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I felt the urge to rewrite my introduction so I thought I’d use it as a starting point for a Subscription Meme, as I haven’t seen one going around for a while.
I’ve made a template, which I’ve filled out very wordily below. Please feel free to adapt it to your wishes, and please link this post wherever you like. (Please participate or share? I'm going to feel very sad if this entry sits here alone with 0 comments...)
People in this journal
Apart from me, those who are mentioned frequently include:
I tend not to talk about my immediate family outside of access-lock unless I’m telling a funny anecdote. The same goes for my work colleagues.
About my job
I spent twelve years as a chemist working in a physics department as an engineer. Specifically, a spacecraft engineer. I wore a number of different hats on several missions, the main ones being:
I couldn’t write specifically about my work, so I didn’t post too much about it unless something really exciting was happening, such as the switch-on of the Rosetta spacecraft.
I also taught in third-year physics labs, gave the occasional guest lecture and did a lot of outreach work in schools.
I recently started a new job at a different institution, about which I shall be intentionally vague. It is quite different, but it also lets me help advance women in areas of STEM in which they are very under-represented. I find this deeply satisfying.
Some random facts
I am closer to forty than I am to thirty. I have been Dr Nanila for over fifteen years. I have dual citizenship. I have lived in the UK for over a decade. I am mixed-race (East Asian and white).
I am a non-theist. I don’t like the term atheist because it has been tainted by a lot of shouty horrible people.
I have strong feelings about immigration, social justice and the obligations of the privileged and affluent toward those who are not. I consider myself to be both privileged and affluent.
I waited a long time to have a child, and was not bothered by the possibility that I might never have children. I have strong feelings about a woman’s (or girl’s) right to choose if and when she would like to become a parent.
Things I like to do
Photography
I like to take photographs. I mean I really like to take photographs. I take dozens, sometimes hundreds, of them a week. I do try to show some restraint in sharing them here, so mostly you’ll see perhaps up to ten in a single post, and I’ll usually put all but one behind a cut.
I have two favourite prime lenses, a 35 mm f/2.0 and a 100 mm f/2.8, which I use regularly on my mid-level Canon dSLR. I used to shoot film too, but since Humuhumu was born, I’ve gone almost purely digital. Someday I hope to have the time to dabble with other cameras again.
Gardening
We have a funnily-shaped garden behind our house, secreted away behind the hedge along the canal towpath. It’s full of lavender and in the summer, we can hear people exclaiming about the lovely scent wafting from it over the canal.
That is, when the farmer who owns the field over the canal hasn’t just spread fresh manure over it.
I’m not really a landscape artist sort of gardener. I prefer to lend an enabling hand to the bloke’s grand plans, so I tend to go for the weeding, pruning and brute-force digging-over-plots jobs as I’m pointed at them.
Walking
I enjoy planned weekend walks with OS maps and proper rain gear, walking with a purpose (e.g. to get to/from work or for a photography trip, probably to a cemetery) and walking aimlessly (e.g. flanage). I enjoy walking even more when I’ve got my camera in my hand.
Painting
I like to paint, mostly imaginary 3D landscapes (see some examples here). I’m not at a phase in my life where I have the long, uninterrupted hours I need to put into my rather painstakingly slow artistic process. So I haven’t painted much in the last couple of years. As my daughter grows, I hope to interest her in art as well. My hope is that perhaps one day we can both have those long hours to create, together or separately.
Reading
Having at last recaptured some time and energy from raising very small children, I am getting back into my old reading habits and am finishing a few fiction books each month.
My tastes have changed recently. I used to read quite a lot of literary fiction as well as “classic” fantasy and sci-fi, but since my awareness of the sameness of tropes written by Ye Olde White Dudes has increased greatly in the past few years, I find myself seeking out recommendations from friends who are authors themselves or deliberately look for texts that focus on female and/or PoC protagonists.
Drink
I am a big fan of Scottish whisky. I also like gin, rum, wine, ale, cider, perry and pretty much ALL THE BOOZE. (Except Jaegermeister. And Fernet Branca, which I’m convinced is bottled alcoholic earwax. Yech.)
I’m also quite fond of tea, from the humble black-tea-in-bag-with-milk to the super-fancy loose-leaf stuff that should be brewed in a narrow range of temperatures in its own special teapot.
Fandom
I am a fan of many films and television shows. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Black Books and Ghost in the Shell are firm and lasting favourites. I will watch anything that is even loosely based on Sherlock Holmes, although I think it’ll be a challenge for anyone to eclipse Jeremy Brett as Holmes. Recently added repeat viewings (I watch everything I like multiple times) have included Warm Bodies, Lockout, Pacific Rim and Underworld: Awakening. Woo, vampires, robots, zombies and absurd plots in space!
My fannishness doesn’t often inspire me to write or seek out fanfic. I do enjoy reading it occasionally, hence why I subscribe to![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fancake, which introduces me to lots of good and often unexpected stuff across many fandoms.
Social media usage
I began using the internet heavily when I discovered Usenet, specifically, rec.music.industrial, in 1995-6. But I feel that the point in my life at which social media became an ingrained, essential part of my existence was when I joined LiveJournal in 2001. I have written blog posts at least once a week ever since. I began cross-posting from Dreamwidth in 2009. I use Twitter, Facebook and to a lesser extent Google+ and Tumblr. I tend not to share content between them. Twitter is stream-of-consciousness, Facebook is entirely personal. I keep G+ going for my immediate family and a small number of friends. Tumblrs are so topical and ephemeral that I don’t keep up with a fixed set of them.
Dreamwidth will always be my mainstay. LJ once was, but as my community there contracts and its parent company does dreadful things to its Terms of Service, I'll slowly be winding things down there over the next couple of months.
Subscriptions, access and commenting
Although I’m cautious about initiating subscriptions - I’m trying not to be, hence this meme! - I reciprocate subscriptions and grant access pretty readily. I try very, very hard to reply to every comment I receive and to comment often on others' posts. It's important to me to be as interactive as possible. I don't comment on my Circle's journals as often as I would like simply due to time constraints, but I’m always reading. I don't expect a reciprocal level of commitment to commenting. If you rarely have the spoons to comment, I don't mind. I welcome all manner and length of comments, from “♥” to “In Z80012, using hex rather than binary, and converting to a basic ASCII code, I think I E5 A9 08 B7 you.”
What I’d like to get from my participation here
I would like to expand my Circle by subscribing to new journals! I also hope you will enjoy reading others’ introductions and feel comfortable subscribing to one another.
I’ve made a template, which I’ve filled out very wordily below. Please feel free to adapt it to your wishes, and please link this post wherever you like. (Please participate or share? I'm going to feel very sad if this entry sits here alone with 0 comments...)
Subscription Meme template:
<b>People in this journal</b>
<b>About my job</b>
<b>Some random facts</b>
<b>Things I like to do</b>
<b>Fandom</b>
<b>Social media usage</b>
<b>>Subscriptions, access and commenting</b>
<b>What I’d like to get from my participation here</b>
People in this journal
Apart from me, those who are mentioned frequently include:
- The Bloke, with whom I share house, bed and passion for science, among other things.
- Humuhumu, our daughter, aged 10 years
- Keiki, our son, aged 8 years
Telstar, our spoiled tuxie catDeceased, Nov 2022
I tend not to talk about my immediate family outside of access-lock unless I’m telling a funny anecdote. The same goes for my work colleagues.
About my job
I spent twelve years as a chemist working in a physics department as an engineer. Specifically, a spacecraft engineer. I wore a number of different hats on several missions, the main ones being:
- Cluster, a set of four spacecraft flying in a tetrahedral formation around the Earth
- Cassini, in orbit around Saturn
- JUICE, a mission to orbit Jupiter's moon Ganymede. This mission is currently in Build phase.
I couldn’t write specifically about my work, so I didn’t post too much about it unless something really exciting was happening, such as the switch-on of the Rosetta spacecraft.
I also taught in third-year physics labs, gave the occasional guest lecture and did a lot of outreach work in schools.
I recently started a new job at a different institution, about which I shall be intentionally vague. It is quite different, but it also lets me help advance women in areas of STEM in which they are very under-represented. I find this deeply satisfying.
Some random facts
I am closer to forty than I am to thirty. I have been Dr Nanila for over fifteen years. I have dual citizenship. I have lived in the UK for over a decade. I am mixed-race (East Asian and white).
I am a non-theist. I don’t like the term atheist because it has been tainted by a lot of shouty horrible people.
I have strong feelings about immigration, social justice and the obligations of the privileged and affluent toward those who are not. I consider myself to be both privileged and affluent.
I waited a long time to have a child, and was not bothered by the possibility that I might never have children. I have strong feelings about a woman’s (or girl’s) right to choose if and when she would like to become a parent.
Things I like to do
Photography
I like to take photographs. I mean I really like to take photographs. I take dozens, sometimes hundreds, of them a week. I do try to show some restraint in sharing them here, so mostly you’ll see perhaps up to ten in a single post, and I’ll usually put all but one behind a cut.
I have two favourite prime lenses, a 35 mm f/2.0 and a 100 mm f/2.8, which I use regularly on my mid-level Canon dSLR. I used to shoot film too, but since Humuhumu was born, I’ve gone almost purely digital. Someday I hope to have the time to dabble with other cameras again.
Gardening
We have a funnily-shaped garden behind our house, secreted away behind the hedge along the canal towpath. It’s full of lavender and in the summer, we can hear people exclaiming about the lovely scent wafting from it over the canal.
That is, when the farmer who owns the field over the canal hasn’t just spread fresh manure over it.
I’m not really a landscape artist sort of gardener. I prefer to lend an enabling hand to the bloke’s grand plans, so I tend to go for the weeding, pruning and brute-force digging-over-plots jobs as I’m pointed at them.
Walking
I enjoy planned weekend walks with OS maps and proper rain gear, walking with a purpose (e.g. to get to/from work or for a photography trip, probably to a cemetery) and walking aimlessly (e.g. flanage). I enjoy walking even more when I’ve got my camera in my hand.
Painting
I like to paint, mostly imaginary 3D landscapes (see some examples here). I’m not at a phase in my life where I have the long, uninterrupted hours I need to put into my rather painstakingly slow artistic process. So I haven’t painted much in the last couple of years. As my daughter grows, I hope to interest her in art as well. My hope is that perhaps one day we can both have those long hours to create, together or separately.
Reading
Having at last recaptured some time and energy from raising very small children, I am getting back into my old reading habits and am finishing a few fiction books each month.
My tastes have changed recently. I used to read quite a lot of literary fiction as well as “classic” fantasy and sci-fi, but since my awareness of the sameness of tropes written by Ye Olde White Dudes has increased greatly in the past few years, I find myself seeking out recommendations from friends who are authors themselves or deliberately look for texts that focus on female and/or PoC protagonists.
Drink
I am a big fan of Scottish whisky. I also like gin, rum, wine, ale, cider, perry and pretty much ALL THE BOOZE. (Except Jaegermeister. And Fernet Branca, which I’m convinced is bottled alcoholic earwax. Yech.)
I’m also quite fond of tea, from the humble black-tea-in-bag-with-milk to the super-fancy loose-leaf stuff that should be brewed in a narrow range of temperatures in its own special teapot.
Fandom
I am a fan of many films and television shows. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Black Books and Ghost in the Shell are firm and lasting favourites. I will watch anything that is even loosely based on Sherlock Holmes, although I think it’ll be a challenge for anyone to eclipse Jeremy Brett as Holmes. Recently added repeat viewings (I watch everything I like multiple times) have included Warm Bodies, Lockout, Pacific Rim and Underworld: Awakening. Woo, vampires, robots, zombies and absurd plots in space!
My fannishness doesn’t often inspire me to write or seek out fanfic. I do enjoy reading it occasionally, hence why I subscribe to
fancake, which introduces me to lots of good and often unexpected stuff across many fandoms.Social media usage
I began using the internet heavily when I discovered Usenet, specifically, rec.music.industrial, in 1995-6. But I feel that the point in my life at which social media became an ingrained, essential part of my existence was when I joined LiveJournal in 2001. I have written blog posts at least once a week ever since. I began cross-posting from Dreamwidth in 2009. I use Twitter, Facebook and to a lesser extent Google+ and Tumblr. I tend not to share content between them. Twitter is stream-of-consciousness, Facebook is entirely personal. I keep G+ going for my immediate family and a small number of friends. Tumblrs are so topical and ephemeral that I don’t keep up with a fixed set of them.
Dreamwidth will always be my mainstay. LJ once was, but as my community there contracts and its parent company does dreadful things to its Terms of Service, I'll slowly be winding things down there over the next couple of months.
Subscriptions, access and commenting
Although I’m cautious about initiating subscriptions - I’m trying not to be, hence this meme! - I reciprocate subscriptions and grant access pretty readily. I try very, very hard to reply to every comment I receive and to comment often on others' posts. It's important to me to be as interactive as possible. I don't comment on my Circle's journals as often as I would like simply due to time constraints, but I’m always reading. I don't expect a reciprocal level of commitment to commenting. If you rarely have the spoons to comment, I don't mind. I welcome all manner and length of comments, from “♥” to “In Z80012, using hex rather than binary, and converting to a basic ASCII code, I think I E5 A9 08 B7 you.”
What I’d like to get from my participation here
I would like to expand my Circle by subscribing to new journals! I also hope you will enjoy reading others’ introductions and feel comfortable subscribing to one another.
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