1) As part of sunshine_revival's first challenge: "Creative Prompt: Shine a light on your own creativity. Create anything you want (an image, an icon, a story, a poem, or a craft) and share it with your community."

I just shared some necklaces I made a few months back over at everykindofcraft. I did a lot of beading in the first 13 years after I took it up, but things have been rather start and stop in the last 10. A craft store closeout + a challenge from a relative got me making some new things in the last few months. That probably also contributed to my starting everykindofcraft here, because I saw various people posting wonderful stuff that not many people were seeing, whereas on Pillowfort some general craft communities there are always getting posts.

Hopefully we can get more crafters sharing here!

2) Have been watching a slew of Apple+ shows as our subscription cutoff nears. The miniseries Disclaimer was framed in an interesting way, one which I suspect had a lot more clarity in multimedia than in the book, but perhaps not. It uses multiple narrative voices and POV for the narration, including second person, first person, and some omniscient narrative. This was pretty relevant because of who was being framed (literally) and who actually got to have their voice(s) heard. ( Read more... )

3) Surface is a story told in a much more straightforward manner even though it also involves an unreliable narrator of sorts in that our central character had memory loss and is trying to piece together her past which also involves a parental mystery. ( Read more... )

4) Also saw the movie Wolfs, which is fine but largely a vehicle for us to watch Pitt and Clooney do fun stuff. ( Read more... )

5) Finished The Big Conn and Cowboy Cartel, two documentaries about big crime. I found the former much more interesting, even though I'd heard about the case before. What was probably the most striking about both was the role of the media in precipitating change. ( Read more... )

6) Careme was marketed as the story of the first celebrity chef, who served Napoleon, Tallyrand and others. It was certainly about far more than cooking. ( Read more... )

We're having to rebuild the search server again (previously, previously). It will take a few days to reindex all the content.

Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.

1) A few more trip photos posted over at common_nature, these of Oneonta Gorge.

2) Saw The Flash film and found it better than expected but also so-so. The big problem to me was the lead himself. Granted his character isn't really written to have any charm but a good bit of the humor fell flat for me, and when he was on screen twice as much it made it worse. ( Read more... )

3) Just an update about the bed situation listed in my last post. Everything went well! The youngsters delivering the bed had no problem with taking the old one down to the moving truck, and moving the other one to another room. ( Read more... )

4) A new wrinkle in the last few weeks is that during yet another heavy rain we got a leak near our front door. ( Read more... )

5) I quite liked this diagram of the interaction between entertainment production and fan activities. This came from an interview on Henry Jenkins' blog about a new set of textbooks for studying fandom.

1) I've been seeing a lot more posting on common_nature, very encouraging! Have added the first of my waterfall photos there, of Latourelle Falls.

2) Looks like there is a spammer at work on Squidgeworld. I got 3 comments to different posts within a few hours today, two with outright solicitations for commissions.

3) Saw Dune 2, and thought it was ok. It's almost as if the movie was made to be the direct opposite of David Lynch's version in casting and tone as well as visuals. ( Read more... )

4) Finally saw the Barbie movie as well. I can see why it did well. Given its remit and likely limitations, I thought it did a good job. It had a clear direction, and it did it well and with both humor and heart. I also quite enjoyed its ending. That said, I think the film itself opened the door to a more incisive critique which it didn't follow. ( Read more... )

5) This past month is turning out to be an expensive one. My partner's sister had a roof leak in her spare bedroom, which went on long enough that it damaged the bed underneath it before she noticed. Since this was where my partner stays when he visits his family, a replacement was needed. So we decided to move his current bed there and get a new one. ( Read more... )