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james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-20 09:28 am
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Books Received, September 13 — September 19



Really, more of Book Received. One work new to me, science fantasy.

Books Received, September 13 — September 19

Poll #33640 Books Received, September 13 — September 19
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 14


Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

Yalum by Matthew Hughes (September 2025)
4 (28.6%)

Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)

Cats!
13 (92.9%)

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swan_tower ([personal profile] swan_tower) wrote2025-09-19 05:03 pm

New Worlds: Camp Followers

As part of its current tour of military topics, the New Worlds Patreon is taking a look at all those other people involved: not the soldiers, but the secondary army of people who support and/or profit off them. Comment over there!

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/FceDbY)
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james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-19 10:21 am
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Bad News From Alpha Centauri A…



There's a planet in the habitable zone... but not an Earthlike planet.

Bad News From Alpha Centauri A…
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james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-19 10:14 am

Sabrena Swept Away by Karuna Riazi



Sabrena's life is full of struggles already. The last thing she needs is an other-worldly adventure. Life is, alas, not considerate of a teen's preferences.

Sabrena Swept Away by Karuna Riazi
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
yhlee ([personal profile] yhlee) wrote2025-09-19 07:19 am
Entry tags:

latest spinning

Ah, the art yarn of it all. :3

handspun yarn

2-ply from these singles:

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james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-18 08:47 am
silveradept: Domo-kun, wearing glass and a blue suit with a white shirt and red tie, sitting at a table. (Domokun Anchor)
Silver Adept ([personal profile] silveradept) wrote2025-09-17 09:47 pm

Sex and Violence, Tech and Violence, and some genuinely neat stuff - Early September 02025

Let's begin here with celebrating fifty years of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and fifty years of what might be the most unique theatrical experience someone goes to when they go to see Rocky. (And the fact that while the thing on the screen stays the same when you go to see Rocky, everything else changes depending on where you are and what time it is.)

Organizations that fail to consider intersectionality in their diversity, equity, and inclusion will create things like employee resource groups that only capture a part of someone's experience and that elide the places where the intersectionality is unique and important. Which should make you unsurprised, but also horrified, that the Institute for Museum and Library Services budget is being given directly to propagandists for a project that will present a white man-centric view of history and demand that we all believe it as the sole and only truthful narrative of the United States.

James Dobson, creator of such abominations unto his God as Focus on the Family and the Family Policy Alliance, has gone to receive judgment at 89 years of age. Our world is far better off without him, and the damage that he has done to the world would take generations to heal if he were the only one doing his kind of damage. But like so many others, he has disciples and followers, and they will continue to perpetuate his damage into the world for generations to come.

A man who believed that violence was an answer, and who aggressively sowed the wind wherever he went, has reaped the whirlwind, killed by the violence he promoted, by a gun that he believed should have more rights than the people killed by it. He is no longer able to use his organization to promote and encourage harm to others.

The fallout from such, and plenty of other things, inside )

Last out, Bohemian Rhapsody translated and performed in Zulu and with the visual and singing styles of several other African traditions. It's worth a watch and a listen, absolutely.

The concept of Queer Time, where the signifiers of "adulthood" like marriage, children, and houses are not achieved on any kind of regular time, if at all, and therefore queer adults have to find their own ways of demonstrating to the community that they are full grown-ass adults.

And the iconic Atari CX-10 joystick as a decanter for drinking, along with a couple of Atari-logo glasses.

(Materials via [personal profile] adrian_turtle, [personal profile] azurelunatic, [personal profile] boxofdelights, [personal profile] cmcmck, [personal profile] conuly, [personal profile] cosmolinguist, [personal profile] elf, [personal profile] finch, [personal profile] firecat, [personal profile] jadelennox, [personal profile] jenett, [personal profile] jjhunter, [personal profile] kaberett, [personal profile] lilysea, [personal profile] oursin, [personal profile] rydra_wong, [personal profile] snowynight, [personal profile] sonia, [personal profile] the_future_modernes, [personal profile] thewayne, [personal profile] umadoshi, [personal profile] vass, the [community profile] meta_warehouse community, [community profile] little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)
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james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-17 09:00 am

The Graveyard Apartment by Mariko Koike



The Central Plaza Mansion tower offers palatial 900 square foot apartments for a mere ¥35,000,000. It is a deal too good for the Kano family to turn down... although they should have.


The Graveyard Apartment by Mariko Koike
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james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-16 11:19 am
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james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-16 10:07 am
Entry tags:
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james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-16 09:09 am
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yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
yhlee ([personal profile] yhlee) wrote2025-09-16 04:02 am

lolnope

behold, a spammer

A particularly hilarious example of low-effort spammer/scammer.

Seriously considering how much spam I could effortlessly screen out if I set up my email to automatically delete ANYTHING with the word "Amazon" in it that isn't on a very small (like, a half-dozen people small) whitelist of family and close friends.
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
yhlee ([personal profile] yhlee) wrote2025-09-15 06:47 pm
Entry tags:

sampled orchestral mockups + music production: part 2: demo of a simple piano sketch in Cubase (DAW)

(cross-posted: [community profile] communal_creators)

earlier:
- part 0: preliminaries
- part 1: brief demo: engraving software (Dorico)



Brief walkthrough of the start of a fake piano sketch in Cubase Pro that I'll build into a hybrid orchestral piece using MIDI and VSTs. I don't claim this is good music, just something for demonstration purposes and to talk through some of the technical details. This is musically unexciting but covering DAW basics will make the later hybrid orchestra bits easier to understand, hypothetically.

(Sorry, the audio recorded in mono; I will look at my audio interface settings again.)

For those curious about my usual style(s) of music, my music reel.
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james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-15 02:17 pm
Entry tags:

Bundle of Holding: Dread Laironomicon



100 lair entries in two succinct pages apiece, from Aboleth's Sunken Lair to Wyvern's Nest.

Bundle of Holding: Dread Laironomicon
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james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-15 10:17 am
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Clarke Award Finalists 2014

2014: Creationism is banned in British schools, the first same sex marriages in the UK are conducted, and Canadian Mark Carney helps the UK navigate challenging times. What ever happened to Carney, anyway?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 73


Which 2014 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
70 (95.9%)

God's War by Kameron Hurley
25 (34.2%)

Nexus by Ramez Naam
10 (13.7%)

The Adjacent by Christopher Priest
5 (6.8%)

The Disestablishment of Paradise by Phillip Mann
1 (1.4%)

The Machine by James Smythe
3 (4.1%)



Bold for have read, italic for intend to read, underline for never heard of it.

Which 2014 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
God's War by Kameron Hurley

Nexus by Ramez Naam
The Adjacent by Christopher Priest
The Disestablishment of Paradise by Phillip Mann
The Machine by James Smythe
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james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-14 06:38 pm

Transit

So, yesterday, the wheelchair ramp on the Rt 8 bus I was on developed a bug. Or the system that detects if it is deployed did. The ramp retracted correctly but the bus thought it had not, and would not move.

Ha ha! I pick my routes to maximize alternatives in case of break-downs. I just disembarked and talked over to the LRT. Which, I discovered, was having a minor service delay.

My contingency plans can handle two delays, but not three. Good for me there were just the two. It did mean I was only a little early for work.

On the way home, just after I disembarked from the LRT, an SUV cut the LRT off so the SUV could reach the parking lot ten seconds earlier. If the train had not stopped, I'd have had to stick around, both as a witness and because the accident would blocked the sidewalk between me and the stop I needed to get to.

Less than five minutes after the LRT near-miss, three SUVs tried to turn into the same lane at the same time. I don't think they hit each other but there was a short discussion between the drivers before they all left. I'd have had to stick around for that as well, because it would have blocked the route my bus uses.
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
yhlee ([personal profile] yhlee) wrote2025-09-14 04:13 pm
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james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-14 08:57 am

The Dosadi Experiment (ConSentiency, volume 2) by Frank Herbert



Bureau of Sabotage agent Jorj X. McKie is assigned a legal and ethical trap: a planet of victims, who, whether rescued or left to their impending doom, present a danger to the ConSentiency.

The Dosadi Experiment (ConSentiency, volume 2) by Frank Herbert
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
yhlee ([personal profile] yhlee) wrote2025-09-14 05:25 am
Entry tags:

sampled orchestral mockups + music production: part 1: brief demo of engraving software + playback

(cross-posted to [community profile] communal_creators)

Earlier:
- part 0: preliminaries (includes partial glossary of terms)



I know there are a lot of people who haaaaaate being forced to sit through video but since audio playback is inherent to the enterprise...This is under a minute, promise.

This is a brief demonstration of the opening of one of my compositions partially engraved (~sheet music typesetting) in Dorico. The two industry-standard engraving apps in media composition scoring are Dorico and Sibelius; Finale used to be a third but was sunsetted to much consternation.

If you come from classical music (especially classical orchestral music), you may be ??? about the score formatting. This is because scores for session orchestra and concert/classical orchestra have different formatting! (See part 0: preliminaries for more detail as to why). Differences for session orchestra you see here include:

- Score is in C (NOT a transposing score for the conductor - nota bene, transposing is "allowed" for octaves), but we won't have e.g. horn in F or trumpet in Bb. Read more... )

As for playback:

- Guess what, Dorico and Sibelius at the level of orchestral scores are spendy. :]

- I'm using NotePerformer, which is the standard higher-quality playback engine, especially if you don't have time to mock it up in the DAW (or you're an art/concert composer for whom a mockup is not part of your workflow). But that's also money (~$130 USD).

NotePerformer is pretty credible with a lot of orchestral instruments. You still have to massage its output. For example, in Sibelius [not shown] you can set playback to molto espressivo (LOTS OF FEELING) vs. senza espressivo (NO FEELINGS EVER!!!) (etc). My experience is that particular instruments can be less "real"-sounding and the "vocalists" (both SATB choir and associated "solo" voices) are absolutely terrible, as in "my vacuum cleaner sings more credibly than this" terrible.

Aside: There are some good vocal VST libraries for specific use cases. I hate that I am often able to straight-up identify "Oh yeah, XYZ floating ethereal ~Celtic Twilight vibes soprano 'ahhh' ululation in this trailer/score/whatever was $SPECIFIC_VST_LIBRARY" because, apparently, I have no life; but this is not unusual in this field.

I know at least one full-time composer/orchestrator/musician who straight-up bounces NotePerformer output and then processes that in the DAW (reverb etc) and, you know, this person makes a living doing this. So that's one route one can take.

Why, you ask, can't we just export this score-stuff into a DAW with all the fancy (...spendy) VST instruments and "paste in" nicer/more individualized instruments? Dorico (and Sibelius) do in fact export to MIDI and MusicXML. [1] This is a very reasonable question that will be the topic of the next walkthrough (part 2), mainly because it's a surprisingly (annoying) complicated topic as to why this is rarely straightforward. (Let me tell you all about negative track delay...)

[1] Missed these glossary items earlier! brief explanations of MIDI and MusicXML )

Happy to answer questions, although I have no idea if anyone else finds this interesting. :p
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
yhlee ([personal profile] yhlee) wrote2025-09-13 01:04 pm
Entry tags:

not good spinning demo: EEW 6.1



Dreaming Robots' Electric Eel Wheel 6.1 e-spinner with some sacrificial Rambouillet/Gotland wool blend. Sorry about the mess; too hot to go outside with this. I don't claim this is good spinning, just a brief demonstration of Getting The E-Spinner To Do A Thing.