Slytherin Risen
The Online Haven of Ms. Katonic
Slytherin RisenThe Online Haven of Ms. Katonic |
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| The following entries may contain material on adult subjects or other things likely to disturb those of a narrow-minded or sensitive disposition. If you are one of them, why not save us all a lot of trouble and turn away now, hmm? |
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| Nov. 22nd, 2009 @ 06:31 pm Links | |||
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This week, I have been mostly feeling:  cheerfulRight, links! Have I got a collection for you! First off, the best thing I've seen all week: Rings Around The World, or The Rings of Earth, a short video on what the Earth would look like if it had rings. It's really good! If we all write in to Barack Obama, do you reckon he'll blow up the moon for us so we can have some rings? Talking of lobbying, the UK Government is thinking of introducing proposals to cut off accused filesharers without warning or indeed anything approaching due process of law. If you think that's a bad idea, sign this petition! (UK residents/citizens only.) Meanwhile, over in Minneapolis, you can if you wish go and see A Christmas Carol in Klingon. If I lived there, I'd be almost tempted. :) This post gets worse, I'm afraid. Much worse. First of all, there is The Meow Mix, which will put the fear of Bast into you for life. Next, the 30 Most Disturbing Twilight Products. I don't know whether my favourites are the sparkly dildo, the Edward Cullen silhouette wall decal, or Bella's uterus (don't ask). And finally, awesome multi-fandom sparkly news. For next year's Simpsons Halloween special, they plan to have Lisa fall in love with a vampire who sparkles. As if that wasn't funny enough, the vampire is voiced by none other than... Daniel Radcliffe. Told you it was awesome. :) |
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| Jul. 25th, 2009 @ 11:43 pm (no subject) | |||
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This week, I have been mostly feeling: sleepy Surprised no one from TGS picked up on this one - Top Gear presenter James May is looking for volunteers to help him build a new house in Surrey - made entirely out of Lego bricks. He's had three million of them delivered to Denbies Wine Estate in Dorking, Surrey (not a million miles from where I grew up) and with help from whoever turns up, plans to build an actual house from them. Were it not suspiciously close to Hard Work, I would be tempted to go. In further geek news, I may have just downloaded the PC version of Settlers of Catan. It's worryingly addictive. All I need now is the digital version of Puerto Rico and you may never see me again. And finally, the human body is said to actually glow. That's right, scientists claim that the human body emits a very faint luminescence not normally visible to the human eye. No word on what colour it is. |
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| Jun. 3rd, 2009 @ 08:17 pm (no subject) | |||
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This week, I have been mostly feeling: amused New Carmilla movie with proper lesbianism! Oh yes... Funky new web gadget: Mapumental. Does maps based on how long it'll take you to get somewhere on public transport! No more will you have to struggle getting to that place which looks so close on the map but in reality takes about three buses to get to. Presently in private beta, but I've signed up for an invite, so who knows, maybe I'll get one. UK maps only though, but it'll certainly be useful for me. Spinal Tap have a new song out! It's, er, interesting. :P But it was free. And it's called Saucy Jack and it's about Jack the Ripper, and I'm going to see them live at the end of the month so thought I'd better get some listening in. It's not bad actually! New hoax (maybe?) in London: a spate of memorial bench plaques all from the same family, all with sarcastic phrases. Genuine or a monumental pisstake? I'm thinking the latter, but it made me laugh. :) Doctors send a petition to WHO asking them to condemn homeopathy. About bloody time - there are some forms of complementary medicine that might actually work, and then there's homeopathy. Absolutely useless. Did a test one summer - over the counter antihistamines versus homeopathic pills. The antihistamines had been working well enough for a few weeks. Weather had been sunny and warm with moderate to high pollen counts, so I'd have been sniffling and sneezing quite badly with no meds. Came off the antihistamines and took the homeopathic pills as directed. HORRIFIC SYMPTOMS SO AWFUL I WAS BACK ON THE CLARITYN WITHIN THREE DAYS. Not the week I'd originally hoped to go for. Don't waste your time or money, folks. And finally, yesterday's XKCD, otherwise known as Twilight's Revenge. Nice. :) |
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| May. 9th, 2009 @ 03:31 pm Weekly Links Round-up | |||
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This week, I have been mostly feeling:  geekyAnd here is me getting my biology geek on - Mitochondria! Aren't mitochondria brilliant? They're former independent organisms that eos ago got taken over by other cells because of their ability to produce lots and lots of the ATP molecules that keep cells going (primarily by allowing things to pass through cell membranes, like food, waste products, things the rest of the organism needs). In return, the mitochondria are protected and cared for by the cells they form part of. You can tell they were former free living organisms because they have their own DNA that is nothing to do with the genome of the host organism. You inherit your mitochondria from your mother, because the mitochondria found in sperm don't become part of the embryo; they're left at the door, so to speak. Which is why variations in mitochondrial DNA can be used to track ancestry of a given organism/species via the female line. Next time you hear someone talking about mitochondrial DNA (and this crops up time and time again in pagan/new age circles, quite often by people who I suspect wouldn't know a mitochondrion if it threw a crystal at them), this is what they're referring to. And now there's a song about them! And you lot probably understand enough about them now to get the lyrics, so have a listen! On the topic of symbiosis, how to encourage kids to see things from both sides - It's Useful to Have a Duck. You can read it from either end, and if you read it from one side, you read about a little boy talking about how much he likes his toy rubber duck. Read from the other side... and you get to see the duck's perspective on what it gets out of things. Meanwhile, some researhers from Stanford are doing a survey on how knowledge about a pandemic among the general public might affect the outcome. So if you want to help, get yourself over there and fill their survey in. It is short and not difficult. Segueing neatly from human death to pixel death - 8 Bit Fatalities! Deaths from childhood computer games depicted realistically, with blood and guts and everything! Maybe not for the squeamish, that one. But on the subject of retro game - Atic Atac for Windows!!!! I haven't played this in years! Not since I switched PCs to one without a Spectrum emulator on it. Excuse me, I think my afternoon fun has been decided... |
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| Apr. 18th, 2009 @ 02:08 pm I have a Dreamwidth | |||
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This week, I have been mostly feeling:  lazyCurrently in the Jukebox: Feeder - Just The Way I'm Feeling Sort of. I signed up with OpenID so I could have a look round. It's nifty! I can't post any entries, which is annoying, but I do have reading and commenting ability, go me. I am unlikely to be moving permanently unless a significant number of you lot do too, but nevertheless I hope to use it. If you are not getting a full account yourself but still want to follow me, or indeed anyone else on your flist who is moving, this post talks you through your options. Half Blood Prince release date moves forward! By, er, two days. Still, the posters look nice... As does the trailer. Latest new member of LJ - ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} somalipirate. That's right, the Somalian pirates have a blog. *is amused* *but not amused enough to add it*More AmazonFail, this time involving the Kindle. Fortunately, there is an easy way around this. Don't buy a fucking Kindle in the first place, buy an actual paperback. They're great, being cheap, lightweight, recyclable, you can read them as many times as you like and they never stop working. Genius! This however is cool - Tetris furniture! It's furniture shaped like Tetris blocks. I think you can even stack them. Perfect for a geek living room. And this is also cool - Missing Human Chromosomes. Humans have 46 chromosomes. Our primate relatives have 48. Our common ancestor presumably also had 48. Where did the missing pair go in humans? The answer is, it didn't go missing at all. Turns out human chromosome pair 2 consists of two pairs of chromosomes fused together. And now it's been sequenced in more detail, the genes on HC2 line up pretty neatly with chimp chromosome pairs 12 and 13. Pretty awesome, eh? Lately, I'm noticing a distinct change in the way I do link posts. Once upon a time, I'd have posted a whole bunch of stuff to LJ, and by and large I still do. Increasingly though, certainly with links that require very little commentary, I'm bypassing LJ entirely and just sending it to Twitter. Partly it's to make posts on LJ look less like a big long list of things. Partly it's due to having a Twitter client in Firefox which makes the whole process easier. But I think mostly it's due to Twitter having taken off in a huge way, and no longer having a friends list of about four people. Speaking of which, my username over there is still ms_katonic, so if you have an account, feel free to add me (send a tweet saying follow ms_katonic, and it will do it for you instantly). Especially seeing as you now know it does contain unique content. ;) And finally, this is very cute: MyBrute! Join, create a little avatar thing, and beat up other people's avatars. It's rather addictive. :) |
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| Jan. 29th, 2009 @ 09:12 pm Queer SF... and Zombies. | |||
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This week, I have been mostly feeling:  amusedCurrently in the Jukebox: Within Temptation - Jillian (I'd Give My Heart) Sneak preview of new Torchwood to come at next week's NY Comic-con. Apparently it'll involve a five-part single adventure, and it'll basically be the Apocalypse. Again. While we're on the topic of queer SF, Stan Lee's created a gay superhero! Don't know if they're any good, but I live in hope. Asimov's Foundation series to be a movie. Awesome! *pencils it in* Ages since I read the Foundation series, to the extent I've forgotten much of the plot. But I enjoyed it at the time. Five Ways Obama Could Fail Spectacularly. Bit depressing, that. Although I do think that last one is a bit unfair - that could happen to anyone! Meanwhile, snaps of Bush after his last press conference indicate he may have been crying. Interpretations do vary though. Who cares though, it made me cackle. And finally, the literary event of the year! A rewrite of Jane Austen's finest works... with zombies. Yep, Eliza Bennet's been reinvented as a fighter against the undead. Lizzy the Zombie Slayer, as it were, with Mr Darcy as Angel. (I don't think he's a vampire with a soul though.) I want a copy Very Much. :D |
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| Jan. 11th, 2009 @ 11:40 pm Quick links before bed | |||
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This week, I have been mostly feeling: amusedFor thehalibutkid, who has this as an icon: Mandelbrot the Fractal Teddy! Someone's made a real one.Chocolate Beer! Want. The future is here - Back to the Future II, that is. Someone's found a way to convert cars so they run on rubbish. Who knows, by 2015 maybe it'll be a standard feature. I still want a hoverboard though. I was promised hoverboards! *pout* And finally, a little song about... The Internet! Sung by a geek songwriter called Jonathan, but not Coulton. It's called 3 Rules of the Internet and it is very catchy. |
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| Jan. 9th, 2009 @ 11:27 pm (no subject) | |||
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This week, I have been mostly feeling:  mellowCurrently in the Jukebox: Placebo - Nancy Boy LJ post a news announcement about the lay-offs. They reckon it's part of a plan to consolidate more things in Russia, so they don't need so many US staff. They also reckon LJ will be around for many more years to come, but they would say that, wouldn't they? Wording could have been better, and a lot of people are apparently angry at no severance pay or notice for laid-off workers (belies the sad goodbyes in the news post, eh?), so of course there is drama. Meanwhile, apparently the new beta version of the next Windows version is out. I do like XKCD's take on it, but I also have to say this - Vista's not THAT bad. It has it's quirks, and needing to approve *everything* gets a little old, but it does what it needs to. And I want this calendar: the iLove Girls Film Calendar - movie posters queered up and featuring only queer ladies. Brilliant! Pirates of the Lesbbean made me think of... quite a lot of you, actually. I'm totally ordering one. :) Meanwhile, Facebook has gone down in my estimation, as has Burger King. They've launched a Facebook application, whereby you defriend 10 people and get a free whopper (US residents only). There is no way this cannot generate wank; otoh if you wanted to carry out a cull, at least you can now get a free burger. Snark post is on JournalFen for your entertainment. The Whopper Virgins thread is even creepier than the OP, but the prediction of a Whopper Sacrifice group where people agree to friend and defriend each other to get food is probably on the money. Still, where there's figures, there's geekery, and someone has used the promo to work out Facebook's real value. It's less than the stock market valuation. Yesterday, the link of the day was the Absinthe Lollipops. Today, I think we've gone one better. BDSMers, medieval weaponry enthusiasts and gamer geeks, brace yourselves. I have found flails made out of 20 sided dice!!! Aren't they great? And finally in space, apparently they can hear *something* screaming. It's an extremely loud electromagnetic sound with no clue as to its origin. I don't want to invoke the screams of Azathoth the blind idiot god at the heart of all creation, however... |
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| Jan. 8th, 2009 @ 10:10 pm Links collection | |||
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This week, I have been mostly feeling: amusedCurrently in the Jukebox: Hole - Awful Anyway, to cheer myself up, here's what I've dredged off the net lately. Plus I wanted to show off this icon. :D One for carlanime: Some adult women are "adopting" hyper-realistic fake babies and treating them as their own children. Each to their own, and if their own kids are grown and/or they can't have kids, I suppose it's better than nothing. Plus having a child that won't talk back/throw tantrums/lie to you to get out of trouble/turn into a teenager is probably quite a bonus. Just as long as I don't get asked to babysit one.Katy Perry is offering cash for a genuine lesbian/bi woman to duet with her on That Song at the Grammys. Don't all jump at once. It's a catchy enough tune, but really, do the Isles of the Queer really need any more sex tourists? If it was a man in the aggressor position, you can bet your life everyone would think it a bit creepy and Not Cool. "My girlfriend likes to watch me snog other women, fancy it?" Er, no. OTOH, I can't really hate a song that has women all over the country singing about kissing girls and liking it. And talking of sex, here's something for the pervert with more money than sense: A $2000 rock-star themed vibrator with diamonds on it. Actually looks pretty cool... but $2k?? On a sex toy? Do me a favour. Quick, let us move on to less tawdry amusements. Here is a map of the Milky Way in Tube map style! It's very pretty, althoguh possibly a little confusing if you are not astronomically minded. Still science-y, but less technical: Two-headed calf born in South Africa. Didn't survive though - it was born very weak and got put down. Shame as it is rather cute. Wonder if they autopsied it... I know how he feels: Barack Obama to lose BlackBerry. He's putting up a brave fight, but it seems inauguration will mean no more emailing. Or Twittering. Or Facebook updates. Poor man. Mine's like my daemon, although I am possibly a bit too attached to my shiny tech toys. But if we didn't have them, we wouldn't have stuff like this - a forum thread in which you are challenged to create your fave vid game moments in MS Paint. Bad art ftw! But even better is this - how to make an electrified steampunk Monopoly set! Come on, one of you has the skills to assemble it, surely... Talking of steampunk - ABSINTHE LOLLIPOPS! Brilliant! Is tempting to order a few for future parties... And finally, they're making a movie of Where the Wild Things Are! I MUST see this film! |
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