~balise's blog (powered by TTBP)



12 june 2024

Books

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.


Travel log



11 june 2024

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!



10 june 2024

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.



09 june 2024

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.



08 june 2024

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 >_<

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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".