Ooooh shiny

Sep. 7th, 2025 11:05 pm
ysobel: (easily distracted)
[personal profile] ysobel
So I got an email tonight-- seen in my last check of the evening-- inviting me to beta the new Procreate. Which probably means it's a fairly broad beta at this point, because I'm nobody, but --

Um. Yes PLEASE.

I've only done a bit of playing with the new brushes but holy crap it's so good. Some of them have dynamic color interactions, behaving more like physical media. Some of them have amazing texture. Some of them would make amazing calligraphy.

I've gotten through 12 of the 18 categories in the comes-with-Procreate default library, and I really ought to go to sleep, but eeee this is so cool!

vital functions

Sep. 7th, 2025 10:50 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Reading. Lake of Souls, Ann Leckie: finished the Radch stories; on to The World Of The Raven Tower!

The Painful Truth, Monty Lyman: in progress; not yet Cross with it but also not yet Impressed by it.

More Dreamwidth catchup.

Listening. More Hidden Almanac!

Eating. SO many tomatoes.

Exploring. Poked around Preston a very little!

Growing. ... SO many tomatoes. More watering system established at plot (so hopefully all the peppers will still be alive and well upon my return). Sowed some probably-past-it seeds.

Observing. A saw a deer on the drive up to Preston! A proper big one with antlers and all! We were very impressed.

Also the local owl Yell.

I feel like an idiot

Sep. 6th, 2025 04:58 pm
ysobel: A grumpy puppet version of Angel (grumpy puppet)
[personal profile] ysobel
Guy came around with "the government wants you to have a free phone because you're on benefits"

and my roommate who is aggressive with solicitors wasn't home

and so I said sure (thinking maybe I could use it to try swapping the sim card from mom's old untextable phone)

even though I know better

so now I have a phone I don't really need, that may or may not be a scam, that I regretted accepting like five minutes later

(they didn't take cc info so maybe the worst they can do is harass me)

...fml
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Or at least "the other line I meant to highlight from the Wikipedia article":

There is increasing evidence that the smooth muscle that lines the airways becomes progressively more sensitive to changes that occur as a result of injury to the airways from dehydration.

I had only taken 700ml of water with me; I'd blithely assumed I'd be able to top up at the café and then had Too Much Social Anxiety to ask or even check whether they had a jug out, because that's a thing my brain is definitely Doing at the moment. ... and then on the way back I was desperately thirsty and stole most of A's water, and I am just personally finding it Very Interesting that the thing my body wanted me to do most was More Fluids.

all things very

Sep. 3rd, 2025 10:11 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett
  1. Have achieved More Event Prep: both the arrows catalogue updating (albeit not printing), and Folding All The Potions that printed successfully.
  2. Friend is watching Orphan Black for the first time. I am getting Yelling. It's DELIGHTFUL.
  3. Yesterday, leaving the lower limbs class that has been prescribed in an attempt to reduce the risk of reinjuring my ankle again, I... turned my ankle. (This is not the good bit.) In more or less the same way I did in April, that was the motivation for the current round of physio, but whether it was the exercises having actually helped anything at all or the fact that I was wearing different (and more supportive) boots or just pure luck, while it's a bit sore it is not e.g. refusing to bear weight any time I don't pay adequately close attention to how I load it, so I'm counting that one as a win.
  4. We forgot New Elephant Day on Monday (Sheldrick Wildlife Trust calendar) so instead had New Elephant Day today... AND IT AN ADORABLE BABY RHINO. 13/10, etc.
  5. I am nearly at the point where I think I might be able to read the Wikipedia page on action potentials and derive meaning from it? I'm definitely slightly less confused about the cell biologist's definition of depolarization than I was even yesterday...
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

multiple colours of sliced tomatoes, prominently featuring some blue-black with red stars

(By "today's" I mean not "all of those harvested today, nor even yesterday" but rather "the tomato course with dinner".)

I really love the ridiculous stars on the tops of the Blue Fire.

vital functions

Aug. 31st, 2025 10:31 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Reading. Regula Ysewijn, McKinley Valentine, David J. Linden, Ann Leckie )

Skimmed several more pain-related papers.

... and I am also making some actual progress on catching up with my reading page! By which I mean "... I'm almost a whole entire week into May." I make no promises about how far I'm going to actually get.

Watching. 'nother episode of Farscape: S02E05 The Way We Weren't. Will concede that this made me go "... okay, yeah, I see why I needed to watch everything that went before, and damn it I am Having Some Feelings".

I have now sat or indeed wiggled my way through through Squish The Fish (Cosmic Kids' "baby yoga") in its entirety, it being a great favourite of The Toddler. I continue to have fascinating conversations about things that are easy for toddlers versus for grown-ups with the resident physiotherapist.

Cooking. A sweetcorn, tomato and runner bean curry, unearthed via Eat Your Books when I realised I had somewhat unintentionally got the nice organic veg box people to bring us runner beans (of which I am generally suspicious because of the texture of the pod).

Two loaves of actually vaguely competent bread (turns out scraping together the executive function to make the timing work... works better).

For breakfast this morning: the next recipe from the Welsh cakes book, being blackberry and apple splits (thereby using up some of the stewed apple in the freezer!). Could stand to have significantly less sugar than the recipe suggested and frozen blackberries very much want to make something that could only generously be called a purée rather than a soup, and definitely benefitted from being left to stand and cool before any attempt is made at the actual splitting, but A is very happy so I am content :)

Eating. Pizza Express takeaway to go with the Farscape on Tuesday evening when we were very, very tired.

Lunch in the café at Forty Hall this afternoon, featuring orange-and-lavender loaf cake!

Blackberries and onions and tomatoes and my mother's fig jam. Many very good food. Very pleased yes.

Exploring. Forty Hall! We went on an ADVENTURE this afternoon to get LUNCH there, which was slightly complicated by the part where breathing, everything is fine )

such that I spent a significant amount of time on the way both there and back again going "nope, need to stop" and spending a while lying on the grass staring up at the blue sky and the wispy white clouds through the various oak trees we passed. I have thoughts about this specific medical experience that I might write up elsewhen, BUT we WENT ON AN ADVENTURE and explored the farm shop and had lunch/afternoon tea in the café and walked around the walled garden and went home VIA THE (outskirts of the) BEAVER ENCLOSURE (thank you all, looking up that link means I have just discovered that TOURS NOW EXIST as of last month!!!) (more context: first beavers reintroduced to London after something like 400 years, back in 2022). Very very pleased to have managed this.

Creating. Hmm. I haven't been creating, as such, but I have definitely been consulting with A about some 3d prints to make sorting the in-game currency easier at Admin: the LRP!

Growing. Everything is tomatoes. I have not managed to get overwintering onions going; maybe tomorrow?

Rooted lemongrass potted up; let's see how long it takes me to kill it this time.

Observing. Alas no beavers, but lots of excellent birds, including two excursions (one solo, one partnered) to visit the cootlings :) The one that hatched last (by a considerable margin) is very definitely still no more than about half the size of its elder siblings!

small delights

Aug. 30th, 2025 11:54 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett
  1. Went out to get mozzarella to have with lunch. Realised halfway down the hill that we could go all the way down the hill and watch the latest batch of cootlings. DID SO while eating raspberries. Excellent.
  2. Lunch also included home-made Tomatoes and Basils and Bread, and also separately a small baguette with fig jam courtesy of my mother and brie courtesy of Somerset via The Supermarket. V pleasing.
  3. Excellent chapter of book has introduced me to all kinds of things including pain asymbolia.
  4. I have DONE SOME ADMIN: THE LRP PAPERWORK. There is paperwork that is DONE and consequently in the RECYCLING. I have sent SO MANY E-MAILS. I am getting some really lovely responses! And soon there will be FEWER THINGS.
  5. Playing with pens! Continuing to really enjoy playing with pens.

more good things

Aug. 29th, 2025 10:39 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett
  1. BREAD. I have coaxed myself back into giving it vaguely sensible timings, and shockingly it works better when I don't leave it to get sad and lonely.
  2. I slightly tripped and bought myself a writing slope last week? ... I am somehow surprised that it's being useful, specifically for when I'm being a horrible laptop + paperwork goblin on the sofa.
  3. SPEAKING OF WHICH, I am going through a bunch of tragically overdue paperwork for Admin: the LRP purposes (the person it is overdue to is... me) and found the answer to a mystery. (I am somewhat baffled that I apparently got the answer to this mystery at the second event this year and yet had completely forgotten that I'd managed anything of the kind until Just Now, two weeks before E4; I think I'm probably just going to chalk this up as another piece of evidence that my brain just... wasn't... working very well at all in June.)
  4. TOMATOES. Actually this is related to the Good Bread -- I had an excellent bread-and-butter-and-tomatoes-and-parsley lunch, which was delightful. The Purple Ukraine are so good and I like them so much.
  5. Today I have managed non-zero tidying, and the flat is marginally better and more usable for it. Mostly sorting out some of my gardening horrors on the patio; partly Wrangling The Dishwasher and some of the washing up; partly the aforementioned overdue paperwork, a consequence of which is putting a bunch of paper IN THE RECYCLING. Is good.

some good things

Aug. 28th, 2025 10:38 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett
  1. A coaxed me out of the house for lunch; they'd been intending to spend the day in the office, but Shenanigans ensued such that they needed to pick something up from home and also the office canteen had run out of the veggie option, and by this time the triptan was more-or-less working. So we had zapiekanka at the market in the sunshine, and lo, it was good.
  2. I apparently somehow managed to duck into the BHF charity shop right before it started raining heavily, and upon reemerging from poking at homeware and books at the back was startled to find that it was no longer raining heavily, but that everything was suddenly and inexplicably (at least briefly at least to me, in my migraine-addled state) damp.
  3. I have finally picked up Lake of Souls (Ann Leckie), which I absolutely pre-ordered and absolutely was very excited about but am only now getting to, and I am having A LOT OF FEELINGS. SO many feelings.
  4. A brought me ice cream from the freezer. Raspberry ripple, which I was inexplicably in the mood for, and the hazelnut + hazelnut brittle.
  5. ... and in fact I am going to go and be in a sleepy pile. Yes. That can be thing number five.
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Subtitle 50 irresistibly nostalgic sweet treats and comforting classics... featuring "Trinity burnt cream":

Also known as crème brûlée, old recipes for versions of this pudding are found in various parts of Britain and Europe. Its association with Trinity College, Cambridge goes back to at least the nineteenth century.

Despite my documented interest in crème brûlée and, you know, having grown up in Cambridge, I had somehow never come across this before?! And yet it's inexplicably clearly attested on Wikipedia. Nominally this means I should probably be indexing the "Ethnicity" of the dish as "English" as well as "French" but, frankly, je refuse, and even Trinity have the grace to say:

The story that crème brûlée itself was invented at the College almost certainly has no basis in fact.

It's not even like the National Trust is making a point of having all the recipes in this book be of British origin! Clearly-identified non-British culinary sources include Italy, Latvia, and Russia! (... the Welsh- and Scottish-origin puddings have headnotes mysteriously quiet on said origins, though.) AND YET. Crème brûlée! Trinity! Really.

kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

-- no wait that's a lie, I also investigated an apple tree. (Unremarkable eating apples.)

But! Tomatoes!

a lap full of tomatoes, in reds and oranges and greens and golds and purpleish

Pictured varieties: Purple Ukraine, Blue Fire, misc green stripey, Orange Banana, Moneymaker. Buried so you can't see it is a Feo di Rio Gordo. I did not get the whole rainbow I was aiming for this year (alas the Yellow Pearshaped all failed, as did the Known green stripey), but I'm nonetheless pleased!

Dear [community profile] sexpollenplus creator,

Aug. 25th, 2025 10:56 pm
anaraine: Crop of Bianchi from Katekyou Hitman Reborn! ([khr] bianchi)
[personal profile] anaraine
Affected has stopped being a word for me. But hello, dear creator! I'm still pulling together all of my ridiculously iddy thoughts for these requests, but I love sex pollen, it's one of my absolute favorite tropes - if you already have something specific in mind, please feel free to just go for it. If you need a bit more to work with, then hopefully I've touched on something that inspires you! (If I haven't, please give me until September 3rd 4th. Will probably finish in an hour or so if I don't fall asleep first!)

(You can also view this entry by ship with cuts a la the date view, and freeform thoughts can be opened/closed by clicking the ▶/▼ arrows.)

I do have gifting enabled and will always be open to and delighted for treats.

In general... )

Katekyou Hitman Reborn: Bianchi/Dino )

Katekyou Hitman Reborn: Tsuna/Xanxus )

Katekyou Hitman Reborn: Xanxus/Squalo )

Labyrinth: Jareth/Sarah )

Naruto: Hashirama/Tobirama/Izuna )

Naruto: Tobirama/Izuna )

Naruto: Tobirama/Kagami )

Naruto: Tobirama/Touka/Hikaku )

RF Guardians of Azuma: Ulalaka | Matsuri/Ulalaka )

Star Wars: Aayla/Bly )


Page generated Sep. 9th, 2025 04:54 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios