So I ended up having to speed up the mail server migration because of what might either be a failing hard drive or a garbled filesystem. (I discovered that the filesystem was corrupt and the old machine wasn't functioning properly *as* I was synchronizing data, and rather than wait and do a final synch today as I had planned, I went ahead and stayed up to finish everything overnight.) More gory details are in this post, which is mainly of interest to other people who read their mail on aq.org. But the short version is that (1) mail delivery to me (and/or from me) may be flaky today, (2) I am going to bed now.

I’m going to be migrating my mail server to a hosting provider tomorrow (Saturday the 26th), from about 10:00am to about 2:00pm or so, so email to addresses @aq.org will be delayed.

Saw PMRP’s Spring Sci-Fi Spectacular, which was great. This included an encore performance of “Red Shift: Havoc over Holowood”, which plumtreeblossom was in, and which was originally performed at an Arisia a couple years ago. That was a lot of fun. And the other show was a radio adaptation of The Day the Earth Stood Still, originally broadcast in 1954 by Lux Radio Theater. That was a truly spectacular performance. Kudos to Michael McAffee, who starred as Red Shift (the lead Interplanetary Do-Gooder in the Red Shift episodes) and directed “The Day the Earth Stood Still”¹.

I finished Harry Turtledove’s The Guns of the South (spoilers at link, of course) a couple weeks ago. I had a weird, mixed reaction to it. I love alternate history in general, and this is an important book in the history of that sub-genre. And I love actual history, and the actual history in the book was meticulously researched.

I have started reading Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic that Remains One of Medicine’s Greatest Mysteries, about the epidemic of sleeping sickness (epidemic encephalitis or encephalitis lethargica) following World War I. I’m only about halfway through it, but I’m really enjoying it. It’s largely taken from case histories, but it also creates an excellent sense of the era. Here’s an example:

For New Yorkers, for Americans, and for the world, the 1920s would prove to be the decade with the most rapid technological change in history. In one generation, travel by horse and carriage would make way for autos; people would travel underground, and soon, in the sky; wireless radio would change ship travel; kitchen appliances and indoor plumbing would become mainstream; light would come from a switch and heat through pipes; telephones would appear in the majority of homes; and the canned music and crackling voice of radio would provide home entertainment and news.

One minor quibble I have with it is that it’s a bit fictionalized and novelistic, including details that I can’t imagine are all actually attested in contemporary sources. But that certainly adds to the vividness, and it’s a very vivid book. Definitely recommended.

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¹ So in this post I have two cases of the same or similar titles appearing in italics as the name of a standalone work or series, and also in quotation marks as the title of an episode of a series. There’s something wrong with that.

From John Scalzi, an interesting gamer analogy for straight white male privilege. Thanks to a couple friends on Facebook for calling my attention to his post.

OK, thanks for the suggestions, all! Here’s my first draft of the Do-Gooder Phonetic Alphabet:

A	COCOA
B	SUBTLE
C	INDICTMENT
D	HANDKERCHIEF
E	QUEUE
F	HALFPENNY (pron. HAY-puh-nee)
G	SIGN
H	HONOR
I	BRUISE
J	MARIJUANA
K	KNICKERS
L	SALMON
M	MNEMONIC
N	DAMN
O	LEOPARD
P	PSYCHIATRIST
Q	LACQUER
R	SARSPARILLA
S	ISLAND
T	BALLET
U	BUOY BUILDER
V	MILNGAVIE (pron. mill-GUY, a town near Glasgow)
W	ANSWER
X	PRIX
Y	PEPYS
Z	RENDEZVOUS

So, since SALMON and PSYCHIATRIST are the phonetic-alphabet¹ spellings for L and P respectively², I'm curious what the rest of the alphabet is like. Some letters are obvious, of course, like DAMN for N, HONOR for H, and WRY for W (or should that be ANSWER?), but would anybody care to make suggestions for the rest of the alphabet? The vowels seem particularly hard; I mean TAOISEACH is great, but is it the spelling for A, O, or E? Or should we just go for maximum efficiency and use it for all three?

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¹ In the radio spelling alphabet sense, of course.
² According, of course, .

Happy mother's day to silverlibre, my and bcat1's fabulous and amazing mother, and to bcat1, the fabulous and amazing mother of my adorable niece and nephew.

I really like my honeywuzzle's business plan, except that it would involve moving out of the area.

My darling plumtreeblossom just got an Android phone (not yet set up), and that spurred me to take some time to update my list of Android apps. It’s crazy-long, so unlike last time, I’m not going to post the whole list to LJ; it’s at

• Jay’s big list of Android apps

Currently, it’s a partial list of what’s on my phone, sorted into categories, with most apps annotated with a short description, and the ones I particularly recommend starred and boldfaced.

He doesn’t read LJ on a regular basis, and I wished him happy birthday in one of the outer circles of the Inferno on Facebook earlier today, but I can’t let the day go buy without wishing a very happy birthday to surrealestate’s wonderful partner DD here as well.