juliet

Thirteen months in, we’re still managing Leon-wrangling without a pushchair, which definitely makes public transport more straightforward. This week I wrote about getting started with woven wraps for A Little Bit of All Of It‘s babywearing series.

Psytrance festival babywearing!

I have been meaning to make an actual post but keep totally failing, so here is a round-up of bits & pieces instead.

Sidney & me at the BP AGM last week. In further PUPDATE news, Sid is doing v well, apart from an unfortunate tendency to wake up at 6am (and when Sidney wakes up...). Ignoring her gets her to settle down until 6.30 but no longer than that. Also she chewed the laces & the Velcro off my bike shoes yesterday. She's getting pretty good at coming when called in the park, though, unless she's found something edible elsewhere (e.g. another person with *better* biscuits). She is, of course, generally utterly adorable. (Currently she is bugging me to go for a walk, but has given up and is killing one of her toys instead.) Another Sidney photo.

I have been ludicrously busy of late -- it's That Time Of Year on both allotment & balcony, & with the latter in particular as I am in the process of writing a book about growing stuff in containers I am having to make sure I don't let things slide this year! Having a bit more time to get down the allotment in the week is making things there seem more in control now, though, which is nice. Also the asparagus has started (v tasty although a slight odd bitterness to it; I have no idea why & the internet is unhelpful), as has the rhubarb.

Been visiting or being visited by lots of people (lovelybug, some old friends from school, C and ladyjulian), which has been lovely; and went up to DO RESEARCH (or to BE RESEARCHED ON, rather) by menthe_reglisse last weekend, which was great fun both in terms of the actual workshop & the sitting around chatting to nice people afterwards. Plus it was a seriously gorgeous day, just right for wandering up through the village and sitting out in the garden & later the pub. This weekend I am off to Bangface, so am hoping the good weather will continue.

Informative Things:

Petition to stop Kiana Firouz being deported. She's an Iranian lesbian, who's been refused asylum and now faces being deported to a country where homosexuality is punished by 100 lashes on a first offence and potentially death on a third. Apparently the Home Office believes that it's OK to deport gay and lesbian people in such circumstances, because they can be "discreet". Never mind that, as ladyjulian in a country where women are strongly expected and may even be forced to marry, "discreet" means at best a loveless marriage and at worst regular rape. Good to see the Home Office looking out for the rights of women and minorities, there. See also this short document from UKLGIG (link from ladyjulian) which had me raging.
LJ has started rewriting outbound links to include its own affiliate codes again. (see also here, which includes how to stop this happening to your links. Or if you want a Dreamwidth invite, let me know.

Right, I must away and finish packing.

Just to get rid of open FF tabs again...

Sexism at Newsweek: in 1970 and now; also a comment piece over at Racialicious drawing attention to the very-white-focussed nature of the Newsweek article.
The Economist on the demise of cap-and-trade in the US. Unfortunately this appears to be largely down to public denial in the face of climate change, rather than, e.g., because carbon trading fundamentally sucks.
What to do now the Digital Economy Bill has been rushed through Parliament (aka: it's not quite over yet).
Drugs, maths, hallucinations, and the visual neurons (with thanks to doop). Well worth a read. I particularly like the research scientist who conducted his research by taking peyote. Sadly this was in the 1920s, and his modern equivalents do not do such things; or at least, they don't admit to it.
Apparently this is very good chocolate. I would like to buy some, but the shipping is as much as the chocolate, so I'll wait till I'm next over in Kensington & can visit Rococo, which sadly will take rather longer to happen than it would have done when I was still working in Kensington. OTOH, this way I don't drop nearly a fiver on chocolate, which is quite a lot of money however good the chocolate is.

ION: have had a lovely fortnight's holiday in, variously, Northern Ireland, and Boston (Lincolnshire, not the other one); of that latter, more anon. Now I am back in London & surprisingly busy for someone whose work is only full-time in the loosest possible sense (i.e. that sense in which it is the only thing that I am doing in the paid work line, rather than any sense in which I actually work an approximation to what this society considers to be full-time hours. I like it very much this way.). The dog continues to be adorable, time-consuming, and an agent of chaos. And it is spring properly today ftb I wore my sandals to the park. Down with proper shoes! Also the first tiny asparagus shoots are appearing in the allotment.

First up: this poem by Taylor Mali is seriously awesome, and this video of him performing it is even better.

Secondly: Pupdate! Sidney has now mostly got the hang of housetraining (i.e. she is now prepared to go in the square, which was FAR TOO SCARY for a while, & she will ask at least once to go out) except when on her own in the house. She has also got the hang of "opening the recycling boxes, dragging all the recycling out, and shredding it into tiny pieces". The recycling is now outside in the cupboard, although I am unsure what the long-term solution is.

Other things she is very good at include: demolishing a proper bone in sub-15 min; getting things out of a Kong in similarly short order; chasing the crows in the park. Yesterday PetPlanet delivered a squeaky stuffed sheep, which received a Two Paws Up result, and to date has remained both interesting and largely intact for nearly 24 hrs. Long may this continue.

She also jumped the fence around the lake in the park last week, in pursuit of a moorhen. And then, obviously, paid 0 attention to me calling her back. Happily she's still nervous of water, so she just stood on the bank doing her Alert Dog Is Alert pose, while I climbed the fence to hoist her back over. Then she belted off into the children's playground (which is No Dogs Allowed, though there were already two other dogs there which is why she went in), and I got a bit irritable. We are now avoiding that half of the park.

On the more positive side: she's getting v good at sit, down, "leave it", and we're working on stay. And right now she is having a nice snooze under the radiator next to me. Watching her hurtle round the park at speed is fabulous (and the walks are doubtless doing me good too).

In non-dog news: I spent the weekend mostly at the London Free School, which was awesome. I watched several films (was facilitating the movie space on Saturday), including Made In Secret (an anarcha-feminist porn collective! sort of) which I strongly recommend (watch the making-of in the DVD extras to get a different view of it). Sunday I went to one workshop on the experience & politics of the menstrual cycle (fascinating) and another one on feminist self-defence (massively empowering; the facilitator is probably going to do a series of sessions sometime soon, so let me know if you might be interested. Self-identified-women-only.).

Also chatted to many interesting people, helped carry a sofa+occupants through the house to resolve a debate about where the debrief session should take place, played Tag (it was really very cold in that building!), and facilitated the final debrief. It was the talking-to-interesting-people thing that was the best part; the weekend as a whole left me knackered but inspired. Hopefully there will be another one in a few months!

Clearing out browser tabs again...

Sperm whales hunting squid!
A Flash developer talking about why he reckons Flash can't work well on iPhone-type devices.
Artificial Flight and other myths -- a reasoned explanation by Top Birds of why artificial flight would be impossible.
A Lego robot that can solve a Rubik's Cube in under 12 seconds.
Maths, neurons, & hallucinations.

Last night featured awesome CULINARY SCIENCE from marnameow & dogrando, in the form of a 12-course molecular gastronomy style dinner. Both food & company were excellent. I should do a proper writeup, but I am tired, so instead I will just mention the undoubted technical highlight: inside-out potato salad, which consisted of cubes of olive oil and chives (a potato-ish texture obtained by use of gellan), with potato foam, and a chive garnish. The blue cheese icecream was also pretty nifty.

Clearing out Firefox tabs, so this is a slightly random set of links:

Collection of publications from The Corner House on climate change & associated subjects (I haven't read any of these as yet, but they look potentially interesting).
Rocky Mountain Institute, who are involved in generating/promoting low-carbon energy solutions.
Mandelbulb: 3D Mandelbrot sets. Pretty!
Seven-year-olds building desktops & installing Ubuntu! I love this.
Overdoing it a bit, or, how not to spend a weekend (warning, discusses drugs & drug experiences. Quite a *lot* of drug experiences. One wonders whether this person is acquainted with the chap we saw at Glade who was sprinkling ketamine, MDMA, shrooms, and speed onto his plate of pasta.)
Warning about LJ & interstitial malware.
A bunch of articles from the interesting anarchists at Crimethink.

(The slightly alarming thing is that, having cleared out all the tabs that were just waiting to be linked to somewhere, I now still have about 20 tabs which are waiting for me to read them / watch them / do something with them. [sigh].)

Current Location: on my sofa

Another "selection of random things" post, then.

I went climbing yesterday & had AWESOME FUN, despite (or perhaps because of) falling off several times & sustaining a splendid bruise to the elbow. (Falling off is kind of good for you, though, because hey: you fall off, no major harm done, more inclined to throw yourself into it next time.) There are at least two things that I really love about climbing: the meditative nature of it (not thinking about anything other than what you're doing at the time); and the fact that it's about both physical ability (being able to do particular things) and mental puzzle (how can I get from A to B?). The physical exertion/exercise part helps, too. Anyway: I now have a decent pair of shoes (thank you

doop) & a harness (thank you Mum & Dad), both for Xmas, which obviously commits me to going a lot & making use of them :)

This has led me to a certain amount of contemplating about the sports/physical activities that I enjoy & what it is that I get out of them; as opposed to the ones which I'm still not remotely interested in. I still have this mental image of myself as "not very physically inclined" from school sports, which these days is kind of out of date; but of course basically everything we did at school fell into the second category, and I hated it.

I've also been writing a lot, which is cool but a little scary so I will not say anything more about that. (Although I will put here links to the two things I wrote for the Yuletide fic exchange.)

On the subject of making things: someone on my FL linked to an auction to help Haiti, so if you want a pair of hand-knit socks, wander over there to make a bid.

This CGI video is seriously beautiful, and v hard to believe that it's all CGI.

I could have sworn I had other things to say here, but apparently not.

You are being shagged by a rare parrot.

ION: this week I have mostly been staying in, specifically staying in *bed*, because I can do writing-type work from there, it is warm, and it means not having to attempt not to fall over on the ice. Today, after putting on 3 layers, a fleecy skirt, a shawl, two pairs of socks, and fingerless mittens, I concluded that it might be time to put on the radiator.

My sinuses hurt. Ow, grumble, etc. Off to work meeting now which should be ... interesting.

Merry Xmas to those as celebrate it!

Xmas Day started off auspiciously with the dog throwing up. No Xmas dinner for him, then. (We might try him on some boiled potatoes. He doesn't like carrots anyway.)

A certain amount of present-exchanging has been going on. I have given Marna her present. WARNING: do not click on that link if you do not wish to read very very wrong (if quite amusing) HP Baxxter^*/Bill Drummond slash (non-graphic). (If you don't know what that sentence means, &/or you are my parents - hello! - either a) ask me, or b) don't read it, you probably don't want to.)

More suitable for readers of a delicate, or any other, disposition is my Yuletide gift, which is fic for "The Swish Of The Curtain" by Pamela Brown, and is seriously awesome. ("The Swish Of The Curtain" is a book I absolutely adored as a kid, and the fic is bang on in terms of style & story. Thank you, mysterious author!). I cannot as yet link to the couple of things I wrote for Yuletide this year, because authors are secret till New Year's Day. (But have already had a comment from the recipient of my actual assignment, and she likes it. Hurrah.)

In other gift news,

uon has given me ALL OF THE CHOCOLATE NOM NOM NOM (& also climbing shoes, which were acquired a couple of weeks ago, & are the *business*); Marna has given me a lovely silver-and-glass bracelet; and Pete has given me a book about mushrooms, possibly prompted by the several hours I spent a while back trying to identify some mushrooms that appeared outside our front door. Also a new saddle to replace the one that some *total scumbag* nicked from my bike outside St Martin's last weekend (it is on its way. The only saddle in the world that I appear to get on with comes from TV's America & therefore takes a while to ship).

Next order of business: POTATOES um sorry I mean XMAS DINNER GENERALLY (but especially the potatoes).

* Him Out Of Scooter.

The head of the IPCC has walked out of the Bella Centre to join the protestors. Bloody hell. (the Bella Centre is where the current main talks are happening).

Various NGOs including Friends of the Earth have been banned from the talks (FoE held a sit-in in the reception). Tear gas and police batons being used on the protestors outside.

More information as-it-happens here: http://www.scribblelive.com/Event/Reclaim_Power_Cop15

Meanwhile, back in the UK, tar sands protest yesterday outside the Canadian Embassy went very well. Photos here, and Canadian press coverage here.

There's a demo tomorrow (Thu) outside the Danish embassy about the treatment of protestors in Copenhagen. Address: 55 Sloane Street, London, SW1X 9SR; time: 16:00; dress code: black; mood: pissed off.

I have a mildly sore throat, a sniffle, and an itchy nose (in that way it itches when you're sore-throat-ish and sniffly). Any recommendations for heading the Unwell off at the pass? Other than vit C, zinc, & 'sitting on the sofa a bit', all of which are already well in hand. (Well; I have to go down to Bromley this afternoon but until then everything I need to do can be done from underneath a blanket.)

ION: Bohemian Rhapsody as interpreted by the Muppets, for anyone who hasn't yet encountered this. Seriously awesome.

IOON: going to The Wave in 10 days? Want something to do afterwards? Climate Camp London will be occupying a space somewhere in Central London for the rest of the weekend. More details to follow, but vegan cake will feature alongside the message to government that "business as usual" is not enough to stop climate change.

Plus if you've ever thought that you might like to be a legal observer, we are running not one but TWO training sessions in the next 10 days: one on Sun 29th Nov 3pm-5pm, one on Fri 4th Dec 7pm-9pm, both at LARC. Lovely hi-viz vests, notebooks, and lots of fascinating legal info provided.

I'm trying to tidy up my Firefox tabs a bit. I'm down to less than 20 now! Serious progress. Anyway: a couple of links

* a very brief video "exploring interaction without touching". Cute.

* Research about domestication and breeding animals for tameness (it's easier than you'd think). Features slightly alarming video of rats from two different lines (one selected on tameness, one on aggression).

Me guest blogging on the Geek Feminism blog.

(ION, this weekend I will mostly be learning to teach people to ride bikes. This is great, apart from the bit where it means doing *actual learning work* for 8 hrs a day for 4 days, which is tiring. Especially when you haven't done anything that looks like full-time work for a year.)

Warning: some of these may be triggery. They are all very, very worth reading though.

* The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck, and follow-up. Well, well worth reading.
* On Rape And Men.
* Another post about rape - "If we teach women that there are only certain ways they may acceptably behave, we should not be surprised when they behave in those ways." (Warning: may be triggery.)
* For the Uninformed: Privilege, Perspective and The Little Things That Jab
* Where Are All The Male Bloggers?. Slightly more lighthearted than the previous posts. Or at least satirical.

(thanks to

narah for some of the above links)

Site with information about banks involved in non-ethical projects, and what you can do about it. Is entirely in Flash (grumble) but in fact it *is* usable Flash (I can't assess it for accessibility b/c I don't know enough about how accessibility & Flash content works, other than 'not a lot unless you try hard', but there is at least some keyboard accessibility, and direct links work, so it's not as irritating as it might be). Anyway! useful info, especially if you bank with RBS, HSBC, or Barclays (think most of the other banks listed are non-UK).

Two nice chaps from Pack&Send showed up this morning (on time, even!) and took my boxes away (2 x clothes/books/random crap, 1 x Cepheus-the-bike[0]). I am now left with (I hope...) belongings sufficient to fit into 1 x big rucksack & 1 x small rucksack. And the sheets, which I intend to post home from Melbourne, because 2 nights in a sleeping bag would feel just that bit too much like camping out, and would make me sad.

Last surf was this lunchtime. Wah. Conditions a bit choppy, but I had the fun anyway. I should mention at this point that Let's Go Surfing are awesome & I strongly recommend them. The instructors were good, but as well as that, all the staff have been consistently helpful and friendly every time I've been in. They look after your stuff for you while you're hiring, they're happy to advise on conditions (even by phone, so you can check if it's worth going down there), & the couple of times I've spotted an instructor when I've been out on my own & in need of information[1], they've been happy to help. Yay for them.

The ship I will be going to Mexico on! This is the couple I met on the train through Malaysia, back in November. I am v much looking forward to the trip, although sadly I do have stuff I have to get done while I'm on board. (ah, the joys of freelancing...)

Leaving Sydney on Sunday...

Oh yes, some links:
* Tiny pigs!
* Lovelace & Babbage Vs The Economy! Pt 1, Pt 2.

[0] The packing process would have been *easier* if they made bike boxes a bit bloody bigger. e.g. big enough so that you only need to take *one* wheel off. grumble.
[1] e.g. "I've just been stung by a bluebottle[2]. If I ignore it, will my foot fall off?" Ans: no. Also "This board is seriously playing up." "That's because it's 9' and you want 8' or 8'6". Go swap it with that one that's on the beach there."
[2] On Tuesday I was at the Australian Museum & found out that bluebottles are not actually single jellyfish organisms, but collections of zooids! This was v exciting.

What looks like a very splendid Climate Camp action against e.on. Also video of one of the people involved being interviewed.

Top work :)

Whilst looking for the opening hours for the Fare Shares food co-op on the Walworth Road, I came across this:
The Map Room.

I very much have to go here.

In other news: GP gave me antibiotics, which after they finished making me feel ill, appear to have made me feel better. All praise modern medicine.

Current Music: Gold Mother - James

Current Music: Gold Mother - James

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juliet

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December 2024

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Wrapping babies

Round-up

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link collection

Climbing, socks, links, sealing-wax (not all contents may feature in post)

Deeply splendid video

Merry Xmas!

Happening in Copenhagen....

atishoo

a couple of random links

"And she's cute, too!"

Linkage: feminism & privilege

linkage: non-ethical banks

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Climate Camp, e.on, and lots of Santas