How to take practical advantage of isolation

Croix · ‎24-03-2020

Dear All

I wonder if it might be an idea for people to say all the actual things that can be done while cooped up in isolation. Things they do themselves or recommend for others.
If you can think of something that has constantly occupied or distracted you, or better yet has had a concrete positive outcome one can point to later on that would be perfect (within the bounds of decency of course:)

We already have a very popular thread on how to assist in coping with the virus

https://www.beyondblue.org.au/get-support/online-forums/staying-well/coping-during-the-coronavirus-o...

and I'd really like this one to be on a different theme, practical occupations.

So I will start the ball rolling with two, the first right here on the Forum:

Jot down a happy memory for you and others to take enjoyment from in the future in this thread

https://www.beyondblue.org.au/get-support/online-forums/staying-well/store-your-happy-memories-here-

The second is external and an ongoing challenge:

Correct the National Library’s many mistakes in all the digitized newspapers from the 1800’s onwards to the 1950's. This can be fascinating and lead you not only to make resources better for all, but can even lead you to snippets of your own family history. Plus discover blogs, podcasts and all sorts of other areas.

Would you believe there is an editors' Hall of Fame for public contributors!

I admit the content of the link below seems a trifle imposing, but once you get started it can be completely absorbing, plus library staff (yes they are still on duty) are very friendly and helpful.

https://help.nla.gov.au/trove/digitised-newspapers/text-correction-guidelines

As someone who has to spend a lot of time stuck at home anyway I’d be most interested in your occupations (not so much on cooking I'm afraid – I’m on a diet:(

Croix

Croix · ‎16-05-2020

Dear all~

I'm stuck with the princess aren't I? Ah well

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... they also brought out the letters OYHEN which formed exactly what they ... needed, HONEY to go with toast. As it so happened a jailkeeper's daughter was passing, laden down with a huge basket of hot buttered toast, some of which she gave to our troop on the principal she did not want the normal recipient to gain too much weight for what she had planned, though how you gain weight in a jail beats me.

So they all sat down and had a feast, all except the Giraffe who after eating all the original honey followed by by DATES was full.

Where are you going jailkeeper's daughter?" asked the princess, "and who was all that toast for?"

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I guess I'm showing my age when it comes to fairy tales and childrens literature. Still it had stood me in good stead all my life. My grandson has moved on to the Wings of Fire Series–Tui T. Sutherland, foreign territory to me.

Still encouraging your kids to read along with you (now you have time) and then branch out on their own as my grandchild has, leads to all sorts of lifelong advantages.

Croix

eight · ‎17-05-2020

i haven't read wof but i did have some friends who i remember liking it. i saw the dragons and comics they'd all draw up and i'd be so stunned by it... tui t sutherland wrote for warrior cats which is a book series i did read all the time. shitty gratuitously-violent feral cat soap operas and they're made by two ghostwriters taking turns writing out what the publishers tell them to but there's some other ghostwriters who write side-books. one time in 2017 i spent a night counting all the books with the help of the (extremely overly detailed) warriors wiki and i got like 80 but that number's absolutely gone up since then. sutherland wrote one of the field guides but most of the side-ghostwriters write novellas. for some reason there's always new drama over it ranging from "this novella dramatically alters a character's backstory" to "this novella rewrote a major plot point making it make zero sense" to "a new novella came out and its about a villain cat people defend a lot grooming a basically-teenage character". i haven't read those books in years and i've definitely outgrown them but it also stirs in me like a sleeper agent. whenever i go anywhere nature-y my brain ticks "ah! this'd be a good place for a fanclan." and immediately starts coming up with names for the warriors. it stirs in me like a sleeper agent

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"Le prisonnier de Nantes," says la fille du geôlier, but the princess is not a very Français sort of noble. She stares at la fille like she's there was meant to be a french idiom here that'd mean something similar to "like she's grown three heads" but im spending too much time researching french idioms and finding nothing. The princess replies 「me não hablo Französisch bello です。" la fille is crying. how did she nail all those accents within one sentence. how did she switch from corner brackets to quotation marks. how did she make the sounds of a corner bracket and a quotation mark with her mouth. she was originally going to use guillemets instead of quotation marks but that defeats the purpose of not knowing french doesn't it

Croix · ‎17-05-2020

Dear Eight

You are right, Dans les prisons de Nantes features a kind hearted jailer's daughter too, though I had been thinking of somethng very much more English.

I'm afraid that I'm not entirely certain of the meaning of the rest of your post, as I mentioned, my brain is not as fast. I can see you used polyglot to say you do not speak French Swiss well, but how the ASCII characters become involved beats me.

As for ghostwriters, do you mean fanfic? There is certainly a huge body of it for most famous books TV and movies. In such a crew there are bound to be discrepancies. I guess going for the quality of the writing may be the best approach.

Come to think of it fanfic (writing stories about characters in someone else's work) is a good way to pass the time and may even lead to fame and fortune (and notoriety) , I can think of one that went down that path , writing in the "Twilight" universe.

Croix

eight · ‎18-05-2020

explaining wc is the funniest but

warrior cats is as said badly written gratuitously-violent feral cat soap opera book series
it is too many books as mentioned before. the main arc books are written by two writers taking turns. they also write super editions, books about 500 pages compared to regular 300 focusing on a single character
they were overseen by an editor for 9 years up until 2012, the fourth arc, where her plans ended. she was one lady and she conceived the series/got the ghostwriters to write em
tui t sutherland wrote a field guide generally overviewing areas and history for the series. that's the only one she's written i think
the said editor in point 3 stuck around to write some side novellas (similar to super editions in zeroing in on a specific character but 1/3 of main book's length) but stopped overseeing the storyline. some other ghostwriters make them too
publisher harpercollins passes the story off to an editing firm around this time. they now come up with all the plots when they revive the series in 2016.
said editor is diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2017 and retires from the series to focus on recovery. actual condolences to vicky, mate
an entirely different group of ghostwriters also write two other talking animal fantasy books one about bears and one about dogs. they are nearly not as popular as warriors so i do not name them
ghostwriters struggle a lot with the editing team. they've caused a few continuity errors that they don't correct even when ghostwriters point them out. its not exactly an error but something that comes to mind was the twigbranch drama of april 2018 when fans were Upset over a major character being named twigbranch mostly because. its a really stupid name. twigs and branches are the same thing. when grilled over it on her blog one of the main ghostwriters explained she was begging editors to name her twigshade. the editors went for twigbranch instead so she justifies it as "i didn't even want the name" i think she should've been named twigheart its more symbolic whatever. cat names are serious business
the pseud for this distressingly complex web of ghostwriters is erin hunter which was chosen bc cat... hunt and to put them near the redwall series which is a similar gratuitously violent talking animal fantasy book series by brain jacques. fans collectively call writers "erins"
why in the living hell does a shitty gratuitously violent feral cat soap opera for ten year olds have so much to it

Croix · ‎19-05-2020

Dear All and eight!

I certainly can't complain at the clarity of your last post, it is a model of organization. One thing I find very interesting is the amount of time you spend on the details of how stories are produced, the authors, publishing houses and all the rest. This is as well as a critique of the content.

Continuity is important, and not always adhered to as you have outlined.

I find a similar fascination wiht movie productions and the books they originated from, TV shows too. for instance I think I have seven or eight scripts for the original Blade-Runner, each vastly different from the last (with a mix of authors too.)

This can develop into a life-long habit, giving many hours of occupation in research and pleasure too, I'd recommend it as something to be considered if one's natural interests run that way.

Incidentally is that a glimpse of part of Neku's headphones above your head in your avatar? I guess that makes you game controller.

Croix

Croix · ‎20-05-2020

Back to the princess -sigh

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... asked the princess, "and who was all that toast for?". The jailer's daughter replied "For a Toad of course, don't you know anything?" "Poop Poop"?

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_in_the_Willows

may assist user's memory

- In the next exciting episode we will see if Mr Toad escapes (having eaten the buttered toast of course)

Croix

Soberlicious96 · ‎22-05-2020

I have actually been working the whole time through this isolation, so I've been very blessed to have a job to go to to keep me occupied most days. Most days.

But yeah, for someone like me who LOVES shopping and having no shops open ......... I have engaged in online shopping for clothes, and buying things for my garden.

I'm also a motorbike rider, so any day that has been warm and clear enough to ride my motorbike to and from work, is a great day!

Isolation and staying home though (not shopping!) has meant playing Solitaire on the computer, and Wordscapes and Toon Blast on my phone ....... over and over and over!

Having a plan for the days I don't work has also helped; I write lists of things I can do in the day, such as housework things, going for a walk, having a nap ........ napping is so important! But also writing and crafting.

Oh, and listening to music. I think if it weren't for music and the radio, I would need to be locked up in one of those special rooms with a special kind of 'hug yourself' jacket! And if that day does come, please note that I would like my jacket to be a blue one with white polka-dots!

Most of the time I try to remember how blessed I am with all the things that I have in my life; not only the food clothing and shelter, but people I am still connected with, the job I still have, the health I have, the education that I had that has brought to where I am in life ....... I really am so very blessed.

A gratitude list a day, keeps the Iso blues away.

uncut_gems · ‎22-05-2020

I love this thread! It's so great to hear what everyone is up to. Besides doing my best to work from home and get moving a bit, like everyone else I've really come to value escapism even more than usual.

I've spent a lot of my time watching movies, reading and listening to audiobooks/podcasts, and doing an online live trivia that a lovely guy from Brisbane does over facebook. This week I started making my own trivia to do with my friends.

Probably the most absorbing thing has been playing around with a piece of software that lets you make music. I don't have any skill in music and don't really understand it, but the software makes it fairly easy anyway. I love just opening up a new project and getting lost in making a track, or loading in a song that I already know and screwing it up and taking samples.

A couple of one-off things I've enjoyed have been getting really absorbed in building a LEGO set and some logic puzzles. But most of all I would just recommend getting really into a good film or podcast! There's a separate thread here (https://www.beyondblue.org.au/get-support/online-forums/bb-social-zone/social-distancing-film-club/) to discuss what everyone's been watching during all this 🙂

Croix · ‎01-06-2020

Dear All~
It's been a few days since I posted and no, you don't get more of the Princess story this time:(

I was reading on my computer and realized that there is a source I'd been tapping for years, not even thinking about it. Now the particular item was a forum about the sort of motorcycle I used up until a few years ago and was packed with information, mostly of a technical nature, that allowed me to do simple maintenance tasks with ease.

This got me thinking, on the web are forums of all sorts from needlework to keeping goats, not to mention cooking and timber-work.

If you can use spare some time now to search though I'm sure you would find other forums of people who shared the same interests and became a fount of information.
Just Google:

Forum needlework

Or whatever is your interest, you will be surprised at the choice

Croix

uncut_gems · ‎09-06-2020

I want to echo Croix's point about the meditative potential of handiwork (literally working with your hands). While I struggle with mindfulness and guided meditation, I find that exactly the kind of manual activities Croix is mentioned (mechanical repair, handicrafts) are very soothing and just the right level of engaging.

Gems