which is to say

countdown to baby: 43 days writing deadline: today jobs: 3 job interview: monday personal projects: too many

so uh

I'm charting #3 right now on the itch.io physical games list and got an endorsement from one of the game designers I really like?????

??????????? help

apparently the people thirst for toxic yuri. i did not expect this i don't know what to do with this

also i got all my promptfic from cohost archived over at veryroundbirdfics finally. accomplish

oh also i got my gallbladder stolen yesterday. recovery's fine just very weird to be minus one organ and also i'll be delighted when my body feels normal again

i've been Going Through It (tm) and therefore have fallen off posting for a bit (hi! i'm alive! sorry i haven't replied to your comments or posts life has been coming at me fast) but. listen.

this wasn't how i intended to make a comeback but i need SOMEWHERE to express my like popcorn.gif / reel-back-from-monitor about the fact that we are trying to approve the SECOND ITEM on the agenda which is the FINANCE REPORT and there has already been so much drama. why is the radio club board so spicy tonight

in order to point a gun at myself to write my goddamn WIPs once I'm back from [situation] I am listing the things I keep earnestly intending to write

• The rest of the chapters of Not Even Into Another Eternity, the hurt/no comfort prequel to Hand in Unlovable Hand, the fic that apparently opened a lot of lesbians' third eye about lesbian OC ships
• The one I haven't named yet that's dreamscape eroguro involving a sharkgirl and a lady who turned herself into a fucked-up jellyfish
• Esoteric astral plane evil snake god/divine nature avatar smut
• Another fic in the series of "Tara asked me to make her suffer so by god I will provide" this time featuring Ch'en Hui-chieh as an unlikely cult leader
• The Real Housewives of the Court of Stars, the warcraft fic that has lived rent-free in my brain for like six years

"carly do you write anything normal" yes but this is my heartsong. thanks

listen i got kind of lost by the gundam metaphysics but

spoilers

happy for these funky little lesbians. all i wanted: got it

also i'm glad every elan is just. differently obnoxious (affectionate) in every version

Really good post on making your own archive on Neocities.

ETA: post with resources on creating fansites!

I also wanted to add that there's an ecosystem of "tildeverse" websites out there that give you space on a shared computer (e.g., you get a website at domain.com/~username, hence the tilde) that require a little more command-line know-how than Neocities, but also give you some more tools, like blog generators and the ability to upload stuff via git and FTP. Some well-known ones are tilde.club and tilde.town.

There's also a lot of lightweight services like smol.pub or bearblog's very tiny blogging engines that have the flexibility to be a small archive. Self-hosted Wordpress blogs are also super flexible as far as what kind of content they can support, and there are plugins that allow for even more flexibility in implementing social features and user-generated content.

If you want some starter templates for a website, Zonelets has some charmingly web 1.0 layouts for you to start with. (Also there's this tool that'll take some markdown files and template it with zonelets for you)

(Also, if you want that microblog fix: consider status.cafe or imood. imood will even give you a little image you can put somewhere as a status widget.)

So, last year I decided to sign up for the next amateur radio licensing exam, which turned out to be a week from when I decided this, so I crammed the entire study guide and walked out with a license and had my callsign two days later. I do not recommend this but it worked.

Why Amateur Radio, Mx. Veryroundbird?

I'm glad you asked! Amateur radio is a neat hobby that lets you make connections with people all around the world, and also offers a lot of opportunities for public service. Amateur radio operators (or "Hams") are often called up to volunteer at large events like marathons, and you can get training to be a weather spotter (Skywarn) and/or emergency comms operator (ARES/RACES).

As such, it's a great way to get involved in local community in a practical way, especially considering that great googly moogly it's all gone to shit recently, not to put too fine a point on it.

There are also a lot of different facets that might appeal to people—some people like the social aspect of being on the air; others like trying to make as many new contacts as possible; some people specialize in operating from parks or mountains. There's also groups that build their own radios, or work on the electrical components or antennas that go along with radios, if you like to build things.

How do you get licensed?

If you go to the ARRL website you can find the exam nearest you—which will likely be sponsored and run by your local radio club. There are also now some options for online exams, if you're not close to one!

HamStudy.org has some good study tools that everyone I know swears by. Basically everyone told me afterward that I could have just skipped the book, but if you're like me and want to devour a large textbook, you can get the official ARRL study guides from booksellers. Technician is the entry level, which will let you operate on a limited selection of bands—you'll want to aim for General or Amateur Extra if you're serious about long-distance contacts. (You can technically sit for all the levels at once if you're committed.)

You will probably pass because the exam is not that hard! And then they'll give you instructions on how to register with the FCC and get your callsign, which is assigned in order. (I'm KD9VDM.)

What do I do afterward?

If you have a nearby club, they'll probably have events! Check out their website or mailing list and see what they've got going on. Regular events like Field Day get a big turnout because it's both a contest for most contacts and a local outreach opportunity. You can also just get on the air!

It's easy to get a Baofeng UV-5R, which is the handheld (HT) model that literally everyone has. You'll want to get a slightly better whip antenna (just a little longer; it doesn't have to be too long) which should let you talk to people in your local area. They are very cheap and therefore a really good way to get started.

If you want something more powerful, a Kenwood mobile unit is on the low end of fuller radios at ~$600. This is not cheap but it will never die. (For a base station you'll also need a power supply and an antenna; it adds up. I keep all my equipment on one of those container store carts though and it's very cute.)

Make sure and sign up for mailing lists for local clubs and groups, because they'll also post there about opportunities for public service, if that's what you're interested in. Some groups have mailing lists for long-distance contact spotting so hams can help each other out making rare contacts.

The demographics of amateur radio are, somewhat predictably, older white cis guys. That can change, though! And a lot of hams understand that they need to get new people in to continue the hobby, so honestly they'll probably be enthusiastic to see anyone new coming in. There's also the Pride Radio Group and the Young Ladies Radio League (you don't have to be young; it's a joke stemming from some slightly sexist ham slang), and Blind Hams if you want to find community with hams of similar background.

Ham radio Mastodon is also very active and also very nice? mastodon.radio and mastodon.hams.social exist and are kind of nice to have as a way to meet hams across the world.

Is there a Dreamwidth comm?

hamradio isn't active... but it could be. We could be the change we want to see in the world.

how did this happen how is it almost july. i have to cancel my marketplace health insurance so they don't take my money

stuff that's more fun than that:

Yuri Olympics - you pick a pairing and write stuff for it during July, apparently, and it's judged by pairing "teams"? I've been talking with my friend Becky about doing something for Arknights

Artfight - oh heck i gotta put together my character sheets for it. this looked really fun when a bunch of my friends did it last year!! i want to draw other people's guys and also get art of my blorbos

accidentally making the /latest page make it look like this site has an arknights fandom that's not just me. anyway the project to port my fics to dreamwidth is complete so now everything is properly mirrored at veryroundbirdfics which also now has a cool custom layout

looking forward to getting back to being a chuubo's player in a few weeks although i've been super enjoying wanderhome and feel like i've been flexing interesting different muscles since the game explicitly removes violence from the stage. adding more tools to my game toolbox. also i think i'm starting to feel like i'm hitting my stride with running chuubo's which is nice!

herb garden's coming along; i have a shitton of cilantro and mint already and i know the basil will pop off because basil just does that. the pepper plant pigeon mostly ate is finally getting new leaves, too (along with the fig plant that accidentally got dried out, which now has a fourth leaf coming)

bought a new flagpole for the house and a progress pride and lesbian pride flag pair which will not get here for pride month but WILL get here for 4th of july, so that we can stand for the flag etc