devi: (Default)
devi ([personal profile] devi) wrote2012-11-21 09:07 am
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Come on back to the war

You know those bits in films where the story skips forward and there's an establishing shot showing something that indicates what time we're in now? Newspaper headlines. A pop song. Colour schemes. Jeans suddenly baggy or skinny, hair suddenly fouffy or 'fro. I had a moment like that this summer on the tube at West Ham. In front of me there was a row of people reading newspapers with the Olympics all over them, and some dubstep went 'wommmmm' on my headphones just as we passed a row of wind turbines. Look, it's 2012!

I am posting to LJ from underground, on my commute, with my tiny pocket computer. This morning feels a bit like that. I am wearing glasses. My jeans are indeed skinny. I am listening to an old [livejournal.com profile] ultraruby mix (British Summertime). My hair is the same as it ever was. Hello world! It's been a weird couple of years. How were yours?

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

[identity profile] bluedevi.livejournal.com 2012-11-21 02:09 pm (UTC)(link)
Kick their arses for me. Also, ultramarine+++++

[identity profile] zenithed.livejournal.com 2012-11-21 02:17 pm (UTC)(link)
Welcome to Space Year 2012.

Things are doing pretty well. Doing science by day and being a geek by night. Still living with Jo in Islington, but my girlfriend lives in Leytonstone so I end up there a couple of times a week.

I am wearing glasses and cycling now, so am probably subject to Hipster Creep (the early Radiohead single that only cool people would have heard of).

[identity profile] mirrorshard.livejournal.com 2012-11-21 02:18 pm (UTC)(link)
That reminds me! Have you read Spike Bucklow's The Alchemy of Paint (http://saskiavogel.com/?tag=alchemy-of-paint)? Amazing & utterly bonkers book about how med. & renn. pigments were made, and the theological/alchemical basis behind it. Happy to lend my copy, if not.

[identity profile] bluedevi.livejournal.com 2012-11-21 03:14 pm (UTC)(link)
Aha, yes, I recognise that one. I did a lot more Londony things when I was coming down from Oxford about once a month than I do now.

Is that a knackering commute? Do you have to go east to get on the London-Reading train or can you pick it up on the way?

[identity profile] bluedevi.livejournal.com 2012-11-21 03:27 pm (UTC)(link)
I read and enjoyed the furry fiction! (I came to see how you were doing when you filled in my poll a while back.) Are you doing more? Sorry to hear about the job :(

[identity profile] boxcat.livejournal.com 2012-11-21 03:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Last 2 years:

* Wrote a book which is doing rather well.
* Started a company.
* Became an international superstar DJ rockstar programmer all-purpose technical gimp

My hair is not the same as it ever was. This is largely because I now have to interact with venture capitalists on a semi-regular basis. I see the inside of Heathrow Terminal 5 far, far too often.

Still, on balance, things are mostly pretty damn amazing, and I am kind of left wondering what I'm going to do if this all crashes and burns, because working for someone else again is more-or-less unconscionable by now.

[identity profile] bluedevi.livejournal.com 2012-11-21 03:50 pm (UTC)(link)
Delighted to hear it. I am also in a Decent Job, and no longer a starving freelance. I still half expect my company to forget to pay me for eight or nine weeks, the way my old clients used to.

[identity profile] bluedevi.livejournal.com 2012-11-21 03:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Hipster Creep! Oh dear. My glasses are rather thick-rimmed and I love my bike, but I will never forsake it for a fixie because coasting is far too much fun.

Give me a shout if you're in Leytonstone and at a loose end?

[identity profile] bluedevi.livejournal.com 2012-11-21 03:56 pm (UTC)(link)
Woo! / Oww! / Woo (again, twice)! / Grrr!

What's your novel called? OMG NOVEL :D

[identity profile] bluedevi.livejournal.com 2012-11-21 03:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Trade you for feijoadas and possibly cake?

[identity profile] bluedevi.livejournal.com 2012-11-21 04:02 pm (UTC)(link)
2013 should be the Year of More Live Music. What are your local bands like?

[identity profile] venta.livejournal.com 2012-11-21 04:39 pm (UTC)(link)
I have the option of going to Paddington and catching the fast train, or just hopping on the slower train locally. The fast train combo gets me to Reading around 10 minutes sooner, but the stopping train is a lot less bother (and doesn't involve Proper City Commuters, who will have your leg off if you delay them by a picosecond).

It's not knackering as such - a ten minute walk, a fifty minute train ride (where I'll always get a seat) and a fifteen minute cycle. It does, however, take up a very large lump of every day. Reading, emailing or dozing makes the train way better than driving, but sometimes I'd like to be doing other things with that time.

[identity profile] undyingking.livejournal.com 2012-11-21 04:46 pm (UTC)(link)
Pretty ropey, to be honest. There's a couple of good reggae outfits, but that's about it. But the young ones are keen! – that's worth a lot.

[identity profile] huskyteer.livejournal.com 2012-11-21 05:00 pm (UTC)(link)
Currently on a contract in Wimbledon and coping by telling myself it's what I'm doing until my writing career takes off (nb may coincide with my retirement). I've had short stories in 2 furry-specific anthologies, one for hem-hem mature audiences, but this is unlikely to start paying the bills any time soon.

[identity profile] the-elyan.livejournal.com 2012-11-21 06:14 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, not bad, ta - ups, downs, quite a lot of boring bits in the middle.

Off to Venice tomorrow, so the next couple of years will at least start better, viewed from here.
ext_36163: (headachey)

[identity profile] cleanskies.livejournal.com 2012-11-21 08:29 pm (UTC)(link)
Promoted, exhausted. And Nelson just won best book at the Comics Awards!
shermarama: (bright light)

[personal profile] shermarama 2012-11-21 10:27 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh yeah, becoming more common - I remember them going in at the Morrrisons in Holloway Road in what was probably early 2009, but then they were always in the Tesco Express round the corner from the same flat from when I moved in there in 2008, but then again I'm sure there were some in place when I was band-commuting from Brighton to London and that was 2005 / 2006... I just can't remember exactly when I first saw one. But lots of Dutch people are seeing one for the first time, and being confused. And they don't even have the bagging area or anything.

[identity profile] haggisthesecond.livejournal.com 2012-11-21 11:16 pm (UTC)(link)
Enjoying self-employment in the last couple of years, not enjoying some medical issues quite so much, but still happily living in our little flat on the river. Quite a dab hand at making soup, these days. Glad to see you posting again!

[identity profile] nisaba.livejournal.com 2012-11-22 12:27 am (UTC)(link)
I appear to be living upside-down, as I moved back home to Australia last year. I'm missing autumn leaves and long summer nights and Guy Fawkes fireworks and friends, but otherwise I'm loving it. Still waiting impatiently for science to invent a teleporter though.

Great to see you back here.

[identity profile] concourse.livejournal.com 2012-11-22 06:55 am (UTC)(link)
Married and living in a pretty cottage with two cats. Still working for OUP but my internal clock is ticking loudly. Part-time student, doing undergraduate Law with the Open University, just to use my brain a bit more. It does feel a bit out of the loop out here but life is pretty nice. Good to have you back online!
juliet: (tree)

[personal profile] juliet 2012-11-22 11:47 am (UTC)(link)
There was that whole baby thing. Although I have seen you at least once over the last couple of years so you're up to date with the new house & all that stuff.

I will say again: come visit! Or let us come visit :)

[identity profile] zenithed.livejournal.com 2012-11-22 02:24 pm (UTC)(link)
Sounds good, we go to the Red Lion semi-regularly anyway. Or is the William IV nearer?
triskellian: (reading)

[personal profile] triskellian 2012-11-23 08:49 am (UTC)(link)
I'm PhDing along. I'm now the world expert in how to get a boyfriend in the UK in 1964, and am gradually acquiring weapons and skills towards defeating the 'academic unemployment' big boss at the end of the level.

...And am surprised by that metaphor, which isn't one which I'd have expected from my own brain, being a non-computer-gamey person, but which seems deeply appropriate anyway.

Hi! Good to see you!

[identity profile] eponymousarchon.livejournal.com 2012-11-23 12:34 pm (UTC)(link)
Helllooo!

You have been missed, dammit!
Me? Still doing evil things to minons and miscellaneous students at the University and plotting feenish things. :)

[identity profile] eponymousarchon.livejournal.com 2012-11-23 12:36 pm (UTC)(link)
Speaking of feenish things: Spodmeet, next friday. Beee theeeere. ;)

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