djkittycat

This is your weekly read-in-progress post for you to talk about what you're currently reading and reactions and feelings (if any)!

For spoilers:

<details><summary>insert summary</summary>Your spoilers goes here</details>

<b>Highlight for spoilers!*</b><span style="background-color: #FFFFFF; color: #FFFFFF">Your spoilers goes here.</span>*

While hiking in a conserved wetland, I saw an informational sign about native pitcher plants. I had no idea we had these in New England; I always thought of carnivorous plants as a tropical thing. But I took a look around and they were certainly there!



This appears to be Sarracenia purpurea which has a lot of names in English, including Common Pitcher Plant. The specialized leaves form cup-shaped traps with nectar at the bottom that attracts bugs, which can't escape and are digested to provide nutrition for the plant. In this species the traps sit on the ground, and I don't know if I would have noticed them if I hadn't been looking.

( pitcher plant flower and habitat (2 photos) )

Title: swimmingly
Author: misura
Fandom: The Green Hornet (2011)
Pairing/Characters: Britt Reid/Kato
Rating/Category: PG13/slash
Prompt: Britt feels regret and decides to teach Kato how to swim.
Spoilers: most of the movie
Summary: Britt gets the genius idea of teaching Kato how to swim.
Notes/Warnings: posted to the AO3

Via troyswann, this new comm:

fan_writers comm - for meta about writing

1. Long day of driving going to San Diego today, but it was a much more pleasant visit than the last few times as things do seem to be improving in the store.

2. The guys came and fixed the back screen door today. I'm so used to dealing with the broken door that it's weird to have it working properly again, but I'm sure I'll get used to that again soon enough.

3. Ollie is such a chonker.

I am so tired.

We've been moving house on top of very busy work that has demanded that I be out of town for lengths of time and prepping for events on top of it. I'm tired and my well of patience for almost everything has dried up. The deadline for being fully out of the old house is coming up and everything is still a mess. On top of that we have had someone quit at work so I've been picking up all that slack.

So I haven't been doing much fannish stuff.

My friends have gotten into Blue Prince, but because I've been busy I've only checked in at times to work on one puzzle or another with them.

I took some time to watch KPop Demon Hunters and enjoyed that a lot. Mira is best girl. It's sort of Disney levels of sophistication, but that's fine. Not everything needs to be a deep commentary on everything. Sometimes you just want to celebrate loving yourself for who you are with a backing track of very catchy music.

I've been too busy to keep up with Honkai or Nu:Carni that much. I've gotten the stories done for both at least. The last Honkai update finally got me liking Phainon.

The Jayvik exchange ended right in the middle of a lot of personal chaos. I can't really say that this is why  I'm unsatisfied with the fic I wrote because I'm always unsatisfied with the fic I write for exchanges, so I will probably spend a long time swearing off them again until I forget my lesson and try again in a haze of enthusiasm. I did get a very fun gift that involves many Viktors and Jayces across AUs having relationship crises. The author tied in a lot of my likes so I'm happy with how the whole event turned out.

And that's my very brief proof of life update. I'm hoping for some breathing room sometime soon, but with my current schedule it looks like I'm not going to find time to Chill until November.

 

Posted by Caitlynne

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ao3-releases-0-9-414-0-9-419-change-log/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=266087

Over the past few weeks, we completed several important infrastructure updates including upgrading to Elasticsearch 8, finishing the transition to Rails 7.1, and migrating the bookmarks table to create room for more bookmarks. We also made some user-facing improvements, such as fixing various access and display bugs; clarifying some error messages, form labels, and page titles; and adding chapter numbers to comments in your inbox. Special thanks and welcome to first-time contributors Abhinav Gupta, hk-contribs, TemperedPetals, and Vemmy RM! We’d also like to thank Dhiraj Mishra for reporting a security issue.

Credits

• Coders: Abhinav Gupta, AliceLsr, Bilka, Brian Austin, calm, ceithir, Connie Feng, EchoEkhi, Hamham6, hk-contribs, kitbur, sarken, slavalamp, TemperedPetals, Vemmy RM, weeklies
• Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, ceithir, Coding-Hen, Hamham6, sarken, weeklies
• Testers: Bilka, Booksarelife, Brian Austin, Caitlynne, calamario, choux, Deniz, Keladry, LilyP, Lute, lydia-theda, Sam Johnsson, Sanity, Teyris, therealmorticia, wichard

Details

0.9.414

In the process of installing the new Elasticsearch servers, we upgraded to Elasticsearch 8 on June 24!

• [AO3-6259] – We upgraded the Elasticsearch gem to version 8.18.0.

0.9.415

On June 25, we finished off the last remaining parts of the update to Rails 7.1.

• [AO3-6894] – We flipped the remaining configuration values to use the new defaults from Rails 7.1.

0.9.416

Our deploy on July 1 updated older language on the work search and filtering forms from “Author/Artist” to “Creator” and added chapter numbers to comments in your inbox, among other improvements.

• [AO3-6050] – When accessing the Tag Wrangling page showing all relationship tags related to a character, tags would always be shown in alphabetical order, regardless of sort order. Now, tag wranglers can additionally sort through the tags by how many times they were used or by creation date.
• [AO3-6273] – Sometimes, when you used the “Post Draft” button on a draft, the word count of the publicly posted work would be blank. It should now always be the correct number.
• [AO3-6373] – If you blocked a user who had previously commented on your work, you could no longer freeze their comment. We fixed this, so you can now block users and freeze their comment threads in any order without problems.
• [AO3-6735] – We fixed that when you left a comment on an news posts with comment moderation enabled, the resulting comment email would incorrectly tell you that the comment was on a work with moderated comments.
• [AO3-6936] – We changed the browser page title on subscriptions pages to a format that matches other user pages: “username – Subscriptions | Archive of Our Own.”
• [AO3-6971] – We fixed an error that occurred if the “No Fandom” tag didn’t exist, for example in a development installation of the Archive.
• [AO3-7010] – Trying to access the chapter index of a work that’s both in an unrevealed collection and hidden by an admin used to result in an error 500. We’ve fixed that so it now results in a normal permission error.
• [AO3-7017] – If you knew the ID of a draft work or a work restricted to logged in users, you could access a few subpages of the work that revealed its title and blurb. Since that information isn’t meant to be public, we’ve once again restricted access to these pages.
• [AO3-7016] – We updated the gem we use to run database schema migrations of large tables.
• [AO3-5345] – Collection maintainers get an email notification if they run matching in a gift exchange and the sign-ups are invalid. We’ve improved the text of this email and prepared it for translation.
• [AO3-6541] – We changed the works search and the sorting and filtering options to use “Creator” instead of “Author/Artist” to match the terminology used by the rest of the site.
• [AO3-6750] – Comments in your inbox now include the chapter number, so you don’t have to follow the comment link to know where exactly it was left.
• [AO3-6807] – If you tried to use an invalid URL for an external work or in your collection sign-up, you would sometimes get a 500 error. We fixed that so now you will always get a proper error message telling you that the URL is invalid.
• [AO3-6999] – We removed some duplicate code for sending comment emails to admins.

0.9.417 & 0.9.418

On July 3 and July 4, we ran out of rows in the database table that stores bookmarks, so we had to move them to a larger table that can hold them all! Now you can once again add your own bookmarks to the 647 million we already have.

• [AO3-7031] – We migrated the bookmarks table to be able to hold more rows and then migrated all other table columns that refer to bookmarks to also support the larger bookmark IDs.

0.9.419

On July 12, we deployed an assortment of minor changes that included allowing the accent-color property in skins and clarifying some error messages.

• [AO3-6795] – When you were excluding a tag in a search and then made a syntax error when trying to filter those results, you’d get a 500 error. We’ve fixed this so it instead tells you that your query has a syntax error.
• [AO3-6989] – If you tried to view the pseuds list for a user who didn’t exist, you’d get redirected to the People Search page. That made sense in a way, but wasn’t terribly consistent with other nonexistent pages. Now you’ll get a 404 error instead, which makes it easier to check for typos in the URL you entered.
• [AO3-7007] – We fixed a 500 error when a guest tried to add a work to a collection by directly going to the “Add To Collection” URL.
• [AO3-7025] – We fixed a typo in one of the CSS properties in the Creating a Skin help pop-up.
• [AO3-7022] – We changed the default comment setting for news posts to “Only registered users can comment.”
• [AO3-5344] – We prepared the email that you get when your work is invited to a collection for translation.
• [AO3-7019] – You will now get an informative error message if you try to change your username to the same name as you currently have, instead of it silently doing nothing.
• [AO3-7033] – When you access a skin, the skin title is now part of the browser page title.
• [AO3-7041] – You can now use the accent-color property in site and work skins!
• [AO3-6852] – We removed some old unused scripts for testing gift exchange matching.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ao3-releases-0-9-414-0-9-419-change-log/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=266087

Intro/FAQ
Days 1-15

In case people haven't seen it, china_shop and mific have started a comm for posting or linking to writing meta: fan_writers. Check it out!

My check-in: An intensive session with my partner in crime pulling together meta-info (tags, summaries, author notes, etc.). Plus some editing + brainstorming with my other partner in crime.

Day 22: china_shop, sanguinity

Day 21: badly_knitted, brithistorian, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, glinda, goddess47, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, trobadora, yasaman

( more days )

When you check in, please use the most recent post and say what day(s) you’re checking in for. Remember you can drop in or out at any time, and let me know if I missed anyone!

 
This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Tuesday, July 22, to midnight on Wednesday, July 23. (8pm Eastern Time).




Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.
 

Book 37 - Carl Hiaasen "Hoot" (Macmillan)


Dare I say it? This book was a 'hoot'! This is a fun read with wonderfully developed characters that still offer ruminations for deeper thought. Three middle school youth band together to protect a species of endangered owls from corporate expansion and their neglectful attitude toward the environment in their rush to expand. It offers food for thought about resistance to corruption, care and protection for the environment and encouragement for those who think they might not be able to take a stand. The book is well written and reads fairly quickly as Hiassen combines intimate knowledge of the Florida landscape with wit and insight. A wonderful and worthwhile read!

It never rains, but it sure does pour.

(Although this really is a somewhat archaic construction and doesn't mean what I've formed it to mean here. I do know that.)

**************************

( Read more... )

The only birds of prey I see here in my tiny town in south-eastern Sweden are Red Kites (Milvus milvus). They're usually soaring far too high up and away over the forest to get acceptable photos of. This morning however a pair was kind enough to come down low enough I could take ( these... )

Recent DNFs (Did Not Finish)

Wake Up and Open Your Eyes, by Clay McLeod Chapman



A horror novel about - I think - how a Q-Anon analogue turns people into literal zombies. I couldn't get into this book. I don't think it was bad, it just wasn't my thing. I didn't vibe with the prose style at all.

The Baby Dragon Cafe, by A. T. Qureshi



A woman opens a cafe that's also a baby dragon rescue. I adored the idea of this book, not to mention the extremely charming cover, but the execution left a lot to be desired. It was just plain dull. I dragged myself through two chapters, both of which felt eternal, then gave up. Too bad! I really wanted to like it, because the idea is delightful.

In the Path of Destruction: Eyewitness Chronicles of Mount St. Helens, by Richard Waitt



This ought to have been exactly my jam, except for the author's absolutely bizarre prose style, which is a combination of Pittman shorthand and Chuck Tingle's Twitter minus the sense of humor, with an allergy to articles and very strange syntax. I literally had no idea what some of his sentences meant. This weirdness extends to direct quotes from multiple people, making me suspect how direct they are. And yes, this was traditionally published.

Here are some quotes, none of which make more sense in context:

It contrasts the chance jungle violence with lava flows off Kilauea - so Hollywood but predictable.

"The state's closure seems yours. Have I missed something?"

[And here's a bunch of Tinglers.]

Heart attack took Eddie in 1975.

These years since wife Eddie died Truman's fire has cooled.

Since wife Eddie died, Rob is the closest he has to a friend.

Since wife Eddie died, Truman has been a bleak recluse, the winters especially lonely.

There are several glasshouses at Bicton Park, and this one is dedicated mostly to pelargoniums...

( All the pelargoniums )

Fandom: Sinners
Characters/Pairing/Other Subject: Sammie (Preacherboy)
Content Notes/Warnings: none
Medium: traditional art, pencils on toned paper
Artist on DW/LJ: n/a
Artist Website/Gallery: bubblegumarts on tumblr
Why this piece is awesome: This is a very simple drawing of Sammie playing "I Lied to You", and I really like it. His face and expression is just right.
Link: I Lied to You

1. I had a lot of stuff to get caught up on at work after the weekend, but I got caught up.

2. I kept seeing ads for one of these blanket hoodie things and although it's not the season for it, it did look very comfy, so I ended up ordering it and it arrived today. It is indeed very comfy and I can see myself getting a lot of use out of this during colder weather.

3. We had a nice evening at Disneyland.

4. Gemma!

Today was a first. Carla drove down to Disneyland from home, and I met her there after work. (Usually if we go after work, either she rides with me and then takes the car to do whatever while I'm doing work stuff, or I go back home after work and pick her up then head back down.)

( Read more... )