02 july 2024
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
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/
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01 july 2024
Books
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!
Writever
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!
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30 june 2024
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.
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29 june 2024
Books
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.
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28 june 2024
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.
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