Before & After & Inbetween

I've changed my primary email address, my synced online calendar and task list, my preferred search engines, and the OS on my computers. Not because the U/NSA and their pet-Brits along with New Zealand, Australia, and Canada(?) -- I've lost track who all's interested in my on- and offline life besides my own government -- but because through this ongoing scandal, I learned about a lot of alternative services and I'm a curious person.

( longish, hopefully informative rant with reasons )

In case anybody wondered about the appalling lack of progress updates on the editing of Family Matters (and other things here):

I got the chance to apply for research funds with a deadline of today. I was told in the first week of April.
Normally you have three months to come up with a project script, get the cooperation partners on board, write a sparkling "that will be the coolest research of world with amazing results almost guaranteed!" proposal, and get the required signatures across the board for it.
I got three weeks.
I succeeded in meeting the deadline.

And now I'm crawling back out of scientific writing mode in overdrive to blink into the world of story and fandom, trying to find my bearings. I'm going to spend this weekend mostly reading "Conspiracy", the fourth book of Lindsay Buroker's amazing steampunk series The Emperor's Edge (which was published while I was just starting on the proposal (and had me seriously whine for 30 minutes I didn't have, because there was no chance of reading it THERE AND THEN)). Afterwards, it's back to TBX and Family Matters and Subaru's adventures in Imonoyama-san's bathroom...
...stay tuned!

My doctorate thesis is eating my life kind of fierce. As in about the only time I notice anything past the TeX-files and its pdf-compilation is when I have to run around doing the chores that can't be postponed until after it's done (like shopping for foodstuff - no, I'm not nerdy enough to survive on pizza deliveries (though I am tempted to try, thank you)). Story writing is postponed until (a) afterwards or (b) my muse throws a fit and comes after me with something long and deadly. Whatever happens first.

Anyway, yesterday's first shopping race brought me face to face with something I managed to overlook ignore up until now (despite allergies): ( Spring & its pretty trees )

And h_san made this beautiful fanart for the Dekagram gallery:

My schedule this Winter is extremely tight and even in relaxed years, I'm struggling to get the cards out in time. Therefore, I'm sad to announce that I won't send cards this Winter. If you are one of the (admittedly few) people receiving annual cards from me, please rest assured that it has nothing to do with you (but everything with a crazy schedule in which I'm trying to squeeze at least the 1st Christmas Day turkey). I plan to send extra-evil cards next year!

In the meantime: enjoy the Evil Incs' card-version of the top ten reasons why Santa is a super-villain and a reread of Santazukamori. :-)

Post copied with okay from solo:

Europe against genetically modified crops
If you live in Europe, this may be relevant to your concerns:
"The European Commission has just approved growing genetically modified crops for the first time in 12 years, putting the GM lobby's profits over public concerns -- 60% of Europeans feel we need more information before growing foods that could threaten our health and environment.
A new initiative allows 1 million EU citizens a unique chance to make official requests of the European Commission. Let's build a million voices for a ban on GM foods until the research is done."
There's a formal petition by the European Citizens' Initiative against it; if one million EU citizens sign, an official request can be made to the EU to ban GM foods pending further research. If you are an EU citizen, you can sign here.

The 'It Gets Better' Project for LGBT teenagers
If you are lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans, you might think about participating in the It Gets Better Project, started by Dan Savage and meant to let LGBT high school students who are bullied know that things will improve after high school. He started the campaign after a gay teenager killed himself earlier this month; the idea is to give teenagers in the same sitation the hope and encouragement to stick it out. Anybody can upload a video to the It Gets Better YouTube channel. Think about it!

It's official. After using a highly customized version of Firefox since it was at... version 0.7 I think, I'm now moving house browser. I've about had it with interfering addons, slow surf-times and it's occasional "let's forget the settings for that page" even on a fresh profile whenever I can't give it 50% of my RAM to play with.
After several trials, I'm now officially in the Opera fraction & happy with the fast surfing, the sleek interface (all glass themes... :))) ) and most of the clunky addon stuff being properly integrated into the main program. Including ad-blocking, and site-specific no-scriptiveness. Overall, a thumps-up.
It will still be a learning curve, but one I consider worth the effort. :)

...and now back to writing Seishiro & Subaru getting wet.

(1) I deleted my Facebook account permanently. The effort it required regarding privacy & maintenance stood in no acceptable relation to its usability and/or the fun it provided. Back to the blogs & the purpose specific networks for me.

(2) I'm in love with the book "Dragon in Chains" by Daniel Fox, esp. its vivid, descriptive prose. It's one of the few books, which immediately drive me to writing (TBX) after finishing a chapter. The last book doing so was "The Last Concubine". And while "Dragon in Chains" plays in a fantasy version of ancient Taiwan and not in the historical past of Tokyo/Edo, it's still the same effect. If you like descriptive prose and dragons that are truly described as a non-human force of nature, go, grab it! I already got me the second book in the series and am growling about the third not being published yet.

Yay! Paid account status positive!
I'm finally able to add the "academia translation" icon and edit my comments!
You always spot the embarrassing type the moment *after* you clicked "Post"!

Thanks to solo I'm now the proud owner of akk @ Dreamwidth, which I'm going to use as a full-fledged mirror to akk @ IJ. :)

They are currently in closed beta and you need an invite code to open an account of your own, but their implementation of open-id (you can just use your livejournal account for it and they even allow your open-id account up to 6 icons!) makes "foreign commenting" really easy. I also like the option of anonymous commenting with a captcha, in case of spam. That's better than just blocking ano-coms.

I used their nifty import feature to salvage all the comments left to my stories on Livejournal.
However, importing those from IJ didn't work (yet). But that's a known bug and I hope I can copy the IJ comments later on, once that one's sorted out.

I'm certainly curious about how this specific electric sheep turns out!

A few days ago, I learned about Dreamwidth from solo, which seems to be a truly nifty service once it starts. They are working hard to make moving over from LJ (IJ, JF) as painless as possible, including porting comments! There's a lot of thought being put into the project to avoid most of the inconveniences (for example of friending & friendslock, etc.) on LJ and how to make it smoothly interact with an existing account elsewhere (like here on IJ). :)

If you want to know more: here's the DW-FAQ.

Special Tag: "Do Androids dream of electric sheep?"