I have voted even though my polling station has moved and I now have to walk 10 minutes each way instead of 7, the horror...
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JulesJones
@JulesJones@mendeddrum.org
mastodon 4.7.2🔶🇪🇺🇬🇧
I write science fiction, fantasy, and (mostly) lgbt romance. I read *lots* of things.
Started on Usenet and mailing lists, added LJ and IRC, moved from LJ to DW, added Twitter then moved to Mastodon and Bluesky.
197 Followers
176 Following
35 Posts
Joined November 06, 2022
Website:
Email:
jules.jones@gmail.com
Replying to
@raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie @randulo@mastodon.social @grassrootsforeurope@mas.to That's exactly what some people did, to go by some of the morning-after-the-night-before reaction interviews on television from people who weren't Leavers but assumed Remain would win.
I was on AliExpress yesterday (bad move), and have an email this morning to say my Majohn flex nib is on the way. I also ordered a Jinhao Century to put it in, since apparently they will fit together. I did manage to make saving throw v shiny regarding the half price Jinhao 20s, though.
RE: @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu
In general I'm pro-EU (and I'm very glad they have a presence on Mastodon). But this nonsense... About 99% of the reaction is negative, and multiple people are explaining the difference between generative AI and analytical AI.
The techbro confusion between generative and analytical is very, very deliberate, and this shows why. "AI" used to be about analytical models, which are useful and come with far fewer problems. Things like the analysis of medical images to provide better results in detecting/distinguishing problems than humans achieve are a real benefit to humanity. The original technology behind the speech recognition software I've used for 26 years could be described as AI.
The techbros hijacked the term to make their plagiarism machines also sound like a boon to humanity - and we end up with this nonsense.
Glory be, I went to the Colourmart site to check the details of the last order to put it into Ravelry, and managed not to buy anything while I was there. Having just put the previous order away and seen the size of the stash was a good incentive in this.
#AmKnitting
Currently dithering over whether to spend the rest of the afternoon to a) talk some more about #Blakes7 over on my Dreamwidth, where I have posted more often in the last 10 days than in the previous 10 months courtesy of a "talk about Blake's 7" meme; b) mess about with some new #FountainPenInk and then talk about it on DreamWidth; c) work on getting an agent for the finished manuscript; d) finish finding and typing in the handwritten text for the WiP; e) do the laundry; f) vacuum.
"Tidy my room" is not on that list. I am aiming for the achievable this Sunday. 🤣
It's designed for 18mm tubes so does a nice job of holding the 5ml sample vials ink samples usually come in. The interesting thing is that it has a perforated silicone membrane in the lower half, which grips the tube to hold it steady. So steady that I was able to turn the rack upside down and the two test tubes I'd put in it didn't fall out. :-) Granted, they were empty, but I don't think the weight of ink would be enough to pull them loose. It's a solidly constructed piece of kit, as it should be given that the intended audience is biochemical labs.
Downside for pen people is that you need to take the vial out to read the label, which means pulling it free of the silicone membrane, so a bit slower than just flicking through the traditional shoe box. Putting a little bit of label on the vial lid with a tiny sample of the ink would be a good idea with this one. But if the membrane's grip is good enough to hold the tube even with the rack on its side it'll be easier to find somewhere to stuff it out of the way. I can see myself getting a couple more of these if I do actually manage to do some decluttering in order to store even more hobby stuff (or "junk" as Spousal Unit likes to call it).
#PennedPossibilities 980 Have you ever had your work plagiarized or stolen?
4 ISBNs listed in the Anthropic AI class action settlement. There would be a lot more titles if they had to pay on everything they stole, and not just the titles registered with the US Copyright Office.
About to go. Had a good time in spite of the whining the afternoon it really hit me. The people from the anime con were lovely and definitely fun sharing the hotel with them. Same time next year.
I have finally managed to give money to #eastercon2028 resulting in a low enough membership number that I suspect a good many other people had also not attempted it for a while after several attempts to get the website to cough up with a registration link.
Replying to
At least 90 of the blighters. Change that "may" to *will*. Even I will admit that this is more pens than I need, or indeed am likely to ever ink. Even allowing for twenty or so of those being All The Preppies plus a few extra of the Crystal to use with pigment ink, that's a lot of pens.
I may need to buy another 48 slot wallet for the "to be eBayed" and/or palming off at the next Eastercon meet. Which is where some of them came from in the first place. 🤣
Replying to
"All of them" refers to the standard line. I have a couple of the Wa Modern Maki-e collectable versions, but wouldn't actually go out and collect them, given they're more than double the price to get some pretty screen printing on the barrel.
Replying to
Anyway, at some point some of these are probably going on eBay, as I have discovered that I do not like Wing Sung aerometric fillers (or any aerometrics for that matter) because they're such a pain to clean. Yes, I could just keep filling them with the same ink, but a) most of them aren't ones I really want to use as daily writers, b) the point of having eleven billion bottles of ink is to actually use them , at least a couple of times. If I want to keep filling something with the same ink it will be my new best friend the Jinhao 20, not least because that actually can be stripped down to clean relatively easily if I fancy a change.
Fanfic as resistance panel - so many thinky thoughts that I'm going to have to watch the replay to scribble some of them down.
Last weekend's pen tat from AliExpress included the Majohn A1 pen disassembly tool. I have now disassembled the Jinhao 20 nib unit involved in The Unfortunate Incident when I tried to fill it for the first time (nib down on a tiled floor). I know a) it works on a Jinhao nib unit, b) more about the internal anatomy of a Jinhao 10/20 nib unit, c) if that one wasn't already toast it is now.
Good thing I effectively got a 20 for free in last week's batch because the silly buggers sent me the wrong colour and have presumably decided they'd rather refund me than have me ship it back. Since it's in the form of bonus aka store credit I'd better go and spend it, hadn't I?
Not sure if I want to get a Majohn nib after all, because the Jinhao nibs are perfectly nice.
Replying to
@CottonCandyandRazorblades @AlexGallagher Apart from the obvious problems with that image, the two wee lads are giving me serious Midwich Cuckoos vibes.
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@Parker51 that's the problem with de-stashing. You go to the place where you can set your current shiny things free, and while you're there you see new shiny things in need of a loving home.
Anyone know what the model number of the Jinhao with wooden body and black cap is? The thing is *massive* - that's a Jinhao X750 next to it for scale.
If I remember correctly it arrived in a pack of second hand pens from eBay several years ago. Rather nice converter which I failed to take a photo of but which looks higher quality than the current bog standard ones.
Edit: Joel has identified it as an 8802.
This would make a wonderful shawl.
I have decided that I really really like Jinhao 20 pens, which is a good thing because I now have several of them after a binge in the shop that is selling some of the basic colours at half price. I also have the Majohn disassembly tool, which I will use this weekend to practice on the nib unit that had An Unfortunate Accident when I was about to put the converter with its first fill in.
I should probably have bought a spare nib while I was buying the tool, because I couple of places have them on offer and it's probably just the nib itself that's damaged, not the complete unit.
Replying to
@jimp@masto.ai I did add my ten pack of different models of Wing Sung NOS individually, but that's because having used a couple of them the rest are going on eBay. They're very pretty but I know I won't use them given how fiddly they are to clean, and they may as well go to a good home with someone who will appreciate them.
Replying to
It is now "had" and it was a distinct improvement on the bacon I had at breakfast, where sadly I had gone light on the sausage and heavy on the bacon based on previous mornings, only to discover that this morning it was the other way round.
The bread wasn't great, but it was edible and all in all that was an enjoyable late lunch.
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop and there is a shop that will do international shipping of unframed prints. I suddenly have more options for Other Half's birthday present.
Boosted by @cstross@wandering.shop
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop Oh, and "check first" goes double if you're a children's author. I know that someone else with a similarish name to me decided to call their book "Dolphin Dreams" well after mine was published, because it somehow got attached as an "other editions" to the Amazon listing for mine and vice versa. Hers was a children's book. Mine... is not. I looked for Amazon's author customer service contact as soon as I'd recovered from the shock, and pointed out that it might be a good idea to fix that immediately if not sooner.
Replying to
@rpluim @etchedpixels @cstross You wouldn't even need a lot of conventional explosives, if you know how to re-enact assorted industrial disasters in the UK over the last fifty years and place a few innocent looking oil drums full of metal powder in strategic locations ahead of time. Imagine how much fun Flixborough would have been with bonus uranium dust.
Replying to
@gmh@mastodon.social @neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk $EMPLOYER pays for corporate iPhones because they're secure enough to be allowed near our internal systems. There was some *very* unhappy discussion on the relevant Teams channels this week after various people discovered their work phones were now demanding their personal credit card or passport details. I get the distinct impression that Words Are Being Had with Apple by corporate IT management.
Replying to
@jwleblan@mastodon.social thanks. :-) I've had a look on eBay for that model, and yes, that's it.
There are several finishes, and now I've seen it I'm reminded that I looked at the shell version years ago and decided that I didn't need something bigger than the shell one I already had in a different model, no matter how pretty it was.
Replying to
@fallen_angela@tech.lgbt Curse the fact that state pension age seems to be retreating at a rate of knots?
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@cstross@wandering.shop And if you're an obscure writer, hope that much better known writers do the same, especially during a unrelated storm between two other authors about "I'm successful so they stole my title". Anyone not looking at the copyright dates would have assumed that I was trying to hang on coat tails. It's happened to me at least twice twice, with different authors.
(I would be extremely surprised if it was anything other than pure coincidence. It's not exactly unlikely for multiple people to think a word sounds like a nice fit for their book.)
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop "Only two?" she says only half jokingly.
I wonder if this has ever happened with "zeitgeist".
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop @davidgerard@circumstances.run more seriously, the new Blue ray sets have optional new SFX with newly filmed physical model work and a little CGI which manage the trick of looking almost exactly like what they would have looked like in 1978 but with a decent budget. A reboot might improve the wobbly sets, but I don't actually want more than we already have with the "lovingly restore and gently update SFX" edition of the original series, because I don't think they'll catch lightning in a bottle twice when it comes to scripts and cast.