Whumpex reveals!

Jun. 10th, 2025 11:19 pm
sholio: (Cute cactus)
[personal profile] sholio
[community profile] whumpex revealed tonight! (And H/C-ex is supposed to in a few days, if it's not delayed. All the hurtcomfort all the time.)

I got:

Staying Power (Babylon 5, Londo & Vir, 4200 wds)

I asked for (among other things) Londo reacting to something bad happening to Vir, or Vir taking a hit for him, and my Mysterious Gifter took me up on it most delightfully!

As usual, there is a fic or two of mine running around loose in the collection as well.

Daily Happiness

Jun. 10th, 2025 11:45 pm
torachan: an orange cat poking his head out from blankets (ollie)
[personal profile] torachan
1. A lot of times when Carla goes back to visit her folks, she doesn't get time to hang out with her cousins aside from specific family gatherings where they're just hanging out at the house, but this time she went into Chicago today with one cousin and they went to a museum and got lunch, and yesterday she went with both cousins to a record store.

2. Work was kind of stressful today (just when I think the drama and issues at this one store are finally dealt with, I have three more issues pop up today) but I had a nice evening at Disneyland to make up for it.

3. Chloe and Gemma and Ikea Shark are having a party and you're not invited.

2025 Disneyland Trip #39 (6/10/25)

Jun. 10th, 2025 11:17 pm
torachan: karkat from homestuck headdesking (karkat headdesk)
[personal profile] torachan
Took an after work trip to Disneyland for dinner. Traffic was not bad at all getting down there (and even better getting home) and as of this week both the lower level pass holders are blocked out, so the crowds are lighter. Nice weather, too!

Read more... )
andrewducker: (my brain)
[personal profile] andrewducker
Reading this article on advice to teachers in the UK about using AI, they suggest using it for things like "marking quizzes" and "generating routine letters".

And what really annoys me about this is that it's a perfect example of where simple automation could be used without the need for AI.

The precise example in the article is "Generate a letter to parents about a head lice outbreak." - which is a fairly common thing to happen in schools. So why on earth isn't there one standard letter per school, if not one standard letter for the whole country, that can be reused by absolutely everyone whenever this standard event happens? Why does this require AI to generate a new one every time, rather than just being a standard email that gets sent?

Same with marking quizzes. If children get multiple-choice quizzes regularly across all schools, and marking them uses precious teacher time, why is there not a standard piece of software, paid for once (or written once internally) which enables all children to do quizzes in a standard way, and get them marked automatically?

If we're investing a bunch of money into automating the various processes that teachers spend far too much time on, start with simple automation, which is cheap, easy, and reliable.

Also, wouldn't it be sensible to do some research into how accurately AI marks homework *before* you tell teachers to use it to do that? Here's some research from February which shows that its agreement with examiners was only 0.61 (where 1.00 would be perfect agreement). So I'm sceptical about the quality of the marking it's going to be doing...

Not just hayfever

Jun. 10th, 2025 07:55 pm
hunningham: Beautiful colourful pears (Default)
[personal profile] hunningham
I have a cold. It's horrible. I am headachy & full of snot & my ears hurt. But there's some relief in saying "yes, a cold" and having a reason for why I was feeling so very very tired yesterday & why slept so badly. It's not just hayfever. Today I have spent rather a lot of time on the sofa & eaten many oranges & not fussed about work.

I hope himself doesn't catch it; he always gets feverish and sick for at least a week and ends up with a cough dragging on & on.

Doctor Who: The War Doctor

Jun. 10th, 2025 03:56 pm
selenak: (Hurt!Doctor by milly-gal)
[personal profile] selenak
About a month ago, I bought the Big Finish episodes around the War Doctor in which the late John Hurt reprises his role. They're basically three episode storyarcs - "Only the Monstrous", "Infernal Devices", "Agents of Chaos" and "Casualties of War" - all set during the Time War. Now, because of the setting, the usual Doctor-Companion combinations are out, though the Doctor meets a likeable idealistic person in each of these three episode adventures (and can save some though not all). But the great charm of any Doctor Who tale are those relationships. So what did Big Finish do? It had the inspired idea of pairing up John Hurt with Jacqueline Pearce, playing, no, not Servalan, but a ruthless female politiician nonetheless, a member of the Gallifreyan War Council named Cardinal Ollista. She and the Doctor are the sole characters in all the four story arcs I've listened to, and the way their relationship develops was probably my favourite aspect in these stories.

Because this is the Time War, and this regeneration of the Doctor specifically is on a self loathing maximum while fighting it, Ollista is initially a good foil because she, who really does only prioritize Gallifrey and initially sees everyone not a Time Lord as expendable, shows that despite what he's telling himself, he is still the Doctor, he still has ethics and lines he won't cross and will fight for and have another way. But Ollista isn't simply an Evil McEvil megalomaniac, either, hence me saying "Gallifrey" and not "her personal power", and so the Doctor in the course of those stories develops a grudging respect for her while she while denying she does so finds herself defending, in the last story arc, precisely the kind of (non-Gallifreyan) people she in the first story arc would have dismissed as necessary casualties of war. Whether they argue or work together, all the Doctor-Ollista scenes are golden, and with both John Hurt and Jacqueline Pearce now gone, I am really glad they had the chance to work together near the end of their lives and create two more remarkable characters for us to appreciate.

A quick note for me and others

Jun. 9th, 2025 11:32 pm
sholio: Text: "Age shall not weary her, nor custom stale her infinite squee" (Infinite Squee)
[personal profile] sholio
[community profile] justmarriedexchange nominations close tomorrow (the 10th).

I will almost certainly be signing up for this one, I'm just saying. And you do need three distinct fandoms for this exchange.

*my existing assignments side-eye me*

Daily Happiness

Jun. 9th, 2025 10:54 pm
torachan: jason momoa/ronon smiling (ronon)
[personal profile] torachan
1. A few months ago I started having problems with itunes where every time I tried to add a song to a playlist it froze. I tried a few solutions I found online and nothing worked, so I just stopped listening to music at my desk and basically only listened to it in the car through Apple Music. Finally the other day I just gave up and uninstalled itunes and reinstalled it again, and at first I was really regretting my decision because even after logging in, it wasn't showing any of the music I'd downloaded over the past few years from Apple Music, only my library on my HD, but then I logged out and logged in again and everything showed up, and adding songs to playlists seems to work again, so maybe now I'll actually get back to listening to music at home.

2. There is DLC for Sea of Stars, a whole new quest that I've seen a few reviews say is about eight hours or so of gameplay. I started it the other day and am enjoying it so far. Sea of Stars is definitely one of my favorite games from the past year or so, so I'm excited to be able to play more of it. (In between Mario Kart World, of course.)

3. Our Little Tokyo store is right next to city hall, so things have been kind of rough down there the past couple days with the protests. Both yesterday and today the store had to close early so employees could get home safe. This morning there was a ton of graffiti (all varities of "fuck ICE") along the windows of one side of the building, but thankfully no actual damage to the store and the property manager was able to get it cleaned up easily.

4. Chloe also says "fuck ICE"!

Hornet Flight - Ken Follett

Jun. 8th, 2025 08:07 pm
sholio: several WWI biplanes flying (Biggles-biplanes)
[personal profile] sholio
I like Ken Follett's books, and I like airplanes, and I like historical books, but this one was just kind of lackluster for me, unfortunately. It kept me reading, and parts of it were very engaging, but I ended up feeling kind of "That was it?" at the end. I mean, to be fair, this book is set early in WW2 and there's a lot of war still to go, but it feels like we didn't quite get the full plot or the amount of airplane that was promised by the title. The airplane-promising title manages to be a big spoiler while not actually delivering on its promise. (Although, to be fair, I guess it did get me to read the book.)

Spoilers in general )

Daily Happiness

Jun. 8th, 2025 08:41 pm
torachan: karkat from homestuck headdesking (karkat headdesk)
[personal profile] torachan
1. I had another quiet day at home, though I did go out for two nice walks, including a longer one in which I stopped for ice cream to cool off. (It wasn't that hot today but it was late afternoon and quite sunny and muggy.)

2. Molly is a super cutie.

alias_sqbr: Fakir from Pricness Tutu holding his injured hand, in a blue rose Utena frame (fakir)
[personal profile] alias_sqbr
Masterlist

I feel kinda bad about how badly I'm butchering LeGuin's flowing prose for these posts. But I learn by summarising and sometimes even a clunky summary is easier on the brain. And maybe I'll inspire some of youse to go read the original!
Read more... )

Nintendo Switch for sale

Jun. 8th, 2025 03:16 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
Anyone in the US interested in a used Switch? No original box, but I've got the dock, AC adapter, HDMI cable, two sets of joycons (black and red/blue), the holder thingy that turns the joycons into a regular controller, one set of wrist straps for the joycons, and a charging station. It also has a memory card already installed.

I'm looking for $100 including shipping.

Oregon Trip, Days 2 through 6

Jun. 8th, 2025 02:15 pm
yourlibrarian: Small Green Waterfall (NAT-Waterfall-niki_vakita)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian
1) We only spent one day in Portland, and M had to nurse her feet after all the walking required the day before. So K and I went to see the International Rose Test Garden which was supposed to have hundreds of rose varieties which were expected to be in bloom by mid-May. While some clearly were, the beds were hit and miss with many varieties not yet available. What roses were in bloom however were attractive to see and some of the blooms were huge. The garden itself though was smaller than expected.

Nonetheless despite the overcast day and the difficulty with parking, the visit to the park was worthwhile as it's overall a great feature of the city. We drove up to the top of the hill for the trees and the view, though none were in a spot where we could park and take pictures. Read more... )

Anyhow, discussing the cards made us discuss the Star Wars series as K had recently watched Ahsoka but found it confusing. I told her this seemed inevitable to me because so much of the meaning in the series comes from it being a stealth 5th season of Rebels. So we started watching. M really liked Hera and Chopper. K liked making the connections to what came later in Ahsoka. My partner and I had rewatched S4 before seeing Ahsoka so it would be fresh. But I hadn't seen the first 3 seasons for some 4 years or so.

I found it really picked up speed quickly, and I my favorite thing was the mentor and apprentice relationship between Ezra and Kanan. The first time around I'd seen it mostly from Ezra's viewpoint since we're in it for much of the series. But this time I was seeing it from Kanan's and really liked how well done this was. And while most of it was in the writing I also liked the animation and the small gestures and expressions. It was quite rich and certainly had a long arc.

We got all the way through S2 during the trip and it made me want to see S3 through as well. I remember how tense I found it watching the season finale the first time around because it seemed quite possible anything could happen.

3) The time since my return has been something of a headache. My partner's sister had a roof leak which damaged a mattress in the room where he stays on his visits. The roof has been patched but reroofing will take place soon. In the meantime he is planning to leave for Ohio around the 25th. After discussion we decided to have him take his current bed to Ohio as a replacement. (She has already removed the damaged mattress but the box spring is ok). That means a new bed on our end. Read more... )

4) In less important news, my 3 water weights arrived, 2 while I was away and the last after. The laggard proved not to be worth the wait. While my partner tested out the first two while I was away this third one has a poor design that had it leaking within an hour. I contacted Amazon to return it and they refunded me and told me not to bother sending it back. I re-ordered a second copy of the smaller weight instead.

5) We've signed back up to Apple+ and so are going to pick up new seasons of things and try out some new shows. So far we've started up the latest seasons of Slow Horses, Mythic Quest, and Pachinko and are trying out Buccaneers and Your Friends and Neighbors.

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