life, liberty and the pursuit of geekiness

My default summer shoes are navy gutties (rubber soles, canvas uppers—what's the English name?). It seems that all makers of trainers now cater soley for the chav market (shiny white trainers, what use are they??), apart from Converse and its copycats. I bought a pair of black Converse knock-offs for £6 yesterday, which with a certain inevitability have been dubbed 'Doctor Shoe'.

LJ seems to have melted down over the breast-feeding icons thing. Simple solution: stop using default icons on search pages. It looks stupid, it eats bandwidth and takes forever to load on dial-up.

Something has happened to our DVD-RW drive. Whenever I put in an audio CD, it takes about ten minutes to load, with lots of whirring and groaning that never happened before. CDs with programs on it won't run at all. I've tried System Restore and scanning for viruses (but the subscription expired this morning, too), but nothing helps. What am I going to do??

Here's Cordelia.

• Title: My Heart and My Honour
• Author: jediowl
• Recipient: altariel1


• Rating/any warnings: Mentions of rape and torture, so, um, no under-10s? Rather less graphic than the books, anyway. Contains traces of Miles. Is ridiculously long.


• Any other information: This fic owes a great deal to ajhalluk, both for a very thorough beta-reading, and for mentioning some author called Lois McMaster Bujold so often that when I saw a book called Cetaganda on a library shelf, I said, 'This seems familiar...'



• Summary: altariel1 requested a 'missing scene' (e.g. his face-off with Aral from The Vor Game, or the conversation with Cordelia about Serg, or the moments before the drop from the balcony).
  Being permanently unable to make up what I'm pleased to call my mind, I did two missing scenes, weighing in at a total of >8000 words.
  Set during the closing part of The Vor Game. Gregor dealing with power, what his father was, and growing up.

Part I: Aral

Part II: Cordelia


( looong )

I'm sure you're all tired of hearing my woes about the Bujold ficathon, as I've talked about nothing else for the past week. Having finally panted to the deadline, I have instantly been seized by three more Vorkosigan plot bunnies. Such is life.

• Title: My Heart and My Honour
• Author: jediowl
• Recipient: altariel1


• Rating/any warnings: Mentions of rape and torture, so, um, no under-10s? Rather less graphic than the books, anyway. Contains traces of Miles. Is ridiculously long.


• Any other information: This fic owes a great deal to ajhalluk, both for a very thorough beta-reading, and for mentioning some author called Lois McMaster Bujold so often that when I saw a book called Cetaganda on a library shelf, I said, 'This seems familiar...'



• Summary: altariel1 requested a 'missing scene' (e.g. his face-off with Aral from The Vor Game, or the conversation with Cordelia about Serg, or the moments before the drop from the balcony).
  Being permanently unable to make up what I'm pleased to call my mind, I did two missing scenes, weighing in at a total of >8000 words.
  Set during the closing part of The Vor Game. Gregor dealing with power, what his father was, and growing up.

Part I: Aral


( Read more... )

I'm not quite finished with Cordelia's bit yet; it should follow tomorrow.

ETA: Part II: Cordelia

I've almost finished my Bujold ficathon entry. Half of it (3400 words!) is typed, and I just need an ending. Oh, and a beta. Preferably someone who'll do more than just proof-read, who'll say, 'That doesn't work' or 'I can't see Gregor saying that'.

Every time I enter a ficathon, my fic always ends up turning into The Son of War and Peace (or Vor and Peace, in this case. Ow.) And the sort where you swap fics—it's like Christmas. You always end up with socks. And I always have a mad panic, like the current one. WHEN AM I GOING TO TYPE ALL THIS!!!

ETA: In a big mad frantic session. 7564 words. My wrists hurt. And it still tails off feebly at the end.

Doctor Who is apparently on at 6.35 tonight. Or maybe 7.25. This means I have to keep checking the television. And there will be some stupid presenter who really annoys me (Please, Auntie Beeb, taking Graham Norton out of the slot before the Doctor. I can't stand him, or Strictly Come Making an Idiot Of Yourself, either.)

In good news, my company have finally corrected my NI number, after five weeks and three time of asking. Yay.

( Cut for Girl Underwear Talk )

Now I must go and shower, and I really must work on my Vorkosiverse ficathon entry...

The spring and summer seem to have come all on top of each other. It's been really warm these last two days, all anticyclonic and hazy heat. The blackthorn is still out, and so are the primrose and the bluebells are starting. I went for a walk in the field opposite our house and I found violets! And celandine, bluebells, stitchwort and primroses. It all smelled of drying mud and that sweet-cocnut smell of whin in bloom.

I love this time of year, when the leaves are all still vivid green, and there's cherry blossom and lilac everywhere. Sadly, I don't think they'd survive up here on our cold, windy hill. Today we had the street at the back concreted. (For my American friends, the street means a bit of hard parallel to the house, not an actual street.) Now we shall be able to wash the car without creating a mudhole.

I found Five Red Herrings for sale for £1.99 in Oxfam. Now there's only Whose Body? that I don't own. Like Swallows and Amazons, where I don't own Picts and the Martyrs, or the Vorkosigan series, where I don't own Diplomatic Immunity...