03 october 2024
Hello from Essen (SPIEL!) and from phone.
hai
am still around
life is a tad overwhelming these days, but i'll manage
did find the time and motivation to do a Terraforming Mars solo game on Wednesday with the new Automa expansion, was nice
also Wow War Within is a welcome source of distraction
also my Balatro Plasma deck is up to gold (I still need to beat gold tho)
Well, it's been a minute. Came back from Poland after Wikimania, and then more stuff happened, and, well.
Wikimania was really good - I came back with a weird mix of "super tired and yet super energized"; in the meantime since then I did add a data set on Wikidata while playing with OpenRefine, which was cool! (And just a teeny tiny bit overfocusing on that. Just a bit.)
I still have more stuff I want to follow up with, but one thing at a time; right now life is Distracting™, so I'm mostly trying to give myself a little bit of slack; trying being the operative word here.
I was in France last week-end and went to a bookshop, and I accidentally came out of that bookshop with three books - which, considered how little I read on paper lately, may not have been the smartest of choices. But, I'm halfway through one of them (a literary study of Buffy), so maybe not that stupid either.
Today is "Travel to Wikimania" day! woot! and also a bit of "aaaa".
Made it to Katowice, mostly on time AND with my luggage. Have met a lot of people already, which is nice, but a tad overwhelming. Hey, I even exchanged a couple of words with Jimmy Wales!
I didn't have lunch today because my flights were overlapping lunch time and, by the time I reached the hotel, it was 4PM. I was still somewhat hungry (despite the blueberry buns of the plane), so I went to the supermarket in front of the hotel. I haven't found yet a "reasonable" snack that's not too salty and without too much sugar, I'll need to think about that more for that kind of "emergency".
I finally decided I wanted some yogurt... but for that I needed a spoon! I wandered in the whole shop, probably looking quite haggard, for quite a while, before I finally found, in the "back to school" section of all places, a set of plastic spoon and fork. So literally, the first thing I bought in Poland (apart from my bus fare from the airport) is... a Paw Patrol spoon.
I was incidentally a bit flustered by the bus app too. You have to a/ put some monies in a pre-paid account (grmpf, I'd rather pay as I go) b/ enter your phone number just when you pay for the ticket c/ pay for the ticket AFTER you enter the bus, because for that you need to scan a QRCode that's inside the bus. Coming from a place where you risk a fine if you enter the bus without having bought your ticket first, it's a bit unsettling.
I was both overwhelmed when coming back from this evening's meetup and somewhat afraid of getting hungry with no snacks at a Really Unconvenient Time, so I did the awkward thing and went to McD's for my first meal in Poland. Got a box of nuggets and had them on a bench on a square, it was actually nice, and the right amount of quiet - still getting a bit of the city in, while not having to talk to anyone. That was a good choice, I think!
Essentially mix of excitment and anxiety at the perspective of Wikimania + the additional stress around Other Stuff. We'll see. I should probably start packing so that I can do last minute laundry tomorrow if necessary. Aaaaaa!
Considered going for an AlphabeticalZürich walk, and decided against it due to
reasonably accessible.
Got a haircut today!! It had been two years. I took an appointment on a whim last night at around midnight for this morning - I initially wanted to target Monday morning, and realized they were open on Sunday too. I'm not necessarily a fan of being part of the reason why people work on Sundays, though, so I don't feel great about that. BUT my hair will not look like weird tentacles in my back if I end up on any picture during Wikimania. So, there.
Tried on my new shoes & socks this morning on the run. It was mostly good, but my feet muscles were definitely not having the same feel as usual. I went a bit further away today, just to check the next bridge over the Sihl, and with the vague plan of "maybe I'll push a bit after the 30-minute mark". The 30-minute mark came and I still stopped, though. I was a bit further away from home, but that was fine.
Feeling a bit bleh. I need to pack to go to Katowice/Wikimania next week, and I need to do laundry before that, and it's 13:00 and I don't have lunch plans/ideas yet. I also need to get some food to survive the week-end, and making a plan for that feels like something I REALLY DON'T WANT TO DO. I guess I'll just go to Migros, grab a bunch of stuff, probably something quicker for today's lunch - but for that I need to go shower first too. Bleh. I'm tired and cranky because I'm not getting enough sleep, and it's my own damn fault, and grmbl.
Okay, it took the whole day, essentially, and a significant amount of self-loathing, but I fed myself, I did the batch of laundry I really wanted to make (and it's even folded and in the closet), and I went to the supermarket and got food.
Today's moods: https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/dinosandcomics-finished/940-boyfriend/viewer?title_no=657052&episode_no=941 and https://www.bouletcorp.com/rogatons/2024/08/03 (this one's in French)
Blizzard modified the WoW pre-patch event so that it's both less frustrating and easier to get rewards, and I'm quite happy about that.
I almost bought some cacti today, but I have no idea how to properly care for cacti and I'd be devastated if they died early. So I guess that first I need to read about how to care for cacti.
Well, it's officially August 2nd, but I did finish July Writever. So here are the last entries!
The word for July 28th was "Decenter".
As the climate change is becoming a more and more pressing issue, more and more ludicrous ideas are gaining traction. The latest I've seen is the Decenter project, whose goal is to modify the orbit of Earth around the Sun so that it's a bit further away (and colder) and somewhat off-center (to get a longer cold season). And to take the opportunity to offset a bit more to compensate for the CO2 production necessary for such an endeavour, obviously...
The word for July 29th was "Speaking".
"Sasha and I aren't exactly on speaking terms anymore.
− Oh, what happened? Did you fight?
− Quite the opposite! We got matching My-Mind-To-Your-Mind implants, so speech became mostly useless between us.
− Only mostly?
− Yeah, puns are still much better out loud."
The word for July 30th was "Survey".
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a librarian. More than the books themselves, I think I had a fascination for the Dewey system, and finding the right code for every book.
Later, I found tremendous joy in inputting and organizing all kinds of data, from my sticker collection to samples at the lab.
When the new exploration mission started recruiting, I applied for the survey cataloger job. The day I got selected is still the happiest day of my life.
The word for July 31ts was "Black".
Most colonists adjust pretty well to the underground facilities. A lot of effort has been made to give a good day/night cycle, and the progress around sun-substituting lights have been impressive (the people working the 'ponics even need sunscreen!)
But we haven't found a way yet to get stars look like anything else than a bunch of lights projected on too black a screen. Turns out, nightlight is much harder to get right than daylight.
Busy day for a public holiday! Went for a long walk for AlphabeticalZürich (I still need to transfer the pictures to the computer). Had a fairly late lunch, and hurried to the gym (note to self: never ever again go to the gym that close after a meal. Stomach was NOT impressed.). Lifted weights, was okay. Talked to S. on her last day of work with us, which was nice, but also a bit sad. And had dinner at Brasserie Fédéral with C. and A., had a really nice evening.
I'm still feeling a lot of anxious energy, but it did me good to keep myself busy. And now I'm home, with all windows open (dealing with window optimizing is also adding to the anxiety, tbh), listening to the August 1st fireworks in the background.
Quiet day today. Mostly I continued watching Extraordinary Attorney Woo (the scene where she sees the whale in the large meeting room made me meeeeeeeeelt), and I played a fair amount of WoW. I'm not convinced by the current event setup: having an event every hour and a half that's essentially done in 10 minutes feels quite punitive :/ but I still did manage to do the three quests. Also I've read these are weekly, not dailies?? To be confirmed tomorrow.
I had a nap at 3PM today, with a 20-minute timer. And I did wake up super refreshed. I think I need to consider naps more seriously.
I dragged my ass (and my feet) to a running equipment shop this afternoon to get Proper Running Shoes, because I'm getting annoyed by the blisters under my foot arches. Got good advice, tried a pair of shoes that gave me the impulse to SPRINT in the middle of the shop when trying them (WTF, I'm not a person who sprints!), and now I have running shoes that go faster, or something. Almost looking forward to trying them.
This evening I treated myself to a trip to the ice cream shop, I got the banana/brownie/caramel and the salted butter caramel ones, both were delicious (as usual) and made me feel better (I was feeling a bit blue.)
I'm awfully late on the end of Writever, so I'm going to try to finish before going to bed. I won't finish before August (which is in 15 minutes), though, it seems!
The word for July 26th was "Play".
"Pff, technology is really getting worse and worse. In my days, things were much more intuitive. This new holoviewer you gave me is full of buttons that are completely opaque to anyone who hasn't spent hours watching the tutorial, because there's not even a written, let alone paper documentation coming in the box. Not to mention, watching the tutorial requires starting the thing; and I don't even know how to do that!
− Have you tried pressing
?"
The word for July 27th was "Group".
Space exploration brings some more or less expected issues. Aliens, fine. Stupid behaviors in the vicinity of c, and in wormholes, nothing new.
But the chemists are really unhappy with the discovery of fractional atomic number elements. Worse: they won't fit neatly into groups, because they're all over the place in the periodic table.
The current consensus is to call them "foramenvermites", add a new table below the f-group and be done with it.
Today was a milestone: I reached 30 minutes, and 3 kilometers, in one go. Next milestone: 5K!
Pierre left for France today, and between tomorrow's "Wednesday's off" and Thursday's "August 1st", I have a couple of days on my own even before the week-end. And I miss him already :(
But, the apartment is not yet a mess, so there's that. My schedule already is, though, lol (finished work after 1930, and I'm not yet in bed although it's midnight). Let's say I'm taking advantage ;)
I started re-watching Extraordinary Attorney Woo, and it's as delightful as the first time.
oh noes, my town fern died, I forgot to water it this week :(
Well look at that it's been three days.
Friday evening we had E. coming over for game night - he was visiting from Iceland and took the opportunity to come and say hi - was very happy to see him and catch up! We also played a game of Cascadia, always nice.
Friday had not gone super well, though - had a Major panic attack in the afternoon (it had been a long while since it had been that bad), with essentially no warning sign. 0 star, would not recommend. Thankfully Pierre was here and helped me recover. I was also (and probably not unrelatedly) feeling like I was flailing at work, but I got some reassurance there at least. And a couple of bad news after that too. So all in all, Friday-day, NOT GREAT; Friday evening made a good recovery :D
Yesterday we had family for lunch - I made chicken legs with onions and shallots (that was very nice), ratatouille and couscous (I failed at couscous, it was quite lumpy - I blame the too-small grain size), and Pierre had made some chocolate mousse with raspberries for dessert. We also spent some time with the jigsaw puzzle, went for a short walk (it was too warm for a longer one), and overall pretty chill day.
Today I wanted to go to the gym in the morning, but decided against it ("fuck it, too tired"). I spent some time making (and using) Hangeul flash cards - I need to improve my handwriting and also the way I write said flash cards! But at least I have a base, and I can replace the ones I don't like later. I also restarted the Korean language lessons proper. Unclear if it's going to work out − it feels like the lessons may be adapted to Coursera format (~10-15 minute chunks) but not necessarily super handy to actually learn stuff (things that are supposed to be repeated are fast, rely only on a Hangeul written support, and I need to pause if I want to repeat). I can probably adjust, though (and not having the romanized version is painful at the beginning but, I believe, better in the long run).
Pierre went on a bike trip this afternoon, and I used the time to FINALLY go to the gym, so yay. I did some split squats (boring but useful for balance, I guess), some 25-kg barbell bench (that was okay), and I tried to row 15kg but I had to downgrade to 12.5 for the last set, my form was getting really shitty and I was worried I'd hurt my back.
Oh, also, I unlocked the last joker I didn't have yet on Balatro. Now only missing a voucher to complete the collection.
Did 28 minutes today, and it was fine. And I wasn't dead afterwards, which, like, progress. Turns out my doc was apparently possibly right when she said "it's going to be better, energy-wise" - except she was telling me to give it 3 months and I apparently needed 6.
Today was a fairly cranky day - I'm working on a fairly large patch in the realm of an even larger refactoring and, we'll get there, probably, but I had to fight Brainz all afternoon that were telling me that I really lacked refactoring skills (and in probably far more negative words). I pushed through, one step at a time, but it wasn't pleasant, and I needed a smol cry this evening after that. Meh.
But I caught up on Writever!
The word for July 22nd was "Walk".
The vintage self-help books I found in my grandmother's trunk all have a similar theme: going for a walk is easy and can solve a ton of problems.
I'm not saying it can't, and the few times I did, it did help. But they vastly overestimate the "easy" part in a context where you need a pressurized suit, air bottles and magnetic boots to go for a walk outside.
The word for July 23rd was "Maroon".
Stupid transmission errors, stupid Make-a-Wish AI. I had won a low-grade wish, so I wished for something realistic: twelve dozens macaroons. This is currently the 54th deserted island I'm marooned on in a row. 120 to go...
The word for yesterday was "Partners".
"Are you two married?
− We can only be registered partners for now. Our state just barely made robot wedding legal; we're still fighting for human/robot wedding.
− I'm sure we'll get there.
− I hope so. I can't wait to marry my human."
The word for today is "Dream".
Of all magic essences, Dream is considered the most powerful and the most dangerous one. The ability to conjure anything at all, no matter how small, big, complex or twisted, by the power of thought comes with the need to control one's nights with an unwavering consistency. Accidents happen way too often; thankfully, no mage has yet managed to Dream themselves out of the Enclave.
Pretty chill day today. Therapy was essentially celebrating recent wins, and also ranting about bad science (oops.) The celebrating felt important, and the ranting was actually linked to an explicit exercise, so fine by me.
Today was also the release of War Within WoW pre-patch, so I played a bit of WoW, re-set up my talents, that kind of things. And I finished the Traveler's Log for the month, which I had procrastinated on.
I've done some AlphabeticalZürich stuff today too!
Long day today, because I started early because I was going to my gym training for lunch, and I might have over-compensated a bit, because I also finished late. All in all my day spanned 11 hours, and I was not away for 3 hours. Meh.
I went to Paula for training today - we had dealifts, rows, carry, squats and two-hand landmine press. It was good. AND the major milestone: I deadlifted 50kg! Six times in a row! And then 5 times! (I think I couldn't get the 6th on the second set. But brain was not able to count anymore then).
It feels like a huge achievement - partly because it was a "scary" weight. And, it was fine. Not EASY, but absolutely fine. I also noticed a "yeaaah that one had more back involved than I would have liked", and I fixed it on the following rep, and it also felt pretty good to feel what's suboptimal and to know to fix it.
Anyway: TODAY I REPEATEDLY LIFTED FIFTY KILOGRAMS. And that's fucking awesome.
Spent a significant amount of time today doing administrative stuff and trying to get numbers that reflect reality in a table. I now have the numbers reflecting reality in the table. I now have a screenshot of the numbers reflecting reality, even if I know that somewhere under the hood there is another lie hiding. I am tired and annoyed and THIS SHOULDN'T BE SO HARD. (yeah, I'm vaguebooking. deal with it.)
I almost skipped choir today because I didn't want to deal with entering the restricted building. So instead I message my choirmates to get support with that (and they were very supportive), and I still managed to go to choir. Identifying what is an issue and getting support for the specific thing that is an issue, instead of letting the issue being a blocker for the whole thing: a winning strategy, it seems. (Also :gasp: asking for help. Who would have thunk.)
Went to see Inside Out 2 today. I enjoyed it, although I found it messier than the first one. Also, hai, I'm Anxiety.
Caught up on Writever, despite the huge distraction that was US politics in the last couple of hours.
The word for July 18th was "Relieve".
"So this is Heaven?
− Yes, welcome.
− As in... eternal bliss?
− Not exactly. The only thing we do when you pass the Gates is relieving your from all your earthen emotional baggage. What you do next is up to you.
− Sounds close enough, to be honest."
The word for July 19th was "Sibling".
One of the earliest techs developed by our civilization was DNA testing. When you have 1/ strong genetic diversity rules 2/ 4000 siblings coming from the same clutch on average, that specific problem gets solved VERY FAST.
The word for yesterday was "Bissap".
Vampires lost a lot of their mystique when a particularly meddlesome young girl discovered they had switched from blood to bissap centuries ago with no other side effect than much better cholesterol levels.
The word for today was "Support".
QuanticStorage is not liable for data or information loss resulting from the use of the products in a manner that is not in accordance with the use cases specified in the documentation. In particular, due to the high risk of data transmission error, QuanticStorage does not support the usage of the products in teleportation appliances or any other present or future apparatus using physical matrix transmission.
Went to the gym this morning for a session of deadlifts / overhead press / lat pulls. Went mostly well, except the crowd at the gym felt more annoying than usual. Folks, how hard is it to not leave 60kg of plates on a bar when you're done with it, and how hard is it to understand that if you don't put your weight back reasonably cleanly then MAYBE you're lifting more than you should? (Accidents happen. When it happens 5 times in a row, it's not accidents anymore.) Yes, I'm judgemental. And I did not appreciate the impression that I was in the way/not in my place because folks were just taking ALL THE SPACE around me and moving close to me during my lifts in a way that felt unsafe. And I'm pretty sure the fault was not mine on that one.
Grmbl, people.
Went to Baden for late lunch - Pierre went there by bike and I joined him by train. We walked a bit around the city, enjoyed the Limmat and the bridges above it, and went home (by train). It was very nice (also the tapas lunch was nice!) but it was also quite hot, and I felt more tired/grumpy than usual when coming home. Water helped, though (:surprised_pikachu:)
Finished my "Hangeul refresher" class on Coursera (namely "The Korean Alphabet: An Introduction to Hangeul" and it was overall a very enjoyable experience. I liked the format with both the videos and the small texts; the quizzes were maybe too much on the "easy" side to be really useful, but oh well. It was maybe also a bit fast on combination vowels. But overall, this is what I needed as a refresher before restarting my learning proper.
Went for my (planned) 28-minute run today, and it was... actually pleasant. I started listening to the Slow AF Run Club by Martinus Evans, and it's super good so far (well, for the first half hour-ish anyway). My run got interrupted towards the end because I saw a stroller with a baby in it and no responsible adult seemingly around, so I panicked a bit - but said responsible adult reappeared quickly enough, and the only victim were the last 2 minutes of my run. I was still happy - and I think I may well have hit my personal fastest kilometer (at 9:30 for the second km today). And I would probably have hit the 3-km mark today if not for said stroller incident. So all in all, a good day.
Pretty anxious day today, BECAUSE I was meeting with colleagues of $previouscompany this evening - people I hadn't seen, for most, for 3-4 years, in a place I didn't know... there was potential for things to go wrong. And I had a lovely evening. It's strange how this group still kind of gels, even though we've gone to various other paths in the meantime, and we didn't have much more in common than to have worked for the same company for some years. It was quite emotional, in a good way.
I ate too much, but that's a me-issue, not a other-people-issue ^^;
Continued the "meta-learning" course on Coursera, and really enjoying it. It basically dumbs down (... in a good way) the neuroscience of learning, and I find this very valuable (and high-school me is a bit annoyed to not have heard these things at that time, it would have been helpful.)
Grmpf, my trainer is sick, so my session for today is cancelled, and the next one is moved from Wednesday to Tuesday, which means my schedule is all out of whack, and I'm having analysis paralysis, which really doesn't play well with the anxiety that was already there. Grmpf grmpf grmpf.
Okay, let's do the following:
As for programme, I'll go for squats/bench/row today, deadlifts/overhead press/lat pulls on saturday. Okay, let's program weights and let's goooo.
Update: I did indeed go to the gym, and did all my programme. I found a 16kg-kettlebell, which was good to improve the weights on my squats less brutally than going from 15kg to 17.5kg in one go. I did manage benching my 12.5-kg dumbbells, so I'm officially back on the barbell next time, I decided :) And I rowed with a 12.5-kg dumbbell too, which was an increase over the last time I did these sets.
All in all, pretty satisfying.
I have THOUGHTS on what I'm doing better, brain-wise, than I was a year ago, but that's probably content for a larger post. But essentially: turns out Phil was right all along (SHOCKED PIKACHU) and accepting what my brain does when it's frazzled works better than trying to tell it that it's NOT ACCEPTABLE while kicking and screaming. Weird.
Continuing on my Coursera bingeing - I may or may not have started three courses in as many days. It's not my fault - the second one was a recommended prerequisite for the first one (although it wasn't written explicitly and I had to look for it a bit more), AND I heard a lot of good things about the Learning How To Learn class there, so this morning I went "well, what the hell, let's try that too". It is indeed interesting, and somewhat more "pop-sciency" than "self-helpey", which I appreciate.
I also did another day on the Hangeul writing class. It's interesting because it also gives some historical context, which I actually enjoy - although it's also very very clearly with the goal of "promoting Korean culture and language" and it can fele a bit preachy. Which is also interesting in itself, mind you. The class is taught by a person who speaks Korean, which feels like a weird choice for an intro course - one that I wasn't too sure about - but I find myself enjoying it immensely! There's quite a lot of repetition in what she says, and it feels like my ear is getting used to the word and sentence cadence. And I'm starting to catch a few words here and there, with the corresponding grammatical suffix, which is fun.
I did some AlphabeticalZürich work today! For one thing, I posted the last 'A' street, AND I went out with the camera for the first 'B' street. I had been procrastinating on that one because it's far away (Witikon may be the furthest place to go from here), and I had been WRONG to procrastinate, because it was super enjoyable: the two streets I shot today were forest paths, and I like wandering in forest paths! Today was particularly enjoyable: great weather (but not too hot), summer time after rain, great smells, lovely noises (I heard some... crickets?), vibrant greens. And I saw a doe! Didn't manage to get a picture of it, she flew as we made eye contact. But it was a nice surprise!
The word for today's Writever is "Care".
"Why do you care? − I have hypermerimnasia.
− What now?
− From hyper, excessive, merimna, care, suffix -ia, denoting the disease.
− You suffer from giving too many fucks?
− From giving ALL the fucks.
− Sounds exhausting.
− You have no idea."
Lalalalalala anxiety for no identifiable reason is THE BEST /s
Anxiety mostly receded during the day and/or got a couple of more identifiable reasons (when I think a tiny bit about it, there's actually quite a lot of stuff going on). Day was mostly quiet, did some code reviews, answered some people's questions, had a primer on Polish food on Slack... Reasonable day.
Also this morning I continued refreshing my Hangul; I'm missing a bit of "translation" between the fonts used on computers and how characters seem to be written by hand (in particular on ㅅ(siot) / ㅈ(jieut) / ㅊ(chieut) ) (I apparently don't have the characters in the font I'm using when typing this, unclear if they'll appear on the web version! We'll see - and correct if necessary.)
UPDATE it works!
Well, drat, I just noticed that LimeCocktail was working significantly less well on Firefox than it did on Chrome. I guess I'll have to fix and update it...
The word for today's Writever was "flamboyance".
"The kingdoms are competing for the most exuberant gifts for the royal wedding.
− As expected.
− We have received a lot of the usual: gold, jewels, art, spices, fabric... and a group of flamingoes.
− Of... flamingoes?
− That's the best flamboyance the Queen of Isla could come up with, considering the circumstances of her territory."
Went for my run this morning - and I hit the 28-minute mark, which is my personal record so far! 2.7km, we're not here to be fast. But, I didn't feel terrible about myself at all, which was nice. All in all, fairly positive this morning.
I accidentally finished two books this morning!
I was listening to How To Invent Everything: Rebuild All of Civilization by Ryan North while running; it was a good running book, interesting enough while not being a catastrophe if I phase out or don't hear something. A few tables in the book could have done with being put in an external annex (that "logical propositions" table comes to mind), but overall the narration was solid and useful for both tables and figures. Kudos.
Next running audiobook is Slow AF Run Club by Martinus Evans. I'm actually looking forward to it :D
I also finished, with my breakfast, One of Us Knows, by Alyssa Cole. It was a thriller set on a spooky island with a castle, and a main protagonist with DID. Following Ken as she tries to figure out what the fuck is happening both in the outer world and in her inner world was riveting, and I think I may remember this book for a long time.
Not sure what's next on the Kindle! (A few hours later) well it seems I'm going for The Pirory of the Orange Tree, by Samantha Shannon.
Today's Writever word is "Listening"
The strongest argument against devices allowing anything remotely close to telepathy is surveillance agencies.
They read our mail, they listened to our phone calls, they watched our online activity... do we really want them listening on our thoughts?
Went to choir this evening, it was really nice (but we could have done with a larger alto group!)
Also I re (re) (re) started a Korean language course today, we'll see where that one goes. I'm happy I have a super basic grasp of the first lesson-ish, because I might have panicked and given up otherwise. As it is... we'll see.
Quiet Sunday today - almost too quiet, I was feeling quite antsy in the middle of the afternoon. We went for a walk to the lake, it was nice (although the whole town apparently had the same idea - color me shocked) and it helped. I wanted to go take AlphabeticalZürich pictures this afternoon, but I checked my camera battery just before leaving... and it was empty. Grmpf. Oh well, at least I checked before going to the place (which is super far away... well, at Zürich scale.)
Finished watching Fallout - it was a really good show! I enjoyed the setting a lot. I haven't played any of the games and, from what I can see, these are probably not my kind of games; half considering getting a RPG book to have more world-building context.
Continued building the LEGO House model - it's getting pretty. The build is very different from the lighthouse (smaller scale, different details to Get Right™), but also quite enjoyable in its own way. And it's going to be pretty with all the colors!
Again missed Writever yesterday - so catching up today.
The word for yesterday was "Training".
Modern town planning tends to put the hatcheries in the middle of the town and not on its limits, as it used to be. Sure, it has its dangers, but if you avoid going outside during class times, you'll be fine. And dragon training is definitely more compatible with forges, ovens and glass and pottery manufacturing than with forests.
The word for today was "Situated".
FOR SALE
Cozy manor, 10 rooms, piped water, central chimney heating.
Well situated, good road to the town center, quiet area. Friendly neighbors, mostly quiet spirits.
Some work (ceilings, floors, exorcism) needed. Furniture available on demand.
Write to agent for pricing.
Went to the gym this morning, did some 15kg goblet squats, some landmine shoulder press (20kg bar on the floor + 5kg weight), and 23kg lat pull downs. Could have I done more? probably. Was it enough? also probably - I'm a bit tired but I still have some energy for the rest of my day.
I'm not super happy with yesterday's Writever; I think it has potential for misinterpretation / making me say something I really don't want to say / give the wrong idea. I'm not sure what to do with that.
Went shopping with full success today. Finally crossed the door of a brick&mortar Levi's shop and talked to the nice salesperson, who was very helpful - because now I do have jeans. I bought two pairs, and doubled my number of wearable jeans pairs - I don't remember last time I had that many, fancy!
We also went to the sports equipment shop - Pierre wanted a bike helmet (he got one, and again what we felt was good advice from the salesperson), and I bought a pair of sports pants. It was kind of annoying, because I tried 5 different, and the only one I really liked was 1/ more expensive 2/ with a Swiss olympic team logo, which I could honestly do without. But oh well - I needed a second pair of sports pants too. So, there, shopping successful.
Watched Inside Out this evening. It was both very good and pretty unsettling, I think because of the literally mind-shattering consequences of Shit Going Wrong, which is... scary. But, I really liked it, still.
The hardest part today was honestly to get out of the door. I was tired, I didn't want to go, and I seriously sat for a good fifteen minutes staring in the void asking myself if I'd rather "have done it" or "have given up on it". I still put my shoes on, went out, started running, almost gave up after 3 minutes ("... at least I tried"), powered on, did the full 25 minutes.
It was, incidentally, the third time I did 25 minutes, which means that Monday is 28 minutes, which will be my personal record. I'm reasonably confident I can do it, because after 25 minutes, I do have some reserve. Problem is: my brain is utterly not convinced of that around the 18-minute mark, so that's another place to have to push through. I do not enjoy it.
Brain has also Not Helped as there were a lot of runners on my path today, and they all looked, like, light, and I was feeling so fucking heavy. Urgh. Also the weather was super humid, not super pleasant.
But hey, went out, did it, have another 25 minutes and 2.4 km in the books.
Work was so-so most of the day, was pretty unfocused - still managed to get a few reviews in, and I did finish the day by finishing the investigation I wanted to do (and I think I even have a reasonable-ish solution for my problem), so all in all okay. Had a jigsaw puzzle break this afternoon, that was lovely.
Game night was nice, did manage to not drink too much and not eat too much chocolate, but I'm still super-full. I probably shouldn't eat a whole portion of take-away anymore... it just doesn't fit. Made scofflaws, that's definitely a strong contender for one of my favorite cocktails... and it mixes in a glass, not in a shaker, which is actually more convenient when making several at a time.
The word for today was "Queer".
"You mean, they were living with a single partner?
Most of them, officially, yes.
And they believed in binary genders?
It was the prevalent view at the time, yes.
And they were pairing exclusively with people of the other gender?
Exclusively, no; by a large majority, yes.
How queer."
Moment of pride today: I did manage to debug an issue with SSH on my own without having to pester anyone. And that's good, because the only issue that I had was an expired key (oops).
Other than that, fairly quiet day - I took care of a bunch of "meta-work", including filling in my perf self-assessment for the past quarter, so yay. I'm very happy that I had good notes last quarter - made said assessment much easier. That's good incentive to continue trying to have good notes! (And not give up on the whole thing whenever I fall off the wagon.)
Writever word for today was "Share".
The problem with trying to replicate services that worked reasonably well in the 21st century is that some things really don't translate well. Car-sharing did assume that people would refill the tank before leaving the vehicle; but antimatter stations are not exactly common enough for starship-sharing to make any kind of sense.
I think I did manage to setup vim to autowrap text at 80 - my config was apparently missing a "t" in the format options. So there, now it works, I'm happy \o/ the little things, really. Also the internets were REALLY CONFUSING on the matter.
Therapy today was kind of weird (spent most of it very dissociated), but useful, because I'm still tired, but I do feel like I stepped out of the hamster wheel for a moment. Took me a while to come back, but at the same time I had enough observer online to be able to see in which order things were happening, which was in itself fascinating.
Also best quote ever - I was wearing my "don't fight your demons, hire them" t-shirt, to which P. quipped "you need a 'don't fight your demons, let them rest' t-shirt". And yes, yes, I absolutely do.
Went to Paula after therapy, it stays consistenly good. Today we did some 40kg dealifts again, some front-carry, rows with 12.5kg kettlebell, and some bench at 20+kg. It was good, I'm tired everywhere, works as intended. She gave me some breathing technique tips though, which were useful. And apparently my bench form is great, which made me happy :)
Made some banana cake! It's like banana bread, but in round shape so that it fit my timing constraints :P
Wrote an AlphabeticalZürich: https://alphabeticalzurich.wordpress.com/2024/07/10/auzelg/
There, NOW I'm up-to-date again on Writever - I'll try to not slip that much again this month. And it's even up-to-date on the full month page!
The word for the day before yesterday was "Solidarity".
The TRAPPIST colonies, strongly condemning the acts of the Gliese planetary system state, and expressing strong support towards Earth and the Solar system, call for an immediate and durable cessation of hostilities.
For Earth, we stand in Sol-idarity.
The word for yesterday was "Travel".
I don't think I'd want to go back.
But it used to be that, to feel fully "on vacation", you traveled for roughly a day. Whether you were traveling 900km at 150km/h, 6'000km at 1'000km/h or 400'000km at 50'000km/h... you were still essentially traveling for a day.
Teleportation made travel times moot, and maybe we have lost something there.
Today's word is "Interstices".
Humans say that the greatest trick I ever played was convincing the world that I did not exist. I beg to differ: it was convincing the world that idleness was a sin.
I have so much more opportunities to sway people my way, in all these interstices of time where they used to daydream and are now trying to fill at all cost.
I finished Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum and it was lovely. I realize that "slice of life" may actually be one of my favorite genres; and this one is the population of a bookshop. And, well, just lovely.
I just decided on the next one: One of Us Knows, by Alyssa Cole. It's been a while since I read a thriller, and that feels like the right mood right now.
I need to update the CSS so that my titles are not so stupidly huge compared to the rest of the text. Also I should configure my vim better.
Ariane 6 should launch this evening (https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Ariane/Ariane_6_launch_how_to_watch_and_what_to_look_out_for)k I think I'll try to catch that!
Did indeed catch the launch - that was good! Two funny things: the infographic talking about A?ores (rather than Açores), and the plug for the Lego Ideas Ariane 6 set that briefly crashed the Lego website.
Did my 25-minute run this morning, 2.41km. I went via the road over the river rather than turning earlier, so that I could avoid crossing the street towards the end of the road - I think that was a good idea. It felt harder than on Friday, probably because yesterday and last night were not necessarily optimal conditions for exercising today. But, eh, went out, did it.
Had a fairly productive day today - did some reviews, sent a couple of patches, and spent the afternoon poking at the problem I have been trying to understand for a couple of days - and finally cracked it.
Also went to choir this evening - I enjoyed it more than last week, possibly because having seen the songs last week helps... and also I got my voice back, woo!
Unclear why I'm feeling somewhat deflated/sad, though :/ Maybe I just need to go to bed, so let's do that.
Late again, and I didn't catch up to today, but at least I wrote yesterday's, for the theme "Questioning".
It must have been weird in the Before Time, needing to choose your studies and your career and your partner.
Sometimes, I yearn for that freedom. But removing questioning also avoids mistakes; or, if it does not, it avoids the associated guilt. We seem to be happier that way. Although maybe that's the Mood Optimizers talking.
I may or may not have cried of relief at the results of the French elections this evening. I can breathe again. It's not over, it's never over, but, at least for now, it seems the worst has been avoided, and I'm very happy about that.
We went at friends for the afternoon/evening and it was very pleasant :) although more food (and alcohol) has been consumed than usual, so I may have a few Regrets tomorrow.
Went to the gym this morning, it was pretty good. I did
I'm particularly happy that I did NOT push the 12.5 for the last to sets of my bench: this would not have been safe, and I'm definitely feeling my muscles enough already, I didn't need to push more (the last rep at 10 was HARD.) It was the right decision, and I did manage to silence the voice telling me I should absolutely push harder and stop being lazy.
I forgot Writever yesterday, so let me catch up today!
The word for yesterday was Joy.
I always found joy in seeing the seedlings pop from the soil after planting them. Seeing seedlings appear on this particular soil, the soil we reclaimed from a wasteland that hadn't seen a hint of green in years, makes me feel something beyond joy. I'm going to call that exseedlaration.
The word for today was Convictions.
"We got raided again, the muffalos ate half our reserves, Alex is close to mental breakdown, and to be fair so am I because I ate without a table again. How can you stay hopeful?
− You don't stay hopeful. You use your convictions as a lighthouse, the strong belief that you can make a difference every day to make things better for you and your fellow colonists. Hope is not a feeling, it's acting for a better tomorrow."
Went for a 25-minute run this morning, keeping the slower pace I found on Monday. And, it actually went well. The past two runs were "... okay, it seems I can actually NOT hate this". It's a bit hard to make my brain shut up on the whole "... you're making exactly 0 effort, what the fuck are you happy/proud of", but having reasonably precise HR measurement on the Garmin seems to be enough to call it on its bullshit. Fingers crossed that it continues being enough.
I'm also almost done with my "running audiobook", namely How To Invent Everything, by Ryan North, and it's a 12.5-hour book, so that's a neat way to have some idea of the amount of time I ran overall in recent memory.
Somehow I'm very happy that my town "botany" plant is a fern. It just makes my heart go "wheeeee!".
Had a nice game night, we played The Crew and coinche, it was fun. And I did manage to get 2 scoops of ice cream instead of 3 at the ice cream shop, which I'll count as a victory (banana brownie + jogurt redcurrants is a winning combination.)
Started the day in a small wiki edit rabbit hole about art history, of all things - saw a thing on Mastodon about Claude Mellan, a 17th century engraver; went to Wikipedia, saw a "citation needed"... and fixed that (including the actual statement needing a citation.) Obviously this also included "how do I make a reference to a book chapter" template side-quest, and all of that. Fun, but now I need coffee :P
That was a surprisingly productive day. I submitted two patches, learnt stuff about an extension and an API to do something I wanted to do (but hadn't dug into yet), and I fiddled with a third bug, for which I hope to be able to make some progress tomorrow. Oh, and I closed this week's deployment task since it was all good. And all of that while fighting some fight about some administrative stuff. A good day, overall.
I had opened a Bookwyrm account a week or so ago, to try it as an alternative to GoodReads. First time I tried, the import was temporarily closed, so I could not import my stuff to test. Today, the import work, so I gave it a try. I do get that the decentralized nature of the network makes it Hard™ to have a single "source of truth" for the items (books, authors, collections) of the catalogue - and, in all fairness, GoodReads is not perfect on that point either (I may or may not have asked for librarian status on GoodReads for this exact purpose of merging things that are supposed to go together.) But it feels like it makes the whole system, at the very least, very very clunky to use? I don't know if I'm missing something obvious, or if it's just Not Usable For My Brain (wouldn't be the first thing) - I asked on Mastodon, we'll see.
The word for today's Writever was "build".
Compiling light ##### 100% Testing light ##### 100% Compiling planets ##### 100% Testing planets ##### 100% Creating all living things ##### 100% Testing all living things ##### 100% Compiling eternal life ## 40% - ERROR - Build failed - Missing ';' at line 9210912093
Went to training with Paula this morning. The circuit was
I am: tired. But I'm excessively pleased by the fact that I can still deadlift 40kg, I didn't think I still had that capacity. And, turns out... not only I do, but I could have lifted heavier.
But, I should definitely have showered just when I was coming home rather than having lunch first. Because my whole afternoon kind of got fucked by "... but I need to shower first", and I'm still in my bathrobe at 5PM. Oops.
Prepared the tax declaration documents, wooo! Always a bit brain-complicated for REASONS, but there, it's almost done (I only miss a paper that I asked for.)
Writever today is "Margins"
"Isn't it weird that life on Ægir is entirely aquatic, and that nothing apparently ever got the idea of conquering their continents?
— It's not that weird if you consider the geology of it. Here on Earth, our plates are well behaved, we have continental margins between the continental and oceanic crust, so the transition is, in practice, reasonably smooth. On Ægir, it just... drops abruptly. Or, from the Ægian perspective, their world is surrounded by huge walls.
— It's still weird they went to space before exploring their surface.
— And as weird for them it took us so long to explore the depths of our oceans..."
I'm cheating a bit: this is a bit longer than the one I posted on Mastodon, due to my server's character count constraints. But, I like it better this way :)
Today did NOT start well. I modified the notification settings of my phone (went from "full silent mode" to "do not disturb with exceptions"), which threw me into a bad "things are changing and maybe i didn't configure things correctly and everything breaks and and and", which was not great. On top of that, Pierre's computer's PSU died last night - which sucked, obviously, but which sucked doubly because our beloved Mastodon client was hosted on it too. So, that was the second thing that fucked up my morning habits... and that was before coffee. Follows: overwhelm about the things to do (breakfast, dishes, shower, fetching a parcel downstairs) and its order, and... well, brain full of bees.
THANKFULLY, somehow I managed to remember the existence of my weighted blanket, so I put myself under it, and instantly things got... better. That was unexpectedly magical, tbh. After a few minutes, I went from "screeching mode" to "talking myself into an order to do things", and then I executed the plan, and I was able to reboot my morning. Phew.
I went into a large rabbit hole at work today, started wanting to find the origins of a bug, ended up exploring (and putting breakpoints) in 4 code repositories in 2 languages. I think I know what's happening, and it should be fixable with relatively little effort and side effects, but that was kind of exhausting. Maybe (:thinking_face:) I should have taken a bit more breaks, especially considering the start of the day!
My favorite duo of romance authors, collectively known as Kit Rocha, are currently running their "Romancing the Vote" auction, benefiting voting orgs in the US (with options for non-US folks buying stuff too!)
There's a lot of stuff - signed and annotated copies of books, jewelry, stickers, hand-crafted stuff, video consults, various editing services - a wealth of stuff, really. The collective effort that goes behind the scene of this thing absolutely warms my heart.
Writever for today is "Collective".
Esteemed gaggle of colleagues, the incorporation of our planet to the Federation gives us the unique opportunity to discuss collective names for our new associates. The Greys are delighted with "a grisaille of Greys"; the Mantids prefer "a vigil of Mantids" over "a congregation of Mantids" and that's fine for us; however the Blue Avians are afraid that "a murder of Blue Avians" would be somewhat derogatory. Does anyone have a better suggestion?
A very neat article about busy beavers - Turing machines with a small number of rules that run for a long time (while still halting) - apparently a group just proved the finding of the 5th busy beaver (longest execution of a Turing machine with 5 rules): https://www.quantamagazine.org/amateur-mathematicians-find-fifth-busy-beaver-turing-machine-20240702/
I finished Books and Broadswords, by Jessie Mihalik. I didn't know these were actually two novellas in the same universe (with a cross-over in the epilogues), which would have been great... except I liked the first one more than the second one. Still, it was a fun read, and managed to get my head out of gesticulates wildly things last night - not bad!
Next on the list is Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, by Hwang Bo-Reum.
Went for another 22-minute run this morning to ACTUALLY DO THE RUN that I had to interrupt on Friday. It went well, and at no point did I actually feel out of breath. Which, on the one hand, may be a sign that I don't push enough (and my Garmin with its "unproductive" flag tends to agree - fuck you Garmin), but on the other hand, well, I'll take "not feeling like I'm dying", thank you very much. And it's also a large sign of progress that I am able to actually run without feeling out of breath, even if I'm slow as fuck. This was absolutely not the case a few months ago, even at the slowest pace I could manage.
I was somewhat dissociated during the whole run, but a/ it actually makes things easier b/ I can detect it and snap out of it when I'm back home, so I'm going to say I don't see the harm in that.
Pierre came with me again today, which was nice!
I decided I'm going to try to do July Writever this month, starting with the first word today "Psy" (the list is translated from French, and both lists are subtly different... which I like :). Without further ado:
Psy (noun): unit of measurement of mental pressure. 1 psy is equal to 6,895 xaviers.
Etymology: from psychic; wordplay on psi, equal to 6,895 pascals.
I'll put these on my Scribbles at some
point, but it seems like it also belongs in feels, so there it is.
Went to choir this evening - the mix of "a bunch of new pieces" and "my voice is currently fucked" was NOT a pleasant one. But it was nice seeing the people, at least :)
I posted on AlphabeticalZürich for the first time in what feels like ages - yay! Also, they updated the UploadWizard on Wikimedia Commons, and now the wikidata/structured data information is input in the same tab as the rest of the info. And I like that a lot better!
Made my dad's risotto (well, some variation of it) for lunch, for what feels like the first time in years. It's very much Non Canon as far as risotto go, but it was still tasty.
We made a "spontan" visit at the Swiss National Costume Festival parade this afternoon - it was super nice! A bit long (there's a lot of cantons in this country) but fun and colorful. I am, however, more tired than I thought I'd be.
Pierre made lemon tiramisu and it's tasty.
French elections are a dumpster fire. The national 34% far right voters was already bad. The current map of districts is worse. Granted, larger districts are reporting later, and at least some of these should normally balance things out. But, at the time of this writing, already 15 far right MPs have been elected on the first round. 12 years ago, there was two. Total. It was already too many.
I finished Slow Productivity by Cal Newport. There was a few good things in there - especially about diagnosing the "problem" of using "visible activity" as a proxy for productivity, and about the associated anxiety. His first part about "do fewer things" is probably the one that spoke the most to me. I didn't like his second part at all about "work at a natural pace" because I read that discourse as "slow down, and nobody has to/will actually know", which strikes me as exactly what I cannot do, because it feels far too much like trying to trick people and circumvent (implicit) rules, which is exactly the kind of things I'm trying to do. His last part, "obsess over quality", glazes over the issue of perfectionism with essentially "... don't", which I also didn't find super helpful. However, I did enjoy the various anecdotes and stories - some people find them "padding", I definitely see their value in making his points more memorable.
Next, after much pondering, is Books and Broadwords, by Jessie Mihalik. Should be short enough but still bridge me over the first round of French elections, after which I hope I'll have a better grasp on what I'm in the mood for reading.
Went to the gym this morning - I definitely need to load this day more, because I ended up doing triple sets on my last two sets of lat pull downs. Definitely time to bump these numbers.
Went to Firehouse Subs for lunch - we hadn't been convinced when they opened a year ago, but this time around it was better. Possibly because we ate there rather than bring the food home (so it was warmer/fresher). Might try again on a Tuesday or something.
Made Ottolenghi beans&tofu with chraime sauce, it stays a brilliant recipe, omnomnom.
Switzerland is usually quiet. Except when they win at soccer against Italy. Sigh.
There, finished leveling my second timewalker toon in WoW. Next will be alliance, and apparently gnome monk.
Went for my first run in a couple of weeks this morning. I had asked Pierre to come with me (because I was feeling anxious :/), which he gladly accepted. So I was running at my slow pace while he was doing a mix of higher speed and coming back to my speed. It was mostly nice, except I started getting really out of breath around the 15-minute mark, it kind of devolved into a panic attack, and I really did not like that. I rested a bit and did the last couple of minutes of my planned 22-minute run, but this was not a pleasant experience. But oh well, I did do it, I did restart, and I did survive, soooo.
Today did NOT start well - I spilled my water bottle when taking my meds, and as I was trying to remove stuff from water, I also spilled my coffee bowl. Thankfully Pierre helped me clean up stuff and we're back, but. Later today I also stained my jeans by dropping food on them, and I dropped my laundry basket on my foot. Not my day!
A little while ago, I fucked up my bluetooth/pulseaudio stack on my work laptop. The only usage of that bluetooth thing is to listen to music with my BT headphones. I can actually do that perfectly well with my phone - the pairing is done, and the phone interface is not worse than the browser interface. Why oh why is my brain screeching at the idea of doing that, even when I want music? Makes no sense.
Saw Paula for training session this morning, and it was really good! I'm tired, but that's to be expected, and in a good way, essentially. Today's training session was two circuits. First circuit (repeated 3 times) was
Second circuit (also repeated 3 times):
Tomorrow is DOMS day :P
I finished processing my DSLR Denmark pictures! Now I need to combine with the phone pictures into a nice album, add some captions, and be happy. I also want to make a paper album, but that's also another large chunk of work...
Therapy today went well. I am making definite progress in being more aware of what's happening to me when it's happening to me, AND making more progress with giving myself more slack around that - both as a result of said better awareness (it's easier to give myself some slack if I have some idea of how my internal state is) and as a more general approach of "work with the horse you have today".
Also there was an interesting point about how much of my behaviours can be linked to the need for a "safety buffer".
Well, I actually managed to finish the Denmark web album. It's here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/2VdgocunBvaKHJzcA And I'm quite happy with it! (And with the fact that it is done less than a week after coming home.)
I finished Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. It was actually amazing. I'm incredibly impressed by her ability to make me see images of contexts I do not know (something I'm not typically very good at). I was a bit afraid, at the beginning, of getting lost in proper names, but I finally got the gist of it (it may or may not have me search for a map of Gethen, which helped a lot.)
I must admit I would have loved a HEA. It was fairly obvious from a few chapters before that it was probably not going to happen, and that ending got me frantically turn pages with a "no, no, nooooo" in my head, and it probably delivered a more emotional/memorable ending this way... but I would have loved a HEA.
I think I'm going to give Cal Newport's Slow Productivity a try - I'm a bit wary, considering what I read about this book, but the title makes me very curious/interested. We'll see. (Worst case, it's a short book :D )
I did manage to call my doctor's office to move an appointment that was planned during Wikimania (which I plan to attend) - victory! And I also did manage to pat myself on the back for doing it despite it being hard than berate myself for it being hard.
Watched half of Bridgerton S03E05 (will watch the second half with lunch). I really do like Penelope, but I wish Eloise would stop brooding for a minute :P
More meta-commentary: I was thinking under the shower that I really really
like the TTBP/feels workflow, but that I'd like a bit more features on the web
display front. And also: I really really like the tilde.town internal
integration of feels, and I don't want to lose that. BUT looking at the code
the other day, I can get the best of both worlds! I can roll out my modified
TTBP engine for my stuff, and still rely on the global TTBP to continue
working, as long as I don't touch the internal file structure. Mmmmmh. I sense
some additional Python hacking in my near future (including integrating my
current "paginated.py" in said personal fork, rather than relying on thinking
about executing it after modifying/creating a post.
SO MANY POSSIBILITIES. (exciting!)
Work was okay, I guess - didn't feel like I achieved much, but I talked to people, and I have (unrelatedly) more understing of language variant handling of wiki titles.
Other than that, went to the burrito popup place for lunch, and my hunch was correct: I enjoyed the same food better as bowl than as burrito.
Still managed to do the 5120 steps (don't ask me why that number, Garmin got stuck on it, it seems), although I was just shy of 5000 when coming back after our evening "let's have my steps" walk.
Mostly quiet day today. Back to work after the holidays, so it was mainly catching up with stuff and people, which is perfectly fine. Also watched the meetings that I missed, and all that sort of things. All in all, I'm essentially ready to restart where I left things before the holidays, which sounds about right. And I still managed to do some code review - not a much, but some, so there's that.
After work I went for a walk - my current objective is to keep my streak of "more than 5000 steps a day" which I accidentally started over the holidays. Hey, we've been back on Friday and it's still alive, I'll take that as a success. I do need to get up more during the day, though, probably (which, well, is also kind of a Current Goal). That may be the one thing I miss by not going to an office: actually going there and walking AT LEAST A BIT during my day - it's pretty hard to make it an habit otherwise (this is not the first time I try), and it's very easy to deprioritize it (whereas when it's part of the commute, well, I actually need to go where I'm going!) Hopefully the weather will help a bit (although tonight's 26°C was almost too hot, if I'm perfectly honest :/ )
Oooh and the day ends well - officially, MediaWiki core is not moving to GitLab, and we're keeping both Gerrit and GitLab for the time being (and, as I understand it, staying on Gerrit for the use cases that are currently relevant to me). Wiki page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/GitLab/Migration_status This is not necessarily a huge surprise, but it is a large relief. I do like Gerrit a lot, I'm used to it by now, and I was definitely not looking forward to changing my current workflow.
There, the web version of this blog has a paginated version with five days per page! It was indeed pretty straightforward. It's not super pretty, but it works (although it's not fully featured yet, and I need to write a bit of doc for, like, the headers & the placeholder vars. But the MVP is visible here :)
I have reduced my set of DSLR pictures from 609 to 147! Well, that was the first selection anyway. Now - processing and more reduction, probably... and integration of the phone pictures in the final album.
Had a large steak lunch with family today, so we skipped dinner, but still watched the latest Doctor Who. Overall a very enjoyable season, both from a "writing" perspective and a "Doctor" perspective. Went for a walk after dinner to Keep The Streak - I've been hitting 5000+ steps every day during the holidays, and it feels like I should continue trying doing that.
Edited 37 pictures out of (now) 141 - well, that's progress made, I guess.
Some meta commentary: I wanted to fix a couple of typos in a 10-day-old post. The documentation of TTBP indicates: "however, changing old entries might cause strange things to happen with timestamps. the main program looks at the filename first for setting the date, then the last modified time to sort recent posts."
So I dug a bit into the source, and my conclusion on that is:
touch -d [date] [file] to set the date backtown feels to update HTMLCaveat: no idea what happens on gopher. But, it seems to have worked well enough on main engine and on HTML file generation.
More meta thought: pondering whether I can/I should write a smol script that generates a paginated blog from feels entries, rather than a Very Long Page™.
Today was a good day, despite the "back from holiday" fatigue.
I am back home and typing on a physical keyboard rather than an Android phone! 'Tis better. But, let me finish my travel log for this trip :)
Today was the "fly back home" day, but our flight was at 3PM, so we had some more time to spend if we wanted to. We decided to go visit Helsingør (also known as Elsinore), which is the closest town from Sweden in Denmark. We could indeed see the Swedish coast quite clearly, including buildings! The town is very pretty, a lot of older buildings. At first, I was a bit puzzled by the amount of liquor shops in the main street... until I remembered that is was probably a smart commercial move considering the regular ferry from Sweden!
We visited the Sankt Olai (St Olaf) church, which had a lot of very elaborate and very gilded decoration, and a great looking organ (I really liked that one!). It also had a small kids table in the entrance, with a box of plush toys labelled "Noah's Ark", which, I'll admit, made me chuckle.
After our parking adventures in Aahrus due to the half-marathon, we were quite amused to find that Helsingør had a half-Ironman planned for this week-end; that one didn't bother us that much, but we were impressed by the amount of organization and infrastructure involved.
We walked around the Kronborg castle, which is the location of Shakespeare's Hamlet, but we didn't feel like we had time to actually visit it.
We could have, though, because by the time we were at the airport, past the security... we were still two hours before our flight (which got delayed an extra half-hour too.) Bah, we took the opportunity to finally have smørrebrød - it would have been a pity to leave Denmark without having that.
The flight was a bit delayed, a bit bumpy, but we finally arrived in Zürich around 6PM; luggage was long to be delivered (and super wet) when it arrived, but we made it home.
And now for the "back to the regular program" of this blog (well, as "regular" as this thing can be with its young age, I guess):
For our last day before going back to Zürich, we went to Copenhagen!
We decided to go by train because a/ trains b/ driving sucks c/ parking sucks more. The Danish train company recently introduced a check-in / check-out mechanism in their app, which worked well enough for the tickets (it felt more clunky than the Swiss equivalent, but still alright.)
The first train was a diesel train going through the forest and crossing multiple foot paths (and hence honking once a minute or so). We changed to a S-tog (equivalent of our S-Bahn, we supposed), which brought us to the center of Copenhagen.
First (almost) mandatory stop: the statue of the Little Mermaid around the port. As expected, somewhat underwhelming, but there was still many many tourist buses around! We took the opportunity to put on some sunscreen (hadn't done that yet), and someone asked us for some (we were happy to help :) )
Then we walked some more around the port, looked at the opera house from the other side of the canal, saw a lot of boats (including a lot of sailboats, a gigantic cruise ship and a very large yacht), and arrived around Nyhavn, known for its colorful facades.
From there, we took the metro to try and have a look at the Church of our savior, which looked pretty cool from the outside (in Copenhagen, the spire slays you), but was unfortunately closed to the public this afternoon.
We took the metro again and went to spend some time in the King's Garden (and have a peek at the Rosenborg Castle. We finished our day in Copenhagen by going for coffee (and strawberry lemonade) and eclairs in a nearby salon.
We took the train back to Gillelege; we made some snarky remarks about the Hillerød train station, which has tracks 0, 1, 3, 4n, 11, 12, 14 and 16, and tracks 0 and 14 are, obviously, next to each other. I may or may not have fallen asleep on the train :p and I'm now typing this as Pierre went for a run before dinner.
Dinner at the hotel, packing for tomorrow and reading.
Finished Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology and really enjoyed it.
Now back to The Left Hand of Darkness! (I like it so far but I'm not sure I'm smart enough for that book ^^;) Or more precisely to keep track of that amount of proper names.
Added https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Pyyy-BAIYQ to "watch later", looks interesting
Read https://www.thecut.com/article/memory-people-who-remember-vs-forget.html about remembering: it does seem memory ability varies depending on people. As a probable "forgetter" (in the terms of the article, and despite the warning against rememberer/forgetter essentialism), I can't say I'm surprised.
Today was indeed mostly a travel day: we left Blokhus at 930 and arrived in Gillelege around 1630. It didn't help that we arrived two hours early for the ferry and decided to check-in as we arrived... which kind of blocked us in the ferry waiting line. Oh well.
The travel, including the ferry, was uneventful, despite somewhat more traffic than we had seen so far.
Our hotel room has a fantastic view over the sea - and we can see Sweden from the window. (Later this evening we also saw the MSC Virtuosa sailing away, which was fun.)
We walked to the train station and back, walking on the beach on the way to the station and on the path above the beach on the way back. The beach is very different from the one in Blokhus: less surface, less sand and more pebbles, and also no cars!
Had dinner at the hotel (salmon rillettes, veal and potatoes, chocolate fondant), and went outside again for the east-er and hence earlier sunset - which was actually not a total fail, we did see the sun dive in the sea, even if it was behind clouds! It was actually very pretty (but windy.)
Sunset yesterday was cloudy, so we technically didn't see the sun set. But the light was nice and it was still good times.
Today we both needed a somewhat chiller day, as we're starting to get tired!
We started the day with a late-ish breakfast at the hotel, and then we went to the next town to visit their sculpture garden. We had seen when driving past it that they had sand sculptures, and they didn't disappoint; a lot of impressive works on the general theme of scientific progress. The rest of the sculpture garden was also delightful; a lot of themes, a majority of wooden sculptures, and overall a nice place to spend some time. We may or may not have dozed off on a bench :)
There was also a small wax museum - the "fictional" characters (a bunch of superheroes, mostly) worked better than "real" people, even if they were represented by their usual actors.
Finally, there was a large art installation over several small rooms and corridors, with material from the forest and the sea. I was particularly moved by a room representing the sea - the waves were structure with shellfish glued on them, particularly mussels, and the overall effect was absolutely striking.
After that, we moved a grand total of 600m to go visit the museum of paper arts, a small museum with some origami and more impressively cut paper silhouettes - those were really impressive in their scale and level of detail. There was also a table with some origami paper and some instructions - I left a very badly folded crane there.
We were quite tired still so we decided to have a break back at the hotel.
After the break, we followed the suggestion of the sheet that was on the breakfast table and drove to the Børglum monastery. A very interesting place, with a lot of different things to see, both historical and cultural. The highlight of the visit was probably the full reconstruction of the Tapisserie de Bayeux - a fantastic work that is exhibited in a nice, long room. It took these 9 women 15 years to achieve that, and what an achievement indeed (more info here: https://www.bayeuxtapetet.dk/welcome/). There was also a nice garden, and a windmill nearby. Really a nice place to visit.
Came back to the hotel, went for pizza and tiramisu at one of the local Italian restaurant (was good, but not extraordinary), popped by at the beach where the wind made us come back to the hotel pretty quickly.
Tomorrow we're back on the road to reach the last hotel of the trip.
I suddenly realized what I need to read during this travel: Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology. So I'm leaving The Left Hand of Darkness aside for the moment and I'll come back to it later.
We travelled north today, and by that I mean that we went to the extreme tip of Denmark. The coastal geography makes it so that two different sea direction meet there, making for interesting waves and currents. It's also supposed to be the limit between the Northern Sea and the Baltic Sea, but where seas start and end is very fuzzy in my view.
Anyway, it was a good opportunity to walk on the beach and in the (not THAT cold) sea water, even if that meant a significant amount of slaloming around jellyfish.
We realized later than a lot of the people we saw there may have come from the MSC Virtuoso, a gigantic cruise ship that was docked in the nearby harbour. People were shuttled back and forth from the parking lot to the beach tip by a bus pulled by a tractor, pretty funny.
All in all, a very pleasant experience (weather helped! It was perfect.), better than we expected, actually (we didn't have much expectations :p) And I found postcards (but no stamps yet.)
We went a few kilometers down the coast, where there was an old lighthouse (oldest of Denmark!) and, for some reason, a large trebuchet. We tried going up the lighthouse but I gave up on the very narrow and steep stairs, I was afraid my knees would make going down awkward to impossible. A pity: there was a photo exhibition and the two pictures downstairs were very pretty - I would have liked to see the rest and the view!
We then drove to Pikkerbakken, a viewpoint over Frederikshavn (which we may or may not have called Friedrichshafen the whole day.) Also very nice, we had a bit of quieter time and a snack while looking at the town and its harbour.
To end the day, we decided to drive in the direction of Lindholm Høje, the historical site of an old Viking cemetery and settlement. The road there was scary, we got a bout of very heavy rain and I was really not serene. It receded quickly and it was mostly done when we arrived on site. Beautiful place, a lot of stones - and goats and kids roaming around! (And, evidently, the weather we had encountered had yielded hail there.) There was a museum too, but we arrived too late to consider visiting it.
Finally, we went back to the hotel. Had dinner (cod fillet and vegetables with a caper sauce, apple and almond macaron as a dessert) at the restaurant in front of the hotel, went to see the beach one more time, and came back to the hotel again. Sunset is in an hour and the weather still seems stable - we'll try to go see if we can get a sea sunset this evening!
We left Billund for Blokhus in the northern part of Denmark. Our plan was to stop on the way to visit Aarhus - a plan that got almost foiled by the fact that we couldn't seem to reach the city center. Mystery solved: today was Aarhus semi-marathon :facepalm:
After some difficulty, we finally found a parking spot - the silver lining is that it made us go through the cemetery, which was a lovely place: not too dense, very well maintained, a lot of greenery.
We then went for a small walk along the docks and in the city center - which was nice, but nothing struck me as particularly notable. Well, the cathedral was impressive (and apparently it's the longest and highest one of the country), but we didn't even get to visit is as it was closed.
Back on the road, and we arrived in Blokhus in the middle of the afternoon. We checked in at the hotel, and went for a pastry as a snack and for a long walk on the beach (there's a reason why they're popular). Well, not that long, because my body is kind of complaining a lot that I make it walk too much these days! (Ow.)
I was Not Impressed by the amount of cars and campers on the beach, it was clearly designed that way but I disagree with this decision, there :) Apart from that we watched the waves. It was nice.
Coming back to the hotel, we sat for a while on a bench in the city square - and came back as the weather seemed to take a turn for the worse (which it didn't.)
Had dinner at the hotel's restaurant - we shared a starter of smoked tuna, then grilled turbot with asparagus, potatoes, shrimp and broccolini, and finally a rhubarb trifle. Also had a glass of Coteaux du Layon with dessert - I don't remember last time I had that wine (a long time ago for sure) but it was nice. Also had a very large fit of laughter (tears in my eyes and abs hurting!) at a joke Pierre made on the spot, which was a definite highlight.
We considered going on the beach for the sunset, but there's a thunderstorm!! So we're going to stay inside instead.
Finished Humble Pie, by Matt Parker. Entertaining writing, but A Lot of these had more to do with computer data representation rather than what I'd expect in a book with the subtitle "A Comedy of Maths Errors." Probably I'm also simply not part of the audience of that book, because I knew quite a lot of these stories already!
Started The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin - well I read the first of three introductions (do you recognize a seminal work by the number of its introductions and prologues?)
The main event of the day was the visit of the Lego House, which is... let's call that a Lego Experience.
There's a large lobby with a brick manufacturing machine, which actually makes bricks, and a set of six red 2x4 bricks is distributed to each visitor - along with a card containing a guaranteed unique combination of said bricks (they say they have enough for 3000 years :) ).
Downstairs, there's a museum with the history of Lego, and a number of artifacts. A kid was very excited to show us his own wooden duck, that he had brought especially from the UK to take a picture of it with the OG Lego wooden duck in the museum. It was great :D
Upstairs, many thematic zones where you could build various things, a lot of Lego bricks everywhere, and a lot of MOCs in exhibition areas. We had a really good time building fish and making fools of ourselves trying to build cascade-worthy vehicles :)
It also felt like they were Doing The Right Things™ when it comes to accessibility and inclusivity, and not in a way that feels performative (they do communicate on it, see for instance https://legohouse.com/en-gb/press-releases/inclusive-play/, but there's no back patting on site, just the useful information). I really liked that.
For late lunch, we went to the Lego House restaurant, which was quite gimmicky (you order with a set of Lego pieces, and your food is delivered to you by gigantic Lego robots) but the food was pretty good.
At the end of tte visit, we did another run at the Lego store and got the Lego architecture version of the Lego House :)
Since it was still pretty early in the afternoon, we went east to Veije. We had a first attempt at a walk in the woods, but we're discouraged by the heavy rain that started short after we did. We did a second, more successful attempt a bit later (weather changes really quickly here this week), and ended up in a deer park (where we saw, well, a lot of deer.) Really nice.
We continued toward the sea, walked on a dike advancing in the water (which was covered in small crab pieces - we want to blame that on the local seagulls maybe?), and strolled around. We also saw an aviary, including regent parrots - it reminded me of the bird we used to occasionally birdsit until it passed away earlier this year, so that was a bit sad.
Had dinner at the pub behind the Lego House - burger and a beer, perfectly cromulent. I appreciated the fact that the pub was pretty quiet despite being quite crowded! Also, since we were back next to the Lego House, I took the opportunity to take a selfie - had forgotten that this morning!
Went back to the hotel via the Billund sculpture garden - I'm not necessarily convinced by the art, but it was a nicer path than along the main road.
Today was Legoland, and I'm consequently dead tired. It was a lot of fun - there's actually a significant amount of fairly hectic rides. Pierre probably enjoyed many of these even more than I did, which was very nice :) We alternated between faster and slower rides/breaks, which was a good move. The most impressive one was probably the Polar X-Plorer, which did have a VERTICAL DROP at the end of the ride. We did that twice, I screamed twice. But, as I was mentioning: theme park rides are one of the few places where it's socially acceptable to scream, and that's possibly a good thing :)
The other thing of note in Legoland is the Miniland, with all the buildings of different parts of the world. Very very nice - and impressive. We particularly enjoyed the Billund airport, as well as the Artemis ship, complete with liftoff!
I accidentally bought a red spaceman plushie - it's so cuuuute! We also spent a bit of time making minifigs - although to be completely honest I was expecting more variety in the pieces choice.
Dinner at the hotel was shrimp & asparagus, fish & root celery & wild garlic sauce, and "gâteau Marcel" (layered chocolate cake with chocolate mousse on top) with strawberries and strawberry ice cream - really good!
And we finished the evening watching videos and music videos on the couch at the hotel. Cozy and delightful <3
An interesting article about "no, brains are not computers, they just don't work that way" - https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer
Holy shit, the French left parties announced they actually have an agreement, a common program and a list of candidates. They did it, and... hope seems not ridiculously out of grasp? Of course the current coalition is far from perfect, but nothing ever is in politics.
Finished reading Vengeance in Death, by J.D. Robb, which is In Death #6. Essentially what I expect from an Eve Dallas book - reasonable procedural, reasonably believable near-future setting. Somewhat copaganda, and actually possibly too much steamy scenes for what I wanted this time around (I'll freely admit it was part of the original appeal of this series, but idk, I wasn't in the mood for that this time around), and probably a bit too gore/graphic for my liking too. Still, it felt comfortable to be back around Eve and Roarke and their set of secondary characters (I like McNab!)
Started reading Humble Pi, by Matt Parker.
Today we leave for Denmark! Looking forward to discovering a new place. And also Legoland.
Went running this morning, and it actually went well! I did my 25 minutes (and 2.5 km during that time). The time between minute 19 and minute 23 was utterly miserable, but it was significantly better after that, which does make me hopeful I can actually manage the 28 minutes that's suppose to happen next in my c25k program. Well, that will happen... after I'm back from holidays, probably.
Also, in today's "maybe if I made things not as hard for myself": today I finally realized that having my running belt on my hips and not my waist is making things better to, like, breathe. I am not a smart person. But oh well, realizing it now is better than realizing it later.
A bit more hope politics-wise, as apparently the left parties managed to reach an agreement to have a single candidate per district, which hopefully will focus things in a good way. I'm definitely in favor in multipartisan (as opposed to bipartisan) systems, but the fact that the 6 (!) left parties found an agreement may be a sign that this has gone a bit too far.
I realized today how bad yesterday actually was. But hey, today is significantly better, AND while I was not in a state to do anything about it or even to believe it, I did have a tiny bit of consciousness about my state and the fact that I was actually not functional. That's huge progress, and deserves to be celebrated.
Luggage ready, alarm-clock set: IT'S HOLIDAY TIME!
Yipeeee, I arranged transportation and accomodation to go to Wikimania in August! Really looking forward to it. Well, a bit anxious and all of that as well (I may have chosen the hotel for the ease of retreat if needed, and was very relieved to see there's a "quiet room" planned at the location), but really looking forward to it.
Work was frustrating today, but it really feels like a "me" thing rather than a "work" thing per se. I don't think I was actually in a reasonable state to work today, ... and it showed, I worked (and had meetings) through tears for most of the afternoon, that sucked.
At least this evening I did most of the packing for the holidays. Yay! Oh, and I fixed a trivial bug on our Mastodon client.
Went to the gym this morning, and it went very well. I'm very happy I hired a personal trainer - already the first session was worth the monies. Instead of doing barbell today, I lifted dumb bells, for both safety/confidence reasons and to work on symmetry and balance. And, weight-wise, I didn't lift "a lot", but the difference in form (as well as actually handling the dumb bells at the beginning and end of the set!) made it so that I was TIRED at the end of the session. But, like, good tired.
Grmbl, I was hoping that one of the two pairs of jeans I had ordered on Zalando would fit, but no no they don't. Which is annoying, because my current amount of wearable pairs of jeans is distractingly low (I think I'm down to 2, and one of them is borderline.)
Also I'm voting for the European Parliament elections today, and it's kind of funny because I'm technically voting for two countries today (since we also have the quarterly Swiss votations today). I mailed my Swiss ballot two weeks ago, but still: today I'm voting with two citizenships :D
Weeeeeeeell fuck. European elections in France gave a HUGE score to far right parties, the President dissolved the National Assembly this evening, we're voting in 3 weeks, and however I add numbers, I am exceedingly pessimistic. I really, really hope I'm wrong. Very depressing, incredibly scary, and I'm feeling a nice (not) mix of anxious and dejected. Wunderbar.
Yesterday's "game" night went well, there was some conversations about meteorology and electronic piano signal acquisition debugging (and a few rants about various stuff). All in all, good, but despite the lack of alcohol anxiety still ran high. Oh well, I would have liked the issue to be "that" simple :(
also yesterday I did a larger foray on town's IRC, and I started publishing moar stuff from my ~ homepage and linking stuff. yay!
Cool stuff read this morning:
did manage to hit my arm on an aisle shelf at the supermarket, ow, and this is going to bruise, probably >_<
--
THERE, ~ sweet ~, http://tilde.town/~balise has what I wanted to put on it for now. yay!
Who has two thumbs and set up an SSH client on her phone and is currently updating feels with, well, her two thumbs? This balise!
also fuck anxiety.
This season of Doctor Who is really fun. Episode 6, "Rogue", was brilliant on its own accord, AND marvelous if you watch Bridgerton - it had the exact right amount of meta commentary. I thoroughly enjoyed it - and Gatwa is an absolute gem of a Doctor. Added points for "I'm Bond, Molecular Bond".
This day also didn't start super well. I went for a run this morning, and instead of my planned 25 minutes, I had to throw the towel after 19 minutes. I already didn't necessarily feel super great about myself, that didn't help :( But oh well, it'll be better next time, probably.
And now I'm shaving yaks to get a patch to eventually get merged, and I'm grumpy about that too. We'll get there.
In the more useful things, foxes-in-love is nailing it again with a recent comic, namely https://foxes-in-love.tumblr.com/post/751719046518538240. I find it very useful to label "knife" when I realize I'm getting into a fight with the people in my head, it apparently tends to stop that spiral! Yay for new labels.
Well that's fascinating: https://www.statnews.com/2024/06/04/co2-ventilation-research-virus-airborne-life-haddrell-celebs/ It seems that CO2 concentration, which is used a proxy for air quality, may also contribute to the survival of viruses in the air (the more CO2, the happier the viruses).
Well, this was a pretty terrible day, but it went somewhat better as my tilde.town application was accepted :)
Anyway. I spent a significant amount of my day fighting with bluetooth and pulseaudio, and THIS IS NOT FIXED YET, which is very (very) annoying. I even did manage to make it work for, like, a few minutes a couple of times, but a/ I don't know how b/ it didn't survive a reboot. And all of that also involved a spiral, a lot of grumpiness, and generally me not being a great human to be around.
Rest of the day wasn't much better, fought with MySQL (I did win that fight, though), and didn't feel much productive in general. Plus, sore muscles all around after the training yesterday.
But hey, I'm here, and now I can even rant on feels ;) Still need to poke the vim config, and make this shell my home for real, but it's super promising and I'm happy to be here (hi town!)