ala's Friends
[Most Recent Entries]
[Calendar View]
[Friends View]
Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.
[ << Previous 25 ]
| Monday, July 13th, 2009 |
sbisson
|
6:08p |
Locus founder/editor Charles Brown dies...
Sad news on the Locus web site: Locus publisher, editor, and co-founder Charles N. Brown, 72, died peacefully in his sleep July 12, 2009 on his way home from Readercon.
Charles Nikki Brown was born June 24, 1937 in Brooklyn NY, where he grew up. He attended the City College of New York, taking time off from 1956-59 to serve in the US Navy, and finished his degree (BS in physics and engineering) at night on the GI Bill while working as a junior engineer in the '60s. He married twice, to Marsha Elkin (1962-69), who helped him start Locus, and to Dena Benatan (1970-77), who co-edited Locus for many years while he worked full time. He moved to San Francisco in 1972, working as a nuclear engineer until becoming a full-time SF editor in 1975. The Locus offices have been in Brown's home in the Oakland hills since 1973.
[...]
As per his wishes, Locus will continue to publish, with executive editor Liza Groen Trombi taking over as editor-in-chief with the August 2009 issue. Read more. News originally found via ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) matociquala on Twitter. Current Mood:  pensive |
| Sunday, July 12th, 2009 |
bakebakebake
[ natural_bore ]
|
7:41p |
Vegetable bread?
I LOVE zucchini bread and was super excited to try making it this year with zucchini fresh from my garden! ...except my dad went to the nursery before I came home, and he didn't buy any zucchini plants :'( I know I could make it from store-bought zucchini, but the point is I want to bake with things I grew. Currently we have peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants. I'm not sure if the eggplants are going grow much more, though; we got hit with a cold snap and the plants are really stunted and sad-looking (plus a rabbit ate one, argh). Fortunately, my peppers and tomatoes are doing FANTASTIC! Tomatoes do well in my yard and I know we're going to have more than I know what to do with. So my question--is there any kind of vegetable bread that involves tomatoes and peppers and possibly eggplants? Can tomatoes even be used in breads? If not, what the heck do I do with the millions of tomatoes I'm going to have in a few weeks? Have a good week, everyone! |
bakebakebake
[ acoustic_dreams ]
|
2:11p |
|
bakebakebake
[ heysmilepretty ]
|
12:06p |
Hey folks! I'm doing a round-robin goodies swap in a community I'm in, and I want to include some kind of delicious baked good. I don't really know the person I was assigned to very well, so I'd like something that is generally universally loved by everyone, but that AREN'T your generic brownies or chocolate chip cookies, lol. Also they'll need to ship well. So my questions to you are: What would you suggest I make for her?! And any tips for shipping so that everything is still delicious and in tact a couple days after shipping? I appreciate any input you can give me :) Thanks in advance. (xposted to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) cooking |
redbird
|
8:25p |
Firefox navigation problems
I just upgraded to 3.5, and the navigation buttons aren't working. I have been to the forum, and followed the suggestions here--the simple "reboot," and the more complicated "remove or rename places.sqlite and places.sqlite-journal". The problem persists. I have posted a question to the forum, but it also seems worth asking here. (One suggestion there, which I hope not to have to follow, is to create a new profile.) Does anyone have any other suggestions for fixing this directly? Failing that, thoughts on Chrome versus Opera? [This is Windows XP, if that's relevant]. Or have you tried reinstalling an earlier 3.x after Firefox 3.5? |
| Monday, July 13th, 2009 |
stevegreen
|
1:20a |
|
| Sunday, July 12th, 2009 |
lrc
|
4:48p |
|
redbird
|
6:23p |
Books read, June
This month's book list is a little longer than the last, because I didn't do much rereading in June. I wasn't intending this, but looking at my list of books, it's (among other things) showing a significant amount of the range that the term "fantasy" can cover, without including anything that would reasonably be compared to The Lord of the Rings. Naomi Mitchison, Travel Light oursin has to some extent infected me with her interest in Mitchison, whose work is very hard to find. (The only one I'd managed before this was Memoirs of a Spacewoman, a second-hand paperback that is literally falling apart.) This is somewhere in the border between fantasy and fairy tale: the main character is Halla Bearsbairn, so named because she is fostered for a while by a bear, or maybe a were-bear: her foster-mother had been her nurse, who rescued her when her parents decided they couldn't keep her and their newborn son. The bears can't keep her for long, they have to hibernate, so she winds up with a dragon, who is treating her partly as his child, partly as one of the elements of his treasure. And on from there, adventures over what turn out to be several centuries, including a meeting with the all-father (who advises her to travel light) and repeated encounters with a valkyrie who tries to recruit her for that team. Recommended if you come across it; I picked it up at a warehouse-clearance sale from Small Beer Press, who have reissued it. Daniel Abraham, A Betrayal in Winter Volume 2 of the "Long Price Quartet," more of Otah Machi's story. This one takes us to a different part of the same culture, several years after the ending of A Shadow in Summer, which disappointed me because I was hoping to see more of how Amat's plans came out after she decided she had to leave the trading house she had been working for, for reasons to do with different kinds of loyalty.( As papersky noted on Tor.com, Amat is an unusual hero for a fantasy novel (or, indeed, any novel), a middle-aged woman, an accountant whose leg hurts all the time, and hurts more when she has to hide out and doesn't have her medicine.) That said, this is well-written, with good characterization, if a somewhat odd political system. In the previous book, we saw a bit of how the khaiate handles succession; this one foregrounds the expected fratricidal conflicts between the incumbent's sons. We also get more about the andat, the reified verbs, magical beings whose great desire is not to exist, but who would be pleased to take a few, or a few thousand, humans with them on their way to nonexistence. The city of Machi controls, and is powerful and prosperous because of, one called Stone-Made-Soft. The applications to mining and manufacture are obvious; walking through mine tunnels with a being that is thinking about what it would take to bring them down on your head is unnerving. MCA Hogarth, Flight of the Godkin Griffin (serialized at godkin Fantasy again, in this case about people who are decidedly not human: what they are is less clear, in part because they vary a great deal. Angharad is a Mistress-Commander in the Godson's army, all set to retire when she is appointed governor of a newly conquered province. The province, predictably, is not entirely conquered. She is also dealing with personal issues, and with her doubts about the basic motivation of her culture: to interbreed with people as different as possible in order to produce a god. The goal and project are both bizarre from outside, but the cross-breeding works at least in the sense of producing a wide variety of different intelligent beings, some with wings, different kinds of fur, or antlers. As she was writing, Hogarth periodically posted polls, things like "should this conversation turn romantic?" or "how much do you want to hear about Ragna?" and used the results to guide the story. I don't think it made much difference to my connection to the story, but others' mileage may have varied. The print version, expected soon, won't have those: it's not a choose-your-own adventure book, maybe something closer to Philip K. Dick using the I Ching to guide his plotting. Sarah Monette, Corambis The fourth and final volume of Monette's Doctrine of Labyrinths series. These are set in a world where magic works, and many people mistrust magicians, often including other magicians. The ongoing story is about two brothers, Felix (a magician) and Mildmay (who has no magical ability, a former cat burglar and hitman whose most respectable skill is card playing). They are entangled in a variety of ways, emotionally, despite (or because of) not having grown up together, though they had similar poor and abusive upbringings, and are both damaged by their pasts, physically as well as mentally. Mildmay feels responsible for Felix, for reasons that may not make sense to either of them; they could also be the poster children for communication problems in a relationship. Much of the time, they aren't just wading through their own past arguments and resentments, they seem to be taking out all their anger at everyone else who neglected or mistreated them on each other. The world has magic and wizardry, and Felix has tasks to do with that, and with his past, but much of the story is about Mildmay's illness, and his and Felix's need to pay bills. The other thread here is about a margrave, Kay, who participates in an attempt to use magic to help a rebellion. Everyone else in the room is killed by the thing they awaken; he survives, blind, and is captured, and displayed by a vindictive man on the winning side, and then taken away from that and tries to figure out what is wanted from him, believing that, blind and defeated, he is by definition useless. A good book, including the drop into a somewhat higher-tech part of the continent: Felix asks "what's a train" when told, in his travels, that he will need to take one, and the person who told him explains, being used to foreigners not knowing. The railroad system is complicated enough that a large timetable (aftermarket documentation) sells well, as does the series of supplements. Enjoyed isn't the word for all of my reaction: the communications difficulties were convincing, and not fun to read. I suspect this book would be confusing and unsatisfying to someone who hadn't read the others. In fact, I wish I'd gotten this sooner, when they were fresher in my memory. (I may see about borrowing them again to reread; I bought a copy of Corambis at Wiscon, to support an author and a bookstore I like as much as because I was impatient.) Rebecca Ore, Centuries Ago and Very Fast This one is weird, but fun. Vel is about 12,000 years old, and no explanation is given for why he, alone among anyone, lives so long, nor why he can travel back and forth in time. He moves with some care: he can't always get out of the time he's in, and has learned that not all injuries heal. We see Vel, and his "sisters" (by now great n nieces, and his lovers. There's a lot of sex in this book, mostly between men, often explicit, and intended to be both arousing and in character. Out of bed and in, Vel tells stories: mammoth hunting, traveling, being treated as an extremely minor god, seeing his friends imprisoned or killed for homosexuality, the sort of low-key investment that you can make over time if you can see the future. When a necklace is stolen from him, Vel just waits and takes it from the thief's grave, decades later. In the afterword, Ore says that this book was inspired (at least in part) by slash fiction. I would say "recommended if you like that kind of thing," but I don't read much of that kind of thing, and I enjoyed it. On the other hand, one advantage of original characters over slash is that an author working with her own characters doesn't use the shortcut of assuming the reader already knows what they're like or the back story, which I often don't. P. C. Hodgell, God Stalk and Dark of the Moon (in an omnibus volume as The Godstalker Chronicles) This feels almost like a parody in some ways: the viewpoint character is one of a created race/organization of powerful beings whose God has handed them the task of fighting evil. The evil force is called Perimal Darkling, and the agents of God include two more-or-less-humanoid species and one species of very wise, almost-immortal felines. The viewpoint character Jame (who goes by various other names at different points, including "the talisman") is a young woman of the Kendyr, one of those three people's. She has almost no memory of, well, anything, who stumbles out of the lands controlled by the dark force into a city, where she finds herself offered an apprenticeship as a thief, moves in many different social circles, and gradually regains at least some of her memories. God Stalk moves fast enough that I didn't much mind that the plot was more "and then...and then...and then" in which neither reader nor characters have time to get their feet under them. By the end of that book, Jame has gotten tangled with some of the local gods of the city she stumbled into; she talks about what the existence of other gods might mean for her rigidly monotheistic (in a trinitarian way) people, but is too busy with other things to really seem troubled by that point. She is convincingly concerned about why she can remember so little of her past, and by some of the things she can remember. This wouldn't be a problem if the title and story weren't setting Jame up as a destroyer and restorer of gods. Dark of the Moon has Jame regaining more memory, and shows battles in a larger area, and I found it less convincing. Events seemed to take place because they suited the author's convenience, not because they followed one from the next or because things happen at least somewhat by chance. In addition to the formless but powerful Perimal Darkling, the threats this time include a vague group of tribes called the Horde, who we are told have been proceeding in a slow circle, consuming everything in front of them and fighting internal, cannibalistic battles for several centuries. It's not remotely clear why none of them ever broke away, in search of safely and fresher pastures. I was also both unconvinced and annoyed by the statement that the Kendyr had started restricting the powerful "Highborn" women, but not the men, after a specific woman had gone over to the dark side: because it is made clear, by the characters as well as the third-person narration, that she had done so following her twin brother. Yes, some men might find that a convenient excuse, but nobody, female or male, seems to notice that it's inconsistent, not only unfair but insufficient to provide the safety it is allegedly aimed at. You either restrict all of your powerful and potentially treasonous human weapons as much as possible, or train all of them because you need them to fight against the forces of Darkness. I'd recommend reading God Stalk and stopping there, which is easier if you find a used copy of God Stalk rather than the two-novel omnibus. (This isn't a "don't go there" warning that the second book ruins the first, just that I liked the first and found the second less fun and less plausible.) [crossposting by hand between LJ and DW, comment wherever you like] |
bakebakebake
[ mumutchan ]
|
9:56p |
|
wouldyoueva
|
2:07p |
From unclutter: Posted by gibbons 07/09/2007
I am not a fan of raised or platform beds. They are contrary to feng shui practises and i believe if you need the extra space it will just attract things you should of thrown out anyways. If you are doing it to get rid of large bulky furniture why not just reorganize your closet. I'm trying to imagine, and failing, hanging up my socks and underwear in the closet. I was asked to leave the only decluttering meetup I ever joined because they were having talks by Feng Shui experts, and I pointed out what utter crap that is. And gibbons? Punctuation is your friend. |
wouldyoueva
|
1:54p |
For nellorat : a plush pancreasSadly, the plush uterus has been recalled, due to the ovaries being a choking hazard. I can sympathize. On July 28, 2003, my own uterus got recalled on account of my ovaries being a hazard. |
sbisson
|
4:25p |
Platinum Light
Deception Pass is a narrow channel at the north end of Whidbey Island, near Seattle. Early on a summer evening the light is fantastic, a platinum sheen on the water, bright bright in the westering sun. The lines of the currents weave towards the cleft in the cliffs, drawing lines on the mirror-smooth water. Fishing boats pass by, drawing their own lines. Zoom in on the reflections, on the white gold ripples...  Whidbey Island, Washington June 2009 Current Mood:  busy |
wouldyoueva
|
12:35a |
Home from BSFS. Very light turnout, although I suspect most folks decided to go to Shore Leave instead. Or Readercon. Bedtime because tomorrow I need to move all the boxes in the living room to someplace else, so the washer and dryer that belongs to Dave's friend E, can be moved to our new place. |
| Saturday, July 11th, 2009 |
bakebakebake
[ gotyellowcard ]
|
7:25p |
|
bakebakebake
[ caerfrli ]
|
10:12p |
hydrox
Does anyone know how to make cookies that taste like Hydrox? My husband loves them and they seem to have been discontinued. We're down to our last box. Thanks in advance. Current Mood: hungryCurrent Music: l&o |
bakebakebake
[ lollypopstar03 ]
|
9:00p |
Recipe Request, Thin Mints...
I have a whole box of thin mints still. I want to do something with them besides just eat them. Does anybody have any suggestions or links to send me to? I can pretty much do about anything you throw my way, so let's have fun! |
bakebakebake
[ layers_of_eli ]
|
5:55p |
Cheddar Chive and Bacon "Cupcakes" with Avocado Frosting
I've been wanting to make a savory cupcake (maybe this counts as a "cupfake" too!) for awhile now, and it struck me the other day that a cheddar bacon biscuit would be delectable with some creamy avocado on top. So I pondered and googled for a week to work out the details, and voila! These came out so, so yummy. You should DEFINITELY make these!! 
Cheddar Chive Bacon Cupcakes with Avocado Frosting
( recipe and more photos )
More info and pictures (including process photos) can be found at my baking blog, Willow Bird Baking! x posted to food_porn and curiouscupcakes |
bakebakebake
[ angiewriter ]
|
12:01p |
Oreo Cookie Cake--request for recipes
Hi Bakity Bakers! I am trying to find a recipe for a 9x13 cake that incorporates Oreos as part of the ingredients. I don't want a round layer cake--I need to serve 25+ guys, so a round layer cake won't go too far with them. I have turned up only 1 recipe in Google. Help!!! Thanks, everyone! Current Mood: hopeful |
bakebakebake
[ raspberriesgrow ]
|
12:43p |
Cupcakes.
I was rushed and made these on a whim in less than an hour, for my boyfriend who was coming home from work. I'm pretty sure he loves The Simpsons more than he loves me.(You can't win them all. haha) ( Read more... )-Emily Current Mood: accomplishedCurrent Music: Bright Eyes "Oh You Are The Roots.." |
bakebakebake
[ _boppo_ ]
|
4:36p |
|
jonsinger
|
3:25p |
Pass. Fail. (See also, Hami-gua.)
So: I calculated an average of the two oilspot glazes, mixed a bucket of the stuff, and put too much water in it. (Sigh. I will let it settle for a while and then decant the excess.) I dipped a test tile and a small vase, and fired them last night, along with some other glaze tests that we can maybe get into later if they become interesting enough after I attempt to tweak them into submission. Here is the vase, slightly overexposed (my apologies). Despite the fact that there is really enough glaze only near the top, it is entirely okay by me...  ...Well, almost entirely. Here’s the bottom:  Grrrr. We hates it, we does. Still, the crack does not go all the way through, and the vase holds water. We Should Be Thankful For Small Favors. (...But We Are Not Very. Grrr.) [Just by the bye, in case anybody actually cares: “H” stands for Helios Porcelain; “JS” with 3 dots is me (am I slightly dotty? I guess maybe I am); and the date is the year and month during which I trimmed the footring. I can’t date them by when I expect to fire them, because it can be a while before I figure out the right glaze for a particular piece. This one, frex, was trimmed in March, and didn’t get fired until July.] In case you want a better look at the spots, here is a close-up. I really like the variegation in color.  The long and short of it is that my “average”, which is tweaked to use only one type of Kaolin (one of the original versions used this type, the other used a different type), then normalized so that none of the amounts would be tighter than 1/10%, and finally normalized again (a gram here, a gram there, pretty soon you’re talking real ...uhhh, sorry; wrong quotation) to make it easy to mix 3 kg, works in a firing that is more or less equivalent to the firing I put the original test tile through. To put that a different way, this glaze is very pleasantly noncritical. _..··-^vWv^-··.._..··-^vWv^-··.._..··-^vWv^-··.._I have previously mentioned the Hami melon of western China, and the fact that travel along the Silk Road seems to have guaranteed that the Persians would become aware of it. I went back to the Persian market the other day, and found a large bin of the things. Oddly, there were two distinct types. These:  ...were reported to have come in last week, and some that were netted about like a cantaloupe and were even larger (those tiles are 8&½" square!) came in this week. I acquired only this one, and cannot provide a photo of the larger size, but the shape was about the same. I suspect that these are hybrids of some sort, and that there is more than one strain. Assuming that this one is like what I remember from my trip (I haven’t opened it yet) I will save seeds, and we’ll see what we get next year. If not, I will run back and buy one of the others. (Argh. Even at a reasonable per-pound price, they are not exactly cheap.) Cheers — jon |
redbird
|
3:28p |
Too long
I just spent four hours going to and from the radiology place in Yonkers to get my old films. Yes, the buses are less frequent on weekends. But this is why I wanted to do that, so from now on I can go to the West Side, and use up far less time. Three buses in each direction, one of them instead of a subway and incredibly slow for the first mile or thereabouts. For reference: Yonkers is the city just north of New York. There are bus connections between the Westchester "Bee Line" system and NYC transit, and in fact the systems are sufficiently integrated that I can use my unlimited-ride metrocard on the Westchester buses as well. On the other hand, the receptionist at the radiology place was helpful and efficient. Also, on the way up, I noticed a little bit of parkland labeled "Tail of Van Cortlandt." It's tucked in next to the street, just south of the actual Van Cortlandt Park; I suspect the nice plantings, benches, and names are all recent. Current Mood:  tired |
redbird
|
3:12p |
Invite codes
I have more dreamwidth invite codes. If you want them, let me know. If you're reading this offer, it applies to you. |
bakebakebake
[ freikykitty ]
|
11:47a |
Luau Theme Birthday Cake
Yesterday I whipped up this tiki- luau style birthday cake for a 5 year old girl named Brooklyn. I hope she likes it. I gave her a really good price on it because my husband is producing a country album for the girl's mom and we've sort of become an extension of their family over the corse of the past few months. Now all of her other kids want me to make them cakes for thier birthdays! lol  ( ++++ ) |
bakebakebake
[ onebrightgirl ]
|
3:56p |
Hi everyone :) I've came home for the summer from university and seem to be having trouble with my baking. I use this recipe that I modified slightly from somewhere else and when I made it at uni it gave a lovely soft and moist cake - at home... not so much, very dry. I figure this might be because the over at university was electric and the one here at home is gas. So, are there any simple cake recipes which will be lovely and moist if baked in a gas oven, or is there anything I could do to my existing recipe which would make it less dry after baking? Thanks in adavnce. |
[ << Previous 25 ]
|
