First swim of the summer

[dolorosa_12]

This weekend was absolutely baking in Cambridge, at least by UK standards, and I finally had enough time to head over to the fantastic outdoor pool to swim some laps. This pool is always a bit of a challenge — I tend to only swim when I'm in Australia (which generally happens every two or three years), and this pool is 90 metres long. It's also unheated, which means the first lap makes my lungs seize up. While I can quite comfortably swim fifty metres without difficulty, even after a year-long pause from swimming, 90 metres has me panting like a lifelong smoker by the end of the length. Nevertheless, I managed 900 metres on Saturday, and 990 today, arriving at opening time in order to beat the crowds. It got easier by the end, so I really need to try to maintain a regular routine of swimming throughout the summer to keep my lung capacity up.

Other than swimming, I've spent most of the weekend putting the finishing touches on my Night on Fic Mountain assignment, which took me very much outside my comfort zone. I'm happy with the overall result, so let's hope my recipient is too.

I've been making my way through the selected works of those nominated for Best Editor Hugo Awards, but it's starting to feel like a chore, especially for those editors whose tastes really do not align with my own, and I think I've made up my mind as to how to vote in these categories anyway. I'll stick up another discussion post in the next couple of days for the editor and zine categories, and it would be great to see what others of you voting in the Hugos feel about the nominees.

One of my dearest friends, the fabulous lowercasename has created a new social network, which from an initial poke around seems to combine the best bits of Dreamwidth (communities and personal blogs, filtered levels of access) with the best bits of Tumblr (a feature fairly similar to the reblog one, but only available on posts public to all users, not friends-locked ones), plus no ads and no selling of users' data. I'm quite happy with the community and platform here at Dreamwidth, but over the years I've lost touch with many people who first welcomed me online, as they moved away from our original forums and onto platforms where I wasn't interested in following, and this new site looks like it might be a good way to hang out with them. I'm not sure about the scalability of the site, but lowercasename has been upfront about the fact that if it becomes too expensive to maintain without income from ads or selling data, he will shut the site down before doing either of those things.

If you're interested in joining, the platform is called Sweet, and I'm dolorosa over there. If you join, do let me know, and feel free to add me.

Comments

[isis]

Okay, I made an account (isis). Not sure what to do with it yet, but I will poke around!

[dolorosa_12]

I have added you! (I think 'Trust' is the equivalent of granting access to friends-locked posts.)

[forestofglory]

I made an account. Its forestofglory

Personally I do not like the best editor categories -- I think they are too hard for most people to judge.

[dolorosa_12]

I've added you over there.

I think it might possibly be easier to judge them if they gave examples of unedited work they'd edited over the past year, although even then I'm not sure it would be easy to evaluate.

[forestofglory]

Yeah, I feel like good editing is really a collaborative process -- its just very hard for outsiders to judge.

[auroracloud]

Sweet seems pretty cool, I'll have to check it out properly and possibly try it out. Will let you know if I do! Thanks for sharing. :-)

[dolorosa_12]

Glad to hear it! I hope you give it a try if you think it's the sort of platform that will suit you.

[corvidology]

It sounds really interesting so I've made an account over there, same user name.

Hopefully I'll have more time to check it out/think about it once I get back from my work conference.

Do you mind if I link others on my access list to this post? I think I have mates who would be interested and I feel you explain it all so succinctly.

[dolorosa_12]

Brilliant! I've added you back, but haven't had much of a chance to post over there myself.

I'm very happy for you to link others on your access list to this post — it would be great to have more people using the site, as I think it has great potential.

[corvidology]

Thanks!

[atrophymidwife]

I think that's amazing about your return to swimming! I was a competitive swimmer until I was 14 and I am always surprised by how tiring it is when first going back to it.

[dolorosa_12]

I do go running regularly, and I think that helps as far as general fitness goes, but you're right that it's always a bit of a shock to return to swimming after a long break.

[naye]

So glad to hear you got back in the water - nearly 1k is impressive!

[dolorosa_12]

It was great! I just hope I'm going to have enough opportunities to swim frequently throughout the summer, as I'd like to get back to swimming a kilometre at a time easily.

[umadoshi]

I made an account, 'cause why not? Same username as here. ^_^

[dolorosa_12]

I've added you over there. I'm hoping it will be a well used platform, but not too popular, because I think these sorts of places stay more fun and friendly when they're just a small community of friends. We'll see.

[alasse_irena]

I made an account. It's alasse.

I guess I'll have a look round and see what's there.

(longer pool always makes things way harder than you'd expect. I remember going from training in a 25m to a 50m pool when I was a kid, and suddenly I could really only make it two thirds as far before I was exhausted.)

[dolorosa_12]

Cool, I'll add you over there.

I haven't had a chance to look around there all that much, although from the look of things it seems very like Dreamwidth (in that you can post to your own feed, or to communities, and you can filter the level of access for all posts), but with more of a preference for Twitter-style short posts.

I have swum this pool before, and I remember the experience being exactly the same: complete agony on the lungs the first few lengths, and then you get used to the distance. If I do keep up swimming in the winter it will have to be in a 25m indoor pool, so that's going to be a weird adjustment!

[trepkos]

Referred here by Corvidology and your tagline hooked me - you must be a fan of the Earthsea books! I'm just re-reading them!

[dolorosa_12]

I am indeed a big Earthsea fan, and I've always loved their notion of Selidor: as far away as it's possible to be from home and the familiar, so far away that it might as well be a fairytale.

I'm also very happy to add anyone here who's interested in Earthsea (and interested in talking about books in general), so if it's okay with you, is it fine to add you?

[trepkos]

Absolutely!