Network

Entry tags:

Varsity!

This time a week ago I was on the ice with fellow Cambridge alumni for "Alumni game 1", kicking off Varsity. Photos (from one of my Warbirds teammates!) that actually make me look good are over at my hockey insta but here's my personal favourite, capturing a moment in motion:

After about an hour on the ice (2 periods running clock, 4 lines), I had a quick shower, and then spent the next ten or so hours mostly on my feet, doing music and announcements for my Huskies teammates, and scoresheet and in-game announcements for Women's Blues and Men's Blues. Final scores were:

Alumni game 1: 1-1
Alumni game 2: not sure, but we won
Huskies: 3-8
Women's Blues: 0-1
Men's Blues: 5-1

The alumni games were a great vibe: we cared, but it wasn't that intense. A whole load of the women I played with in 2022-23 came back, and for me that was really joyful, plus I got to make some new friends. A couple of the older guys in game 1 had played with my old work colleague Brian Omotani back in the day. Although he didn't play, he was there to watch, and he made time to come and find me for a brief catchup later in the day.

The rest of the day though was a different gear. The Huskies game was especially tough to watch, and I felt every goal against my teammates. The Women's Blues game was incredible, the team worked so hard and it was probably the best I've seen them play. And the Men's Blues winning so decisively was delightful, especially as the first goal came from one of the two ex-Huskies (and they both got an assist each later). The whole day was incredibly intense. And then I took my kit home to hang it up, changed, met up with everyone at Mash, danced until the club closed, went to Maccies (and realised just how much my feet hurt) until that closed, and sat on a bench gossiping with two of my favourite people in the club while one of them finished his burger. Eventually we all cycled home. I didn't want the day to end, but I had things to do on Sunday.

That is, very nearly, the end of the season with just the Nationals weekends in Sheffield to go. We've finished the league games, we've had Varsity, we're shifting to "summer ice" open practices, and even had the very last "S&C" gym session on Thursday this week. Some people will graduate and leave soon, and I will miss them so much, but I am so grateful for this university season and the time I've had with these wonderful people.

Entry tags:

friends,
health

She's Recovering

Elle's operation went well. She's having no pain, but she's also mentioned good drugs.

As suggested, we're communicating via text or via Kay.

Entry tags:

Live Performance

Weighing in on the Timothee Chalamet remarks.

First of all, I understand what he was trying to say. Live Theater, Ballet, and Opera (and Jazz, in some cases) have become so expensive that it's hard to see much of it, especially at a high level.

On the other hand, as someone who has given up food to see a Royal Shakespeare Company production (and that's not including things like waiting in line for hours for the cheaper same day tickets or the armchair proms), nothing touches being in the same room as the performers. There is an alchemy that occurs.

If it's made for a screen, there can be some question about whether the human body or human voice can actually do what's being portrayed. If you're in the same room -- even if you're getting a nosebleed up in the gods -- you can tell that everything is possible.

In some cases, people are told "oh, you wouldn't like it" and believe what they're told. I had a colleague who quietly asked me, "Do you know anything about opera?" We went to see The Girl of the Golden West by Puccini within the week. There were cheap tickets available because it wasn't a full house. She enjoyed it. We ended up seeing Faust and another opera, I think Manon by Massenet, together, and she continued attending operas.

She'd been told Opera wasn't her type of thing, but she heard an aria somewhere and decided to try it.

I was lucky. When Dad was assigned to London, the USO had tickets available for various performances. Once Dad found out about it, he took Mom to see her first Opera -- Madama Butterfly -- and they ended up in the area of the Grand Balcony reserved for Princess Margaret. She released the tickets when she knew she wasn't attending, and they often ended up as USO tickets. Mom insisted that her kids weren't going to wait until they were over 30 to see an opera, so we attended Hansel and Gretel at a matinee.

Ballet was an easier sell, though I think Sis and I are among the very few kids who saw Swan Lake before they saw The Nutcracker.

Modern Dance was something that I explored on my own thanks to high school dance classes.

But being dismissive about the lively arts doesn't get more people into the movie theater. It's not an either/or proposition.

Entry tags:

people

goodbye minoanmiss

I've known minoanmiss online for decades, and got to meet her in person twice. She turned fifty in January, and two weeks ago she had a fatal seizure. Complicated family stuff meant delaying saying anything in public.

MM had an infectious smile and took joy in sharing art, music, and food. She always had stickers to give to children she encountered when out and about, she cooked meals for her local food bank, and she spread drawings and poetry online and in tangible form. I have many postcards, holiday cards, and magnets with her work, and I've enjoyed many of her fruitcakes and confections. In a last act of giving, her organs gave life to three other people.

Due to an abusive past she struggled to see her own value sometimes. But she also saw the many friends who gathered around her and the unknown people she helped in the world, and I hope that that helped her get through rough times. There was a non-religious service on Friday (which I attended on Zoom) and an in-person memorial gathering today in Boston, and it stands out how many people from different circles were together in those places. There's going to be a virtual memorial on April 12; details will be shared later on the announcement list (signup link).

She was doing what she loved -- cooking -- when it happened, way too early. I miss her.

Performing some traffic maintenance today

Happy Saturday!

I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!

If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.

poached eggs

https://dotat.at/@/2026-03-14-eggs.html

A few weeks ago I was enjoying a couple of boiled eggs

(in the shell, with plenty of salt and pepper, and buttery fingers of toast to dunk into the runny yolk)

and pondering how fiddly it is to cut off one end of the shell after boiling compared to eating a poached egg. And I was annoyed because (I thought) I didn't know how to poach eggs.

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

friends,
ice hockey

Hockey hockey hockey

I hadn't been on the ice since last Saturday (Huskies and Women's Blues practices were all Varsity squads only, and Kodiaks practice got cancelled by the rink) but I made it to and through Warbirds practice tonight. It was so worth it. I also got my Varsity notebook from Women's Blues: every team member gets a notebook, and everyone writes a note in every teammate's notebook, and we read them before Varsity to inspire us. Mine was very sweet and I love the team very much for making me welcome.

I need to leave the house in 7.5 hours to get back to the rink for Varsity. I'm playing in alumni game 1, getting cleaned up during alumni game 2, and spending the rest of the day in the scorekeepers box with a rotating cast of some of my favourite people. The three non-alumni games will be livestreamed

14:00 Mixed 2nds (Huskies v Vikings B)
17:00 Women's Blues
20:00 Men's Blues

I also had a little art session this evening before going to the rink, making signs for my Huskies teammates. The sign in Irish may well only be understood by the teammate who got me back into learning Irish this year - our class covered "how to cheer on your sports team" a couple weeks ago and I made careful notes - or maybe it will cause any lurking Gaeilgeoirí in the rink to make themselves known.

I think I'm wound down enough to sleep now.

Entry tags:

friends,
health

My Friend Elle

I've mentioned Elle in other posts. [https://fabrisse.dreamwidth.org/2016/12/04/ is the most important one] We've known each other since high school. She would hate me for stating that we graduated in 1979, even if I am keeping her pseudonymous. She's rarely on time for anything. She has an opinion on everything -- which granted is a shared trait. She regularly frustrates me, but she has been my most faithful and generous friend for 48 years (and that's a number that will kick a person in the head).

Elle called me on Wednesday because she's having surgery next week. About a month ago, she called her dentist to mention a sore on her tongue which hadn't gone away. They had her at an oral surgeon's office very quickly, and the sore was excised. It was also sent for biopsy.

It was a squamous cell carcinoma. They think they got it all, but the nature of squamous cell means that they can't be sure. A larger area will be removed on Tuesday, and the surgeons will check for lymph node involvement. If they find it, Elle may end up having her tonsils (and possibly adenoids) removed. The surgery is supposed to be in and out on the same day.

Our friend Kay will be looking after her. Elle can't talk for a week to ten days and will be on heavy painkillers for that long. I can't imagine her keeping quiet for that long, especially with what's going on in today's world.

Keep her in your thoughts, please. We've known each other since high school in Brussels, and there's literally no one else in my life, other than Sis, whom I've known as long.

Update, Netchoice v Wilson (South Carolina): motion for preliminary injunction filed

Case: Netchoice v Wilson, 3:26-cv-00543, (D.S.C.)

Netchoice's litigation page: Netchoice v Wilson

Netchoice filed the motion for preliminary injunction on March 9. It isn't available on the docket in RECAP yet (and I'm over my threshold for PACER fees that will get refunded for the quarter, or else I'd put it there!) but it is available on Netchoice's litigation page: Motion for Preliminary Injunction. They haven't included the declarations, but here's Dreamwidth's declaration as filed, authored by yours truly. Because of the wild incoherence of so many of the provisions of this law, many of which were new because a lot of states have switched to using different model legislation, I had to write almost all of our declaration for this one from scratch (while recovering from a lumbar puncture, lying flat on my back in bed: never let it be said I am not completely extra about the lengths to which I will go to fight against this bullshit), so much less of it will look familiar than usual, but boy was I mad.

We'll let you know when the judge makes a ruling on the PI! And three cheers as always for the Netchoice team and for the outside litigation counsel team, who is Lehotsky Keller Cohn for this one and who put in massively heroic effort to get this filed as fast as possible thanks to the law taking immediate effect.

Freedom of speech

There's been a rant I have been meaning to turn into an essay for a while, but Ken White (Popehat) has done it better, so I direct you to his really well-written and referenced (though US-centric) article: The Fashionable Notion of 'Free Speech Culture' Is Justifying State Censorship, Ironically. Criticism. Is. Not. Censorship, and “Free speech culture” has a natural tendency to discount the speech rights and interests of people who criticize speech.

This is important in Europe too, not just in the US, because it's a deliberate, specific Russian infowar tactic to promote far right events at UK universities and claim censorship if anyone objects. A network based at [Cambridge] University and backed by Thiel, which it said was using the issue of free speech to “normalise white nationalism on UK campuses”. Neither Putin nor Thiel has anyone's freedom at heart, and they're all too successful at distracting people with a toddler-like notion of "freedom" where you get to say the naughty words without being told off.

( shorter version of my original opinion, building on White's piece )

Entry tags:

cambridge,
theatre

The Orphan of Zhao

This is an 800 year old play based on events 2,500 years ago in China, the first Chinese play to be translated into any European language (about 300 years ago). The Royal Shakespeare Company commissioned James Fenton to adapt it for a production about 13 years ago, and a student theatre group are putting that adaptation on at the ADC in Cambridge this week.

I went to see it last night with Charles, and also Olivia, one of my friends from Womens Blues. (We then found two of my Huskies teammates in the audience so it became an accidental hockey social.) We saw a little first-night talk beforehand from the director and some of the actors, about why they chose this play and some of their favourite lines and aspects of the characters they play. The play itself was very good, very gripping, a revenge tragedy with a very high body count and an ending I didn't quite expect.

The kind of evening that makes me remember how much I like living in this weird little city in the fens.

(and, in further "wow I love living in walking distance of the ADC" news, here's what I'm hoping to get to between now and early May:

Into The Woods (famous musical)
Olympus Unscripted (improv show on greek myths theme)
Chekov's Four Farces (what it says on the tin)
Next to Normal (musical about mental illness)
The Ferryman (play about the Irish Troubles)
Medea (musical adaptation of Euripedes play)

)

Entry tags:

questions

Question thread #149

It's time for another question thread!

The rules:

- You may ask any dev-related question you have in a comment. (It doesn't even need to be about Dreamwidth, although if it involves a language/library/framework/database Dreamwidth doesn't use, you will probably get answers pointing that out and suggesting a better place to ask.)
- You may also answer any question, using the guidelines given in To Answer, Or Not To Answer and in this comment thread.