The other news

[jadesfire]

Happy birthday, aeron_lanart!!! Hope it's a good one, hon.

~ Today is a bank holiday and I am at work. There is something wrong with this picture. On the other hand, after spending all Friday lying on the sofa and most of yesterday dozing, I'm actually ready to get some stuff done. And did I mention that my work is awesomely understanding about my health? I'm so lucky on that front, and it's a counting my blessings kind of day today.

~ I'm not going to be around as much as usual for the next few weeks, since we were broken into at the weekend and my netbook was stolen *cries* (as well as our wallets and J's laptop). I will be getting another, just not for a little while, which is going to curtail my online access. BTW, those of you with netbooks, what have you got and what do you recommend?

~ Less surfing might not be an entirely bad thing, since I have a stupid amount of stuff on my writing plate right now, and maybe less time online will mean more words on the page. Anything's possible, right?

~ I am busy every night this week. All with good stuff, but I'm starting to wonder if this is what it's like to have a social life. Weird.

~ Flautists on my flist, how do I play a 'C' without dropping the flute or losing the note? I'm teaching myself at the moment, and right now I can only manage one or the other...

~

	This week	Next week	This Month	Long Term
WORK	Serial POs Transcribe Audiotour Receiving Houtschild books Invoices Moys Mooting videos FMP orders Oracle password Non-FMP orders	Serial POs Finish Audiotour BIALL tickets and details	Google Books Agreement Any reading for BIALL conference
WRITING	Pirate!fic NCIS fic for azure_chaos Beta for donutsweeper	Finish tardis_bigbang	bau_bigbang "Five Things..." ficlets spn_summergen	SGA project with perspi Dragon!fic Universal Library sgabigbang
OTHER	Email C OSD Reply to CK Update library blog Return EFL book Return library books Linkspam Zoo RLD change Haircut Taste of Britain Address to A&L	Coffee with AW Email AG Update library blog Pictures to blackmare_9 Post to Rusty	Duke Humfrey's Paperwork for BIALL conference Writing links (?date?)	Course at ContEd? Website for my stories Flute

~ Yes, you did read right in that table. Because we are a bad influence on each other, greyias and I have signed up to co-write for this year's sgabigbang. That's THREE Big Bangs for me this year, plus the SPN Summer Gen challenge. Bring it on *wibble*

~ There's probably more, but I need to get coffee before my 3 hour enquiry desk shift. Hopefully the students are all in exams or Bank Holidays *crosses fingers*. There's so much to do!

~ I am rather vague today. This could prove problematic.

[I'm just going to keep adding 'ETA's to this as I remember things. By the time Californian folks see it, this post is going to be epic]

~ I made a lemon drizzle syrup cake last night, and it is exceedingly yummy. I meant to bring it to work for those of us slaving away while everyone else is at home, but it's still sitting on top of the bread-maker in the kitchen. It's one of the easiest and yummiest cakes ever, and I've put the recipe under the cut.

Cream together 175g caster sugar (I use Golden, but normal will do) and 125g butter. Add 2 eggs and the grated zest of 1 lemon. Mix until smooth. Carefully fold in 175g self-raising flour, a pinch of salt and 4 tbsp of milk. Scrape into a prepared 2lb loaf tin and bake at 180 for about 45 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

While it's baking, put 100g icing sugar and the juice of 1-2 lemons in a saucepan and heat until the sugar is dissolved and you have a syrup. As soon as you take the cake out of the oven, puncture it all over with a skewer and pour the syrup over. Leave to cool completely before eating.

[Weight to volume cooking conversions can be done here]

Comments

[aeron-lanart.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the birthday wishes, I'm going to have a great day!

Happy Towel Day and don't forget...

(http://s215.photobucket.com/albums/cc176/a_lanart/?action=view&current=4728_1188771401466_1293750066_31143.jpg)

[tiggothy.livejournal.com]

re. C on a flute - I balance it on the bottom knuckle of my first finger (the knuckle where it joins to your hand). I think this is the lazy way to do it though, as it;s the way I worked out when I was about 12 and 12-year-olds are only non-lazy when compared to 13-year-olds!

Also, this might not be a recommended way of balancing the instrument because I tend to get cramp in my hands after extended bouts of playing (or when there's lots of fiddly notes). Mind you, I do have stupid joints.

I suspect the more proper way to do it is to use the thumb & forefinger of your right hand to balance the flute against your jaw/lower lip. Maybe see if there's any footage of James Galway (or other flautists) online & see if you can pick up tips from watching him/them?

[crystalshard.livejournal.com]

*blinks* That's a loooong list of stuff to do.

On the more entertaining side:

Klingon anti-virus software. (http://www.sophos.com/HIghoS/)

[hab318princess.livejournal.com]

sorry to hear about the break in!

I've signed up to wrianojune - 50000 words in 30 days.... but next to your list that looks tame

[rustydog.livejournal.com]

Zoo!

[naye]

Wow. You are one busy person. I am in awe of your list! Good luck with that, and have fun with the new Big Bang. ♥

[thalia]

The flute question: The C is the left index finger and right pinky, right? (The fact that I had to think about that tells you how long it's been since I've played.) Your right thumb is what's holding up the flute; it's basically under the first two fingers of your right hand, if that makes sense. Between that thumb and your mouth, the flute should stay in position.

Just wait till you get into the really really high notes; some of those fingerings are insane.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

I thought I saw you mention THREE bigbangs earlier.... Not sure if I should giggle or glare at you for that.

Give a shout out if you need help on any of them! :)

[greyias.livejournal.com]

Because we are a bad influence on each other

Too true. The entire cast could end up as sea slugs for all we know. *g*



As for Netbooks, beware, TL;DR

After struggling and prevailing to install a new OS, I do recommend mine, mainly because it has a nearly full size keyboard, which is wonderful. And now that I have Windows XP on it rather than that really bad distro of Linux, it boots up and is ready to go in less than thirty seconds. However, the battery life on my particular model is atrocious (I get maybe an hour and a half unplugged. I probably need to tweak my power settings.) I think the battery life has improved with the newer models, but it gets very hot. (But that seems to be common with HP laptops, as I can attest to after owning three.) It looks like the Compaq variant (http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF02a/321957-321957-3832385.html) is popular on your side of the pond. I'm not sure if it's a different PC, or simply a rebranded one.

Even though I hate their marketing team right now, all of my research shows that the Dell Minis (http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/inspnnb_mini?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&ref=lthp&s=dhs) are fairly solid machines.

And I've never heard of this one before today, but Asus has just released some sort of Supah Eee Machine (http://uk.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=24&l2=164&l3=0&l4=0&model=2912&modelmenu=1), that's big on HDD space and expandability. If the price is right, I might suggest going with that one. It seems both portable and decently powerful.

[mad-jaks.livejournal.com]

As you seem to be loading your plate may I humbly suggest that you let yourself take a small breather sometime around December and participate in consci_fan_mo? (Maximum word limit 2000 words.)

*comes to read your 'fandom' responses*