julad

I love this font, and it comes with an interesting article for both typography geeks and connoisseurs of transformative works:

This is the story of the creation of a new font, Avería: the average of all the fonts on my computer.

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

I am on holidays on the NSW north coast with many other lovely fangirls. I've also very cleverly gotten horribly sick for three days and then, after finally getting over that, breaking my toe this morning. So I'm sitting on the couch with my foot elevated and iced, and trying to get some long overdue LJ posts written.

Post the first: things I keep meaning to recommend and never get around to it.

( Four software applications and one bank... )

Finally, a very quick and heartfelt anti-rec: just say no to Vodafone. For the love of all that is holy, just say no. I went there last year, and then I spent two months and a complaint to the telecommunications ombudsman getting out of there. And then my sister did the same thing. Just don't do it, mmkay?

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

I mentioned a while back that starting to do meditation was the most unexpected thing that happened for me last year. I've been meaning to do a post about it, but took longer than I thought, because I found it quite difficult to put this stuff into words. Finally I've got something down, though, so here goes.

( The backstory )

( The benefits: More amiable five-year-olds; Less mental friction; Obvious thing is obvious. )

( What didn't change )

( Yoga and meditation )

( Future plans )

I am clearly an absolute beginner at this. It's almost daunting - it's so obvious that I only know a drop in the ocean of this stuff. But that's okay. The good thing is, I really like what I've done so far and I feel very sure of the benefits. Even if all I do for the rest of my life is a daily ten minutes of watching my breath, I think it has already demonstrated that it's worth doing.

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

A few drive-by notes while I try to find time to post something substantial:

1. OMG OMG White Collar was awesome yay!

2. It probably won't have escaped your noticed that the Candadian Shack thing is on again. I haven't written a new one, but I did put up my old ones on the archive: http://archiveofourown.org/users/julad (The remainder of my stories will eventually, one day, at some point, follow.)

3. A huge thank you to everyone who gave me advice in October on the stupid $800 hospital bill saga. I went after both the hospital and Medibank using the advice I got, and eventually the hospital halved the bill and Medibank covered the remaining half. It all got finalised yesterday.

The advice and knowledge that gets shared in this space is so valuable, but you can't often put a dollar value on it. Well, this time I can: $818.75. Thank you again and again, people.

4. I finally bought a slow cooker. I've gone nuts filling the freezer with shredded beef and shredded chicken and massaman beef and green chicken curry, but now I'm running out of inspiration. Any recommendations for books or websites? It really is about inspiration for me - I rarely follow an actual recipe when I make anything - so I'm especially looking for beautiful pictures, interesting ideas, stuff that makes you go "wow, I want to make that!"

5. So there's this project that I used to work on, and the project manager (who is awesome) is leaving, and I just found out who they appointed in her place. This guy is a freaking idiot. He's one of those guys that runs around spouting lots of ideas that are completely fucking out of touch with reality, and then people he talks to come to people like me because they want me to implement an idea that this guy had, and people like me have to explain that no, that isn't actually technically feasible, and that actually if you think a bit more about it, it couldn't work how he says it will anyway. This guy used to get paid the same as me, and he was largely useless at what he did then. He's now got a huge leap up the corporate ladder and about 25K more a year to manage a very costly and complex project that he is completely and utterly unequipped to handle. He has no expertise in the subject matter. He has massively insufficient project management experience for a project of this size and scope. And this guy is really obviously an ideas guy, but this is not a project in the ideas stage; it's a project in the delivery stage. I'm not sure this guy delivered anything more difficult than a pizza in the entire time I worked with him. It's absurd that this guy got appointed.

But that isn't my point. This is my point: If I'd still worked at that place, I would never have applied for that project manager role, even though I had experience on that specific project, I had delivered some fairly big projects myself, I had relevant skills and expertise, and so on. I wouldn't have applied because I would have assumed I wouldn't get it. I would have assumed that I didn't have enough qualifications and experience for a project that daunting. I would have assumed that it was too big of a step up for me.

And so here's what I've learned: you might as well apply for that job that is too big of a leap for you, because actually, you never know what kind of ignorant, ill-equipped fucking fool is going to put himself forward for it. And you know what? You might not be ready, it might be a stretch, you might have to do some fast talking about how you're right for the job, but for fuck's sake: you would be a way fucking better option than that dude.

That is all.

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

At the last minute, in a strange fit of "why the hell not," I offered to write Malcolm in the Middle for Yuletide.  Then I had a heart attack when I actually matched on it, because OMG, seven seasons, a dozen primary characters, and more vicious, hilarious social commentary than you can poke a sharp, possibly flaming, stick at.  But then in the end I actually had a lot of fun writing it.  Because duh, it's Malcolm in the Middle.  How could you not have fun with those characters?

Life is a test - futurefic, Malcolm, Reese, Dewey. Written for winning hearts for Yuletide 2011.

Thanks to kaneko and astolat for beta.  All mistakes and non-baby-saving my own.  ;)
This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

OMG, hello The Internet! It is so nice to see you after four days apart. It's felt like quite a lot longer.

I've just spent the whole Christmas long weekend at my parents' place at the coast, with the siblings and the sibling-offsprings, and without the internet or TV or even, a lot of the time, phone reception. I loaded my yuletide story by holding my phone up to the window and waving it around slowly, like a person dowsing for water, except I was dowsing for that tiny patch of 3G reception that would let me load a web page without it timing out.

Yeah, I looked ridiculous, and my arm hurt, but it was worth it: I got At Heart, a Shelter (2007) story. It's a glimpse into the post-movie future of Shaun, Zack, Cody and Gabe, and gets the characters spot on, and brings back the beauty of the movie for me. A big thank you to my author, and I wait excitedly for the reveal. :D

If you haven't seen Shelter, it is most enjoyable: a surf/skate-flavoured take on an intertwined m/m relationship and family drama. It's done with a laidback style, a good sense of humour, likeable characters, is not always predictable, and for me it does a great job of laying out its more serious subject matter without getting weighed down by it. Trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKsCvcvoZcE (and then once you've seen the movie you can read the story!)

Christmas was fun overall, but my head is still echoing with the shrieks of far too many 20-month-olds for one small house. Most of the time they were beautiful and adorable and hilarious, and they were just old enough this year to be delighted by the tree and the lights and the presents, but oh my god, they were full-on to keep up with, and when they were bad they were horrid. There were six of us and three of them, but I still feel like I've worked a double shift for four days. (I suppose it wasn't really the kids, it was also, you know, Christmas, and all the shopping and cooking and cleaning and organising and everything, but somehow it feels like the kids are to blame for the tiredness. Possibly because they had us up at 4.30 most mornings.)

I have really big plans now to sleep off the rest of the afternoon, and spend a beautiful day tomorrow reading yuletide stories and watching shows and generally being a giant lazy ass, which is going to be awesome.

Happy holiday season to everybody! I hope it has gone well so far and continues well into the New Year. :)

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

Having taken three days to make up my mind and submitting at the last possible second, I'm now running off to work! I will come back and edit tonight with details!

( ETA: Here we go with Suits, Bring It On and Shelter... )

That is all, I think. Thank you so much in advance, lovely author, and good luck!!

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

Hi beautiful list,

I've done a big update of my flist/circle and switched to Dreamwidth as my main reading "place", which also involved filtering out everybody on the LJ list who is also on the DW list. So just a heads up that if you have a DW account, I'm probably reading you there now, and you might want to update any filters/access/whatever if it's desperately important to you that I read your filtered post or whatever. (I know, I know, really it's not. *g*) I've still got ltos of transitioning to do, but hopefully that was the bulk of the change.

In other news, I've decided to venture back into the warzone and do yuletide this year. Oh my god. I think the last story I actually posted was Yuletide 2008. My few attempts at writing since then have stalled at about the third word. But! Sooner or later I had to write something, right? And this year it's sooner. Um. OMG. Wish me luck!

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

I never did post an update on my laptop-buying dilemma.

About four weeks ago, I finally made up my mind and bought the 13" MacBook Air, and I'm incredibly happy with that choice. It's a gorgous machine. It's fast, it's sleek, it's beautiful and it's so freaking light. A month later, I'm still amazed when I pick it up. The first couple of times I picked it up, my mind kept blurting, disconcerted, "It's cardboard!" It doesn't feel flimsy like cardboard, but it feels light and thin like cardboard. And in truth, I still have that 'cardboard' moment every couple of days.

I'm a product of a particular generation. I expect computers to take up a certain amount of space and weigh a certain amount. But this computer has been, for me, one of those moments when I realise that I live in the future. I don't have a jetpack, sure, but I have a computer that is amazingly fast, powerful, and sleek, and feels as thin and light as cardboard. How fucking crazy is that?

When I got home with it, I turned it on, I plugged in my backup drive, and the computer migrated all my data and all my settings in ninety minutes while I read stories on AO3. And that was it. I was transitioned. Even my browser history was there. Everything was how I wanted it. I re-opened what I was doing before I went to the store, and got on with it. My old MacBook sat on the floor by my bed for three weeks, because I thought I'd need to open it to get stuff or use something, but I never did. It was most seamless computer transition I've ever made. It was so seamless, in fact, that it actually has been the least exciting computer transition I've ever made. It's hard to explain this, but if you invested less time setting up and settling in on your new computer than you did driving to the store and buying it, some kind of threshold has been passed, you know? It's like when you got bandwidth so fast that you could download music faster than you could play it, or a few years later, when suddenly you could download video faster than you could watch it. The excitement of watching the minutes tick down on a download, or the thrill of spending an entire weekend copying all your old files into shiny new folders and going into all your settings and setting them all again, is something that I'm never going to experience again. In the software as well as the hardware of this machine, I'm realising that there used to be a past that I assumed would always be present, but I live in the future now.

So.

I'm sitting on my couch with the TV on and my cardboard-light laptop on my lap. My iPhone has been tossed onto the couch next to me. I realise now that I literally tossed it, this amazing device, from the kitchen a few metres away, without a thought. I've already used my laptop to accomplish a dozen different things this morning, and my iPhone for a good half-dozen, from texting my friends to checking facebook, to looking at photos of me and my nephews that my sister took with her own iPhone and then transferred to mine, to updating my to-do list, to timing my breakfast steak. This technology has made my life better in so many small, barely measurable ways, and I have used it all morning without thinking about it - it just worked. At heart, that's what Steve Jobs did for me. And he really, actually, did it for me; he was driven to do this for me and millions of people like me, and I know this because if he hadn't been, this morning wouldn't have happened the way it did. From the personal computer, the graphical user interface, through the Macintosh Portable and AppleTalk to the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, Apple didn't invent everything (although it invented a lot), and it didn't get there first with everything (although it got there first a lot), but what it always, always did was relentlessly drive technology towards the experience I had this morning - far-reaching, seamless, life-enhancing, easy.

There's something very rich and very deep about the user experiences created by Apple. There's something very elegant and simple, powerful and balanced. There's a phenomenally thought-out philosophy of form and function that resulted in this amazing device that I used to time my steak while I organised my day, and then tossed across the room to land on the couch and wait for me to join it there. There's something they've achieved that I don't know how to put into words, but when I stop and think about it, it's just profound.

There is so much that is extraordinary about Apple products, about the Apple company, and about Steve Jobs, and an incredible amount to learn from them, but in the aftermath of Steve Jobs' death, these are the words that resonated with me the most:

And so more than ever, I find myself inspired. Steve’s untimely death reminds us we can never give up. He could have given up at any point in the seven years since his first cancer diagnosis, but he did not. The vast majority of Apple’s unprecedented resurgence took place while Steve Jobs stared death in the face. How many of us could have lasted this long at all, let alone accomplish all that he did along the way?

Ten years ago today, we still had not yet met the iPod. The last of Steve’s five decades on this Earth ended up being his most accomplished by far. Remember that whenever you think your best days are behind you. We can’t control when our lives begin, and we can’t really control when they end. All we have is what’s in between. Make it count.

Steve did.

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

I know I have a few folk in the Australian health industry on the flist, so I'm hoping desperately that somebody can give me some advice on a stupid, ridiculous hospital billing saga.

Here's my tale of woe: I had to get some tests done. I was referred to a private hospital. Medibank told me I was covered for the tests. Separately, the hospital told me I was covered by Medibank for the tests. I signed a financial disclosure thingy from the hospital that said I had no out-of-pocket expenses. I had the tests done, and I was not required to pay anything. I just signed on the paperwork which had my insurance details.

( Months later, I got a bill from the hospital for eight hundred dollars… )

In the meantime, can anybody tell me of a health fund in Australia that doesn't suck?

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

So, I accidentally let the domain on yearningvoid.net expire a couple of days ago, leading to creepy domain-squatting content occuping the site where all the stories used to be.

I've since gotten in and renewed the domain; hopefully normal service resumes shortly. :)

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

I have a very very terrible first world problem.

My main computer is the 2006 MacBook, and it's pretty due for replacement. It works, but it's slow, the hinge is broken so it only stays open at particular angles, the CD/DVD drive won't eject unless you hold the laptop at a particular angle... it's time.

My only real requirement in a laptop is a) that it's a Mac, and b) that it has at least 160GB hard drive space (my current HD size, very full), but ideally a bit more. Everything else is negotiable.

It was a no-brainer for me to buy a new MacBook to replace my old MacBook, because it gave me everything I wanted at the lowest end of the Mac price range. I was just waiting for the next hardware update before I bought. Aaaaand.... instead of being updated, it's been discontinued. Thank you so much, Apple.

( I have no idea what to do now. )
People, I'm sure for a normal person this wouldn't be rocket science, but I cannot make up my frigging mind! Advice and perspectives needed! What do you use? How does it work for you?

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

You may have heard news of the flooding we're having in Queensland. It's been bad since Christmas, but there were some horrific flash floods overnight and Brisbane is now flooding.

I'm fine and my family is fine, and we all are on high enough ground that we can sit it out at home. I'm on the edge of one of the badly affected areas, but fortunately I'm on a hill.

I've never seen anything like this. The roads around the corner from me are about thigh deep in water. Places I go every day, if I was there now, the water would be over my head.

If you've spent enough time in Brisbane, you've seen the markers around the city showing the high water mark of the 1974 floods. They're on buildings and signposts and bridges, a reminder of something that the people of that time didn't want us to forget. It always gave me a funny feeling to look at them, because those lines were so high up in the air. I remember looking at one of those markers, craning my neck looking up, and then looking at the Brisbane River, and thinking, WTF? How could there possibly be that much water in this river, that it went that high up? It's now predicted that the floods will exceed 1974 levels on Thursday. It gives me a very funny feeling indeed, to think that those markers could be going under water.

If you would like to help, there is a disaster relief fund for those affected. By the time this is done, it will be quite a few.

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

Before I do a New Year's post, I found this meme thing rather entertaining. via needleandspoon...

1. What was the last thing you put in your mouth?

Drink: one of those combined fruit and vegetable juices. My sister bought it for me on Boxing Day because I was dying for some carrot, apple and ginger juice (post-Christmas detox urgently needed) and had been unable to obtain it despite going to two supermarkets and two juice bars. This was the nearest thing she could find.

Food: leftover lime jelly made with real lime juice and vodka, which was part of my alcohol-soaked Christmas rocky road. (You're probably starting to detect why I needed the post-Christmas detox.)

2. Can you play Guitar Hero?

I can just barely cope with the drums. On the easiest setting.

3. Name someone who made you laugh today?

It's New Year's Day and I have only been awake for two hours. I haven't laughed yet. Oh, I probably laughed at myself trying to do yoga after weeks of neglecting it. That was embarrassing.

However, I will take this opportunity to mention WHEN PARENTS TEXT, which had me laughing until I hurt my stomach the other night. For example:

MOM: the text that i just sent u, i sent to the wrong person over an hour ago. I just found out cuz they sent me a text saying “i don’t know who this is but good luck with the pumpkin bread.”

Of course, my parents can't even text. I texted them from the shops over Christmas and my sister said, "You know they're never going to see that, right?" And I said, "Yes, but at least now I can say I tried." Then I bought all the groceries I wanted.

( The rest )

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

Is is just me, or is Vodafone's customer service MINDBLOWINGLY bad? Like, TELSTRA bad. TPG BAD. Haven't been through this level of incompetence and torment in several years bad?

This random post brought to you by one iPhone 4 shipped but never delivered three weeks ago, three weeks of absolutely no information, one hour-long phone call that told me nothing, one promised call back that never materialised, one email to customer service never responded to, one more call abandoned after fifteen minutes on hold, and the current attempt, where I'm up to 35 minutes on hold and counting. Oh, and my misspelled name on all my account information.

At this point all I want them to do is cancel my order so that I never have to deal with them again, but unfortunately I cannot fucking well accomplish this until I am able to deal successfully with somebody from Vodafone.

Update: Call answered after 40 minutes. "Unfortunately nobody is available who can help you with this matter at this time. Can I arrange for somebody to call you tomorrow?"

It's never going to end. I have that horrible sinking feeling.

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

Oh my god. People, I do not own a bicycle. I am a pedestrian. I will generally defend pedestrians to my cyclist friends and bitch about cyclists to my pedestrian friends.

But OH MY FUCKING GOD.

Let's say you are in a nice park doing some kind of nice activity with lots of grown ups and lots of kids. And a nice young lady comes up to you and says "Hi, do you know you are sitting on the bike path? Cyclists come through here really fast. You had better move or you could get injured or a cyclist could get hurt."

And you say, "Thanks, we're aware that it's a bike path. Other people have told us and some of the cyclists that have come through have told us." And then you don't move.

And the nice young lady goes, "umm, ok." And keeps walking.

And as soon as she's out of sight of you, SHE CALLS THE COPS ON YOU, YOU FUCKING TOOLS. YOU COLLOSSAL FUCKING IDIOTS.

People, in case you don't know:

* Cyclists go fast
* Cyclists can't stop very fast
* Cyclists can't always swerve fast
* Cyclists often have their feet attached to the pedals
* When confronted with a pedestrian sitting on their bike path, they have the choice of running into you or knocking themselves to the ground, bike and all
* If you've ever seen a pedestrian who's been hit by a bike, they look like theyve been dragged behind a car for 30 metres
* If you've ever seen a cyclist who's come off a bike to avoid hitting a pedestrian, they probably have a limb in a cast. If they're really lucky, they're only missing half the skin on one of their arms or legs. They'll be hobbling for weeks.
* If somebody tells you to get off the bike path, get off the fucking bike path for everybody's fucking sake.

YOU ARE ENTITLED TO ENTER YOURSELF INTO THE DARWIN AWARDS. YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO BRING OTHER PEOPLE WITH YOU.

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

Randomly, five things that improve my life in small ways:

• TV Calendar. It tracks when episodes of stuff will air. You tick which shows you want to see. You see on a calendar what episodes air when. You can set it to your own timezone. Cool.


• Readability. It reformats web pages. You save it as a browser bookmark. When you go to a page that has you either leaning in and squinting or leaning back going 'WTF', you click the bookmark. The page becomes readable, and it looks really, really nice.


• Things. You think of stuff. You put the stuff in Things. Then the stuff is not taking up space in your head. Best understood in context of Getting Things Done. (I have both the Mac and iPhone versions, and I think it works best when you've got both.)


• Mailplane (Mac). You have multiple gmail accounts. Logging in and out in the browser is a pain. Having your accounts in an email program ends up doing weird things with gmail labels and stuff. You get Mailplane. Your email life gets simpler.


• TED talks. Twenty minute presentations by smart, passionate, amazing people. Mostly people you've never heard of, on topics you never heard of, that you wished you knew about before now. Browse by topic. Some random favourites of mine: Falling in love with a fish (and a really crazy way of farming). How to get rich by fighting corruption. Environmental racism. Our psychological immune system. Jamie Oliver getting really stroppy about what we eat. The design (or lack thereof) of public spaces. You can stream, download, or subscribe in iTunes or wherever.

Tell me of nice things too!

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

Hi people.

The latest LJ malfeasance has finally provoked me into taking a few more tottering steps towards dreamwidth. I tried to do the adding people thing. I may not have got it right. I bookmarked my dreamwidth reading list, such as it is, next to my LJ flist, so that I will read both. This is tottering, like a snail. I'm doing less of a migration and more of a floaty, abstracted drift.

( RL stuff herein )

I am watching, with a great deal of starstruck fannish love, NCIS LA. Oh my god. I don't even know.

I am also watching, with much love, White Collar, Leverage and Castle. I just mainlined the entirety of The Middleman, after toying with it for over a year. After the amazingness that was Yuletide, I'm toying with Mythbusters.

( Vampire Diaries and Twilight - does anybody actually care about Twilight series spoilers? )

Um, and that is me, more or less. I am going to try to be more post-y and more fannish, so hopefully a bit more soon. :)

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

I am loving getting virtual snow in this week of mid thirty (Celcius) temperatures! Thank you! :)

In other news, this is a frantic drive-by post: on top of a huge week at work, I have a Skunkhour concert on Tuesday night and Custard+Powderfinger on Thursday (woo!), and then Friday I get my wisdom teeth removed, then I go to my parents for a few days of recovery. I am packing for the weekend today because I don't think I'll get another chance. At this point I am actually looking forward to the surgery because it means I get some time off, and hopefully some really good mind-altering drugs. \o/

In other news, White Collar. I just saw the pilot. Holy crap. *g*

Last year, in a fit of anti-consumerist spite, I refused to buy Christmas presents for my friends and family. Instead, I bought charitable donations on their behalf, tailored to each person's interests and cares, and on Christmas Day they got bundled up information about each charity so that they knew where the donation was going and what it was going to help with. It turned out everybody was really happy when they got their "presents", and now my sister is monitoring her microfinance loans on Kiva and my sister-in-law is giving regular donations to RiverKids and so on. The whole thing turned out to be completely awesome.

So I'm going to do it again this year and I need to find new charities and causes for everyone (because giving to the same cause twice feels a bit like giving the same Christmas present twice *g*).

Does anybody want to suggest their dearly-held causes/charities for me to look into? I'm open to anything, but these are some of the cares and concerns of my family and friends:

- children in poverty & global children's health issues
- access to nutrition and sport/fitness opportunities in Australia and globally
- disadvantages for people in remote areas of Australia
- women's education, especially in scientific and medical fields
- engineering and construction related, e.g. sustainability, disaster relief
- endangered species preservation (particularly plants)

I don't care if it's tax deductible but I do want to be confident that the money gets used effectively. Smaller, less-known things are especially welcome.

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).