lea_hazel: Typewriter (Basic: Writing)
Writing is half reason, half ritual. There's an element of magical thinking to it, and also an element of self-reinforced habits. You make your own recipe for a muse, more or less. Some of the advice for beating writer's block is so bland, or so arbitrary, you feel like you might as well...

Well, you might as well take advice from a video game.

In The Sims 4, individual sims are ruled by their mood. The canonical mood for creative work (which includes playing instruments, writing, painting and cooking) is "Inspired". Inspiration don't come easy -- except in TS4, where it literally does. True, true, it comes a lot easier if you have lots of money, or if you've already had success in one of the creative careers. But even at the lower levels, there is always something your sim can do to get in a creative mood.

How to beat writer's/artist's block, TS4 style:


  • Take a "thoughtful shower" -- the easiest way, available to all but the poorest sims. Grants four hours of blissfully enmused creativity.

  • Drink green tea (my flesh and blood self prefers ginger, because it's caffeine free).

  • Interact with a reward you got from progressing in your creative career (lovingly strokes the paperback copy of the anthology I was published in).

  • Cloud or star gazing (it was cloudy yesterday, dammit, why didn't I take advantage).

  • Playing with molding clay (this is actually a good idea, I gotta get me something like that).

  • Drinking coffee, but only if done at a cafe (can confirm, I just had a moccha latte).

  • Completing a piece of art/writing, but only if you're at a low skill level (presented without comment).

  • Mentoring from a sim with a higher skill level (...).

  • A special creaitvity-boosting mixed juice drink called the "Prose and Pop". I'm gonna have a lot of fun trying to invent a recipe for that one.

  • Just fucken' be born naturally creative or something. Don't even.



Ah, fuck it. I'm gonna go drink my ginger tea and eat my black licorice and hope for the best.
lea_hazel: The Little Mermaid (Default)
The main problem I've had so far with Cards Against Humanity is that a lot of the jokes are really super-specific culturally.

So.

Cards against humanity - Israeli homebrew edition.
lea_hazel: The Little Mermaid (Default)
I really wish the yeshivah whose phone number is very similar to mine would finally put out new pamphlets.
lea_hazel: Pride flag (Politics: GLBTQ)
Browsing free romance e-book summaries is endlessly more satisfying when Jailbreak the Matriarchy is installed.

Inspired by Book Depository's big sale on books that no one wants.

ETA: Case in point, some choice extracts:

"[W]illing to risk his life <...> even if it means giving himself over to a woman he's never met."

"Two sisters want to possess him."

"He’s a fiery-tempered fighter pilot..." (that's more than enough, really)

"A lifetime of sheltering makes him reckless."
lea_hazel: Typewriter (Basic: Writing)
(believe me, I've tried)

1. I check a dude's profile out on OK Cupid.
2. Scan the profile, nothing interesting.
3. Check out "personality traits" even though they're always weirdly vague and random.
4. Check "questions with unacceptable answers" to find out if he's a creep.
5. He answered a probability question differently than me.
6. I assume I'm wrong and start rethinking the question.
7. Before changing my answer, I realize that I'm right and he's wrong.
8. Despite his background in mathematics.
9. Technically, it was a reading comprehension error, but...
10. ...he forgot to account for the fact that there are two sides to every coin.
11. If I read this kind of symbolism in a book, I would consider it ludicrously uncredible.
12. Post about it to my journal and lol.
lea_hazel: I am surrounded by tiny red hearts (Feel: Love)
I don't feel like dealing with shit until I'm done with my morning coffee, but I just wanted to inform the DW-o-sphere that OK cupid is apparently super invested in hooking me up with a German. All my match e-mails lately have been full of German users. The LOLs may never end.
lea_hazel: Kermit: OMG YAY *flail* (Feel: OMGYAY)
Last night I finally installed Dragon Age: Origins. I was going to set up my character and play for like an hour or two, just to get a good feel for the game. During the character's introduction mission, I got stuck in a fire trap and had to repeat an escape sequence 4-5 times before I managed to avoid getting myself and my companion killed by guards. By then it was getting kind of late, so naturally I just went and played for three more hours. Mysteriously, while I was trying to save and close the game, my mouse flipped out and I had to change the batteries.

Read more... )

Maybe I'll play all night tonight. That's what the holiday of freedom is for, right?

Yup

Sunday, 1 April 2012 20:32
lea_hazel: The Little Mermaid (Default)
You know what would be cool? If they used video streaming sites in order to recruit test subjects for psychological experiments. You could fill out questionnaires online and earn points to unlock videos, like the viral marketing videos they use now, but for science! The methodology wouldn't be that much worse than having endless conclusions based almost exclusively on the answers of first year psychology students.

It would probably work better than money, too. Instead of thinking, "great, I spent thirty minutes clicking on red rectangles and earned about enough money for a cafeteria lunch," you'd be thinking, "one more survey and I can watch to the end of the season."

ETA: "Don't be like that" must be the universal douchebag motto, or something.
lea_hazel: I am surrounded by tiny red hearts (Feel: Love)
Sometimes I get sad, but then I remember that Texts from Cephalopods exists.

True story.
lea_hazel: The Little Mermaid (Default)

נכנס גבר לבית קפה ביום האהבה. למראה הבלונים המקשטים את המקום, הוא שואל, "של מי יום ההולדת? לא של היטלר, נכון? היטלר נולד בעשרים באפריל, ומת עשרה ימים אחר כך. ושישים שנה."

רק בישראל.

Icon 2011

Sunday, 16 October 2011 10:11
lea_hazel: Wonder Woman (Genre: Comics)
I suspect that going to an Israeli comics convention might be a little anticlimactic after Dragon*Con. Or, then again, it might be comfortingly familiar. At any rate, the food will be better. Too bad I fell asleep at 3 AM last night and then woke up at 8 AM this morning.

My brother still wants TPBs to catch up on the latest Green Lantern events. IDK, I think he'll probably end up being disappointed.
lea_hazel: Neuron cell (Science: Brains)
The reliability of data collecting through questionnaires is subject to three types of threat: errors stemming from the time or conditions of the test, errors stemming from the test's actual questions, and errors stemming from the assessing judge.

Poor reliability between judges is frequently associated with vague operational definitions, which may be caused by a vague theoretical definition. Alternatively, it could be because the judge is a douche.

In other news, I got an OTC nasal spray, which I hope will improve the quality of my sleep, thereby eliminating the need for random midday naps. Especially on days on which I'm unlikely to study until 8 PM to make up for it.

Childhood Follies

Tuesday, 5 April 2011 10:53
lea_hazel: I am surrounded by tiny red hearts (Feel: Love)
One of the weird, random gender behavior assignments of my youth was stationary. For some reason, collecting random crap was considered a noble pursuit, and the number one thing that little girls collected was colorful stationary. Toy stores sold ultra-cheap sets of paper and envelopes in pastel colors, with little drawings printed on the margins. You could use them to write letters and greeting cards for birthdays, but most girls collected and exchanged them.

Possibly this was supposed to be an exercise in prosocial behavior or something. It wasn't focussed on the buying of more and more stationary, although it did make a convenient cheap gift that parents could use as rewards for good behavior (or treats for when the kids were sick). Basically, your social status determined who you could trade with, and the more friends you had, the more diverse your collection. If you got a set of stationary from your parents, and you still had 8 out of the 10 sheets, you were a friendless loser.

Another quirk of the stationary system was that each pack had half as many envelopes as sheets of paper. However, the makers had grossly overestimated the verbosity of third grade girls. Even with an effort, most of us could barely fill a whole page. This created a constant shortage of envelopes and, as everyone knows, packaging a nice stationary page (LOL shitty kids' stationary that costs 5*10^-11$$ or thereabouts, but it was sparkly) in a lousy white envelope is just the height of gauche. It is a grave insult to the girl receiving the letter.

Anyway, I just realized that the way I arranged the images on my seminar presentation strongly resembles the arrangement of ugly cartoon images on the shitty stationary I collected as a kid.

IDEK.
lea_hazel: Neuron cell (Science: Brains)
That song "don't hate me 'cause I'm beautiful" has become inextricably coupled, in my mind, with playing Minecraft. It is simply impossible for me to think of one without conjuring the other. I imagine Pavlovian hijinx are at play here.
lea_hazel: Neuron cell (Basic: Science)
RNA polymerase is an enzyme that's responsible for transcribing DNA into RNA. It facilitates producing proteins according to the DNA template. Like many complex enzymes it's made of several subunits. The sigma (σ) subunit is responsible for initiating transcription. The rho (ρ) factor is responsible for terminating transcription.

I believe I've mentioned my chronic inability to tell the difference between the two? Just when I reliably learned to tell mu from eta, too.
lea_hazel: Neuron cell (Basic: Science)
So today I had a biochemistry quiz and it wasn't as bad as I was dreading, and tomorrow I have a physiology quiz that I may not have time to study for :( because I am so tired and behind on everything. As part of an exercise in not working myself to a crying frenzy, the only thing I absolutely have to do tonight is finish my Excel exercise and mail it in, and that's only because it's, um, due. And tomorrow afternoon I'll have Happy Fun Catch-Up Time where I do a bunch of work so I'll be ahead next week.

Gretchen Lieberum is an amazing jazz singer who I discovered in high school through a music-loving internet friend, listened to constantly in the army, and then pretty much forgot about. Brazen Girl is one of my favorite songs ever.



These dudes made a book and it sold better than Glenn Beck's for one day, and now he's all pissed at them. I looked up Glenn Beck and now I wish I hadn't.

This dude tries to talk to evangelical Christians who are sincerely worried about gay teen suicide, but still believe gayness is a sin. While respectful and forthcoming, he in no way cuts them any slack (or sugarcoats, as he puts it). It's a fascinating read.

Jack Chick says that Halloween is Satan's birthday. I thought it was like All Saints' Eve or something? *shrug*

I feel that LOLtapirs pretty much speak for themselves.

Check it out, this dude doctor of philosophy (!) does pretty much exactly what I'd like to do. With my life, I mean. Altered intracellular calcium signaling!

To do: Eat soup and watch Lost Girl.
lea_hazel: Neuron cell (Basic: Science)
This post is an optical illusion. I am actually studying thermodynamics for my biochem quiz tomorrow, not posting.

So this week's [community profile] fannish5: Five of your favorite characters are going to a Halloween party. What costumes are they wearing?

My first thought was CrossGen characters, which is bizarre, because they went out of business about six years ago, so why would they pop up before more recent fandoms? Anyway, the thought of Giselle in a classic black witch's costume is too hilarious not to share. But for reals:

1. Kenzi from Lost Girl dresses as a harlequin clown, because there is nothing scarier than clowns.

2. Astrid from Fringe dresses in a gown and wimple which she did not buy in a Renn Faire, obviously, because she doesn't go to those, and whatever her loser ex told you to the contrary is nothing but a vindictive lie. She does look good in velvet, though.

3. Veronica Mars dresses as Carmen Sandiego FTW. You know she played the hell out of those games when she was twelve.

4. Jamie Madrox from X-Factor would dress as Cyclops if he wasn't afraid Cyke would toast him for his troubles. So he dresses like Indiana Jones. Not because Terry has a crush on Harrison Ford, though, because that would be weird.

5. Faith from BtVS has probably never been to a proper Halloween party in her life. She doesn't really get how the concept works and so Dawn makes her wear a classic purple Batgirl costume, which is truly a WTF choice. Halfway through the party she changes into one of Buffy's minidresses and they end up duking it out and spilling all the punch.
lea_hazel: Neuron cell (Basic: Science)
You know what the best Hebrew title for an urban fantasy book is?

It's not a trick question. )

Haha, Dr. S just said that crystallizing proteins is dark magic, not science. Word for word. How are my lecturers this year so much more awesome than last year?
lea_hazel: I am surrounded by tiny red hearts (Feel: Love)
Why I love geologists, crystallized (hee!) into one sentence. Digger: Pretty much the best webcomic in the world.

ETA: Is it TMI to lament the loss of my midstream? I was supposed to take a urine test this morning and as I was getting ready to leave, I inventoried everything I'd need in my mind, and realized my dad still has my HMO card.
lea_hazel: I am surrounded by tiny red hearts (Feel: Love)
Sometimes men see fit to dance around in gold sneakers and boxer shorts. Why? Perhaps they really want me to be happy. Or maybe they just like it.

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