Member Posts

Kind Words 2

I picked Kind Words 2 up as part of Humble Bundle's Wholesome Snack bundle. I was actually expecting to get into Spirittea more (which is very spare in its explanations, to put it politely) and Botany Manor, which is a puzzle game, but I have found myself mostly playing this game. I have it on my computer, not my Steam Deck, because it's very keyboard-heavy.

Kind Words 2 is kinda-sorta a MMO. But instead of battling creatures, you're holding asynchronous conversations and writing advice and encouragement to people who ask for it. You can also post your own worries and someone might reply back! You can also get recommendations for things like games, songs, and music. I asked for a particular subgenre of mysteries and got back two recommendations - one for a book series I was already familiar with, and one for a book I think I've heard of.

If the person likes your recommendation/advice/encouragement, you get a sticker. You can also send stickers if you like someone else's recommendation/advice/encouragement.

There's also a spot where you can literally yell into a void.

I'm liking it a lot. It reminds me in a vague way of Glitch, except just... being there for one another. You're not going to spend hours in it, and there's a limited amount of messages to reply to, but it's very nice.

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Winter Song

I mentioned that it was supposed to get down to freezing last night, but I don't think it did - upper 30s, maybe, though, which is still pretty chilly by our standards. We do usually get a freeze or two (or sometimes more) but it's usually later in the winter when that happens. (Is it even technically winter yet? I think not, come to think of it!)

I was off today and I only ventured out to go to the credit union because we are trying to close out the very last one of my mother's trust accounts. (Some of you who remember me from way back may remember hearing about this looooong ago - my mom died in early 2007, I believe, so darn near 20 years ago.) We had to do some thinking (and some querying of my sister) to figure all this out - at the time Mama died, my sister and her ex were getting or had just gotten divorced, and my mother had been very determined that my ex-brother-in-law should not be able to get his hands on any of her money. Which is what resulted in a trust so strong that that we're still trying to jailbreak the last money out of it at this late date, even though I'm the executor. (With help from the CU, we think we've got it figured out. We just need the right paperwork!)

I'm still half-sick, although I've been coughing off and on for almost two weeks and so I'm bound to be near the end of this cycle, I hope. We did manage to go try that Mexican restaurant that we hadn't been to before and it was really good. (I may go eat leftover fajitas soon, come to think of it!)

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vital functions

vital functions

Reading. ( Scalzi, Bourke, Barber + Bayley, Boddice, Cowart )

Writing. I have a document that contains the outline and extensive transcribed quotations for the Descartes apologia! ... it's already over 5000 words long! And that's before I even get into the argument about Against New Dualism! I think. It is going to wind up needing to be split into two essays. One of which is the quotations about How People Summarise Descartes + What Descartes Actually Said, and the second of which will then be the polemic about how you don't get to rail against mind-body dualism if you then replicate it unfailingly with commitment to the absolute separation of central sensitisation and peripheral nociception. With the former as non-essential background reading for the latter...

Watching. Encanto, courtesy of The Child. I had retained approximately none of the plot from the Encanto-flavoured Baby Yoga we did together recently, happily, and also I Did A Cry. (I am also genuinely impressed that "fish is in terrible bowl" was an indication of where things were going...)

Listening. The Instructions For Getting To The Child, while cycling, via the bone-conduction headphones. V pleased.

Playing. The Little Orchard avec Child! Using some definite House Rules. Also being Someone With Long Arms for various self-directed play. I continue to be told Many Numberblocks Facts. :)

Eating. I put in an order with Cocoa Loco, maker of My Favourite Chocolate For A While Now, for the purposes of A Convenient Present; I also acquired, because Why Not, a single brownie portion and the cocoa nibs & hazelnut bar. I'm not sure I think the cocoa nibs particularly enhance the experience but I do like the Good Dark Chocolate With Hazelnuts of it all; I think I prefer My Default Brownie Recipe to their brownie BUT I also think that having a bag-safe well-wrappped calorie-dense food was extremely valuable in the context of some of this week's more questionable adventures, and I did enjoy it a great deal while I was, you know, inhaling it.

Exploring. BIG HECKIN BIKE RIDE. Many fewer birds along the canal than last time I did that route (on an unseasonably warm day in April); extremely excited to confirm that Walthamstow Wetlands is Within Scope for a trip At Some Point, though possibly not until it's warmer again.

And then today I learned of the existence of and attended an event at the London LGBTQ+ Community Centre, just across the bridge from Blackfriars, which they blurb as "The London LGBTQ+ Community Centre is a sober, intersectional community centre and café where all LGBTQ+ people are welcome, supported, can build connections and can flourish." They have comfy sofas and a permanent clothes swap and a wee library and a very large bookshelf full of boardgames, and a whole bunch of structured social groups as well as walk-ins. I am charmed, I am pleased with my purchases (including MORE BULLSHIT CERAMICS), and I... am contemplating maybe actually getting myself out to some more of their events, not just when I have a friend visiting from abroad who suggested Attending A Market.

Current Mood: tired

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Reading material

Currently reading: Wicked

I used to think Wicked was hard going, the first couple of times I read it, but I guess I've got the hang of it now - I'm blowing right on through. (I'm not to the Kiamo Ko part yet, though, so I might be premature in saying that!)

I think I mentioned that I was reading the new Jenny Colgan - The Secret Christmas Library - and I ended up liking that one a lot. Very entertaining. I read a couple of holiday-themed romance novellas that I dug out of my collection - I'm in the holiday mood, I guess!

This morning I was reading an October Daye book - I'm blanking out on the name of it, but it's the one where we find out Stacy's real identity - but I stopped because it's pretty depressing and I decided I wasn't in the mood for that. (It's right on the tip of my tongue - Be the Serpent, is that it? It's late - or early, depending on your POV, and I'm not really all here right now.)

Maybe I should go to bed, actually. We're supposed to have a cold front - it's been 70-ish but it's supposed to drop to somewhere around freezing by tonight. By Texas Gulf Coast standards, that's like a blizzard.

I have a friend...

...I know - it may come as a shock. But thankfully, that's not the reason for this post.

Recently, said friend made the absolutely heartbreaking decision to leave a job he truly loved, and at which I can say with all honesty, he was amazing at doing. His reasons for leaving amount to little less than workplace bullying and utterly toxic management.

Now, any employer will likely have a policy these days that says you can't say anything detrimental about said employer. And that bringing them in to disrepute is a no no. That's...fair enough. But now imagine that your employer tells you that you are not allowed opinions, that you are not allowed to spend time with certain people or groups, that you absolutely must turn your eyes away rather than call out shitty behaviour... Ridiculous, right? Then bring in a late diagnosis of ADHD, which reframes your perception of self and finally starts to loosen the shackles of self-hatred...Just for colleagues to get upset that they can no longer control you the way they once did, leading to the employer attempting to tighten the shackles right back up.

So...he resigned. Walked away from something he had built through his sheer optimism, curiosity, and love of sharing.

And there are people out there, who know nothing of him, or what happened to him, trying to make out that it's an over reaction. People saying, with their full chest, that they hate that he is warm, caring, shows empathy, and embraces inclusion.

Imagine being so full of your own bullshit, that you see someone - who would even defend YOU - as a threat to be eliminated, even after they have already walked away from anything you might have encountered anyway. The mental gymnastics these people have to go through is...weirdly impressive. I sit here and read some of it and have to remind myself not to respond. For a start, I dont want to draw attention to their antics because I KNOW that my friend will already have seen a lot of it and been upset by the casual cruelty and misrepresentation. If I go chucking my tuppence worth of "fuck yous" to the bullies, he'll see that and then feel bad about any backlash I get from the keyboard warriors out fo virtual blood. But what I want to do...REALLY WANT to do, is grab one or two of the posters who've cited one particular opinion they take umbrage with and ask them
.. "And how, exactly, has this opinion hurt you or anyone else?". Because yes, some opinions are harmful and hurtful. Others are not. Even if later those opinions turn out to be "wrong" in some way, they hurt precisely nobody. Because they dont call for the "othering" of a minority, for example. They don't advance one group at the expense of another. If you can be so nasty about opinions like that? You're a bit of a failure as a human being. He's nicer than me though and would likely tell me off for thinking that way.

Thing is, he doesn't NEED defending. The indefensible is actually the total lack of compassion or conscience exhibited by those who caused his decision,or by those crowing over it.

Love you matey. You're a much better person than me, and here's to the next chapter, free of the dead weight.

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Life lived in dot points

surgical recovery continues apace. The incision has mostly healed, although the knot of dissolving stitches at one end got caught when I was trying to clean it and pulled it slightly open, so I've now cut off the knot, put a fancy steri-strip over it to hold it together, and a little circular sticking plaster over that. Internals still noticeably sore, externals are itchy; have been putting 'scar therapy gel' on which seems to help (it was in the cupboard; I do not know what any of the ingredients are). I see the surgeon on Tuesday for follow up.
reviewers comments for my candidacy proposal are in (received late on Friday). I'm not actually sure what the next step is -- I'll work it out tomorrow. I think it said 'no edits' which is a surprise, given that I have been reading and annotating weekly since submitting, and there are a lot of 'this could be clearer' and 'what did you mean here?' notes. Also, I found another answer to one of the reviewers questions from the presentation about why books and not films/tv, which is that I'm hoping to get a wider range of cultural influences (and I have a paper from Italy in which almost all of the TV/movies that the kids reported was from the USA, which very much supports my 'this would be an issue' argument)
there was an HDR and supervisors lunch run by the school I'm in on Monday. This was very interesting and I met a lot of people. Including one who I was unsurprised to discover is an acquaintance of Youngest. Very queer (not very surprising) and neurodiverse (should not have been surprising) bunch that I met.
weather has been Warm. To the point that artisanat has been volunteering to put the air-con on.
There have been some changes to the mix of South Asian grocers on High Road. One of the two north of Bunnings has gone (and the one still there no longer stocks palak paneer in their shelf-stable preprepared meals; not the regular nor the tofu/vegan option. They do, however, still have some vegan options). There is a new one that is further south than the ones I was aware of -- nearly to where the petrol station is. To the point that it is still so new that not all the shelves are stocked; we couldn't find the box meals there at all, but we had to rush because we ran out of time. Thus there are still three that I'm aware of.
Monday's rehearsal I went with the intention to play pizzicato, which was mostly fine, but I got there to discover the C string broken (spare was at home) so had to transpose some of the work up an octave, which ah, that needs practice. As does one of the sections we hadn't got to that I'd failed to realise has a lot of fast notes.
craft has stalled
reading - one of these week's I'll get around to doing another reading post. Over on the Book Club of Habitica Discord I've joined the TBR Bingo challenge for Dec/Jan and set myself a bingo card of 16 books from my 'paused' list. So far, I've finished 1, which is progress but not as fast as I want.

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Sickly and lazy

I'm not doing so well at Holidailies - well, I've done a few entries, but it's already the 13th and I've done (pause while I go and count) five whole (short) entries. In my defense, I've been sickly, and it just seems not to be going away. Rob has recovered much better than I have.

We were talking idly about going to see Hamnet tomorrow, but really I intend to sleep all day, and the city holiday parade is also tomorrow - it's not impossible to get out during it, because it only goes down the main road and so you can get out by the back ways. But I bet we don't. We probably will go and get the fajitas that we put off last week - that will be Sunday, though.

(We can still go see Hamnet later, anyway - I assume it will still be around!)

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Lurking in my drafts

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: chilly
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: BTS "Save Me"

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Dept. of Memes

Music Meme, Day 14

A song that someone showed you:

I'm going to go with one that I saw one of my favorite reactors, Roscoe, react to this morning, "Save Me" by BTS. (He actually reacted to it some time ago, but there's a "Roscoe reacts to BTS video marathon going on and I dropped in just in time to see the music video from their early days, and to listen to the song.)

The tune has an extremely catchy hook, and I'm impressed by the fact that both the camera operator(s?) and the group members were working on ground that was partly shifting sand and still managing to both sing and dance (with some pretty complicated choreography) during a number of single-shot camera works.

I didn't enter Kpop via BTS, the way so many people, including those I've met through the Couch Crew discord community, did. I enjoy their music when I hear it, but I'm not Army (the name of BTS's fandom). Despite that, I can appreciate a well-written tune and some smart choreography, even when it's obvious the group and the producers didn't have much money which with to work. So here you go.*

Watch on YouTube

* I thought about using "Spring Day," which was part of the reaction marathon, but it's pretty intense, with regard to its subject, and I didn't want to put that into the post.

Also, here's a link to Day 13 which in itself has a link to the previous 12 meme answers.

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science!

more on visual culture in science

This morning I am watching the lecture I linked to on Tuesday!

At 6:53:

Here is an example of how the Hubble telescope image of the Omega nebula, or Messier 17, was created, by adding colours -- which seem to have been chosen quite arbitrarily -- and adjusting composition.

The slide is figure 13 (on page 10) from an Introduction to Image Processing (PDF) on the ESA Hubble website; I'm baffled at the idea that the colours were chosen "arbitrarily" given that the same PDF contains (starting on page 8) §1.4 Assigning colours to different filter exposures. It's not a super clear explanation -- I think the WonderDome explainer is distinctly more readable -- but the explanation does exist and is there.

Obviously I immediately had to stop and look all of this up.

(Rest of the talk was interesting! But that point in particular about modern illustration as I say made me go HOLD ON A SEC--)

A quick thought on leadership

A keystone can only work if all of the other stones in the arch hold it up.

Current Mood: working

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battles with executive dysfunction

Battles with Executive Dysfunction

The metaphorical devil on my shoulder: "You know, you don't have to do that final paper for Intro to Human Services. You've got enough extra credit to cover 30% of it, and that'll probably be enough to keep your grade in the low 'A's. And even if it's not, would a 'B' really be so bad?"

Me: "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, I did not go through two semesters doing every piece of homework assigned to fail at the final stretch, I am doing this shit, even if I only manage the bare minimum!"

Metaphorical devil on my shoulder: "Okay, jeez, lighten up! It was just a suggestion!"

Me: *already ignoring the devil and refocusing on the paper*

I refuse to let this paper win 😤

Edit: Paper completed and submitted! With this, I have officially done all graded homework for my back-to-school career. I am very proud of myself.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: The furnace. Mmmm, heat ....

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Dept. of Adulting

Alert the Press

I have finally put in my I-90 application for a renewal of my Green Card into to Citizenship and Immigration, along with the $415 it costs to start the process. That's a lot of money I could do a lot of things with, but I need to remain legal in this second country of mine, so one bites the bullet when one has to. Sigh.

I'm happy, though; I'd been putting this off because for some reason I had convinced myself that it was going to be a lot more difficult than it was. Somehow, I geared myself up enough to tackle the job and - surprise - it wasn't all that difficult. There are further things that I'll probably have to do; get my picture taken again, since the picture on my current card was taken a decade ago, and possibly have some biometric information taken. I don't know if all of that will involve further money heading the goverrnment's way, but I wouldn't be surprised.

The one thing that truly disgusted me when I went to the CIS home page on the .gov website: up at the top, in very gaudy gold, was an advertisement for That Man's credit card. I fucking kid you not. I have no words.

Still, I did what I'd been putting off. I adulted! Huzzah!

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endometriosis

[surgery] one year on!

I continue extremely grateful to no longer have ureteric stents.

( a bit of stock-taking )

Current Mood: sad
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: Silence

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Dept. of Unexpected Goodbye

Arthur Hlavaty is Gone

I don't know how many people in my Dreamwidth circles are from OG science fiction fandom; those who are there may know this. Other people, especially those who aren't familiar with OG science fiction/fantasy fandom, will undoubtedly not be aware that the world lost an amazing man last night/the early hours of this morning.

Arthur Hlavaty, one of the most brilliant people it was my honor to know and communicate with, died unexpectedly, leaving his spouse Bernadette Bosky and co-husband Kevin Marony bereft. Even though Arthur was 83 and had been in poor health following a broken hip many months ago, no one expected him to leave this circle of the world so soon. He was Supergee on LJ and on Dreamwidth, where he should still be, dammit.

I am fairly certain that I have known, or at least known of, Arthur since the mid-1990s Usenet days of rec.arts.sf.fandom. When he responded to anything I posted, I was proud of having said something worthy of his notice. I once wrote a defense of good politicians/government officials that he acknowledged might have moved the needle slightly from his mostly cynical view of both. I was quietly over the moon at that immense praise. He was kind, wry, gentle about much of life and merciless about fools. He was very deaf, and thought that popular music ceased being good after about 1966. I occasionally twigged him about that, and he was able to reply in kind. Bob and I were lucky enough to have a meal with Arthur around 2002 during a Minicon. He was as impressive in person as he was on the printed page or pixel.

He was a ... well, the best description of Arthur comes from Arthur himself, although this is also useful. His personal zines Nice Distinctions and Derogatory Reference were two I always was happy to receive in the mail and I treasure his occasional letters to me. Oddly, or sadly, enough, I dug up a Nice Distinctions from my files about three days ago so that I could find Arthur's Bernadette's and Kevin's physical address. I mailed my holiday card to the three of them last night. Less than 12 hours later, he died.

I cried out this afternoon when I read Bernadette's announcement. The world is darker today.

side-tracks off side-tracks

One of the things I found yesterday, while getting distracted from transcription by regretting not having taken History and Philosophy of Science (or, more accurately, not having shown up to the lectures to just listen), was some tantalising notes on the existence of a four-lecture series entitled Visual Culture in Science and Medicine:

Science today is supremely visual – in its experiments, observations and communication, images have become integral to the scientific enterprise. These four lectures examine the role of images in anatomy, natural history and astronomy between the 15th and the 18th centuries. Rather than assessing images against a yardstick of increasing empiricism or an onward march towards accurate observation, these lectures draw attention to the myriad, ingenious ways in which images were deployed to create scientific objects, aid scientific arguments and simulate instrumental observations. Naturalistic styles of depictions are often mistaken for evidence of first-hand observation, but in this period, they were deployed as a visual rhetoric of persuasion rather than proof of an observed object. By examining the production and uses of imagery in this period, these lectures will offer ways to understand more generally what was entailed in scientific visualisation in early modern Europe.

I've managed to track down a one-hour video (that I've obviously not consumed yet, because audiovisual processing augh). Infuriatingly Kusukawa's book on the topic only covers the sixteenth century, not the full timespan of the lectures, and also it's fifty quid for the PDF. I have located a sample of the thing, consisting of the front matter and the first fifteen pages of the introduction (it cuts off IN MID SENTENCE).

Now daydreaming idly about comparative study of this + Tufte, which I also haven't got around to reading...

Oh look. It's December!

That was fast. Where on earth did the year go?

Well, today has been...a day. I still don't have a new job to head to, but I have met some terribly lovely people during the interview process, so that's nice.

Right now, I'm ordering twice my own considerable bodyweight in chocolate bars. If you saw me, you'd assume it's for personal use, but no. The snack box we put out back in Covid times for the couriers and posties and the like who kept us supplied with...well...everything...has proven to be quite popular. Keeping it stocked can be tricky (like when the latest order went AWOL in the postal system) but its definitely worth it when you hear the little "oooh!" Of delight from a newcomer to the house. Several of the delivery drivers will stop by when they are in the neighbourhood too, since they know the box is here. Can't say I blame them, and no one so far has overstepped. I really dont mind making sure there's a snack and a bottle of water for the poor sod hauling 350 boxes of stuff around the place simply because someone decided they absolutely MUST have 10000 cottonbuds by 1pm tomorrow. I'd like to think someone would do the same for me. I think the whole treat others as you'dlike to be treated thing has a lot going for it. We should promote it over and above the self interest first narrative.

The launch went up finally. Lots of weird delays, the usual nail-biting launch and separation moments and now it's business as usual to get the hardware up and running before yours truly can do the customer service thing again.

I've been making Christmas puddings. Glass ones, of course. I still want a bigger kiln, but first, a new shed.

I'm just waffling again now.

Ooooh. Waffles.

Current Mood: groggy
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: The Rose "Phase Me"

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Dept. of Officially Weird Days

Weird is as Weird Does

Life itself is rather weird, but I've had several days of weirdity beyond the usual. Here's at least one or two of them.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: satisfied

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school work

DON'T Play with Internet Safety

Social Problems final was today, and this was my project: A short, chutes-and-ladders-style game about information security online.

( Game board under here )

Only one final paper left, and it's not due until early Friday afternoon. I think I'll probably try and get it written tomorrow, when I'm not working on laundry 😂

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Life lived in dot points

Well into 'it's not one thing after another, the damn things overlap' territory here

nominal deadline for my confirmation of candidature to have been submitted has passed without anything from my reviewers (one of three from our school has theirs)
Eldest's quilt has been somewhat abandoned, which is annoying me but I haven't had the cope
Instead I've been working on logistics of Youngest's quilt, which is very heavy in the planning stages (picture quilt, converting it from a photo)
Took a week at home on light duties last week, this week I'm back in the office. Did surprisingly well yesterday. Surgery site looks to have healed on the surface but the internals are still quite sore, so I'm still sleeping with the post-surgery bra.
Middlest and their partners have bought a house. They move in January. There was a messy blow up with the fourth housemate, who has since moved out, so they are learning how they fit together as a trio, and it sounds like things are going well. R's parents are providing lots of important support for the process.
Saw the nurse for follow up on Monday. They didn't like the wound support stuff I'd found in the pharmacy (because it is plasticky) and replaced it with a stiff fabric 'can be washed but blow dry it after' dressing that was so annoying/itchy I took it off last night (and it took off lots of ick; that area has an unsurprising build up of Stuff) and put the second piece of the wound support stuff on. That is so much better -- it is a clear plastic lattice that actually moves with the area, rather than digging in. Also, I'm not reacting to the glue.
My middle sibling and their partner are moving to Perth for two years. D has a job at UWA, K's job will allow 'remote' work from the Perth office. Amusingly, D described UWA as 'not restructuring' and Youngest laughed when reading that out. My comment was that from my perspective it has never not been restructuring, it is just the level that is changing. Plus, there was a leaked minutes from some meeting that suggested they were going to try and get a merger with Curtin, which I learned about when the Curtin Guild sent a 'not if we can help it' email out to all students. Pointed out to sibling that as they and I share a family name there is a non-zero chance they are going to get spotted as related.