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Dec. 19th, 2025 04:56 pm
china_shop: Close-up of Da Qing looking conspiratorial (Guardian - Da Qing conspiratorial)
[personal profile] china_shop


Image: colour pencil sketch of a black cat wrapped neatly in a blue blanket, and a young man (Zhao Yunlan) sprawled/face-planeted under a red blanket, with his feet sticking out the bottom and one sock fallen off. He is holding a lollipop.

notes
* Perspective is really hard. ;-p
* Still avoiding drawing faces.
* I think my attempt at Da Qing is on a par with Guo Changcheng's notebook sketch, but in my defence, that is one weird-looking cat. ;-)

Aha!

Dec. 19th, 2025 11:17 am
china_shop: Chu Shuzhi wearing a black face mask with a cat mouth and whiskers on it. (Guardian - CSZ cat mask)
[personal profile] china_shop
With the help of multiple people, I finally got the ancient $15 scanner to talk to my computer via shareware. Woohoo!

(Meanwhile, I can't write a story to save my life. Argh!)

birbs

Dec. 17th, 2025 11:32 am
omens: Tiny Titans Robin, with robins (dcu - tiny titans robinses)
[personal profile] omens
I saw (what I think was) a sharp-shinned hawk in the tree the other day. What a petite little dude! I thought it was a mourning dove at first bc it was a mottled brown from what I could see, but something in me was like, "get the binoculars!" The tail twitching, I think. It reminded me of the long ass tails of the magpies in Belgium. Twitch, twitch, twitch. But yeah, in the binoculars, the big orange eyes and the tail striping, very very cute, but he zipped off a second later so I didn't have time to note details ;_; come back lil sharpie



Junco thru my filthy window <3

Honestly, I thought I had more to say when I opened up dw to post, but there's just nothing? Feeling kinda like going back to bed today. I think it's going to be a no-focus kind of day.

Me-and-media update

Dec. 17th, 2025 11:17 am
china_shop: An orange cartoon dog waving, with a blue-green abstract background. (Bingo!)
[personal profile] china_shop
Previous poll review
In the Mind's eye poll, 22.4% of respondents said their mind's eye is as vivid as IMAX (wow!), 20.7% said pretty vivid, 25.9% said they can visualise if they work at it, and 22.4% said it's a bit patchy/vague. Nearly fourteen percent, including me, have no mind's eye. (I do occasionally see things in my dreams, eg, wake up with the memory of an orange cat, so I voted "other" as well.)

In ticky-boxes, spices (56.9%) came second to hugs (67.2%), followed by being able to name characters from Winnie-the-Pooh (39.7). Thank you for your votes!!

Reading
I was trying to write romance for Yuletide, and digressive murder mysteries were not helping my subconscious to deliver the romance beats/pacing, so I stepped away from Murder Must Advertise (Peter Wimsey) for a while and read a Jennifer Crusie instead. Not one of her better ones, but I've read the better ones so many times... I haven't returned to Murder Must Advertise yet, but I will (and I'll have forgotten everything, oh well).

In audio, I'm relistening to The Wedding People by Alison Espach, read by Helen Laser. It's so good! Phoebe's POV is specific and observational. As I said last time I read it, "Give me all the middle-aged women's midlife crises! Warning for suicidal protagonist, but the book is overall life-affirming."

Kdramas
Still loving Knight Flower. It's adorable and dramatic and silly, with many great women. Competent goofballs FTW! And Andrew and I started Jeongnyeon: A Star Is Born, set in the 1950s after the Korean war, about an all-female theatre troupe. It is fabulous, incredibly gay, and I love everything about it. See also "so many great women!" Moon Okgyeong is mesmerising, ahhhh, I totally understand why everyone's smitten with her (or is it him? or them?). We are racing through it (by our standards).

Other TV
We finished Down Cemetery Road, and I want more, especially of Emma Thompson as Zoe. Finished The Lowdown with Ethan Hawke. We're still going on Pluribus, which continues to be fascinating, and Prehistoric Planet. (My Apple+ subscription runs out on Sunday.) We finished the available episodes of Stranger Things, and I have Robin, Will and Max tied for first place as MVP.

I'm having a bit of trouble with season 3 of The Cleaner, but we might watch some more. And then there's Krapopolis, which is mixing things up this season. My sister and I are still watching Fringe and Bluey.

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses, Letters from an American, Cross Party Lines, some Brandon Sanderson youtube lectures.

Online life
I am seriously not keeping up with Dreamwidth or my inbox. Sorry! I keep opening things in tabs to read/reply to later, but I'm going to have to give myself an amnesty and just close a bunch of them.

I'm enjoying the hockey show squee on my reading page, and though I don't know if the show will be for me, I plan to take a look at some point, just in case.

Writing/making things
I had a good writing run in November, but we got some bad news and now brain is refusing to brain, stories are refusing to story, sentences are refusing, etc. I ended up defaulting on Yuletide, though there is still a chance I'll finish the fic.

I am enjoying doodling, though -- it's freeing not having a clue what I'm doing. I posted one pic to Tumblr and it got notes and everything, and I just posted another to [community profile] fan_flashworks. (I bought an ancient second-hand flatbed scanner for $15, but I couldn't convince my computer to recognise it, so I guess I'll continue to photograph my sketches for now, even though it messes with the colour balance. I don't know how long this art phase will last, so investing in a newer scanner seems premature.)

Life/health/mental state things
I've been staying up too late lately (including to write an angry submission on a stupid roading project), and it's taking its toll. Offline things are a bit stressful and distracting (stuck in a waiting phase). Summer keeps coming and going. Christmas is imminent.

I need to get more active here on Dreamwidth again. *clings to you all*

Goals
Maybe I should make some of these for next year? Hm.

Good things
The boy! The cat! The house! Coloured pencils and a sketchbook and an ArtLine pen. TV that centres female characters. Also: Guardian! The slo-mo rewatch. ♥ ♥ ♥ Christmas mince pies. Early Christmas present bone-conduction earphones (after years of using this kind of earpiece, now I have stereo sound!).

Poll #33963 dance dance revolution
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 51


Have you danced this week?

View Answers

yes, with other people
3 (5.9%)

yes, with a pet or other animal
1 (2.0%)

yes, on my own
14 (27.5%)

kind of / only briefly
15 (29.4%)

no / not yet
24 (47.1%)

other
1 (2.0%)

ticky-box full of "Fighting!" (화이팅!)
9 (17.6%)

ticky-box full of books borrowed from an acquaintance quite some time ago, which really need to be returned but it's super awkward
9 (17.6%)

ticky-box full of enthusiastically and fervently loving what you love
32 (62.7%)

ticky-box full of giant prehistoric otters roaming the savannas
27 (52.9%)

ticky-box full of hugs, so many hugs
39 (76.5%)

jesse_the_k: chainmail close up (links)
[personal profile] jesse_the_k

I've observed hockey RPF fandom from an immeasurable distance, and I still got a kick out of this post:

https://marina.dreamwidth.org/1576715.html

[personal profile] marina was in hockey fandom, spent her childhood in Ukraine, knows much about filing serial numbers, and has definite opinions about vodka.

I'm reading reading reading.

Hi!

Ugh

Dec. 11th, 2025 10:02 am
omens: snowflakes (MOUSE snowflakes on purple)
[personal profile] omens
We have been absolutely DUMPED ON the last couple days here. Sooo so much snow. I have shoveled so much. The neighbour took pity and helped me with half of the driveway again (he has a snowblower - the entire street has snowblowers). Why do none of these snowblower people help me with the ton of snow compressed from the plow??? ;_;

Anyway, I went to two different grocery stores the day before the snow so we are STOCKED. It's snowing again on Saturday, though. :/



The sunlight through the ice and snow this morning is bringing me joy.


In media news:

I just finished the first season of Hilda, what a cute and fun show. Fun folklore. Nice animation.

Our ongoing kdrama is Beautiful Gong Shim which started out really strong (huuuuuuge ND4ND vibes, two of the most autistic leads ever) but seems to be wobbling around 8 or 9, and we're not halfway through. A 20 ep drama?! Pretty rare. I'm not sure they have the story for it, but we'll see!


An update!!! My other neighbour helped me chop up the plow snow and shovel it enough that my car can be moved. He also gave me all the hot neighbourhood gossip, hell yeah. 🥹

If you're required to deploy AI

Dec. 9th, 2025 10:48 am
jesse_the_k: USB jump drive pointing into my left ear (JK data in ear)
[personal profile] jesse_the_k

...here's an excellent use-case: feed your strong passphrase text as a prompt to an image generator

from the passphrase string "fabulous tattoo Harvey", Reddit user u/waydomatic and ChatGPT made this cheerful example )

The LLM thinks Harvey is a muscular white guy wearing a skimpy purple Speedo; arms, shoulder and upper chest covered in rose tattoos. He flexes his right arm and flashes a big white smile under his handlebar mustache. Of course he's wearing a rose crown.

Saving the generated image would certainly be more secure than writing down the password.

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