The Journal of Lee Davis-Thalbourne

YAAAAAAAY!!!!!

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:53:26 GMT

For those not on Twitter or Facebook...

I HAS A JOB!!!

I start in a couple of weeks, which means I'm still going to have to live quite frugally for a little while longer, but I'm working for the NAB at their King St call centre (which is absolutely fantastically awesome, so much better than UCMS!). I'll be getting a payrise over my previous job, and not only that, but the place is entirely supportive, there's no hot-swapping (so I get my own desk!), and there's good prospects for upward mobility should I decide that I don't actually want to go back to uni. I'm working for a god damn bank!

I'm feeling so utterly overjoyed, and really relieved. I was not looking forward to more job-hunting. It's nerve-wracking and really down-heartening, especially when you're getting interviews and just not being able to convert them into jobs.

I should have realised that I'd get this job - I was sick with nervousness going into the final interview, which just showed I was taking it seriously, I guess.

Also, with all the job assessments I went through, I've learnt many interesting things about myself:

1) My typing speed is 65 words a minute. Much higher than my previous assessment 5 years ago!
2) I apparently have a high attention to detail. I got, like, 95% on the test. We're fairly certain this is with the caveat "As long as I'm paying attention", but it's all good.
3) I hate being unemployed. I start unravelling at the seams without some sort of schedule in my life.
4) I love erinkyan a whole bunch.

This was originally posted at http://kirby1024.dreamwidth.org/124845.html

Back to the Lexicon!

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:05:03 GMT

So, I'm still looking for players for the Lexicon I was talking about previously. If anyone's kinda looking at it, going "It seems fun, but I'd never be able to do that", I'll happily point out that the game is not supposed to be anything to do with building a masterpiece - it's about getting your writing gear out there and writing! It's a chance to be inspired by everyone else, and bounce of everyone else's ideas, which is a whole lot more fun than you'd think!

Even if you're looking at the schedule and going "But I was gonna do NaNoWriMo this year", think of it as a pleasant writing-based procrastination that has a limited timespan (you're only writing once a week!)

If you have looked and decided "Sorry it's not for me", that's cool, and I apologise for the spamming. I won't try to persuade you guys, and you can just ignore any other Lexicon posts from me.

Also, you know, if you know anyone else who might be interested, or any groups that might have people who'd be interested in playing, I'm happy to let you plug my game to them (or you can tell me, and I'll plug it to them). Really. I don't mind at all! Please?

This was originally posted at http://kirby1024.dreamwidth.org/124618.html

Something worth reading

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:10:54 GMT

Nerd Assertiveness and Insensitivity to Privilege (from erinkyan's Google Reader, from Sociological Images, which everyone needs to read, seriously. Awesome blog.)

In other news, I am getting so very, very bored of this whole unemployment thing. It's starting to really get to me. I've been actively looking for work for the last month, and while I'm getting interviews, I'm not getting anywhere. I've only now started the process of getting Centrelink payments, because I was so certain that I would be able to get another job by now. But things are slowly crawling away from me. I'm running out of money, and thus running out of time, and I just really wish I could find a job somewhere, but the world is rather rudely pointing out how lucky I was the last few jobs I got. It's not like I'm not qualified for the jobs I keep applying for, but I'm just not getting a lot of bites.

Still, not much I can do but keep looking, I s'pose. Unless anyone has any better suggestions, anyway.

This was originally posted at http://kirby1024.dreamwidth.org/124368.html

Lexicon is back!

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 10:40:56 GMT

So, previously I made a statement that I wanted to keep prompting myself to write creatively, and so, I decided to start a game of Lexicon.

It's been some time since the last Lexicon game, and I admit, part of that was slackness.
But I loved the last game - writing is so much more fun when you can bounce off everyone else. But! I have now actually sat down for an afternoon and managed to come up with a decent new prompt that will hopefully be a little more accessible this time (so those who interested last time but didn't feel confident messing with history should feel a bit more comfortable this time). This time, it's the Unicode Gamma Lexicon!. The Prompt?

In the early 1990s, a brand new television show premiered. Unicode Gamma was a great foray into the television market, and was sent internationally on a brave mission to earn it's creators money. Alas, Unicode Gamma was a television show of it's time, a show with no real attempt to connect to a general audience, and thus, lasted only a season. That didn't deter the fans (as it never does), and a thriving community of Unicode Gamma fans continue to watch and enjoy this real slice of early 90s television.

And now, after over 15 years of living in obscurity, it's fans derided by others, and the fan community warped and twisted by years of disappointment and drama, the very first GammaCon has been organised and unleashed, and a (depressingly small) group of fans have come together to remember and reminisce about a show that only they care about.

Apart from a name, and a fanbase, We know absolutely nothing about this show, so, it could end up being about just about anything.

If anyone's interested in joining up for a game of Lexicon, you just need to put your name down on the player's list here, and then get your first entry (starting with A, B or C) written and submitted by the 10/10/2009 (though I'll accept entries up to the 13th). Also, I'd prefer that you contact me (through whatever medium you can) so I have a few forms of contact so I can remind people about turns and such. You don't need to write much, just 100 words a week is the minimum.

Come on! You know it'll be fun! :)

This was originally posted at http://kirby1024.dreamwidth.org/124131.html

XY Online - The Blog I was looking for!

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:56:41 GMT

I have mentioned to a couple of people that one resource that I always felt was missing in the blogosphere was a blog about men and masculinities, written by men, from a feminist viewpoint. It turns out that there was one all along, and that I had just never seen it.

XY Online (RSS)

It's actually astonishingly close to what I'd call my "perfect resource" - full of resources about masculinity and men all around the world, from worldwide perspectives... this one's definitely going on my google reader. It's apparently looking for submissions from people, as it's recently had a reboot. I am very tempted to contribute, but then I'd have to actually write something of contributable quality on the subject matter!

I do know a few people on my flist who, I'm sure, would be interested in the resource (radicalyffe, I'm looking at you!), and I'd strongly recommend anyone who is curious have a look - it's quite good!

This was originally posted at http://kirby1024.dreamwidth.org/123677.html

MOAR Dreamwidth Codes!

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 01:43:53 GMT

In the event that there's anyone on my friends list that wants to have a go on Dreamwidth, I hereby let it be known that I have 5 invite codes currently outstanding.

As per usual, If I don't know you, you can feel free to ask, but people I do know get first dibs, followed by people who know people I know (so if you don't need a code, but know someone who does, send them my way!). Comment here and I will get the invite code to you in any way I know how! :)

Something else. [Trigger Warning]

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 06:51:00 GMT

I was going to write a post about the rest of the road trip, but to be honest I'm not feeling it anymore. Instead, my head wants to write something else much more urgently. This is going to be a bit rambly, because there's a lot of thoughts in my head related to the subject. I'll try to order it when I'm done but I can't guarantee that it'll all make sense.

It has now been over three years since I was raped by another man. In fact, today marks exactly 3 years and 1 month.

It's probably a blessing that I don't recall the exact date. I don't get particularly crazy around the time, and I usually have plenty of other things going on, so the date normally flies by without much of a thought. But it's really important to me that you don't think that this is because I'm "over" it.

My rape doesn't come up in conversation much, and if you've met me in the last couple of years, you might not even realise that this has ever happened to me. It's because in the last three years I have built up coping strategies so that the issues surrounding my rape do not come up so often. But it's really important to me that you don't think that this is because I'm "over" it.

I sleep easy these days, perhaps even easier than the days before the rape happened. A lot of this is natural, since I've always been good at sleeping, but it's also partially because I had to learn some pretty heavy-duty techniques for forcing my brain to let me sleep. Also, despite efforts to the contrary, I still push myself extremely hard, making myself do a lot more things than I probably should do, so by the time I actually get into bed, I'm usually well exhausted enough to fall asleep. So I sleep soundly at night. But it's really important to me that you don't think that this is because I'm "over" it.

Because if you think I'm over it, there's a whole bunch of other stuff that doesn't make sense. Like how I haven't visited the house of my best friends in six months. Like why my sexuality is still such a big thing for me. Like how I still, occaisionally, have to tap out of a session with erinkyan because something has just happened and I can't get back into it again. Like how I often have to switch away from a police drama that I love because the crime they're investigating will cause me to go off into a daze for a couple of days if I keep watching. Like why I'm very careful these days to heed trigger warnings, and to force myself not to read further if something presents itself.

You may not notice if I get triggered, because often I don't notice myself. That's the nature of my trigger response - some people might get anxious or panicky, but I, well, disappear for a while (the technical name is dissociation). I often liken it to a hard drive thrashing - it's like most of my brain's processing cycles suddenly become occupied with something else entirely, leaving cognition and interface processes starved of resources. If it's a really bad trigger, this can go on for a couple of days, and it'll often mean I'll seem very dreamy, very scatterbrained, and unable to pay attention to anything for long. It's my brain's way of escaping the bad juju, by just making sure I can't really think or feel about it.

I want to post this for an important reason. It's not to gain any sort of sympathy (although if you feel it's needed, I won't reject it), and it's not because of anything in particular that anyone has done (this is not a reactive rant), but because I don't get much of a reason to talk to people about this, and talking about it is hard. I spent a lot of time talking about it when it happened because I needed to talk about it to make it real, but these days talking about it makes it real - and if I try to tell the story nowadays, all the emotions just jump back into my head, and I end up in a daze for a day or two as the rest of my head retreats into dissociation.

But I want to put it out there, again, just so noone has the wrong impression. I am not over it. I can deal with shit a whole lot better than I was able to 3 years ago, but it's all a matter of learning limits, not finding shock-proof ways of living. The trauma is going to be with me for the long haul, and even intense psychotherapy is only really going to find me better ways to cope and adapt, not resolve the trauma entirely. I just want to put into people's heads again that sometimes I'm going to act weird, or I'm going to have to leave the room because the gamers won't stop talking about how they "raped" the other player, or if I say that I can't attend something because of the location or the guestlist (thankfully that's a rare one), or if you ask a question about the rape directly, that I might not answer directly, or I'll decline to answer. I try my best to manage but it doesn't always work out, and I don't need you to act in any particular way but it'd be nice if you could understand why, and why it still has an impact on me now.

All I ask, really, is that on the rare occasion that it pops up you forgive me my baggage.

This was originally posted at http://kirby1024.dreamwidth.org/123538.html

ROAD TRIP!

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 13:28:25 GMT

So, today me and not_in_denial started our awesome road trip so that not_in_denial can do his coming of age rituals. It would have happened in a week or two anyway, but with no job we ended up fast-tracking the trip a little!

I'd like to say that there's been some awesome roadtrippy goodness, but alas, the trip has been mostly uneventful. We didn't stop at many places (the only town we really entered at all was Albury), and mostly just stuck to the Hume, which meant we got from Melbourne to Goulburn in about 9 hours, which is a pretty phenomenal pace. I'm surprised that I'm not terribly tired right now, actually - I feel a little tired, but only about as tired as I would normally be at 11pm.

Also traveling with us is Minnie, not_in_denial's new girl. I actually specifically asked for her to come down with us, because I haven't had a lot of opportunities to spend a lot of time with her, and I'd like to get a little closer to my boy's girl (I seem to be a freak in that I have absolutely no jealousy towards her - compersion, I has it). The trip down hasn't given us a lot of time to talk, seeing as I was driving all of the way down, but I'm hoping that we'll have more chances to chat tomorrow. She's a really cute, sweet girl, and am thoroughly convinced that not_in_denial should keep her. :)

One thing I have noticed is that we seem to have almost identical iPod lists, from listening to her iPod on the way down, I seem to have a very large number of her tracks, which apparently means that I have the music taste of a teenage girl. I think I'm cool with this.

So tomorrow I pick up radicalyffe so we can take him back down to Melbourne with us, and then... Um... Not sure, really. I'm sure we'll find something to do in Goulburn. Surely there's something to do in this town. May have to go to the Kmart here and pick up a deck of cards or something...

Anyway, time to let someone else hog the broadband connection here! Later all!

This was originally posted at http://kirby1024.dreamwidth.org/123151.html

The economic crisis just got personal.

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:09:25 GMT

I was going to write a big entry discussing exactly how my day went, but I think it's probably much easier to keep it simple.

Today, I was made redundant.

A HR rep came to my resource centre, asked me to come with him. We went upstairs, without really chatting. When I got upstairs into the meeting room, I saw my Manager, Ganesh, waiting there. And there, they told me that there had been a review of the company, and my job had, unfortunately, been made redundant.

I asked whether I was to leave by the end of the day. In fact, they wanted me out there and then. So, I went downstairs, escorted by the HR rep. I said goodbye to my lunchtime relief, Divya, and gathered my things. As it turns out, I keep a very spartan office, so it didn't take more than a few minutes. I gathered everything, gave some last instructions to Divya, and departed.

As you might expect there has been some mixed feelings on the matter. I'm not entirely sure it's all hit me, really. I mean, I'm still sorta expecting to get up tomorrow and go to work. But I'm not. And that, I think, is the worst part of it all - the fact that the whole process took ten minutes. From everything as normal, to out of the building, it was all done in ten minutes. No chance to say goodbye to any of the teachers or students, no nothing. So sudden. No chance to even get used to the idea that tomorrow I have a free day. It's all just... gone.

I've been mostly dwelling on the positives today, although I can feel the shock beneath it all. I get a quite decent redundancy pay for only being there a year or so. I'll have enough money to last me through at least a month or so, so it's not urgent for me to start looking for work yet. And it's not like I was overly fond of the job - I was actually going to start looking for work, so this has just accelerated that a little. To be honest, while I've enjoyed the very slack job I had, it's been a year. I was definitely in a rut, and there was no real option of advancement at Carrick. It was comfortable, but limiting in the end.

And they could not have picked a better time to throw me out. I've just gotten out of my very expensive apartment into a sharehouse, with reduced bills and reduced rent. So that redundancy pay could last me even a bit longer if I so chose. And if I get a job sooner, that just means I have more money to pay off debts. And now I don't have to worry about getting that time off I wanted in a few weeks - I already have it!

But the positives still don't help with the shock, and the abruptness. 10 minutes from normal to out of the building for good. How do you deal with that? I don't think you can, not quickly.

It'll pass, I'm sure, and I'll get another job. If nothing else, I can go back to the call centres and work there again, no sweat. But not today. Not this week. I have time, there's no panic, I can let it lie.

10 minutes. 10 minutes.

This was originally posted at http://kirby1024.dreamwidth.org/123135.html

I've been shamed into an update.

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 05:55:21 GMT

It wasn't anything erinkyan said, oh no. It was more along the lines that his LJ had pointed out that I'd finished moving before mine did. It's a little embarrassing, let's be fair. Time to catch up at least a little bit. This is a bit rambly, so bear with me.

So! I've moved! The moving went reasonably smoothly, although it's only really finished last weekend when laza_burns dropped off the last bits and pieces. We're now slowly getting around to getting things out of boxes, and getting boxes out of the way.

We did have some slight issues when we got there, when we realised that the back door didn't lock, so we've spent a good week and a bit at the house without doors that can distinguish between resident and intruder. Thankfully, that was fixed yesterday, so our many pieces of stuff are well and truly safe. We also have a key for alissakalisti, so when she moves in on Friday she will also have doors that distinguish between resident and intruder!

I've been slowly starting to explore my way around the area, and I'm slowly dawning as to why everyone said "lots of good food" as the first thing they mention about Footscray - my god there are a lot of extremely cheap eats that way! And good cheap eats too! It's all delicious and I certainly plan to nom my way through Footscray's many restaurants in good time. I may well have to invite friends to nom with me!

In other news, last weekend me and erinkyan spent a really good, nice weekend together. We'd started on Thursday with our weekly date, stayed around and enjoyed each other's company on Friday and did some Serious Talks about our relationship and stuff, Went out for a drive to Sunshine on Saturday (Why? Why not? Part of our explorings of the surrounds!), then went out to Chains at the night where we did some really intense play, then on Sunday we went to the Chocolate Rush Festival at the Showgrounds, where we partook in chocolate and I bought yummy spices. By the end of the weekend I was really reticent to leave him - it was one of those weekends where you can clearly and honestly say that there was quality time spent, and admittedly we'd not had such an intense weekend in quite a while. It was a wonderful thing to have my relationship batteries recharged in such a way, and now I miss my erinkyan greatly and can't wait until next Thursday to see him again!

Monday I also got a brief opportunity to say hi to my Uncle Bryan, when he took me to lunch down at Crown before his flight to Adelaide. It was actually really nice to sit down and chat with my Uncle without having the parents around (it's not that they interfere or anything, but when I'm at relative's places with my parents it's still kinda hard to break out of the family unit, so I don't tend to engage as actively). We chatted about all manner of things, like theatre, Twitter and Facebook, how our respective workplaces were going, how the politics in Adelaide and Melbourne seem to be very similar (and yet how things seem to happen in Melbourne, and not in Adelaide), etc. etc.

I don't get a lot of moments like that with my Uncle (unfortunately), and I wish I had more of them these days. He's not just a link to my family back home, he's pretty much my first knowledge of queerness. I've never exactly thought of him as a role-model, but I have to admit, if he wasn't in my family I think I'd've had a lot more issues with sexuality than I do. My uncle, just by living his life, and not really that closely to me, showed me that there was nothing wrong with loving men, and it's taken me a while to really understand how fundamental that was to me. So, since I know you're reading Uncle Bryan, thankyou. Thankyou for being you, because you let me be me.

This was originally posted at http://kirby1024.dreamwidth.org/122534.html

sigh

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 10:08:44 GMT

The comments on this article just continue to prove that people see exactly what they want to see. To be fair, I think the article is worse.

Let me put it to you very simply and very clearly - Almost every instance of "Americanisation" in Australian English has either been part of the language long before America reached it's cultural superpower status, or has been switching in and out of the language for about as long.

Oh, and even if some changes in language could be directly connected to the influence of one of the many American Accents (there's more than one), that's okay. Really. Americans seem to be able to get their points across just fine. Hell, there are some excellent parts of American language use that I'd love to see adopted properly down here (like all their spelling reforms - They make the written form much closer to the spoken form, even in Australian English.

I do understand the whole overreaction to changing language thing. It's a big part of the identity of people, and everyone thinks they're right, and that everyone should speak like they do. But I don't have to like it. *grumps*

Countdown to Movination!

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 03:07:54 GMT

So, a couple of things to my loyal readership - as it turns out, it wasn't the St Kilda East Property we'd gotten, but a property in West Footscray. Which I'm not complaining about at all, seeing as it's a house, and a house that's about similar distance away from work, for exactly the same price. The reason for why I got confused is a funny one, and mostly revolves around confirmation bias and my noted tendency to miss vital parts of conversations and why you really do need to make sure about the confirmation questions you ask.

So, the day of the Keys is this Saturday, so lots of things need doing. Among the list:

Actually Sign Lease and Give 1st month's rent.

~~Arrange the Water connection.~~

~~Arrange the Gas & Power connection.~~

~~Arrange the Phone and Internet connection.~~

~~Call Man with a Van to arrange a Moving Van.~~

Acquire further boxes for moving.

Change Addresses with everyone.

Set up a mail redirect for the inevitable one or two important groups I'll miss.

~~~~Press-gang~~ Invite friends over to help with packing.~~

~~Check with alissakalisti as to whether she's coming over for moving day or not, and ~~Press-gang~~ Invite her to help move/pack if she is.~~

Arrange Carpet Cleaners.

~~Decide whether I'm doing big clean-up, or whether I'm hiring professional cleaners for the purpose.~~

Act on above decision.

Because that's safe...

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 04:58:10 GMT

Discovered in the Facebook Ads while going about my daily business.

On the one hand, it's a brilliant idea - Laser hair removal costs a ton, so why not create a home system? It's a perfectly marketable device.

On the other hand, You are giving an untrained a person a class 3 laser in an unsupervised setting, where they'll be aiming it directly at themselves, probably even near eyes or gibbly bits. Chances are excellent they'll be using it on themselves, meaning possible flinches that could lead to any number of ill effects, and possibly even putting such a device within reach of children.

What could possibly go wrong?

I so have a new place to live.

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 02:25:07 GMT

So, a few months ago I started advertising for housemates, and more recently I actually acquired a stable set of housemates and began searching for somewhere new to live.

So this weekend, me and metal_dog were running (or cycling as the case may be) around various bits of melbourne househunting. Yesterday and today we were clamouring about to send documents to real estate agents.

About an hour or so ago, I was informed that we'd picked up a nice little 3 bedroom apartment in St Kilda East, just off Carlisle St. For cheap.

When things move, they move fast!

MOAR JOB WATCH!!!

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:59:26 GMT

Again, those looking for work, here's another exciting Job Offer from Carrick. In this case, you'd probably be working in Bourke St, or maybe at Docklands. If you're interested, let me know and I'll put a referral form in with your resume!

Corporate Receptionist

Carrick is a leading privately owned and operated organisation who have been providing quality vocational education and training programs to local and international students across Australia for over 21 years.

We currently have a vacancy for an experienced and professional Receptionist to undertake a busy front of house and administration role. Working in conjunction with our other Carrick receptionist, you will provide meet and greet duties in a busy reception environment to all key Carrick stakeholders including prospective and current students, employees and clients. Your professional manner and experience in a multi-tasking environment will see you handle the steady flow of calls, customers and administrative work successfully.

The ideal candidate will have prior experience in a busy corporate reception position, coupled with excellent communication and interpersonal skills. A flexible and adaptable attitude to your work, combined with a positive approach to problem solving will suit this position. Intermediate MS Office skills are essential.

Please email your resume outlining your industry experience quoting reference number RCP-M-0709 to cbutcher@carrickeducation.edu.au

Job Watch!

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:46:02 GMT

For those of you needing jobs in Melbourne right now, a new one has popped up in my email. If you're interested, let me know, so I can put in a Referral form for you! As a note, this is a full-time position, and you'd be working in the same building as me (although on a different floor):

Administration Operator

We are currently seeking to employ a motivated and team-orientated individual to join the Education Administration Department in the role of Administration Operator. Based at our Southbank Campus, and working within a friendly and supportive team environment, your duties will include but not be limited to the following:

File student records on a daily basis.
Input student results into Student Management System (Wise.NET and/or individual Academic Results).
Input attendance records into Student Management System (Wise.NET).
Update and regularly maintain student information on Wise.NET.
Provide additional support to the team as required.

The successful applicant will possess the following attributes:

Excellent data entry speed and accuracy
Ability to effectively contribute in a team environment,
Cultural awareness and empathy
Excellent attention to detail
Strong communication skills, especially on the phone and via email.
Accountability for workload
Customer service focus

If this sounds like the a role that either you or someone you know would be suitable for, please forward your resume (CV of no more than 4 pages) to jglover@carrickeducation.edu.au quoting reference number AO-M-0709.

Applications need to be submitted by 5pm, Friday the 17^th of July, 2009

Dear Lazyweb

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:58:23 GMT

So, I've been noticing a distinct bias in a lot of the blogs that I read these days, mostly that they're very America-centric, except for a few electoral blogs. I seem to be very well informed on a lot of American Social and Political stuff, but have very little knowledge of what's going on in my own country!

So, considering how many of my friends are out there reading their own stuff, I'd like to politely ask if anyone has any suggestions for good Australian Blogs on the following subjects:

* Linguistics (surely there has to be one or two!)
* Sociology
* Law
* Queer Issues (of any and all stripes)
* Economics

Also, any Australian General Interest blogs that you've come across that should be read.

Anyone?

Yay! Discoveries!

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 01:33:11 GMT

One of the undocumented perks of using barely documented software you've never used before for is that you keep discovering interesting things about it. Some things I've discovered today about LionWiki:

1) Since any plugins you download with it are on by default, I've had File Upload abilities on my wiki since I started it. As it turns out, the Upload function is very basic, and thus entirely unsecure. So while I was checking out my AWstats page, I discovered some interesting file requests, checked them out, and discovered that people had been uploading scripts on my file server. One delete-fest later, that problem's fixed, and I've disabled the Upload plugin.

2) Lionwiki apparently has a very simple RSS feed attached to it, which just diffs every change made to the wiki. Mine has now been added to my Greader, so I know when people post to my wiki.

You'd think these things'd appear in the documentation, but it's harder to find than you'd think!

Reminder about Lexicon Game

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:03:54 GMT

Those of you who were at all interested in joining in on the Lexicon game I'm starting up, just a reminder that the first turn ends on Friday, so you'll need to have your entries posted up by then if you're going to play.

Here's a direct link to the Lexicon's central page. Please don't be shy about joining! Don't think you have to be a good writer, or have to be overly witty, or anything like that - the point of the game is to practice some creativity in a nice, relaxed atmosphere - And, you know, have some fun while you're at it!

Lexicon is open!

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:05:44 GMT

So, since erinkyan is sick, and I have time before the 11:45 doctor's appointment I'm driving him to, I've got the Lexicon Wiki open:

Lee's Lexicon Wiki is open for business!

The first Lexicon is the Broken History Lexicon, and the first entry (written by yours truly) is APEX. For everyone who's interested in joining up, the only thing you need to do to sign up is get your first entry up on the wiki by next Friday (10/7/2009). While my entry is fairly serious, feel free to be wildly silly with this prompt. Take whatever you know of history, scramble it, add some cheese then fry it with vigour - that's all this prompt is about. I just didn't have the silly vibe in me this morning.

Oh! Also, if anyone has friends who might also be interested in signing up, feel free to point them this way - The more people involved the better, I always say! There's no need to sign up on the wiki, since there's no usernames at all involved, and at the moment, I've not put a password on the wiki. This game is open to anyone who wants to play! If you just want to watch, that's fine too - but I can't guarantee it'll be as fun as playing!

Prompting Myself

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:49:18 GMT

So, I was recently reading deird1's recent post on prompt communities, and a few things suddenly fell into place for me (as I write this, I notice how I verge into slightly different territory than deird1 did, still I think it's worth writing anyway).

Over the last year I've been noticing exactly how little creative work I'd been doing, and I think the reason is because, well, nothing's prompting me to do it. When I still roleplayed at MURP, I was often the GM, but I'd almost never plan a session, because I was much more comfortable bouncing off other people, but I also wonder whether part of the reason was because honestly, there are very few things I've done in my life that weren't banging right up onto the deadline. It wasn't that I rushed things, or that I did things without thinking, but that until I was made to do something, it just never got done. I've often noted how I could never seem to do essays until the day before they were due. It wasn't that I hadn't been thinking about the essay, or doing the research, I'd just... never had a reason to start writing the damn thing until the night before. It infuriated more than a few people in my life, but it was really how I worked. And I did well enough to get into honours, so clearly there was something going on there. My Psych even calls it being prompt-focused. I don't do things until I'm prompted, simple enough.

So, it's occured to me quite a few times in the last year that I should get back into writing, but I've never actually done more than an abortive attempt at creative writing. And I'm certain that I'm not the only one on my flist who's feeling the same here. I'd join a fandom community and start writing, but I have no fandoms right now, certainly none that I'm thinking enough about to want to write fanfic.

Then I remembered about Lexicons. As world-building exercises, they're not fantastic, but as deadline-constrained collaborative creative writing exercises, they're brilliant, and quite adaptable to a range of different writing styles.

If I started a game of Lexicon, would there be anyone on my flist who'd be interested in playing with me? I wouldn't be doing a full 26-turn Lexicon (maybe a phone-pad lexicon, those are just short enough to keep everyone going until the end), and I wouldn't necessarily be setting it up as encyclopedia-style writing. Just a way of giving everyone a neat prompt for some collective writing, and have a little fun while doing it. A way of getting my arse into gear and actually start writing again, even if it's only 200-300 word things. I'd even be really nice and make 1-week deadlines for everyone, just so there's as little pressure as possible while still having a tight deadline. Who's in with me?

I am possibly the biggest nerd of all time.

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 09:10:56 GMT

I am enjoying pronouncing words on Wordnik far, far too much. I think I may be running out of words in memory to pronounce! This is terrible! Tell me LJ and DW, what words should I pronounce next? Is there a word you want to hear pronounced in my Australian accent? I don't care if it's rude or crude (hell, that makes it better!), just tell me, what word should I pronounce next?

I love TED talks

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 08:53:02 GMT

Especially when they're geeking on my geekery:

It's long, about 15 minutes or so. But well worth it, because I agree with just about everything in it. The dictionary is not the language. It doesn't contain all the words and leave out all the non-words. It just has a set of words. And we can do so much better. We can capture every word in the world if we want to!

And as it turns out, the sort of site that she was envisioning has already begun, And it's name is Wordnik. And I gotta love a website that helps put words into context by putting realtime Twitter feeds into every word. That's just brilliant.

EDIT: OH MY GOD. They let you record your pronunciation of words. This is beyond awesome. I may be staying in tonight...

Who do I not have on my Greader list?

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:13:59 GMT

So, I use Google Reader an absurd amount during my day (usually due to lack of other things to do), and I notice that noone I know seems to share anything they read on Google Reader. Hell, it's like noone I know uses Greader at all.

So, seriously, who's on Greader, and do any of you generally share articles? Are you guys just not on my contacts list or something? I'm always curious to see what everyone else is reading and whatnot, and it seems that Greader would make that a whole lot easier...

From the Google Reader:

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 03:40:03 GMT

An interesting report on racial discrimination in the workplace focusing on Chinese, Italian, Middle-Eastern and Aboriginal groups.

It's quite the interesting study, actually, doing a few neat experiments and drawing a few not particularly pleasant conclusions. Basically, if you have a Middle-Eastern or Chinese name, you're going to have to work much harder just to get an interview, which does not bode well right now, seeing as jobs are getting thinner and thinner on the ground.

I would have been interested to see if the race of the person looking at the resume makes any difference to rate of callback in the jobseeker category, but I'm not surprised that such information wasn't available considering the setup of the test, and I'm sure if I had access to the literature databases again, I'd probably be able to find some tests on that.

Definitely a very interesting read, I recommend looking through it.