Entry tags:
various things
I am so behind on posting!
Things that have happened since I last posted, a partial list (feel free to comment on any of these and I will say more):
-I finished watching Amadeus, it was amazing except for the guy playing Mozart, I missed Tom Hulce a lot
-I read pretty much Hugo stuff in July, but also because of reading the Heinlein study for Hugos, read the parts of To Sail Beyond the Sunset that aren't set in the future. (I have never read the bits that are set in the future.) My friend CW told me to read this book in high school, saying that her boyfriend had said it reminded him of her and that it was just like her, and it super is just like she was in high school. (I suspect this no longer holds: we read this in the early 90's, it was published in 1987, and we've lived through several decades since then)
Also, I must share that the copy I was reading has the same cover shown on Goodreads.
E wandered by and did she remark on the cover? Yes. She said, "Cute kitty!"
...I have NEVER NOTICED there is a cat on the cover of this book. Neither has Dave.
-I am slowly getting through Hamilton more than a month after everyone else watched it, it is really slow for me to watch things on video these days plus which D doesn't like rap/hip-hop so I try to watch it when he's not around either. wow I can't get over how acrobatic it is, how can you even sing and do all that at the same time. Also LMM may not be the greatest singer but he has this kind of frantic intensity that almost burns through the screen.
-I signed up for my first WorldCon and it was great to hang out with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
morbane and seekingferret and nolly and would totally do virtualcon again although next time I will try very hard not to schedule a fic exchange at the same time *facepalm*
-that Hugo ceremony, though. As I toldseekingferret, the best thing about it (besides some of the non-GRRM parts which were very cool, like the part where the artist was describing the Hugo Award base) was being able to real-time share the horrifyingness with him and ase and Worldcon chat (including nolly)
-it has come to this, I have started to play with learning German on Duolingo. I knew very little before and I'm really pleased at how knowing just a few more words makes a lot of simple sentences much more understandable. It's also kind of hilarious how excited I am to have graduated to adverbs, as they're quite important and for some reason I could not keep almost any of them in my head at all before (previously I could at least recognize conjugations of be and have and a few adjectives/nouns, but "immer" and "wieder" were literally the only adverbs I could keep in my head, courtesy of the Brahms Requiem -- which of course has a great number of other adverbs which for some reason didn't stick). Of course using for current fandom, but I'm also really excited at the prospect of listening to more German art songs and opera, which I've always felt I'd appreciate a lot more if I had any idea what was going on.
-duolingo is edging out my previous "oh I have two minutes of time to waste what shall I do" time-filler which is this tablet game called Heroes Charge, the idea of which is that you have these "heroes" which you collect like cards (they even have a animation of a card which plays when you get a new hero) and you combine them into teams of five to fight battles with other teams. I really can't recommend it, it's awfully lame in any of six different directions (starting with the scantily clad female cards and moving on to the way it constantly is trying to get you to buy stuff, not to mention the way some of the subbattlegames are poorly designed), but I love the shiny-collecting aspect, the plotting out team-building aspect, and sometimes I just want to be able to demolish some enemies in a way that has no actual consequences for either of us and everyone gets up and dusts themselves off afterwards and goes off to fight someone else.
-oh yeah, non-online life, it exists. life is pretty good for us, actually, we have had a mostly pretty chill summer. Because no camps (well, actually, there have been camps here, but I wasn't comfortable sending E to an indoor one and the outdoor ones we tried to get into we didn't make the lottery), I am working half-time (instead of 3/4 time) and spending more time taking the kids biking (A can now Almost ride a bike, starting and stopping are still kind of hit or miss for him) and playing games, and also they are playing a lot more Minecraft when I have to be on telecons. I am not looking forward to virtual school starting.
Things that have happened since I last posted, a partial list (feel free to comment on any of these and I will say more):
-I finished watching Amadeus, it was amazing except for the guy playing Mozart, I missed Tom Hulce a lot
-I read pretty much Hugo stuff in July, but also because of reading the Heinlein study for Hugos, read the parts of To Sail Beyond the Sunset that aren't set in the future. (I have never read the bits that are set in the future.) My friend CW told me to read this book in high school, saying that her boyfriend had said it reminded him of her and that it was just like her, and it super is just like she was in high school. (I suspect this no longer holds: we read this in the early 90's, it was published in 1987, and we've lived through several decades since then)
Also, I must share that the copy I was reading has the same cover shown on Goodreads.
E wandered by and did she remark on the cover? Yes. She said, "Cute kitty!"
...I have NEVER NOTICED there is a cat on the cover of this book. Neither has Dave.
-I am slowly getting through Hamilton more than a month after everyone else watched it, it is really slow for me to watch things on video these days plus which D doesn't like rap/hip-hop so I try to watch it when he's not around either. wow I can't get over how acrobatic it is, how can you even sing and do all that at the same time. Also LMM may not be the greatest singer but he has this kind of frantic intensity that almost burns through the screen.
-I signed up for my first WorldCon and it was great to hang out with
morbane and seekingferret and nolly and would totally do virtualcon again although next time I will try very hard not to schedule a fic exchange at the same time *facepalm*-that Hugo ceremony, though. As I told
seekingferret, the best thing about it (besides some of the non-GRRM parts which were very cool, like the part where the artist was describing the Hugo Award base) was being able to real-time share the horrifyingness with him and ase and Worldcon chat (including nolly)-it has come to this, I have started to play with learning German on Duolingo. I knew very little before and I'm really pleased at how knowing just a few more words makes a lot of simple sentences much more understandable. It's also kind of hilarious how excited I am to have graduated to adverbs, as they're quite important and for some reason I could not keep almost any of them in my head at all before (previously I could at least recognize conjugations of be and have and a few adjectives/nouns, but "immer" and "wieder" were literally the only adverbs I could keep in my head, courtesy of the Brahms Requiem -- which of course has a great number of other adverbs which for some reason didn't stick). Of course using for current fandom, but I'm also really excited at the prospect of listening to more German art songs and opera, which I've always felt I'd appreciate a lot more if I had any idea what was going on.
-duolingo is edging out my previous "oh I have two minutes of time to waste what shall I do" time-filler which is this tablet game called Heroes Charge, the idea of which is that you have these "heroes" which you collect like cards (they even have a animation of a card which plays when you get a new hero) and you combine them into teams of five to fight battles with other teams. I really can't recommend it, it's awfully lame in any of six different directions (starting with the scantily clad female cards and moving on to the way it constantly is trying to get you to buy stuff, not to mention the way some of the subbattlegames are poorly designed), but I love the shiny-collecting aspect, the plotting out team-building aspect, and sometimes I just want to be able to demolish some enemies in a way that has no actual consequences for either of us and everyone gets up and dusts themselves off afterwards and goes off to fight someone else.
-oh yeah, non-online life, it exists. life is pretty good for us, actually, we have had a mostly pretty chill summer. Because no camps (well, actually, there have been camps here, but I wasn't comfortable sending E to an indoor one and the outdoor ones we tried to get into we didn't make the lottery), I am working half-time (instead of 3/4 time) and spending more time taking the kids biking (A can now Almost ride a bike, starting and stopping are still kind of hit or miss for him) and playing games, and also they are playing a lot more Minecraft when I have to be on telecons. I am not looking forward to virtual school starting.
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I... am hopeful that people learned some lessons from this year? Basically the lesson is, Do Not Invite GRRM To Be The Toastmaster. And If You Do And It Is Prerecorded, Listen To It Before Broadcasting. But really, I don't think he would have gotten away with a tenth of what he did in an in-person venue, because people would have started throwing tomatoes.
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(I...don't know about "enjoyed," but "appreciated" your writeups. The Chiang stuff that I just got to was good, at least!)
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You do not need to read everything if you don't want to
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I probably do force myself to read a lot more of the ballot (especially the shorter works which are a smaller time commitment) as "homework" when they're things I am not crazy about, but part of that is because I really like
ranting aboutanalyzing things that I don't like and why I don't like them :) and discussing them with other people who are reading them -- who often do like it, and we can talk about why our reactions were different (and occasionally, someone even gets me to change my mind -- the Cannibal story this year I like a lot more than when I first read it). But seriously, if that's not fun for you then don't do it!just vote for the one I tell you is goodj/k!no subject
my galaxy brain plan is to get something published at pro rates so I can be on the ballotThank you! :)
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*claps hands*
A little Duolingo goes a surprisingly long way! I also commend them on how addictive they make it. You can tell some gamification research went into that app.
A reading group also goes a long way. :D Thank you for helping me with my German studies, and good luck with yours! (I'm glad it will pay off in musical respects as well.)
it has come to this
This made me laugh. Little did we know, a year ago, where our conversations about Don Carlo would lead us. I look forward to seeing what surprises the future will hold!
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This made me laugh. Little did we know, a year ago, where our conversations about Don Carlo would lead us. I look forward to seeing what surprises the future will hold!
This is all kinds of amazing! <3
ADVERBS, though! I was looking forward to the Adverb lesson for forever (well, like, I guess a week and a half) and now that I'm there it really does make SUCH a difference, and the slow repetitive exercises are exactly what I need for these words that Do Not want to lodge in my brain! A lot of vocab I can pick up as easily through e.g. the Duolingo reading samples, or our reading group, or English analogues, or remembering bits of random German e.g. from Brahm's Requiem, but not these stubborn adverbs!
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I'm impressed with not just how addictive Duolingo is, but how productive it manages to be even if you only do a few minutes a day. I was aiming to do a little every day during a completely wretched sleep period, and many days I only did five minutes, but after a month (some days more than five minutes, obviously), I was ready to start reading an interleaved translation of Ziebura!
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For real - I've seen two Hamiltons perform in person, and they were both very good but the partial loss of that intensity did make a genuine difference.
Oh, GRRM. *siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh* And *siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh* to much of the Hugos.
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Yeah, I'm with you about GRRM and the Hugos. Ugh. There were some good parts, though.