Sophinisba Solis

Hey there, Internet, I could use some help! So I switched from a plain old talking phone to my first smartphone about six months ago and it's been loads of fun, but I still haven't figured out how to download and listen to music or podfic on it. /o\

I used to use an iPod touch and I would take care of all the synching stuff in iTunes, but I can't do that anymore.

I have Google Play/Play Music, of course, I'm pretty sure that came loaded on the phone but I also went to the trouble of connecting my accounts and uploading all the music from my computer to this cloud.

The thing is, Google Play seems to be mostly set up for streaming, which is no use for me. I have a really limited data plan so I want to be able to download things at home and then listen to them when I'm out walking. After I'd had this phone for about four months my sister showed me how you're supposed to be able to download a track by bringing it up in your library and then hitting the pushpin icon (thanks, Google, that was super intuitive) but when I try to do this I always just get the message "Can't download music right now."

Sometimes I manage to navigate to a podfic right on my phone and I think I've downloaded and opened the mp3 from there, but then I need to use another app and when I try to go back to the mp3 it's gone. Safari won't load anything when I'm offline and I don't know where else to look for the file.

Ack I'm super embarrassed to admit that I can't get this when it seems like a really basic thing! I mean the thing is I don't miss it terribly because most of the time I just want to listen to podcasts, and I handle that with another app, BeyondPod, and that works fine. Anyway that is my tale of woe! I appreciate your help, thanks!

I wasn't going to get into this fandom you guys I don't even know. I was just going to read some critiques but then last night I started reading fics, and tonight I read some more fics and then I went out and watched the movie again.

The best Charles/Erik fic I have read is You Told Me Again You Preferred Handsome Men, But For Me You Would Make an Exception by feverbeats, especially recommended if you were bothered by Charles' arrogance in the movie (which I wasn't especially but still, good fic).

Here are two lovely ensemble pieces also with Charles/Erik, more appealing if like me you were crushing on Charles:

Five Minds Charles Never Read (And One He Did) by Leyenn

Five Lessons Charles Taught (and One He Learned) by kaydeefalls

I may be running out of things I want to read on the AO3 and will have to start venturing into the kink memes soon. /o\ What I really want to read is all the hurt/comfort in the world, so if you have those recs I will take them.

I do not have any ideas for fics I want to write. That's pretty normal for me - I need to spend a lot of time reading in a fandom before I start writing, and in this case I probably won't, and that's okay. I was thinking I could do some podfic but pretty much every fic does this telepathy business where Charles hears Erik's thoughts and speaks in Erik's mind and, although several friends on Twitter suggested I could handle that in a podfic with filters (reverb etc.), I fear that would end up sounding really cheesy and I just don't want to do it. So for now I'm just reading okay!

( And I watched the movie again! )

In other news, I watched the movie Hanna and thought parts of it were really neat, and liked that there was no rape or threatened rape and that she got to keep her clothes on, but was not really satisfied by the story.

Today I bought Photoshop Elements and then realized that I should get the trial version before I opened the box and since then have spent many, many hours waiting for the trial version to finish downloading. At the moment it says it'll take another thirteen hours. :(

For the past month or so the trackpad on my Macbook hasn't been working properly. Sometimes it lets me select text (for copying and pasting, for instance) but often it doesn't. Same thing with trying to drag and drop anything, for instance regions when editing podfic. Argh.

Last week I friended summerpornathon and teamgreed but forgot to add them to the not-Dreamwidth filter, so I totally missed the challenge announcement on Sunday and get-to-know-you stuff for my team. :( However once I finally noticed on Tuesday I managed to write a ficlet without too much trouble. If I think about it in terms of competition or strategy I start to freak out, but if I think in terms of "First porn I have written since February!" I feel pretty good!

I was going to make a giant post about how awesome Dreamwidth is, but my computer's giving me trouble so I guess you'll be spared most of that proselytizing for now. :) I'll just link to the latest dw-news post, which has links to some very helpful resources for newbies and a preview of the new update page that they'll be implementing soon. Along with being intensely shiny, I think this new page is a great example of Dreamwidth asking their users what they want, following through, and responding to feedback as they go. (You know, because their business is about satisfying the users who pay for their service, rather than drawing in ad money. *suppresses much longer rant*)

I've got an appointment at the Apple Store in a few hours, no idea whether they'll fix it then, tell me there's nothing wrong and send me home, or take my beloved computer into custody. D: In any case I'll be going out of town this afternoon and won't be back until Tuesday, so even if I get to take my Macbook with me I probably won't be online much. If I don't answer your e-mail or fail to comment on your awesome femslash10 story, I promise it's nothing personal!

hyel wrote a great Merlin AU with Gwen and Morgana as pirates, Guinevere of the High Seas, and there's some good discussion in the comments about why Gwen so seldom gets the starring role in fics, even though almost everybody tends to like her. aralias talked about this some when she reposted her remix, Fairytale Romance (The Happy Endings Remix).

The Gwen/Morgana Thingathon looks like fun.

boxofmagic fics are up with a lovely fic archive. I especially like skin number 2 though I wish there were one page with links to all the fics with their authors. I'm a slow reader and feeling pretty overwhelmed but also happy. ( two little recs )

In other news, I continue to love my Mac but I have been squinting an awful lot. ( Read more... )

Today I'm happy that it's cloudy and that it has been since Monday. This is the kind of weather baranduin likes, I think – cool, with a light breeze, some light rain from time to time. It's not usually my favorite but it's been nice for the sunburn recovery process. The skin on my face started peeling yesterday. My chest is still bright red and hurts, but a little less than it hurt two days ago.

I had a nice time playing with some MacBooks at the store yesterday. I had less fun with the netbooks but that might be because that particular store had very little interest in selling them. The salesperson I talked to was sort of what I think of as a stereotypical Mac guy – like, younger and cooler and better looking than me, not trying to lord it over you or do a hard sell, just really laid back and confident in the knowledge that his computer is a thousand times better than yours. :) I'm thinking I'm going to hold off on buying anything for now (will maybe wait and see how much money I have in late August, also see if the warranty on my old computer is good for anything), but I do want my next computer to be a Mac.

This morning I accidentally dropped my backpack that had my beloved laptop Kimiko in it in the street. It's still working fine but one corner of the casing is a little dinged up and some of the paint is chipping off. I just backed up the files on my external hard drive.

I've only had this computer (a Toshiba Satellite) for a year and a half and it's been great for what I need it for but I'm a little worried about how banged up it's gotten. Also its battery only lasts about 25 minutes these days, so it's getting less and less practical for taking places. Of course I could get it a new battery, but I've been thinking about whether I should try getting a new computer instead rather than lugging this one around all the time and worrying it might actually crack up one of these days.

I've been thinking about Macbooks and how pretty they are and how Mac people are so cultish snobbish enthusiastic about them. I've heard they're sturdier, and that would certainly be a good thing. But then I look at the prices and I think, okay, technically I could maybe afford to spend that much money, but how do I justify it when I could get a PC laptop for half of that? Mac people, can you help me?

So then on the other hand I think about these new mini-laptops, netbooks, which are around 3 pounds and $300 and cute. I guess they're mostly supposed to be for the Internet but I could install a word processor on it too, and that would pretty much take care of the stuff that I do when I take my laptop to campus or a coffee shop (reading and writing). Then I could keep Kimiko at home for reading and writing but also watching movies and TV shows, and it wouldn't get so banged up. Anything PC would also probably be more compatible with school/work computers than a Mac. Maybe the small keyboard would make typing on a netbook uncomfortable though, I don't know.

What do you think?

ETA: My eyesight is not awesome. I mean, it's not bad, I wear glasses and they're okay but I still really hate small type and lack of contrast. Does that make a difference? Do netbooks make type any smaller or do they keep it the same size so you just have to scroll more? What's with Apple's website and all the gray-on-white text? Are the computers like that too, when you're doing...operating system type stuff?

ETA2: If you've got all your files on a PC (Mostly Office documents but also PDFs pictures and some videos and other things), how easy is it to transfer them to a Mac?

My old laptop sort of stopped working on Sunday. That is, it stopped taking power from its AC adapter yet again. I could have bought a new one from Dell for $50 or so but I have been meaning to replace that computer for a while anyway because it's slow and clunky and annoying in a lot of ways, the biggest probably being that it can't read CDs or DVDs anymore, and since the only TV in the apartment is the tiny one in my friend's bedroom, I have been relying on my computer more and more for watching movies and TV shows. So I went out and got one yesterday morning! (It wasn't as much of an impulse buy as it seems, really. I'd looked into buying a new one a year and a half ago and I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted.)

My new computer is a Toshiba Satellite A215-S7437 and so far I like it pretty well. It has a nice wide, bright screen and in a few minutes I'm going to try watching Heroes to see how that works. I'm still adjusting to using Vista and Office 2007 (because, you see, I've stuck to my daily writing goals, even with this! Go me!) and having the Delete key way the hell up in the upper right corner of the keyboard, among other things. I've transfered most of my documents from the old one but can't transfer everything because I can't keep the old one on long enough on battery power. So Firefox doesn't have the bookmarks and bookmarklets it should have and lots of toher things still need to be dealt with, but in general I'm very happy with the new one.

My techie cousin who helped me get the wireless network set up asked if he could have the old one to play with and I said yes, so I shall have to remove all traces of the fanfic before Thanksgiving. I'm sure he'll wipe it clean anyway, but I just couldn't stand handing it over the way it is. :)

Friends,

I've been having some troubles with my laptop for the last few days. I don't know if it's a problem with the power cord or the battery or what, but the battery won't charge so it shuts down all the time. I'm going to try to finish up a challenge fic on a school computer today, which is a little strange for me. Anyway, if I fail to comment or to respond to comments, that's why. I hope I can get this resolved and get caught up with my f-list soon.