Not around much today, I’m afraid – I’ve got some meetings that’ll keep me offline, and also, I’m playing catchup after spending Sunday getting our mail server put back together – okay, mostly rebuilt from new parts – after the windstorm on Saturday not only took it down, but broke things. Big shout-out to Andrew “Traest” Grey who knew what fuckery was keeping us off the net after coming back up on the new hardware, and even more for helping us fix it.

I did take some time off Saturday night and go to Betsy Tinney’s CD release concert, though. I supported her kickstarter for her first solo album, and if you like instrumental material, particularly adventurous cello music, go give that a listen.

Solarbird: I ordered a metal aluminium NO Solicitors sign for the bottom of the driveway. $27.
Solarbird: Because we just got another one and do not want
Solarbird: And it has a stake and I imagine that if it’s at the bottom of the driveway and they see that sign and look up the climb to our front door they’ll go, “…yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah… okay.”
Taliesin: They’re climing all the way up there just to bug a known supervillan?
Solarbird: I just had to disintegate another one!
Anna nodnods re: sign. Good.
Anna: (And yeah, disintegrating solicitors, while fun, DOES distract from disintegrating MORE annoying targets!)
Solarbird: Plus it drains the capacitor and then I have to recharge it.
Taliesin grins.
Solarbird: and it’s a BIG capacitor.
Anna nods wisely.
Taliesin: So that’s what that annoying whine I’m hearing is?
Solarbird: Are you kidding? Hell no. Silent. You think I want that kind of noise pollution near my studio? I’m this close >< to using the magfield generator to move airplanes out of my sky. I’m not adding to the problem!
Anna Hee
Solarbird . o O ( and since they’re all aluminium and composites these days, that means I have to move it by moving the _people_… )
Anna stage whispers to Tal, “I’ve had to remind her to NOT use the heat ray on the neighbors.”
Solarbird LIES
Anna: (Most of whom are ooooooooooooold, it’d be like shooting fish in a barrel)
Solarbird: okay that much is true but it was not _me_ who wanted to liquify the people in the 80s house down the street after _somebody_ locked themselves out and _they_ wouldn’t let her use their phone.
Anna: Now see THAT would have been justifiable disintegration!
Anna: It is not justifiable to disintegrate your neighbors over hedge wankery XD
Solarbird: No, that is the BEST time. I would be a neighbourhood … hero.
Solarbird: Okay you have a point.
Anna: If however you choose to use the ray on the HEDGE…
Anna | *ZORCH* THERE! PROBLEM SOLVED!
Solarbird: Nah, that’s just taking a side at that point. I’d have to take out the hedge AND the trees AND the rockery. And I like trees, mostly.
Solarbird: _Mostly_.
Solarbird: Some of those guys along the north property line? Total fuckers.
Solarbird: But in general, they’re a good lot.
Anna: That’s TRUE.

Last week, I asked what you want out of 2014. You collectively responded with a lot of different and varied answers. They all seemed pretty reasonable, honestly. Health for elderly relatives. Time. A better sugar-cookie recipe. Fewer bad things going down.

I’m not so reasonable. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want for 2014, and I think a lot of it comes down to wanting to be done with all the bullshit.

That’s both nonspecific and unattainable – there is always bullshit – but I would like there to be less of it. But less intentional stupidity. Less believing in lies for the sake of tribalism. Less of politics as some sort of goddamn sportsball event. I’m sick of that.

But I don’t want to externalise all of this. I want less bullshit on a personal level – not in the sense of lying, but in the sense of moving on past things. I’ve had a rough history, in a lot of ways – Batman ain’t got nothin’ on me – and I’ve had to deal with a bunch of that over the last few years. I’m tired of it. I want less of that and less of the mental expenditures and less of the blocking that kind of thing creates.

See, kayjayuu on Livejournal? Kayjayuu asked for forward motion.

Yeah.

See, the thing about all the bullshit is that it impedes, and I’m regularly feeling stalled out and delayed and I’m tired of that. Lots of North America seems to feel that way to me, too – but I can’t be sure that’s not just my perspective, my filters, my projection.

But even if it is, it’s the view I’ve got.

Forward motion through less bullshit in 2014.

That is a goal.

Thinking towards the future – I don’t make resolutions, but I’m trying to figure out what I want out of 2014. In my 2013 summary post, I talked about thinking my tools are in pretty good shape; let’s work less on tools and more on using them. And that’s fair. But I don’t think that’s complete, and it’s still bouncing around in my head.

What do you you want out of 2014? I’m seeing a lot of people on different blogs being very, very tired of the status quo. If that’s you – what’re you wanting out of the new year?

While you’re thinking on it, please enjoy these two new 2014 Shatterdome drinks I experimented up, working off of tereshkova2001‘s basic research:

Siberian Honey:
2x vodka, 2x barenjager, 1x grapefruit juice (dirty). cold, shaken. pour strained; very sweet. Too sweet for me but the favourite of the shatterdome floor crew.

Kuril Islands Chrysanthemum:
Prepare tippy assam (black) tea, allow to cool, do not adulterate. Then:
2x vodka, 1x barenjager, 2x fresh-squeed grapefruit juice (dirty), shake hard, pour unstrained, add 1x tea, stir in. Unexpectedly delicate; flowery without excess sweetness; tastes of chrysanthemum, hence, the name. I really liked this tonight; hopefully it’ll hold up once repeated.

Enjoy!

All of my Top 10 posts but one in 2013 are political – or, at least what I would call political. John Scalzi has seven of his top ten posts on similar topics, but doesn’t think of any of them as political. I find that kind of surprising and a little confusing.

See, in my head, I’m not sure how these various issues aren’t political. They aren’t necessarily partisan, true – it’s not to do with politics in the electoral sense – but all of it is still the politics of society.

What do you think? Are these “political” to you, or something else, and if so – what would you call them?

1. Three out of Four – a mixture of PAX report and political complaint.
2. Power and Supervillainy – about harassment at conventions.
3. Gatekeeping and Recourse – something specifically only men can do about sexism in geekdom.
4. All That SWFA Fail, a summary and linkpost to other posts about SFWA’s sexism and racism fails this past year.
5. Somewhat Past Time – to just say Theodore Beale is a white supremacist.
6. Unexpected Side-Effects – the triple-rainbow picture from last year, still in the top 10.
7. Orson Scott Card Can Blow It Out His Ass – no, his begrudging admission that marriage equality is on the way does not make me want to see his movie.
8. Exclusion – why representation matters, and why a crowd that’s 1/3rd women is not “gender-balanced” – but Hollywood thinks it is.
9. Pushback and Misandry – I get into a fight with Penny Arcade’s Dave Kuchera. Watch as multiple guys call me a misandrist for citing data!
10. If You Want an Organised Boycott – why I’m not boycotting PAX – yet – and what you’ll have to do if you want one to work.
     
    Once you get past those – 11 through 20:
     
11. Kind of Done with Agents of SHIELD – finally! A post that’s kinda sorta something else!
12. Going On – the end-game politics of the Baby Boomers.
13. Two Followup Items – sexism in fandom and gaming again.
     
    You guys really prefer these kinds of posts to anything else, don’t you? But now we get into a different focus – DIYers, ahoy!
     
14. Okay, Moffat, You Can Live – A Doctor Who 50th Reaction Post.
15. The Studio Buildout Series, Part 7: Jeff Bohnhoff on Room Conditioning. The first DIY post in the top 20.
16. DIY Video: Making Cheap Acoustic Sound Baffles. Another DIY post!
17. The Studio Buildout Series – the amalgamation post containing links to every post in the set.
18. The Studio Buildout Series: Part One – The Room. Room conditioning again, this time, by me.
19. nwcMUSIC 2013: Sneak Preview. nwcMUSIC being the music festival I run at Norwescon.
20. I Needed an On The Air Sign – the first remote-controlled on-the-air sign I made, another post from last year.

Moving further down the list, I find I’m still getting a bunch of hits from last year’s posts. And not just the triple-rainbow picture; mostly studio buildout series, as it turns out.

So, mostly what I think of as politics, and DIY. But like I said – I’d call these political, but other people clearly do not. What would you call them?

Seen on Twitter: if 2013 was a battle for you, then take heart: it’s dead, and you’re still alive. Show 2014 the corpse of 2013, as a warning.

That’s right: it’s time for the year-in-review post!

New stage costume in progress, for GeekGirlCon

My 2013 was pretty good, most of the year. Actually, until October, it was really good. Honestly, it didn’t feel like I did all that much, but I’m looking at it, and thinking I must’ve been busier than I remember!

I did my first zouk solo on stage (and came away with a funny story), appeared on someone else’s album for the first time (as well as recording more than half of it), put out several episodes of a Geekmusic Podcast, appeared on The Cosmic Ray Show, played in Victoria, rebuilt this website, and toured briefly – eight shows – with Leannan Sidhe.

I fell really hard for Pacific Rim, and wrote a song about it for Jaegercon, recorded with help from fans tereshkova2001 and Kathryn Tewson, had fun at Clallam Bay Comicon and Virtual ComiCon and VCON and Harrison Hot Springs, got involved with fannish and gamer misogyny, including a fight with Penny Arcade’s Ben Kuchera on Twitter about something other than PAX, and performed a supervillain elfmetal operetta with Hello, the Future! and tereshkova2001 and Angela Highland and Amber Clark at GeekGirlCon, complete with a new stage costume (thanks to Leannan Sidhe for her help)…

…which is when things got annoying. Emergency eye surgery, rounds one and two. And Anna had to have major medical adventures of her own, which kept us both – aheh – homestuck for a couple of months.

Pan-Pacific Defence Corps

Also, we had Cat Pee Festival 2013, about which the less said, the better, but if you think that wasn’t a distraction, I have a bundle of WRONG for you.

None of that stopped me from doing my first voice acting during recovery, but damn, that was nasty. We had to miss Orycon and everything.

But then, at the end of the year? I got invited into the Mega-Music Download, which just made me go EEEEEEEEEEEEE because here I am surrounded by all these people who are better at this than me. so exciting I can’t believe I got included eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee 😀

Better than Me

And that doesn’t even talk about nwcMUSIC and the like, so… yeah. I’m not lying when I say I feel like I didn’t get much done this year. But then you stack it up in a list like that and I feel better about it.

Even if that damned soundtrack album got stalled out for a while. More recording is scheduled, at last, in January. There will be an album, goddammit. There will be.

As usual, there were a bunch of DIY highlights. I built a remote-control for Ardour, a remote-control ON AIR sign, made some retr0brite and de-yellowed some equipment; I identified the Lord Ruler of All Hard Drives while rebuilding and upgrading my digital audio workstation, modded the hell out of an old input switch to make a speaker-selector and warning device, made my DAW into a standing workstation, did some graphic design to make a nice, legal-size comp sheet to help in studio work (downloadable!), and found super-cheap but very effective ways to do speaker isolation and microphone cases.

Oh, plus, put together a buildout post for the Austin Microphones ribbon mic kit, and an even better buildout post for the pre-amp kit. I’ll be using this on that album.

Blinkinlights blinking!

So, yeah. It’s been a year. By most reasonable standards, it’s been a pretty big year. From a purely commercial standpoint, my two biggest download months are both this year, the second-largest being right now. (Downloads still pay-what-you-like, but not for much longer!)

But for all the everything, I don’t…

I don’t feel like I’ve been playing much, and not writing much, either. I did write some songs – not just Kaiju Meat – and even performed them out. But… yeah. Not so many.

I think that’s what’s missing; it’s been a year as much about engineering and talking than creating and playing. I think 2014 needs to be a kind of followup.

My tools are in pretty good shape, now – let’s get back to using them.

eta: Anna has posted an even longer, more detailed year-in-recap post of her own!

So over on Tumblr, I got a new follower, maksimoqqoman. And despite the crappy username, I thought I’d check it out. It brings up a possibly-relevant promoter’s page, which is all well and good, despite for the autoplaying music video, but whatever.

Then pops up a modal dialogue box saying “Check out some great artists below,” with a single “close” X in the upper right and no other controls, and the rest of the page is locked out. Fine, annoying, but you get a lot of that brick-wall experience these days. It makes me very unlikely to look at your site again, but whatevs.

Sigh, another brick wall frontpage

THEN it gets good, because the “close” X? It’s not actually a close. IT’S A HIDDEN FACEBOOK LIKE FOR AN UNRELATED POLITICAL GROUP. Which I discover as soon as I try to close it.

fuuuuuuuuuck youuuuuuuuuu

Am I, like, the last to know about this? Because there are not enough efs and uuuuuus for this situation. There just aren’t.

So let me make sure I have this right: this weekend we have the series 2 finale of The Legend of Korra, and An Adventure in Space and Time, and the 50th Anniversary special episode “Day of the Doctor,” and Anna and I should finally get to see Thor: The Dark World, and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is out.

Am I missing anything? Because this is more TV and film in one weekend than I usually get in, oh, two months.

WHY YES APT-GET WHEN I TYPED NO I DID ACTUALLY MEAN YES AND WANT YOU TO BLOW AWAY OUR WEBSITE CONFIGURATION. THANK YOU!

Configuration file `/etc/apache2/apache2.conf'
 ==> Modified (by you or by a script) since installation.
 ==> Package distributor has shipped an updated version.
   What would you like to do about it ?  Your options are:
    Y or I  : install the package maintainer's version
    N or O  : keep your currently-installed version
      D     : show the differences between the versions
      Z     : start a shell to examine the situation
 The default action is to keep your current version.
*** apache2.conf (Y/I/N/O/D/Z) [default=N] ? n
Installing new version of config file /etc/init.d/apache2 ...
Remove obsolete configuration file /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
Removing obsolete conffile /etc/apache2/mods-available/version.load ...

This should only affect people trying to hit murkworks.net (as opposed to www.murkworks.net or crimeandtheforcesofevil.com or any of our hosted domains), but it’s still insane. And if you see any problems, this is probably why. We’ll have to pull the old files out of backup and Anna (webmaster) is out for a couple of hours.

GOSH I’M GLAD I DIDN’T GET TO OUR PRIMARY WEBSERVER. >_<

Another week, another appointment. I was getting really worried, because a few days ago (same number of days past surgery as the first time when things went wrong), I started seeing some dot floaters in my right eye. Then on the way downtown, the sun was out, and I saw a lot of them, and kind of panicked.

BUT: despite all the dots, the retina is still well-attached. I made Dr. Saperstein do a second, higher-magnification check and it passed that too – though he was a little nonplussed about a second check. But it helped when I saw the device he needed to use on my eye and instead of squicking said, “oh, this. I don’t mind this,” and he settled down and did the extended check.

So at this point, things should be okay. I have another appointment in two weeks; I will be able to wear contact lenses again (if not with full vision) by this coming week. This is a big deal, because seriously, glasses? Even with two normal eyes? No depth perception. As in, none. As in, I have more with one eye in a contact lens.

This is because there’s more to depth perception than parallax, which is what two eyes gives you, and apparently the parallax data I get from two eyes through glasses is so very very out to lunch that my visual processing centre says NOPE and goes on vacation.

Plus, my glasses are heavy, and hurt my nose.

So I’m really looking forward to contacts again. And seeing things. You know. Stuff like that.

I still have a few more days of restricted activities, but only a few. It’ll take longer than that to get full vision back, but it’ll follow eventually. Can’t come soon enough, either. Still: most of the way home. Just keep thinking that. Most of the way home.