"You look Time Lord."

As well as a pub whose loss is to be mourned, there was a bus terminal plus petrol station/car wash thing on the corner. This was abandoned, then occupied by squatters, then reclaimed and finally demolished. Then Lidl applied for planning permission.

We have been waiting for our Lidl to appear.

This weekend diggers appeared on the site.

2011; 2012; 2013; 2014; 2015; 2016; 2017; 2018; 2019; 2020; 2021; 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025

Once again I used flamebyrd's bookmarklet to download all pages of the works list and then shoved them together using the command prompt, with the wonderful (?) experience this year of ao3 putting me in Bot Time Out around page 45ish of just opening them in tabs a few at a time, downloading, opening a few more...

Oh well. ( Read more... )

A fic I'm subscribed to updated for the first time in a over a year. I read the update. I notice there is no lengthly author's note explaining the absense. The person posts another chapter. No note.

I discover, to my surprise, a deep feeling of relief. How nice, how truly refreshing, not to have this. To just treat it normally and update the fic.

Especially because a lot of times I'll read a fic and there will be all these notes apologizing for not updating "on time" (no schedule has ever been mentioned), or being "late" (ditto). And long apologies for plenty of things. And I'm reading the fic after it was finished, all in one go. These notes are not relevant anymore.

And all sites have their own customs regarding author's notes, and ao3 gets to have its own because of its own dedicated author's notes section, which unlike ffn, is a seperate part of the page. So ao3 notes tend to get long. And that is the custom of the website.

So to see someone not engage in that, and just post the fic and not flagellate to the audience. That was nice. I was very glad to see that. It felt restful.

Then I catch up on the newly posted chapters, and behold, there is the lengthly explanation of why there was no update for a year, and then in another chapter is an argument about people saying things in the comments (and I feel like some of the people the author is annoyed with are spambots), and you know at least in ffn, when you wanted to respond to commenters you did it by name. Was that better? No it was not. But if you want to respond to commenters, you can just respond to them. Most people reading a fic do not dip into reading other people's commenters. So you're just highlighting something people would not otherwise see.

But ugh. It really was so nice not to have an author feel they need to apologize to me for posting fanfiction, in a timeline of their own choosing, which is their hobby. You don't owe me an apology! You don't owe me an explanation! It's your fic, not your job.

This morning I set out to visit Sutton Hoo, by train and on foot. First up, train to Melton, changing at Ipswich, then the last 2k or so on foot. There, I spent some time looking at the High Hall exhibits, heard a talk about the Mound 1 ship by the true-to-size sculpture and then ambled over to the burial mounds for a guided tour. The weather had been pretty gorgeous if very breezy until then, but the burial mounds tour saw a couple of showers that came and went quickly. I knew how close to the river Deben the site was supposed to be, but I hadn't really realised how much higher than the river it was. Certainly lots of gorgeous views. The exhibition at Tranmere House was about the 1930s excavations but I struggled to take it in.

I had lunch there and then spent some time in the shops before walking back to Melton for the train back. I didn't realise how tidal river Deben is until crossing the bridge near the Melton station and seeing how much higher the water was than it had been in the morning.

Tomorrow it's all about getting back home.

Happy Easter to those of you who celebrate and Happy Sunday to those of you who don't!

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this on here before, but not in a long time, so some of you might not have been around to see it. Since I was young (I remember being in my tweens and having this idea), I've mentally divided both Easter and Christmas into two separate holidays:

• Jesus Easter vs Rabbit Easter
• Jesus Christmas vs Santa Christmas

I was aware of the historical origins of both holidays, and how the non-Jesus versions grew out of the Jesus versions, but I was also aware of how some people (myself among them) celebrated the non-Jesus version almost exclusively. (I also later became aware of how some varieties of Christians celebrated the Jesus versions exclusively.)

So, anyway, if you celebrate Easter, of either variety, Happy Easter. And if not, Happy Sunday. And to everyone, enjoy the wide variety of seasonal candies in the stories (while laying a pox on the increasing efficiency of capitalism, which means that each year there is less and less of that candy available at a discount on the day after Easter).

I'm making the most of the long weekend to get away from home for a little while, so I'm spending the weekend in Colchester. I've never been before, and that's a good enough reason to choose it. Yesterday, I spent the morning doing some tidying up at home before heading out around midday. The train journeys and the Cross-London transfer on the Elizabeth line went smoothly. After checking in to my hotel I went for an aimless stroll in the town centre. This morning I did some parkrun tourism (my first parkrun of 2026) and after getting back, showering and changing I went to explore the Castle Park and then the castle, including a guided tour that took us in the vaults. Apparently it usually takes you up to the roof level as well, but because of works up there, we could not do that. Afterwards, I had lunch at the Minories art gallery cafe and also did some exploring at Firstsite. Then some more aimless walking and browsing in shops. It was really mostly browsing, but I did buy a couple of books.

I just looked up the side effects of the new antiseizure medication I'm starting. (Almost always a big mistake, but I did it anyway.) I looked at the Mayo Clinic website, so it was a reputable website.

First, the thing that made me afraid: The Mayo Clinic website, divides side effects into two groups: First those you need to contact your doctor for immediately, then those that will probably go away and you need to contact your doctor if they become problematic. Each of these two groups is subdivided into three subgroups: Common, less common, and rare. Side effects in each subgroup are listed alphabetically. Which meant that the first side effect I encountered when I looked at the list was "blindness"! WTF? (I don't know if I've ever said on here, but going blind is something I'm particularly afraid of.)

Second, the thing that made me laugh: The side effects to contact your doctor about immediately included "tiredness." The side effects to contact your doctor about only if they don't go away and become problematic include "sleepiness" and "drowsiness." I think I understand what they're trying to differentiate here, but only after sitting and thinking it over for a bit, and even so it still has an element of "WTF?" about it.

Well, interesting to me, anyway. Probably not interesting to you. But this is my journal and I want to make sure I remember it, so here it is.

Unfortunately for you, if you care to read this, it requires a lot of backstory.

( Read more... )