ludy

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 21:17:04 GMT

Happy International Women’s Day

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Annual Earworm

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 21:57:59 GMT

Enjoy your pancakes or local equivalent* and/or your Lunar New Year treats

*Estonia has (kind of brioche-y) Shrove Buns/vastlakukkel filled with whipped cream (Wikipedia suggests they should have almond paste in too but that’s not how either of Nieceling’s families eat them)

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Sun, 15 Feb 2026 23:26:00 GMT

Yesterday I forgot to do the “traditional” autocomplete valentine poem so you can have it for Lupercalia instead…

Roses are my new obsession,
Violets are the best flowers in this universe.
Sugar is a beautiful color(sic) in this photo of my heart,
And so much of this is just pure love from you guys in the comments.
(iPad - which is apparently a big hippo)

Roses are still very pleased with her husband.
Violets are the fandom I think you should get.
Sugar is dissolved,
And so it helped you get your own back.
(Kindle Fire - obviously living for teh drama)

Roses are good for the kids,
Violets are the best jokes on the wall.
Sugar is a bit of a serif but it’s impossible to get the train back from London
And so you don’t need it for the rest of the year.
(Phone - maybe a bit judgmental)

It’s interesting that the iPad and particularly the phone have learned some ludy-speak (and the phone is more aware of subjects I’m likely to be texting about) while the Kindle seems a bit more generic

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Sat, 14 Feb 2026 20:56:46 GMT

I hope everyone is having the Valentines/St Cyril and Methodius/Lupercalia weekend they want whether that’s soppy and romantic, all about chosen family and working together on something worthwhile (and of course lettering/typography) or wolf-y and wild…

Sadly it’s not LJ in the 00s anymore so there aren’t the big organised love-memes and communities - and I don’t think I have the spoons to try to run a mini-love meme right now now.

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Sat, 24 Jan 2026 23:30:03 GMT

Managed to make a successful pressure cooker cake (blueberry and lemon) that this time didn’t accidentally taste entirely of too much almond extract.

It’s basically just like cake - it’s prolly a little heavier textured than a baked one but I’m not sure if you’d really notice that of you weren’t looking for differences. And obviously it’s not browned…

Things that seem to be helpful are covering the tin with baking parchment secured with a big silicone “rubber band” before steaming and once you open the cooker letting it cool completely on a wire rack to let the steam out. A thing that’s not helpful are not having the tin completely level on the trivet and ending up with a slightly wonky cake!

There’s also a more general issue of pressure cooking intensifying some flavours and flattening out others which I’ve noticed with savoury cooking too. For this cake that means it turned out more lemony than I expected from the amount of zest in the recipe. I guess it’s just going to need trail and error (and possibly actually remembering to record the results somewhere) before I develop a sense of how different ingredients/tastes respond to “pressure baking”

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Watch Out! There Could Be A Penguin About!

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 22:36:03 GMT

Apparently today is Penguin Awareness Day - https://www.wwf.org.uk/learn/world-days/penguin-awareness-day -which is Shiny! Penguins are Awseome and should have, at least, a day.

But I’m a bit thrown by it being called an “Awareness Day” not just Penguin Day or Celebrate Penguins Day or Save the Penguin Day or something. Awareness Days are usually for diseases and other bad things.
It seems like it’s suggesting that you have to be aware at all times in case stealthy Penguins are sneaking up on you for nefarious purposes…

Are you Penguin Aware?!

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CakeFail

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 23:46:51 GMT

Today I attempted to make (bake? I’m not sure if that’s the right verb) a cake in the pressure cooker. I’m intrigued by the concept but unsure what to expect the results to be like. How much will the texture be different to oven baking? Will it be more like a steamed sponge pudding? Will I like it?

I’m still really not sure because the cake failed for non-pressure-cooker reasons. I used a new-to-me-brand of almond extract and it is obviously considerably stronger than the brand the recipe-book writer uses. A teaspoon was way too much and I now have pretty much the cake-shaped version of those room scenting wax-chips rather than something you’d want to eat…

(It was at least a sweet almond extract rather than anything too cyanide-y)

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MidWinter

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 14:20:56 GMT

Happy Solstice everyone. Wishing you Shininess

(Obviously Happy Midsummer rather than Midwinter to anyone in the Southern Hemisphere)

I am getting to Floomp rather than do a lot of Festive Stuff and Things - which is what I need right now. The first slightly-more-than-half of my year was very intense and I’ve been in rest mode since (and have not had great luck with my physical health although thankfully nothing too serious). So even though there’s some things I’m disappointed not to be doing (I’d really like to get to have some more in-person time with ClosePeople) overall this is the right shape of Solstice for me this year. There are tasty snacks, candles, fancy bath products and a lot of duvet time

Hope you all get to have whatever Festiveness you celebrate being the shape that you want and need

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Postbox

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 13:02:43 GMT

This is a screened comment postbox post for you to get in touch with me while I don’t have my mobile.

Also Happy St Nicholas Day everyone - enjoy celebrating everyone’s favourite heretic-slapping, accidentally canibalistic, patron saint of Sex Workers

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Forgot my Phone Argh!

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 12:59:41 GMT

I am on the train to my Dad’s and have realised I don’t have my mobile with me - argh! Going back home to pick it up would put my arrival at Stratford Upon Avon after the last bus that will drop us off anywhere “near” his retirement village (near = 15-20 minute walk away - as it’s forecast to be solid rain for the next couple of days at least we’ll have to take the 20 minute route) until Monday morning. So I’m not going to go back and will just have to re-experience pre-mobile life for the next few days

(I just forgot to switch it from pyjama/lounging-around-at-home-clothes pocket to my going-outside-in-the-wet-clothes pocket)

I do have my iPad and Kindle Fire. So writing here or email are the best ways to get in touch with me (with Teams, Zoom or Discord also being options)

I feel very stupid for forgetting - I haven’t done that in ages and of course the time I do would be for a time sensitive and very long train journey/being away from home for several days…

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Fri, 14 Nov 2025 14:14:10 GMT

It’s a very grey, bleak day out there. Let’s have a sparkly song:

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A Place To Tell Me Stuff and Things

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 21:42:38 GMT

So my poll about polls (and other things) came down slightly on the side of not bothering with a Great Annual Do You Fancy Me Poll with the lack of new people here on DW. But there was more support for making a post with screened comments for people to tell me stuff and things including (if you want to) if you fancy me more not…

So here that is.

You can tell me anything you want to here - comments are screened and will stay screened - I’m doubting that any of my regular readers are going to confess an unexpected crush (though feel free - attraction can be fluid and surprising. It’s a bit depressing to only hear about any changes from people who used to be attracted to you and no longer are!) but I would love to know about ways you like to do (virtual or IRL) socialising and any other stuff and things you want to tell me/you would like me to know

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Phone Question

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 18:44:30 GMT

Have got my Open Reach appointment to have my phone (land)line switched over to Digital Voice this week.

Asking people who have already been switched - do the engineers typically come into your home or is it like regular phone repair where it mostly happens outside but you need to be around just in case? And if they do come in do they just go to your router or do they need access to every phone socket?

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Sun, 17 Aug 2025 11:30:54 GMT

Grrr! Spellcheck autocorrected we’re to were as I was typing it for some reason (Why?! Surely people are more likely to forget the apostrophe than accidentally add one in so we’re is much less likely to be a typo than were is) … and then had the audacity to tell me that what it had done with what I’d written now wasn’t grammatically correct!

It feels like in the rush of enthusiasm for all things AI that I’m ending up having to fight spellcheck/auto-suggestions more than in the past. They obviously aren’t training it on stuff written by dyslexics!

The suggestions seem to be more business-y now too

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One of My Biggest Inspirations for Taking Up Knitting

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 22:04:46 GMT

Oooo there’s a bunch of the 1980’s Joan Hickson Miss Marple’s on iPlayer - (re)watching them is happy-making (even though it’s sometimes giving me, intense but mundane, little flashbulb-type memories of watching them the first time round as a child/teen)

(They are SO much better than the 2000’s Geraldine McEwan/Julia McKenzie adaptations (nothing against those awesome actors but the adaptations are just not-great))

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Finally the Cabin Pressure / XKCD cross over the world has been waiting for

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 20:17:10 GMT

Specifically the Douz episode of Cabin Pressure

[mouseover text:We should have you at the gate in just under two hours--two and a half if we get pulled over.]

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Letter Box

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 10:32:10 GMT

In the BeforeTimes people would frequent make a screened comment post after BiCon for people to tell them anything or ask questions (and to have the awkward conversations to match people to usernames - which is sadly less of an issue these days unless we can collectively coax a whole load of new people over here).

You do not have to have been at BiCon to play.

So if there is anything that you would like to tell me or ask me or whatever here is a space for it. Comments are screened and will stay screened (DW works more sensibly than LJ did so the journal-owner can reply to screened comments with only them and the commenter being able to see the exchange)
You can be anonymous if you really want but then you’ll never see your comment again (because it’ll be screened) and the only ways I’ll be able to reply that you can see are if I unscreen my reply here or address it in another post…

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Sat, 02 Aug 2025 22:27:59 GMT

Ooooo the Hot and Bothered podcast is continuing its series of looking at Romantic Films with a set of episodes talking about Queer Romances. The first one is about But I’m a Cheerleader and it makes me happy because the hosts genuinely love the movie as well as discussing it critically (though it makes me feel old when they talk about it’s “historical moment”

https://shows.acast.com/8db78936-153d-56f6-b6d4-fa61364322f6/6889008e2a38d6f5cbe53c01

There’s also a bonus initial episode with the awesome podcast veteran Kathy Tu discusses Queer Romances Books with H&B’s Vanessa - and they coo over the high levels of Bisexual Inclusion in the genre.

https://shows.acast.com/8db78936-153d-56f6-b6d4-fa61364322f6/687fa506fd9acfeba4871ae9

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Like a door that keeps revolving in a half forgotten dream

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 20:47:50 GMT

In a conversation about internet-ness this morning (specifically the sometimes random amounts of time between A sending an email and B receiving it) I used the phrase “like a wheel within a wheel”. And consequently have had this song stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

(There are umpty different versions but I’m particularly fond on this one by the glorious Alison Moyet)

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They Only Want to Hear About Your Formic Concerns

Tue, 22 Jul 2025 10:22:48 GMT

Obviously it’s the kind of typo I make all the time - and I know what was actually meant but I am inordinately amused by a(non insect specific)n email sign off reading “Ant problems? Let me know”

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I’m prolly more of an amateur noun

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 22:40:46 GMT

OK, I know I’m prolly having a bit of an Autism about this…

For Reasons I quite often check out books for Smalls (and Mediums and now actual young Grown Ups who have largely grown up in a different cultural and linguistic environment) about Gender stuff and Sexuality.

I’ve just read one that claims that The most commonly used pronouns are she/her/hers and he/him/his !
Obviously the actual most commonly used pronouns are I/me/mine, we/our/ours and you/yours.
(I’m now curious which of those gets used most).
He and she are just the most popular third-person singular pronouns. And even among third person pronouns if you add all the plural they/them/theirs to the singular ones then they must be more popular than the gender-specfic options.

There appear to be a load of grammatical challenged people in the world who think that pronoun means a-word-that-clues-others-into-your-gender rather than a-word-used-so-as-to-not-have-to-keep-repeating-people’s-names

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This Might Be One of the Bestest Things Ever

Thu, 22 May 2025 10:12:08 GMT

From last Saturday’s Doctor Who but not a spoiler (obviously YouTube comments make contain spoilers)

I’m particularly enjoying speculation in the comments (also not a spoiler) that this is the metaphorical(?) Infinity Bird mentioned in Heaven Sent that sharpens it’s beak on the diamond mountain every hundred years…

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Sat, 17 May 2025 17:58:01 GMT

In conversation with one of the (not so)Smalls today I realised what a silly expression “mate for life” is - it’s not like the gibbons or swans or whatever are getting put into arranged marriages as soon as they are born!

It also seems to conflate non-monogamy with only short-term relationships/~~casual~~ recreational sex. Which is not my (human) experience of being polyamorous. Wondering now which, if any, non-human species have a pattern of multiple long term relationships?

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Sat, 26 Apr 2025 22:30:45 GMT

Ooooo one of my favourite TED-Ed characters is back - the Celestial Accountant:

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RCS, SMS, colours and inaccessible design choices

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 19:32:54 GMT

I have an Android phone which means my texts either send as SMS - which show up on my phone screen on a light blue bubble (other people's SMS's to me are on a dark grey bubble or more often (because they aren't limited by my monthly Bundle) as RCS via Google Messages - which show up on a darker-but-still-bright-blue bubble.

Blue is not my-eyes-friendly. The darker/brighter blue of the RCS messages is particularly not me-friendly and I've wanted to change it ever since my phone started offering me the option of RCS as well as SMS. But, on my phone at least there's no setting on the main phone settings or on the Message app's central settings to change it. However I recently pressed something on the corner of an individual message thread and found you can change a specific thread to a different colour-scheme (though only on RCS threads). So I've done that with my most frequent RCS correspondents. I chose a grungey green as the bubble background

Only it turns out that changing the setting on my phone also changed how those messages look on the recipients phone!?! I suppose the idea is that it's like choosing Fancy Notepaper for specific friends? But it's just horrible for accessibility. What if my comfy colours are the ones that give them visual stress?

I already have my font size super large and use very few phone apps because I just can't read more than a few sentences off of a screen that size. (I am forever complaining to organisations, mostly medics, who send me links to webpages by text rather than by email - I only use the browser on my phone for emergencies like checking train times or directions when I'm out of WiFi range).

Why is basic visual accessibility so hard?

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