Eggs and Endorphins

Back from OVFF.

That was awesome!

grinnellian2001 was reading a book on food that I thought was written by the blogger who helps run the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, so I shanghaied (sorry. not intentional) her, stakebait, and Mary Alice (has an lj, don't remember it) after the Elegant Arts Tea and Games event today to go down, grab Chinese food in Chinatown, an hit the Factory for dessert.

Since I was (naturally) put on the spot to pick a restaurant, I chose Mandarin Garden (on Mott Street, a bit north of Wo Hop and south of Canal), which I've -mostly- done for dim sum, but which I know some in our circle (possibly even me) have done for dinner and never complained about. The first dish we settled on was Peking Duck -- which it developed, none of my fellow dinners except Mary Alice had tried, and which is one of my favorite dishes (even if it's served differently at different places). To round out the meal (keeping in mind that the duck was priced as two dishes and advertised as a two course dish, so we figured it could serve as two), we got Lotus & Veggies, and to accommodate both my fetish for spicy and grinnellian2001's desires to have something safe on the table, a quong bao (eg, kung pao, as I'm used to seeing it) chicken.

The duck was ordered and arrived first--and was -totally- worthwhile. The first course consisted of the traditional sandwich buns, hoisin sauce, scallions, and the skin of the ducks with the drumsticks, and was delivered with all due ceremony (not quite the same as what we got at the Peking Duck House, up the street, but different and cool). The duck meat, delivered with the rest of the meal, was worked into a delicious dish, with a nice savory but not significantly spicy sauce.

The other two dishes also worked well -- the veggies were a really tasty mix, with a lot of mushrooms, along with the lotus roots and snow peas, and the sauce had a slice spice edge to it. And the kung bao (which, to be fair, is one of my favorite "simple" dishes) was perfectly spiced--enough bite and pieces of hot pepper to keep me interested, but not so much as to be a problem for those of us with a lower (but not nonexistent, of course) taste for heat.

The dinner a success, we headed for the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, right off of Mott--an establishment so old that my first memory of them is discovering that I was (not permanently, fortunately) allergic to mangoes there at the age of, perhaps, 8 (if so, that would be 1980), and only later rediscovered them a few years ago as what they are now (at least, I don't -think- they had quite the variety of flavors they have now then, though they always had some oddball ones)--an excellent boutique ice cream parlor that makes their own, albeit with a regrettable lack of chairs, nestled in the heart of Chinatown. I can't speak of what anyone else got, (though they were out of pumpkin pie, I tasted the zen butter, which is butter with a taste of coconut, and I'm sure that grinnellian2001 got the lichee and some other flavor (they do split their smalls, as all right-thinking boutique ice cream places do)) but I decided I didn't need to be adventurous this time and got the mocha chip and the green tea, which made a lovely combination.

The only issue, of course, was the "standing outside eating ice cream" factor (oh, -that's- why the haagen daaz nearby gets any business!)--I've got to get a better idea of where one can get a seat near the CICF (even if it's outdoors).

drcpunk will be sitting Shiva at our place tonight from 5pm and tomorrow from 7pm.

Directions will follow in a locked post; email/comment if you don't have access and want them.

Lisa's (drcpunk's) dad died today, about 3 weeks after he went into the hospital with what turned out to be multiple major organ failures. The funeral will be tomorrow (or maybe monday) at a time to be determined Monday, at 10:30AM, on Staten Island (directions are here).

(stolen from http://www.aisb.org/~ddj/)

http://news.cs.cmu.edu/article.php?a=1029

Summary:

RHAT, sponsoring an open source, OS promoting lab at CMU...in the Gates building, built by a grant from Bill Gates.

(This is the "mostly avoiding specifics" review of Rosemary & Rue. I might do another with a lot more spoilers, or I might not (I'll likely put it under a flock, though))

( Review Ahoy! )

The Ruined Tower
Joshua Kronengold
ttto Under the Gripping Beast
inspired by Horsetamer's Daughter

With a circle made of horses, and a plain first level screen,
I fought and beat the wizards who would rule what they had seen
They granted me an eight domain, which was not theirs to give,
And I shall strive to keep it free as long as I can live

Inside the ruined tower, my horses run and play.
Inside the ruined tower, the wizards stay away.
My people love my power, for it keeps the plains folk free
As I have won our freedom, so shall we forever be.

I know that I grow older, so I search the land for power,
I hate to be the only one--alone within my tower.
But though there's power in the land, there's no one here like me.
No one with strength that's great enough to make the wizards flee.

Inside the ruined tower, I pace upon the straw
Inside the ruined tower, time is an open maw,
For I'm an only child, and I dare not have a babe,
For I would lose my power, and my land would be enslaved.

The years have fallen on me, and I know my sun will set,
But my people still have freedom, for I have not fallen yet,
I know the lords will rule again as soon as I am done.
Each day that I can have is like a year that I have won.

Inside the ruined tower, the horses come and go
Inside the ruined tower, I stand against time's flow
Though he yet hunts my footsteps, still I will not yield to death.
My power keeps my people free while I can take
a breath

Lisa and I are not -actually- doing a grand tour--but we are doing enough cons this ye\
ar that one could argue it anyway. Spring cons included Lunacon(Rye, NY), Concertino \
(NEfilk Massachusets), Origins (Columbus), Dexcon (NJ), Intercon (Mass.), Balticon (Ba\
ltimore), and this past weekend, drcpunk and I took a quick flight over to L\
ondon to make HarmUnu (and Unicon in general, as we did have non-filking UK friends in\
attendence). (and in terms of trips, I suppose I have to count my cruise with pocketnaomi to Alaska, with Seattle on the way).

It was great. Expensive in both money and energy, of course, but much fun and we got \
to both reconnect with old friends from that side of the pond and meet and chat with n\
ew friends. I even got a few games in.

This coming week, naturally enough, we're planning on taking a train up to Montreal t\
o attend Worldcon.

And we -hope- to also make PiCon this summer...not that we've planned for it even a li\
ttle bit--it just sounds fun.

At Concertino, I

• Got to sing a fair bit
  
• Played a lot of set (including with some very good opponents)
  
• Met some new (to me) people. Cool new people!
  
• Got to have good conversation with people (hi, fiddledragon and Kate, among others) I don't usually get to talk to
  
• Wrote a new song (see adjacent post)
  
• Gave/got many, many hugs
  
• Had fun
  

Thank you, everyone who was part of any of this, or part of making the con a reality!

I participated in cadhla's latest Iron Poet, giving Chocolate, Quarters, and Blood (as they were, well, what came to mind). And then forgot I'd done so -- as I'm wont to forget so many things sometimes.

And what did she write? What lovely, Catherynne Valente's Palimpsesty thing did she write?

See for yourself

Wow. Just wow. Thank you, Cadhla!

If you still need a DW invite (and know me), talk to me. I've got quite a few.

Balticon was fun, if odd. Friday night, I came in, saw people, ate dinner with peoples, changed, danced like a madman, went back to the room, and crashed. Saturday, I caught half of quadrivium's concert, did Patches' excellent Renn dance (where I ended up being her demo partner = fun), gamed most of the day (once I was awake), got a nice dinner with selki, drcpunk, and Pamela, gamed a bit more, stopped by some parties on the way to the filk room...and found that the filk had ended sometime before 2:30AM. So it goes. So I played a bit of Werewolf (annoyingly, a game soured because a player didn't realize they weren't a werewolf, the mod announced a werewolf innocent to the seer, and the mod didn't have the brains to -correct his mistake- before endgame was hit. So the seer looked at all three werewolves and lived to talk about it, yet the town "lost") and went to bed. Sunday, I gamed all day, had dinner with drcpunk, nancylebov, esrblog, and cathyr19355, and went directly to the filking -- so actually got a few good hours of filking in (even if I did torture Gwen's Like Their Feet Have Wings mercilessly; I'm not usually -that- bad on the words or even the chords; I think I brain was cramped [and I do try to sing songs with the words even when I know them, but my laptop was in for repair this weekend and I neglected to arrange a replacement for the con]). After filking broke up WAY TOO EARLY, I went over to the gaming room and got a few hours of Dominion and Race for the Galaxy in before bed.

Monday, I hung out in the gaming room for a bunch of hours. Where I was introduced to Colosseum. Which kicks ass.

Colosseum is a Wolfgang Kramer game -- and it shows. But while there are clear connections to Princes of Florence (eg, it's a art-themed financial game with the same style of auction, and a separate-but-related score track), I like it a lot better. For starters, it's a well-designed game with many of my favorite game elements -- development, trading, money management, auctions, as well as some other interesting ones (screw-the-leader, -aid- the leader (yes, both -- the leader gets a +3 on all further scores and has one of her pieces stolen from her in each of the four preparatory rounds), collections, and game win by best-score (which is why I refer to it as 4 preparatory rounds and one final round--as, unless you're playing badly, your score in the final round will dwarf your previous scores. For example, my round 4 score was 40 and my round 5 score was 85, and I won by 3 points).

I like it a lot, and have gone ahead and bought myself a copy (along with Le Havre, which is a bit long, but as the sequel to Agricola, I must own if nobody else in my friendship circle has it, and nobody does).

I've never been into "organized play" of a roleplaying game -- but by my lights, D&D is only -somewhat- a roleplaying game, (the other part being a character construction wargame), and I've been hankering for putting the 4e books I've been buying to some use, so I showed up to the RPGA meetup yesterday, packing a female 1st level Deva (eg, multiply reincarnated angel) Avenger named Isa Sunrise.

And you know what? It was fun!

Apparently, you can choose "easy" or "hard", so we picked "hard" as, Living Forgotten Realms tends to be (supposedly) a bit easy. Three encounters, two fights.

The first one was a big mess against a large, well-balanced enemy party, where the party's two clerics and the swordmage took the brunt of the damage and someone made two death checks before I took a break from knocking enemy rogues and made a heal check.

The second was glorious. A boss (elite, probably) that felt like 9th level or so and a giant pile of minions. I got targetted early (and before I got a chance to "oath" the boss so I could get a benefit from all the attacks--avengers do extra damage if they're attacked by other than their target), going from a really hefty 34 hp to low teens, and was the bunny throughout the fight, once only avoiding unconciousness because of 3 temporary hp I'd been granted. The minions were nicely handled by various bursts, blasts, etc from the multi-attacking ranger, the swordmage, and the wizard, the clerics mostly kept me upright and hit the boss with a few attacks (I used a reroll to let one hit the boss with an encounter power), and I? In three attacks, I managed to crit with my daily and my encounter for a total of 50 and 42 damage, respectively (avengers, if properly positioned, get to roll twice on every melee attack, so this is only slightly less likely than 1/100), then, with me back in "one hit from unconciousness" territory, I managed to hit once more (a 25 didn't do it, so I used the Deva encounter ability to add a d6 to the roll and hit with a 31) and finish the bastard off.

Yeah, I've got a Dreamwidth account. It's mneme (no, no x. The x is a disambiguator).

I've heard a lot of alarmist "why is everyone going away" bits, so I figured it was worth explaining what -I- like about Dreamwidth -- at least in concept.

First and foremost, I'm not planning on leaving LJ or the LJ community. But that's part of the point. Among the tools and improvements DW has promised are features (some implemented, like journal import [though...is that disabled atm?] and journal crossposting and better OpenID suport, some not, like the ability to embed your friends page on other lj-like sites in your friends page for DW if you want) that let the "community" spread beyond a single site -- and isn't that the point? Why -should- we lose access to our friends posts or have to follow them with Yet Another Login whenever they move sites? Why should our communities be owned by an external entity -- rather than merely hosted by them?

So, I don't want everyone leaving lj and going to dw instead. I want a world where people post wherever they want -- and I can be part of their community if they're "my people" anyway. But supporting DW is a step in that direction -- hopefully a very large part.

Second, they seem to have a good, sustainable plan not involving selling out their principles or assuming large bags of cash will fall from the sky.

Third, their attitudes are more or less a direct response to a lot of the ljfail we've seen over the last few years; not "everyone gets to see everything", but "we can handle adult/spam/financial issues without treating our users as criminals or children."

Fourth? LJ used to regularly come out with new features -- you know, ones I used. But over the last few years, that has slowed to a crawl or less -- instead, all their new features seem to be things that benefit someone else (like advertisers, or whatnot)...which might be fine except that features -I- want; ones that make it easier to communicate with people, seem to not happen. DW, in a small number of months, has implemented a huge set of my wantlist for LJ (not least: separating "access" and "readlist" and getting rid of the "friend" designation), plans to implement a lot more, and in general, has proven very response to suggestions.

So yeah, I have a DW account. But don't worry, I won't be going anywhere.

Less cryptically, why isn't there a perl-usable (pure perl or just something with perl wrappers; don't care) distributed locking system that's worth a damn? What's so hard to understand about "locks should only EVER be given out to one client, and clients need to know instantly if their locks become unreliable?" that causes everyone to get it wrong?

IPC::Lock::Memcache: memcache is a caching system, and may drop your locks on the floor without telling you; also, netsplit will hose you, also, dead clients don't auto-unlock=useless.

IPC::Locker: single-server (not ideal, but fine -- although it lets clients specify a group of machines that DON'T TALK TO ONE ANOTHER, which is worse than useless unless you -want- a high likelyhood of false locks), handles dead clients well via timeouts and checking for pid existence (though if pid server isn't working, probably can timeout longrunning locks while they're working = bad), but locks don't hold connections open. Which means if, say, your lock server reboots, instead of what -should- happen (all your processes holding open locks get signals and can decide this means they have to relock or dump all their work on the ground, as they no longer, well, have an exclusive lock), things go on happily having lost your lock. Checking for a lock before every atomic stage of a critical section? Not good.

Helped run Dragon at RPI (e.g. spent most of the weekeend in a room making moves on a map and running a Play By Mail war/trading game; pretty fun, particularly when the troops decided they were smarter than whoever was giving them orders; they were usually
right, too).

Still in NYC, still filking and gaming and reading and getting paid for programming.

NOT DED.

From maverick_wierdo.

( cards )

( Smile )

( Shoes )

( Quiet )

( Home )

You know the drill.


sweetmusic_27 asked about: 1. Filk 2. Waltzing 3. Garth Nix 4. Scotch 5. Gadgetry

( filk )


( Waltzing )


( nix )


( scotch )


( gadgetry )

So, you know the drill. Ask me more stuff if you like and I'll see if I can answer it -- or ask for words and I'll see what I can do!

Stands just fine on its own, really:

The weekend (and Conflikt) was fun, but filled with incidence of nearly epic-FAIL (some of which was FAIL, just not epic).

( FAIL here! )

This was written this morning, with an idea popping up as we set up for
working on our Band Scramble set. It almost certainly wouldn't have been
finished if it had not been for the enthusiastic help and encouragement from
my insta-band mate, Dawn Jackal.

Hold On
Lyrics: Joshua Kronengold, with help and encouragement from Dawn Jackal, to the tune of "Calm Down," by Kathy Mar

Musicians have invaded, they're everywhere you look
And they speak of each performance from a music theory book
They rant of broken measures, rave of substitution chords
I'd love to find some way say I don't know all those words

Hold on, it's only pitch and rhythm,
Hold on, it's only G and A
Hold on and speak to me in English
Please realize, I'm a filker, and that I just want to play

They sit around for hours as I'm sure you've seen and heard,
But though the music's nice, we cannot understand a word
With meter, modes, and intervals, time: broken, cut, and whole
You work each piece of music 'till it starts to sound like coal
The theory group is growing and the hour may not be long
Before you need doctorate before you sing a song
I'd rather be a maverick and just sing what sounds good
Than have to make my music sound like others think it should

Hold on, it's only pitch and rhythm,
Hold on, it's only G and A
Hold on and speak to me in English
Please realize, I'm a filker, and that I just want to play

One day I'll study theory -- get a doctorate or two,
And throw it all away to talk like normal people do,
I'll make a music language that is clear, concise, and clean,
With terms derived from English and that says just what I mean

Hold on, it's only pitch and rhythm,
Hold on, it's only G and A
Hold on and speak to me in English
Please realize, I'm a filker, and that I just want to play
Please realize, I'm a filker, and that I just want to play