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longlivefeedback:

The @longlivefeedback comment builder is a tool created to help fanfiction readers respond to stories and communicate with authors. We recognize that commenting is a learned skill, and that there are many reasons why an individual may find commenting particularly difficult or daunting. 

The LLF Comment Builder is designed to help users learn to comment using instructional scaffolding, as well as to remove other barriers to leaving feedback such as dysexecutive syndrome, anxiety, mobility issues that make typing long reviews difficult (particularly on mobile), language fluency, and mobile commenting functionality in general… or maybe you just aren’t sure what to say. 

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Under the cut: instructions and further explanation. 

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Love this! Particularly as someone who has read fanfic voraciously for two decades but is STILL real real bad about leaving comments.

We’re halfway through the year now! Of course, my cons are kind of front-loaded into the beginning of the year, but there’s still a few left, and I’m starting in on work for them. That said, I got kind of burnt out in the spring, so I’m going light for a bit to catch up on life.

Dragon*Con

• Gren (Cowboy Bebop) - mostly done because he dresses like he shops at Goodwill, basically
• Lup (The Adventure Zone) - just updates here! I’d like to make the Phoenixfire Gauntlet if I have time/energy
• Hoozuki (Hoozuki no Reitetsu) - the one all-new outfit. I’ve got supplies on order, and I’m looking forward to making a giant foam tetsubou
• may do Shiro (Voltron) if I’ve got some time because S6 destroyed me and then brought me to life again, okay

Teslacon

• Matcha Parfait (Sakizou) - because nothing says late 1800s like giant hats and bustles

Other

• Iida Tenya (BNHA) - my friends pulled me into shounen hell so I’ve been putting this together for shoots locally (we’ll probably also wear them to cons next year). Mostly done except I’m Extra and decided to make silicone prosthetics for the leg engines.

Cosplay Plans - Katsucon 2018

Friday - Mikazuki Munechika (Touken Ranbu)
Friday/Saturday PM - Shokudaikiri Mitsutada [internal affairs] (Touken Ranbu)
Saturday - Clow Reed (Cardcaptor Sakura)
Sunday - Tieria Erde (Gundam 00)

plus kicking around in my Nyanko-sensei kigu when I get tired of wigs and make-up. I’ll be at the tourabu shoot Friday, too!

From @sparrowdreams

rules:
copy this post into a new text post, remove my answers and put in your
own. when you are done tag up to 10 people and also tag the person that
tagged you….most importantly, have fun!

a / age - 28

b / biggest fear - That one of the people I care about is going to die in sudden, unanticipated freak circumstances.

c / current time - 12:37 EST

d / drink you had last - a cup of Republic of Tea’s HiCAF Toasted Coconut black tea

e / everyday starts with - A hot shower

f / favourite song - I have to pick just one? Let’s go with Vienna Teng’s ‘Level Up’

g / ghosts are real? - nah

h / hometown - Look, there are some things I don’t post publicly on the internet

i / in love with - hi-mi-tsu~

j / jealous of - people with good make-up skills

k / killed someone - nope

l / last time you cried - Teared up during the end of Arrival on Monday

m / middle name - It’s fairly uncommon, so again, not posting that publicly.

n / number of siblings - one

o / one wish - That the world becomes a more progressive place in the immediate future.

p / person you last called/texted - text my automated appointment reminder service to confirm

q / questions you’re always asked - How’s the dissertation?

r / reasons to smile - the sun is out and my cat is fluffy and adorable

s / song last sang - Mmm, something off the mix CD that’s currently in my car, though I don’t quite remember what track it was on last. KMFDM’s ‘Anarchy’, maybe?

t / time you woke up - 9:30ish

u / underwear color - decline to comment

v / vacation destination - Kyoto (hopefully)

w / worst habit - picking at my skin

x / xrays you have had - teeth, foot, lower back.

y / your favourite food - Most of them? I really can’t pick a single thing, though right now I haven’t had egg tarts or taiyaki in ages and I miss them terribly.

z / zodiac sign - Pisces

Too little brain to pick out a specific ten people, but if you want to do it, do it, and feel free to blame me.

Someone should have told me the Vorkosigan novels were actually reasonable lengths - I had been putting them off because I didn’t want to get sucked into more Jacqueline Carey 800-page doorstop monstrositities. But I finished Shards of Honour in like five or six hours on Wednesday, and Barrayar yesterday afternoon.

Unsurprisingly I’m enjoying them immensely *g*

foenixfyre:

chadcomello:

Refer Madness spotlights strange, intriguing, or otherwise noteworthy questions I encounter at the library reference desk.

During an otherwise quiet evening on the desk, someone messaged my co-librarian on our library’s chat service with a specific, but not quite specific enough, request. She wanted the title and author of a book in a murder mystery series, published post-2000. She then provided a some 200-word synopsis of the plots and characters in the series, which involved a young girl in rural postwar England who solves crimes in her village “using her bicycle and chemistry skills.”

She’d tried book-related listservs and message boards, to no avail. Since our go-to fiction RA librarian was gone for the evening, we were on our own. But not quite alone: I jaunted over to NoveList Plus, that magical database beloved by librarians and bookish folks everywhere, and entered keywords from the patron’s description—and which serve as this post’s title.

Boom. First result:

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is the first of five books in Alan Bradley’s Flavia De Luce mysteries series. Since NoveList’s plot description was surprisingly sparse, and I wanted to make sure I got the right book in the series, I cross-checked it with its Amazon page and sure enough, NoveList was right on target.

Putting the same search terms into Google yields nothing close to what I was looking for. Google can do many other things well, but its wide generalist’s net can miss what a targeted niche search like NoveList will catch every time.

Which, of course, reminds me of the Neil Gaiman quote you can find on every corner of the librarian internet: “In a world where Google can bring you back 100,000 answers [or in this case 6 million], a librarian can bring you back the right one.”

Thanks to the life-changing magic of NoveList, we got it right tonight.

All hail librarians and their resources.

AND THEIR KNOWLEDGE OF HOW TO FIND THE THING.

karanguni:

disexplications:

Long ago I heard an interview with Jonathan Lethem on City Arts and Lectures in which he said a number of things I found very interesting, which I wrote down, but I have no idea where. (I have often wanted to link people to various City Arts and Lectures recordings, but have been unable to do so as they don’t provide tapes, transcripts, or streaming audio – which, come to think of it, is kind of ironic given what I’m about to talk about, but let’s move on)

Lethem coined the term “culture oracle” to describe a sort of person who knows about, and has access to, all kinds of obscure cultural products that you’d never be able to find except through them. The example he gave was a friend of his who would occasionally invite him over to watch a movie, and the movie would be a third-generation copy of a VHS tape that was recorded years ago from public-access television at three in the morning, and that would be the only chance Jonathan Lethem would ever have to see that movie. Things like that still existed only as physical objects. You could only access them if you were plugged into the right social networks, and frequently you wouldn’t know you were looking for them until you found them. This gave the culture oracles an almost mystical aura, as though they could see aspects of the world that were invisible to others.

(One such person, I think now deceased, was the inspiration for Perkus Tooth in Chronic City.)

Today it’s much more difficult for these people to exist, because so many media products have been digitized, and even if something hasn’t been digitized you can often order a used copy online. And even if you still can’t find something, it lacks the mystique it might have had before, because the scope of things you can find is so bewilderingly vast now.

(Digression, sort of: film is a partial exception to this, in that films are much harder to digitize, and potentially much harder to ship, than books or records. I used to be a volunteer assistant projectionist at my college movie theater, where I learned to work with 35mm film. The set of 35mm reels that makes up a feature film is extremely heavy, and has to be shipped in a set of metal canisters at a cost comparable to that of shipping furniture. And every time you project the film, there’s an inherent risk that it will be damaged, especially if it’s old film that may not have been stored properly in the past. Someone on our programming committee once pitched a series on the history of South African film, which would have included several movies that had never been shown in the US, but all the films would have had to be shipped from South Africa, which would have been ludicrously expensive. If you want to see something that has never been released on VHS or DVD, you are likely still out of luck, especially if it’s foreign. On the other hand, in the pre-Internet days, you’d be considerably less likely to be aware of its existence at all.)

As I was saying, thanks to the limitless cultural stimuli available on the Internet, I think it’s nearly impossible for a text or a piece of music to feel like a message from another world, as was still possible even fifteen years ago. Yet there might be a few ways in which you can sort of approach culture oracle status in some respects:

1. You can translate things that are not otherwise available in translation, because it’s not profitable. For instance, I would imagine that some anime fansubbers know a lot of Japanese cultural trivia that a non-Japanese speaker would have no way to discover.
   


2. You are interested in something that interests almost no one else, like early 20thC British suit patterns or old aircraft manuals.


3. You’re willing to sift through vast amounts of material that most people already have access to, but would be strongly disinclined to read, in order to find the interesting bits (i.e., you are @nostalgebraist)

i’m going to hold on to this one, because Yes and because Thoughts

Happy Halloween! My outfit for handing out candy :) I’ll see about getting a picture of the back of the dress later - it has vertebrae on it!

• Fantastic weekend, solved most of last  year’s problems, A++ would con again
• I am not allowed to bring more than five costumes to a con, because that is how many I will actually wear. Internet, hold me to this.
• I also need to stop making costumes I melt in in Atlanta
• Aquarium night with terieri and squigglehaunt as my trash seadweller family was FUCKING FANTASTIC
• I have so many photos to edit, ty gothichamlet and pinnedtogether for getting some shots for me
• The costuming track needs a bigger room and also some better panelists for some of the shit
• I got my entire Last Herald-Mage Trilogy signed!
  
• I am making a bingo for the masquerade next year, I swear to god
• The Sheraton is a surprisingly nice hotel, even if it’s a little more of a walk from the others.
  

:D

D:<