C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 64

so the visualization thing is called aphantasia

I’ve been talking about this topic for years (whether you see pictures in your head when you, say, read), ever since a conversation with a friend and Ted and the friend said something about the radio drama in her head, and Ted said “You only get a radio drama?” and she said “Oh no! I get the whole movie!” and I said “wait what?”

After some incredulous back-and-forthing, we found that they saw pictures in their heads when they read (or called up memories, or DAYDREAMED, WHAT THE HELL!!!), and...

The Great Manor House Picture Post

This is long, but I’m Showing Stuff Off, so I’m not putting it behind a cut. :)

The house & front garden:

The sun room (with slightly distorted child), visible to the right of the house:

The living room end of the Long Room:

The dining room end of the Long Room:

The library:

To the left is the TBR shelf before 6 weeks of no net.

The TBR shelf after 6 weeks of no net:

The kitchen:

My (the, but mostly my :)) office:

My beloved Captain’s Chair:

Guest room:

The back garden, in all...

Recent Reads: The Abigail Adams Mysteries

I’ve had Barbara Hamilton (Hambly)’s Abigail Adams books on my TBR shelf for quite a while, based on my love for her Benjamin January books.

I didn’t like the Adams books as much as the January books, which kind of surprised me. It was partly, I recognize, the Puritanism in the books, which made me…impatient. I don’t have a lot of use for religious fundamentalists in real life, much less in my fiction, and the fact that Abigail Adams herself apparently struggled with her (literally) Puritani...

back online with thinks to do

Now that I’m back online I have a list longer than my arm of thinks to do.

– put in a grocery order
– check to see how to renew indy’s passport print appointment page
– update fitbit to use new one
– email redeemer patrons
– email patreon patrons
– prep short story for patreon
– update reading list
– email ian
– email steve
– clear out inbox, augh
– email harlequin
– pay credit card bills
– update fb page
– email mailing list
– email m&m mailing list
– email orssp mailing list

– hook up print...

omg. we have net.

SIX WEEKS to the day, we have broadband back again.

I do not EVEN have the heart to explain it all but it involved orders being cancelled and resubmitted and me almost bursting into tears on the phone support lady and managers green-lighting priority work for my account and a two-month credit being issued for the account and MANY QUESTIONS THAT I HAD ANTICIPATED AS PROBLEMS AND ASKED ABOUT VERY CLEARLY AND WAS PROMISED NO NO NO THAT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN AT ALL being the things that happened...

Recent Reads: THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS

I confess that I would not have made it past page ten or so of THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS had it not been written by a friend of mine. It’s not that it wasn’t well written: it was. It’s that it’s a zombie novel, and I’m not much of a horror fan. (Re: at all.) But I’ve known MR Carey for years now and he’s a wonderful human being, so I was inclined to try working my way past the subject material and going for broke.

I’m glad I did, because it’s a good book. Narration by the several POV charac...

“imminent” was overstating things.

I can’t even.

The new modem arrived Wednesday. I plugged it in. It didn’t work. I called tech support. After (another) half hour on the phone with them, they concluded I had a faulty modem.

A FAULTY MODEM.

AFTER ALL OF THIS, A FAULTY MODEM.

They sent a new modem over by courier on Thursday

I plugged it in. It didn’t work. I did all the rigamarole they’d had me do on the support call the day before. I called tech support. After (another) half hour on the phone with them, they concluded there w...

internet is imminent.

Well, ‘imminent’ is probably overly hopeful. I’ve finally been able to put an order in for broadband, anyway, and we should have internet by the 14th. Probably. Hopefully. Assuming all goes well. Which I dasn’t do, at this point. :) I am, at the moment, slaving my computer to the phone again, which only seems to work sometimes.

Poor Indy has a terrible cold and nobody got much sleep last night. Earlier I tried spelling ’tissue’ and typed ‘tirrue’ and then ‘sittue,’ which cannot be blamed on b...

Tuesday Without Internet

I have temporarily slaved my computer to my phone in order to get online for a few minutes. It is not an ideal solution.

***

Oh thank god, I said faintly, somehow the rtf file (opened with libreoffce) that previously would not show comments on a manuscript has suddenly decided it doesn’t mind doing so, which means I don’t have to install god-awful-horrible Word on this machine.

Not that I have internet available to me by which to install it. There are a lot of things a person can’t do when sh...

hiatus blog #3

I’m typing at my Captain’s Chair for the first time in literally years. At the moment I’m using my laptop for my Main Computer, and it looks like the smaller-than-ideal screen isn’t going to be an issue, at least not for a while. I have dreams of getting, like, y’know, a 30″ all-in-one screen/computer thingy like a Mac whatever-they’re-called, although I’ve been using Windows for so long at this point that the idea of actually getting a Mac is pretty strange. Also very expensive, but I don’t...