My problem with life right now is this feeling of discontent that's looming over me. Looming. It's just there and it doesn't want to go away.


I wonder if it'll go away if I run around in circles, hmm.

My report on True Blood, episode one, in list form!

( spoilers, of course )

General conclusion: I, uh, I honestly don't see what the attraction is, but maybe it picks up? I'll give episode two a go, maybe in a few days.

I was cleaning up my bookmarks and moving them to Delicious (username: yatii, but that's glaringly obvious, I suppose) and decided some of them are worth mentioning, especially the fandom related ones. Hee.

( fic recs: Merlin, The Lymond Chronicles, Danny Phantom, Fire and Hemlock, Final Fantasy VIII )

( fanart: Danny Phantom, Gundam SEED Destiny )

( Xenosaga meta )

( miscellaneous links )


That's it!

This week's Weekly Geeks left me scratching my head. Our assignment this time is to list the books we haven't reviewed yet, and get other readers to ask questions. Not difficult, right? Just list the books and wait for questions!

Here's the thing -- I haven't reviewed anything the whole year. Possibly nothing since July last year. I think the last reviews I did were for a same task when Dewey posted about it way back then, and even then I didn't manage to answer all the questions. (Awful, aren't I.) But I still want to participate this time, so here's the list.

I've decided to be kind to myself and post only the titles of the books I read this year. Here goes:

( a lot of books! )

The list is copied directly from this page here, where I list all the books I've read this year.

If you have questions, fire away!

ff_exchange is back! I will sign up once I find the courage to do so!

I was also planning to post an entry about books but I haven't managed to get to it! Last month was a great month for books -- I read two books I absolutely loved: The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, which is the type of book that leaves your heart thumping and makes you feel dazed the next morning because you couldn't put the book down and sleep, and To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, which was a lot of things but mostly hilarious.


---

So. What I did over the weekend.

I finished this bag! Took me two weekends, actually, since I wasn't really concentrating on it -- it has been a mixture of reading and wrangling some stupid cross-browser CSS issues and watching TV and avoiding parties.

( pictures and some rambling )


Also ended up watching bits and pieces of Infernal Affairs I to III this weekend! Siblings were marathoning through them; I just popped by now and then to admire Tony Leung. I knew that The Departed followed the film closely (and I had watched Infernal Affairs before watching The Departed though it had been years earlier) but I was kinda marvelling at how even the dialogue was almost exact at times.

I still like Infernal Affairs better than the Hollywood remake, XD.

Waaaah. My notebook's monitor just died a violent and sudden death. The computer can still boot up; I was able to log in while the screen flickered and wavered, but it's quite impossible to do anything using it right now. I probably could try connecting it to another monitor but that's just too much effort.

Now I'm using my brother's old laptop, which has an odd keyboard (and you need to punch in the key to get a comma) and is surprisingly slow even though it is actually newer than the monitor-dead notebook. (I am frugal. Sue me.) I was planning to get a new computer anyway, but the old one did not have to die -- I was planning great things for it! Like installing Ubuntu! And stuff! ;_;

The earliest I can send the notebook for repairs is next weekend. Which is also, incidentally, when I had planned to get a new one. I didn't even tell it my plans and it sprung its revenge on me! O, how could you, once trusty notebook!

Now I am slowly installing Firefox add-ons here with hopes that I will be able to manage for another week.


--

Here's my excuse for not watching True Blood this time -- it was on the other computer! >.<

Does anyone (or do any of your friends) want invite codes to Dreamwidth? I have some extras. Thought I'd ask first before going over to dw_codesharing. :)


---

Been poking the CSS for Core 2 Testing Tabula Rasa (whoops, it's been renamed) and now my journal is a blinding sort of blue. Not a very inspired design, is it. (My design, I mean. Not the style itself.) I'm good with structure and putting things into nice, sensible blocks and all that, but making things pretty isn't my forte.

Automated colour palettes! Seriously. That's what I need!


---

Other stuff: playing around with code. Sifting though Dreamwidth's repository and suddenly finding myself thinking, "hey, maybe I should give this a spin!" Um. Yeah.

Things being concentrated at IRC makes it a bit difficult, though. Am I the only one terrified of IRC? It's ridiculous but true! Generally I just hang around and feel awkward, even when it's filled with people I know. I am sort of lurking in #dw and sometimes #dw_kindergarten. (Filled with people I don't know, so it's even more awkward. Social skills stat: -90!) I have yet to ask anything though.

(. . . Good grief another network timeout. This is getting embarrassing. I'll just stay out of IRC for now.)

Also poking documentation and the Wiki and looking at Perl notes and trolling through the bug list. Setting up my own development environment looks, um, not really doable (I can't believe I've been away from servers and crazy troubleshooting and version control and patch applying for more than two years. Old job, I miss you. Not.) It's been too long since I did something like this. So I applied for a Dreamhack account instead, and am puzzling through the repository and finding stuff and going "aha!" and probably will end up doing nothing but going "aha!" for a few days. Maybe.

Hmm.

Text mostly from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Just testing formats, that's all. Really.

Headings, in various sizes:

'Fury said to a mouse, That he met in the house,

"Let us both go to law: I will prosecute you.--Come,

I'll take no denial; We must have a trial: For

really this morning I've nothing to do."

Said the mouse to the cur, "Such a trial, dear Sir,

With no jury or judge, would be wasting our breath."

Text in blockquotes:

'"Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail.
"There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle--will you come and join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?

An ordered list:

1. ''Tis the voice of the Lobster; I heard him declare,


2. "You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair."


3. As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose


4. Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.'

An unordered list, nested:

• 'Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish,


• Game, or any other dish?


• Who would not give all else for two


• Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
  • Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
    
    • Beau--ootiful Soo--oop!
    
    
    • Beau--ootiful Soo--oop!
  • Soo--oop of the e--e--evening,
  
  
  • Beautiful, beauti--FUL SOUP!'
    

( 'What do you know about this business?' the King said to Alice. )

Hullo! This here is a sticky entry -- scroll down to see the most recent entry.

I'm Yati. This journal is a mixture of real life and fannish stuff, most of it unlocked.

I can also be found elsewhere:



Feel free to subscribe/unsubscribe at will.

What you can expect in this journal: me blabbering about books but never really posting reviews, perhaps a glimpse of fanfiction now and then, random squeeage over a number of things which include, but is not limited to, video games, television series that everyone else has watched ages ago, and code (mostly relating to Dreamwidth's style system).

I also sew stuff, so some of my lopsided creations might make their way into this journal.


If you don't have a Dreamwidth account but have a blog elsewhere (or you're on a service that supports OpenID -- there's a list of services here), why don't you use OpenID to log in and leave comments?

So. We went out to lunch today in my car. In my car was a copy of Robert Jordan's The Path of Daggers, Book Eight of the Wheel of Time. The following conversation ensued on the way back to the office:

CK: Is this what you're reading now?
Me: No, my sister was lending the series to someone, only to realise that book number seven (I think) of the series is missing.
CK: Book number what now? Which book is this?
Me: I can't remember. I haven't read those books in years. (Also I was driving, so I couldn't exactly flip the pages and check.)
HS: *looking the book over* It's written here lah, "Book Eight of the Wheel of Time". How many books are there?
Me: (I really wanted to go something like as the wheel turned and time passed into legend and whatnot and decided not to, because then they'd think I was nuts.)
Me: Well, at first we thought it would end at Seven. It obviously didn't because you're holding Book Eight. Then we thought it would be Nine. Then Eleven.
Me: And then the author dies before finishing the last book.
Friends: . . .
CK: That's . . . awful?
Me: But! He left his notes and all and someone is continuing that last book and the publishers said it was coming out this year. And it is! Except it's a book in three parts so we're only getting the first volume this year.
Friends: . . .
CK: Oh. I guess it spans over generations and generations from the great grandfather to grandfather and son and grandson and all?
Me: . . . No, it's just about one dude. And this group of other people.
Friends: . . .
Me: And my favourite character went missing for one whole book.
Friends: . . .
CK: It's almost like TV. One season. Then stop. Then continue.
HS: Like that it's already twelve seasons. How to catch up?
Me: I don't even know a show that ran for twelve seasons.
CK: If someone started reading this when the first book came out, their children would be old already.
Me: Haha. I'm just thankful I only started reading after Book Seven was out.



So, not like this is really news or anything, but the beginning of the end of TWoT series is being released this year; the publisher has confirmed and Brandon Sanderson has also said something about this.

Me? I'm mostly bemused. I expected one book and now we're getting three. A longer wait for the end, of course, but I'm willing to wait. Rushing doesn't really help -- you might end up misspelling words like "schedule". Trufax. Getting mad at the author also doesn't help. At all.

I suppose this gives me time to join the snarky re-read, then. We mock only because we love, right?