So today I was sitting in the office, working late because my boss emailed me in the middle of this afternoon asking for a report that has to be finished by Monday *sigh* And I got stuck on phrasing and procrastinated by glancing at my friends page, and caught compilerbitch's post that there was about to be a major press announcement from NASA. So I watched it, live video from the American space research people right there on my desk at work... announcing that they've found organics on Mars!!!!

Then I was squeeing about it to hatam_soferet by IM, and she quickly made me an icon to celebrate. I have been thinking for a while that I need an icon for joy and celebration, and I think this fits very well. And I came home and fed my over-excited inner 8-year-old burgers and macaroni and ketchup, and now I'm posting to my blog to share the squee with all of you. Tomorrow I shall download the original paper from an electronic library I have access to at work, just for the sake of being a distant witness to history.

I like being grownup in the future.

Reasons for watching it: I was quite curious about how they would handle the subject, the more so because people keep asking me for my opinion of the film "as a British person", so I rather needed to see it to be able to have these conversations usefully. Besides which I really like Helen Mirren as an actress.

Circumstances of watching it: ploni_bat_ploni called me last week and suggested it for that evening, so in a fit of uncharacteristic spontaneity I agreed.

Verdict: The Queen is well acted but insubstantial.

( detailed review )

The other problem with the film is that it made me very depressed about just how much the UK has gone downhill since 1997. The more so since I saw it the same week as the vote to make an utter, unbelievable hash of what remains of the House of Lords. I should probably talk about my opinions about that trainwreck in more detail actually, but the short version is that I am sickened that Blair has got away with such a blatant measure to remove the last vestiges of any checks on the PM's personal power.

Also, GIP. For reviews of things that aren't books, and general cultural noodling. I think I should restrict the letters one to stuff that's directly related to languages and words. Amusingly, the first step in making it was googling for a picture of a purple mandlebrot, and one of the first hits that came up was redbird's purple mandelbrot icon.

The kind of computer games I like are easy to learn, addictive and largely abstract. Preferably the action takes place in a single screen (though there may be multiple levels of increasing difficulty), and ideally the controls require no more than half a dozen keys. This means that there aren't really any modern games that I like as much as the old staples: Qix, Snake, Bubble Puzzle, and Donkey-Kong type games. And nothing from the past 20 years has lived up to Tetris!

( more gaming babble )

I think I need an icon for general geekery, (as opposed to talking about science or linguistics). I happened to stumble on a dollmaker that actually provides "long plait" as a hairstyle option, and has a reasonable amount of flexibility without being so over-complicated it's boring to use. So, behold, a vaguely manga-ish version of me!

I never found the piece of paper with my crucial information. But I was able to reconstruct the searches I did to look for a B&B and identify the correct place where I do, in fact, have a booking.

Last night, someone I'm very fond of but whom I hadn't talked to in ages messenged me. This made me very happy indeed.

I need a few more icons, I think. One to cover general geekiness, as opposed to linguistics- and biology-related geekiness. I think one for pretty things and culture, other than the alphabets one I use for that purpose at the moment, and possibly a separate one for music. I could consider one for travelling and tourism, but it would probably end up being a picture of a specific place which isn't really what I'm after. And one for talking about food.

For the last category, monanotlisa took a photo of the high tea we (Mona, darcydodo and I) enjoyed in San Francisco. She made me an über professional icon which I'm not using because I don't like looking at pictures of me in profile. But instead I made this icon from her photo. Comments and constructive criticism welcome.

Also, I've put up reviews of Neil Gaiman: American Gods and Bruce Sterling: Zeitgeist.

I am an idiot and have managed to leave my mobile phone chez pseudomonas. I am going to try to get it back but I'm not sure how easy this is going to be. So, people who were thinking of meeting up with me this week, especially lethargic_man, you might need to take note that there's a good chance I won't have my phone on me.

Though the occasion of my accidentally forgetting my phone was a very fun evening with pseudomonas, compilerbitch and doseybat. Most excellent conversation and it's really good to see such lovely people. *bounce*

Also, note the lovely icon that darcydodo made for me!

Today is the second day, with no weeks completed, of the Omer

I'm not really much of a fangirl generally, but one thing I do want to show my appreciation for is the film Amélie. I've poked around LJ looking for icons, but I never found anything that really grabbed me, just a lot of not-quite-right (and often unnecessarily animated) screencaps. Until today, when I saw aemilia_parker commenting in a friend's (locked) journal with this one. I don't otherwise know aemilia_parker, but she was happy for me to snag the icon.

Tautou is famous enough that no-one's going to mistake this for a picture of me, right? This image is also similar to one that's on a badge that rysmiel gave me a while back, which is probably another reason why I was drawn to it.

As I mentioned, lovely darcydodo made me some gorgeous icons for my birthday. And then I was inspired by her example to make a few of my own. So here they all are:

( icons )
Suggestions, comments, advice welcome as always. I've linked directly to the images on the LJ server, cos I can't be bothered to host them on my site right now. Now I'll have to see whether I need these enough to justify continuing to pay for LJ once my support windfall runs out.

So, there are two people I know who have exceptionally beautiful hands, and darcydodo happened to have a photo of both of them together. So I've cropped the hands from the pic and made them into an icon, with help from Darcy over IM. Cos I never really used that cells icon anyway; it was a good scientific photo, but not a very good icon.

If you happen to know who the people are, or can guess, don't think too hard about the implications, please. What can I say? It's better than LotR stills with 'I <3 Orly' scrawled across them. So, I gratuitously present:

Also, in case anyone has missed the extremely well-buried announcement of this, and cares, the mood text and the mood icon are now separated. So you can type free text in the 'other' box and still choose an icon from the drop-down list. Which is what I've done to associate my 'pleased' icon to my 'self-indulgent' mood.

More interestingly (at least I hope so!) I've posted a review of Foucault's Pendulum.

I've had a go at decorating a virtual teapot as a potential userpic:



Comments? Advice?

And yes, I do know that ooooolong is a tea, not a mood

Well, I was just complaining to shreena that all the digital photos of me that exist are in fancy dress. She suggested I use this:
as the basis for my icon. What do people think? Would it be a good icon, and if so, what should I do with it to make it into a truly funky icon?

*I believe the correct term is 'gratuitous icon post'