- Figure out solution to the logistical problem of wanting to learn to play the drums when your flat is too small to fit any drums into.

- Learn to play the drums.

- Try not to shout at anyone who mentions the alleged upcoming Mayan apocalypse.

- Try not to be too sarcastic at anyone who mentions the alleged upcoming Mayan apocalypse.

- Ah fuck it, they probably deserve it.

- Continue to get better at the stuff I want to get better at. (The only way to lose is not to play.)

I got some great presents as well:

The thing in the box is a FEZ Spider Starter Kit, and I’m really excited to start playing with it, although I still have a few tutorials to go through until I do. I may try to convince my brother to lend me his music expertise and collaborate with me on some kind of cool chiptune-y project. No idea what it will be yet, but I think it’d be fun. Maybe we’ll build an instrument, kind of like those modified Gameboys.

The books are Der Hundertjährige, der aus dem Fenster stieg und verschwand; Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories; Machine of Death; and Guns, Germs, and Steel. I also got some colourful brush pens from my brother, which I forgot to draw. /terrible sibling

Unfortunately I’ve been incubating a cold all week which has chosen today to come out in full force, and so I’m off to drink tea on the couch and sulk about my hands being too unsteady to draw properly.

What has happened to the year? I’m not really sure what I’ve done in the last three months. I did NaNoWriMo, and although I didn’t win, writing turns out to be a huge amount of fun and I’m going to keep doing it. Maybe my ~creative energies~ have recharged, or maybe I’m just getting my act together, but I’ve got a lot of ideas lately and I’m drawing again, and getting a start on some other things I’ve been meaning to do in my copious free time.

Endless leisure is still not my favourite situation to be in, though, and so far there’s been no success in the jobsearch. I am doing some German > English (and the other way as soon as my test gets approved) translation on MyGengo, and as usual it’s a lot of fun. Unfortunately the jobs aren’t really pouring in so far; in the last week I’ve done two, one of which was only a sentence long. Made almost $30 on the other one, though, and requested a payout (to make sure it actually works). I hear the experience from the customer side is pretty good, so if you need a translation you should consider them. And consider doing it via this banner, because then I get referral money. ;P

Something that has raised my unemployed spirits is that the library they’ve been building near our flat since before we moved in has finally opened. I still think it looks kind of like an ominous looming spaceship.

The non-fiction section is a little lacking, but the fiction selection is good — they fit a lot more books into that building than it looks like there’s room for — and they have a nicely sized graphic novel section, too, so I’m finally getting around to reading all of those comics people have recommended to me.

The first time I visited last week I took out volumes 1 to 3 of Fables. It’s fairly good so far. The writing seemed a bit stiff to me at first, but I think I’ve gotten more used to it now. They get points for having their ladies drive the plot a lot, but I haven’t been able to really get into any of the characters, and I’m not sure why. They just seem a little obvious to me; it’s like they’ve taken fairy tale characters and turned them into the cast of a soap opera. Or maybe it’s because most of them are rich and US American that I get that vibe. The premise interests me enough to get the next few volumes, though, and maybe when more of the back-story is revealed I’ll become more invested in the characters.

I also got out a few volumes of Hellblazer, which is always fun in a creepy way. (Although the hippies in The Fear Machine annoyed me a lot, for various reasons.) I have no idea of what order they are meant to go in so I just got out two at random. That Wikipedia article probably has the publication order in it, doesn’t it. Maybe I’ll go with that from now on.

What other comics should I check out? I have a long list somewhere from various Eastercon panels, but I am always happy for more, since I know you guys have good taste.

(By the way, I’m trying out a plugin to crosspost to LJ and DW from my website, hopefully this will work…)

This first post is going to be a little short, probably, because there are a lot of nuances for this place that I have yet to work out. Turns out it takes a lot more effort to construct a culture if you don’t know as much about their environment. Everything is going to be set in Mediterranean climates from now, ok? (No it won’t, that is a total lie. I have so many papers about Scandinavian prehistory open right now.) The world in general is a fantasy (or maybe alt-history? I might still put in some monsters or something) world, but prehistoric instead of pseudo-medieval. Because I think that’s super-cool and I couldn’t find anything like it in books. Although maybe the point is a bit moot now, since I’m ageing up a lot of the places to Iron Age – Early Medieval levels for my NaNo story…

The topic of this post is definitely at “prehistoric” tech levels, although a form of written communication does exist (it isn’t representative of spoken language, however). The place doesn’t have a language or name yet, but I’ve been calling it The Northern Island. It’s kind of my pseudo-Europe, at least in terms of climate (hemi-boreal), but hopefully it won’t end up hideously cliché! Here’s a rough map:

The island is the remnant of a much larger landscape, drowned under rising sea-levels. It’s roughly teardrop-shaped, and consists of a rim of mountainous highlands surrounding a flat plain tending to marshland. I don’t know exaaaactly how geographically feasible that is, but just go with it. On the northern tip there is an old eroded volcanic crater, overgrown on one flank by an extensive, dark, and imposing forest. There are actually bits of forest all over the place, but that one has particular significance to the inhabitants of the island (scary shit lives there).

The population of the island is split into two major groups: those that live around the bay and on its islands and are largely sedentary, and the groups based around the southern mountain range and the central plains who are seasonally nomadic.

The two group’s territories.

In the winter, the nomadic people congregate in large settlements in the southern foothills and along the major rivers. They live in what are basically large examples of European long-houses, holding something like 30 to 40 people each. The inhabitants of one settlement, which I’m going to call a community, number a couple of hundred, probably. My sense of scale is not the best for these sort of things, but that seems sustainable to me. (I may look up what calculations there are for this later, but that might be heading too far into “avoiding the difficult business of coming up with plots in favour of comfortable nerdery” territory) Monsters and creepy supernatural things have free reign over the northern half of the island in the winter and it is considered a bad idea to leave the settlement.

In the summer, the members of a community split out into smaller sub-groups and spread over a large part of the plain to hunt, gather, and tend to the land. They don’t really farm, as such, but they manage some animal populations and woodlands and encourage useful plants, that sort of thing. Some also stay near the mountains and exploit the resources there. (There’s metal ores around, but the technology hasn’t really taken off in a big way quite yet.)

Another thing that happens during the summer is the upkeep of borders. Territories and paths between them are carefully delineated and marked. Groups are partly familial and partly based on a ridiculously complex role system, which is part gender, part astrology, and part profession. (They recognise three sexes — plus one, linguistically, for ‘unknown’ — and 4 or 5 ‘aspects’ on top of that which are associated with certain behaviours and character traits and determine how you’re supposed to dress, talk, and the role(s) you fill in society. I am unable of designing cultures without a shit-ton of restrictive rules to bother my characters with, apparently.) Each group owns territory collectively, made up of the land rights of each of its members, and all of the groups together make up the territory of the community. This isn’t necessarily one coherent stretch, but you don’t tend to get things like one community’s land completely surrounded by another’s.

Each group has a base camp within their territory, where they collect resources for the winter, occasionally meet to exchange news and goods with each other, and all come together at certain key points of the year. From there, the group splits off into even smaller, single-aspect groups, which go off to fulfil their various roles. (Oh, you’re also not meant to get with people of the same aspect, who are coincidentally the people you spend most of the summer with. Which is why the winter deity is not only in control of all the things that want to kill you, but also one of the patrons of romance and sexytimes.)

I haven’t entirely worked out how joining or leaving one group (due to exogamy or whatever) works, so shhhh. I’ll figure it out later. Child-rearing and inheritance are probably going to more or less communal affairs.

The coastal dudes are much more sedentary. The area is rich and relatively sheltered, so there’s not much of a need to disperse. They do move inland occasionally in cases of bad winter storms. Their social structure — as well as language and basic religion/cosmology — are the same as of the inland islanders, although the various roles to fill within the community are of course slightly different, and they have a greater marine focus. Some communities also build pile dwellings, especially the island ones. They do maintain the same customs regarding the upkeep of territorial rights and maintained of paths, and carry on a good deal of trade with the in-landers, who don’t have a lot of access to marine resources, since they don’t have any rights on easily accessible coast land.

That’s pretty much all I have on these guys for now, apart from a little bit of mythology, which I think I’ll save for a later post. Now I have to go draw some Homestuck fanart before I explode with fannish glee.

HE WAS MANKIND'S LAST CHANCE. AND THEY WERE GOING TO KILL HIM FOR IT. Burt is a trillion dollars worth of robot — with a ten-minute gap in his programming that renders him virtually useless to his creators. Still, since coming to Earth, he was managed to find a snappy new set of clothes, a cure for cancer, and a sixteen-year-old girlfriend.

• Google map of incidents
• Live BBC stream
• #LondonRiots hastag on twitter
• Guardian live blogs for last night, and from this morning (haven't read the latter yet).

cobweb_diamond

Let me know if you find anything that’s broken. I found so many broken things in my old layout while I was making this; what was I even doing back then?

Also I updated the info page and changed the main page around a bit. I’m working on an updated links page, too.

klos

klos, sein da wo klos?
du gehen rund den knödel
du dann finden den türen
sein drauf stehn >männeken<
du dort treten innen
du dort finden den rinnen
du machen auf den hos.
du wissen was dann tun?
ja ich wissen was dann tun.
so ich gehen rund den knödel
ich dann finden den türen
sein drauf stehn >männeken<
ich dort treten innen
ich dort finden den rinnen
ich machen auf den hos
ich nix finden darinnen.
rasch ich zumachen den hos
rasch ich treten außen
finden den türen neben
sein drauf stehn >fraunen<
sein ich erstaunen
daß in mein leben das
ich haben können vergessen

Ernst Jandl

I’ve started an art blog, which I’m planning to update at least once a month. Have a look and leave me a comment!

The pig is there for luck. Apparently pigs don't symbolise good luck in England, as I learned yesterday when Tim asked me why it was there. This is weird and interesting and makes me want to do a survey! I’m pretty sure four-leaved clovers, chimney sweepers, and possibly horseshoes (with the legs pointing up so they look like a bull’s horns, according to my grandmother) are shared, as well as all the unlucky stuff like walking under ladders and breaking mirrors and so on. (I suspect those were popularised by films and cartoons.) My mum brought me bread, salt, and a penny when I moved into the flat -- for plentiful food, wealth, and good luck, respectively, though we had to look that up -- and when you find a penny on the street you’re meant to (pretend) spit on it three times and keep it in your pocket for luck. That’s all the folkloric traditions and superstitions I can think of off the top of my head. Do you have any?

I think pigs are pretty cool animals, regardless.

So, in the time since I last blogged I’ve been having really nice Christmas and birthday/New Years times. Hung out with my family, baked cookies, ate delicious food, and played card and board games (everyone seems to be coming around to my point of view that board games are for cool kids. My dad even enjoyed Settlers of Catan, after initial scepticism – “You can’t kill anyone?”). Everyone seemed to like the presents I got them, too.  :D (Paintings for my parents & brother, and a pair of Hello Kitty headphones for Tim.) My parents got me a new keyboard and screen, which I asked for intending to attach to my laptop, but then Tim got me the parts of a computer to go with them. :O! I am coming to you at this very moment from my super sexy new desktop PC. I got some other  really great stuff, too:

•There is finally a successor to my faithful old bag. It’s very similar and feels pretty sturdy, so I’m hoping it’ll serve me just as long
•Books! I am so excited to read those books.
•I love my jar of erasers. Perfect present idea. ♥

On New Year’s Eve, Tim and I went out to see the London fireworks. The travel guidelines said the viewing areas start filling up around 8, so we went out for dinner and ended up on Westminster Bridge around 7. And then we sat and read books for five hours while Radio 1 played really lame music. It was totally worth it, though: the fireworks were spectacular. I adore fireworks. Pretty bright colours and loud noises are just viscerally satisfying. Fuck yeah, watch us light up the sky! I didn’t want to waste any of that feeling on trying to take photos, because photos of fireworks are never as good anyway, but I did tear myself away for a couple of seconds because the sea of cameras and phones that went up in front of me when it started was too amusing not to document.

Everyone on the internet already knows what fireworks look like, guys.

I was thinking yesterday about whether I should make a resolution this year. I usually don’t, because I think about my goals and how to achieve them pretty frequently anyway, so I don’t feel the need to do it at new year’s specifically. My life has been going really well in the last few months. Everything feels like it’s rolling in the right direction. I like where I live, my relationship is really good, I’ve been making some cool friends at uni and being social, and I got my first essay back before the holiday and got the best grade of my academic career so far holy shit. Of course this is a dangerous moment and I can’t rest on my laurels and stop pushing to keep rolling in that direction, so I’ve decided that my resolution for 2011 is: “Take all necessary steps to ensure the continuation of awesome good times”.

In addition to wars of conquest, highland Mexican city-states engaged in xochiyaoyotl (flowery wars), which consisted of carefully prearranged, 'friendly' battles between rival states. Soldiers were killed in these battles and prisoners taken, but military action was restricted to the battlefield and the overt political status of the participants was not altered, at least in the short run, by the outcome. The rationale for these contests was to capture prisoners for sacrifice to the gods. Flowery wars were said to be waged when not enough wars of conquest were occuring.

There’s actually more than this, but if I linked it all I think I would endanger the new layout’s integrity. Or, you know, stretch this box. We can’t have scrolling now, can we. So check it out yourselves.

He said the syllabus was "bound to be Eurocentric" because the world was Eurocentric.

"Once a brilliant but eccentric scientist, he now comes over as a half-witted clown," said one viewer.

  

cubed2D: mums watching some award cerimony on tv. its rubbish
chairman_wow: yeah, the brits, I think. My mum's watching it, too. And my dad's watching football in my room. XD
cubed2D:it basicly goes....
int count = 0;
while(moderatlyFamousManIsOnStage)
{
   FamousPerson p = AnnounceFamousPerson();
   WalkToStage( p );
   Talk(p, "Its lovly to be here, im really famous.");
   Cards[] cards = ReadFourCards( p );
   cards.Sort();
   FamousPerson winner = card[0];
   Talk(p, "the winner is " + winner.ToString() + "!!!!");
   WalkToStage(winner);
   Talk(winner, "Its lovly to be here, me and " + p.ToString() + "really famous.!!!!");
   WalkOffstage( p );
   WalkOffstage(winner);
   count++;
   if (count > 10)
   {
      AdvertBreak();
      count = 0;
   }
}

I dunno about you, but writing 2010 always makes me feel like I’m living in the Future, with a capital F.

Anyway, a slightly more respectable number of new drawings for the first update of the year. I bought a brush pen last week, and I’m very excited about the cool things I’m going to draw with it. I feel like I can improve a lot more than I have been!

"Well, you got your story the first night. I hope you enjoyed it. Everything you always wanted to know about the manufactured man, including his sex life. Was I any good? Do you want me to pose for photos?"

"Now I understand. If I help you to unravel this mystery, then you'll have a story about Island One bigger than the test-tube baby story. Right?"

"I'm sure of it!" She nodded excitedly.

"And if I don't help you, you've still got my story. You can go back to Earth and sell my story to your bosses."

An unhappy frown creased her brow. "I don't want to do that, David."

"But you will if you have to."

"If I have to... I don't know what I'll do."

But I know, David said to himself.

"But why... what do they..."

Arching an eyebrow, the old man asked, "Do you see any statistical correlation between the fact that the Board has ordered five mansions and the fact that there are five—count them, five—members of the aforesaid Board of Directors of the island One Corporation, Limited?"

David blinked at him.

"And they'll let the world collapse around them?"

"There's nothing they can do to prevent it, even if they wanted to."

"I don't believe that!"

"Well... there is one thing," Cobb said. "After the Board comes here to love, we can shoot anybody else out of the sky when they try to come up here and invade us!"

The dude was black, and he wore the right kind of clothes: blood-red shiny plastic jacket with the sleeves torn off, tight-ass bullfighter pants, heavy boots that're good for stomping or running. But the clothes were too right, like somebody'd handed him a uniform. And they were new. Instead of fitting into the First Avenue scene, he stood out like a hooker's pointed bra.

"Listen to me," the cop said. "If you don't come back now, voluntarily, they'll drag you back."

"Take some draggin'," said Leo.

"They can do it. You know that."

Leo slowly got to his feet. It was like a dark storm cloud rising. "No, they only think they can do it, Frank,” he said in a kind of voice that Lacey had never heard out of him before. He sounded almost like the cop! "I've learned quite a bit about how things go out here in the streets, quite a bit about power—how to get it and how to use it. Power does not reside in the government bureaus and agencies. There's no power in those long corridors between offices or among those faceless, interchangeable automatons that you report to. Power is here, in the streets, in the cities, among the people who are hungry enough, scared enough, mean enough, desperate enough to fight."

The cop staggered a step backward. "You're talking nonsense. Madness!"

"Am I?"

"You can't survive out here without us, Elliot. The melanin treatments, the steroids, the hormones—they'll cut off your supply."

Leo shrugged massively. "I've got other sources, Frank. I don't need you people anymore."

[...]

"You're crazy, Elliot. The drugs must be affecting your brain. They'll come and get you..."

"Shee-it, man!" Leo's voice went back to normal, and Lacey felt better for it. "We gonna come an' get you. We got more soldiers than you got, more guns, too. An' we know how t' use 'em. All over the world, man—the underdogs are gonna knock off the white-asses, wherever they are."

Ok, now I’m uploading the update at this very moment. A few pieces of art — depressingly few pieces of art, actually, I’m prett sure there’s some around that I just haven’t scanned — and a link to a cool new webcomic I found the other day: Today Nothing Happened. I like comics that let me be nosy about other people’s lives.

This is my favourite of the new arts: a commission to be used for the layout of an upcoming blog called Robots in Tutus. It’s going to be badass.

And where would rebels such as the revolutionaries in Latin america get their arms and munitions? If the corporations wanted to weaken the World Government...

Each man had come from a different part of the world: tobacco-skinned Arab, brown Chinese, black African, red-haired Russian, blond Dane, and the darkish American. Yet they all wore the same type of conservatively cut grayish suit. The colors of their clothing varied less than the colors of their skin. And they were all men. We still do not allow women to rise to the level of the Executive Council. That would be too cruel.

De Paolo's main concern continues to be the weatehr modifications, I suggest we terminate this phase of the operation as quickly as possible, before they can find a leak.
We should make stronger ties with El Libertador, [...]. Under no circumstances should [he] be allowed to make conciliatory gestures toward the World Government, or vice versa.

Mine had three eyes, but one fell off.

Somewhere in the back of his head he was marvelling that he felt no fear, no despair, not even anger that someone had gone to such lengths to kill him. He was trembling, but with an anticipation that was almost joyous.
Jesus, God, he thought, we really are pagan warriors underneath all that politeness and chat.

Grasping her wrist firmly, he helped pull her up along the climbing path. "It gets easier up ahead. The gravity slackens off. And the view is worth the effort."

She nodded, but said to herself, He knows he's handsome. Good muscular body; firm backside. That's why they picked him to guide me, no doubt. He gets all the female hormones popping.