jessmoreorless

Some people have control over less well known muscles...

You could be evil and include these in a game of Simon says...

"Whenever I wish too I can make a 'rumbling noise' in my head..."
That's the tensor tympani muscle, behind the eardrum, pulling tight to prevent damage from loud noises. Some people can control it voluntarily.
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/1999-09/937369459.Gb.r.html


If you can make a clicking sound in your ears (without yawning), then your voluntarily opening your Eustachian tubes by flexing your tensor and levator veli palatini muscles.
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=8227642

today i have to go over to a friend's house in... Henleaze I think and house sit.
this is something to do with the insurance while the family's away in New Zealand that someone has to sleep over in their house so they don't default on their home insurance.

and I really, really, really don't want to do this tonight. it's not a case of being stuck in someone's house more so I'm not relaxing in my own during my days off which are few and far between right now given the peculiar rotas I'm penciled in to do over the course of the holidays.

plus I won't have a chance to continue with this fanfic, although i've got the arc laid out in a framework stylee which helps.

Oh well, better go and start my cheesecake prep.

As usual my thoughts are jumbled... I never was any good at making a thread-of-consciousness like I need to do for writing a proper update, feel free to put my words in the right order. =)

Christmas has gone really well this year. It's been a mixed bag - it's been quiet, which is relaxing and gives me time to reflect on the year, and spend time with my partner. But it's been quiet - I miss the bustle of Christmas, just a little bit.
I've been happy - nothing complicated has happened, and I'm blissfully enjoying all this time I have to myself! It's the equivalent of about 4 months of regular working week time off wrapped up into a fortnight! *bliss!*

We eventually got the tree up last night. The tinsel was in the box, so I could have put it up earlier, but I'd been looking for it. It looks cosy and wintery, it's a nice focus for our otherwise un-atmospheric living room. I've got some clear ideas of a 'posh' living room, including sturdy oak furniture and plush velvet, with a Windsor carpet, and book cases with Georgian glass doors in wood surrounds but that's a little out of our price range right now, so the tree will do.

I wasn't expecting anything for Christmas this year - everyone's been hurting from the recession. But, I was pleasantly surprised and happy with what I did get, which far exceeded my expectations.
I have a beautiful deep pink Phalaenopsis Orchid, and a new computer.

I'm going to write about my prezzies now, because they've been my main focus the last few days... =D

My beautiful Orchid!
I've been reading up on the Orchid... I knew they were difficult to grow, and after looking through some care guides I've found out it's because they need a narrow band of temperatures, light and water. It's looking like the study will be the most stable place for the temperature and humidity, but I'm not sure about the light! Every room has something good, but also something bad about it. The bedroom it would get light, but it's too cold, the living room is a bit too dry (big radiator), but not much light, but nice and warm. The kitchen is the same, but a little cooler - and I'm not suer how the change in atmospherics will effect it when we're cooking.
It ideally needs cool rainwater - as tap water can contain too much lime and other impurities. It's hard to come by around here - as we live in a flat, we don't have any water butts to collect it. Though there might be a location if I'm lucky. For now I'll use boiled water, the kettles rather good at precipitating the lime out.
I'm a little anxious! I've never had an Orchid before and I'm worried I'll mess it up. =/
But if I can get it too grow - it'll be my best personal achievement with flora! =D
Game on!

My speedy computer.
I've been configuring my new computer the last few days - it's really good. I've got Windows 7, and there's been no crashes at all. I've installed Photoshop CS 4 on it, and was shocked that all the tools/zooming/panning updated at one frame a second! After extensive Googling (there's thousands of pages about this), I found out CS 4 is designed for really modern hardware - duo/quad/oct core chips, and the latest DX10 cards. Blimey! It's the Crysis of the art world.
I patched the software, and changed my NVidia settings for Photoshop to minimize the overhead. (It uses a sloooooow shader to do scaling!). I'm getting about 10 FPS now, which isn't bad. In the new year I may save for a double core chip which should improve things lots.
Thanks to VMWare, I've virtualised my old machine - I've got a version of it sitting on a removable drive, and can run it on my new machine - it gives me access to all the software I have, and CS 2's plugins I've got, and everything on its hard disk.

Santa's the adorable old guy, with a plush white beard, presents, and a wise word for young kids.

Normally...



http://www.sketchysantas.com/

ok long story short over the past day.
I've written about 5000 words today, some weird crossover fanfic combining Blade Runner/DollHouse and a mix of my own demons.
it's not meant for public consumption [although I might upload it to fanfic after i've finished] more so a cathartic attempt to clear out the crap in my head and get to feeling a little better about being me than I do right now.

And my bro came round with his girlfriend and we drank wine and smoked our lungs out.

And the rest I'll speak about tomorrow cos I am tired and pale right now.

You know that black-box... that bit of magic where the symbolic stuff you see on your screen gets turned into the electrical patterns inside the chips which exist, and do stuff... this book explains all that in minute detail.

It'll kill the "magic black box" feel of computers, but give you an amazing insight into the physical workings of a computer program...


Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/software Interface
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Computer-Organization-Design-Interface-Architecture/dp/1558606041

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1lD9LZRcIZ8C&dq=the+hardware+software+interface&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=o5CWvdKjLy&sig=nu-R_qM4kpzyJBIKOyDwnMEEOcg&hl=en&ei=eps0S4XeI5jSjAeC77CmDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CE0Q6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false

I'm sure we'll all find something we didn't know in here, and it's a great starter for people wanting to learn about computers...

http://www.karbosguide.com/books/pcarchitecture/start.htm

PC Architecture
- a book by Michael Karbo.

This book is protected by copyright. It has been published in many European countries but never in English language. Therefore I desided to upload it to the Internet. It is free to use as it is for personal, non-commercial use. All rights belong to Michael Karbo. You may not in any way copy the contents.

These web pages have been produced from a Microsoft Word file. Hence the design, which could be a lot better. However, it is too much work for me to clean it all up. So you'll have to live with it as it is.

sitting here, at the station in work I'm hearing how we have the problems getting ANY cases done at all due to the ab-so-lutly BARKING plan to have un-trained surgeons working on a day such as today (christmas day for the ultra jewish among you) when it is a bank holiday when NO ONE wants to be in work.

and they get a shed-load of money too.

i think this is why we need socialism or communism in the Ukk. Wee all get paid the same for the work we do.
This is why China will rule the world in 15 years time. Mark my words.

I decided to treat myself tonight by taking a super hot bubble bath. I've had this marvelous bubble bath solution on hand for a long time that I almost never use so it was a super sweet bath. Now when I do the bath thing I always follow it up with an old fashioned shower.

Everything was going great, the water was super hot and the bubbles were awesometastic. I was texting my mom for a good hour before and during the bath, it was very relaxing. Then came the shower stage; then everything went wrong. I let the water drain down almost completely before I started my shower. The moment I turned the water back on I started getting light headed, so I turned on luke warm if not slightly cold water. Nothing helped. I ended up stumbling out of the tub, I turnned around to get my towel off the shower door handle and that's when my legs gave out and I collapsed on the side of the tub. I remained conscious but I hit my arm pretty good on the door runner and was bleeding a little bit. I just sat there for a few minutes while the light headedness and tunnel vision disappated. Fucking holidays. I can't wait for tomorrow, I'll get good use of my netflix that's for sure.

This project was used as a chance to learn Purl, ribbing and making tassels. This is how it turned out.



I have given it to one of my my sister's as a gift. For the other sister I made her some beaded jewelery.

http://en.gigazine.net/index.php?/news/comments/20091127_nikon_d3s_night/


The hot/dead/slightly wonky pixels really show up with these ISO settings - but wow! these are previously impossible situations to photograph in...

Big piccy's without noise reduction (mostly)...

http://ftp.robgalbraith.com/public_files/D3S_ISO102400_Ring.jpg

http://digitalphoto.maccreate.com/files/2009/10/D3S-Sample-102400a.JPG

Personally, this is good, and with noise reduction improving it'll be even better. What I'm really after is a camera with enough dynamic range to photograph the sun from inside a cave, and be able to pull off the details in the cave, and the sun-spots on the sun... from the same exposure.

Wow... I need to learn me some of this!


http://thechive.com/2009/12/23/next-time-your-hitting-on-a-girl-at-a-bar-burn-this-into-your-mind/

The best automatic shotgun... also fires exploding frag-grenades! (4:30 into the vid)



I wonder if the ammo caddies would be able to eventually contain multiple rounds filling the space to the centre of the cartridge? At the moment there's only the perimeter used, which is an awful lot of space wasted. I'm thinking of normal spring loaded gun magazines in a circle...

If global temperatures continue to rise, massive amounts of methane gas could be released from the 10,000 gigaton reserves of frozen methane that are currently locked in the world’s deep oceans and permafrost. Passing this climate tipping point would result in global warming that would be far worse and more rapid than scientists’ current estimates.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/05/could-methane-t/

Wiki:
Brittany Murphy (November 10, 1977 – December 20, 2009)[1] was an American actress and singer. She starred in films such as Clueless, Girl, Interrupted, 8 Mile, Uptown Girls, Sin City, Happy Feet, and Riding in Cars with Boys.

At 8:00 a.m. (16:00 UTC) on December 20, 2009, the Los Angeles Fire Department responded to "a medical request"[22] at the Los Angeles home Murphy and Monjack shared. She had apparently collapsed in a bathroom. Cause of death is not yet known.

From TMZ:
"A DVD rental company is moving fast to remove outdoor promotional posters of Brittany Murphy -- posed lifeless in a bathtub -- for her movie, "Deadline."

Officials from redbox -- which operates DVD kiosks around the country -- tell TMZ beginning today field teams are removing the "Deadline" box art from the kiosk displays. The officials tell us it will take 7 - 10 days to remove the image from the 19,000 kiosks nationwide.

We're also told the "Deadline" distribution company will change out the DVD covers."

http://www.tmz.com/2009/12/23/brittany-murphy-deadline-redbox-movie-poster-death-bathtub-recall-dvd/

Depression-zord, morph!

So there's this online climbing forum I read a lot (but don't post to often), where I'm not out as trans, and like lots of forums they have a sort of "general discussion" forum. One topic comes up, about women and numbers of sexual partners, and someone opens the thread with a nice post about the double standard behind regarding a man with lots of sexual partners as successful and someone to emulate, yet a woman in the same position is generally considered dirty, of lower morals, not someone to emulate, etc..

So I read on, and am pleased to see lots of posts expressing a similar sentiment - that this is a misogynist double standard, and then I see this:

Sex is all about the moment not the past ( health and STD's and sex change operations aside that is)

For fuck's sake! Apparently I can't get away from it. *sigh*

Originally posted at http://auntysarah.dreamwidth.org/219268.html - you can comment here or there.