it's like the eye of a duck

Starting off with the crunchiest and most worth reading: hrj's Sex Between Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, a worthy followup to her Essay on Cross Dressing in the SCA, which I also highly recommend. It is thorough, somber research but given the subject matter it might be NSFW. Writers and RPGers might find these very useful.

A thoughtful article on privilege and losing it, via @Mactavish.

Will rap music change the face of enterprise IT? "RapGenius is a site that lets users upload lyrics. Then it lets other users annotate and explain the meaning of the words for each song.”

Eric Idle, Eddie Izzard, and Billy Connolly sit down for a podcast - no really! Recommended with one caveat - I had never heard of Sophie Winkleman before, and lamentably didn’t learn much about her from this podcast, as it’s illustrative of the unfortunate fact that women speak drastically less when they’re surrounded by dudes.

An old article on the winning mindset via Fencing.net. “Being an effective competitor in martial arts (or doing any challenging task for that matter) requires that you develop faith in yourself and in your ability” - no kidding! I think this is one of my main stumbling blocks - no matter how much awesome I can pull out, I still don’t quite believe I can do it again.

"Held", Jane Fradgley, Guy’s Hospital, London, Through March 2013 - exhibit of “strong clothing” (19th century strait jackets). Sobering but fascinating, I’ve never even heard of such things being exhibited before.

How to start a hackerspace - parts 1 and 2 of a total of 7 are already up. dustdaughter, might hackerspaces be the “salons” of the 21st century?

Edited 11/15/2012: Fixed links - I won't be using that editor again!

• 10:43 @quasigeo - did he seem more bumbling Walter or evil Walternate? Any Observers around? #
• 12:37 RT @WornThrough: Yes, we will be tweeting! RT @momvmonster @costumesociety (follow #csa10). #fashion #costume #
• 12:56 RT @PetaPixel: Cool - Museum of London releases augmented reality app for historical photos: j.mp/cbxGsJ <- this is very, very cool! #
• 14:32 @MargoEve - you've definitely go to pack that hat for the con! #

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( action hero quiz stolen from vree )

Abnormally long-feeling day. There's construction in and around my building, so I spent much of the day inhaling plaster powder, paint fumes, and the stink of tar :( Headache city.

In good news, our new cell phones arrived today. With D.'s job search and my increasing roadtrip habits, D. pointed out it would be a really good idea for us to have cellular phones again. Still playing tech support tag to get them running, but they are slick :)

I have to admit - I'm a luddite where certain technologies are concerned, and cellular phones are one of them. I have no need to play video games, or download funky (and annoying) ringtones, or listen to music. I just want to make a call, dammit! And I'm kind of tetchy about the subject of button size - one of my stranger repeating nightmares is that I can't see or can't press the right buttons when I really need to make a call (like, Republicans are chasing with a crucifix and holy water or something) and this has invaded my waking life in the form of needing fingertip-sized buttons. This was the only real requirement I asked of D. when he was shopping around and these phones (Motorola 815E) have good-sized buttons.

They also have a camera and their own browser (!) and probably countless other things I'll discover when I read the user manual. Call me naive, but this is the first cellphone I've had in at least 2 years and it's staggering to me how far the technology has advanced for features like this to be called "basic"!

Time to eat some dinner before I go fence...