Tuesday, October 21st, 2025 06:29 am
Good: I got a decent night's sleep last night, over seven hours.
Bad: It ended before 0315.

Those of you who can do arithmetic have realized that I turned out the light around 2000 last night. That's not ideal, but it's still better than the night before. Is it now taking me two nights, at least, to recover from a late Saturday night? Or do I need more time every day with the happy lamp, currently glowing away right under my laptop?

It's not that cold yet, thank Goddess. It's not unusually rainy for this time of year. I can't explain the strong urge to hibernate that's hit me this month. Whiskey tango foxtrot, over? If this is just How It's Going To Be every fall from now on, I'm not ready for that.

Time for yoga. With the happy lamp aimed at me.
Tags:
Sunday, October 19th, 2025 08:43 am
But first: I think my happy lamp has passed the test that I set for it. It's become a breakfast time fixture here at the Devil Girl house.

On to the booty-shaking! Roy Davis Jr., one of the (many) artists listed in Daft Punk's song "Teachers", played the Monkey Loft last night. I checked him out ahead of time and he sounded promising, so off I went.

Worthy of note: the local support that I saw was two women, namely Shannon Johnson and Emily Song. Go us! Maybe someday women DJs won't be remarkable, but that day hasn't arrived.

And what of the man himself? I wish he'd taken the stage at midnight and not 0100, but he did deliver the groove in big mirror shades. Not for him the gospel feel of Derrick Carter; I wasn't the only one singing along to the remix of "Enjoy the Silence" that he slipped in. But otherwise yes, it was among the best of Chicago-style house.

Also worthy of note: the ordinarily chill area downstairs had a second DJ, since they weren't using the mighty Funktion One in the adjacent room. (Why not?) Good grief, I hadn't heard "Din Daa Daa" in decades and had to stick around for that.
Saturday, October 18th, 2025 04:27 pm

This is a followup guide to this one that I wrote a while back: HOWTO: Set up a radial menu on a Steam Deck game. Tuxborn players expressed some interest in the details of my decisions on how to set my radials, so I’m going to write those out for this post here.

The primary audience for this post is Tuxborn players on Steam Decks. But a lot of this can apply to any Skyrim players on Steam Decks, especially if you’re running a load order similar to Tuxborn’s, and if that load order happens to include the BFCO-related mods we have.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read more on Anna Plays Skyrim.

Tags:
Saturday, October 18th, 2025 11:24 am
But first: leatherdyke munch last night. Small turnout, but not a bad time at all. The organizers never appeared, mysteriously enough.

So, do you remember that I recently bought a synthesizer? Well, I have indeed been messing with it. Fairly often, when I turn it on and switch to one of the "scenes", i.e. instrument-definition-to-MIDI-channel mappings, some of those instrument definitions ("tones") are labeled "not available" and are indeed not playable. If I power cycle the synth, though, it resolves the problem.

I've learned, however, that if I power cycle or even disconnect the synth while my digital audio workstation, Apple LogicPro, is running, the DAW will send a very loud sound out the external speakers. This sound is loud enough and at the perfect frequency to make one of my speakers vibrate its way off the kitchen counter and crash to the floor, thereby disconnecting itself and, as I just discovered, marking and denting a wall.

The good news is that the speaker still works fine. The bad news is that I now have to spackle and paint the wall.

Moral: make sure the synth is okey dokey artichokey before firing up the DAW.

How's the actual music making going? Slowly. I suck at piano and as you read above, I have a lot to figure out. I'm making progress, though.
Friday, October 17th, 2025 09:00 pm
thixotropic
adjective: (of fluids and gels) having a viscosity that decreases when a stress is applied, as when stirred.

thixotropy
noun: property of becoming fluid when agitated and gelling when left to stand.
Tags:
Friday, October 17th, 2025 05:40 pm

Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 2.0.5 – 17 October 2025 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 2.0.5.

This release is very small, containing two major upgrades, and some additional notes on the Central Kirkland Connector’s south-end closure.

Here’s the complete changes list:

  • ADDED: Two-way bike lane opened on E. Marginal Way S on 9 October 2025 from Edgar Martinez/Atlantic down to Horton St., at which point you cross over at a new bike crossing to the existing ped/bike mixed-use trail which connects to Spokane Street Trail. This creates a no-car-interaction connection. These bike lanes will be extended from Horton directly to Spokane Street in early 2026. (MEGAMAP)
  • ADDED/UPGRADED: Bike lanes on northern 100th Ave NE in Juanita upgraded and extended to cover NE 139th St. through NE 145th St. (Both maps)
  • UPDATED WARNING: The south leg of the Central Kirkland Connector is BRIEFLY reopening this weekend (October 18 and 19) for a marathon event before CLOSING again until late October for continuing emergency sewer repair work. Once it does re-open, it will be closing again intermittently for additional work. On the maps proper, this is mostly be an alert box change. (MEGAMAP)
A screen-resolution preview of MEGAMAP 2.0.5.

All permalinks continue to work.

If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because honestly it doesn’t.

Enjoy biking!

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Tags:
Friday, October 17th, 2025 04:27 pm
Over Thai food with the latex gang last night, someone brought up eternal internet questions: what, if anything, is the difference between a taco and a sandwich? What's the difference between a cupcake and a muffin?

I said that somebody needs to make muffcakes, or maybe cuppins. The cis women didn't find that funny.

I told them about gingersnatch cookies, the ones with an agenda* that traumatize gay boys. It's probably for the best that I don't know how to bake and I'm not inclined to learn. Otherwise I'd bake a lot of gingersnatch cookies.

Bonus: years after buying a couple of my latex dresses, I can fill them out in the bust.



*They were all different "skin" tones, shapes, and degrees of icing, no two alike. The baker definitely made a point with them. And of course, they were delicious.
Tags:
Wednesday, October 15th, 2025 10:01 am
Against my better judgment I went to the Blue Moon last night. Good beer, the cute bartender with the queer hair, and a mix of good house music and train wrecks. So far so normal, you say, but I ended up chatting with a lady with grey hair. It turns out that she and I have similar... tastes, and I don't just mean house music.

Didn't turn out my nightstand light until 2315. I only regret that slightly. I've already asked if she's going to the Monkey Loft on Saturday.

Gaydar is when you can tell who's queer. What is it called when you instinctively find the kinky folk in a vanilla space? Flaydar?
Tags:
Wednesday, October 15th, 2025 02:20 am


Video title: Pura Fé & Danny Godinez Improv
Posted by: purafe
Date posted: 2008-09-17
Tags:
Tuesday, October 14th, 2025 11:39 am
You may recall my griping about fall and reduction in daylight hours per day. Well, as I mooted in that entry, I did indeed get a small happy lamp. So far so good, as evidenced by:
  1. I seem to be capable of doing things in the early evening besides sleep.
  2. I can do the yoga tree pose right after lamp exposure, which is my usual time, without having difficulty with my balance. That's right: I have trouble with that pose in the fall and winter because my brain is using my eyeballs (overmuch?) to tell it which way is up.
Caveats: It's been really sunny the last couple of days, and I spent Sunday recovering from Saturday night. The real test will be later this week when the rain returns.
Tags:
Monday, October 13th, 2025 08:31 am
... as copied along from [personal profile] nanila  : (her posting under the same subject :

1. pink and grey rucksack by the late lamented Mountain Equipment Co-op, purchased in Stary Vancouver 38 years ago as a grad school indulgence. I replaced its buckles with standard Fastex ones..

2. clean knickers and knee-stockings, because one ought. A double set.

3. Allen scales; again a double set (one set SI units, one set American units). These scales are riveted at one end, so that they can fan out to serve as map-scales.

4. photocopies of two weeks past and future, from my Filofax diary-book. The book itself stays at home.

5. waterproof notebook, ruled in squares.

6. ferry-tickets, a duplicate set.

7. binoculars with stadiametric scale, handy for whale-watching from the ferry; Elcan, 10x50.

8. bottle (small) of cherry juice

9. mechanical, self-sharpening draughting pencil
, made in Germany by Staedtler, with 2H lead..

and you?




Thursday, October 9th, 2025 10:19 am

Second post in my new playthrough of Enderal, using the Emissaries of Tux modpack. Main action in this post: a side quest in Riverville, in which I venture into Clearwater Cave to hunt for Tarhutie’s lost elixir.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read more on Anna Plays Skyrim.

Sunday, October 12th, 2025 05:41 pm

Here’s the final thoughts wrapup post on Elessir’s run, which will let me move him into the archive of old playthroughs!

Read the rest of this entry »

Read more on Anna Plays Skyrim.

Sunday, October 12th, 2025 03:02 pm

I had six remaining posts pertaining to Elessir in my Drafts folder, and a few more directories’ worth of screenshots for which I never took notes. So I’m going to do an overall survey of them here, so I can knock all of that out of the queue.

This post will contain spoilers for the tail end of follower Lucien’s personal quest, and also some spoilers for Beyond Skyrim: Bruma.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read more on Anna Plays Skyrim.

Sunday, October 12th, 2025 12:21 pm
Taller Woman had surgery for cancer. Again. Last week. I'd promised to visit her in the hospital. She told me when it was happening, but I didn't put it in my calendar, so I missed the window. I was in New York when she told me, and thoroughly distracted, but I still feel terrible about it.

And last night, I thought I was going to Seacompression, but neau. I found out at almost the last minute that it's next month. At least this had a happy ending: I found out before I got on transit, so I went to the Merc and said hi to the gang.
Tags:
Saturday, October 11th, 2025 06:13 am
https://necessary-disorder.tumblr.com/post/738333539525853184


That Tumblr has all kinds of neat images, but I like this one best.
Friday, October 10th, 2025 08:33 am
Mayunn, several times in the last couple of weeks I haven't wanted to do squat after sunset. Not circumflatulation, not reading, not house cleaning. I go to bed early and sleep the sleep of the just: eight hours last night, no less than ten one night last week, and no less than seven per night since Sunday.

How do I explain this? The rain is starting to return — no need to water my outdoor plants for a few months, yay — but most of all, Seattle will be Down The Hole in under a month because it's up above 47°N.

Is it time to get a happy lamp? I dunno. Mornings aren't a problem for me. I just want my evenings back. Drink more tea? Maybe.
Tags:
Thursday, October 9th, 2025 09:01 am

I’ve been calling for people to post pictures, video, whatever, of their towns when Herr Fuckface describes them as war zones, as hellholes, as whatever he pukes up this time. Particularly Chicago, and now, extra particularly Portland. But any blue city or state he lies about.

Post the truth.

On Wednesday night, Jimmy Kimmel requested people do that too, using the hashtag #ShowMeYourHellhole. They’ll look for and highlight some of those videos and contact you if they want to use it, so only use it on video you specifically want seen by as many people as possible.

Post your reality; use the hashtag to help other people see it, if you’re okay with the one in a million shot that they ask you to let them use it on Kimmel.

In reality, of course, they’ll mostly be checking YouTube and maybe other corporate social media, not cooperative spaces like the Federation. But he’s famous enough that if he calls for a hashtag, a lot of people will use it, and in this case, that’s no bad thing.

So – Portland. Chicago. Los Angeles. Memphis. DC. You in particular, but not just you…

…mods are asleep. Post your reality.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.