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Archive for January 2010

Islamophobia adventures.

The French government: fighting sexism by... um... restricting what women are allowed to wear on their heads.

I am not a great fan of repressive religiosity either, but in nothing that I've read or heard on the radio today has anyone stated a good reason for the government to get involved in what people are wearing. Are the 1900 French women who cover their faces all secretly members of a bank-robbing gang that can't be caught because no-one knows what they look like? Are they? Oh no, they're just ~*un-French*~.

Fuck off.


Anyway, sketchdump:

I found a website called Pose Maniacs a while ago. It's pretty good for some life-drawing practice.




I swear half of the female poses on that site are unnecessarily sexy.



This is pretty much my favourite thing I've drawn this year so far.




Still practicing with the brush pen.


Oh, and I got my official offer letter from UCL. Hee. Start date: 27 September 2010. *starts counting down the days*
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27. 1. 2010 1:32 am | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , , , | Comment

I explained Archaeology to the tiny-Germans yesterday:

"You know, my house is really old, too! It's 20 years old."

"Wow! Well, the things I dig up are a lot older than that. Some of them are a thousand years old."

"How old?"

"A thousand years."

"How old?"

"A thousand."

"That's not a number!"


They're the best.


I finally brought my laptop to a repair shop to have its overheating problem fixed, so I'm not gonna be online much in the next few days. If you require the thrill of my conversation, you can always hit me up on Google Talk, which I've got on my phone: breakfastspoon@therandomplanet.com

I'm listening to the A History of the World in 100 Objects programme on iPlayer at the moment. It's pretty neat. Good old Olduvai Gorge, amirite? And it's available as a podcast, so you can alllll listen to it, even if you're not in the UK. :D

My parents' mac's screen has some weird contrast settings going on; it's making my eyes hurt.
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21. 1. 2010 10:13 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , | Comment

Half-remembered media reporting of a scientific study go! 8D

I heard an interview on the radio a few months ago, with a psychologist (I think), who'd dome some research on multi-tasking that indicated two broad types of behaviour: "explorers", who constantly crave new stimulation and jump from task to task, and "exploiters", who concentrate on only one thing and do it thoroughly.

Which is how I'm justifying my wish that I had enough room on my screen to watch a TOS episode and play a single-player game of Solium Infernum at the same time.


In the mean time, the alien fly that invaded the Enterprise has landed in Captain Kirk's coffee, and I think he's about to swallow it.

Oh wait, no, it's not a fly, it's a super-fast space woman who wants to get in his pants.
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19. 1. 2010 12:58 am | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , | Comment

New resolution: post more than once every 10 days. ¬_¬

I went to my UCL interview on Monday, and it went well! I was incredibly nervous and ineloquent, but I got an email the next day saying they've recommended me for an offer, so I must have made a fairly good impression. Haven't got the official letter from the college yet, but it looks like I'm going! :D :D

Ummm, what else. I went to see the Staffordshire Hoard after the interview. It was pretty cool. Sparkly, shiny things. I'll blog about it properly later, right now I've got a cold and my head is a bit foggy.


Some links:

• The Desert Peach - I rediscovered this the other day. The greatest piece of historical fiction set in World War 2 that exists, in my opinion.

• Choice of the Dragon - A very well written multiple choice text game. In which you play as a dragon:


What more could you want, right? It's got a great attitude on gender & sexuality. I noticed it when I was playing, and then I checked their blog and read the most recent post at the time, which confirmed how much thought they'd put in it. It's so refreshing not to have presumptions shoved down your throat: you can chose the gender of the dragon, and the dragon you futilely attempt to mate with (I will get the right combination of stats/actions one day), and it doesn't go "'knight' obviously = 'he'", either.

Their quest to introduce meaningful choices into games pleases me, too. It makes the whole thing instantly many times more engaging and entertaining. My only criticism is it wasn't long enough. :P

• One of my favourite fiction series, "Union Dues" by Jeffrey R. DeRego (as seen on Escape Pod and Clone Pod) is apparently being pitched as a TV series. I think that's brilliant. I'm not of the opinion that everything that's good should eventually be made into a film and/or TV show — TV is not the end-all of storytelling media — but I also don't have a problem with different versions of stories and things jumping form medium to medium and taking on new forms (I mean, look at Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). In fact, I encourage it. If I find a fictional world I love, I want to experience it through as many different lenses as I can, to see all of it's permutations and facets and flavours.

Also TV probably has a larger audience than podcasts, and I think something of quality deserves to be seen by as many people as possible. (Or maybe rather: Everyone deserves to be exposed to quality entertainment.) I've never been into superheroes much, and I love "Union Dues". It's definitely worth it.

• I also have a key for the Star Trek Online beta! It's currently downloading. Very slowly.


Pff, I started this entry thinking I'd only list a handful of links, since my head hurt, and I ended up rambling all over the place anyway.
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15. 1. 2010 7:38 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

First update of The Future!

New in this update:

Read More →

12. 1. 2010 8:08 pm | Website News | Comment

Subheadings~

The weather!
As you might have heard, the UK has been covered in snow lately. Of course the infrastructure of the entire nation is on the verge of collapse, but luckily I'm a layabout with nowhere to go, so I'm free to enjoy how nice everything is.





I bought a brush-pen a few days ago with some of my birthday money! I'm not very good at using it yet (can you tell? XD), but I've been practicing, and I think it's gonna be really good for my drawing.

Here's some of my practice doodles that aren't completely terrible. :P


My birthday!
I'm twenty-two! My birthday was fun—Tim and I were going to go see the fireworks in London, but while the tube is free all night, the first overground train is at 6-something AM as usual, so we decided to wait until next year, when we'll probably both be living in London, anyway. Instead we stayed at my house and played Cranium (superfun) and had some epic fireworks of our own.

I got really good presents, as well:


I forgot to put a few things from Tim in that drawing, actually: he also gave me Vol.2 of the Darker than Black manga, and the bag also had these totally rad ¥1000000 playing-cards in it:



My parents also gave me some money to be spent at Uniqlo, with which I have bought myself some delectable attire.


On the 2nd, we went to the theatre. :3



We had pretty bad seats—all the way on the left, almost all the way at the top—but the show was so good. ♥ I sort of want to get the soundtrack. XD

University!
I have an interview at UCL for my MA on Monday. I'm nervous, but pretty confident I'll do alright. I was looking over the info about the programme and the professors on the UCL website in preparation, and got twice as excited again about going there. It's going to be so amazing, you guys. I really really can't wait.

Anime!
I have not been keeping up! It's been about a month since I've downloaded any anime, so I haven't seen the end of anything yet. XD I'm at Tim's house atm, though, so I've seen a few of the first episodes of stuff from the new season.

There's one about some cat-girl demon protecting a teenage boy with a jealous childhood friend blah blah lots of stupid fanservice &c. &c. that I really couldn't care less about. There's also Chu-Bra!!, which is about a girl who likes wearing and designing fancy underwear, and is obviously an excuse to look at girls' underwear a lot, but also has messages like "you shouldn't judge people by how they dress", and "girls can look pretty for themselves, not just for men"... except for the fact that it's also an excuse for the male audience to look at 2D girls' underwear for 25 minutes a week. Anime is weird.

But, there is also Durarara!! (double exclamation marks are in, I guess?), which is going to be so badass. :D It's already my favourite thing. The storytelling and pacing and art are all greatly to my taste, as far as can be seen from the first episode, anyway. :) :) :)

In Conclusion:


Foot brush!

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9. 1. 2010 7:06 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Comment