February Links Post

Things strangers have done

• Created a polygonal sine wave generator, which allows you to play sine and cosine waves generated from regular polygons which aren’t circles. Entertaining to mess around with, and allows you to change the frequency of the waveform to suit your hearing as well. Discoveries with A (440Hz) include that while increasing the number of the source polygon’s sides until it most closely resembles a traditional sine wave produces a smoother-sounding note, reducing the number of sides until the waveform resembles a flamboyant triangle drawn with a calligraphy brush creates something which is both harsh and musical at the same time. Fantastically good fun. 
• The British Library remind everyone that their Medieval and earlier manuscripts are in the public domain and the digitised catalogue is available for use: good news for scholars, the interested, or people like me who are having a bit of a belated spike of appreciation for the times prior to the fall of Constantinople.
• The Kerala State Library too have a large digitised collection online in English and Malayalam. Some of the books are very rare, and there are over a thousand titles available.

People have done other things, but I haven’t been paying attention.

Filed under: content: links, british library, english books, generators, illuminated manuscripts, kerala, library, malayalam books, maths, medieval, music, public domain, rare books, scholarship, sine waves, sound theory

January Links Post

Things I’ve done

Things my friends have done

Things strangers have done

• Posted a marvellous Victorian experiment in cross-dressing, where for scientific reasons gentlemen discovered that corsets are a right bastard to bend in. As someone who spent New Year’s Eve having to rely on their friend for all shoe-tying and bag-raising needs I can wholeheartedly concur, although despite the belief of the male participant in this experiment, it is possible to both eat and drink in one. Kind of.
• Wrote a very accessible post about temperature and negative temperatures, using Warren Buffett, Scrooge McDuck, and the Dalai Lama as examples in an analogy. I’m not the brightest when it comes to understanding physics (it wasn’t really taught in my school) but this makes rational sense to me so I’d say it’s a pretty good piece of science journalism.
• Worked out how Vestal Virgins must have done their hair. In case you felt the need to recreate it.

Filed under: content: links, analogies, clothing, corsets, cross-dressing, hair, hairstyles, historical hairstyles, negative temperature, physical laws, physics, roman, roman history, rome, science, science education, science journalism, social experiments, sociology, temperature, victorians

December Links Post

Things I have done

• Reached a stage of procrastination so acute that I thought it was a good idea to start making Etsy Treasuries.

Things friends have done

• Written an unusual ghost story at my prompting: My Old Man’s Badge.
• Challenged himself to write 12 “Fast Fictions” in 12 days, with some quite well-known people prompting him for the stories.

Things strangers have done

• Made this great tutorial on how to make your own filigree masquerade mask. I think you’d need steadier hands than I have to make it work.
• On the theme of tutorials, this blog is full of useful beading tutorials.
• Created this beautiful costuming and tapestry blog which is full of very revealing and fascinating posts (illustrated with photographs, of course) for anyone interested in those crafts.
• Written a very charming round-up of English letters that ceased to be English letters as a result of French printing presses, or for other less amusingly xenophobic reasons.
• Made what a friend describes as “an in-browser tool for making up nonsense words to your phonetic requirements”.
• The British Library has made available online a truly staggering number of medieval European illuminated manuscripts.
• Made an entire kit for constructing a language from scratch!

That’s all for this year! Have a happy new year, everyone who observes the Gregorian calendar, and I hope 2013 is better.

Filed under: content: links, alphabets, applications, apps, arts and crafts, beading, beads, calligraphy, challenge, constructed language, costuming, craft, crafts, etsy, fiction, filigree, generators, ghost story, greek myths, guide, history, history of print, how to, illuminated manuscripts, jewellery, jewelry, kits, language, linguistics, links, mask, masquerade, medieval arts, medieval history, printing, sewing, short fiction, tapestry, tools, tutorial, tutorials, writing

November Links Post

Things my friends have done

• I can now say with absolute sincerity that I have had a song composed about me (by my dear friend Hana), and I will just have to sit on the fact that she wrote it because I pouted at her after she wrote a song about our mutual friend Fiona (and that mostly because Fiona rhymes with boner. We are an intellectually robust cabal). This is worth listening to just to hear Hana break down in giggles mid-verse.
• Written a rather beautiful poem.

Things strangers have done

• Pertinent to the month which has just passed by us, the Guardian have published a guide on how to write a book in 30 days.
• Set Skillex’s most well-known track into a piano piece, in which it sounds as well-composed and wonderful as ever, but perhaps less grating for those who, like one of the commenters, have strong negative feelings about dubstep.
• The Foreign Institute Service has developed a series of language courses and put them online for free.
• This deviantartist has created a tutorial on how to draw backgrounds using Google Sketchup.
• More appropriate links to the month just passed, and for anyone who still wants to be a writer: your lack of confidence is neither interesting nor unique.
• Memrise, who appear to specialise in mnemonics, have some courses on learning Irish.
• On the subject of Gaelic, there is a handy pronunciation guide here.

Filed under: content: links, art, background, composition, courses, drawing, foreign language, friends, gaelic, guide, how to, irish, language, learning, love poems, mnemonics, music, nanowrimo, piano, poetry, pronunciation, reference, resources, sketchup, songs, songwriting, tutorial, ukulele, very silly indeed, writing

Guest Post

Today my “essay”/mad ramblings about staying in character while writing has been posted at the Madame Guillotine blog:

Keeping your characters under control – a guest post by Delilah des Anges

Filed under: content: links, advice, characterisation, essay, guest post, madame guillotine, nanowrimo, writing

October Links Post

Things friends & acquaintances have done

• I wrote a poem in response to a prompt some time ago: the artist who prompted me has responded with a set of truly astounding illustrations. I wish to draw everyone’s attention both to the beautiful detail in the inkwork, and to the light on the crown and the face of the beast. Top-notch.
• Likewise in the arts arena, acquaintance and fellow-writer Anna J Roberts has popped out another book, and this one has my cover design on it.
• It was my birthday yesterday, and to celebrate my friend F wrote me a poem to my requirements: about fish.
• And then my friend Kevin drew me a dude being eaten by a tentacle monster, because my friends know me.

Things strangers have done

• Written a thought-provoking and to my mind/experience at least very accurate article about classism and academic jargon turning working-class women off feminism.
• Created very funny and eerily accurate fake announcements on the London Underground.
• Provided a concise and very helpful guide on content-editing your own work, which I think I will be referring back to regularly myself.
• Created a thing, or possibly a whatsit, which scans Twitter for tweets in iambic pentameter, and then arranges them into poems.
• Offered some handy hints for getting ahead with NaNoWriMo.
• Made a Fibonacci cabinet, which is beautiful nerdery, or possibly a demonstration of why the Golden Ratio is so important in everything.

Filed under: content: links, academia, apps, art, cabinet, classism, content edit, culture, design, editing, fakes, feminism, fibonacci number, fibonacci sequence, fish, furniture, gifs, iambic pentameter, illustrations, lived experience, london, london underground, math, mathematics, maths, monster, nanowrimo, nepotism, poetry, presents, street art, tentacle, theory, transport for london, writing, writing hints

What’s it called when you turn your age on the date?

Hello. Today I am 30, an age that for various reasons I wasn’t expecting to get to. Since not-dying is worth celebrating, between now and when I actually get to have my celebration (the 1st of December), all the books on Lulu are reduced, all the jewellery currently up on Etsy is reduced, and between now and the 1st of November, The Breaking of M is FREE on the Kindle Store.

If you’re into buying presents, my Amazon Wishlist and Etsy Favourites; if you’re not into money-spending/broke, I really like it when people do fanart/writing for me. Stick figures are fine. Haiku are terrible but I appreciate the effort anyway. Really I’d just like to hear from you.

(I’m tempted also to say I will provide free Kindle copies of anything people have bought of mine in print, but I’ve no idea how to work it).

Filed under: content: links, content: real life, birthday

September Links Post

Things I’ve done

• Written a post for Bad Reputation about female desire and pop music.

Things my friends have done

• Talent fountain and illustrator Kassie has at long last made it possible for people to commission her. Examples of her work can be found at the link.

Things strangers have done

• Created a beautiful map of the London Underground out of printed circuit board, and made a functioning radio with it.
• Used the rings of a tree to map a piano sound, and produced beautiful, chaotic music.
• Called for submissions of short fiction to a rollerderby themed anthology.
• Compiled a list of poetry publications who – unfortunately still a rarity – accept digital submissions. It is a particular bugbear of mine that poetry magazines, behind every other type of publication, refuse to accept poems via email or web form, especially as unlike longer submissions it is entirely possible to to attach a poem to an email without capsizing even the most stingy of email inboxes.
• Compiled a handy ten-point list of ways not to write about comics.
• Created a gorgeous collection of ominous clothing eerily reminiscent of the costume designs for the baddies in Lord of the Rings.
• Written a not uncontroversial article about preventative therapy for paedophiles and hebephiles.
• Weighed in on the subject of taboos in comedy.

Filed under: content: links, anthologies, art, clothing, comedy, comics, commissions, composition, controversy, costume, couture, criticism, design, desire, electronics, experiments, fashion, feminism, graphic novels, lyrics, magazines, maps, meta, music, music technology, paedophilia, paraphilias, pedophilia, pj harvey, poetry, pop, pop culture, pop music, psychology, psychotherapy, publishing, radio, rape, rape jokes, reviews, roller derby, rollerderby, science, sequential art, submissions, taboo, trees, writing

Guest Posts On Other Blogs:

A little note to say my post about PJ Harvey, “This Is Love”: PJ Harvey, Pop Music, and Female Sexual Desire has gone up at Bad Reputation.

Filed under: content: links, bad reputation, female desire, feminism, links, lyrics, music, pj harvey, pop music, writing

August Links Post

Things my friends have done

• bottle_of_smoke has blogged again about things she enjoys: this time, the romantic lives of urban pigeons.

Things strangers have done

• Someone has discovered – how, I don’t know – that there is a squid that can break off its arms and throw them at enemies. The world can always, always get weirder.
• Made a note, at a fiction magazine, on why writing what you know isn’t always the best advice.
• Some kind soul has uploaded a selection of public domain films, including The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, to Youtube.
• Created an amusing little toy which will generate chunks of “Fifty Shades of Grey”-esque prose at the press of a button.
• Made a tool which allows you to find that word that’s right on the tip of your tongue.
• Posted a wide variety of documentaries, with a slant towards British history (the tumblr page is something of a clusterfuck of add-ons and annoying cursor-follows).
• Made an easy-to-follow tutorial on how to make custom lipsticks using wax crayons!
  
• Reported that science populariser and neurologist Oliver Sacks struggles with prosopagnosia, or “face blindness”, a neurological disorder which prevents him from recognising faces. The article itself is being used in part to promote Sacks’ new book, The Mind’s Eye. 
• Compiled a list of the “6 Most Certifiably Insane Acts of Writing“, although it is from Cracked.com so you may wish to take it with an entire cellar of salt.
• Posted a tutorial on how to turn a t-shirt into a “tank top” which I think is Americanese for “strappy top”.
• Laurie Penny wrote a post using her personal experience to talk about definitions of rape in the media; as you might expect from that description it is not a comfortable read.
• Created a handy website that will transform handwriting into a font.
• Made an interactive map of surname frequency in London.

Filed under: content: links, writing, craft, advice, fiction, media, neurology, fashion, humour, feminism, research, science, london, names, language, useful, squid, cephalopods, t shirts, politics, documentaries, biology, british history, Oliver Sacks, magazine, publisher, silent movies, history of film, free films, cabinet of dr caligari, fifty shades of grey, generator, toys, time-killer, tools, lexicography, list, european history, world history, resources, reference, medicine, DIY, D I Y, lipstick, cosmetics, beauty, cognitive neuroscience, prosopnagosia, face blindness, cracked, insane behaviour, rape, sexual assault, pigeons, birdwatching, typography, frequency, statistics