the_shoshanna: my boy kitty (Default)
([personal profile] the_shoshanna May. 11th, 2026 07:31 pm)
Today the weather was absolutely gorgeous, sunny and mildly warm and a steady wind from the north -- and that last was important because today was our day to do a challenging hike along the north coast, and the last thing you want is a wind blowing you off the cliff!

Spoiler: we did not get blown off the cliff.

We had another huge breakfast at the guesthouse -- honestly, I'm becoming less able to eat them as the week goes on. I'm just not used to either that much volume of food at breakfast, or that much dietary fat; fat is very filling! And today's omelet/scramble included the bacon I didn't eat yesterday. We asked for vegetables tomorrow, lots of veggies please. After that I think I may opt out of cooked breakfast entirely for a day or so, and just have muesli with fruit and milk; it's still got a lot of nuts, but that fat doesn't gorge me the way eggs and bacon do.

Anyway, after that we caught a bus up to the northwest corner of the island, to a ruin called Grosnez Castle. We weren't quite sure which way it was from the bus stop, but we got to chatting with a slightly older couple who had also gotten off the bus, and they were confident it was thataway, so off we all went. Except that we walked faster than them, and anyway they were going to be turning left/counterclockwise at the edge of the land to go geocaching, while we were turning right/clockwise to pick up a coastal trail. A few days ago we overheard a woman complaining to a group of friends that the trail she'd tried to follow had been really poorly marked and she'd ended up walking several kilometers further than she should have had to, but we found it pretty clear throughout the day; the path was always obvious, and there were occasional signs. The only problem was that sometimes there were a couple of possible paths and we weren't sure which one was best -- but I had downloaded a GPS app and loaded into it a trail from I think it was a Jersey Heritage site? Anyway it kept us on the extremely curvy and narrow.

We didn't bother exploring the castle ruin, because we wanted to get walking; we knew where we were hoping to end up but really weren't sure how long it would take us to get there. So off we went!

The trail was much like the cliff trails we were on in Wales last year: narrow, often only a yard or so from Certain Death but safe enough if you weren't stupid about it, with absolutely gorgeous views along the cliffs and out to sea, where we could see Guernsey and Sark (and probably Herm too) in the distance. And also France, but that's old hat to us by now. (I was amused to get a text from our mobile-phone provider informing me that I was now roaming on a French network, though!) We tromped along happily, admiring everything including our own stamina. There was a lot of up and down, as the trail wended its way through and around and down into the places where the sea has cut deeply into the land.

There are supposed to be a few puffins in that area, a small colony, but we didn't expect to see them, and indeed we did not. We did, however, see the giant statue of a pair of puffins that has been put up to mark their presence!

We had caught a 10:30 bus and started walking at 11:30, and at about 1:30 we arrived in the town of Grève de Lecq, which greeted us with perfectly salubrious public toilets, and a beautiful curving stretch of sand beach, and a very nice beachside cafe with outdoor seating. As I said to Geoff, that's my kind of hiking: rugged terrain, gorgeous views, crashing ocean waves, and a pub every two hours! We split a pint of Liberation ale (unfortunately no longer actually brewed on Jersey) and a piping hot plate of chips with a sort of chili mayo dip, and Geoff also bought me a bottle of water, because I hate the taste of the tap water at our guesthouse and had meant to bring an empty water bottle to fill along the way but forgot. (Look, I was managing all the logistics of getting us to the start of the hike, and keeping us on the right trail, and keeping an eye on the bus times to get us home again from various possible bailout points, and I did remember to bring the bag of trail mix. I dropped one stitch. And then I had a bottle of tasty water anyway!)

We headed out again at two, but fortunately only got about five minutes down the road before Geoff realized he'd left his camera on the table! So I waited while he went back for it; the waitress had kindly set it aside when she saw it had been forgotten. So Geoff ended up walking a bit further than me today, and accordingly has slightly greater bragging rights 😀

Anyway, from there we continued on the same kind of cliffside trail (and occasionally road), except that we made a small detour around a recreational shooting range that was flying the red flags that meant, according to all the signs, ACTIVE SHOOTING IN PROGRESS, DO NOT ENTER. We did not enter! We did see a couple of guys with bows as we skirted the edge of the restricted area, and a little further on we heard a fair amount of gunfire.

Right at the point where we detoured, we also stopped to look at some odd-looking sheep grazing in a field beside the road. Another couple of hikers were already there, looking at the sheep and chatting with the shepherd, a young man who was happy to tell us that they were an unusual breed called Manx Loaghtan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manx_Loaghtan); he said, and we could see, that they often had four horns, but Wikipedia says they sometimes have six! We definitely didn't see any six-horned ones. And a signpost next to the field he and they were in told us that the conical hill in the center of the field, on the edge of the cliff overlooking the ocean, was an ancient hill fort, which had been fortified in various ways by multiple succeeding cultures and forces. So much history, just lying around everywhere!

We walked past many many potato fields, and startled several grouse out of the gorse as we walked by, and saw a tractor moving through a field and followed by a flock of hopeful gulls (or similar), and encountered a fair number of other walkers, either coming the other way or overtaking us. We don't generally overtake others, except for one older couple whom we leapfrogged a few times as we and they alternately stopped to rest, snack, or don or doff layers. Strange to think that we also qualify as an older couple now!

We made it to our ultimate goal, the evocatively named Devil's Hole, a deep crater and blowhole in the oceanside cliff, at about 3:15. Except that we weren't actually there yet; we had arrived at the Devil's Hole bus stop, from which we could get home, but the Devil's Hole itself was a ten-minute walk further on, steeply down through woods as we approached the edge of the water. Climbing back up was not fun ("ten minutes there, fifteen minutes back"), but the Devil's Hole itself was worth it: a wide and dramatically deep and dangerous hole in the rock, and fascinating to stare down into. A signboard warned onlookers that the ground beyond the constructed path and viewing platform was crumbly and unstable, adding, almost but not quite in these words, "Jersey Fire and Rescue rescues twenty or thirty people a year who try to climb down there and can't get back up, don't be a dumbass!" It was indeed sooooo tempting to hop the fence just to get a better look down the throat of the crater, but we generally try not to be dumbasses, so we did not. Sadly it was low tide, so the seawater was not crashing in the crater, but we could see it ominously slapping around at the bottom, as the waves washed the outer side of the rock.

There was also a big statue of the devil beside the path down, mostly cheesy but fun to see.

We slogged back up the path to the parking lot where the bus would stop, had about twenty minutes to sit and rest, and then the bus arrived that would take us back home! Excellent timing. Well, first it took us five or six stops further out, to the end of its route, and then it turned around and took us home.

You could not pay me to drive on these roads. The roadway was often barely six inches wider than the bus, and yet was a two-way road; several times either the bus or the oncoming vehicle had to brake hard, back up, and pull into some invisible but marginally wider spot -- or just into someone's driveway -- so that we could squeeze past each other. Truck drivers and oncoming buses often flipped their rear-view mirrors in to make more room. In the more rural northern part of the route, the bus driver often honked several times as he approached blind curves. If there was a bicyclist in the road, there would often be a line of several cars creeping along behind them, since it was rarely possible to get around them (and you couldn't pay me to bike these roads either). As an admiring and occasionally freaked out passenger, though, bus rides like that are pretty cool! Also, the bus we took home was a newer one, and it actually announced every upcoming stop both aloud and on an electronic screen, which was remarkably civilized compared to the way I'd had to carefully track our progress on previous bus rides so as to know where we were and when we should get off. It wasn't actually helpful, though, since we were going to the end of the line, the big main bus station in the center of town, so we didn't need help identifying it. But it's good to know that some buses, at least, have that system!

Rather than get home and then drag ourselves out again for dinner, on our way home from the bus station we stopped at a likely-looking pub that had outdoor seating and split a big order of fish and chips; a "coronation chicken tart" that turned out to be curried chicken salad on top of a flaky pastry, garnished with salad greens; and another pint of Liberation Ale. Then back to the room for collapsing, showering, and blogging. And here we are!
For [community profile] highadrenalineexchange I got this absolutely delightful Fandom for Robots fic that was everything I wanted! Go read it.

Farther Adventures of Robot and Human
(10233 words) by BardicRaven
Chapters: 6/6
Fandom: Fandom For Robots - Vina Jie-Min Prasad
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: bjornruffian & Computron (Fandom for Robots), Computron & Hexode (Fandom for Robots)
Characters: bjornruffian (Fandom For Robots), Computron (Fandom for Robots), Hexode (Fandom For Robots)
Additional Tags: Canonical Character Death, Canonical Abuse, Friendship, Robots, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Post-Canon
Summary:

Computron is well aware that he exists on sufferance.

hannah: (Laundry jam - fooish_icons)
([personal profile] hannah May. 10th, 2026 09:09 pm)
It's fairly amusing to get scam calls to hang up on me - I'll ask for a website or an email, and they cut their losses then and there.

"Do you have a website?"

"No."

"Why?"

It was one of the brighter points of the day. There was a decided lack of stimulation, and it's making the evening drag on somewhat. I'm hoping a light weights routine will help some, once I decide what movie to do it to.
beatrice_otter: Cover of Janelle Monae's Archandroid album (Janelle Monae)
([personal profile] beatrice_otter May. 10th, 2026 06:03 pm)
[community profile] highadrenalineexchange has revealed authors, and I can reveal what I wrote! I had a lot of fun with a Vedero-focused Goblin Emperor fic.

Title: The Obloquy of Newness
Author: Beatrice_otter
Fandom: Goblin Emperor
Characters: Vedero Drazhin
Written for: DontStopHerNow in High Adrenaline 2026
Summary: Vedero would like nothing more than to study the stars. If only court politics and gossip did not get in her way ...

Author's Note: Betaed by Irina. Title from The Old Astronomer by Sarah Williams.

On AO3. On Squidgeworld. On Dreamwidth. On tumblr. On Pillowfort.



Vedero could barely see her hands as they worked.

That was alright; they knew their business. They did not need to see more than the ghostly outlines of the white tubs in the sink to fish around in the sodium sulfite solution with rubber-coated tongs and grab the edge of the paper and hold it up so that some of the fluid would drip off, before settling it gently in the tub of acetic acid that would stop the silver halide crystals from continuing to develop. She counted the seconds, and then moved the paper to the sodium thiosulfate that would wash away the excess silver from the paper, so that when she took the images out into the light, they would not be re-exposed.

On the whole, it was a very meditative process. )
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
([personal profile] kaberett May. 10th, 2026 07:00 pm)

Reading. I am so close to being Fully Up To Date with She's A Beast!!! I have just hit Feb 2026!!! Maybe my brain will let me read literally anything else???

... having said which, I totally managed to take a break from SAB to inhale Platform Decay (Martha Wells), the new Murderbot. Very little of it has stuck with me and also it was a very pleasant way to switch off brain for a few hours.

And I got close enough to the autoreturn on the library loan of another memoir about embodiment -- Run Toward The Danger, Sarah Polley -- that I am actually trying to blitz through it; so far it is not doing a great deal for me but all this really means is that I am not the target audience for everyone!

Watching. In celebration of David Attenborough's 100th birthday, we have now watched The Year Earth Changed. I had an lot of feelings.

Playing. ... yeah so I completed The Game About Shelving Books, in that I now have all of the Steam achievements including the speedrun achievement (I never normally get speedrun achievements; I never normally even bother trying to get them), and am now Taking Breaks from other things by loading the game back up and wandering around reorganising subject shelving bays according to what makes me happiest (by and large: pick one of "colour" and "thematic grouping"; I am not here for trying to work out how to impose Dewey). At this point, though, that is feeling like a small soothing achievable task that can be A Smol Treet, rather than having the driving urgency of hyperfocus, so that's an extremely welcome development.

Eating. Strawberriessssssss. So many strawberries. I Am Luxuriating. Also: British asparagus! Fancy goats' cheese! The supermarket, having Taken Away the raspberry and passionfruit cheesecake Apparently Forever, has reintroduced it as a seasonal food!

Exploring. We went for one of our normal walks! Adam spotted a deer! We pursuit predated it for a little off amongst trees we had not previously poked around in, and discovered a series of neat rectangular brick walls, all of uniform roofless height, now full of mature trees that had clearly been there for Some Time! We have no idea, OpenStreetMap has nothing to say on the topic, and there is something that has merrily dug setts or dens into and around the foundations...

Making & mending. Bike... works again? Bike works again. Still need to unfuck the rear brake some more but maybe I will manage to take it to see the nice bike shop halfway down the hill tomorrow morning on my way Elsewhere.

Growing. Potted up the lemongrass! Have not potted up the aubergine. Ancho flowering merrily. Maybe I will make it to the plot this week and get some of the things I'm intending to put in the ground into the ground?

Observing. A deer! (Probably muntjac.) The bat! Several excellent front gardens!

the_shoshanna: my boy kitty (Default)
([personal profile] the_shoshanna May. 10th, 2026 04:44 pm)
Nothing beats meeting a friend for the first time[personal profile] trepkos and I friended each other on LJ waaaaay back in the day, because we had friends in common and I thought she seemed cool and I guess she thought the same of me, and there it might have rested if Geoff and I hadn't come to her island!

We started the day with another huge breakfast and enthusiastic conversation from our host Elena; this time she made us veggie omelets and I fended off the beans and still couldn't finish everything. Then we hopped a bus to [personal profile] trepkos's place -- we caught a slightly earlier bus than I'd allowed for, so when we got off at her stop we had enough time to wander around the little oceanfront park and out along a slipway and a natural sprit of land that would have been under water at high tide but was lovely to pick our way along now that it was exposed. Then we came back to shore and walked up the road to her place, and had a nice chat (and tea) with her and her partner, and then we got in her car and she drove us to see wonderful things.

We started with a stroll out an enormously long breakwater on the northeast coast, just to admire the ocean and the way it was so much choppier and violent on the seaward side than the inner side, which is of course exactly what a breakwater is for, but it's pretty cool to look along its length and see both sides at once. There were several people on their way to swim, even. We could just see France on the horizon. And it was ferociously windy; at one point trepkos picked up a tangle of seaweed that had been flung up on the walkway atop the breakwater and tried to drop it over the side back into the sea on the seaward side, where we were walking, and the wind immediately snatched it up and whipped it over our heads to dump it in on the sheltered side instead.

There was a plaque mounted on the breakwater commemorating a fifteen-year-old girl who, starting and ending there, swam all the way around the island. The mind boggles, but apparently this is a thing that people do regularly!

Then we went on a beautiful walk through a wooded valley of conservation land with a stream running through it, just chatting the whole way about fandom and life and I don't know what-all. I had wondered if ticks were a danger here, which question was answered by a signpost warning of the danger of tick-borne disease, and also by the dog we met that had a tick on its forehead, which its owner flicked off when Geoff pointed it out, shudder. But I don't get the sense that they're the constant glaring danger that they are in some places I've been back home.

*pause to tick-check my lower extremities*

At the far end of the conservation area we looped around briefly on roads before re-entering it to retrace our steps, and we passed someone's "fresh eggs for sale" shed at the end of their driveway, with an honor box for money and also a "smile, you're on CCTV" note posted. However, there were no eggs there to be admired; I mean, I wasn't going to buy any, but I would have enjoyed admiring them. We did see a pheasant and several chicks crossing the road, though!

From there we went to the Faldouet dolmen, a Neolithic tomb and ceremonial site; we didn't stay long but such places are always atmospheric and make me think about the length of human history and culture. This one is six thousand years old.

We also went to La Hougue Bie, another Neolithic passage grave, where history is literally layered on layers. We crept into the Neolithic passage under the hill, and walked through a reproduction Neolithic longhouse; and went through the museum exhibit about the enormous Celtic hoard of coins and jewelry that was found in an undisclosed location nearby, dating from around 50 CE; and went through the underground bunker that the Germans built into the hill, which now houses exhibits and photographs commemorating the enslaved workers whom the Nazis brought to Jersey from all over Europe to build their fortifications. (We forgot, however, to visit the sixteenth-century chapel on the top of the hill.)

We finished up in the on-site cafe, which offered cakes and eclairs of a size that I remarked would make an American blush; Geoff and I shared a latte and all three of us got bowls of really excellent tomato-basil soup with fresh rolls, crusty on the outside and wonderfully soft on the inside. It was so much that Geoff and I have decided to skip dinner -- though I might have a handful or two of our trail mix, which I also greatly enjoy!

Trepkos gave us a ride back to our guesthouse, where we are now tucked up blogging. Tomorrow we plan to hike along the northwest coast, which is supposed to be be both gorgeous and quite challenging. We'll start by taking a bus to Grosnez Castle, at the northwest corner of the island, and walking east from there; there's a bus we can take home after what might be a hike of an hour or two, and another one at what might be anywhere from another one to four hours; I'm finding it really hard to get clear information! We'll see how we get on.
troisoiseaux: (reading 3)
([personal profile] troisoiseaux May. 10th, 2026 10:19 am)
Read Sounds Like Titanic by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman, a memoir of her time - as a young, desperate aspiring violinist - playing violin in a fake orchestra that toured the U.S. (and, briefly, China) while "doing the Milli Violini", i.e., the instrumental version of lip-synching to a recorded CD. It's also a memoir of the cultural shift/dissonance of post-9/11 America ("The desire for postdisaster control was so strong in the years [Hindman] worked for the Ensemble, the years 2002-2006, that even the slightest sound of a pennywhistle was soothing") and of what she describes as life in the body, a theme encompassing everything from the way that being A Violin Player was an escape from and defense against the pressures of being A Teenage Girl, to the panic disorder ("disaster-brain") she developed while on the aforementioned U.S. tour. Engagingly written; had a lot going on in a relatively slim memoir - shuffling between circa-1990s backstory, the circa-2000s "main plot", and contextual/reflective interludes like a deck of cards - but it worked.

Read Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth, queer coming-of-age in early 1990s rural Ireland; I liked this a lot but don't have much to say about it. Would recommend if you enjoy intense teen girl friendships-to-lovers, complicated relationships with one's mother, Catholic guilt, and slow-burn emotional/personal growth.

* Actually finished both on Saturday, after starting on Friday and Thursday, respectively ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
cesy: "Cesy" - An old-fashioned quill and ink (Default)
([personal profile] cesy May. 10th, 2026 02:08 pm)
Vidders.net has been a fannish vid hosting site for a long time, offering a safe place when others kick legally protected vids off randomly at the request of copyright holders. It currently runs on less than $100 a month. They need a few more people to join their Patreon as regular donors to keep it sustainable.

Their Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/vidding
Their site: https://vidders.net
ysobel: (Default)
([personal profile] ysobel May. 9th, 2026 10:05 pm)
Hope to do a more detailed entry later but this has been a very full week, some unfun (interviewing and training new caregivers to replace my graduating students; the training process always sucks and is stressful, and I keep having to remind myself it always sucks and always gets better) but some fun. Craft fair last Sunday, Whole Earth Festival (kind of a hippie-vibed craft fair plus music plus some activities) today. It was hot, around 90F, and we were there for 2.5 hours, but sunscreen plus UV-protective cooling hood (purple of course) plus plenty of water plus frequent shade breaks all made it okay.

I am tired and, for the moment, content. :)
hannah: (Library stacks - fooish_icons)
([personal profile] hannah May. 9th, 2026 08:24 pm)
In trying to free up apartment space, I need to de-accession some materials. In de-accessioning some materials, I need to free up hard drive space. In needing to free up hard drive space, I'm taking a long, hard look at what I've collected over the last couple of decades. Some of these files date back to freshman year of college. Few of them are shows I'm at all interested in rewatching. There's a half-season of something here, the last season of something else there, the season where I downloaded everything and then wandered away from the fandom halfway through watching them, episodes I later ripped from DVDs and Blurays. It's a weird form of digital nostalgia. There's no needing these. There's liking the record of having them, and there's no needing it.

Certainly for some of the newer ones where there's no boggling over downloading it that long ago, there's an ease in getting rid of them. Admitting I'm not going to watch that, giving up on the sense of obligation, reminding myself if I really want to watch it then I'll find some way to do it and if I really wanted I'd have likely done it by now. Sure, there's stuff like Rome where I downloaded the first season in 2007 and only got around to watching it a few weeks ago, but those I'd ripped so I knew I'd have everything, plus subtitles. By now, I'm not watching those old files because the quality's so low compared to what I can get now. I can find my way to the full seasons of Psych and 30 Rock if I'm so compelled, on one format or another, on box sets or a streaming service.

The technology of streaming remains largely positive to me. It's the vertical integration of the distribution methods and fragmenting of the market that's the true downfall of the whole affair. Ages ago, I saw it suggested that a Steam-like service for shows and movies would solve a lot of problems, and as there's less money in that than the alternative, it's going to take an act of God to get it going. Until then, I'm having to say I need to take comfort and relief in knowing I don't have to commit to hauling these around anymore.

Amusingly, checking the local library for DVDs of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes gets me a David Bowie concert movie. I can't say it's wrong. Not what I'm looking for, and also not wrong.
marginaliana: A cat typing on a laptop. (Cat + computer)
([personal profile] marginaliana May. 8th, 2026 07:46 pm)
Things:

--Two joggers went past me the other day and all I caught was the phrase 'the touch grass doctrine.' I love the idea of it being a doctrine, like a religious precept.

--Yesterday in the subway station two girls were brainstorming how to convince a friend of the merits of polyamory - which, fine, you do you, but their proposed arguments were a) when you get tired of your boyfriend you can go hang out with your girlfriend and b) hanging out with your girlfriend will make your boyfriend want to hang out with you both because you're both hot, so he will stop being annoying. This seems to me to be... not the best angle to take. Then again, if you're college age, maybe this is convincing reasoning?

--I actually like everyone from this series of Taskmaster. This seems impossible. Usually there's at least one of them that I want to punch. Very weird sensation. No one to root against.

--Relatedly, I was walking through the park the other day and saw a robin with its dinner and mentally went "I found a worm!" in a deeply self-satisfied manner.

--Wrote another little ficlet:

North (478 words) by marginaliana
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sorted (Website) RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ben Ebbrell/Mike Huttlestone, Ben Ebbrell & Mike Huttlestone
Characters: Mike Huttlestone, Ben Ebbrell
Additional Tags: take it as gen or preslash as you like, pretentious metaphors
Summary: Compasses captivate Mike.

Today I discovered, at approximately 6 p.m., that The Gym is only open until 5 p.m. on Saturdays. We had had a fairly lazy day at home and I had been putting off My Own Gym until after I had talked A through their (second!) Liftoff Phase One workout; I spent the approach going "... this car park is suspiciously empty, I don't think it can possibly be just that the school isn't on today..." and, yep, closed already.

Read more... )

elyusion: hmmmmmm (thinking)
([personal profile] elyusion posting in [community profile] style_system May. 9th, 2026 03:38 pm)
Does anyone know how to make the comments on [community profile] joseimuke less ugly? I dislike that there's no Quick Reply, but more importantly, when you're replying to a comment it doesn't show the comment you're replying to unless you press the Preview button. I also don't know how I would make it so replies indent, but other than that I can fix the rest of the ugliness myself. But is some of the more technical stuff fixable, or should I give up and find another layout even though I really like the current one?
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