You step off the boat in Devonport, and lots of enterprising salesmen are standing right there, waving "Breakfast at our Cafe!" signs and gesturing to their joint down the street.

You step off the boat in Melbourne, and no-one cares. You want breakfast? Eh, so does everyone else. You got off a boat? Congratulations. People do that sometimes.

Melbourne: the city where nobody gives a damn. (And, for the first time in three weeks, I felt right at home.)


Our holiday can be neatly divided into a few different topics.
( the old stuff )

( the oops factor )

( the natural stuff )

( the kidlets )

( the verdict )

The Engineer and the Time Lady
1. Alpha
( Unknown Planet )

i bought a garden solar light for 0.68€ today because i want the actual electronics for something else and it's funny what that boring little thing says about technological progress. imagine if i could send it 40 years into the past. solar cells being used for something as mundane as garden lighting?? but these things are expensive! a white LED - nevermind the fact that it's bright enough to only need a single one? and apparently nickel-metal hydride batteries also didnt hit the consumer market until 1989? all this combined for less money than a loaf of bread? we really take these things for granted.

I've been watching Yakitate!! Japan recently and am finally on the home stretch (Nine episodes left!), and I love it in all its ridiculous glory--Bring on the Iron Chef references! Bring on the extended Detective Conan reference and the episode that's just a twenty-five minute Naruto parody! Bring on the puns that I don't really get! Bring on every appearance of Kid, the most American of Americans!

I am here for the second ending, a.k.a. the best ending ever. I am here for Pierrot, the bestest clown ever and ( spoilers for the end of Pierrot's story. )

I am here for Kazuma calling Kuroyanagi and Pierrot "old ma--er, old pal!" every. single. time. he addresses them. I am here for Monica and Kuwabara's who-will-flinch-first, nearly naked romance. I am here for the surprise yakuza subplot!

But I am not sure I can buy that Austria is super famous for its jams and that most Austrian of jam doughnuts, the Berliner.

Why is everything scheduled for the last weekend in April? It was bad enough when both AwesomeCon and Endgame were, but now I'm missing a book sale and the first Jane Austen event we've had in this year for literally *years* because I've got that weekend booked. This weekend the only think I've got is the newest penguin documentary, and I'm not even sure I'm going to do that. I might just stay home and hammer out the end of my series.
Especially when Sunday's walk was rudely interrupted by my headphone adapter suddenly shorting out, along with the pause button on my music app; I had to power my phone down just to shut it up. Plus I didn't get to the Apple store to get it sorted until Tuesday night, so that was a worrying pair of days, when I thought the problem was the phone itself. Today was less stressful, but who knows what tomorrow's reckoning will bring.
Although at least it will also bring Cloak and Dagger. Last week I found myself at the end of the third episode contemplating how impressive that show really is. Started watching Les Miserables on PBS too, a nice way to occupy myself when everyone else is watching that HBO show, at least for as long as it lasts. Nice way to get the original story without slogging through Hugo's novel.
Though I kind of want to read his history of Notre Dame right now. Mom actually cried a little Monday. I'm more relieved most of it survived.

“No spoilers, but [blatant spoiler].”

The advantage of reading a series for the second time is that you feel all the love again-- and you fall in love with characters and pairings all over again.

The disadvantage is knowing exactly what is going to happen to said characters and pairings

Oh Leo and Eshild-- like, I think I will always love you just a little bit--

Alberta, WTF were you thinking? Did you look over at Ontario and see how screwed we were and go, "I gotta get me some of that?"

Also, someone needs to out Kenney. I don't know if it'll hurt his brand with the bigots and troglodytes but if anyone ever deserved to be outed, it's him. You come after the gay kids, you come after all of us, asshole.

"omg but how are we supposed to spend the night if we can't do anything our neighbours would hear" i dunno, play video games without screaming at them like retarded monkeys, the way normal sane people do? sleep? the mind just boggles at all the possibilities

"omg u can't just cross red lights when there's kids around u are a bad example" it's not my job to be a good example for them, that's their parents' job

where on earth did the stereotype that germans will wait to cross red lights even if there's no cars around come from, why would i do that when the worst that could happen is having to pay a 5€ fine

downside of cheap chinese body-chan knockoff: the hole in the back of the figure where it's meant to attach to the stand was too small (a small screwdriver took care of that), the hands are tricky to replace, the ankle joints didn't move at first, some joints are a little loose

upside of cheap chinese body-chan knockoff: cost a little over 10€ instead of a little over 100€

on the whole, there's still poses it can't do, but i already like it so much better than stupid wooden drawing mannequins. smaller than i expected, but that's fine. i really like how the different hands and the accessories are stored inside the base, so you can't easily lose them. i've also ordered a figma archetype next knockoff to see how their proportions and posability compare, it's just not here yet. don't think i will buy any male ones, i don't find that kind of muscular male body type very aesthetically pleasing, so i don't draw it either

lj_writes posted: Set up a Dreamwidth queue, drafts, and local backup on OS X

There isn't much I miss from my stay on Tumblr
and it's a great relief to spend more time on Dreamwidth--
and, these days, my feed reader.
However, there are still some functions that Tumblr has and Dreamwidth lacks, like a draft folder and the ability to queue posts.

Tumblr aside, I also found myself wanting to keep local copies of my posts
and to compose them in an editor with more robust functions, such as live Markdown preview,
than the DW editor offers.
I like the new DW beta editor but it's still not an actual text editor,
nor does it write to my own machine without an extra step like copy-paste.

So I figured, why not set it up on my computer?
It seemed simple enough with Dreamwidth's post by email function and Terminal on Mac.
It took me longer than I thought to get it working reliably
because there were a few different components to it, like Postfix, Bash, and Launchd.

What I Just Finished Reading

Still nothing.

What I'm Reading Now

Comics Wednesday!

( Avengers No Road Home #10, Guardians of the Galaxy #4, Magnificent Ms. Marvel #2, Tony Stark Iron Man #10, War of the Realms #2, West Coast Avengers #10 )

What I'm Reading Next

Probably still nothing.

harry-and-ginny-potter:

It is international language week at my school. This morning a girl who is fluent recited the Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic. Everyone freaked out. Some people loved it, but more hated it. Saying that the pledge should only be spoken in English because “this is America not the Middle East” and now our principal just announced that we are no longer allowed to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in anything besides English at our high school. In the hallway I passed the girl who spoke the pledge. She was sobbing. This is to anyone who says that America is a post-racism world. Reblog the shit out of this. Get this known

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also here's my vaguely anime-styled realisation on why sleeve caps can end up as tall as they often do, and why it's possible to figure out the right sleeve cap height by measuring the height of the flat pattern armscye. i used to think that doesn't make sense, the finished armscye isn't as tall as the pattern armscye after all, because the top of it curves around the shoulder... i somehow failed to realise that the same thing is true of the arm opening in the sleeve, the process of handling the ease causes the top of the sleeve cap to curve in towards the shoulder point. and the distance from the armscye level to the shoulder point on the side of the arm is indeed nearly the same as on the front and back. the shoulder joint isn't a perfect ball, but it's close enough for this to work...

i dunno how i went for so many years without understanding this

now i set a sleeve that's at least 10 cm larger than the armscye without gathers. i am magic, i can do anything. i seriously didn't expect it to be possible.

and i mean, i don't use any techniques that aren't known to the general sewing public! just a single easing seam, lots of steam and a few pins! only thing i figure i'm probably doing differently from most people is that i don't try to keep all the ease constrained at the top of the sleeve, in the area between the notches (my pattern doesn't even have notches yet, except for the shoulder one). i distribute it around the entire sleeve cap because i figured that hey, the entire reason i'm dealing with so much ease in the first place is fat flabby upper arms, the underside of these isn't exactly flat when i raise them, why am i trying to keep the bottom of the sleeve perfectly flat? it would be better to have some fullness in that area as well, it will be invisible when the arm is at your side anyway. of course that means i have a lot more bias cut edges to push ease into.

(i also think that using too many pins or hand basting is actually likely to make it harder to set a sleeve without little puckers or folds. traps the fabrics and keeps your fingers from being able to distribute the excess width properly...)

honestly though, people who think that sleeve setting is this ultimate sewing challenge are... probably just not actually very good at sewing. i know i have industrial training, but it's been a good ten years since then, and as i said, i didn't learn any secret techniques homesewers aren't privy to. if anything we worked with fewer cheats, we were grudgingly allowed to use an easing seam, but weren't really supposed to use pins and shit like hand basting was right out. our trainer in the third year of my apprenticeship was able to set a blazer sleeve with no easing seam or pins at all. would've had maybe 4 cm of ease, i never got to look at the pattern in detail. i never got that good, but it's absolutely possible. the whole argument about how it would be nonsensical for industrial patterns to have cap ease because they would be too hard and take too long to set is moot even without the fat that sleeve setting machines exist, so clearly there's applications for them. the claim that properly drafted industrial patterns never have or need sleeve cap ease was just plain overconfident and wrong.

The Student of the Doctor
It was unusual, the Doctor thought as he set the TARDIS in motion. Usually those who travelled with him told him their names. This latest one hadn't yet. “So,” he said. He paused, waiting for his companion to volunteer her name. After a few seconds he added. “So, where would you like to go?”

“Isn't it obvious?” She asked.

The Doctor knew what that meant. “The future it is.” he changed the coordinates.


She exited the larger-on-the-inside box. She looked around. The ship had landed on top of a large building. The wind was blowing hard, her braids trailing to the side.

An hour later, the senior squirrel arrived at a large oak tree in a small forest just to the west of Lawndale’s suburban fringe. A large group of squirrels appeared from behind nearby vegetation.
“Password?” a large gruff squirrel asked. The new arrival gave the password he had been given, and then was escorted into a tunnel that lead into the large tree’s root system.
 
A minute later he was up in the canopy of the tree. This was the heart of the Varmittan Empire, the squirrel polity that dominated the area around Lawndale.

“Report, Captain Jaywi,” said the commander of the Varmittan forces.
 
“A Non-Normative Event has occurred at Lawndale High School,” Captain Jaywi said, repeating the high pitched impression of Ms Li from earlier.
 
The Commander of the Varmittan forces remembered Edict 004 ‘All Non-Normative Events are to be reported to the Emperor’ and so allowed Captain Jaywi audience with the Emperor.
 
 
Captain Jaywi reported the events at Lawndale High as he had heard from his two patrol officers and his orders to the same. The Emperor was then in thought.
 
( Read More )

The quintessential anime of Keynesian economics is Maoyuu Maou Yuusha. It’s about two countries that have so devoted their economies to war that whoever wins will suffer an economic collapse.

The quintessential anime of Austrian economics is [C] – The Money of Soul and Possibility Control. It’s about a demonic bank that gives you money and then literally steals your future.