Introduction to Nanila
Apr. 5th, 2017 01:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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2017revivalName: Nanila is my preferred pseudonym pretty much everywhere
Age: 40s
Location: UK Midlands
Tumblr/Goodreads/IG/etc: Er, no, sorry
The rest of this is lifted from my sticky intro post on my journal and is a bit long.
People in my 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’m a chemist working in a physics department as an engineer. Specifically, a spacecraft engineer. I wear a number of different hats on several missions, the main ones being:
I can’t write specifically about my work, so I don’t post too much about it unless something really exciting is happening, such as the switch-on of the Rosetta spacecraft.
I also teach in third-year physics labs, give the occasional guest lecture and do a lot of outreach work in schools.
Some random facts
I am closer to forty than I am to thirty. I have been Dr Nanila for almost 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. I currently cross-post to LJ but assuming the latest idiocy with the ToS spells its death knell for the small circle of friends I have who still post there, I will stop in the near future.
Subscriptions, access and commenting
Although I’m cautious about initiating subscriptions - I’m trying not to be! - 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.”
If you got to the end of this and wish to add me, please do! Reciprocity guaranteed, and no hard feelings if you change your mind a few weeks later.
Age: 40s
Location: UK Midlands
Tumblr/Goodreads/IG/etc: Er, no, sorry
The rest of this is lifted from my sticky intro post on my journal and is a bit long.
People in my 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 4.5 years
- Keiki, our son, aged 2 years
- Telstar, our spoiled tuxie cat
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’m a chemist working in a physics department as an engineer. Specifically, a spacecraft engineer. I wear 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 can’t write specifically about my work, so I don’t post too much about it unless something really exciting is happening, such as the switch-on of the Rosetta spacecraft.
I also teach in third-year physics labs, give the occasional guest lecture and do a lot of outreach work in schools.
Some random facts
I am closer to forty than I am to thirty. I have been Dr Nanila for almost 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. I currently cross-post to LJ but assuming the latest idiocy with the ToS spells its death knell for the small circle of friends I have who still post there, I will stop in the near future.
Subscriptions, access and commenting
Although I’m cautious about initiating subscriptions - I’m trying not to be! - 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.”
If you got to the end of this and wish to add me, please do! Reciprocity guaranteed, and no hard feelings if you change your mind a few weeks later.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-05 05:20 pm (UTC)And is a great community - if No Reservations: Narnia was the only story I'd ever found there, it would still be one of the best fannish resources I've ever encountered.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-05 09:15 pm (UTC)I always get the feeling with Fancake that the recommenders have been clutching their recs with both fists for ages, and are SO EXCITED about having a theme to share them in at last. It's lovely.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-05 11:54 pm (UTC)Found 2017revival through a friend who linked to it. The top four posts on my reading page are people talking about the TOS change. Are they just getting your permission to use your info to target ads to your account, or is there something more to it?
no subject
Date: 2017-04-06 12:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-07 02:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-07 02:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-11 03:08 pm (UTC)