I like fantasy books, and I like checking out what writers are recommended by writers I like. Terry Pratchett led me to Fritz Leiber, who does some awesome sword and sorcery, and you can see how it has influenced the first two Discworld books. David Eddings has led me to Lord Dunsany, because Eddings was all 'yes, everyone bows down to Tolkien, but it's Lord Dunsany who really had the bigger influence', and having already read Tolkien I figured I'd give Dunsany a shot. He has an excellent way with words and descriptions, one of those writers who likes to paint a picture with words. His works are a bit all over the place, sometimes it's in some imaginary world, sometimes it's in the real world, but there's always something about it that places it in the fantasy genre. He's done a lot of short stories, and since the one I really rather like is up for grabs at Project Gutenberg, I figured I'd copy and post it.

It's a story called Blagdaross, and it's about a cork, an unstruck match, a kettle, a piece of rope and an old wooden rocking horse, and they're reminiscing about their lives before they were cast away.

( It's only about 1700 words anyway )

Now, I know what you're thinking. I certainly thought 'LOL telling a story from the point of view of a cork that used to be on a bottle of wine', but then Dunsany pulls out the story of the rope and the rocking horse, and I'm like 'yeah, Dunsany, this is why I like you'.

Riona's entry reminded me I should wish everyone happy winter holidays as well.



Santa Dalek wishes you a MER-RY CHRIST-MAS, and the Doctor help you if you haven't been a good girl or boy this year.

And now for a nice Christmas song: Jonathan Coulton's Chiron Beta Prime, telling us that even if you've been enslaved by robots, you can still celebrate Christmas.

I have also, with the help of my mother, made a chocolate cake. OM NOM NOM.

I have made an attempt at a Snow Dalek!

( EXTERMINATE )

Due South continues to be entertaining. Fraser fails at shoplifting! Ray has been declared dead! Fraser and Ray argue with their ghost dads! Fraser's Ghost Dad keeps helpfully informing Fraser how to kill the guy who murdered him! And there's a new Mountie at the consulate, who is adorable and Fraser clearly wants to facepalm at him a lot but is too polite to do so.

WIN WIN WIN SO MUCH WIN WIN WIN!

OKAY SO I had this Organic Chemistry exam, which I narrowly failed to pass. And about half the people in the course failed it, and today there was a question and answer session with the two teachers to prepare for the resit. I didn't attend, as I had spent the entire day checking assignments from my students for another course, which I was done with at 4 and the Q&A wouldn't be until 5, so I was like 'bugger this, I'm going home.'

And on the university intraweb, the Organic Chemistry teachers had put up messages saying that the grades wouldn't be changed as the computer doesn't make mistakes checking the multiple choice answering sheets, but they put up the correct answers anyway so people could check and see what they did wrong.

I don't know what happened at the Q&A session, but now there's a message on the intraweb saying that, according to some sort of error/mistake calculation, the following students have passed after all, AND I AM ONE OF THEM HAHAHAHA. I think it may be because there was some questions where none of the answers were correct, or maybe something else came up, but I don't care! I don't have to do a resit!

Checking the original list of grades and student numbers, I truly don't understand what's going on. The majority of people whom they are now listing as 'have passed after all because of this re-calculation' had a passing grade anyway, a narrow pass, but still a pass. Along with myself there 8 more people who went from a 5 to now having passed. It makes no sense at all. I suppose I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but I am very curious as to what the hell went down at the Q&A session.

BUT WHATEVS I AM GONNA UNENROLL FROM THE RESIT :D :D :D :D.

Results from Heat magazine's Weird Crush Award whatsit. DAMMIT NO TOP GEAR HAT TRICK. However, the Stig did come number three, the highest of all Top Gear presenters!

Derren Brown was number one. *eyes Riona suspiciously*

ANYWAY, my nanowrimo will get a Random Attack Helicopter crashing through a ceiling, and tomorrow I shall visit my niece. Hurrah!

Last night there was a lovely housewarming party during which I wasn't completely crap at Guitar Hero, although I went for Bass and Drums on Easy a few times. Also, I was on the winning team for Werewolves twice, because as the witch I killed the second werewolf thanks to an awesome group effort, and the second time I was the lone werewolf victor because the mayor thought the other person was the werewolf. WIN.

GUTS drama has also died down somewhat, and The Physicists starts next week, and I am officially no longer a member! There's going to be a new board that I won't be a part of, which I am quite pleased with. My next semester will be busy, so I don't have time for theatrical shenanigans. Not that this will stop me from coming round whenever sals_uni_diary will let me so I can see if The Physicists is going to be any good.

My wisdom teeth shall be extracted another day. After the student dentists took a picture of my jaw, it turned out there's a nerve that's too close to the wisdom teeth for them to be comfortable about removing it, and they will send me to a specialist instead. On one hand, it's a bit annoying, because I just want to get it over with, but on the other hand, I'm hardly complain that the discomfort has been postponed.

And I have started watching The Middleman, and it's quite awesome! It's so geeky and wonderful and had genetically engineer super-intelligent gorillas!

I have passed Genes and Behaviour! Hurrah! Only 50 credits until I can has my Bachelor of Science degree!

Also, I am watching The Middleman and it is highly enjoyable. Why only 12 episodes, show?

I am also very close to 40K on my nanowrimo thanks to having a giant mechanical elephant crash the school and now only a few people survived to deal with the boy band zombies. I also appreciate everybody's answer to my previous poll question! I expect it'll be very helpful in the final showdown between Team Giant Mechanical Elephant and Team Boy Band Zombies. I bet Simon Cowell is behind it all, somehow.

Dear Eastwick,

I like you, on the whole. You're not a good show, but you're entertaining, and I don't demand much from you.

I do, however, demand from all TV shows that I watch that they don't play rape as comedy. Joanna hypnotising the gay guy into having sex with her when he made it quite clear that he was done dancing with her is rape. The TV show then playing it as a 'oh, haha, Joanna and her silly ways! Now she slept with a gay guy who is married! Isn't that hilarious?' thing is just in incredibly bad taste, and you fail A LOT.

Poll #1490366
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 16

How many zombies does it take to take down a giant mechanical elephant?

Okay, I have let the giant mechanical elephant crash into my school and now everybody is dead, except for Kyle, Russell and three male characters who may or may not be based on the Top Gear presenters. *looks shifty*

So, now the five survivors are on the giant mechanical elephant and travelling the land, and maybe they're going to chase down a bad vampire. So, I could add zombies. But how many would pose a good threat against a giant mechanical elephant? And one of the five survivors has a flamethrower. No guessing who :p.

I failed Organic Chemistry with 5 :(. There were no 5,5s, which I found a little odd. OH WELL, RESIT, HERE I COME. About 60% of the class passed, which is an improvement compared to last year, when only 20% passed. I hope we get the Genes and Behaviour grades back soon, because I could do with some exam passing.

As for nanowrimo, I got hugely behind when I was busy last week with Dracula, but I got to 36K last night, and I've got a writein planned for tonight, so I shall catch up!

I haven't mentioned the Dracula performances, have I? Well, they went better than I had expected, especially as our Van Helsing had to drop out a week ago due to unforeseen and personal circumstances. So, some poor soul had to learn all of Van Helsing's infodumps in a week, which had me worried as I was Doctor Seward, and the third act is pretty much The Seward and Van Helsing Have Lots Of Exposition Dialogue About Vampires Show. Luckily, Van Helsing 2.0 managed fine, and we did quite some improvising whenever he didn't know a line, which led to even more mocking of Twilight, insinuating that Van Helsing is a necrophiliac and doing the crossword in the International Herald Tribune, so on the whole that wasn't a problem.

Afterwards 90% of our merry group wanted to see New Moon in the cinema, and although I protested heavily, it was either sit in the pub by myself or go to the cinema. Damn grouppressure. I went to my room to dump my things and get some wine (New Moon should never be watched whilst sober) and headed to the cinema, where I discovered to the joy of myself and Van Helsing 2.0 that there were other movies playing at the same time as well, so I went to see Orphan and he saw some movie by a Dutch comedian while everyone else went to New Moon to look at halfnaked guys who turned into werewolves.

I feel I made the better choice, as I got a decent if somewhat cliched horror movie about an evil child who kills people. I always like creepy children in movies and TV shows, so I was sold on the movie before it even started. Granted, it is one of those 'adopted children are eeeeeevil!!!' films, and the ending was rather WTF, but I liked that the family had a deaf daughter. It wasn't a huge plotpoint, although it was there to add extra stress to the relationship between the parents and trauma to the mother, but the deafness wasn't essential to the plot, and the deaf girl was played as a regular little girl who just happened to be deaf rather than as Tragically Deaf Girl, so that alone makes me approve of the movie. I also liked that they took their time to build up a suitably creepy atmosphere, and the desolate location of the house, which looked sort of familiar and has probably been in some other movie I've seen. And Esther was very, very creepy, so on the whole Orphan was pretty good.

I am such an IDIOT. Today's Neurobiology lecture got cancelled, and because I was thinking of Dracula and nieces I completely forgot about that. The teacher had sent an email earlier this week saying that he had something else come up that was at the same time as today's lecture, so today's lecture would be held tomorrow.

I COULD'VE STILL BEEN IN BED. SLEEPING. UNTIL TEN.

It's not a completely wasted trip, though, since I still have the labwork this afternoon at eleven. Still, it is rather annoying to know that I could've still been ASLEEP.

Oh well, that'll teach me not to read through teacher's emails properly. And I can do something useful; I can go to the library here and read through the book, as I am a bit behind on that.

I AM AN AUNT! A few days earlier than officially expected, but the baby has arrived, and is a healthy little girl!

I didn't even hear it from my brother, since I was in the shower when he rang and I didn't hear him. So, I saw he had called, called them back and they didn't pick up. Called my parents, but they were engaged. After being annoyed for a bit, I called my sister, figuring that she would've been informed about anything important, and she did pick up, and informed me that as half past two this afternoon, my family has a new addition! My brother and his wife only got home from the hospital this evening, and obviously she was exhausted and he was busy before he had time to ring people, and I expect they'll be busy and exhausted for quite some time.

No idea when I can come round to visit, as that depends on their exhaustedness and my own schedule, which is fairly busy with university and Dracula performances and other social things.

Otherwise, it's all going all right. Like I mentioned, I've been busy with being a studentassistant and the upcoming Dracula performances. I'm still rather happy with my group. They turn up for class and hand in their assignments without much complaining, they do their bit in the afternoon workgroups - granted, they're highly motivated to get through things quickly so they can leave sooner, but they do the work and seem to enjoy it for the most part. I like hanging out with the other studentassistants and the course coordinator, and it's a great experience to be sort of in charge of a group of students who listen and are somewhat interested in the subject and in discussing things amongst themselves. One of the student assistants has a group that is just completely unmotivated to debate and discuss amongst themselves, and she had to work really hard to get a discussion going. So, yeah, I'm happy with my group. I hope they provide me with good essays to grade

And I would like to get some exam grades back! The Genes and Behaviour one should be back this Thursday, and the teacher in charge of the Organic Chemistry course has buggered off to Germany. Dammit, Organic Chemistry man, this is why you have a fellow teacher (the useless German one) who can put up the grades on the university's intranet! You do not have to do everything yourself! *keeps fingers crossed the grades are passes*

Right, let's watch some Big Bang Theory and see how ridiculously married Howard and Raj are being this week. And, y'know, Sheldon, Leonard and Penny related funtimses.

Amidst the discussion amy_wolf and myself had about how obviously Richard Hammond is one of Mark Owen's clones and Robbie Williams is the Stig, we decided that what the world really needed was Derren Brown Facts, along the lines of Chuck Norris Facts and Bruce Campbell Facts.

We have four already:
- Derren Brown doesn't need to roundhouse kick you in the face, he'll just make you think he did.
- Chuck Norris has only cried once, and that was because Derren Brown spoke with him.
- There is no such thing as evolution, it's just Derren Brown manipulating animals into not procreating.
- The alphabet was invented by Derren Brown as an early memorization aid.

LET'S HAVE SOME MORE.

Additional Derren Brown Facts:
- You are Derren Brown, having adopted another identity as part of your cunning plan for taking over the world. You've just hypnotised yourself into not remembering.
- Derren Brown is not attempting to take over the world: he did that ten years ago and we are all his willing brainwashed minions.
- There's no such thing as webpages on the internet - it's actually Derren Brown personally hypnotizing every internet-user in the world through the screen.
- Granny Weatherwax never made anyone think he was a frog. Derren Brown just let her believe she did.

Nano so far seems to be going all rightish. I hit 15,000 on Sunday, due to the trick of 'taking a minor character and writing something completely different with her that has no connection with the main narrative'. We'll see if inspiration strikes for the main story, and otherwise I'll go with the minor character for now.

The student assistant thing is going well so far. I've got a nice group, some are quieter than others, but at least I have people who'll speak up and who'll argue, whereas some other assistants need to do a lot more prodding before they get a discussion going. Just got to make sure it's a group discussion, and not one guy arguing a lot. My Monday and Tuesday have been long (although the Monday involved going for a drink after with the other assistants and the two people in charge of the course) but they don't feel like long days at all. And it's kinda relaxing to sit in a lecture without constantly having to pay attention and take notes, and it's fun to hang out with the other assistants in our breaks, and the assisting itself is going fine so far.

My other course is Neurobiology, and as I took it last year, I won't need to take the entire lab-part of it again, I just need to do the two practicals I didn't last year, the one involving the food regulation and the other involving the estrous cycle of the rat. I couldn't do the lab last year because halfway through I got the deep thrombosis thing, so now I can catch up on those two missed practicals, do the lectures and with some luck pass the course.

I would also quite like November to stop being horrible to the people I care about. Granted, November has brought some good news as well, but I've had enough of the bad news.

Anyway, got a GUTS meeting tonight about Dracula, let's hope that works out for the best.

TRAILER FOR SERIES 14 OF TOP GEAR STARTING THE 15TH OF NOVEMBER.

Oh, wait, I've got nanowrimo write-in planned, then. Nano write-in trumps Top Gear, unfortunately, and I'll just have to download it the next day.

Anyway, have a trailer:

Jeremy has things on fire! Racing through sewers! Crap car challenges! Some sort of 'make your own tank' challenge! HURRAY.

I have broken the 10K line!

And I have Kyle Katarn in there! He's now a vampire at the vampire school. Not a lot of sparkly Mary Sue ness going on, I'm afraid, and Kyle's not really being Kyle yet, he's mostly being Mr. Exposition. Obviously I'll have to give him a sword.

Had a bit of a busyish day today, since I was up at 7:30 so I could go to the folks who did the selling of bicycles picked up by the city. I was there at a bit past 8, got a number and was informed that I was the 120th person of that morning and to come back at 9:15. Went to the copyshop to look at some testprints for the Dracula flyers, which were fine, and the flyers would be done that afternoon, so that was that taken care of. Went back to the bicycle people, and got some free tea and a slice of cake from the Academy Building of our university as there was some sort of information day for secondary school students going on. So, I had my tea, and waited around with the other bicycle-hunters. It took ages, and by the time it started to speed up, some other people (presumably they had more experience with this thing) said that it was highly likely most of the decent and cheap bikes were sold already. And I had a day of presentations for university, so I left before I could even get a look at the bicycles, but I doubt anything suitable was left for me anyway.

Anyway, the presentations were fine, and it proved once again that this teacher is awesome, because there was lunch available, including tea, coffee, cookies, apples, tangerines and bread, so we were all right with that.

And now I can sit back and watch The Sarah Jane Adventures! I was rather surprised the current two-parter doesn't seem to have any Luke in it at all. I'm thinking the actor who plays him might be very busy with school or something, because Luke got sidelined in last week's episodes as well (a lot of 'Luke, stay here while Clyde, Rani and I check out the other room!') and in the one where Rani visited her old hometown Luke was left out a lot as well, having to stay with Rani's old friend rather than check out the fair with Clyde and Sarah Jane.

And tomorrow my parents are going to drop by to bring an old bicycle from home. They had to visit family in a nearby town, so they decided to combine that. Handy, that.

So, I spent a rather large part of the day watching Due South episodes, and I continue to enjoy it very much. I especially enjoyed the last bit in The Deal where Vecchio beats up the mob guy, and thought that was alarmingly hot. I'm not usually a violence pervert, but I suppose it was like Burn Notice, because Burn Notice had a moment that made me go 'aha, so that's what hurt/comfort is about', and another one that made me go 'aha, so that's what the gun perverts are about', although quite frankly, I've had moments of gun perverting before, because Simon Pegg was hot in Hot Fuzz when he was wieling ridiculous amounts of weaponry, and I find Richard Hammond worryingly attractive in this picture where he's got weapons as well.

Anyway, yes, Vecchio needs to intimidate mobsters more often.

And I still can't believe Fraser made him blow up his Buick, even if he found a replacement fairly quickly. Speaking of Fraser, I want more Fraser/Elaine. They'd make an adorable couple!

The saga of my bike, let me tell you it.

So, last Monday it turned out the backtyre of my bicycle was flat. The backtyre is a bugger to fix, so I figured I'd get it repaired. I was rather busy that week, what with labstuff in the afternoon, so I didn't get round to taking it to the bicyclerepairshop until yesterday. On my way there, my backtyre decides to break down EVEN FURTHER. You know the metal bit on the inside? Yeah, that snapped in two places, so it was completely unmendable and I was going to need an entire new backtyre, which was going to cost me 70 euros. Since I am a poor student, I wasn't going to pay 70 euros for that, especially not when they informed there was the monthly sale of bicycles for about 35 euros this Friday. The bikes sold are the ones picked up by the city council because they were parked where they weren't supposed to be, and then never got picked up by their owners.

As I was dragging the bike back home, _glarawen_ was having coffee with hope4dreams, and was all 'what happened?' so I explained what exactly what had gone wrong, and how I could always incorporate it into my novel. She suggested my baddie vampire could have a broken down bicycle, but no baddie vampire of mine is going to ride a bicycle. Maybe his do-gooder younger brother can have one that breaks down at an inopportune moment. And I still need to shove Kyle Katarn and Russell Watson! It's not a proper nanowrimo without them :D.

My parents want to take the broken bike back home, since my dad can fix it at some point and having a spare decent bike is always handy. They also offered to drive up here with another bike we have back home (I think every Dutch family has about twice as much bicycles as they technically need), but I thought that was way too much hassle, especially what with the upcoming sale. If the sale doesn't work out, they can always drive up this weekend and collect the broken bike.

But for now, I'll have to do things by foot or bus, which is doable over here.

Right, and now it's time for some Due South, and after that I need to organise my notes for the Genes and Behaviour exam tomorrow, which is an open book exam meaning we can bring all the notes we like. I'd love to take another course from that teacher, seriously! Not just because of the open book, but also because she's a good teacher.

Well, the Bio-Organic Chemistry could go either way. The Organic Chemistry part was doable, the Pharmaceutical Biology horrible, so let's see if I scraped together enough points for a pass.

And Firefox has been giving me ridiculous amounts of trouble. For some reason it refuses to connect to https websites, meaning I can't log into my email, amongst others. I re-installed it after uninstalling it, and it still won't work. Internet Explorer will access https websites, luckily, and I also installed Google Chrome, but that refuses to go to https websites as well. I expect it's some setting in my internet security somewhere, but it really is rather annoying.

As for Desperate Housewives: SHUT UP, TOM. SHUT UP FOREVER. Do Lynette a favour and divorce her, will you? I still don't understand why we're expected to believe that his going back to college to study Mandarin was a good idea to begin with, since his excuse was that he'd learn Mandarin because he's a businessman and bla bla bla business with China. If you want to learn a language, going to college for it is the worst idea EVER, because they'll also expect you to learn about the history, and the culture, and the literature. Which, granted, can be very useful when doing business with people from China, because there might be less culture clashes, but for Tom it's useless. He's been out of the ad industry for over six years, and it clearly isn't even his dreamjob if his pizza place was anything to go by. Why couldn't Tom have just got a food-related job? Or a restaurant-managing job? SOMETHING THAT MAKES SENSE. And I can't believe the Lynette pregnancy thing either. At least Katherine the Psycho is entertaining, although I wish they'd bring back Orson the Psycho.

On the bright side, I'm still on track for nanowrimo! And my vampire baddie has decided he has a do-gooder for a younger brother. I'm sure this'll come in handy.

Right, as there were two people interested in pictures of the contents of the Big Book of Top Gear, here are some highlights.

( Book picspam! )

Now with 100% less fail.

Only just now got round to watching the latest Sarah Jane Adventures. I love K-9 snarking at Mr. Smith! I am so doomed to a lifetime of dog-fangirling, what with Top Gear Dog and Diefenbaker, and now K-9.

( And more Sarah Jane )

I was going through the study guide for my Biomedical Sciences major, and checking if any of the demands for the major had changed, and the rather wonderful thing is that, as far as my planning is concerned, there is very little difference between my current Biomedical Sciences major and the Behaviour and Neurosciences major! I'm already planning on taking courses that count towards the Biomedical Sciences as well towards the Behaviour and Neurosciences major, so if the Organic Chemistry course fails and I do all right at all other courses, I can always switch to becoming a Behaviour and Neurosciences major without too much trouble.

And let's face it, behaviour is fun. Granted, I may have complained about the C Elegans and its tininess and the way they're almost impossible to pick up with a toothpick, but fact is that I understood the labwork, and like I said, behaviour and the courses on it are fun.

I am totally keeping switching majors in the back of my head as a plan B. It helps that, as far as the university is concerned, Biomedical Sciences and Behaviour and Neurosciences are quite similar. Win!

ONLY 24 HOURS UNTIL NANOWRIMO STARTS :D :D :D.

But now, back to two weeks ago when I went to Walibi World for a bit of Halloween.

( Although most of these pictures feature rollercoasters, and only three scary people, so I kind of fail at capturing the Halloween atmosphere, oh well. )

In other news, my Top Gear Annual of 2010 and my Big Book of Top Gear has arrived! The Big Book is filled with EVEN MORE ridiculous crack, and I love it! They all clearly made their own AU comics, with James getting Bigglesmay, Richard getting a Black Shadow comic where he marries a rich woman at the end, and Jeremy getting some Thunderbird thing. The international versions of Top Gear, where the Dutch version involved the Dutch equivalents of Richard and Jeremy shagging while they waited for James! The people who made it clearly had a lot of fun making it, and I still maintain that we at topgearslash should get involved to make it EVEN CRACKIER.

So, today was our project as labpartners, and we did two chemotaxis assays which involved a lot of washing petridishes and eppendorf cups with tiny tiny worms in them and pipetting them onto petridishes and then watching them for an hour. We weren't done until 16:45, and we get to do another chemotaxis assay tomorrow so we can compare three strains of tiny tiny worms and see if one of 'em goes to the attractant quicker than the others. So far, we've noticed that the N2 worms are sprinters, and the Hawaii worms do slow but steady. Good for you, Hawaii worms. Take it easy.

And last night I stumbled across an upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie that has even LESS to do with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories than the Robert Downey Jr one.



FEAST YOUR EYES ON THAT.

Have you noticed what is probably a T-rex? The giant squid in the water? The firebreathing Pterodactyl? I'm just mentioning these things because the first time I saw it, I completely missed the firebreathing Pterodactyl, and I think everybody needs to see that.

The entire Asylum movieline is AMAZING. It's filled with crappy horror movies and rip-offs of popular films! There are Transformers rip-offs and a Da Vinci Code rip-off and an Indiana Jones rip-off, and I sort of want those movies in my life.

I also want James May's go at making a 1:1 scale Airfix model of a Spitfire in my life, but it's still downloading. Hurry up, download!

Until that arrives, I'll do some Bio-Organic Chemistry studying.

I am still enjoying Due South, by the way. It's such a NICE show, and Ray is adorable if a bit stalkerish when he completely falls for a woman. I still love Diefenbaker best, and I want Fraser to meet Nicholas Angel, Moser from Kommissar Rex, and Carrot Ironfoundersson. Massive Due South/Hot Fuzz/Kommissar Rex/Discworld crossover please? Except I can't be bothered to write it, obviously, but I'd love it if it existed.

I love a lazy Sunday. I've done pretty much all the necessary useful things yesterday, so today I can focus on two things: Organic Chemistry studying, and Due South. Because of Eastwick I felt like checking out Paul Gross' earlier work, and all I knew about Due South was that it was a cop show with a Canadian mountie who went to Chicago because his dad died, and there was an awesome dog/wolf hybrid. And I always liked Kommissar Rex, so I thought I would probably like this.

And I was right! It's a lovely show. Fraser is Carrot Ironfoundersson from Discworld, Ray has the worst taste in shirts and ties in the world ever and is a bit of a snarky ass, and I love Diefenbaker. I told littlemoose that I find the way Fraser flees when women flirt with him hilarious and adorable, and she refused to say anything more than 'just watch the entire first season' and refuses to spoil me. Well, there's only thing for it: Watch more Due South.

I also watched The Great Mouse Detective, as part of my 'watch a lot of older Disney movies' scheme. Ratigan was a FABULOUS villain, deranged underneath a layer of civilisation. I still prefer Jafar from Aladdin as a villain, though, because he was creepier.

Do any of my graphics program-savvy friends know how I should go about counting the number of pixels of a certain colour in an image file? Apparently it can be done through GIMP, but I haven't quite figured out how. It's for a practicum where they took picture of three worms who have fluorescent bits, and now it's up to us students to figure out which worm has the most fluorescent bits. Apparently I should be able to tell GIMP 'hey, figure out how many pixels of this file are reddish' and get an answer, but, er, I don't really know how. Anyone have an idea?

ETA: After some fiddling about with thresholds (which I used to make all the reddish colours into white) and the histogram dialog, I have managed to get some results! Let's hope they're the right sort of results.

Actually, I didn't even need to fiddle with the threshold, there's a function in the Histogram dialog that'll let me select to look at just the red channel, which shows me how many reddish pixels are in there. Excellent.

So, yesterday I went to the Fright Nights of Walibi World with blueberryapple and two more friends, because I wanted to see if the scareactors they had hired instead of me were any good, or if it was simply a matter of 'you're old therefore you're more expensive, so we're just gonna hire some 18 year olds who can do what you do instead' but masked as 'nope, suddenly your scareacting skills aren't good enough'.

( And then there was Halloween )

In conclusion, Alice in Horrorland was a massive amount of fun, Club Roxy was made of fail a LOT, and the Circus of Horror was all right. And it's the ten year anniversary (although it wasn't very well advertised until 2005) of the event next year, so they'd better make it a lot better then.

Since I delight in schadenfreude, I was pleased Club Roxy was fail, and that I was hardly replaced because of my scareacting skills. Clearly Walibi is trying to save money on personnel so they have money for cool things like Alice in Horrorland, but on the other, getting fewer scareactors isn't the best way to go either, because scareactors bring a house to life, after all.

The Sarah Jane Adventures is back! Sarah Jane and her awesome! Clyde and his gleeful face when he realises there's an alien to be investigated! Luke and his science rants! Rani and her being sensible! :D

And Supernatural has a kid who might turn out to be creepy and evil, and I LOVE evil creepy kids in fiction.

And there's a trailer for James May's Toy Stories, and from the looks of it, it'll be six hours of James being a massive geek over toys, so that's sure to be awesome :D. And the next series of Top Gear will be on on the 15th of November, so YAY to that as well.

After picking tiny, tiny worms from one petri dish to the other, I now get to wait until 16:50 before I can take pictures of their behaviour (will they aggregrate in clumps? The excitement!) and go home. Stupid two hour waiting thing.

( I played some Sims 2 yesterday )

I have also given up on Heroes. I sort of like how they're not trying to have all the characters in each episode, it means they can spend more time on individual storylines, but I DO NOT CARE. I do not care about Sylar's memory loss or Peter's wanting to save people as a paramedic or his romance with the deaf girl who sees colours, or Claire's attempt at being normal and her lesbian friend and Tracy's attempt at wanting to have a job that isn't sleeping around with people to get favours and Hiro dying.

Also, I'd really like it if my current cold would just go away. It's stuck around for at least a week now, and I'm tired of it. GO PLAGUE SOMEONE ELSE, WILL YOU.

I don't know which one of the Scavo twins just told Lynette and Tom they were irresponsible, with the whole 'you're in college and you just got a new job' thing, but he's awesome and so are the writers. See, this is what I watch Desperate Housewives for: The sheer hilarity and ridiculousness.

Yes, self, think of the hilarious ridiculousness while Susan makes a complete ARSE of herself some more. SUSAN SHUT UP. FOREVER.

As for the Mystery Family, they're obviously on the run because they're fleeing for a criminal rather because they're criminals.

I'm back from rehearsal camp, I'm tired as I've had about five hours sleep each night, and lots of things were learned through I Never, Psychologist and Truth or Dare (one of which was that sals_uni_diary's clothes fit me surprisingly well). Despite my wine-drinking and the little sleep I didn't have a hangover, which was fortunate. We had fine weather, and thanks to our presents game I ended up with a bunch of useless but amusing stuff (sparkly Jesus stickers) and some useful stuff as well, like cookie cutters, which I am quite pleased with, since I wanted those the moment I saw them. Now I can make cookies shaped like cars, or boats, or aeroplanes or ducks!

Right, I'm off for rehearsal camp on Schiermonnikoog this weekend, you lot have fun without me.

( Also, Supernatural )

rpf_big_bang masterpost.

Title: The Saga Begins
Author name: dracothelizard
Artist name: fizzyblogic
Fandom: British bandom with a small dash of British television presenters.
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 19,959
Warnings/Spoilers: The same warnings that would apply to A New Hope, like mild torture and character death, except there's no incest.
Summary: A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, a farmboy by the name of Gary Barlow is dragged into a Galactic Civil War against his will. It's the mighty Empire versus the Rebel Alliance, and the Empire is hunting down Gary before he even fully knows what's going on with his uncle Paul McCartney, and why Ant and Dec were sent by the captured Prince Mark Owen to get him. Even the slightly unreliable smuggler Jason and his co-pilot Howard seem to know more about what's going on than Gary, which seems really rather unfair.
Disclaimer: Everything in this story is completely made up by me, or by George Lucas.

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4

Author's notes:
I would like to thank blame littlemoose and amy_wolf. amy_wolf because she was the one who pointed out that Howard-from-Take-That clearly had Wookiee parentage which made me decide that clearly, the world needed a Star Wars/Take That AU, and littlemoose because she brainstormed with me and let me throw fic snippets at her and beta'd the whole thing.

And I want to thank fizzyblogic for claiming my story and making an awesome soundtrack to go with it. Here's their post with the soundtrack.

I couldn't have written this fic without the Wookieepedia, which is an AMAZING wiki about the entire Star Wars universe and it made my fic-writing process a whole lot easier.

It's October! Which means it's time to sign up for Nanowrimo if you like! I still intend to go with my plan to write a ridiculous young adult fantasy series with vampires and teenage girls with magical powers who are the biggest Mary Sues EVER. If that doesn't work out, I have a back-up plan of killing off the main characters and continuing with a minor character, but in a different genre, and repeating this process until my nanowrimo project has covered ten different genres, and I will use the Genre Lounges on the nanowrimo forums as a way of defining genres. It's a nanowrimo project, so it seems fair and useful to use their forums as a tool for defining different genres.

But mostly I'm hoping I won't get bored of the super special vampire/werewolf/witch Mary Sue I intend to create in November. If you're going to join in on the fun, feel free to add me as a buddy. This is my profile.

What else? Well, today I had the first lecture for the Genes and Behaviour course, which is looking interesting, and even the teacher admits that the basic genetic concepts we need to understand are a bit boring, so in the second hour, she was like 'screw the boring stuff, I'm gonna tell you about lemmings for a bit, we can do the basic genetic concepts tomorrow'. What I also liked is that she explained very few people have failed this course, and that it's an open book exam, meaning that we can bring notes and lecture summaries and books to the exam. This is why I chose the course in the first place! I mean, behaviour is always interesting, and I looked up how many people ended up taking the re-sit last year, and I think it was about 5 people out of the 40 people who had taken the exam in the first place, so I decided that Genes and Behaviour would be an excellent way to get the 5 credits I need. The labwork also seems interesting enough, although the first week will be a LOT of basic stuff. For instance, tomorrow afternoon we're going to practise our pipetting skills and learn how to pick up a tiny worm from one petri dish and put it in another. Science is so exciting.

( As for the latest House episode )

Title: The Saga Begins - Chapter 4
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Character death.

( Chapter 4 )

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3

Title: The Saga Begins - Chapter 3
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG-13

( Chapter 3 )

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 4

Title: The Saga Begins - Chapter 2
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG-13

( Chapter 2 )

Chapter 1
Chapter 3
Chapter 4