High Tech – Allegra Sloman's blog

a trifle of luck

Jeff has won two Global Privilege Levels™ hockey tickets so I am thrilled he will be able to share this bounty with a friend and eschew the cheap seats. I basically told him I’d be happy to go if everyone else on his list was busy, but this is too good not to share with a hockey-loving friend.

I am feeling lucky meself. I got to talk about my grandchildren at lunch yesterday but I said, “Sorry, no pictures, I think it’s gauche, especially when you can look for grandson goo on my vanity site and fill your boots.” THE RELIEF ON THEIR FACES I am going to write a song IT WAS SO INSPIRING, three relentlessly childless-by-choice people not having to deal with interminable grandson pics LOLOLOL. And of course, I’ve known most of them for 20 years as acquaintances so I know to the eyebrow raise just how little they want to see those pics. I’m so glad I lost my phone, at least for now. It was also a good day to be a well-masking autistic, believe me, because if I’d brought my 11 year old inner self to the party I would have had so much more to say, to less happiness among the attendees, equal parts LOL.

Because I have a minor child in my on-loan car 8-10 times a week, as a responsible adult I should have what the current technology supports in terms of safety, to wit a phone. Who wants to give me a phone and I’ll get going on that. Yes I know I said something different in the last paragraph~ what are you, the thought police. Tsk, tsk. I want a granny phone, only as much access as it takes to text and phone.

Bsky continues to be fair winds and strong engagement. People are much more accepting of my content and I wander around ‘liking’ things and occasionally commenting but I have zero urge to land on people’s necks and scold the living crap out of them like I had for the entire last six months I was on Xitter.

They need money, and if they provide a couple more robust in-app services (thread unroll, good CHRIST, mebbe DMs tho I’m onthefence about that, better list curation, GIF SUPPORT SEE EARLIER BLASPHOOMERY, block lists of words) I’m all for a $5 per month subscription. It’s that much in entertainment, news, self-expression and validation, and that indefinable sense of community that makes you adopt a chaos bi expat Scot in Anchorage because he’s ABSO HILARIOUS and then stop following him because you really are not that interested in him emitting an extended oops chronicle of the married women he’s boned because he was too drunk to ask for life stats first. Farewell, you know who you are, and please don’t drink yourself to death even if you think it’s mandated.

LOOONG discussion about earthquakes in the vancouver subreddit. Got some good ideas, shared some. My song about Vancouver mods will soon be a memory. Maybe I’ll go back and delete it har har. (No. I mean it will disappear when the site goes down later this year, although I’ll have a backup.)

cri de coeur

As sustained and limitless as the human consciousness that presents it:

Catherynne M. Valente on AI and art.

helluva story if true

The tech heist of the century? Giving me ideas for Honey on the Moon, that’s for sure.

I’ve started writing down songs again

Finally got Finale running, haw haw, so I’ve started putting Thorfinn’s song (Standard of the Crow) into musical notation. I’ve got about a hundred songs to write down, and I’ll start fitfully posting songs over the rest of the year.

It was like air and water to see Katie yesterday.

I said to Jeff yesterday, “I’m in a good MOOD I just can’t get anything DONE.”

He’s not happy because NÃ¼rburgring was called on account of fog so there was virtually no night racing, which is what he *wants* to see.

Hello my SF fans, check out this science news. It’s an article from the Asia Times about how we as a species have figured out how to jam photons together to make matter. You need a dirty great laser….

two movies, two fan pics and a song

Come As You Are – three disabled guys go on a road trip to a brothel in Montreal with Gabourey Sidibe as the driver. Jeff and I laughed our asses off. It tries to speak to the difficult truths about autonomy and pleasure and love without talking down to disabled people and for the most part succeeds. There are a number of interesting twists on the trope of the magical Black woman, most of which land deftly, but you can tell white people, non disabled. wrote it. Also Jeff called one of the main plot points about thirty seconds into the road trip so full marks for observation. Cried at the end so hard the top of my head nearly caved in, full marks to me for being a drip.

(Several months later read what disabled people said about the movie, and HOO BOY did I drop the ball on not seeing the ableism here….) Please read this.

First Love – Funny, horrifying, over-the-top, stylish and touching all at once, this ensemble bloodbath with a happy ending is utterly worth seeing just for how fast it moves and the clockwork intricacy of the plotting and fight scenes, and for how it casually integrates the cultural differences of the principals into the action. (Chinese gangs vs Japanese cops vs. Yakuza vs. extremely confused but survival-oriented lower-class civilians.) One of the characters is floridly psychotic and hallucinating due to drug toxicity for a good chunk of the movie which just adds to the ‘not knowing what the fuck is going to happen next’ thrill ride of it all.

I’ve added a tag to the song “I’m going to have to ask the smart people to leave”.

AU Castiel with suit and tats

AU Dean Winchester with piercings and tats. Art available on Etsy at https://www.etsy.com/shop/JackieDeeArt

I am not a fan of age regressed fan pics for these two actors (Misha Collins and Jensen Ackles) so these pics make me very happy.

materials technology goes wild

so cool!

No sense being right if it nearly gets you fired

So much for DRM.

Google Play

I know all you high tech folks will roll your eyes, but it blows my mind I can go to Google Play on my laptop, pick out apps to try, have it confirmed that they will work on my model of phone, and then they can push to my phone in seconds through the wifi. And just as fast as I try the little suckers, they come off my phone, usually, but the drum rudiments app is proving useful, even as the music notation app is not. For example, Angry Birds is off. Each time the advertisements blocked my ability to destroy those verdammten schweine I died a little, and off it came – although now I know what all the fuss has been about. So far I’ve been sticking with free apps, anybody got any tips for a good paid app? I’m looking for utilities, music apps, productivity apps and anything you’ve found useful. I can recommend gStrings Free, it’s as good as any tuner I ever paid for and quite sensitive.

Miss Margot watches the screen

A couple of days ago Margot was sitting on her tuffet in the den while Jeff was copying files. She watched intently as the files flew between the folders, and then for yuks Jeff started shifting the dialog box around, and she watched that too. Eddie never watches TV although occasionally he responds to sounds from the speakers.

Margot needs a bath, she’s getting a bit pee-ie, and it’s Jeff that has to put up with her rank rear end.

I have a new phone, an HTC One S (I bought it on Thursday last but it was DOA so I replaced it). I am very much liking it but I’m still getting used to the keyboard.

Clean cheap hydrogen?

All right! http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/self-sustaining-solar-reactor-creates-clean-hydrogen-fuel-2012044/

Life at Geekhaus continues along its merry way. We’re halfway through the last season of SG1 and although there are those who believe that it just wasn’t the same program without Rick Anderson and Don Davis, I continue to enjoy it and am sad that it’s all going to end soon. Which just means we have to view SGA and SGU again, plus any tv movies we can actually get copies of.

I move at work today. By my count I sat at one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, oooo ! I JUST REALIZED. This is lucky 13! Thirteen desks since I started with the company. Yeah, I thought it had averaged out to once a year. We’re moving one floor down and to the other side, which means I lose the view of the Old School Cylons and the Lions out the front of the building, and now get to glower at the EA logo all day, when I feel like turning around and doing that, that is.

Anyway, I have to get my poop in a group and get out of here. We have to pack and the day’s work must still be done, and I owe 1.5 hours for my running around yesterday re the passports.

Called mOm on the phone yestreen and Katie waltzed in while I was talking to her and she had a nice long chinwag. Keith is heading to the Island this weekend so hopefully mOm will get her grandbaby fix. Katie is inching closer to having her own apartment, but that isn’t because she isn’t looking, it’s because she’s extremely fussy about where she lives and if the front hallway smells like crap she just spins around and steps back out again. Like Keith said when he was four, you don’t want to live where it smells like people are cooking their dinner in a garbage can.

Various and continuing shifts at work made me realize that I am a very small person in a very large enterprise. I don’t have what it takes to run my own business (unless somebody wants to pay me to dream up tunes all the time) and so if I want to stay employed I have to execute according to plan. I just wish I knew what the plan is. I know this makes me sound stupid, and it’s not meant to be a crack at my bosses/supervisors, whom I respect greatly. I am not convinced that anybody in particular knows what’s going on and can relate it to a larger plan, and past experience leads me to believe that we are (in the words of the inimitable Dorothy Dunnett) being ‘ground between magnates”.