timeo danaos et dona ferentes

Courtesy of Claire on Saturday night: Acer Aspire One isn't a computer, it's a meme.

Honestly, on Sunday Kay claimed one at home, and pinkdormouse and and I both produced our identical little blue shinys. Alyse, Hazel and Seph own them, Clara's is on order just arrived, and Mandragora is eyeing them covetously has fallen!.

This is by way of notes should I ever brick the damn thing.
( day one notes on opening the box: AA1 Linux )

Making the system recovery flash drive

Do this before fucking around with it in any serious way. Don't turn it into a brick and have no way to get it back. Actually, you can get it back, but I will laugh and heartlessly point you at the blog post and let you get on with it.

Handy how-to video on Making a usb backup key for your AA1
( details and notes )

Once the backup key is done and put somewhere safe, you can start installing things. To install stuff, you need to use Terminal. This is a command line interface.

Getting to the terminal:
I used the 10 Tweaks article from The Register to add the advanced desktop and right click link onto the AA1. Once you've done that, you can just right click on the desktop and then left click on Terminal.

Otherwise, do Alt-F2, and leave the text field empty, check the 'run in terminal' tick box, and click on 'Run'.

( To add the advanced desktop menu )

( General comments on using terminal )

( Upgrading to Firefox three )

( Installing a new music player (Amarok) )

( Installing VLC )

Would it be too wanky to post a list of animals that were native to the British Isles in the early medieval period? And trees. And birds. (The Normans brought the rabbits, dammit!)

Maybe I should just sit on my hands *g*

I headed out for work this morning (first commute in two weeks), and peered out the window, somewhat blearily it has to be admitted, and thought, oh, it must have snowed. It wasn't until I stepped out the door I realised that it was presently snowing. Which frankly is just mean.

So i trudged through the howling blizzard into the office ... up hill. both ways. in the snow.

I may have gloated lightly over the way I was wearing my hiking boots and others ... weren't. Weirdly, there were more badly prepared men than women. The women had mostly gone for trainers or Uggs. Men were in their thin soled office shoes. On the ice.

Slashbash over at mandragora1's yesterday and it was lovely seeing everyone :-) enough people in fact, that the three second rule was in full effect (leave your seat for three seconds, lose it ::g::) Mandragora gave Klo and I a battery operated flying Firefly thingy, and a giant popup Dalek model. We have to get the batteries to power up the flying macvhine, and then... fear us...

The Evening Standard claimed it was going to be -10 in London tonight. I may have muttered as I walked past, ah, hell *is* freezing over. But you know, Evening Standard (or, no standards at all), so I confidently expect an unseasonal break in the weather and temperatures up to 15'C.

Okay, today was just funny, and ridiculous and *brilliant* and if the rest of the year could have UNEXPECTED DAVID TENNANT that will go down very nicely.

( and so... )

Regarding tomorrow:

Ravurian's plan sounds pretty good to me. All Bar One, Dean St. 3.30/4ish onwards. Nearest Tubes are Leicester Square, Tottenham Court Rd. AB1 do snacks as well as drinks. It's 20 minutes to the Novello from there, so plan accordingly.

The nearest tubes to the Novello are Temple and Covent Garden. The Novello's pretty much midway between Covent Garden and the Strand. There are nearer pubs -- lost_house suggested Marquess Of Anglesey‎ on Bow Street, probably about five/ten minutes from Covent Garden Tube. Remember that Covent Garden is EXIT ONLY on weekends.

If you need my phone number, comment here.

So, I wrote some fic. A large amount of this was due entirely to the efforts of Claire and Al, who between them dragged nearly twenty stories out of me.

I'll start with the most recent first :-)

Nunc Dimittis was my story for the sga_santa gift exchange. lavvyan asked for a Medieval AU, and as luck would have it, I had a notion about an AU where Rodney was a monk in a quiet little monastery who was brilliant enough to know how very trammelled he was. Adding in John was almost too easy: if there's one thing John Sheppard knows, it's honour and last, brave hopes. I fell a little in love with my monk and his knight. ( notes and spoilers )

Per Ardua ad Astra was my story for Yuletide, written for hhertzof, who asked specifically for something on Professor Richardson from the Chalet School books. He's a minor character who barely even speaks in the one book he is present; Ruey Richardson's improbable rocket scientist father, who goes to the Himalayas to launch his own rocket and is never mentioned again.( notes and spoilers )

As for the rest of the stories written this year, most were for MMOM, and pretty much all of them include sex either explicitly or alluded to, mostly m/m, but some het.

Nine fandoms, 20 stories, 22083 words.

( Listed by fandom )

I'm glad to see the back of 2008, to be honest. As Claire said earlier today, it's been a great year for some of the people I know, and a dreadful year for others. It hasn't been a great year for me, or my family, but there have been good things too.

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger. And even death is not without reminders that there are good things -- I met cousins I have never seen before, and we all started mending bridges damaged by those in the older generations.

2009 is going to be different. Good or bad, it's going to be different.

Glorious things!

My little acer aspire one!

Sir Terry Pratchett.

Finding out who wrote all those wonderful stories (behind the LJ cut, for M, are the stories I mentioned last night :-) )

2009. Incoming :-)

Happy New Year!

( Yuletide stories that came up in conversation... )

urgleplex

Somehow, between now and Sunday I need to get my days and nights turned the right way around again. In the meantime, Mandragora and I went to see Quantum of Solace, and I really enjoyed it. The girl survived, which was a bit of a shocker, but other than that it was really remarkably Bond-like. which surprised me, since I'd got the impression that it wasn't. ::shakes head::

Now I need to go find my brother a 21st birthday present. Being as it's his 21st birthday. Today.

Maybe I'll be noble and drift by Comet. See what they have in stock.

Apart from this, obviously.

So I watched the entirety of Dexter on Sunday. I like watching Dexter in one go -- the stories are so tightly woven that you can watch them individually, but I get such a bad case of 'want to know what happens!' that I'd rather save them up and gulp it all in one go. I was like that on Heroes too, only I could only bear to wait four or five episodes before caving. And I don't watch finales until I've got the second (and third, if necessary) parts too.

Wow. ( Spoilers. For Dexter through end of season three )All I have to say about Merlin, is that it seems to be picking up people from SGA and Harry Potter. And that's kind of terrifying too ;-)

Also, I have this line in my head. Uther snapping his fingers, and telling Merlin, "Come here, serving boy." in this kind of evil yet hot kind of way. Er.

Lalalala.

*surfaces*

So, yes, happy Christmas!

Mine was spent mostly over at the parentals, where the wireless broke, and since it's adsl, couldn't be fixed without an adsl router, so, not internets. Saturday then, I spent inhaling Yuletide. I've been tagging stuff I particularly liked on Delicious, for what it's worth :-)

Sunday was spent on a billion Yuletide stories and the whole of Dexter season three. OMG. OMG. Dexter! My clock said 5.39 when I closed my eyes this morning. Why yes, I did start around eight last night. Fear my planning-fu.

Lots of thankyous. Thank you for the cds, dvds, books, Edward Monckton, bits, bobs, pieces, fic :-) I had a major Christmas FAIL and sent no Christmas cards, but thank you so much for the ones sent to me. I might try to send new year's cards instead...

I was also given two brilliant stories -- one for SGA Santa, a really intriguing AU with the Trust, John and Rodney, and a mysterious device that brings them together in a very unexpected way ::g::. I was so involved in sorting out other things I clean forget that I *received* a story as well as writing one O.O, and was like the last person at the party to say thank you to the hostess. Note how I continue that theme. And one for Yuletide, a character study of Howl pre-the book, which I loved. Thank you, oh nameless authors :-)

I also wrote two stories -- one for each of sga_santa, and Yuletide. I can only offer kudos and interested requests as to How You Knew, but do feel free to guess :-) Both stories did something I've never tried before, and one of the stories was new and different in, um, three separate ways. If I discussed the story with you -- or inflicted chunks of it on you in IM, you're not eligible to join in ::eyes youse::

I can't tell you how much I appreciated Al and Aithine this time, they both ignored my panic attacks and fits of the dismals and were unrelentingly cheerleadery and in Al's case, even unflinchingly betaread a story for a fandom that to the best of my knowledge she knew nothing about (she may have known it. I didn't ask. I just sent the file and broke out the pathetic chibi eyes ::g::). And then she told me how it could actually be made to *work* when I thought it was going to die in its tracks and I had 18 hours to save the earth write a whole new story. Alyse of the Flying Monkeys, Saint and Martyr ::g::

ETA: Livejournal appears to have fallen over. Earlier this evening, Virgin broadband fell over -- I finally get internets back, and LJ dies. Not. My. Night. I shall go to bed and hope for better behaved internets by and by.

...my copy of VLC is wearing a Santa hat. Heh.

I kind of like the middle panel of today's Dilbert ::g:: If I could wield that, oh, what joy, what joy :-)

I am now off work until 5th January. I'm loath to say I will not be around, because I may do nothing but be around. But I'm looking forward to many *many* days in pyjamas. The sinusitis is on the wane, thanks to my lovely GP, and NORAD says Santa's halfway done :-)

Joy to the world :-)

This amuses me a lot more than it probably should: “In recent times, an intriguing urban legend has arisen in Wales: ‘Every time Wales win the rugby grand slam, a Pope dies, except for 1978 when Wales were really good, and two Popes died.’

It's originally from a BMJ article about false correlation of statistics .. but does have a suggested 45% probability that since Wales won the grand slam this year, Pope Benedict might ...er ... want a medical team on alert?

*scratches head*

I was doing fine on the tax self assessment thing, right up to the bit where they said they had to send me an activation code. Through the post.

Also. I did not know that the reason I had been double knotting my hiking boots was because single knotted there's a trailing end long enough to catch in the door when I shut and lock it.
ow
*goes to make mince pies*

Happy Christmas Mr. Ninja
Originally uploaded by itinerant librarian

The Tree of Awesome, in all its glory...

( and more... )( Now with added Death Star )

Well, that sucked. MOT and service. *wince* Bloke tells me next year will be MUCH cheaper -- it better. But the cam and timing belt needed to be checked and having been checked needed replacing, and wow, labour costs a lot :-( And they had to rewire the headlights, and charged me for the bulb that I turned out not to need because it was the *wiring*. Granted, that was only a quid, but really *g*. And I knew the cam was going to have to be done in the next 10,000 miles or so, and i'd so much rather this than losing the whole engine block >.<

And he knocked nearly fifty quid off the total because he liked my Daniel Jackson keyring. So, not all bad ::g::

( first (public post) of the month meme )

alyse has started a drabble tree over on primeval_canon, whee!

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade apparently got Rickrolled. I use a capital R for a reason ...

Huffington Post has video

:-)

I didn't realise how far advanced the LOLcatz bible project had got. I'm rather impressed with their rendition of ( Psalm 121 ) and i really rather like 150 :-) ( Psalm 150, lolcat style )

But I actually I thought I might die of lulz at the Ceiling Cat creed (scroll to the end of the page) when I ran it against the original and realised that the communion of saints had been rendered as itteh bitteh kitteh committeh...

100 things meme gacked from seiyaharris



( Stuff wot I've done )

HAPPY

BIRTHDAY

SEPH!