unjapanologist

1. I had a WFH day today so we went down to DCA for lunch. It was such a nice day weather-wise (just the right amount of warm, lots of cloud cover for the most part but not just a grey sky) and the crowds were low. We had some delicious food from the Food and Wine Festival, which wraps up this weekend, and since it's been a month since we were there, there was lots of new merch to admire.

2. We were out for about five hours, which is the longest we've been away from home since we got back, and we were a little worried we might come home to another pee incident, but there was no pee! Jasper was super needy this morning (but he often is on mornings I work from home) and we had a good half-hour snuggle at my desk before leaving. He did hork on the sofa while we were out, but I would rather deal with a hundred incidents of vomit than a single pee incident, so while it wasn't ideal, it wasn't a big deal, either.

3. One thing I do not miss about Japan is the allergies. I have in the past decade or so developed some degree of allergies at home as well, having not ever had any growing up or in my early adulthood, but not to the degree that I get them in Japan. Before our trip, I think the weather here was bringing them out more as I did have some reactions many days, if not all, but I have been blessedly sniffle-free since getting back (though today my eyes are a bit stingy).

4. Molly's showing off her perfect snoot.

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torachan

It's been exactly a month since we've been to Disneyland. Well, our Disneyland anyway. We had originally planned to go last weekend, but were still too worn our from our trip, so we put in for a mid-week trip today and went down for lunch.

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disney

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schneefink

I planted two wild strawberry plants in my living room window box today :)

Last year I was lazy and didn't plant anything after the many herbs I had before all died (after I barely used most of them.) But this weekend I visited a botanical garden ~fair with a friend and she convinced me to get the strawberries, fingers crossed they'll grow and I can eat some. Apparently they can have fruits the whole summer.

I want to put some sage with the strawberries, and some flowers in the box of the window that is hard to open, and some herbs in the box on my kitchen window sill but I haven't decided yet which ones of parsley, chives, basil, and mint. Maybe all four will fit, even, if I can put them close together? Maybe I'll just go to the once-a-week-every-spring gardening stand nearby and see what they have/say.

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life and stuff

mark posting in

dw_maintenance

Happy Wednesday!

I'm taking search offline sometime today to upgrade the server to a new instance type. It should be down for a day or so -- sorry for the inconvenience. If you're curious, the existing search machine is over 10 years old and was starting to accumulate a decade of cruft...!

Also, apparently these older machines cost more than twice what the newer ones cost, on top of being slower. Trying to save a bit of maintenance and cost, and hopefully a Wednesday is okay!

Edited: The other cool thing is that this also means that the search index will be effectively realtime afterwards... no more waiting a few minutes for the indexer to catch new content.

princessofgeeks

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greece

princessofgeeks

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princessofgeeks

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renay posting in

ladybusiness

( let's get EMOTIONAL )

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torachan

1. Today was my first day back at work at the office. Lots of meetings and not a lot else, but since I did all my catching up yesterday, that was fine. I'm planning to work from home tomorrow (and maybe Thursday?).

2. I asked Carla to make hummus for me today while I was at work, since I usually make some on the weekend to have for weekday lunches but hadn't gotten to it, and she did make it for me, but also first mistakenly opened a can of pinto beans instead of chickpeas, so she made refried beans and we had that with some more tacos for dinner as there's still plenty of carnitas and fresh tortillas from yesterday, and they were both delicious and the perfect amount for two servings. (Though we still have more taco fixings, so if there had been more, we could have finished them up later this week.)

3. There was a decent chance of rain today but it pretty much didn't rain. No rain at all in Gardena where I was, and Carla said there was a little dampness on the ground mid day but that was it. I really have had enough to rain for now, so I'm glad.

4. I spotted Tuxie in an unusual place the other day (in the neighbors' front yard). He seemed startled to see me, too, lol.

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thistleingrey

Jinwoo Park, Oxford Soju Club (2025): character-centric spy thriller from a Canadian publisher, which I picked up while glancing at a different library epub (by someone who blurbed Soju Club). Subject line is from ch. 5.

If you know which Korean surnames are border-straddlers, you'll find them well represented amongst Soju Club's associates, either directly or via central-casting allusions to kpop/kdrama stars' names (including the voice actress for Meitantei Conan's Korean dub, if I'm not mistaken). One character totes around a copy of The Golden Compass, thus named. The Oxford around Soju Club and another pub is barely sketched in, a liminal space for crossings, as though to assert that there's no need for the Arctic; southern England is unlikely enough.

Soju Club is the type of novel that, while layering secret-handshake refs that most readers wouldn't see (I caught the doublings related to Sacheon in Yeongnam, but I know I've missed a bunch), tries suggesting that it doesn't matter that gyopo Park did his homework for those resonances and evocations as though preparing for a Suneung he never took. If you catch the Korean bits, you won't catch the UK-related or NorAm-related ones.

All you need are the sense that you won't catch everything Park has learned while touring himself out of some boxes, and the fact that he did a master's at Oxford and then some writing/managing for computer games. The latter furnishes the novel's vignette-driven scrambled sequence: turn the page or tap the screen to find the next puzzle-segment.

I think that Park, with this debut novel, doesn't imagine the author to be dead.

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reading

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torachan

1. Back to work today, but since I knew the majority of my day would just be catching up on messages, I decided to work from home. Jasper was extra clingy so I'm glad I was able to snuggle with him so much. And I did get all caught up on email and teams!

2. The other day I saw a post on instagram about some viral loaded fries (the original was orange chicken but they've added a char siu version as well) and it just happens it's at a Chinese restaurant not that far from us. They have delivery, but the fries aren't on the online menu and by the time they got to us they'd be soggy anyway, so we decided to go there for lunch. Since it's gone viral, we decided an early lunch would be best, so we got there around 10:30 (they open at 10) and there was no one else there except someone picking up for delivery, which was good because they only have three tables. We got the char siu fries and they were even better than expected.

The fries are tossed in orange chicken sauce and then there's a bit of melted cheese and sriracha mayo under all that char siu pork. This is like a regular square takeout container but filled so full it would barely be able to close. We shared it and still only ate half. Would definitely get it again, and we want to try the orange chicken version as well.

3. The restaurant is in the same shopping center as a big Mexican market, so we did some shopping there since we usually don't get over there (now we have another reason to go) and got some stuff for carnitas tacos for dinner and those were also delicious.

4. We figured out who the mystery pee-er was, which I'm glad for, because now we know who to keep an eye on. It turns out it's Jasper, which was one of my top suspects. The reason we found out for sure is that I had to throw away all three of the warming beds when we got back because they'd all been peed in and while we'd washed one before, there had been too many recent pee incidents, I didn't want to leave any possibility of a smell. I ordered another one and that came today and not long after we put it down, he peed in it. D:

He is not having trouble using the box, so I don't think this is anything health related, just stress due to us being gone too long, and then I think he now has an association with those warming beds, so thankfully it's not cold weather right now, and when I do get some more for the winter, I'll try a different type and hope that it's been long enough and they're different enough that it doesn't trigger him.

He's such a needy baby, but he's always been a bit weird about Alex, so while he was okay around her in general, he didn't go to her for snuggles while we were gone like Ollie did (Ollie went all in on the snuggles with her; she was not prepared lol), so I think that's what caused him to act out. Hopefully now that we're home and all problem spots have been eliminated, we won't have any more issues.

5. Chloe was checking out the new cat tree.

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mrkinch

Since we didn't get rained out, U and I walked up the road today in the pre-storm quiet. We heard our first of season Swainson's Thrush! There have been a few reports so we weren't surprised, only gleeful.:) Only other interesting events were seeing, finally, two tiny beaks poking up from the Anna's Hummingbird nest over the Lake. I'm fairly sure they were there four days ago but my eyes and bins weren't good enough to be certain; I expect they will have fledged by next week. We also saw a female Mallard with six quite small chicks, not on the Lake but in the spillway below, feeding in the very shallow water. ( The list: )

When we got back to the parking lot the weather was sunny, and though I knew it wouldn't last, after she left I climbed Lower Packrat to the bench and ate my apple while listening to a very loud Orange-crowned Warbler. I heard two Swainson's Thrushes! I wasn't there very long and my list is somewhat shorter but I heard two species we had not heard earlier, Downy Woodpecker and Orange-crowned Warbler. ( Another list: )

It's been raining since I got home and will continue through tomorrow, looks like.

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princessofgeeks

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princessofgeeks

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torachan

1. Yesterday was Record Store Day (a day to support indie record shops where they have a lot of limited release albums for sale) and we went to Record Surplus when they opened at nine only to find that there was a huge line all the way down the block. The people working there were passing out order sheets so you could write down the things you were interested in (including backups if your top choices were sold out) and Carla filled hers out, but after waiting for about 45 minutes and seeing the line barely move, she decided to tap out and we just went home.

Today we went to see if they had anything left over that she wanted and found several albums on her wishlist, including one of her top most wanted. We probably could have gone back yesterday afternoon or evening to check again, too, as there were only a handful of people who joined the line after us, so after that initial rush you were probably able to just go in the store normally, but it worked out in the end.

2. Tonight Alex came over for her usual Sunday dinner and TV and we were able to give her all the souvenirs we'd collected for her, which turned out to be quite a lot as we'd just been picking up stuff here and there that we thought was something she'd like. We actually found several small items with Gaara from Naruto, her favorite character, just at random shops, when last year we'd had to really go deep into the anime shop areas to find anything Naruto. Maybe it's having a comeback?

3. We've decided to get back into bike riding and that we'd like to get ebikes. The area we live in has a lot of flat spaces, but then also some directions you can't go without a hill, often a steep and/or long one, and having the ebike to get back up the hill would be very helpful, especially for Carla, and (hopefully) make us more likely to actually get out and use the bikes.

I had hoped that there would be somewhere around here that buys used bikes, but there doesn't seem to be, so I'm cleaning the old bikes up to try and sell on Nextdoor or Craigslist or something. I don't think I'll get much for them now, but they cost enough that I'd rather not just put them out on the curb for free. I got mine dusted off and pumped up the tires and took it out for a couple mile ride today and it was so nice. I haven't really ridden my bike much since we got a car again and I wasn't using it for my daily work commute. I'm looking forward to more bike riding in my future, and I think I might even take the old one out a bit while waiting for a buyer.

4. Lately Gemma has been spending a lot of time with Chloe and Chloe has been very tolerant of her. We often see them together on Carla's bed, but the other day they were both out in the dining room by the window.

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fanhackers_feed

Posted by aninfiniteweirdo

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This time, it’s about information behaviours: by the fans, for the fans

The clickbait title of this post would have been: gatekeeping in fandom. Fandom’s information behaviour is of much interest to scholars as

(…) cult media fans are seen to be an information-intensive group in many respects, with a variety of sophisticated online and offline information practices.

Price, L.; Robinson, L. (2017). ‘Being in a knowledge space’: Information behaviour of cult media fan communities. Journal of Information Science, 43(5), 649-664. doi.org/10.1108/JD-05-2020-0089

These sophisticated practices might involve the role of information gatekeepers.

These gatekeepers seem to have a network that extends outside of the immediate social structure and as such they seem to possess strong ties even to external resources. They are able to filter the flow of information when passing the knowledge on to others. This kind of gatekeeper or information provider can be observed within the context of the game, either at a low level, like in a guild, or at a high level, like someone who for one reason or another has earned acclaim and thus earned credibility.

Nyman, N. (2010). Information Behaviour in World of Warcraft [Master’s thesis, University Umeå].

Nyman here talks about gaming environments and it would be dangerous to generalise based on that, but some takeaways might be warranted. Gaming is based on voluntary and active participation, the communities are collaborative and not based on fixed hierarchies, these are presupposed for the purposes of this post.

Then, Nyman expected to see that the information needed for this participation (how to complete a quest) was gathered through the personal relationships in the game (from the people the gamers are already raiding with, for example).

Well, close enough.

The most common way to gather the information needed (to complete in-game tasks) was by visiting a third-party website.

Nyman, N. (2010). Information Behaviour in World of Warcraft [Master’s thesis, University Umeå].

Nyman’s speculation was based on how information sciences gather the most effective ways to gather information. Then, the result could also suggest that third-party websites are, in some way, more effective in providing information.

The game is taking place online, as such Internet is but a few clicks away. So even if the knowledge exists withint he social structure to resolve many of the needs, the quickest path to a satisfactory result is to use a website for research.

Nyman, N. (2010). Information Behaviour in World of Warcraft [Master’s thesis, University Umeå].

In their description of a gatakeeper, the acclaim can be earned either in the game or outside of the game world, while still related to the game. There is reason to think that that acclaim (or social capital) could be earned through contributing information to third party websites.

Furthermore, the voluntary participation of gaming communities is interest-based. While they might not be interpretative communities in the same way fandoms are, it can be speculated that information resources for gamers by gamers will organise and disseminate information in ways that makes sense for these gamers, therefore, making these resources close to as effective, as if they were personally tailored to the information seeker.

It has been observed that fandoms

are saturated and defined by distinctive information behaviours, affecting all aspects of the information communication chain, from creation and dissemination, to organisation and use.

Price, L.; Robinson, L. (2017). ‘Being in a knowledge space’: Information behaviour of cult media fan communities. Journal of Information Science, 43(5), 649-664. doi.org/10.1108/JD-05-2020-0089

So fandoms can provide information effectively to fans specifically because of the distinctive information behaviours, but they are distinctive in what ways? This is something to be further discussed.

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This time, it’s about information behaviours: by the fans, for the fans

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