What If I Knew How

Aug. 3rd, 2025 03:09 am
bc86s: A frame capture of Teru from a comic by BC86S (Default)
[personal profile] bc86s
Dreamwidth is my favorite, because it is a continuation of LJ.
The codebase for it is possible to understand some day. There are still some things to get it functioning well in mobile browsers.

For the most part, Dreamwidth still has a desktop bias. It retains the look and feel of the web 2.0 era.

Today's screens have higher resolutions, so text and menus appear tiny.
Some of the site adapts to mobile screeens. Icons appear way too tiny.
SVG might help, but personally I find it bloated. Github or Gitlab impose a custom font where icons are glyphs. I'll need to look into it.

HTML5 support... A recent PHP standard. It's very overwhelming how much needs to be done.

Technology is incredible! You can now write journal entries to share with others on a social internet!

Lookie Mee!

Aug. 2nd, 2025 08:16 pm
bc86s: A frame capture of Teru from a comic by BC86S (Default)
[personal profile] bc86s

Marquee! Marquee! Look at me! Look at me!

BLINK TAG
Rah! Woo-hoo!



The tag tag might be gone, so the stuff will only hold still.

Things

Aug. 2nd, 2025 10:18 pm
vass: Small turtle with green leaf in its mouth (Default)
[personal profile] vass
Books
Reading Danny Lavery's Something That May Shock And Discredit You. Unsure whether I have read it before or if it's just familiar because he published some of these essays online. Discovered that the pages from 84 to 101 of this (library) copy are missing. Not torn out, it's a misprint, they are replaced with earlier pages from the same book, printed blurry. Irritating. I suspect Unprecedented Times may be at fault: the publication date was 2020.

Comics
Dumbing of Age: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. (I wrote that a few days ago.) Live Sarah Reaction. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. (That one was today.)

Fandom
More betaing, and also I signed up for a fanfic bingo event that the Nine Worlds fandom server I'm on is doing.

Games
Played Toby's Nose, an interactive fiction game in which the player character is Sherlock Holmes' dog Toby. (A lot less unforgiving than the average IF game, but just as intricately detailed.)

Slay the Spire: still spending more time playing it than I should. Since last post I unlocked Ascension 6 for everyone, and Ascension 7 for Ironclad and the Silent and the Defect. It took me eleven tries to get the Silent through Ascension level 6. The eleventh time I had a shiv build with, among other things, Wrist Blade, Phantasmal Killer, two Accuracy+ and one Accuracy, Terror, Burst, Clockwork Souvenir, and a Flex potion. And, of course, Infinite Blades and Blade Dance+ and Blade Dance. So on my first turn I drank the Flex potion and let Clockwork Souvenir counteract the part where it wears off after one turn. Wrist Blade adds 4 damage to zero energy attacks, Accuracy+ adds 6 damage to shivs, Accuracy adds 4 damage to shivs, Terror gives the enemy vulnerability (attacks do 50% more damage) for 99 turns or until it cures the status effect, and Phantasmal Killer makes the next turn's attacks do double damage. That's a lot of setup, but you get shivs that a serious amount of damage. So of course my act 3 boss was Timmy. (The good news: he doesn't get stronger from power cards. The bad news: he gets stronger from you playing twelve cards period, and rudely interrupts you in the middle of your turn every twelve cards you play. And Burst's "play the next skill card twice" effect counts as playing the next card twice, not once.) I beat him in six turns. I had a Fairy in a Bottle potion, but I didn't need it. (I did use my Ghost Jar.) I also discovered a beautiful synergy between the Hovering Kite and Eviscerate, which didn't help me that much with Tim but was very helpful with hallway encounters. Eviscerate is 7x3 damage for 3 energy, one less energy for every card discarded this round. So even if you still only have three energy, if you block with Survivor and discard a card, that reduces Eviscerate to two energy and gives you one extra energy to play an Accuracy or whatever. The Defect, after that, just took two tries.

Crafts
I made another linoprint, my biggest and most complicated one to date (nearly A5, and not very complicated.) Yes, I'll post photos one of these days.

Also I dyed some flannel sheets and pillowcases a very dark bluish/purplish grey. It was my first attempt at overdyeing: dyeing fabric which already has a pattern printed on it. It was green and white gingham checks, and I hoped I'd get dark grey on darker grey checks. This indeed proved to be the case, although they mostly only show in direct sunlight. What I wanted most, though, was just warm winter sheets in a colour that went with my other sheets and blankets, without having to pay postage from another country, and, success!

Tech
Still configuring laptop a little bit at a time. Most recently, used Themix to install an unbelievably lurid desktop theme. I will get tired of it and need to change to something less garish within five hours of using my laptop again, probably definitely.

Links


Nature
Roo sighting! Not in my backyard this time. A much smaller one, maybe a jill or a joey (are they still joeys when they're too big for the pouch but not full-sized yet?) or maybe a wallaby not a roo after all.

It was crossing the road, presumably to get to the other side. It kindly gave me enough time to brake comfortably. For the next stretch of road (maybe ten metres?) it hopped along the side of the road, parallel with my car, until I got fast enough that it couldn't keep up.

Cats
They've been making their presence known when I'm at the computer, especially on video calls.

Starlinography?

Jul. 30th, 2025 10:24 pm
azurelunatic: (Greater) Tits Against the RTE (the bird kind of tit). (put a bird on it)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/storage/yes-you-can-store-data-on-a-bird-enthusiast-converts-png-to-bird-shaped-waveform-teaches-young-starling-to-recall-file-at-up-to-2mb-s

Taking this proof-of-concept to a ridiculous destination, imagine taking a very simple secret message, converting it to sound, and tasking a starling to smuggle it out somewhere. (This seems very impractical compared to an amateurishly knitted scarf with a code in the seemingly random purl stitches.)

Prior Auth, my beloathéd

Jul. 28th, 2025 09:54 pm
azurelunatic: A martini glass full of pills of all colors, haloed in a rainbow. Resin sculpture. (meds)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
July 22: I message my symptoms team for a refill on my primary pain med (which is still only the next step up from Tylenol 3). And yet, it's what keeps me from regularly screaming when I exert myself in a way that stresses my right hip. I have 21 + 5 (a week plus a day and 2/3) left.

July 24: A list of detailed follow-up questions from the symptoms nurse, and my detailed reply. About 20 left.

July 25:
Hi [Azz],

I wanted to let you know that [doctor] sent a refill of the [med] to the Costco!

[Discussion of discontinuing another med]

And can I just say how much I enjoy your MyChart messages; I am always impressed at how in tune you are with your body.

Take care,
[Nurse]

Me: It's time to renew my prior auth again, alas.

Nurse: Aw dang!
No worries though, you gave us time (thank you by the way).
I have asked our billing specialist to help with this so we will call the Costco when we get it and then let you know.
Thanks,
[Nurse]

About 17 left.

***

July 26: About 14 left.
July 27: About 11 left.

***

July 28
Different nurse:
Hi [Azz],

We needed a new prior authorization on [med]. We received approval for this over the weekend. However, Costco has been unable to get this medication to process. They are in the process of calling your insurance to figure out where the issue lies.

[Image of prior auth as sent to doctor]

I will keep you updated

Thanks,
[Nurse]

Me: Thanks for the update!

***

A hair bleaching, trip through the shower, and time to drip dry later, I figure I will call Costco pharmacy and see what they've discovered, since they're still open and the symptoms care office is not.

[Call time: 6 minutes 54 seconds]

***

Me: I talked with darling [Don't Panic Pharmacy Assistant] at the pharmacy, who had my back the last time UHC was like this, and we had a real good chat about the state of things at UHC, and she is putting me through for 12 days so I can have some breathing room while you and she go and wrestle alligators. I will get that picked up tonight and we'll see when UHC can be made to see the light.


I drive to the pharmacy.
I receive my jar.
I tell our friend that I was so glad it was her who picked up when I called.
Don't Panic Pharmacy Assistant tells me that when she took my call about the prior auth on my med, the rest of the pharmacy was looking at her funny, because she swapped registers straight out of professional. "Is that a family member on the phone?" And yet again we had words about United Healthcare. Also, the pharmacy we used to go to is shutting down; she has this from her friend and ours, the guy with the Emperor's New Groove pin. He prefers to stay with that company, so he's not coming to Costco.

***

About 8 left, plus 12 days.
tcpip: (Default)
[personal profile] tcpip
A couple of weeks ago, I made initial preparations for an upcoming trip to South America and Antarctica with my friendly neighbour Kate R., and last week, payments were made for said voyage. In addition to the tour's planned route to Lima, Cusco, Machu Picchu, Buenos Aires, Punta Arenas, Ushuaia, the Antarctic Peninsula, the Falkland Islands, Montevideo, and Buenos Aires (again), we've added a couple of nights in Santiago. To say the least, the trip isn't cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but there is a great deal of ruggedness involved on the itinerary, and volume makes a difference as well. There are many practical tasks to be undertaken between now and December, including improving my questionable competence in the Spanish language. I have smashed my way through the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile introductory course in Spanish over the past fortnight, at least in part helped by an existing "fairly good" B1 level on Duolingo.

Eschewing the numerous optional activities offered by the tour company that are not really to my taste, I am scanning attractions that suit my inclinations toward museums, art galleries, archaeology, natural beauty, and, in the South American style, anything relating to their surrealist and magical realist literary traditions. I already have firmly marked out "La Chascona", built by Pablo Neruda, who, apart from winning the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature for his surrealist love poems, was also a career diplomat and politician. Another site of this ilk to visit will be the "Centro Cultural Borges" in Buenos Aires, dedicated to the mythologist, writer, and poet Jorge Luis Borges. This said, the pair of them come with certain controversies, as if often the case, the art and the artist make a troublesome union.

It seems fitting that so much of the trip will be an exploration of wondrous landscapes in reality, history, archeology, and the literary tradition of surrealism and magical realism, and, I readily admit, I will be drawing a great deal of this travel experience in writing my "Call of Cthulhu" project "Fragments of Time, Slices of Mind". As that is being written, I have decided to run a short campaign using "ElfQuest", based on the comic series by Wendy and Richard Pini with their palaeolithic and telepathic characters. In the most recent months, I have been quite involved in a game run by Andrew D., "Night's Dark Agents", which is a story involving modern European special operations teams versus vampires. Finally, on this trajectory and of marginal interest to anyone not deeply into the lore, I have picked up (at an incredibly cheap price) an unpunched copy of Chaosium's "Dragon Pass", close to fifty years old and in "almost new" condition.

Alas, new glucometer

Jul. 26th, 2025 05:40 pm
azurelunatic: "Sanity" St. John's Wort flower.  (the good drugs)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
As sent to my primary care, who I actually do like:

United Healthcare, in their omnibenevolent wisdom, sees fit to drop the One Touch Ultra from my preferred drug list as of September. They have offered several alternatives.

My primary goal with a glucometer is to not require a smartphone to do the simple task of marking whether any reading is before or after a meal. Out of their list of suggestions, the Contour Plus Blue meter meets my requirements and is not discontinued.

Joy. And happiness.


(This is the primary care who, upon learning which insurance I had, while we were trying to solve a problem, asked whether I was up to date on the then-recent news about their CEO, then said "You'd think they'd have learned their lesson." She's from Canada.)

[Edit: I am not currently in need of a CGM, I just want to be able to enter whether a reading is before or after a meal without involving an app.]

I put up my middle finger at him.

Jul. 25th, 2025 10:52 pm
azurelunatic: Sorry! You were rude to me so now you get no hotdog. (vintage sign) (rude)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
After Belovedest and I got our Home Depot errand finished, we went out to the car.

Belovedest: 6'4", white, short clipped brown hair, receding hairline, white Honeywell dome type N-95 mask, white T-shirt reading" Classically Trained" with a bunch of old-school video game controllers (but not any as old as the ones they started with), khaki colored cargo shorts, dark plastic slide type sandals.

Me: 5'6.5", white, shoulder length dark brown and variously blue fine 2c wavy hair held back with a grey rhinestone headband, violet eyeshadow with black liner behind blue frame rectangular glasses, black Breath of the Nature KF-94 mask, black chain necklace with spikes, silver star necklace, dark blue velour cardigan over a full length flowing embroidered black Holy Clothing dress, smartwatch with rainbow band, several medical bracelets and a medical necklace, some silver bangles with black, violet, and labradorite semiprecious gems, toeless black compression stockings, and a charcoal and violet pair of serious business support hiking sandals, just done driving a motorized grocery cart.

Him: sitting in his candy-colored Tesla, medium colored hair, with a full mountain man beard.

"You fuckin' weirdos," he muttered, deliberately loud enough to be heard inside the open windows of Belovedest's Toaster.

"Same to you, buddy!" I called as he started to pull out, waving my hand out the window.
tcpip: (Default)
[personal profile] tcpip
The past couple of weeks have resulted in some rather pleasing work-related events. The first followed a meeting with representatives of the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Western Australia which has resulted in me acquiring a test account and becoming the responsible person for approving projects that are seeking to upgrade from UniMelb's Spartan to systems like Setonix, which is the most powerful in the country and number 59 in the world (this time last year it was 28 - the landscape moves quickly!). The architecture is somewhat different to what I am used to (HPE Cray OS, HPE Cray MPI), so I'll be doing some additional learning myself and some hand-holding for researchers as they navigate and migrate data and code to this system. At the other end of the scale for the newcomers on Spartan I conducted two introductory workshops last week with some fifty attenedees. Quite a few times now, I have met researchers several years after taking my introductory courses who express their significant gratitude that I led them on the path of using high performance computing to process their data with efficiency, and hopefully, there will be a few of that nature from this cohort.

I often make the point of how supercomputers are utterly critical for current economic development with an ROI of 7:1 almost all through positive externalities, and literally save millions of lives. Could you imagine COVID-19 vaccines without HPC systems to do the simulations? We'd still be living under lockdown. Well, on a smaller scale, I was very proud to organise a researcher presentation last week for Research Computing Services (RCS) and Melbourne Data Analytics Platform (MDAP) with Dr Debjyoti Karmakar who is developing a non-invasive fetal monitoring device to prevent perinatal asphyxia for high-risk pregnancies. Dr Deb's presentation was very well received, even if he had to take a brief emergency call in the midst of it! He has been making extensive use of both the Spartan supercomputer and our Mediaflux-based data storage system, which dovetailed quite nicely with a virtual meeting a few days later with several representative from Princeton University who also are interested in integrating the HPC systems with Mediaflux, which is not as simple as it should be, but that is the nature of our work.

In my own research, I am still making good progress on studies in the psychology and sociology of climate change denial and have recently made contact with a long-standing member of the UNFCCC Accreditation Panel of Experts and Methodology Panel of Experts who shares this interest. Over the next two months or so, I am hoping to elaborate from this member's own interest on the psychological need for "belonging" and "club membership" which leads to climate science denial being strongly correlated with ideology rather than scientific evidence, and to draw a stronger correlation between this and vested interests in political economy. Ideological positions are usually strongly associated with political economy, so it should not surprise me to find such a connection, and when it comes to the damage done, there are those who are responsible, and one thing we do know from institutional and individual analysis, very few people like to take responsibility.

Wye

Jul. 26th, 2025 12:05 am
althea_valara: A screenshot of my main Final Fantasy XI character. It's a close up, and she's wearing the Teal Saio robe set which features a golden circlet. The character herself has black hair in a ponytail and brown eyes. (ffxi)
[personal profile] althea_valara
OKAY FOLKS! So, when the Jeuno raid dropped in FFXIV, I got strong nostalgia goggles for Final Fantasy XI, and returned to the game then. My goal? To replay the game's stories and document them so I wouldn't forget them again.

I am pleased to say that I have finished the first set of my documentation! It is here:

https://altheavalara.neocities.org/ffxi/bastok

And is a fan script of the Bastok city-state's rank 1 missions up to and including the rank 5 missions.

Now, this was originally the end of the base game's story, though they added additionally missions later. And each of the three city-states start out with different missions, but then there's a LOT of overlapping (some missions are exactly the same regardless of which city-state you're from.)

I'm proud of the fan script, but it's LONG, and not everyone wants to read dialogue. So I decided to write a summary. It's... also still long, but shorter than the actual game script. Plus it was a fun exercise to explain the story.

Anyway, it's under the cut. ENJOY!

Read more... )

Out of Road

Jul. 24th, 2025 11:03 pm
bc86s: A frame capture of Teru from a comic by BC86S (Default)
[personal profile] bc86s
Today's internet has gone the way of newspapers and radio: dead mediums that once had something, but died of ads and religion. Dead mediums could be brought back if they had something, but the bourgeois class always does this. The tracks show the same pattern as before: A medium of expression that once had things that resonated with people is turned into spammy mcspam, rendered useless by advertising, and is abandoned for the bigots to spread their ugly religion.

Advertising is what capitalist death smells like. Everything they touch turns to ads, religion, and finally dies.

That is the way the internet is going. We used to hope it would replace the bourgeois mass media, because it was empowering. The internet today isn't even called an internet anymore. It's referred to as some sort of cable box with a few channels called "social networks" ... The bourgeois class bought it all out. Google and others changed their search engines so that only a few websites ever show up in a search. It is becoming entirely ads and misinformation. A diseased mass of damned lies.

This time, there's nothing to replace the internet. No new medium to migrate to. And, this has been the story of our time. Of migrating away from ruined platforms. We spend maybe no more than several years on a platform, it gets popular, the advertisers track us down and we have to move to some place less popular where the imbeciles can't find us.

I hear the Marxists over at the RCA have revived newspapers, and even let working class people write articles in it.
jadelennox: Senora Sabasa Garcia, by Goya (Default)
[personal profile] jadelennox

This essay was alluded to and quoted from in several of the essays I read about Edna St. Vincent Millay. I correctly suspected I could find the journal issue (The Outlook, vol. 147 no. 10, 1927) on the Internet Archive, and I'm very glad I looked for it. Here's a couple-few excerpts.

This is also in reference to Sacco and Vanzetti.

Read more... )

If I could meet one person from history I've always said it would be Millay, but right now I'm so enamored of her prose I can't even think what I'd say to her. To be able to write like that...!

jadelennox: Senora Sabasa Garcia, by Goya (Default)
[personal profile] jadelennox

Conscientious Objector

I shall die, but
that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall;
I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba,
business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle
while he clinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself:
I will not give him a leg up.

Though he flick my shoulders with his whip,
I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where
the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death;
I am not on his pay-roll.

I will not tell him the whereabout of my friends
nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much,
I will not map him the route to any man's door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living,
that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city
are safe with me; never through me
Shall you be overcome.

jadelennox: Senora Sabasa Garcia, by Goya (Default)
[personal profile] jadelennox

I posted "Justice Denied In Massachusetts" in [community profile] poetry, and that led me into an absolute Millay spiral. (Also I ended up reading a few pieces like "On Edna St. Vincent Millay's 'Justice Denied in Massachusetts'", and I don't think I realized how many of the poems I already knew are Sacco and Vanzetti poems.)

I didn't feel like inflicting a whole bundle of Millay on everyone who reads [community profile] poetry but I don't mind inflicting her on all of you. So here goes.

Two Sonnets In Memory

(Nicola Sacco—Bartolomeo Vanzetti)
Executed August 23, 1927

As men have loved their lovers in times past
And sung their wit, their virtue and their grace,
So have we loved sweet Justice to the last,
That now lies here in an unseemly place.
The child will quit the cradle and grow wise
And stare on beauty till his senses drown;
Yet shall be seen no more by mortal eyes
Such beauty as here walked and here went down.
Like birds that hear the winter crying plain
Her courtiers leave to seek the clement south;
Many have praised her, we alone remain
To break a fist against the lying mouth
Of any man who says this was not so:
Though she be dead now, as indeed we know.

Where can the heart be hidden in the ground
And be at peace, and be at peace forever,
Under the world, untroubled by the sound
Of mortal tears, that cease from pouring never?
Well for the heart, by stern compassion harried,
If death be deeper than the churchmen say,—
Gone from this world indeed what's graveward carried,
And laid to rest indeed what's laid away.
Anguish enough while yet the indignant breather
Have blood to spurt upon the oppressor's hand;
Who would eternal be, and hang in ether
A stuffless ghost above his struggling land,
Retching in vain to render up the groan
That is not there, being aching dust's alone?

Riders on the what?

Jul. 22nd, 2025 04:22 pm
azurelunatic: Hacker-Kitty (aka Yellface) snuggling with Azz. (Hacker-Kitty)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
I have a locational song for Yellface.

There's a kitten on the bed.
There's a kitten on the bed,
Please pet her silly head,
This kitten on the bed.

There's a kitten on the sill.
There's a kitten on the sill,
So please don't speak her ill,
This kitten on the sill.

There's a kitten on the couch.
There's a kitten on the couch,
She just might be a grouch,
This kitten on the couch.

piano blather

Jul. 22nd, 2025 12:21 pm
queenlua: (Default)
[personal profile] queenlua
Clair Obscur got me to hit the keys again lol. it's been a while!

my piano background )

anyway, Clair Obscur has a lot of piano-centric tracks and i was like hell yeah, if they were designed for piano and sound not-too-bad surely that's doable right

(i say with the tone of a middle-aged guy who played football in high school like "YEAH I STILL GOT IT" 0.8 seconds before i have a heart attack from doing yard work too hard)

ANYWAY. pieces i've been piddling with:

nattering on about the pieces i've been playing )

anyway i've been wondering if i should get a one-off lesson with a piano teacher or something? the problem is i know that's not a market piano teachers really want to be in, right, like "hi i'm an annoying amateur who wants to show up a couple times, play the repertoire i want to play, and you give me some hot tips before i disappear again" is... not as appealing as a regularly-recurring student lol. but it's been so long since i had any formal instruction, and the formal instruction i had back in the day was... pretty mongrel-ish:

piano pedagogy )

anyway whatever. i'm having fun! that's the main thing! but i also like hearing myself talk, hence this post LOL happy tuesday
jadelennox: a sign which reads "GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS GORGEOUS LIBRARIANS"  (liberrian: girls girls girls)
[personal profile] jadelennox

I have started rereading the Amelia Peabody mysteries. It makes me sad that they've definitely had at least a light visit from the suck fairy [note], because I've never realised before how much Amelia is in love with Evelyn in The Crocodile On The Sandbank.

She's obviously got it bad for Emerson as well, but my goodness her jealous desire to spend her life with her beautiful Evelyn is overwhelming.


Note: Amelia was never supposed to be a reliable narrator, and her Victorian Orientalism was always to be read as historical. It's just that in modern conventions we -- correctly -- no longer feel it's okay to portray the likable heroines of (wholly unrealistic) historical romances with historically accurate racism. [back]

Midwinter Gatherings

Jul. 21st, 2025 08:28 pm
tcpip: (Default)
[personal profile] tcpip
On the weekend, I hosted a "Midwinter Day's Awakening", where once again I proved I can squeeze around 25 people into my apartment when dispersed over several hours. It has a cross between a "Christmas in July" southern-hemisphere provision of food and drink (lashings of mulled wine), and Elizabethan music (William Byrd, John Bull, John Bull et al), along with readings from Shakespeare, and the dulcet operatic tones of Angela L. (whose capacity to recite paragraphs from Shakespeare from memory is second to none). As featured attendees, the rodents Mayday and Mayhem were a big hit; "As I would serve a rat". But most of it was the outstanding company and wide-ranging, brilliant conversation that kept the event going from noon to the witching hour. As is often the case, I overcatered and now found myself in the enviable and challenging position of many delicacies. For example, what does one do with 1.5kg of Shropshire Blue cheese?

It was the second gathering of such nature recently as well; last week, I organised, through the Australia-China Friendship Society, a social dinner at Song's Dumplings, a glorious hidden gem in South Melbourne. Inexpensive, superb food in generous portions, and an amazing 1960s-style Chinese feature wall, the dinner was attended by a range of people from their 20s to their 80s. Everyone in the room was, of course, a bit of a worldly traveller, even the (relative) youngsters, and were able to discuss a variety of matters of Australia-China relations with great acumen, all whilst retaining a sharp sense of humour. I find it important that, with the exception of one person, the attendees of the ACFS dinner were completely different to the attendees of the Midwinter Day. I think it's important for a person's sanity to have diverse groups of friends - otherwise, you end up spending twenty years talking to the same people about the same things and wondering why you've ended up in an echo chamber.

As delightful as these two social occasions have been there is several other vectors in my life; Spanish studies for the impending trip, University teaching in supercomputing and researcher presentations, progress in my doctoral studies that cross climatological science and the psychology of denial, producer roles in the arts, poetry matters, and even some interesting news in the gaming hobby. Some of these will be raised in my next entry; I keep many irons in the fire of life, and most have been chosen well. But for now, gentle readers, I can only offer tantalising hints.
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