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100wordsanythingdrabble, vocab_drabbles, and drabble_zonecornerofmadness
lebateleur posting in 100wordstrobadorasweettartheart posting in 100wordscornerofmadness galadhirFrom dreamersdare
Challenge 3:
Make a Top Ten list for your favourite music picks and share what you love about them. This can be in any format - songs, artists, albums, music videos, soundtracks, scores, something else not mentioned here. If it's vaguely related to music, it ticks the box, so go with whatever you like!
This is hard! Like a lot of people I stopped being passionately interested in music some time in my youth (around my 30s, I think.) So a lot of these will be from before that drop-off, when I was heavily into prog rock.
Having said that, I'm starting with one of my favourites from right now. Amanati, who I found through sword dancing and immediately wanted to belly dance to as well. Cretan trance music - Fos by Amanati
Speaking of belly dance music, this lady is my current favourite MENA musician Maro Hereira with Bladi What can I say, it's my trance background coming out again.
I am not a big fan of Western trained opera or choral singers, but I make an exception for the counter-tenor voice, which I think sounds like angels. For example Andreas Scholl - Who may abide the day of His coming?
I quite enjoy bardcore as long as it uses actual instruments rather than synth, and it puts a bit of effort into its language. Hildegard von Blingen with Pumped Up Kicks
This is not really music so much as it is someone talking about ancient music in a way that helps me understand music theory and history. He makes music too but I have to confess to not having listened to that part except for some of his medieval tavern music. Which is infinitely superior to bardcore. Farya Faraji getting heated about the duduk
Okay, now back into the far distant past, during which my second favourite group in all the world was Hawkwind, a band whose musical style my mother described as "music that sounds like you're listening to it through two walls." Hawkwind - The Psychadelic Warlords Disappear in Smoke
My first favourite band in those days was Emerson Lake and Palmer, and despite the intense nostalgia rush I had when I first re-heard the beginning of this album, I have no idea why. God, it's horrible - ELP with Tarkus
Surely this one is still beautiful? I remember Yes as being almost too pretty for my tastes. Close to the Edge by Yes Oh no, I'm not sure I like that either. Thank goodness Hawkwind still holds up.
Basically the only things I'm listening to now are belly dance music and the tracks of fanvids. So here is a fanvid I have singled out because I really love the music: The Future will be Silent - a fanvid by Wyomingnot
And here is a belly dancing track that I particularly like. Ya Hassan by Yassir Jamal
luzulagaladhirOoh, ooh! There are leaf buds beginning to uncurl on the medlar tree. I barely got my apricot tree replanted in time because there are buds there too. They're still tightly clenched but they're visible in a sort of lovely plum bronze colour.
Snowdrops and crocuses are carpeting the graveyard of the church in our village. We've nearly made it, folks. These last couple of weeks are the worst, but the end is in sight.
cornerofmadness
shadaras“Ms. Warram,” Ames said icily, his patience worn thin, “you have not even given me details about your offer. Your letter said nothing about compensation, support, or even a timeline for prototyping. It merely told me what you wanted from me, and nothing about this conversation leads me to believe I will enjoy the environment of your trading company. Treat me with the respect the title of Chief Engineer implies and I might consider visiting your workshop to make an informed decision. Otherwise, I do not see any reason to continue this conversation."
Emeline sat up straight, hands folded in front of her, that ring catching the light. He still couldn’t quite make out the design on it. “Amaranth dev Citronel,” she said, “I will show you the workshop. You will come with me?”
Ames opened his mouth to say “No”, but the light kept gleaming from Emeline’s eyes and ring, and he couldn’t concentrate through them. His tongue felt thick and heavy, as did the rest of his body.
It occurred to Ames, as the light stole over him, that he had been so busy worrying about the mundane side of predatory business contracts that he hadn’t even thought about a mage dead-set on taking him.
His lips said Yes, and Ames’ last conscious thought was that, if nothing else, Rhei would know something was wrong as soon as they arrived back in Jogan’s Rest.
sanguinitycandyheartsex has revealed, and I have received a delightful gift!In Which Laurent Rises to the Occasion
The Wounded Name -- D. K. Broster
Laurent/Aymar, Amyar/Avoye
Canon divergence, Pre-Poly
Aymar despairs of clearing his name and leaves France, leaving only a letter behind.
luzula's direction*), especially given the central theme that maybe you should ask your girlfriend what she wants before making a grand life-altering gesture in her name. (A genre of story that luzula excels at!) But I shall refrain from offering official thanks until after reveals. (But please know I enjoyed it very much!)conulyyhleeA practical illustration of how to exploit this gap came in a paper [arxiv.org] posted in October. The researchers had been thinking about ways to sneak a malicious prompt past the filter by hiding the prompt in a puzzle. In theory, if they came up with a puzzle that the large language model could decode but the filter could not, then the filter would pass the hidden prompt straight through to the model.
They eventually arrived at a simple puzzle called a substitution cipher, which replaces each letter in a message with another according to a certain code. (As a simple example, if you replace each letter in “bomb” with the next letter in the alphabet, you’ll get “cpnc.”) They then instructed the model to decode the prompt (think “Switch each letter with the one before it”) and then respond to the decoded message.
The filters on LLMs like Google Gemini, DeepSeek and Grok weren’t powerful enough to decode these instructions on their own. And so they passed the prompts to the models, which performed the instructions and returned the forbidden information. The researchers called this style of attack controlled-release prompting.
cornerofmadness stonepicnicking_okapi (thank you!!) for the holiday (I was crap at sending any out) I went to the coffee shop to have a chocolate covered strawberry mocha for the holiday fearing it would be packed. It wasn't. yay. spikedluv because I haven't heard from her in nearly two weeks and I usually hear from her daily. Her mother was in extremely failing health and I thought maybe she had passed and it's always weird with the do I reach out now or do I wait a bit thing.kingstoken's blog to let us know spikedluv had passed away. I was stunned to say the least, gutted. I couldn't quite take it in. Someone had posted in Spiked's last blog entry cornerofmadness
cornerofmadness galadhirAs the title says, The Boat of Small Mysteries is out today :)
You can get it on Amazon here, or everywhere else (Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple etc) over here.
~
When a new disability ruins Emily’s life and family turns her out, she finds herself forced into a nomadic life on a narrowboat. With very little money and even less physical stamina, she doesn’t know if she has it in her to forge a whole new future on her own.
In the idyllic surroundings of the British waterways, as she moves from place to place she encounters a series of small mysteries. Can she solve them and find a new purpose for herself in the process? Or must a missing person remain lost and the case of the body in the lock remain unsolved?
Half cozy mystery and half fond ode to the narrowboat life, ‘The Boat of Small Mysteries,’ is a charming tale of resilience and intuition, sure to appeal to anyone who enjoys BBC Four’s Canal Boat Diaries, or the gentle adventures of Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books.
~
Currently it's out in ebook only. The paperback is in the works but I am waiting for the proof copy to arrive so that I can check that it's ok before I release it.
It's also currently at 0.99c as an early bird discount, but it will be going up from that probably on the first of March - to the heady heights of $2.99
First book in seven years! I am sick with nerves over how it will go. There's a lot to be said for a few years of rest--it's all new to me again.
but_can_i_be_trusted in 100words - [Challenge #482: Neutral] Doctor Who: 'Undue Attention'cornerofmadness - Vaguely disheartenedlebateleur in 100words - [#482 - Neutral] Baldur's Gate 3 - Partial Observertrobadora - 新年快乐, 恭喜发财 and all thatsweettartheart in 100words - Prompt: #482 - Neutralcornerofmadness - Had to get away for the daykalloway in 100words - Dragalia Lost - With a Roargaladhir - Stuff I love challenge #3 Musicluzula - Recent readinggaladhir - (no subject)cornerofmadness - Writerly Waysshadaras - the snow is slowly melting in the just-above-freezing warmthsanguinity - The Wounded Name ficconuly - Well, this certainly is a way to phrase itkalloway in smallweb - Hey there, Smallweb! Chatter post time!yhlee - genuinely blackly hilariouscornerofmadness - It's been an emotional daycornerofmadness - Happy Valentine's Daycornerofmadness - Fannish Fridaygaladhir - The Boat of Small Mysteries is out today!timeasmymeasure
