The Farmstead

Bizarrely in-depth and interesting chat about the economy.

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:07:38 GMT

I like it when Newsnight packages the interesting bits into single videos:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22625480

(Also, this reminds me of how much I've enjoyed some articles in the Financial Times over the years. Sure, I have no money to do anything with this stuff, but it's very interesting. And the How To Spend It magazine is the best of all 'ogle expensive junk' periodicals, even if the ratio of men's stuff:women's stuff in it is a woeful reflection of the financial sector.)

(Yes, I went looking for yesterday's Newsnight. It's not up yet.)

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This is my news*

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:45:17 GMT

Gang, the peacock coat arrived!! It is even better than I could have imagined - rather than parka-type material (what do you call that? Calico is wrong, I'm sure...), it's actually a finer, silkier material, lined in black and ever so slightly quilted, 90s bomber jacket style! It's a completely different coat to my blue one, though the cut is the same, and I already want to wear it everywhere...

... !!

*OK, so there's other stuff as well, but this is the best/least stressful for the moment...

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Do I want this?

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:07:38 GMT

So, I think this is exactly the same as a parka I bought a couple of months ago in navy blue (because everyone seems to own khaki now and getting a new khaki parka seemed like an insult to my old, beloved, knackered one)... Only it's got peacocks on it?

http://tinyurl.com/ce82atk

(Bearing in mind that the reviews are silly and I thought I didn't like my blue parka because it was unlined and a bit basic, but now spend most of my time walking around in it looking in shop window reflections and thinking how well it goes with skinny jeans and DMs.)

(Really, I think I want it. I just feel poor because I finally got around to dumping most of my savings in an ISA rather than having them floating around my current account. You like it too, right?)

ETA: Wellll... I hope I don't regret that in the morning. To be fair, I haven't been drinking recently. So that makes it OK.

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Hilarity.

Thu, 02 May 2013 06:49:41 GMT

gingerwall posted this interview with Mila Kunis on her journal, but I had to bring it over here so that anyone who hasn't seen it can. Basically, Chris Stark is really nervous about the interview, so Mila helps him out by letting him go off-piste in the subject matter, and then... They end up talking about going down the pub in Watford. Watford!!! He envisions this day of fun where they go to Nando's and then to the football and then get trashed down the pub. It's worth it for the Watford Nando's shout-out alone (♥), but in general is just brilliant.

ETA: Heeee, more reaction. As far as I'm watching, this basically breaks down the video, but it explains the set up more too.

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Cities vs Nature

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 21:55:38 GMT

Once upon a time a read a lecture summary or something on the Cambridge website about what would happen if humans upped and vanished one day from a large city (such as Cambridge)... I've never been able to find it again, but it stuck with me and was one of the main inspirations behind abridgement. And these images from Pripyat in the Chernobyl exclusion zone remind me of that too:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-22246328

Can't get over that second image with the forest re-emerging between the buildings.

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Submitted without much comment

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 19:09:27 GMT

Because I was bored and so faffing around with iTunes -

A Personal History of the Last ~10 Years in Big Tunes

out of stuff I've bothered to keep on my iPod that
(a) I bought at the time (or close enough)
(b) remember as important

even though this became quite difficult by 2008
and I was listing to an awful lot of 70s punk basically throughout this time period
and I went through AFI and Bad Religion as favourite bands (mostly for their back catalogues)

( ... )

Plz share your thoughts and meme at will!

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"The Duchess of Cambridge in Bloom"

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 21:24:22 GMT

^ BBC headline right now. About pregnant!Kate pics.

... Er, gang, we're still in 2013, right? Watching Supersizers Eat The Fifties didn't actually send me back in time, did it? o.O

(Also watched the Supersizers do the Eighties. When did I start being charmed so much by the 80s? Why won't it stop?)

(I really, really don't want to go back to the library tomorrow. Even though I have Responsibilities To Undergrads I Have Been Shirking. My mum was right. I've hit the wall of my particular PhD marathon. In sport/bizarre craft projects this is usually where I give up. And my head is tender still. :( )

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Fic! 'Broken by Degree' (PG-13;4.5K) for the sb-ashtray

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:28:01 GMT

I wrote a fic on Saturday! It's been a while, so it's nice to be back. (There's something else wurbling in the background, but I don't know if it's going to become anything any time soon. And there's another project, which might have been slightly scuppered by the death of my laptop, but also might be given new life somehow.)

For one of the latest sb_fag_ends prompts (What if Buffy and/or Spike were split in two (like Xander in The Replacement)?), this is around 4,500 words and so was initially posted to the sb_ashtray, here. I've also just put it up on the AO3, here. There might still be some typos in it, but hopefully not too many - and I can only thank relurker for pointing out that I'd been writing 'drawer' as 'draw' (in my accent they're homophones, I promise!)... Please do point out anything else you spot! But otherwise hopefully enjoy the fic. :)

Broken by Degree.

Instead of using the trigger, what if Robin Wood used Toth's magic rod from The Replacement to split Spike's demon from his soul?

“What the bloody hell is this?” Spike asked as he walked through the door. Wood’s garage was covered in crosses, no inch unsanctified. It was… A bit unnerving, to say the least.

With the unwavering expression of a man with a plan, Wood shrugged. ( ... )

.

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New Computer

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 21:47:09 GMT

So, I am on my new computer! The shiny, it is beautiful. Windows 8 is weird and a bit cumbersome, but I think I can see myself enjoying it when I get to grips with it. Office 2013 seems fine, but I do NOT like the DESIGN CHOICE that MENU HEADINGS should be in CAPITALS. Ugly and hard to read at a glance. :( But I'm sure I'll get used to it.

The real sea change, though, is my monitor. Ever since I saw bogwitch's old HP laptop (even with its heating issues...), I have coveted an HP screen and the same depth of colour intensity. At last the dream has been realised in 23 inches of glory! (Because there were bigger screens on the market, I, er, thought it was going to be smaller than it was...) Watching HD on it earlier just makes me want to watch things all the time. And design things. And watch more things. Even if I'll probably stick to fic for the moment (and trying to remember how things used to be on my old Firefox).

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Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:05:23 GMT

Gang, my computer is kaputt. I'm on my phone and will be trying various remedies/back on my mini work laptop next weekend, but in the meantime will probably be a bit absent. Thanks for all my birthday wishes and apologies to anyone I've failed to reply to.

PS. This isn't actually an April Fool. I would try a bit harder if I was going to bother with one of those.

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Heading Out

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 22:36:43 GMT

New sitcom on BBC2: The Perkins! Joanna Scanlan doing some sort of wacky Fry/Laurie character! Excellent.

Did think there was something off about the production design, though. Couldn't work out whether it was the lighting, camera angles or music, but I think it needed a bit more so as not to look like you'd just tuned into a standard Perkins documentary. Hmm...

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Coldwave + Led Er Est

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 23:06:33 GMT

So, bogwitch has been getting me into New Wave recently, ever since I found myself listening to a load of it on the American Airlines 80s radio channel... I was convinced that this stuff sounded dead on trend and something was going on with it. Turns out I was right! As my Rough Trade Synth Wave 10 album put me on towards, there is some sort of scene happening, possibly taking the name coldwave or minimal wave, following what to my knowledge are long defunct descriptors of early post-punk. Very excited about this! (And don't worry, will stop talking wank about genres now.) There's a whole world to explore, but currently I'm in love with Led Er Est, who sound a bit like Theatre of Hate would if they'd come from Brooklyn and ditched the saxophones for gameboy-dodgy synth and more groovy lines. Really it's just the vocals. Anyway, this is a track off their album from last year:

and this is a more boppy track of greatness from their 2009 outing (though everything I have says it's called Poll Gorm, not Poll Grom):

ETA: And this is why all the hipster bands are starting to record on cassettes! It all makes sense... Alas, no cassette player for me; not hipster enough, clearly.

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News

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 19:17:07 GMT

Well, the Pope's resigning. I don't have much to say about that, though I like the idea forwarded on the telly this morning that the new Pope might be from somewhere other than Europe. I think that would be nice for a lot of Catholics around the world.

In other news, though, I can't get over what has become known as the 'horsemeat scandal'! For those who haven't seen this particular bit of British/European news, they recently found that some (value) beef ready meals/things have contained horsemeat rather than proper beef and, the more they dig into it, the more there seems to have been some serious organised fraud happening in a pan-European supply chain - the latest victim is Tesco's spag bol.

I just can't help but feel like this is one of the definitive stories of our times. There's so much bound up in it - how expensive meat is (becoming again? has always been?) that fraud is worthwhile, how cheap we want/need our food, how meat-heavy we want our diets to be (despite all that), and yet how picky we are about what animals+cuts we eat - even when they're processed beyond our ability to discern any difference. Because, presumably, if we just ate horses our pockets would be the ones benefitting, rather than the fraudsters... But we never will.

Basically, I feel like beef is the new bread when you come to food history; it's the site of all our anxieties. Which amuses me.

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.

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 01:21:08 GMT

Is it just me, or are these all kind of the same and generic 'good graphic design' and a bit shit?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/galleries/p01481hh

(Randomers redesigning their favourite album covers.)

Obvs they've barely picked any by women. But, anyway, they're all so blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

/trashed.

ETA: I think my problem is that you don't just get good album covers (apart from when you do); good album covers become. None of these mean anything. This is such a pointless exercise.

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...

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 23:06:01 GMT

I'm very, very worried I'm going to start watching EastEnders again. It's been over ten years, but for some reason I seem to be still invested in Kat and Alfie. And Nina Wadia is very compelling to watch.

*hides from own shame*

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Illyria fanmix!

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 22:02:06 GMT

It was the bogwitch's birthday yesterday, so the appropriate thing to do seemed to be to make an Illyria fanmix, with bogwitch-friendly tracks and a very thin narrative.

Ta daa!!

Can't believe it's Friday tomorrow already.

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In case anyone thought I'd forgotten

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 13:49:44 GMT

Crystal Castles had a new album out recently, it seemed worth mentioning that this song is a triumph beyond triumphs. It's all about the slow, smooth baseline and the echo chamber of everything else.

(The image of the video doesn't change, by the way; it's an unbleached version of the photo from the album cover.)

I can't really name any other standout songs from the album, but that's fairly par for the course with CC, it seems (and I definitely rate the album). I wish they'd set their vision a bit bigger than individual songs, because I would be in love with a proper twenty minute EP or some such. They're clearly developing (and I love the fact, just discovered, that (III) was made without computers), but the songs are still very much one idea played with for a few minutes, when they could easily carry a bit more narrative.

ION I slightly hate last.fm. I had to remove the updated app they had me download, because it kept trying to interfere with iTunes in a way that Windows decided was too virus-like. So currently I have no record of listening habits. Ah well. No one really needs to know that I sat in the library with Simple Minds on repeat for four hours.

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Stuff

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 17:02:53 GMT

Many thanks to whomever nominated me at absence_oflight! I have my suspicions who it was, but I shall keep quiet - it's very much appreciated!!

In other news, I bought some new plant pots and will be attempting to grow/maintain basil plant number three. Don't know why I bothered buying more coriander; may not bother with it and just grow mint instead. Yum, mint. Have moved my jade plant into this hideous blingy mosaic glass ball thing (meant for candles and presumably the ugly nineties spa look?), but as I hoped the soil tones down the blingy glass and leaves it a nice-ish textured pot that goes with the living room. (It was the right size, basically, and everything else was horrible too. This was so ugly it charmed me...)

Generally, I am in complete love with this song - ish. It's the best off the album (which isn't that great, but nice enough), and the original was one of my favourites off the original album. It's definitely better than the original, but I feel like something's supposed to happen after the first two minutes that never does. :(

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..

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 00:20:58 GMT

Confessions of a Shopaholic's on iPlayer at the moment, so I watched it, for dubious reasons known to no one. I can't say it was very good, but it got surprisingly close to actually dealing with addiction (actually) at a few points. There were a few beats when it really could have broken into some sort of Trainspotting-esque reality and you realised that the shopping had been a metaphor all along and the frivolous world of New York magazine journalism was in fact the imaginings of someone in a hovel somehow managing to catch repeats of Ugly Betty...

But, anyway, it made me miss the early days of Being Human, when it was all just a heroin addict, a domestic abuse escapee and an HIV-positive randomer trying to make a go of it in Bristol. I don't know why they never realised that the world they'd created wasn't epic fantasy so much as something very, very small. :(

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The vampires are moving in!

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 20:55:33 GMT

Yes, this is quite near where I live...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-20891185

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Fic Rundown 2012!

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 02:31:12 GMT

Another year, another meme! Here's last year's, and so it comes around again.

( Hmm, the amount of things written is slightly easier to deal with when they aren't all tiny... )

( I did some other stuff too..! )

( Oh, heck, there's a meme as well. Well, I suppose it's traditional. )

Generally, I think my problem is that I don't have that much fun writing fun fics! Typical.

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Fandom, fandom, fandom

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 00:17:42 GMT

I'm in such a weird place with fandom at the moment. I've been drifting offline more and more, but over the last couple of days I've been reading my old fics in one of those elusive moods where I can enjoy it rather than just picking out the flaws - and I miss them all. :( I don't know what's happened over the last couple of years - with my S6 Spuffy series and Fag Ends I've somehow ended up distracted away from all my short story experiments of 4-20K words, but I still love them to pieces. Two and a half year's distance means I can appreciate all of the frustration people felt reading An Exercise in Futility, for example, but then I kind of revel in that feeling. It entertains me that there are so many things spinning in the air - and that the actual emotional weight and impact of the story exist entirely in the negative space around it, one you've got to the end and think about it a bit. I have a plan for the novel it should go with somewhere on my other computer, and I kind of wish that that existed, but I doubt I'll ever get round to it.

I've even been re-reading my Spikeid - and I'm finally at peace with the pacing issues in books 6-8. I'm quite determined to revise them at some point, because it seems so clear to me that there are just a few transitions that need to be re-worked and bulked out with some space, but it's been finished for long enough that I can enjoy it.

And that's the thing, because, for whatever reason it seems/feels as though very little of what I write these days really strikes a chord with people, compared to back in the day. Which is fine. It's not as if I don't still do relatively well for feedback (love to you all!) and I'm not great at responding to positivity anyway, always looking for the next adrenaline rush and trying to find the negativity hidden between the lines - but then this seems to have got worse and actually become a problem in the last year or so, because I get so invested in things and then can't feel satisfied after I've put them up, obsessing for longer than makes me happy. Which makes me think it's not worth continuing; I should look to original stuff, give myself a change rather than hanging on for an audience who've gone another way. And yet, then I re-read old things again and remember I've only ever really written to entertain myself. And I still do.

Ergh, but then I can't bring myself to open the Word doc and start writing. I think I blame the Spikeid and Turn and Face the Strain. Those two projects burnt me out. And the fact I'm still dissatisfied with them (even if I'm at peace with that dissatisfaction) continues to burn me out. (Also, why can't I punctuate? Idiomatic prose/verse shouldn't be so difficult to punctuate in a way that brings across the nuances I want from it.)

Blech. This has been a self-obsessed ramble about me as an author. But then, I got into LJ back in the day to be part of a community of authors, so I fear this is what I'm posting.

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I wrote a fic.

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 22:39:13 GMT

eilowyn did a banner! Post-apocalyptic Dawn gen; slightly warningsy, but not in a way that that's the focus of the fic. It's banter, really - though for some reason I decided it didn't want a capital A.

abridgement.

I fear I may really have run out of things to say, otherwise. Things continue apace.

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.

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 19:53:17 GMT

As I polish off my bowl of boeuf bourguignon soup (bogwitch will be pleased to note that Housemate and I have defected from Asda to Sainsbury's online shopping, generally to escape the permarain and the inability to bring back more than 4-8 loo rolls at a time on our bikes), it strikes me that foreign cuisine has only really made it in the UK these days once it's been successfully turned into a type of sandwich, crisps and/or soup. Where would we be without the wraps of the world (currently discovering: chipotle'n'chicken), the ubiquitous Thai sweet chilli crisp (and my current favourite thing of Warburton's naan chips) and the supermarkets' competition with Covent Garden and Glorious! soups to make the bestest flavour? I fear we are all taste-hounds who can't be arsed to cook. I blame Rick Stein.

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...

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 18:15:59 GMT

Wanted for no sensible reason:

http://store.drmartens.co.uk/p-7904-dr-martens-spike-boot.aspx

(I am generally in the market for a new pair of 1460s, but I think I'm going to go with basic black. Though the mono black (ie. with stitching and soles and everything) is quite nice. More for you than me, though, bogwitch!)

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