cloudsinvenice: "everyone's mental health is a bit shit right now, so be gentle" (Default)
Hey, Dreamwidth community mods: turns out DW supports a community guidelines entry: you can specify an URL where your comm rules are, and ensure that the URL is shown to people on joining! I know that on [community profile] vc_media we've been concerned for a while that going to the profile to find out what's what isn't at all intuitive to people who've never been on LiveJournal/Dreamwidth before. I'm creating a sticky post at the moment, but being able to display it to new members is particularly useful.

You can find the option in your comm's Account Settings page, in the Community tab.
cloudsinvenice: Screencap from an old vampire-hunting video game. It says, "The morning sun has vanquished the horrible night." (Castlevania II: Simon's Quest)
Quiet week post-wise because country slipping (hurtling joyfully, truth be told) into fascism. Always awkward when that happens. Shitposting on my new Tumblr created for the purpose of alternately venting and cheering myself up will continue until morale improves. And we made major headway with the application this week, which has kept us sane.

Meanwhile, I started the annual push to keep The October Country running smoothly for the duration of autumn and particularly October, and as usual Now Winter Comes Slowly is quietly ramping up as well. I'm always fascinated by trying to get under the skin of what works and what doesn't on there - sometimes you can feel like you have your finger on its pulse, other times, it's a mystery why something does or does not appeal.

It's getting me into the Hallowe'en mood, anyway, as is the fact that in the last couple of days I've actually been able to smell that it's autumn, which is no small thing when you're nearly always congested...
cloudsinvenice: Medieval art: illuminated manuscript with a knight in gold leaf (semyaza illuminated)
First off, there's another Friending Friendzy post here in case you're looking. Secondly, here's a post from back in July: Why Imzy doesn't have ads, and what we're doing instead which has some stuff I hadn't heard before. I'm not altogether convinced all these ideas will work, but it's interesting anyhow.

Finished recently:

Dance of the Tiger: A Novel of the Ice Age, by Björn Kurtén. The author is an expert on Ice Age fauna, so it's interesting to read speculation rooted in deep knowledge, and his afterword, along with Stephen Jay Gould's introduction, really add to it. Since the book is a few decades old, I'd imagine that much then-current information has been superseded by new discoveries (we often seem to hear that we've underestimated the Neandertals, for instance), but the characters, situations and world are compelling enough for this not to matter. But the best pleasure of this book is a piece of narrative boldness: a third of the way through, we switch to hear the story from the antagonist's point of view, before returning to the protagonist for the last third. The only real problem for me is that the ending feels very rushed, which is a pity after everything else has been so cleverly set up and allowed room to breathe.

Currently reading:

Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders, by Gyles Brandreth. I thought that what I'd previously read was the first in the series: actually this is the first, and that was the second. It doesn't matter, though if you're looking for the series in America you need to know that some of the titles have been changed for that market. Here's a nice interview with the author, too, in which he theorises that Wilde may have been the model for Mycroft Holmes.

Good Kings Bad Kings, by Susan Nussbaum. So far this is very good, though harrowing at points. I'm very glad it was recommended to me.

Reading next:

Something digital in a waiting room, probably.
cloudsinvenice: Tony Stark removing his old arc reactor (Iron Man unplug)
The story of the women's history museum which mysteriously transformed (via the process, often contentious in British life, of getting planning permission) into a sensationalist-looking Jack the Ripper museum is making its way around the world. Here's a few interesting links:

- The Guardian: Jack the Ripper's victims deserve to be commemorated. But like this?
- [personal profile] jesuswasbatman: Fisking the Jack the Ripper Museum
- 38 Degrees petition to Tower Hamlets Council: Celebrate Suffragettes Not Serial Killers
- Protest at the museum opening on Tuesday 4th August! Women's history is not Jack the Ripper!

Other things:

- Jacqueline Wilson has written a new take on What Katy Did.
- Twitter, unable to grasp that endless growth might not be possible or desirable, considers being more like Facebook.
- [livejournal.com profile] arcadiaego informs me of the existence of a longstanding fan project at [community profile] read_lotr_aloud, where a small group of fans have spent most of the last decade building up a chapter-by-chapter audiobook. Sean Astin even reads the first section! Is anyone aware of other projects like this?
- [livejournal.com profile] ladysisyphus has an epic post on The Blair Witch Project and the movies that tried to emulate its impact without really understanding it. So delicious to see a good chunk of horror meta on LJ!
- In other news, shoestring film production company Mansfield Dark have come up with a beautiful 12-minute shadow puppet version of Count Magnus by M.R. James. You can see the trailer here and also find a link to buy the DVD, which comes with a lovely piece of art on the slipcase. Mine arrived this morning, to my considerable delight. The Mansfield Dark guys are both talented and ingenious, making everything from this gorgeousness to comedy to LGBT thrillers, so go check them out.
- A friend recommended browser extension FB Purity as a solution to the man ways in which Facebook is annoying. I haven't installed it yet, but perhaps some of you feel like trying it too.

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cloudsinvenice: "everyone's mental health is a bit shit right now, so be gentle" (Default)
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