emperor: (Default)
[personal profile] emperor
It's time to vote for the next Chancellor (previously); I've looked at the candidates and their statements, but still don't have an obvious-to-me choice of who to vote for.

When I asked on mastodon, I got two responses (one for Sandi Toksvig, one for her or Gina Miller); FB has shown me one friend saying that Chris Smith is "a nice bloke, but also the only candidate worth of the role"; and I've been sent this from someone who evidently doesn't share my general political view (though I'm inclined to agree that being the author of tuition fees probably rules John Browne out).

I can see why people might think Wyn Evans is a good option, but his proposals seem to me more the sort of thing you'd expect the vice-chancellor to do, rather than the chancellor who is not really involved in the running of the university directly.

I'm currently inclined to put Sandi Toksvig first; I'm sure she'd be great at the schmoozing-major-donors thing, but also at engaging with staff & students and advocating for the University.

I'm planning to vote in person on Saturday...

[this post is public, I am screening comments by anyone not already on my DW access list, will unscreen if I think they're making a useful contribution]

Costume Bracket: Round 4, Post 5

Jul. 8th, 2025 06:48 pm
purplecat: The Tardis against a sunset (or possibly sunrise) (Doctor Who)
[personal profile] purplecat
Two Doctor Who companion outfits for your delectation and delight! Outfits selected by a mixture of ones I, personally, like; lists on the internet; and a certain random element.


Outfits below the Cut )

Vote for your favourite of these costumes. Use whatever criteria you please - most practical, most outrageously spacey, most of its decade!

Voting will remain open for at least a week, possibly longer!

Costume Bracket Masterlist

Images are a mixture of my own screencaps, screencaps from Lost in Time Graphics, PCJ's Whoniverse Gallery, and random Google searches.

Polccoyo Mountains

Jul. 7th, 2025 06:24 pm
purplecat: The family on top of Pen Y Fan (General:Walking)
[personal profile] purplecat
Because of all the mix-ups with permits and so on, we were offered an additional "free" activity. We picked a trip to the Polccoyo rainbow mountain area. It turned out that there are two rainbow mountains in Peru of which Vinicunca is the more spectacular, touristy, and better known. Different mineral compositions in the soil - particularly copper - cause the geological layers exposed in rainbow mountains to reveal stripes of bright colours. Our guide for the day, Olmer, was obviously from the Polccoyo area and felt very passionately about it. He explained that it was being opened up to tourists in a bid to stave off a proposed investment from a Canadian mining company who wanted to establish a copper mine in the area.

It was beautiful and remote and while there were two or three parties of tourists, it was easy to feel alone in the landscape. B. and I were a bit dubious that it could both retain its character and generate enough income to hold off the allure of mining company big bucks.

Photos )

The road up to Palccoyo went along multiple switch-backs from tarmac to dirt track, and past alfalfa farmers on the lower slopes (the alfalfa feeds the guinea pigs which are a local speciality - if you are interested they taste a bit like duck) to alpaca farmers on the higher slopes (alpaca is genuinely nice meat, quite lamby but more restrained). On the way back down I tried to photograph alpaca from the taxi resulting in a lot of blurry photos of alpaca of which these are the best.

Photos from the taxi )

Unbridled woodwork

Jul. 6th, 2025 06:42 pm
ladyofastolat: (Default)
[personal profile] ladyofastolat
We were on holiday in North Wales the week before last - a week in Criccieth, followed by two days on the borders on the way home. I'll write up the rest of the week one day, but I have so many pictures of the various comical creatures of Plas Newydd that I thought I'd put them in a separate post.

Comical creature carvings )

June 2025

Jul. 5th, 2025 08:40 pm
muninnhuginn: (Default)
[personal profile] muninnhuginn

June 2025

Read:
Novels:
  • The Foot on the Crown by Christopher Fowler (K)
 
Shorts:
 
Non-fiction
 
Attended:
  •  Gryphon @ The Junction

Random Doctor Who Picture

Jul. 5th, 2025 08:42 am
purplecat: The Sixth Doctor (Who:Six)
[personal profile] purplecat

Book cover for Doctor Who The Shadow in the Glass by Justing Richards and Stephen Cole.  A blue cover with the faces of the sixth Doctor and Hitler behind a transparent globe.  Blue streaks emanate out from the globe.

I've no memory of reading this at all. The back makes it sound both interesting and memorable - a retired brigadier stumbling upon shenanigans from WW2 recruiting the sixth Doctor for help. Richards and Cole are both solid Doctor Who authors who I rate but none of it stirs a memory.

Random Castle

Jul. 4th, 2025 07:06 pm
purplecat: A ruined keep. (General:Castle)
[personal profile] purplecat

Tall turrets of a castle with a bridge on one side then the buildings of a town, but castle walls extend beyond.  All in front of a river or estuary.  An overcast sky.
Caernarfon

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Jul. 3rd, 2025 05:36 pm
emperor: (Default)
[personal profile] emperor
This is a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, and provides the backstory for Imperator Furiosa in that film. So here we see her life from a child in one of the remaining green places to the Imperator we meet in Fury Road.

Aside from the opening, this film is very much in the orange-and-black dieselpunk post-apocalyptic vein of Fury Road. There's a lot of high-speed chase-come-fight sequences, which are quite the spectacle, a fair amount of bloody violence, and some quirky funny moments (especially from Chris Hemsworth as Dementus), which provide a little comic relief.

Furiosa doesn't let off full throttle very often, so this is not one to watch for interesting ideas or a nuanced plot. But if you can avoid thinking too hard about how plausible it all is (or isn't), it is pretty entertaining.

Moray and the Salt Mines of Maras

Jul. 3rd, 2025 06:19 pm
purplecat: Hand Drawn picture of a Toy Cat (Default)
[personal profile] purplecat
We had a "free" day in Cusco, but there were some suggestions of activities that our guide could organise for us. Two other people in the group were interested in seeing the Moray Ruins and the Salt Mines of Maras and we were happy to tag along and make the excursion cheaper.

Moray was the first Inca Plant laboratory we encountered. As noted previously, it wasn't quite clear to us why it earned the status of laboratory.

Pictures under the Cut )

The Salt Mines are not actually mines, but a salt extraction plant that predates the arrival of the Spanish and which are still worked today. Mineral rich water from the mountains comes in and fills clay lined pools. The water then evaporates and the salt is collected. They are owned by 300 families and there were people working them - flattening the clay lining - when we visited. I bought salt.

Photos under the Cut )

Costume Bracket: Round 4, Post 4

Jul. 1st, 2025 07:16 pm
purplecat: The Tardis against a sunset (or possibly sunrise) (Doctor Who)
[personal profile] purplecat
Two Doctor Who companion outfits for your delectation and delight! Outfits selected by a mixture of ones I, personally, like; lists on the internet; and a certain random element.


Outfits below the Cut )

Vote for your favourite of these costumes. Use whatever criteria you please - most practical, most outrageously spacey, most of its decade!

Voting will remain open for at least a week, possibly longer!

Costume Bracket Masterlist

Images are a mixture of my own screencaps, screencaps from Lost in Time Graphics, PCJ's Whoniverse Gallery, and random Google searches.

Rebuilding journal search again

Jun. 30th, 2025 03:18 pm
alierak: (Default)
[personal profile] alierak posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance
We're having to rebuild the search server again (previously, previously). It will take a few days to reindex all the content.

Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.

Sacsayhuaman

Jun. 30th, 2025 06:01 pm
purplecat: Two dummies wearing Edwardian dresses. (General:History)
[personal profile] purplecat
Sacsayhuaman is a massive Inca fortress, called the House of the Sun, on a hill top above Cusco. We were taken up their on our first day in Peru, walked around the site and then walked back down into Cusco.

It is quite a thing )

Wicked (2024 film)

Jun. 30th, 2025 03:25 pm
emperor: (Default)
[personal profile] emperor
This is the first in a two-part adaptation of the musical of the book (which is in turn a re-interpretation of The Wizard of Oz investigating the Wicked Witch of the West's backstory). It's a very long time since I saw The Wizard of Oz, and I've not read the Wicked book nor seen the musical. review, with spoilers )

The songs are reasonable (though none of them have stuck in my head), the leads are very good, and it's very pretty. And I was pleased to recognise Peter Dinklage by his voice :) But I don't think I'd recommend it as a film.

Are you ready for the NFE?

Jun. 29th, 2025 05:14 pm
nfe_gremlin: (Default)
[personal profile] nfe_gremlin posting in [community profile] narniaexchange
THE TIME TO SIGN UP HAS ARRIVED!

This is a pretty long post, but it answers questions and explains things, so please read the whole thing.


Here is a handy tutorial on how to sign up for an fic exchange on AO3:

Handy tutorial!

If you want to sign up, but don't have an AO3 account, email me at snacky8@gmail.com or narniaficexchange@gmail.com and I will get you an invite.

Here is the link to the signup form:

Sign-up form!

Here is the tagset:

Tagset!

Other handy links (beta post, pinch-hitter post, letters post, etc.) can be found here:

Info post with links!


THINGS OF NOTE:

1) Reminder: same as the last couple of years, you cannot request "any." We had too many problems with matching, and [personal profile] aurilly made the tags more specific for this reason. However, you can still offer "any," but only offer it if you're really open to writing anyone/thing.


2) Reminder: you can only request relationships as characters. You will see in the tag set characters groupings which are either platonic (e.g., "Group: Character A & Character B") or romantic/sexual (e.g., "Group: Character A/Character B").

This means if you want a specific combo of characters (either platonic or romantic/sexual), you have to specifically request that tag. So if you want a story about Edmund Pevensie/Bacchus, you need to request Group: Edmund Pevensie/Bacchus. If you simply request both characters, there is no guarantee that you will be matched with someone who wants to write those characters together.

This is also how you should request crossovers with specific characters. The crossover characters won't have individual character tags, but will be in a group with a Narnian character (e.g., Group: Lucy Pevensie/Aragon (Lord of The Rings)).

You can still request crossovers in your optional details, with something like, "I'd really like a Narnia/Star Wars crossover" but this does not guarantee a specific match.


3) For matching, you are matched on characters (so individual characters and groups). If there is no match there, you can be handmatched, or the mods may reach out and ask you to add characters/groups to make you more matchable.

Remember, because this is a small single fandom exchange, what tends to happen is that people are matched on one offer/request, but writers will also mix and match from the other requests.

For example, your recipient might have made request one with Aravis, and you offered Aravis in offer one, so that's what you matched on. But if they've also requested Zardeenah in another request, and you offered her in another offer, then you're certainly free (and encouraged) to use all the other characters you have in common in your story (unless your recip says something like "DNW a story with these two characters, or in this situation").


4) About crossovers: as in previous years, you can request crossovers, but they can't be your only request. There's no way to guarantee that your writer will be familiar with the other fandom. Same with requests set in specific ficverses - you can, for example, request a story set in rthstewart's ficverse, but you must be considerate and have other requests, because not everyone knows that 'verse. Before you request a story set in someone else's ficverse, just make sure the original author is okay with that. That's on you -- the mods are not going to check with authors about this. As well, you should not set stories in someone else's ficverse, unless the person has specifically requested that ficverse.


5) There won't be a separate collection for treats this year, but after the assignments are sent out, all the requests will be open for treating. You can upload these treats to the main collection. Just tag them as treats.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask in comments, or email to narniaficexchange@gmail.com

***

I know, this was long. You won't read it all. I thought we were friends though.

Random Castle

Jun. 27th, 2025 06:58 pm
purplecat: A ruined keep. (General:Castle)
[personal profile] purplecat

A rectangular entrance building with battlements and a large wooden door, next to a taller building - also with battlements and a rounded corner.  All in reddish stone.
Powis Castle

So, what else did you do in Peru?

Jun. 26th, 2025 05:33 pm
purplecat: Hand Drawn picture of a Toy Cat (Default)
[personal profile] purplecat
Our Inca Trail holiday actually started with three days spent in and around Cusco, the ancient Inca Capital. Our first day started with a walking tour of Cusco. Because of the various mix-ups with permits, this was with a guide called Arturo who should have been our guide for the whole trip, but wasn't.

Photos under the Cut )
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