Now that the remix authors have been revealed, I can reveal that I wrote Feels Like Home (The Green Planet Remix), which is a Stargate Atlantis Five Things fic.

Every year I want to do something different for remix. This year I expanded something short (the original author called it a drabble). And I discovered writing early Rodney, when he hates everyone, is fun.

Today I posted my Remix fic. Which took ages - I can never get the A03 form right. But at least the archive was fast for once. But I did do it this morning, which probably helps. All I have to do now is wait for it to go live and the archive to go slow.

I am working on the rewrite/first edit of my Big Bang story. The rewrite and first edit are usually separate things, but I'm doing them in one go. The week before last I resented it a bit because I was trying to do a scene a night and it was taking up all of my evening that wasn't spent lying down (I can type while lying down, but it makes my back hurt). This week's been a bit better, partly because I've been staying up later to see if that'll make me sleep later, but also because I spent half the week to tired to do any writing.

But I have 24 scenes in this version and I have done 14 of them. So I am over halfway through. It's looking like it's going to be 20,000 words, if each scene that I'm keeping comes out a third as long as the first draft. So then I'll just need to find 5000 more words in the next couple of edits. I have two months until Wimbledon, when it'll need to be done, so at the moment it's looking doable, fingers crossed.

And since I posted a snippet at the Sci-Fi Big Bang comm, I will post it here too. Read more...

I've just been ill. All last week I kept waking up really early and being busy, so I just got worse and worse. To the point where I went to the Rotary District Conference on Friday and slept better than I had all week, despite the room being hot, the window being open and my roommate snoring on and off. Of course after that I didn't sleep so well and Rotary likes to start early, so I'm back to being dizzy again, although not as bad as last week yet, but then I haven't been back to work yet.

On the plus side, I finished the first draft of my Big Bang fic. It comes to 17,600 words, which is quite a lot considering the first draft is more of a plot outline with dialogue. I have to go back and change bits of plot now. Well, I say now, I mean after I've done Remix. But I have already decided what I'm going to do, I just need to find the energy to do it.

I also got my Ebook Reader (but not the cover, but that's a long story). It's great having so many books on it and I'm loving that you can change the direction you swipe your finger to turn the page - I always went the wrong way on Dad's. So far I've filled it with a couple of books from Gutenberg and a load of fics from last year's AU Big Bang which I've been meaning to read for months.

Speaking of, while I was looking for the 2010 masterlist for AU Big Bang, I looked at people signing up and what they're intending to write. And I thought there should be a Lynda Day at the Chalet School...

I have finished my month of drabbles a day! I really did write one a day and not get ahead at any point. The month suddenly feels like it's gone really quickly. Although I had a few days where it was a struggle to find the time to write or I couldn't think of what to write, I did manage it. And never felt the need to make any of them a double drabble either - they nearly all came in at roughly the right length. They're all on my website under the drabble a day tag. I also wrote every single prompt I was given.

I also wrote for Remix - although that I finished in April. I wrote Of Memory (The Poker Face Remix). Since I quite wanted to write Stargate I was happy to get someone who wrote Stargate. So that worked out well for me.

You might well ask what's next. Well, apart from the unfinished fics I have sitting around that I will finish one day... Now I'm going to write 100 drabbles between today and 6th September (which is 99 days, incidentally). I didn't mean to, it just came up in one of the comms I'm in. The plan at the moment is to write all of these centring around Harry Sullivan. We'll see how well that goes, but the comm has only given me 75 prompts, so I'd love some more to fill the remaining 25.

So Remix went live late last Sunday and since then I've been reading everything in the archive. Well, everything in the fandoms I'm interested in. And I have managed to get it all read before the reveal tomorrow as well. So I have some recs. Read more...

After a week I'm now sick of the election. Or rather, what I'm sick of is listening to politicians fail to answer questions. Although there was an amusing moment the other day when I was listening to the news on my way home, wasn't quite concentrating and thought Nick Clegg was Tony Robinson... Chris Addison has an amusing blog about it all. After my post about not being able to decide who to vote for I discovered the BBC website has a page where you can look at the policies of three parties side by side. So I spent a whole two days as an undecided, and decided to vote for the same party I decided I would have voted for in 1997 had the election been a week later.

I got my remix assignment and the person I'm remixing has mostly written in fandoms I know. So I could write pretty much anything. I've been skim-reading and I think I've decided, but reserve the right to change my mind.

I've discovered I'm intolerant to all gluten, although I can eat quite a bit of it. At this rate I'll be intolerant to all food in ten years time. If they could just invent a pill to take every day that means you don't have to eat that would do me. Although I'd forget to take it half the time...

Usually, when Remix happens, I try and read everything in the fandoms I know and get a recs list about before the reveal. But since that clearly wasn't going to happen anyway, never mind that I only had four days to do it in, I'm still working my way through it. But some recs will find their way to Sel's site.

I wrote my first ever Harry Potter fic: Sirius Black, Specialising in Sexual Education (The Master Becomes the Apprentice Remix). I didn't mean to, it wasn't one of the fandoms I put down that I'd write, but I couldn't get it out of my head as I read the others.

The one that was remixed of mine was Suddenly a Small Fish (The Great Big Pond Remix) and as what happened with the TARDIS Big Bang, people seem unable to understand that the name I write under is not the same as my LJ name, but in this case it's in a tag, so I can't get them to change it.

I've got lots of things done this weekend, which was good. And then this afternoon the washing machine smoked... And this is where I'm very glad I rent because the landlord has come round and looked at it and it's his problem, not mine.

Since it's now after time, I can reveal that for remix I wrote Drowning (The Hero Remix), which is Doctor Who (it was almost strange not writing Atlantis for remix!). It's got Four, Harry and Sarah and I really enjoyed writing it. As evidenced by the fact that it took me two days

It probably helped that I'd read the story before and liked it and could see what I wanted to do with it straight away.

45 stories in 10 fandoms - these are the ones I read and enjoyed.
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So, remix went live while I was asleep. So far I've only read the remix of my fic: Might not last, but it's no big deal (the Hometown Blues remix). I read it and thought it was a good fic but a few of the lines nagged at me. So I went back and read the original: I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For and realised that the author has also done some really clever stuff with shifting events to different times and giving the same lines in different circumstances. Plus it's also Jack O'Neill/Elizabeth Weir, of which there needs to be more of.

I got lots of things done yesterday, but completely failed to do any Rotaract stuff. Today I really, really need to do it, but also do some work on my Big Bang fic and start reading all the Remix (and accompanying originals) before the reveal next weekend. Expect a recs list later this week.

Good things at the moment:

• I've finished my Ian/Barbara ficathon fic! By finished I mean it's betaed and even has a title and summary.
• I got my Remix assignment and have already decided what fic I'm going to remix and how I'm going to do it
• I took over as mod of oncoming_storms and changed the rules and posted some prompts and it has actually gone down well! Phew
• last.fm is playing me more songs I like and fewer I dislike these days, so it's actually learning nicely and I think I prefer it to Pandora now. So Pandora actually did me a favour by going US-only.
• It's the weekend
• The sun is shining
• I've actually done most of the things I need to do this weekend already. I'll leave a couple till tomorrow, though.
• I'm feeling slightly more like I might get all my ficathon commitments done along with everything else going on - specially in March
• I went to see Juno last night which was very good and cheered me up.
• Tonight I'm going to a school disco - but Rotaract run so more fun than the ones you can go to in clubs etc. Nothing I'm planning to wear bears any resemblance to my secondary school uniform.

This morning I woke up and was hot and couldn't find a cold bit of the bed. Given that I bought a double bed so that I could always find a cold bit, I just moved me and my pillows to the other side. Which was just as warm because it had a warm quilt covering it. Come summer I think I might be back to the single quilt so the bed's cooler.

I've had this slightly strange cold for a while and I can't quite be bothered going to see the doctor about it because she'll just say it's a lingering cold. Then I realised that I've had the same slightly strange cold this time of year for the third year running now. Which suggests I'm allergic to something. I would say flower pollen but it started before the flowers decided it was spring. It's a bit academic what it is, though, because the only thing to get rid of it is hayfever medicine. Since it costs £5 for a bottle that lasts 10 days and tastes horrible, I don't feel so bad I want to take it.

Since the authors have now been revealed, I can say that for remix I wrote Overload (The Big Battle Remix), which has been remixed from Overload by sugargroupie.

Last year, I changed the POV of the story and it went from being funny to being angsty. This time, I changed the point of view and it went from being shippy to being action, and the end of mine only overlapped with the beginning of the original. There were gaps in the original that made me ask why things happened, so I decided to write them. And then had no end of trouble because I've not really written action before - the theory of how to do it is all very well but putting it into practise is another thing entirely. But with the help of Tanaqui I got there in the end. And I enjoyed myself, and assuming it goes ahead next year, I'll definitely be participating again.

This morning I thought I'd quickly upgrade to WordPress 2.1. I forgot that anything you do with computers will take three times as long as you anticipate and go wrong. So I started by copying all the files I'd uploaded, just in case they were different from the ones on my computer. Then uploaded the relevant stuff and got confused with the deleting part. Then I upgraded. It made a mess of my links, then threw a wobbler when I re-activated the LJ Crossposter plugin. At which point I decided I didn't have the energy to deal with it and put everything back.

Except that the links now all had errors. Looking round the forum I found this was because they'd changed something that meant the tag I'd used to call them no longer worked. And also because I needed to upgrade back to 2.0. Once I'd done that it had just deleted all of my links categories. Or at least I thought it had. I've just discovered it decided they were post categories instead. But it's all fixed now, and I'm back to the old version that definitely works with the code I have in my theme.

That was this morning. This afternoon proved that one or both of my parents is reading my blog as my dad suggested a CD writer alternative that is free, and I had on my computer at work for a bit. It doesn't copy CDs - or at least the current version doesn't, but it will. It took forever to take Pinnacle off, but then I put this one on. And then panicked a bit because it tried to tell me every blank CD I put in had no space on it, even though I knew it did. So I tried writing to one to see what happened and it was quite happy.

It was a bit strange with some of the audio CDs too, because it decided the tracks came to more than 700mb, yet was still ok in terms of the number of minutes. And it was quite happy writing those too. Except when I came to do the last one and it crashed when finalising (it plays in my stereo fine, so that's good enough for me). I could only get the CD out with a paper clip in the hole and then once it was open it just started spinning again. I ended up restarting and hopefully it's ok now.

I also discovered I love my hard disk recorder. I started watching The Trial of Tony Blair (for I am that far behind) at lunchtime. When I was done I just pressed a button. So when I came back to it later I started again from there. I only have Midsomer Murders left on there now. Well, except for Top Gear and Lewis. I was close to catching up, perhaps later in the week.

I also not only have a clean house (although I've lost my duster, which is very strange) but I have put posters up as well. Which is a big improvement, especially in the lounge where the walls are a dark yellow and it's all a bit colourless.

And I sent the first chapter of the Doctor Who soap sequel to beta. And after flailing about the number of stories the person I am remixing has written (like choice is a bad thing!) I have decided which to remix and what I'd like to do. Which is good.

Dinner at buffet night at the Chinese restaurant tomorrow. Mmm, duck.

I just put Coldplay X&Y in my stereo and put it in shuffle. I was listening to the first one that came up and loving it and thinking 'why isn't this one my favourite?'. Then checked the listing and found out it was Speed of Sound. Which is my favourite. Mostly, though, I wanted to listen to it because when dad told me about The Guardian April Fools I didn't think Coldplay had done a song called Talk. I am really great with song titles, as you can see.

Anyway, Remix authors were revealed last night. So I can now say that I wrote Dear Jack (The Elizabethan Remix), which is a remix of From Pegasus, With Love by Soleta. The original was for the SGA Flashfiction Documentation challenge, and is a series of emails, and is quite funny. I took Elizabeth's point of view, filled in the gaps and made it slightly angsty.

My first thought on seeing my assignment was, 'excellent, a Sheppard/McKay writer'. From Pegasus, With Love is Sheppard/McKay. But Elizabeth didn't know there was anything going on, so mine ended up being the more hinted at pairing of Liz/Ronon. And there's a teeny tiny Teyla/Ronon hint in there that probably no-one will notice.

It means I am now more than halfway through my writing goal for the year:

15,362 / 20,000 (76.8%)

I can't work out whether my room is hot or I am or both. I've worked out that I've got the sore throat bug, though. I've actually had a sore throat since Friday, it just took me a while to work it out. My brain's not quite working at the moment, unsurprisingly.

I'm all excited cos the Remix archive is up! I wasn't expecting it to be until after I went to bed. So far I've only checked that my story is there (it looks quite weird that thin!) and to see which of my stories has been remixed. It's slightly sad that I had to check back to my story to find out what the original was (see above re brain) but I'm really excited about what the remixer has done with it. I will give them more coherent feedback once I can work somewhere above 'squee'.

I have an idea for a B2MEM related post, that I will try and get in before the end of the month. But I decided to talk about the TV I've watched recently - because there's actually been some on!

I got round to Poirot last night. Usually they just do one at a time, at New Year, but there's another one tonight, which surprised me. I did enjoy last weeks but I was completely confused by the end. I don't know whether that was me or the program, though.

I watched Comedy Connections about Drop the Dead Donkey. It's been so long since I've seen any of it that I had forgotten loads of it. Like Gus's management speak. It must have been the first time I'd heard any of it. It was really interesting to learn all sorts about it as well. I'm really disconcerted by the way Neil Pearson doesn't seem to have aged at all.

Then there was a one-off drama called Best Man. Technically it was in two parts, I watched it in one (much better). I was a bit skeptical at the beginning because it seemed quite strange. It was about these two men who had a bit of an odd relationship. You saw how they became friends in flashbacks and their relationship was always a bit odd. The whole thing was pretty much about who was the more strange of the two. It was really good, though. Plus it had Zoe from Spooks and Jeff from Coupling in it.

I'm really missing the 'Mrs Peel, we're needed' bits from the beginning of The Avengers. Although that was probably because this week's wasn't that good. I'm still entirely confused what relevance the dog had.

And there was new Taggart, yay! And on a Wednesday, the most boring day of the week when there's never anything worth watching. I entirely failed to work out whodunnit, as per usual, but I did manage to start it just right, that I finished just after the actual program did, thus gaining me back 15 minutes of my life.

I gave myself a deadline of 10pm to finish my Remix first draft. It's now 10 to and I have 2500 words! Not terribly good ones, and I did find I had to rejig things because I had one character in one place when he can't possibly have been there. But at least I have something to work from now.

I was entirely unsurprised to find the whole of the Mens Curling team are Scottish. I'm enjoying all sorts of weird and wonderful sports in the evenings. The doubles luge is definitely insane, though. Hurling yourself down a track on a tea tray is mad enough, but strapped to someone else? I am looking forward to the skeleton tomorrow, though.

It's quite nice to just watch be able to admire the impressive skiing/skating/insanity/whatever, without thinking about GB getting any medals (except in the curling). It's good to see people getting excited about coming in 14th, for example, because that's still 14th in the Olympics, which is pretty amazing, when you think about it.

I had entirely forgotten about the top 5 meme a while back. Avon asked me for my top 5 senior officers in The Bill:

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I remember Bugs being really cutting edge at the time - it was the first time I'd seen a writeable CD. It was made in 1995-99 and set in the near future. So their various gadgets and gizmos still look pretty cool. It's the computers that really date it. One of the characters didn't know what a mouse was (at the time, it was funny but not so unusual). But one thing really got me with the third episode. A guy has written a top program for flying planes, that incidentally, can be controlled from elsewhere with a computer (and a mouse). It fits on a floppy. In fact he pulled a copy from a pile of floppies - I don't remember the last time I saw that many, never mind used one!

Tonight's Olympics were a bit boring, partly because they gave us a few results, showed us the men's skating, then showed some skiing, luge and curling - the results of which they'd previous told us! The commentators annoyed me a bit in the skating as well by continually repeating what their eight required elements are - despite having gone through it at the beginning. Even though it was just the short program it basically ended up being who had screwed up least.

I had a sudden fright when I looked at the calendar today and realised that the Jack/Liz fic is due in two weeks. And as I'm going to the Rotary District Conference in the middle of March, my Remix fic is actually going to be due in four weeks. Um. It has nine paragraphs. So now I'm off to force myself to write some more even though I'm still not entirely sure what I'm doing with it.

I entirely confused myself this morning by glacing at my inbox. I had a message with the subject Re: Joe Flanigan and another one with the subject hot hot hot! and my mind put those together. The second one was from Emma about the weather, so what confused me is that she doesn't even know who Joe Flanigan is and certainly wouldn't be telling me he's hot because he's not her type at all. Probably.

I got entirely distracted this weekend by making myself a Life on Mars icon, and today submitting three postcards to the SGA Flashfic postcard secrets challenge.

I have got my Jack/Liz fic up to v4 but I'm still not convinced about most of it which is not good. It's not due till the 3rd, though, so I could leave it for a bit and try and work out some plot for my Remix fic (why did I decide to expand on something?)

My brain is obviously flu-addled because I decided to sign up for Remix IV. Due 20th March. In my defense my pill had run out and I had forgotten and I'd been up for a while and really needed a lie-down.

I've been reading some of the stories at We Invented the Remix... Redux. It's interesting reading the remixed story and the original. Some of them are really similar and all that's changed is the POV. Some of the then are really different though - one has a long story off one scene and one I don't know how they got their remix from the original, they're so different.

This morning I woke up at quarter past six when my computer fan came on. At which point I realised I was hot too and opened the window. When I woke up again the fan had gone off. Last Wednesday I was trying to get to sleep when I could hear a loud humming. I remembered hearing it Tuesday evening but quieter. At which point I realised I'd plugged my printer in Tuesday to do some printing then forgot to unplug it. Which only goes to show how loud the transformer is.

I've also injured myself at Tae Kwon Do - I can't remember what happened but there was kicking involved and I bent back the three middle toes on my left foot. Which wasn't too bad at the time but they now hurt whenever I move them. I still managed to play tennis tonight, so I doubt they're broken. They did at least bend the way they were supposed to.

The most annoying thing at the moment is that I have nothing to do at work and loads to do at home. I've actually been quite dynamic tonight and have nearly cleared out my inbox (I have lots of folders, so they only e-mails in my inbox are ones I have to deal with).