01 january 2025
Happy new year everyone :)
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!