A brief history of August, in five parts.
Hello, all! My word, is it cold here. Now if you're not a New Zealander, you probably won't know what's been going on the last two days, but you probably will (being intelligent people) know that we're in the middle of winter here.
Today it snowed. Snow. Actual, falling from the sky and freaking everyone out, making roads slippery and my toes numb, snow.
The reason it's freaking people out is that it hasn't snowed in Wellington since the 1970s. At least not like this. So after the initial wonder of 'hey, look, it's snowing! Isn't that crazy?' the novelty wore off pretty quickly and now we're resigned to just a few days of intense cold and the inability for me to navigate the stairs outside my house. Caleb and I are both a bit concerned for ill-defined reasons - mostly to do with people freezing to death or this being a sign of the apocalypse, but only in a paranoid Final-Generation kind of way.
And that's the obligatory weather update.
The Master's thesis continues unabated. By 'continues unabated' I mean 'occasionally I read a book that tells me a little more about what I'm doing'. Everything I have on loan is overdue, and I'm finding myself very unenthused about the prospect of having to do work on the presentation I'm making at the end of the month. Two weeks. I can totally do this.
The other massive task ahead of me and a few other tremendous geeks at the moment is the university puzzle hunt that we're running in a little under a week's time. The puzzles themselves are slogging along reasonably well, and we should have them all written reasonably on time. What's concerning me currently is the total lack of sign-ups. It's actually a little embarrassing and frustrating to have put this much work into writing about thirty puzzles, ranging from lethargically easy to mind-numbingly difficult, and to have no-one be interested.
The worst part of it is that we're pretty sure we have interest - more than a dozen people have suggested they'd like to be involved. Of course, the difference between 'yeah, I'd like to sign up' and 'I will sign up' is always massive. I briefly considered putting a notice on a university forum, and I may still do that, but the troll problem is pretty bad on that forum, and I don't want to make my job harder by opening the signups page to people who'll abuse it, or make my job less appealing by opening myself up to abuse either.
Bloody trolls.
Speaking of 'bloody trolls', the Film Festival just finished in Wellington, and Caleb and I managed to spend a tremendous amount of time in cinemas. Overall, I caught ten films (which is ten times the number I saw last year), and will put together a post about my thoughts in the near future when I want to procrastinate on something else. That said, I have wonderful things to say about Pina, The Great Bear, and Troll Hunter, still-pretty-good things to say about Tabloid, La Dolce Vita, Weekend, Le Quattro Volte, The Innkeepers, and Norwegian Wood, and some not-particularly-good things to say about Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Of course, there's always one to complain about.
The question is how much people want to hear about the movies I watch. There's a lot I could write about some of these films, and the puzzle hunt debacle has me questioning how much of what i write is interesting to read. So, I pose the question to you all.
Finally, fanfiction. Well, the Muses have been leaving me alone for a while now, so I'm not sure there'll be much forthcoming in the next few days. I tend to wear myself out pretty quickly on that score. You never know.
I'm certainly interested in writing more Zephyr/Mouse for fanfic25 but I'll need to be inspired... I dunno. Prompts?
And with that, this overly long post as a desperate atonement for going so long without checking in comes to an end.
Today it snowed. Snow. Actual, falling from the sky and freaking everyone out, making roads slippery and my toes numb, snow.
The reason it's freaking people out is that it hasn't snowed in Wellington since the 1970s. At least not like this. So after the initial wonder of 'hey, look, it's snowing! Isn't that crazy?' the novelty wore off pretty quickly and now we're resigned to just a few days of intense cold and the inability for me to navigate the stairs outside my house. Caleb and I are both a bit concerned for ill-defined reasons - mostly to do with people freezing to death or this being a sign of the apocalypse, but only in a paranoid Final-Generation kind of way.
And that's the obligatory weather update.
The Master's thesis continues unabated. By 'continues unabated' I mean 'occasionally I read a book that tells me a little more about what I'm doing'. Everything I have on loan is overdue, and I'm finding myself very unenthused about the prospect of having to do work on the presentation I'm making at the end of the month. Two weeks. I can totally do this.
The other massive task ahead of me and a few other tremendous geeks at the moment is the university puzzle hunt that we're running in a little under a week's time. The puzzles themselves are slogging along reasonably well, and we should have them all written reasonably on time. What's concerning me currently is the total lack of sign-ups. It's actually a little embarrassing and frustrating to have put this much work into writing about thirty puzzles, ranging from lethargically easy to mind-numbingly difficult, and to have no-one be interested.
The worst part of it is that we're pretty sure we have interest - more than a dozen people have suggested they'd like to be involved. Of course, the difference between 'yeah, I'd like to sign up' and 'I will sign up' is always massive. I briefly considered putting a notice on a university forum, and I may still do that, but the troll problem is pretty bad on that forum, and I don't want to make my job harder by opening the signups page to people who'll abuse it, or make my job less appealing by opening myself up to abuse either.
Bloody trolls.
Speaking of 'bloody trolls', the Film Festival just finished in Wellington, and Caleb and I managed to spend a tremendous amount of time in cinemas. Overall, I caught ten films (which is ten times the number I saw last year), and will put together a post about my thoughts in the near future when I want to procrastinate on something else. That said, I have wonderful things to say about Pina, The Great Bear, and Troll Hunter, still-pretty-good things to say about Tabloid, La Dolce Vita, Weekend, Le Quattro Volte, The Innkeepers, and Norwegian Wood, and some not-particularly-good things to say about Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Of course, there's always one to complain about.
The question is how much people want to hear about the movies I watch. There's a lot I could write about some of these films, and the puzzle hunt debacle has me questioning how much of what i write is interesting to read. So, I pose the question to you all.
Finally, fanfiction. Well, the Muses have been leaving me alone for a while now, so I'm not sure there'll be much forthcoming in the next few days. I tend to wear myself out pretty quickly on that score. You never know.
I'm certainly interested in writing more Zephyr/Mouse for fanfic25 but I'll need to be inspired... I dunno. Prompts?
And with that, this overly long post as a desperate atonement for going so long without checking in comes to an end.