quick note re bookshop.org
Dec. 5th, 2025 11:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettPreviously: uk.bookshop.org were selling a Tor ebook with DRM applied, which I only noticed after I had bought it, because all? Tor ebooks? are DRM-free? at the request of the publisher? Like, Hive applies DRM to them, but given that bookshop.org lets you filter for DRM-free, this... was surprising.
My initial support request for (1) an explanation and (2) any chance of a refund, realise this is totally on me though, ... got me an almost-immediate refund, which I was not expecting, and a very entry-level explanation of What DRM Is, which I sort of was. So I wrote back saying thank you very much, and also, Tor went famously DRM-free in about 2012, and they're definitely supplying this specific ebook to other retailers without DRM applied.
There was A Pause.
A day or two later I received a response from someone with "Senior" in their signature, thanking me for my patience and saying they were Investigating.
A few days after that I noticed that the ebook in question was now marked DRM-free: hurrah! ... but when I bought it, and clicked on the "yes please download my DRM-free ebook" button, nothing happened.
I did not write back in because I have been. preoccupied.
But a few days after that I tried again and this time the download did work! So hurrah for bookshop.org needing me to do much less assertive escalation than I'd been expecting, and also for noticing that something was still broken and Fixing It without me needing to get around to e-mailing in about it.
... the quick part of this note was going to be: I know there were Questions on my first post about Hey They're Doing Ebooks Now, about how you actually filter for DRM-free. As far as I can tell this isn't actually possible from the ebooks landing page, which seems A Pity, BUT when you search for something (which can absolutely be as vague as "science fiction"), the FORMAT dropdown lets you filter for DRM-free ebooks only. Obviously this is Not Ideal, in that one might actually like to browse All DRM-Free Ebooks, but it does exist as an option, where as far as I can tell it doesn't, at all, on e.g. Kobo. Hopefully this knowledge is helpful! And certainly The Above Saga has caused me to think sufficiently positively of them that I'm likely to default to them for my ebooks in future.
Bill Bored – DORK TOWER 05.12.25
Dec. 5th, 2025 09:10 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
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It's DecRecs Time!
Dec. 5th, 2025 11:47 amforestofgloryBut that's not what I want to talk about! It's December, and every year for the last several years I've been doing a project called DecRecs in December where I rec on thing everyday for the month and encourage other people to rec stuff too. Recs get posted on Mastodon and this year for the first time BlueSky then every once in a while I round them up and post several days worth here.
So here are the 1st five days of recs!
Day 1
It's the first day of December and that means its time for #decRecs !
This year I want to focus on reccing things I discovered this year, not things I've recced a ton of times before, though I'm sure I'll include some old favorites.
I'm starting out with "This is it" a mulifandom Go /Baduk / Weiqi vid. This so much fun! I've been rewatching this everytime I scroll past it in my ao3 bookmarks and its a delight every time!
I love the variety of source material and the perfect timing!
https://archiveofourown.org/works/51767752
2:57 min, only music, subtitles available
Day 2
Today for #DecRecs I want to talk about barley tea! I used to get this all the time at my favorite Korean restaurant but I recently realized that I can make it at home! It's so good, cozy, a bit of nutty flavor, very warming in the cold!
( Read more... )
Mudlarking 69 - Ginger beer
Dec. 5th, 2025 03:17 pmsquirmeliaI spoke to a person on the foreshore and asked them what they'd found and they had found a ring, although a modern one.
I found a chunk of a stoneware ginger beer bottle - Clayton’s. It would have said on it:
Clayton’s
Old English
Stone
Ginger Beer
London and Kingston-on-Thames
I found two buttons.
The bus stop was still there, as well as a Lime bike.
A crisp packet floated by.
I found two stickers, one of which was a festive bauble.
(You need a permit to search or mudlark on the Thames foreshore.)
sherlock holmes and the case of the problem of communication
Dec. 5th, 2025 12:00 amdinosaur_comics_feed| archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about |
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December 5th, 2025: If you're looking for Christmas gifts, might I recommend... THE DINOSAUR COMICS STORE?? We got a Christmas sweater! :0 – Ryan | ||
Girl Genius for Friday, December 05, 2025
Dec. 5th, 2025 05:00 amgirlgenius_main_feedDork Friday – DORK TOWER 03.12.25
Dec. 3rd, 2025 06:00 amdorktower_feed
This strip was first published in 2012. (Time has no meaning anymore.)
MANY DORK TOWER strips (though possibly not this one) are now available as signed, high-quality prints, from just $25! CLICK HERE to find out more!
HEY! Want to help keep DORK TOWER going? Then consider joining the DORK TOWER Patreon and ENLIST IN THE ARMY OF DORKNESS TODAY! (We have COOKIES!) (And SWAG!) (And GRATITUDE!)
Dr Crab Robot Reaches the Exit
Dec. 4th, 2025 11:54 amjackPlay online at the link: https://cartesiandaemon.github.io/rusttilegame/programming_release.html
It's clunky in several places but you can successfully play! Drag the instructions onto the flowchart. Press space to start the crab robot moving. Get them to the exit.
Leave the tab open, there's not yet any save :)
It's currently best played in a browser on a PC. (It works on mobile except that you need a spacebar. You can also build an exe for windows or Linux if you want, repo https://github.com/CartesianDaemon/rusttilegame)
the inexorable passage of time and end of all things
Dec. 3rd, 2025 10:49 pmkaberettFor lo these many years (i.e. basically since I got a smartphone) I've been using Swype as an onscreen keyboard. Some time ago it was announced that it had reached end-of-life-and-support, but it wasn't until I went looking earlier today that I realised that happened in 2018, that being when I posted asking for suggestions for replacements.
And then I didn't think about it again for, apparently, approximately eight years, through several new phones and quite a lot of new major versions of Android... and then a few-ish weeks ago Fairphone rolled out Android 15 to the Fairphone 4 and alas That Was The End Of That.
Recommendations back in 2018 were for Gboard and Swiftkey; a question posted to reddit in 2022 garnered similar responses.
Since the Abrupt Keyboard Failure I've swapped to Gboard more or less by default. I don't hate the bit where language switching is now automatic (for the purposes of language learning apps, at any rate), but good grief I am missing the ability to e.g. type < or | without needing to go like three clicks deep in menus. Yes, when I have "Touch and hold keys for symbols" enabled -- as far as I can tell that only gives me one symbol per key, not "now select from a variety of them" as with the much-lamented Swype. I'm also missing the gestures I know for "yes, that word, but change the capitalisation", and still grumpily adjusting to the shift key mode cycle being in a different order to what I'm used to.
I've experimented briefly with AnySoftKey but rapidly got annoyed by the total lack of any Irish language pack (and how difficult it is to navigate the app listings to establish this fact). I'm trying to persuade myself that it's worth giving SwiftKey a try even though it (1) is now Microsoft, (2) has gone all-in on Bundling With Copilot, and (3) apparently "contains ads".
Eheu, alas, etc; all is woe; ... unless anyone knows of any other Android keyboards that provide ready access to All the punctuation...?
Wednesday reading: Percy Jackson
Dec. 3rd, 2025 07:36 pmrmc28About ten days ago, my hockey-and-languages buddy Owen enthused about Percy Jackson to me on the journey to/from my game in Lee Valley. (Owen was riding along to provide photography services.)
I was like, I've never read the books but I'm pretty sure I've got Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief somewhere in my to-read pile. So I took a look and sure enough, I had ten Percy Jackson books in my kindle account. My emails tell me I bought them in May 2016, and I have no memory of doing so or why (except that they were all 99p so that might have had something to do with it).
I opened up Lightning Thief to see if it was as good as expected ... and got fairly instantly hooked. I've read the first series of five books, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, then I briefly borrowed and read the short story collection The Demigod Files, before moving on to the next series of five, Heroes of Olympus. I'm currently a few chapters into the second book in that series, Son of Neptune. I'm having a great time: the books are good reads and I'm reviving a lot of memories from my childhood Greek myths phase. The positive ADHD rep doesn't hurt either.
dinosaur comics now starring TREE-rex
Dec. 3rd, 2025 12:00 amdinosaur_comics_feed| archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about |
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December 3rd, 2025: If you're looking for Christmas gifts, might I recommend... THE DINOSAUR COMICS STORE?? We got a Christmas sweater! :0 – Ryan | ||
Girl Genius for Wednesday, December 03, 2025
Dec. 3rd, 2025 05:00 amgirlgenius_main_feedfaster than a roller coaster
Dec. 1st, 2025 10:33 pmwwdn_feedIn just a couple days, I’ll get up at are-you-fucking-serious o’clock to get on a who-flies-this-fucking-early plane to go across the country, where I will land at you-just-spent-the-entire-day-on-a-plane o’clock, just in time for rush hour.
I know, I make it sound really awesome, and you’re all deeply envious of me. I’ll try not to flex about it too much.
I’m going to be on a little tour of New England to watch Stand By Me with my cast mates and a few hundred of our closest friends. It’s just three nights, with five hours days in a tour bus between them. It’s all going to happen so fast, it’ll be over before I know it, and that feels weird, since we’ve been talking about it for almost a year. I don’t know how the reality can match the buildup, but I’m looking forward to seeing what it brings.
If these shows go well (and we all expect them to go well) we have plans to do a bunch of cities next year, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of our film, and what it continues to mean to multiple generations of audiences. We already booked a handful in March, and if the stars and planets align, we’ll be doing something in a city near you, and something in Oregon, close to where we filmed the movie, next summer. Cross your fingers for us!
Once again, the locations for this week:
- December 4 at Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, New Hampshire
- December 5 at Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, New Jersey
- December 6 at Lynn Memorial Auditorium in Lynn, Massachusetts.
Oh, also! We didn’t release a new Storytime last week because it was a holiday here, but there’s a new one dropping on Wednesday. ALSO! I have my very first host-read ad coming up, which is something I never thought I’d been excited about, but it turns out I am. It’s so cool that something I made, that I love so much, that I want to do until I retire, is working out the way I’d hoped! Getting sponsors is one of those things that creates its own inertia, and is the best way we can keep doing the show for years (unless I get super lucky and 100,000 people want to be Patreon supporters — not entirely unrealistic, but not very likely, either).
I’m super grateful to be doing something I love, that I do well, that matters to people. It’s easy to forget that, or lose sight of it in the *gestures broadly at all this fucking shit every fucking day*, so I’m making an effort to remember.
If you want to get updates from the road, updates about future shows, and never miss one of my posts, here’s the thing:
Mudlarking 68 - Rain and Empires
Dec. 1st, 2025 05:58 pmsquirmeliaFinds included:
Two pieces of Empire Ware. Empire Porcelain Co were based in Hanley and active from 1896 to 1967. https://www.thepotteries.org/allpotters/389.htm
One of these pieces is from the 1930s as Empire conveniently stamped their pottery with the month and year around that time. The 3 is quite visible.
Three pieces of Express Dairies.
It seems it was the river’s birthday. Happy birthday, River Thames!
A lid from something? Or a holder of something. It looks quite new somehow, so could be some kind of religious offering.
(You need a permit to search or mudlark on the Thames foreshore.)
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December 1st, 2025: December! It's a new month, filled with new experience too, but also, FAMILIAR experiences (like comics that are new but use the same pictures but also have been using the same pictures for a few decades at this point)!!! – Ryan | ||
Girl Genius for Monday, December 01, 2025
Dec. 1st, 2025 05:00 amgirlgenius_main_feed