testing the crit group filter

Apparently it's so long since I last had anything to post for crit that it was before I had a Dreamwidth account. So I've just set up a crit group filter on my Dreamwidth account and added those people who were already on the crit group filter on LiveJournal. Of course, this actually means in practice those people who have a Dreamwidth account, have friended my Dreamwidth account, and I have been able to recognise who that Dreamwidth account is. :-)

If you've been missed off the Dreamwidth filter and want to be on it, wave from your Dreamwidth account, and let me know who you are if it's not obvious, so that I know who to add. Some of you are using very different usernames on the two sites...

I'll have an 800 word speculative fiction short story for crit later today, assuming that I'm not driven demented by trying to do a cut-and-paste from my word processor to Dreamwidth using only Dragon.

This post is public, but I'll put up a separate test post under the crit group filter, just to check the cross posting on the filter is working properly, and so that people can test to see whether they are on the filter on either site.

testing the crit group filter -- second public post

just posted what ought to be a locked post that only the crit group can see.

ETA: this post is public, the one immediately prior to this is filtered.

Dragon is not the quickest way of typing

and you can see from the timestamps on the previous two public posts just how long it takes to do anything with Dragon ....

short-short just posted under lock for the crit group

I've just posted a short specfic story on the crit group filter list. If you should be able to see it and can't, let me know.

Down among the dead men

I've just been watching the Titanic centenary memorial concert broadcast from Belfast. It's a strange thing for me. I was born not within sight of the Harland and Wolff yards, but a couple of miles over the hill. I've lived most of my life elsewhere, but for me, for a long time the Titanic was simply part of the city's industrial heritage, recorded as such at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum; with the quietly crumbling yard buildings part of the ordinary quayside scenery as the ferry from Scotland trundled its way from Belfast Lough into the Lagan on its way to its city centre mooring.

One fragment of memory, from a time before I was really aware of it as the centre of a commemorative tourism industry -- the display in the Museum included, perhaps still does, a set of tiny, anonymous, human figures, grouped according to ticket class, and within those groups, men, women and children, and survivors and fatalities. It was a stark display of how class affected survival rates -- not because first class was deliberately given priority in the evacuation, but simply because the more luxurious cabins were above deck and thus closer to the lifeboats, with fewer stairs and safety doors to negotiate en route. There were not enough lifeboats, even though the Titanic was built to the highest safety standards of the day, in part because it was assumed that all that was needed was enough lifeboats to run a ferry service to nearby ships in the shipping lane. Nobody imagined that help would not be immediately to hand. The harsh lessons learnt that night saved many other lives down the years.

I'll probably go and see the shiny new exhibition centre some time. I doubt if it will have quite the same impact on me as the first time I looked at a sheet from one of the original design drawings, seeing the loving care with which someone had drawn it a lifetime earlier.