On and off I had being attempting to decipher the ribbons on Major Davis of SG-1 fame's dress blues. I'd found most of them, but couldn't suss out the last few, so I asked little_details to help out and managed to figure out the rest. In the comments, someone mentioned wanting to do this for the rest of the main characters and I thought 'what the hell?' and did so. Behind the cut are the ribbons on the uniforms of Sam, Jack, John, Cam and Davis. Because, yes, I am that geeky.

ETA: Over at the little_details post, someone linked me this site which is chock full of detaily goodness. She has done the medals for Jack, Sam, Hammond and Jacob. You can see them here. Her Jack and Sam stuff agrees with mine in terms of the ribbons, but not the devices (clusters/stars), in some cases. Which is fine, because I had trouble figuring them out anyway. :-D

( Short answer: they have a lot of medals. )

As I wandered through my links the other day, I thought about how often I use various sites and thought I might share them with others. Some of them are uber specific to certain stories I've written, but I've included them in case they are useful to someone else.

( Character Names )

( Languages )

( Dialects and Slang )

( Facts & Info )

( Generators, Tools & References )

For those who watch Lie to Me: whenever they show the establishing shot of the Lightman Group, they show a really tall, windowy building. I doubt the Lightman Group has the whole building, but I've never seen anyone get out of elevator, IIRC, so does mean they're on the first floor? Thoughts, ideas, theories?

Why is always the little details that trip you up in writing?

Memes soothe a frazzled soul, so I went looking for one to help ease my computerless pain. I am typing in Notepad on my 'rents' computer and it doesn't look right! The font is wrong and the screen is stretched out. But I will persevere for the good of meme kind.


1. Choose a few of your own characters. Five at the most.
2. Make them answer the following questions.
3. Then tag three people.
4. Feel free to go ahead and add some questions yourself!!

Characters playing:
Dr. Forrester
Fay Dresden
Dylan Cartwright

( Questions! )

One of my questiony posts, requiring information from the Yanks, regarding: hospital/Health Care visits and, uh, macaroni and cheese. I never said they were intelligent questions...

( Questions! )

joonscribble did one of these for an OC of hers a little while back and, since I've been trying to hash out Forrester for a story, I thought doing one of my own might help me out. Some facts may be contrary to what I've said during previous memes, as I've changed my mind about them as he's developed.

( 10 Facts about Dr. Darcy Forrester )

I'm not a car person. I'm one of those people who, when asked what kind of car we had rented, I could only respond 'silver'. So, with that in mind, I would love some help from anyone on my f-list with more knowledge than I. I may have to post this to little_details, but I figured I'd start here first.

I need three cars. One for mini!Dresden!Harry, one for Ramirez and one for Dr. Forrester. Further details under the cut.

( Say you were... )

I was looking back through my journal the other day, as I am wont to do, and remembered how fun this meme was, so I thought I'd bring it back.

Character Questions Meme
1. Go here to generate 10 random numbers between 1 and 100. DO THIS FIRST.

2. Choose a character that I write or have written, be it a canon person (Jack), an OC (Dr. Forrester) or whatever. Feel free to pick a character that was used last time, as the questions will most likely be different this time around.

3. Comment with the character and the numbers, and then I will answer the corresponding questions from here.

If you choose Mal or Fay or Graylin (or anyone of a minor age), any questions inappropriate to ask a child will be answered as though they were adults. You can choose a few characters if you so choose. I love these sorts of things, so any character, no matter how small, is really fun to do. :D

I've Googled this, but haven't be able to find an answer or didn't have the right phrase to find it.

When you're writing time in a story, what sort of formatting is grammatically correct? For example, I'm having a character give the timeline of a crime. He says 2 AM to begin with, which is fine, but after that he's going to drop the 'AM', because you don't tend to keep saying it when you're talking. So how do I write time after that? Would it be -

"I got the call around 3." (which looks weird)
or
"I got the call around three." (Which looks more like a number than a time.)

If it were in description, I'd keep the AM, but in dialogue it just sounds repetitive.

I've posted this to grammargeeks too, but I don't know how active it is. Anyone have a better grammar question community?

Completely off-topic: donutsweeper found me a Canadian spellchecker for my Firefox and it's awesome! When I turned it on, Googled suddenly became a word (the US one had it underlined) and it didn't try to correct 'dialogue' (the US always wants it to be 'dialog'). Yay!

Time for more of Taylor's Weird and Wonderful Questions about Stuff!

Does anyone know when the height restrictions were dropped from the Chicago Police officer requirements? I know that they don't have them anymore, I know that they used to be 5 8" for a male and 5 4" for a female, but I haven't be able to find out the year they were dropped. My Google-fu has failed me! So, I thought I'd put this out here in case there's anyone who knows or knows someone who might know.

Question for ficcage: has anyone on the show ever spoken Gallifreyan? I mean in the old series, because I don't think they have in the newer one, though we've seen it written. I have my own idea of what it would sound like but I don't want to write it and have people be like 'EPIC FAIL!'.

Thanks in advance, my wise f-list. :-)

What do Americans call a 'tuque'? I'm pretty sure it's a uniquely Canadian word and as I was fic writing today, I suddenly realized I didn't know what an American would call it. Knit cap? Winter hat?

This would be an excellent time for me to use a due South icon. However, I don't have one. I shall have to rectify this...

Doing one of my question round-up posts, this time RE: the Dresden Files bookverse. Spoilers for up to and including White Night.

PSA: I haven't read all of Small Favor yet, so please don't spoil any plot points in the comments. I know some of the answers might be found in Small Favor and I just haven't reached them yet, but I'm working at reading it in bursts and I want to make sure I have some idea of the answers in order to have enough time to finishing writing before my ficathon deadline.

( Fishing for opinions... )

Stolen from gusthemoose's Murphy RP journal and manipulating for my own purposes. (Muhahaha!)

Character Questions Meme
1. Go here to generate 10 random numbers between 1 and 100. DO THIS FIRST.

2. Choose a character that I write or have written, be it a canon person (Mal), an OC (Dr. Forrester, no matter how small) or whatever.

3. Comment with the character and the numbers, and then I will answer the corresponding questions from here.

If you choose Mal or Fay or Graylin (or anyone of a minor age), any questions inappropriate to ask a child will be answered as though they were adults. You can choose a couple of characters if you want.

Meme stolen from _medley_.

20 things about The Dresden Files that I hold to be my own personal canon. (Mostly Harry related things).

( In my world... )