badrubbish: Snape, leaning heavily against a wall and looking like he's genuinely about to cry, no hyperbole. (snad)
2019-03-06 11:40 pm
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(no subject)

"... sed sine amicitia non valemus et vita est nihil."

Cicero, bro 😂
badrubbish: Lucius Malfoy, moving quickly to the side, his hair trailing into his face. It's a good look. (lucius)
2019-03-06 06:57 pm
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Useful miscellanea

A bit of light reading, viewing, etc

Yale open courses
https://oyc.yale.edu/
The great courses series
@ overdrive and kanopy
** For that matter, search a keyword like "rome," "sumerian" or "egypt" on kanopy for p great results.
Khan academy
https://www.khanacademy.org/
MIT open courseware
https://ocw.mit.edu/help/get-started-with-ocw/
EdX astronomy
https://www.edx.org/learn/astronomy
Lots of stuff
http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses
badrubbish: Dumbledore, in very dramatic lighting. (dumblediva)
2019-03-02 11:50 am
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Latin 101

Goal: basic (or better yet, intermediate) knowledge of Latin. 

Plan of action: 
1. Finish Wheelock's cover to cover. One chapter per day gives 40 days, and 2-3 off or slow days per week will mean I can expect to be about halfway done by April Fool's, and finished by at latest mid-May; the task should take 8-11 weeks.
2. As of chapter 5 (completed 7 March, right on target), I feel comfortable beginning to read 2–3 pages per day of an at level reader. Eventually increasing that amount and transitioning into, say, 20+ pages per day once I'm done with Wheelock's should give me a good base a reasonable timeframe—I'll just need to source material.

Additional learning resources:
1471 basic Latin words, by category (there are 23 categories; take your time with each). 
Other misc resources 
Reading material, further instruction 
Online discussion forum
More reading material
Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

I can revisit Old English (which I've found a delightful old textbook for), Greek, Sumerian, etc in May–July if I feel like it. Alternatively, I may want to order a more advanced Latin text via interlibrary loans in late April. 

Rules: 
1. Ideally, one new chapter + one review chapter per day. I can shift that around based on difficulty, but shouldn't exceed three chapters per day (including review!). 
2. If I want more content, work on memorising the 1471 most common words. 
badrubbish: Severus Snape, in the middle of dramatically opening or closing a door. (Default)
2019-01-23 02:49 pm
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Calendar-making reference post

One of my hobbies is constructing lunar and lunisolar calendars. Without getting into too much detail, I'd like to pin the current one to a recurring cycle that begins on the first new moon after an equinox. I want this calendar to have begun counting fron a date a few centuries ago, which means historical new moon events will influence when the current cycle began. So, TLDR, I need to know when the new moon was in a particular month in the 1120s.

Six millennium catalog of phases of the moon
Easier to navigate, only goes back to 1900

I'm happy to just go with the most common date for the equinox, but precision there would be lovely as well...

Solstices & equinoxes 1100-1149

I'm glad I checked, because it looks like the most typical dates have shifted substantially in the last few hundred years.

In case I want to account for saros cycles, planetary appearances, or etc:

NASA's page on eclipses
eclipsewise.com
Very rough synodic & sidereal orbit periods of the planets
Planet brightness, distance, size for laypeople
Pluto, not listed (😭), is never visible without a telescope.
About Venus (583.92 days between recurrences)
About Jupiter (398.88)
About Mercury (115.88)
About Saturn
(378.09) 
About Mars (119.94 days between recurrences)
Seasonal constellations
(this calendar's reference point is below 40N)

Some numbers (units are days unless otherwise stated): 
Sidereal month, 27.321
Synodic month, 29.530587981 (roughly 29.53059)
Tropical month, 27.321582 
Anomalistic month, 27.554551
Draconic month, 27.212220
Sidereal year, 365.256363004
Tropical year, 365.2422
Saros, 6585.3211
Triple saros or exeligmos, 19755.9633

Just for luck:

Time and date calculator

And that's all for now.
badrubbish: A photo of Dumbledore's chocolate frog card. (chocolate froggledore)
2018-12-20 05:27 pm
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Google, no

Based on the little related apps bar in the google app store, it looks like Twitter is a dating app. You didn't know? Well, apparently, the next best thing to Twitter is "FarmersOnly Dating," "Modern Love," or—most probably—"Hinge - Dating and Relationships." Because what's sexier than hinges.

All of the little related apps were like this, I am in awe of their algorithms.
badrubbish: Severus Snape, in the middle of dramatically opening or closing a door. (Default)
2018-12-20 08:21 am
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Smartphone tape?

I'm fairly new to the world of smartphones. I've never dropped mine, but this is the second time it's shimmied off a table because it vibrates whenever it starts up. I'm thinking about taping it down.

Where on Earth are you supposed to keep these things before their cases arrive?
badrubbish: Dumbledore's right eye, and a bit of his hat. He has a very luscious beard; what we can see of it seems to suggest he's moving quickly. (go go dumbledore)
2018-12-19 12:40 pm

Lugnutcracker

Saw "a very nutty Christmas" the other night, I keep picturing Steve Rogers as a time traveling nutcracker who likes to threaten people with his shield (possibly several shields, just random shield shaped objects he picks up) & who uses his incredible nut cracking abilities to help Tony bake cookies for robots. Or salvage electronics. Or wire houses. W/e.

Perhaps instead of reincarnating as Natasha/Bruce/whoever's nephew Steve defeats the mouse king and is un-cursed? Hmm.

The mouse king could throw him into a lake or sth—giving us our almost-sad end—before Tony fishes him out. If Tony dives in after that'd be nice and dramatic but also, imagine: a giant robot arm picks Steve up out of the lake by his scruff.
badrubbish: Severus Snape, in the middle of dramatically opening or closing a door. (Default)
2018-12-15 01:40 pm
Entry tags:

(no subject)

Spam bots are modern sirens pass it on
badrubbish: Severus Snape, in the middle of dramatically opening or closing a door. (Default)
2018-12-14 07:54 pm
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Useful links

Dw 101 by Sineala 

How to download fic from various archives
Quickest, works with FFnet, HPFFarchive & AF:
http://ficsave.xyz/

My personal favorite rss readers:
Inoreader (for image-heavy sites)
The Old Reader (for text-heavy sites)
(You can use these to follow dw + lj + tumblr all in one place).

Blanket permission to podfic (remember to check their lj/dw/ao3 page as well, many aren't on there)
badrubbish: Dumbledore, in very dramatic lighting. (dumblediva)
2018-12-13 12:18 pm

Hi! 👋

I was around when dreamwidth opened, but I never used it much. I guess it's time to figure out how it works, lol.

Good riddance, tumblr. 💅