Reading

Ncuti Gatwa in 'The Importance of Being Earnest'

Go here to watch the performance

I've just watched it and it's great!

Excellent cast all round, great costumes (Gatwa looks amazing in his skin tight suit)

I mean, what could possible fail to delight in a show which starts with Gatwa playing a piano in a ballgown?

Multi-racial cast, loads of laughs, Algernon and Jack definitely have bromance going on, and Oscar Wilde's brilliant script.

I think Wilde would have loved this performance as much as I did.

You've got one more day to watch it before the free view comes to an end!

Entry tags:

Starfall Stories 53

Keep forgetting to crosspost my

rainbowfic pieces & I'm still quite a bit behind, so have two:

Name: Watchdogs
Story: Starfall
Colors: Azul #15 (Through thick and thin)
Supplies and Styles: Novelty Beads (11 Years of Dreamwidth Space Month & Book of the Day Challenges - "Never alone.")
Word Count: 1794
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Mild illness.
Notes: 1313, Portcallan. Leion Valerno, Tana Veldiner, Iyana Valerno. Takes place straight after after Turn to Dust and a few days before Sweet Interlude. (Just a slight linking piece, but I wanted to post something.)
Summary: Leion recovers from Chiulder's work - with a little help.

Name: Missteps
Story: Starfall
Colors: Warm Heart #22 (Sorry); Azul #20 (Zest)
Supplies and Styles: Giftwrap + Silhouette + Novelty Beads (Oct Spooky Challenge 2020 - http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0g7cdJCp91r6aoq4o1_500.gif & September Secrets 11 Years of Rainbow fic - "It's in the palm of your hand now baby/It's a yes or no, no maybe" - Dark Horse, Katy Perry") + Pastels (

allbingo square "Bouquet of Withered Flowers - Rejected Love").
Word Count: 2361
Rating: Teen
Warnings: None.
Notes: 1313, Portcallan. Leion Valerno/Viyony Eseray, Kettah Jadinor, Diyela Eseray, Aolla Gerro, Vin Lorras.
Summary: Leion and Viyony attend the first night of the Sea Festival. Nothing goes according to plan.

Performing some traffic maintenance today

Happy Saturday!

I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!

If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.

Entry tags:

for all mankind

For All Mankind season 1

I've just finished the first season of 'For All Mankind'. Enjoyed it, but I'm puzzled by the season finale.

How did Ed manage to get upto the Apollo module and down to the moon again? And then up again!

Surely there's no way salvaged fuel could power two lunar take-offs, let alone give the course correction for the Apollo module as well?

and the way lunar landers worked was for the base part to be left on the moon, in any case.

Entry tags:

diabetes

Diabetes and iron deficiency....

Went to see the diabetes nurse today to sort out medication.

I forget how it came up, but apparently iron deficiency can lead to blood sugar readings that look exactly the same as diabetes...

So, now booked in for an iron test, just in case it isn't diabetes at all.

Also, skinny people can sometimes get Type 2 diabetes, so I'm not even sure which kind of diabetes I have... But the treatment is the same either way in the early stages, so what the heck.

Entry tags:

Calling in from the shapenote 'verse

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Entry tags:

book review

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Absolutely bloody fabulous!

I have the audiobook and have listened to it many times.

I love the science, I love the characters, I love the problems that the characters have to face and the way these are tackled.

I'm not in the least surprised they're making a movie, and I'm going to see it as soon as it opens.

The plot is ingenious and unlike any other I've encountered. Earth's sun is losing energy - which means everyone on Earth will die as the world gets colder and colder. There is a limited time span in which to try and find out what is causing the problem and what, if anything can be done about it.

Everything goes in a single 'Hail Mary' project - the only thing that might, possibly might, find a solution.

If you haven't already read it, buy it. (Unless you read and hated 'The Martian', but I don't know anyone who did...)

Entry tags:

book review

This is How you Lose the Time War by Amal el-Mohtar

This book just didn't work for me. I only got part way through before abandoning it.

It's a clever idea, that characters involved on opposing side of a long-running time war start a correspondence, but I found I had little interest in the characters, and little idea of why the time war was being fought.

The descriptive text is very good, but that's not enough to hook me on a book.

Entry tags:

book review

Mythos /Heroes by Stephen Fry

Heroes is well written, as you'd expect from Stephen Fry, and has some gentle touches of humour.

The problem is that after a while the Greek myths all start to feel the same. You don't want to read them all in a short period of time. They're not exactly in depth stories.

This is a book that I think I will dip into now and then, but having got part way through, I've no urge to finish it all in a few sittings.

3/5

Entry tags:

why yes i do have cats

The problem with cats

I think I commented on Ms Calico's very strong predator instinct back in the day

Tabby Little is not so keen on stalking birds. Good.

She's caught two mice. Excellent

My garden contains flowers. Flowers attract pollinators. Tabby Little has brought in four monarch butterflies this summer. Very much not so good.

*sigh*

Entry tags:

book review

The Boat of Small Mysteries - Robyn Beecroft

It's so nice to read a book involving narrowboats by someone who actually knows what they are writing about!

I remember once reading a romance involving a narrowboat and spending more time mentally nitpicking than getting involved in the romance...

Beecroft knows how a weed hatch works and what you use it for, and likewise for the rest of the waterways equipment.

Does it also work as a novel? Yes, it's a gentle story, made up of different people whom Emily meets and re-meets along the inland waterways. I particularly enjoyed the group of student with their floating party, who keep needing Emily's help due to their general ineptness with narrowboats.

Emily has her own, health-related problems, but there are also other boaters happy to assist her when her pain flares up too badly.

People help her, and she solves problems for them.

There is also romance, but romance with a very Beecroft twist - which happens to work for me :)

Entry tags:

book review

Guards Guards, by Terry Pratchett

'Guards Guards' is Pratchett on top form (much though I love his books, some are much better than others...).

It's the first book about Sam Vimes and the Night Watch, and we get to know and love the characters who will make many appearances in later books.

It's got a plot that makes sense, and has some good twists in it.

It's funny, but it also has characters who feel like real people. Sam Vimes the drunk captain of the Watch has pretty much given up on everything, finds there are some things that even he won't give up on.

The various mystical brotherhoods that meet in Ankh Morepork are hilarious.

My favourite character is Lady Sybil Ramkin, breeder of swamp dragons. The kind of person whose family goes back so far that she is perfectly comfortable spending all her days dressed in old clothes and mucking out dragon pens, and feels no need to attend balls and the like.

This is the story where the Librarian (an orangutan, for those who don't already know) gets enlisted into the Guard, and we discover the mysteries of L-space...