I would direct you to Rabbi Ben Ezra, which begins:
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith, "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all nor be afraid!"
- Happy Birthday, Mr. Browning...
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bishopjoey- May 7th, 15:11
- Housing!
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- bishopjoey
- April 24th, 10:41
Yeah, I know I don't post here much. The big deal is thatlast_girl_guide and I are buying a house. We get keys on 15 May and spend two weeks painting and moving in.
The other big deal is that it needs to be furnished. We've spent a couple of months trying to identify in Dutch stores one piece of furniture that we need/want. Here it's called a buffetkast - a combination sideboard and display cabinet. The thing is, they're pricey. And good ones even more so.
We decided that with a slight change in aesthetic, we could get 70s era furniture on eBay from the UK and ship it over. And get more of it. So two sideboards are in the offing. And a coffee table. To be sure of the colour of one of the pieces, LGG identified an antiques dealer near Rotterdam who has one. For about three times the price, but we could actually touch it and verify the style and quality and colour and such like. Gracious but the English knew how to build a piece of furniture.
After that, a trip to Ikea was something of a let-down, but LGG identified a piece of storage she really needed. It was a much nicer trip than the last one, because Ikea buffetkasts are no nicer than any of the others we'd seen and just as pricey. I could concentrate on other things this time.
It helped that we had plans to meet friends for drinks after.
And Sunday, after a workout at the gym, same friends gathered for pannenkoeken. And after that we met with a painter because the first order of business after getting the keys is to paint. Y'see, the family we're buying it from has three girls. Oldest younger than ten. So there are three very pink rooms. And that's got to change.
- not much of anything but...
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- bishopjoey
- April 13th, 9:16
chipper
I post here bloody seldom and the stuff I post in other places (fb, tweetbox, g+ sometimes) isn't much more interesting.
Saw The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel which I quite enjoyed. Thumbs up. See it. Good date movie.
I've had this idea recently that I want to see certain goody-good actors do out and out villainy. The guy who plays Bates on Downton Abbey, for example. He played the same do-good role in Lark Rise to Candleford. I want to see him as the evil genius in something. Same with Judi Dench. And coming back from Marigold Hotel I had this inkling she must have done Lady Macbeth at some point. Not quite Goldfinger, mind you, but pretty high on the evil.
Not only has Dame Judi played Lady Macbeth, she played it opposite Ian MF McKellan. AND, it's on DVD. Woot. (It's also got Ian 'Palpatine' McDiarmid in a small role.)
33 days and counting til we get the house. Let the painting commence! Let no one say that the Oakley-Silber Alliance isn't doing its part for the Dutch housing market.
Work continues. Writing continues. I and two other Leiden expats have a (very) little writing group which meets every two weeks. I also host the Leiden Anglophone Linux User Group (aka burgers and beers with the geeks) every other two weeks.
Theoretically I'm halfway through writing a novel, but have been for a while. Slowly getting back to it.
- 2011 Music Roundup
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- bishopjoey
- December 17th, 2011
( My top 13... )Looking up a few more lists, there were maybe 8 on the Rolling Stone list I recognized/owned/had heard. The Decemberists' very fine The King Is Dead and Radiohead's The King of Limbs both in the top 10. That said, King of Limbs might very well be the weakest album of Radiohead's career. Still quite good, but not better than the Dolby by a far cry. In my very bloody humble opinion. (Remember, we are dancing about architecture here.)Having read the top 50 album lists from both Pitchfork and Mojo, I feel officially old this year. But each year for the last 10 or so, I’ve found myself listening to fewer and fewer new releases. Probably doesn’t help matters that I moved to Europe nine years ago and, in general get my recommendations for new tunes from some strange places these days.
That said, here’s some of what got the heaviest rotation this year in my listening world. In no particular order:
- NaNo NaNo...
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- bishopjoey
- November 3rd, 2011
Already well behind in NaNoWriMo - had LALUG meeting on Tuesday night and only got a bit down last night. All my section headings (4 interlocking tales of 1 week each) in place. I have no real character notes to speak of. This is what's known as pantsing it in the vernacular.
We shall see.
OTOH set up SpiderOak last night so all my work is backed up.
- Mississippi Personhood Amendment
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- bishopjoey
- October 14th, 2011
Reposted in hopes Mississippi might refrain from passing this dreadful piece of legislation...
Okay, so I don't usually do this, but this is an issue near and dear to me and this is gettingvery littleno attention in the mainstream media.
Mississippi is voting on November 8th on whether to pass Amendment 26, the "Personhood Amendment". This amendment would grant fertilized eggs and fetuses personhood status.
Putting aside the contentious issue of abortion, this would effectively outlaw birth control and criminalize women who have miscarriages. This is not a good thing.
Jackson Women's Health Organization is the only place women can get abortions in the entire state, and they are trying to launch a grassroots movement against this amendment. This doesn't just apply to Mississippi, though, as Personhood USA, the group that introduced this amendment, is trying to introduce identical amendments in all 50 states.
What's more, in Mississippi, this amendment is expected to pass. It even has Mississippi Democrats, including the Attorney General, Jim Hood, backing it.
The reason I'm posting this here is because I made a meager donation to the Jackson Women's Health Organization this morning, and I received a personal email back hours later - on a Sunday - thanking me and noting that I'm one of the first "outside" people to contribute.
So if you sometimes pass on political action because you figure that enough other people will do something to make a difference, make an exception on this one. My RSS reader is near silent on this amendment. I only found out about it through a feminist blog. The mainstream media is not reporting on it.
If there is ever a time to donate or send a letter in protest, this would be it.
What to do?
- Read up on it. Wake Up, Mississippi is the home of the grassroots effort to fight this amendment. Daily Kos also has a thorough story on it.
- If you can afford it, you can donate at the site's link.
- You can contact the Democratic National Committee to see why more of our representatives aren't speaking out against this.
- Like this Facebook page to help spread awareness.
- Failure to communicate
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- bishopjoey
- October 11th, 2011
I asked a friend who has recently bought her first Mac if she considered Linux? As this was over Twitter, I replied with a couple quick links (including one to In The Beginning Was The Command Line, which is really the wrong place to begin) and followed with an email:
I think I'm still failing to convey what it is I love about Linux and why I prefer not to use Mac/Win if I can help it. As one who is trying to lead a Linux User Group, I find this is a double fail. Her reply was that it all seems too complicated. In theory it is; in practice, generally not so much.Twitter's not really the place to go into what Linux is in any kind of detail and directing you to a somewhat oblique 100-page article on the history and such like of Linux isn't really fair or helpful.Suffice it to say that it's an operating system in the same way that Windows and Mac OS are operating systems, and uses the same WIMP (Window-Icon-Mouse-Pointer) user experience. Mac OS about 10 years ago rebuilt their OS based on UNIX (a 60s-era OS developed by AT&T). Linux is also Unix-based, but is generally released with some kind of GUI on top. The core of Linux (the kernel) open source, meaning anyone can look at and manipulate the code, and is available for free under a public license. If you delve into the subject, the phrases FOSS (Free Open Source Software) and FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software - the Libre indicating that there is no patent encumbrance) are commonOn top of the kernel there are several layers, the top of which is the desktop environment. These come in several flavours including KDE, Gnome, Xfce, Fluxbox, and more recently Unity (put forth in the latest full release by Ubuntu - very user friendly, I gather, but limiting).But, of course, the OS only gets you so far. You need software. There are two major office suites Open Office (formerly a Sun Microsystems offering, now a project of the Apache Foundation), Libre Office (this was forked from Open Office when Oracle bought Sun - the Open Office code was sloppy and hadn't been well managed - there's been a lot of cleanup in the year since Libre Office first came out and it's overtaken OO as the office suite offering in most distributions.Music applications, games, internet access, networking, and just about everything else you do with Windows or Mac can be done in Linux. There are problems however. The biggest ones I've found include printing and iTunes. There is no Linux equivalent to iTunes, though there are a couple tools that are trying. If you have iTems, then working with them solely under Linux is an arse. Printing is mostly smooth sailing, though WiFi printing is still rather complicated. Theoretically less so under the recently released v3.0 of the kernel. I've not installed a Linux Distribution with a 3.0 kernel.It's not nearly as complicated as I'm making it sound. Really. Linux enthusiasts always run up against a wall. I've not been able to convince Rachel to give it a try, mainly because she does 2 things with her computer - photo editing and iTunes. There are many Linux-compatible photo editing suites available, but are they up to the standards of Lightroom? I don't know. But she's heard me do nothing but bitch that I can't fill my iTouch from my own computer. And suggests that with the money I spend on Linux magazines (about €15/month), I could afford a Windows license.Fair enough, but...As a writer, I'm much happier using Abiword and Write Or Die than MS products of any stripe.
- Goodies!
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- bishopjoey
- October 5th, 2011
So, when I got home yesterday there was a stack of mail waiting including:- My new shiny passport with 54 unstamped pages (my soon-to-expire had the original 26+24 added a few years ago and has no blank pages!)
- Hapax by A.E. Stallings (poet who received a MacArthur fellowship this year - I'm rarely disappointed in the writers who get that - the same cannot always be said of Pulitzer/Nobel winners, though I always give those a look too)
- A micro-SD card (ordered for the cheap POS tablet I bought a few weeks ago but will be returning today - I'm sure the card will get use, fear not)
- Split Pea Press' A Wake Newslitter CD-ROM which I've wanted for ages and finally ordered.
Felt a little like a holiday.
- Weekend update
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- bishopjoey
- October 3rd, 2011
It was a mostly lovely weekend - the weather in Leiden was fantastic. Pickedlast_girl_guide up from the airport as she returned from several days stateside. Alas, due to Leidens Ondzet (3 October - big celebration thingy in Leiden, but nowhere else in NL), there was no market and the usual fruit and veg purchases had to be got at Albert Heijn. Took it easy on Saturday night and worked on my fourth Red Phone Box story (two are online, all four should be in the published edition next month).
Had a lovely long run Sunday morning while LGG slept off some more jet lag.
We thought we had a fish on the hook (asdrkaos puts it), but are currently not sure. There are many more fish in the local sea, but this one would have been quite nice.
In the evening we walked into the town center and gawped at the fun fair, ate oliebollen and then collapsed at home.
- And we're back.
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- bishopjoey
- September 10th, 2011
Was a fantastic holiday - lots of really good food and wine had.
Wine tasting with Platypus was great.
Dinner at Moody's in Truckee - great.
Gott's roadside diner in Napa - great
Culinary Arts Academy in St. Helena - great.
Hiking at Northstar - well, a morning's walk which included a scary scary chairlift. Note that for me, all chairlifts are scary - Great.
Lots of poolside time - great.
Staying in SF with Tristan and David - great.
Realising I'd lived in the Bay Area for the better part of 15 years and never actually visited Napa - kinda sad.
Among other things, read Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl. Bloody brilliant.
