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    Monday, November 23rd, 2009
    lyonesse
         		6:11p
    why i hate research
     this experiment has gone on for three years, across two sites and three machines, and i can't seem to lay my hands on two data sets (one of which i'm sure i scored, one of which i'm sure i transcribed in its gruesome entirety but may or may not have *scored* per se as i hadn't worked out my hypothesis yet when i was working with it).

    i am teh frustrated.

    also with the dropout i've never been able to obtain.

    actually i guess i am just frustrated with my own disorganization and that of my fellow researchers. (i also just sent off a wee sample of another unlistenable subject to someone i hope will be able to render it comprehensible/bearable as six hours of speech data....)

    Current Mood: cranky
    Sunday, November 22nd, 2009
    annathepiper
         		11:43p
    Yet another book roundup post!

    Yes, folks, it’s time for another book roundup! Titles recently purchased by me include:

    Print books: Lilith’s Brood, by Octavia Butler. SF. Because I had me a 20 percent off coupon from B&N, and I have a sad relative lack of Butler in my library, and this is a nice big volume of three of her novels.

    E-books (a whole mess of ‘em, a good number of which were because Fictionwise did an indie publisher sale and I wanted a bunch of Juno’s harder to find books):

    • Written on Your Skin, by Meredith Duran. Romance. Because of a post by userinfosarahtales over here that referenced this book, and which made me LOL.
    • Black Hills, by Nora Roberts. Romance. Because apparently I just don’t own enough of this woman’s books yet.
    • Soulless, by Gail Carriger. Fantasy. Because I’ve heard all sorts of good things about this one.
    • Nights of Sin and Blood Magic by Matthew Cook. Fantasy.
    • A Mortal Glamour, by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. Fantasy/Horror.
    • Beyond the Hedge, by Roby James. Fantasy.
    • Wind Follower, by Carole McDonnell. Fantasy.
    • Riversend, by Sylvia Kelso. Fantasy.
    • Jade Tiger, by Jenn Reese. Fantasy. (This one’s actually a re-buy of a print book copy I sold to Third Place. Liked it well enough that I wanted to keep an e-copy around.)
    • New Tricks, by John Levitt. Urban fantasy. (Another re-buy of a print book in e-form.)
    • Gordath Wood, by Patrice Sarath. Fantasy. (Another re-buy in e-form.)
    • The Drowning City, by Amanda Downum. Fantasy. Because I’ve heard good things about this one too.
    • Apricot Brandy, by Lynn Cesar. Fantasy.
    • House of Whispers, by Margaret Lucke. Fantasy.
    • Wraith, by Phaedra Weldon. Urban fantasy. Re-buy in e-form.
    • Spectre, by Phaedra Weldon. Urban fantasy. Re-buy, not read yet, trading off for e-copy.
    • Once a Wolf, by Susan Krinard. Romance, but a historical paranormal involving werewolves. Saw it linked in off the Fictionwise homepage and thought it sounded fun. ;)
    • Shadow’s End and Grass by Sheri S. Tepper. SF. Mostly because I wanted to check her out, and Grass got recommended to me ages ago.

    This brings me up to a grand total of 159 books purchased this year. I hope I just paid a few more publishing industry employees’ salaries!

    Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

    lyonesse
         		10:01p
    riding riding riding log
     looong day with the ponies.

    9am: picked up by student, driven to barn. farrier already there working on miss gemini. talked about draft paper for canker case study. think she was a bit surprised to find out i'm actual scientist; sent pointer to my faculty page later with subject "holy moly!" and asking if i'd be her perceptor for a month (which i'd be glad to be if they'll let me!) anyway she was particularly interested in some of my speculations on various elements of canker as byproducts of neovascularization without circulation, so we may put out a heavily-hypothetical paper attached to the "see, if you routinely pick your horse's hooves, you may notice the STREAMING BLOOD and any canker may not be too hard to take care of." stjarni's feet look pretty great btw, she cut off a big flap of old frog that had been separated from the rest of the frog by the canker lesion, leaving only intact, shapely, albeit immature and somewhat soft frog behind in that foot.

    meanwhile she'd also done ljufur's feet, and ljufur's rider went and tacked up, so i instructed a little bit while she worked on stjarni. then stjarni's rider went to tack up. meanwhile some friends of one of my students had arrived with a camera and a thought of watching lessons to think about taking some. i don't think i was remotely at my best as an instructor, too much going on. people were also starting to arrive for an afternoon trail ride, and there was another young horse who needed her feet done (and whose cavorting about led to some unexpected cavorting by ljufur, and a student falling -- people fall off ljufur all the time; good thing he's short :) anyway i took potential-new-student for a pony ride (on ljufur actually, since he was tired and stjarni's student was still hard at work) and that went fine too.

    then the students went home and we adjusted tack and we (half a dozen barn folks and our beasties) went on a trail ride. (left around 2pm?) we did "the two-hour trail" (i have no idea why it's called that) which is about six mildly hilly/rocky miles in an hour and twenty minutes. my legs were all noodly after leading students around at the tolt in the morning so i didn't do much cantering, esp. downhill we just tolted. ljufur ran like a little fuzzy bolt of red lightning until he was totally exhausted and then walked; stjarni arrived home panting but almost cool actually. stjarni's feet looked great after the ride too -- no chips or anything. and i think he mostly forgave me for paying too much attention to "that other horse" during lessons time.

    then i ate some crackers because i was really tired and hungry, came home and fell asleep in a hot bath, and now should get some other stuff done....

    i think i've decided to consult a vet acupuncturist for roses' lymph node -- general anaesthesia is pretty scary stuff for sighthounds :/
    Saturday, November 21st, 2009
    lyonesse
         		5:30p
    dog update (pretty bad), other animules
     a second round of the first antibiotic, and a single week on a new one, and roses' throat lymph node is still appallingly swollen.

    next week i expect to take her in for anaesthesia and imaging.

    umm, in other pet-disorders news i wrote a draft of a case report about stjarni's canker.

    here, have a picture of me cuddling an mspca duck:



    Current Mood: drained
    Friday, November 20th, 2009
    annathepiper
         		4:01p
    Meanwhile, hurray, Defiance is on Amazon!

    In much, much faster turnaround time, Amazon now has Defiance available for purchase!

    So if you’d like to score yourself some period goodness from userinfosuricattus, userinfojoelysue, and myself, and you’re a Kindle owner or a user of the Kindle app on the iPhone, I invite you to go and make with the clicky! Thanks in advance for your support.

    Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

    solarbird
         		12:30a
    when in doubt write ragey punk
     My other fake band, Mary Kay and the Cosmetics, keeps getting new songs this NaNoteWriMo; I think it's because they're really easy to write. Anyway, I have another three minute song added to the mix, yay! It's not good. But I was giggling kind of a lot while writing it, so that has to count for something, right? RIGHT? RIGHT GODDAMMIT?!

    Anna says it's in the key of AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!! which I think is probably correct. But whatever it might be worth musically, it's also worth three minutes towards NaNoteWriMo goal! Unlike some of these other songs this time, it probably won't be getting longer. I mean, it's four verses plus choruses and extra chorus because it's an easy chorus to keep ranting and! bonus RAEG, so. THREE MORE MINUTES! Yay!

    Currently: 24 minutes. I have now written more music than my previous nanotewrimo attempt! I am not currently on target; to be on target, I needed by EOD to have 31.7 minutes. (1.67 minutes/day). I am getting closer to being back on schedule.

    This post originated at ソラバドのおん: Solarbird Makes Noises, on Dreamwidth.

    Current Mood: accomplished
    Current Music: Get Out | Mary Kay and the Cosmetics
    mamishka
         		12:31a
    Orycon anyone?
     So it's official, I'm going to Orycon over the Thanksgiving weekend. It's kind of a weird last minute decision thing, probably a very silly thing to do, but well, there it is.

    I'm curious if anyone else is going and if so, would you like to carpool? I don't mind driving by myself, but it would be more fun, and cheaper to bring others along with me. I also have a room that I'm sharing with one other person, so if you're looking for a place to crash, let me know!

    Feel free to pass this info on to other cool people that you know/like/trust if they are likewise looking for either carpool options or rooming options. :)

    Current Mood: thoughtful
    Thursday, November 19th, 2009
    annathepiper
         		9:10p
    Harlequin founds vanity imprint; Internet asplodes!

    Now I know several of you likely to be reading this are writers, either already published or aspiring to get that way. Among you, I know that several are specifically involved with the romance genre or the urban fantasy/paranormal romance genre. So you’re probably already aware of the huge debacle that’s exploded across the publishing blogs the last couple of days about Harlequin opening up a shiny new vanity publishing imprint.

    I posted earlier this week about another new Harlequin venture, Carina Press. Which I thought was pretty awesome. Harlequin’s new vanity imprint? Not so much.

    Here are a whole bunch of links expounding on the brouhaha:

    My take on the matter? Well, initially I was going to say that I didn’t really have a horse in this race, since I’m an SF/F author, not a romance author–but userinfosolarbird pointed out and quite correctly that actually, any writer of fiction has a horse in this race. The reason for this is that if Harlequin actually pulls off doing this imprint of theirs, it’s highly likely that other big NY-based publishers will follow suit. As Writer Beware calls out, a couple already have, although they’ve apparently taken pains to be less obvious about it in their branding.

    And, the big sticking point for me is that according to the spin that was going around the Smart Bitches thread from a Harlequin rep, they will be including in standard rejection letters an upsell to the vanity imprint. Which essentially means that an author who comes to Harlequin via traditional publishing routes and who gets rejected would be getting told “we don’t think your book is good enough to be a Real Book, but if you pay us enough money, we’ll humor you and print it anyway!”

    This goes against the unshakeable law of writing: money flows to the author. Always.

    So yeah, this is huge and the furor is still ongoing. I’ll be very, very interested to see what Harlequin does now that they have not one, not two, but three professional writers’ organizations angry with them.

    Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

    lyonesse
         		11:00p
    riding log
     today was mostly teaching -- four students, three horses, three lessons. one student got a bunch of demo, mostly about tack really but i went around wttc for awhile, so i gotta log it. omg i am tired. and our trotting kinda sucks. but stjarni's a super love, so it's all good :)
    solarbird
         		10:32a
    Small crack in the dam
     I had a small crack appear in the dam yesterday and out popped a new two-minute instrumental piece. It's rough and unfinished, that's nanowrimo for you - but it's coherent, and could be performed, and thus counts. 21 minutes. I'm quite far behind but will continue working - maybe a rush of things will all break free at once! Nine minutes behind as of last night.

    This post originated at ソラバドのおん: Solarbird Makes Noises, on Dreamwidth.

    Current Mood: okay
    mamishka
         		9:20a
    The Swell Season
     And I ain't talkin about winter in Seattle! Eeech! Too much gray! Too much rain!

    No, I'm talking about the band, The Swell Season, starring the two fabulous musicians from the movie Once. They're playing this Sunday at the Paramount and I have a serious hankering to go.

    http://www.stgpresents.org/artists/?artist=1132

    Anyone else interested perchance? I'm thinking of going to the Paramount after work tomorrow to see what they have in the way of tickets and seats.

    Current Mood: contemplative
    Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
    annathepiper
         		12:45p
    First review in for Defiance!

    Check it out you guys, Soleil Noir has some lovely things to say about Defiance over here.

    About my story “The Blood of the Land” in particular, she says:

    This is set in the world of Angela’s previous book “Faerie Blood”. A book I read and enjoyed. I have to say though, I actually liked this story more.

    Go check out the review for the full text, and also what she has to say about userinfosuricattus and userinfojoelysue’s pieces as well!

    Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

    Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
    annathepiper
         		10:48p
    Waters of Mars: very watery, very Mars-y

    I am now going to take time out of my wibblings over Nanowrimo to wibble over “Waters of Mars” instead!

    Picoreview: Ye gods that was grim. Spoilers locked up in the dome beyond the cut!

    ( Read the rest of this entry » )

    Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

    mamishka
         		8:05p
    More TMBG!
     This one is so adorable! I love the opening bit. The #6 song is just so-so, but then they do a fabulous acoustic version of Fibber Island, which is a song I really love, and then there is the cute goodbye song.

    AND PUPPETS!! :D



    Current Mood: exhausted
    lyonesse
         		9:35a
    happy new year, [info]alabastard!
    may you enjoy every moment of wonder, and discover many many more :)
    Monday, November 16th, 2009
    solarbird
         		11:37p
    Stalling out
     I'm stalling out badly. I've got a couple of pieces of things - including a bit of music today that I really, really quite like - but I haven't got a complete song since, hum, Thursday? And I just kind of sit and stare at half-completed lyrics, with nothing popping forward into my brain. This is not good. I'm not giving up! But it's looking problematic at best.

    I do like the fractional song I came up with today tho'. Mostly I noticed that if you hit a second-inversion E chord and then slide your fingers up a fret, it turns into an Am. More importantly, it sounds awesome. This will be something, for sure; I just don't know what, yet.

    This post originated at ソラバドのおん: Solarbird Makes Noises, on Dreamwidth.

    Current Mood: frustrated
    Current Music: Something's Coming | Crime and the Forces of Evil
    lyonesse
         		6:25p
    beer off
     down below 227k. umm, 67k to go....?
    annathepiper
         		1:35p
    Faerie Blood is super-cheap on Fictionwise today

    It seems that Fictionwise is having themselves an Indie publisher sale this week. All MultiFormat (read: DRM-free and downloadable in any format you want) books are 30 percent off!

    And since Drollerie is a MultiFormat publisher on Fictionwise, that means, ladies and gents, that you could pick up Faerie Blood from that site for a cool $4.14.

    If you pick it up TODAY, there’s even a coupon that runs until tomorrow, FANTASYNOW, which will knock 25 percent off any Fantasy novels! So you could get a total of 55 percent off of Faerie Blood that way!

    Sharing this because, y’know, I care. ;)

    Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

    lyonesse
         		9:13a
    cartoon
     it may be difficult to understand without context, but i totally heart today's "skin horse":



    Current Mood: amused
    Sunday, November 15th, 2009
    annathepiper
         		11:16p
    Nanowrimo catchup: Up to Day 15

    Well, I’m at the halfway mark, and it seems apparent to me at this point that 50K by the end of the month isn’t too likely given how my daily rate has gone so far this month. But on the other hand, I’ve continued to write every day so far this month–and this weekend in particular, I’ve had a particularly good run with nearly 2,500 words yesterday and a K today.

    This puts me at 13K and change. At minimum, if I make 500 words a day every day for the rest of the month, I should make about 22K–but I’m thinking 26K is not out of the question. I’m going to keep going, regardless. The Nano cred would be shiny, but finishing Faerie Blood’s first sequel? Shinier.

    I’m about to finish up Chapter 5 as of tonight. Jude’s life has just gotten quite a bit more difficult, though she doesn’t realize it yet. And I’ve enjoyed writing a tender moment between Christopher and a very worried Kendis. More updates as they happen!

    Written on the 10th: 584
    Written on the 11th: 515
    Written on the 12th: 537
    Written on the 13th: 215
    Written yesterday: 2,454
    Written today and tonight: 1,019
    Chapter 4 total: 2,882
    Chapter 5 total: 2,442
    Bone Walker total (first draft): 13,751

    Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

    lyonesse
         		11:19p
    riding log
     have been MUCH WITH THE BUSY (incl. trip outta town with a student for equine affaire, whee fun! :) but can't skip riding log....!

    today was teaching a double lesson, one student on stjarni, one on ljufur. i decided to work ljufur a little first, so i first led him up to "scary corner", where he freaked out, squealed, spun, and fled. it being inside a ring, i was not too excited about it. i caught him and we did it again, with just a little sidling. then i got on (i had my student hold him, as i am also thinking we need to work on standing still while mounting) and demonstrated "trying to get four-beat tolt (and mostly, but not completely, failing)". this was rather fun, and l got over being scared in the corner right away -- really i think he's sort of playing at it rather than really being afraid. then i turned him over to his rider for the duration.

    i did a few demos of walking and tolting on stjarni, who was a mite obstreperous because HE HATES IT WHEN I TOUCH THAT OTHER PONY. (not so obstreperous to me, but at his other rider!) bareback, a bit damp, all loads of fun.

    i picked up a new helmet at equine affaire -- an irh model 1065nb in navy, which i like quite a bit but doesn't seem to be made anymore (and is "new old stock" that i'd use for maybe a year at most....) sigh. anyway it was very comfortable, and not too warm despite it being an unexpectedly warm day!

    Current Mood: accomplished
    annathepiper
         		5:30p
    High Wind Watch for the Seattle area

    For those of you who aren’t following me on Twitter or Facebook, y’all be advised that we have a Wind Advisory up for today and tomorrow and a High Wind Watch for Monday evening and Tuesday. Looks like we have the potential for some nasty gusts. Cross your fingers that this blows over (aheh) without coming to fruition, hey? Not only would a decent windstorm be guaranteed to knock out power at the Murk, it’d probably put a nasty crimp in our ability to get a very important project done at work!

    You can read both the Advisory and Watch data over here.

    ETA 6:25pm: And oh hey, the Seattle Times has an article up now. The money quote here being “If projections play out, it will be the strongest windstorm of the season”.

    So keep a sharp eye on the weather forecasts, people. This could get crunchy.

    Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

    Saturday, November 14th, 2009
    solarbird
         		10:49p
    the shit i get into
     So, apparently, I'm the Emergency Backup Hologrammatic Filk Track Lead for Norwescon this year. ELF NEEDS CLUES BADLY. I have no idea what I'm doing. Srsly liek woah etc.

    I'm expecting a big data dump tomorrow, which will be helpful. I'm going to be talking to a few people tomorrow. IF I HAVE SOME IDEA THAT YOU ARE A FILKER I WILL BE HITTING YOU UP FOR DATA. Maybe more than once when I forget I already asked you. Please deal with it. I've been asked to step in and get this fixed up, and I want to do it as correctly as I can.

    Things I need to know include but are not limited to:
    • Wait, what?
    • No, seriously, what?
    • What do you expect to happen in filk programming?
    • Who do you expect to see get concerts and how do you determine this sort of thing anyway?
    • What has Norwescon done right and should do it again?
    • What has Norwescon done wrong and should not do again?
    • What do you not see in music/filk programming at conventions but want to?
    • What other questions should I be asking?
    • What things do I need to look out for in general?
    • What do filkers need?
    • Who are good filk panelists who might come?
    Things I already know:
    • Oh Hopping Christ On A Pogo Stick, Not Next To The Drum Circle/Dance/Fannish Fetish Fashion Show Again
    • Don't schedule big concerts against the masquerade
    • Don't schedule big concerts Thursday or 16:00 on Friday. (I'll do what I can. See below.)
    • No tiny-squishy Cascade rooms for open filk (ibid)
    • Jam panels are always good
    • So are "mechanics of harmony" panels
    • We sure did like that Joss Whedon Sing-Along Panel Last Year
    I'm coming in late and a bunch of decisions I already know I'm not real thrilled about have already been made without anybody representing this track in programming, so I'm working from behind here and need to get up to speed now. So if you are interested in any of this, please provide data. Lots and lots of data. Thanks!

    Current Mood: blitzed
    solarbird
         		12:40a
    Day 13: Something's Coming
     Anna and I went out on dinner-and-movie-date and we saw Paranormal Activities, which is actually pretty nice and very creepy, and more than a bit like taking the 1950s Haunting of Hill House (which I love, btw), adding a little Forbidden Planet, stripping it down and setting it in present-day Southern California.

    And now I've started a song that I think wants to be called "Something's Coming" and feels like it might have some legs to it. It's not actually related to the movie in any particular way except maybe at the outer fringes of the horror theme, but I don't want to impose that on it yet, it's too new. (It's not from any notes.)

    I've also realised that I have a bunch of notes on my old voice recorder (from before the iPhone) that I've never transcribed or copied over or anything. I need to do that f'srs.

    No minutes counted today because it's not performable yet, but I think it's a solid start. Sleepy now tho'. G'night! ^_^

    This post originated at ソラバドのおん: Solarbird Makes Noises, on Dreamwidth.

    Current Mood: accomplished
    Current Music: Something's Coming | Crime and the Forces of Evil
    Friday, November 13th, 2009
    mamishka
         		7:02p
    Hellllllooooo LADIES!
     I'm sure all of my John Barrowman/Torchwood obsessed friends have probably already seen this, but on the off chance that they haven't ...



    Top hat off to [info]melsner for pointing the way. ;)

    Current Mood: amused
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