Archive | August 29, 2011

Google-fu (of a sort)

Aug29

This (via [personal profile] haikujaguar) is pretty awesome:

“That any two things in the universe are connected can be demonstrated inductively by the magic of Google. It is not necessary that to be computationally tractable a process must be informationally encapsulated. Take any two words. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy uses “banana” and “mandolin” in an article on the Frame Problem. If you google it, you obtain 2,690,000 hits.”

(“Avatar mouse” is interesting.)

1000 years ago or so, there was a thing … I think “googlism”… where the trick was to find a phrase that had no google results…

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/121721.html. You can comment here or there.

Monday, with a new habit

Aug29

I like other people’s daily posts; why not try one myself?

Yesterday, we made Oops Soup for dinner:
“Oops!” When buying peppers at an Asian market, don’t assume the banana peppers are sweet (two mouthfuls of yogurt and a gulp of milk to stop the burning)
“Oops!” Also, remember WHICH Asian market has the rice you want (the stuff we got is strange, good, but not what we wanted)
“Oops!” (from last week): plan a lunch BEFORE the 2-hour hike – we had chicken carcass for broth.

It turned into something like Thai chili soup with leek, carrots, onions, and a chicken broth. Tasty, and HOT.

Still not king. Err, still no date on the house-closing.

Funky links of the day: hide-away house and Zoom Room, a new take on hideabed.

And back to vocab:
ad·um·brate [a-duhm-breyt, ad-uhm-breyt] Show IPA
verb (used with object), -brat·ed, -brat·ing.
1. to produce a faint image or resemblance of; to outline or sketch.
2. to foreshadow; prefigure.
3. to darken or conceal partially; overshadow.
Origin:
1575–85; < Latin adumbrātus shaded (past participle of adumbrāre ), equivalent to ad- ad- + umbr ( a ) shade, shadow + -ātus -ate1
Related forms
ad·um·bra·tion, noun
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/adumbrate

For this, I present Shahin from Addergoole at about twelve:

“It’s not precognition,” a young Shahin insisted quietly. “All it does is give me vague ideas and bad dreams, adumbrate the future. That’s it.”

“Adumbrate?” Her aunt lifted an eyebrow, and the petite girl flushed.

“It’s the proper word, Shadowy, faint, concealing. Right?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/121489.html. You can comment here or there.

30 Days Second Sem, Waiting Uncomfortably, Tir Na Cali Harem

Aug29

For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “21) Roll a d20 twice. Combine the themes of the two previous stories for those numbers.” I got #14 & #17; this follows after #14, Preparing the Stage.

Tir Na Cali, in the Harem sub-setting – landing page here (and on LJ)

Content warning: bondage and mild violence

Stephan squirmed uncomfortably against his bindings, wondering what he’d done this time. He and Lady Ursula had, he thought, been getting along relatively well this week. He’d been trying – his pride squirmed, too, at how much he’d been trying, but she was the boss – to live up to her occasionally-cryptic and frequently-foreign expectations, had been sure to only mouth off in private, and had a long notebook of orders she’d given him, which he did his best to obey (although their sometimes-conflicting nature made that tricky).

But he still found himself strapped to a St. Andrew’s Cross (not what they called it here, but what he knew it as, and damned if he needed another word for “thing he got tied to when they wanted to whip him”), his toes barely touching the ground, more weight than was comfortable hanging from his shoulders, facing the plain white wall while, behind him, the sadist who took care of the leather gear tested her whips, cracking them in the air.

“I…” he tried, even though he knew it was stupid. Bettie casually flicked the end of the flogger against his inner thigh: a warning that left his skin stinging. He fell silent. What had he done wrong? If he was going to be punished, it would be nice to know why. “Please,” he said hurriedly, before she could hit him again, “do you know why I’m here today?”

Bettie patted his shoulder. “Sometimes,” she said gently, “they’re just having a bad day.”

The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written. (LJ)
12) prompt: sweet iced tea (LJ)
13) re-write a story that everyone knows (LJ)
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter (LJ)
15) prompt: ascension (LJ)
16) write a scene that takes place at the end of a long road trip. (LJ)
17) write an uncomfortable story (LJ)
18) prompt: a step too far (LJ
19) write a story in which something goes BOOM. )LJ)
20) Write the end of the story ‘The Purple Bag. (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/121268.html. You can comment here or there.