Jasmine

Often you’ll be walking on Dartmoor & some ponies will be like “Follow us, we will lead you to the castle where the wizard lives & life is perfect!” My advice, from experience, is to ignore them. Ponies are known liars who will make up any old shit to briefly relieve the vast boredom of their lives.

Smashing my collarbone into a bee on the bike track was not on the plan for today.
I'm fine and I have a soothing gel for the sting, but I'm not liking the placement.

I'm going through my notebook, editing a short story, and one page just has "Boötes constellation" written at the top.

I'm delighted to rediscover it, but it is not pronounced how I initially read it.

A photo of page 227 from the book Name Your Baby by Lareina Rule (which, as a side note, promises over 10,000 names and "a special baby personality horoscope"). This page is S names and we see the names SKEET, SKELLY, and SKELTON amongst others.

Naming characters is hard, but I reckon I've found some of the coolest names right here.

In Hazel's defence, I also sometimes eat things I know will make my stomach sore because they're delicious. I understand the dark call.

My kingdom for kitten food without chicken in it. This seems like an impossible ask.

My adult cat, who can't eat chicken, is determined to lick the dregs off the plate like it's some kind of exciting treat and 8 more months of this seems like a lot.

Once again, I find myself struck by a great desire to get rid of unused things. There's nothing like the thought of moving house to fuel efficiency.

The top of a fully cooked loaf of bread, still in the bread maker and warm.

A slice of the home made bread. It is white bread that has risen nicely.

Oooh yeah. Bread.

A sunflower that is yellow tinged with a circle of red around the centre. There is a blue sky with fluffy white clouds in the background, with lots of other sunflowers out of focus against it. Some of these sunflowers are entirely missing their petals.

Some of the sunflowers in the background may be entirely bald after all the wind, but this one is hanging in there! I'm really happy with my sunflower garden.

“This means that the first giant organisms on the Earth’s surface were not closely related to anything alive today.”

Fantastic #SciComm thread and such fascinating science about early life on our planet!

🧪

She probably is! A(n invasive) lizard murder

This response to my typo has brought me a great deal of mirth

I meant 'litterbox', but maybe they also look serious when checking for mail.

A huge tabby cat with a serious expression, she has been photographed in the crack between a door and the wall.

A 3 month old seal point ragdoll kitten staring seriously out of her litter box towards the camera

Why do cats look so serious when they're using the letterbox?

A popup that reads "Due to new session activity on your account, changes to the phone number or email address on your account have been temporarily restricted. To change your account information, please try again in 48 hours from this same session."

I've not been on the other app for quite some time. Finally managed to manually delete all of my posts (except 4 phantom ones that don't show up for me). The end is in sight. I'll hit that sweet sweet delete/deactivate button as soon as I can alter my saved email.

A 4 by 4 grid of 16 books. A Hero Born by Jin Yong. Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson. Notebook by Tom Cox. The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar. Cordelia's Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold. Elder Race followed by Ironclads by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Memories of Ice by Steven Erikson. The Warden by Anthony Trollope. Death by Darjeeling by Laura Childs. The Expert System's Brother and The Expert Systems Champion by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Sojourn (the comic) by Ron Marz and Greg Land. There is no Death There are no Dead, ab anthology by numerous authors. The Mires by Tina Makareth. The Hedge Witch by Cari Thomas.

My 2025 Storygraph. A mood map of reading. Lighter books push the line up and darker books push it down. The line is high until April where it takes a big dip, then up half was in June, slight dip in September, back up on October, down slightly in November, and holding steady in December.

April was when I finished Deadhouse Gates.

A hand with ink running down the palm onto the page. There is ink splattered everywhere with writing in between that reads "Dropped ink, like blood, from a wound, now it flows".

Remembering the time I spilled ink on my hand and then decided to be super dramatic about it.

One of my baby pumpkins was eaten by creatures while I was on holiday, but the other is now about twice the size! I hold out hope for second pumpkin success.

A sunflower! The yellow flower has fully opened up, the centre is still new with no sign of seeds. It is nestled within green leaves.

First sunflower of the year!

A large red strawberry sitting in the palm of a hand. The light is coming from the left and highlights the strawberry skin around each seed.

First strawberry of the season

A photo of the first page of a short story by Lee Murray called "the bone eater". There is a picture of crossed bones to the left and the text starts on the right-hand page.

I wasn't expecting to find a story so deeply Aotearoa in this anthology. Walking down the same streets I walked as a student with this character was unlike anything I've experienced before. It's absolutely dripping in the familiarity of home, down to complex cultural questions. Beautifully written.

Belated alt text: A person with dark hair, a silver moon fairy headdress, a blue ball gown, and a lighter blue set of sleeves stands in a t-pose. Shiny blue wings with a purple sheen spread like a butterfly in flight, spanning the length of the outstretched arm.

T-pose for the wings.

Zae Coprinus: ball gown edition.
It was nice to have a small event, even if the final LARP had to be moved to next year.

There's something about dragging a large delivery into the house and closing the screen door behind me that makes me feel like I understand the appeal of being a trapdoor spider

I'm reading a couple of Malazan chapters a week and other books in between. This week has been a weird sense of whiplash as I go from 242 pages, 50 chapters to 1035 pages, 26 chapters.
These chapter lengths are opposite ends of the scale.

Stardew Valley Character Creator by Jazzybee Make a character (or yourself) in the style of a Stardew Valley character portrait!

The portrait creator is this one jazzybee.itch.io/sdvcharacter...

A fairy with blue hair and a blue-ish tinge to their skin. They have a silver headpiece and are wearing a purple top with straps that show the shoulders. They have purple eyes and a scar coming down over one eye.

A gunslinging cowboy with a black hat and black coat. She's wearing a green shirt that brings out her blue eyes and bright ginger hair. There is a scar going across one cheek.

My two current campaign LARP characters, portrayed using the Stardew portrait creater.

To the left we have Zae Coprinus, and to the right we have Cassie Marlow.
Both very different characters to play in terms of mindset and personality.

"Test it on Production"

A large white and grey rabbit eats a huge mouthful of long grass. There is a green fern to the left of the image. The foreground is focused on Big Ben's glorious whiskers.

Such an excellent lad

A tabby cat with partially closed eyes sits on a cat tree. She is beside the window.

I think the new phone is roadtrip ready now, thank goodness. Of course, this was the first photo I took with it.