kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
kaberett ([personal profile] kaberett) wrote2025-08-31 10:31 pm
Entry tags:

vital functions

Reading. Regula Ysewijn, McKinley Valentine, David J. Linden, Ann Leckie )

Skimmed several more pain-related papers.

... and I am also making some actual progress on catching up with my reading page! By which I mean "... I'm almost a whole entire week into May." I make no promises about how far I'm going to actually get.

Watching. 'nother episode of Farscape: S02E05 The Way We Weren't. Will concede that this made me go "... okay, yeah, I see why I needed to watch everything that went before, and damn it I am Having Some Feelings".

I have now sat or indeed wiggled my way through through Squish The Fish (Cosmic Kids' "baby yoga") in its entirety, it being a great favourite of The Toddler. I continue to have fascinating conversations about things that are easy for toddlers versus for grown-ups with the resident physiotherapist.

Cooking. A sweetcorn, tomato and runner bean curry, unearthed via Eat Your Books when I realised I had somewhat unintentionally got the nice organic veg box people to bring us runner beans (of which I am generally suspicious because of the texture of the pod).

Two loaves of actually vaguely competent bread (turns out scraping together the executive function to make the timing work... works better).

For breakfast this morning: the next recipe from the Welsh cakes book, being blackberry and apple splits (thereby using up some of the stewed apple in the freezer!). Could stand to have significantly less sugar than the recipe suggested and frozen blackberries very much want to make something that could only generously be called a purée rather than a soup, and definitely benefitted from being left to stand and cool before any attempt is made at the actual splitting, but A is very happy so I am content :)

Eating. Pizza Express takeaway to go with the Farscape on Tuesday evening when we were very, very tired.

Lunch in the café at Forty Hall this afternoon, featuring orange-and-lavender loaf cake!

Blackberries and onions and tomatoes and my mother's fig jam. Many very good food. Very pleased yes.

Exploring. Forty Hall! We went on an ADVENTURE this afternoon to get LUNCH there, which was slightly complicated by the part where breathing, everything is fine )

such that I spent a significant amount of time on the way both there and back again going "nope, need to stop" and spending a while lying on the grass staring up at the blue sky and the wispy white clouds through the various oak trees we passed. I have thoughts about this specific medical experience that I might write up elsewhen, BUT we WENT ON AN ADVENTURE and explored the farm shop and had lunch/afternoon tea in the café and walked around the walled garden and went home VIA THE (outskirts of the) BEAVER ENCLOSURE (thank you all, looking up that link means I have just discovered that TOURS NOW EXIST as of last month!!!) (more context: first beavers reintroduced to London after something like 400 years, back in 2022). Very very pleased to have managed this.

Creating. Hmm. I haven't been creating, as such, but I have definitely been consulting with A about some 3d prints to make sorting the in-game currency easier at Admin: the LRP!

Growing. Everything is tomatoes. I have not managed to get overwintering onions going; maybe tomorrow?

Rooted lemongrass potted up; let's see how long it takes me to kill it this time.

Observing. Alas no beavers, but lots of excellent birds, including two excursions (one solo, one partnered) to visit the cootlings :) The one that hatched last (by a considerable margin) is very definitely still no more than about half the size of its elder siblings!

andrewducker: (obey the penguin)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2025-08-31 10:14 pm

Life with two kids: A matter of probability

The kids take it in turn doing a variety of things, so that we don't have arguments every single night over who gets to choose teethbrushing things, who gets to be first to get put into pyjamas, who gets to check inside the parcel box when we get home, who gets to choose who gets out of the bath first, etc. This month, Sophia has odd numbered days and Gideon has even numbered days. Except that they swapped yesterday and today so that Gideon could have his birthday.

Except...that a few months ago we used the app Chwazi, where everyone puts their finger on the screen and then it picks someone (to be first player in a game, for instance). And Gideon loved it. So last weekend when I asked who should get out of the bath first he said "We'll play the finger game." - and I asked him if he'd be sad if he didn't win, and he said no, and then he and Sophia played it, and he lost, and I had to wash the hair of a sobbing child, who kept saying "I thought I would win!"

So this weekend, I asked him who was getting out of the bath first, and he said "Finger game!" and I said "Do you remember how sad you were?" and he said "Very sad!" and I said "So you should just choose." and he said "I have a plan, this time the person who loses will go first." And, of course, he won. And so, again, I had to wash the hair of a crying child who thought he'd found a way to beat probability.

All of which is to say that if you want to beat people at games of chance then I recommend 5-year-olds, who are both terrible at understanding it, and completely fail to learn from that.
jack: (Default)
jack ([personal profile] jack) wrote2025-08-31 11:01 am

August summary

> Social

Ely peacock's tearoom. Buying physical books! K birthday and 20,000 leagues under the sea.

Poly Meet. Main munch, DS munch.

Dinner with Rachel's family.

Capybaras and As You Like It with Tim, Pearl, and Tim's parents.

Run DnD (Lovely people. Second and fourth wednesdays, now changing to second and penultimate wednesdays).

Colin and Kirsten wedding blessing in Synagogue, and Ceilidh.

Mathsjam

Coton Manor Garden with Mum and Rachel to see FLAMINGOS!

Kerry and Simone BBQ.

Hosted grantchester meadows picnic. About 12 lovely people. A little swimming. Next time, clear directions to location, somewhere with shade, somewhere with less deep mud on river bottom.

Jamaican vege dinner at metamours'. So Clover, Mao.

> Creative Hobbies

Updates to open source running app Fitocracy. For my use an in PR. Add pace as well as speed. Add average speed current interval.

DnD planning. Experimenting with a scenario across a few sessions for less prep.

Musing on Space Opera RPG. Musing on Vampires Ball and coffee shop LARPs.

Made butterscotch brownies.

> Exercise

Managed several consecutive runs without much breathing difficulties. Feel like I'm getting a proper workout in my legs and body again.

2x jog to parkrun and back (not early enough to actually do parkrun). 1-2x lido.

> Countryside

Walking with Claudia

Pootled in river by Hauxton nature reserve

> Misc

Sharpen knife.

Dealt with roof patching people.

Watching fantastic four first steps. Reading many web serials, physical books. Playing Slay the Spire and Starvaders.
Solving LOK puzzle book with Rachel.

Struggle with WFH. Maybe need a break before trying again.
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
kaberett ([personal profile] kaberett) wrote2025-08-30 11:54 pm

small delights

  1. Went out to get mozzarella to have with lunch. Realised halfway down the hill that we could go all the way down the hill and watch the latest batch of cootlings. DID SO while eating raspberries. Excellent.
  2. Lunch also included home-made Tomatoes and Basils and Bread, and also separately a small baguette with fig jam courtesy of my mother and brie courtesy of Somerset via The Supermarket. V pleasing.
  3. Excellent chapter of book has introduced me to all kinds of things including pain asymbolia.
  4. I have DONE SOME ADMIN: THE LRP PAPERWORK. There is paperwork that is DONE and consequently in the RECYCLING. I have sent SO MANY E-MAILS. I am getting some really lovely responses! And soon there will be FEWER THINGS.
  5. Playing with pens! Continuing to really enjoy playing with pens.
mtbc: maze N (blue-white)
Mark T. B. Carroll ([personal profile] mtbc) wrote2025-08-30 03:07 pm
Entry tags:

Immigration and wealth

Living in Aberdeen, seeing the grand things around the city centre, it was notable that many of them dated from the Victorian era. I suspected it to be no coincidence that the Victorians saw the height of the British Empire's exploitation of its colonies. With the wealth of others, we built our shiny things. The bridge I walk on to work is nineteenth-century.

In the meantime, Britain declines. Local councils now struggle to provide even basic services. The health system is becoming several kinds of joke, despite the dedication of those working within it. Even those graduating with good undergraduate degrees typically can't get a job that pays well enough for them to be soon on the road to buying a house within reach of the job.

Furthermore, our population is aging. As we end up with fewer working people, and more people needing assistance, the situation can only worsen. Given that our history puts us somewhat in others' debt, I would like to imagine that we could kill two birds with one stone: welcome young families from the British Commonwealth so they can live and work here, providing services and paying tax, ideally building new towns and cities too, while probably also sending some money back home to their families.

Of course, what I describe is not far off the immigration policy we had between, er, around WWII and Margaret Thatcher. We've seen how the Windrush generation has been treated since. Further, populist anti-immigrant rhetoric abounds so we're not about to be saved by welcoming workers from overseas. So, what's the plan? We could make domestic families have lots of babies (not that they can afford anywhere to put them) or we can erode the health service far enough to stop the old people from living for too long.

Looking at the high prices, poor services, and xenophobia, I'd be happy to self-deport. However, for the meantime there are kids in education that I don't want to disrupt. Once everybody graduates, I wouldn't fault any of us for moving elsewhere. In the meantime, I can continue to hope and vote for change, both in the UK and the US.
mtbc: maze I (white-red)
Mark T. B. Carroll ([personal profile] mtbc) wrote2025-08-30 10:12 am
Entry tags:

Keyboard shortcuts and modifiers on the Mac

Given that I am so used to Linux, having a Mac for work always slows me a little. Especially, aspects of the window management and focus ongoingly impede my usual workflows. Another aspect is the keyboard shortcuts. To take a simple example, for cut, copy and paste, where I might be used to control X, C, V on other systems, of course I'm using this command key on the Mac. Except, within Emacs on the Mac, which seems to behave more as I'm used to. Of course, the Mac has a control key too, and it's a common modifier for some other purposes, so I'm often left guessing. For instance, if I recall correctly, in IntelliJ I do use control in pulling up a type hierarchy.

This switching of shortcuts between Linux, Mac, and Emacs-on-Mac is awkward partly because, as above, some of these are quite similar, and I don't yet see a system that helps me remember. Far easier for me was back when I used to use a Programmer Dvorak keyboard layout at work, and regular Qwerty at home, partly because those are just so clearly different. Also, probably it helped that I wasn't switching frequently, just a few times per day.
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
kaberett ([personal profile] kaberett) wrote2025-08-29 10:39 pm

more good things

  1. BREAD. I have coaxed myself back into giving it vaguely sensible timings, and shockingly it works better when I don't leave it to get sad and lonely.
  2. I slightly tripped and bought myself a writing slope last week? ... I am somehow surprised that it's being useful, specifically for when I'm being a horrible laptop + paperwork goblin on the sofa.
  3. SPEAKING OF WHICH, I am going through a bunch of tragically overdue paperwork for Admin: the LRP purposes (the person it is overdue to is... me) and found the answer to a mystery. (I am somewhat baffled that I apparently got the answer to this mystery at the second event this year and yet had completely forgotten that I'd managed anything of the kind until Just Now, two weeks before E4; I think I'm probably just going to chalk this up as another piece of evidence that my brain just... wasn't... working very well at all in June.)
  4. TOMATOES. Actually this is related to the Good Bread -- I had an excellent bread-and-butter-and-tomatoes-and-parsley lunch, which was delightful. The Purple Ukraine are so good and I like them so much.
  5. Today I have managed non-zero tidying, and the flat is marginally better and more usable for it. Mostly sorting out some of my gardening horrors on the patio; partly Wrangling The Dishwasher and some of the washing up; partly the aforementioned overdue paperwork, a consequence of which is putting a bunch of paper IN THE RECYCLING. Is good.
mtbc: maze J (red-white)
Mark T. B. Carroll ([personal profile] mtbc) wrote2025-08-29 07:24 pm
Entry tags:

Infectious commuting

After I got over my cold, I seemed to get another, for the following weekend, which would fit with my contracting them on my commuting on-site days. For my latest day on-site, I realized that, for Reasons, I used my ScotRail card to ride the Glasgow subway, and my Glasgow subway (really, Strathclyde Partnership for Transport) card for riding the ScotRail trains. I'll be going back in on Monday via a less inverted arrangement. I use smartcards rather than cellphone apps because I dislike being reliant on my telephone and its apps all working.
andrewducker: (Default)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2025-08-29 01:19 am
Entry tags:

Photo cross-post


Little smiley chap wanted to take a photo with me this morning.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
kaberett ([personal profile] kaberett) wrote2025-08-28 10:38 pm

some good things

  1. A coaxed me out of the house for lunch; they'd been intending to spend the day in the office, but Shenanigans ensued such that they needed to pick something up from home and also the office canteen had run out of the veggie option, and by this time the triptan was more-or-less working. So we had zapiekanka at the market in the sunshine, and lo, it was good.
  2. I apparently somehow managed to duck into the BHF charity shop right before it started raining heavily, and upon reemerging from poking at homeware and books at the back was startled to find that it was no longer raining heavily, but that everything was suddenly and inexplicably (at least briefly at least to me, in my migraine-addled state) damp.
  3. I have finally picked up Lake of Souls (Ann Leckie), which I absolutely pre-ordered and absolutely was very excited about but am only now getting to, and I am having A LOT OF FEELINGS. SO many feelings.
  4. A brought me ice cream from the freezer. Raspberry ripple, which I was inexplicably in the mood for, and the hazelnut + hazelnut brittle.
  5. ... and in fact I am going to go and be in a sleepy pile. Yes. That can be thing number five.
hilarita: stoat hiding under a log (Default)
hilarita ([personal profile] hilarita) wrote2025-08-28 03:34 pm
Entry tags:

so.. almost completely random question:

If you are a fountain pen person, what stupidly expensive pen (let's say, for the sake of this argument, one that costs more than about £250) would you want to buy?
fanf: (Default)
fanf ([personal profile] fanf) wrote2025-08-28 02:39 am

strongly typed?

https://dotat.at/@/2025-08-28-strongly-typed.html

What does it mean when someone writes that a programming language is "strongly typed"?

I've known for many years that "strongly typed" is a poorly-defined term. Recently I was prompted on Lobsters to explain why it's hard to understand what someone means when they use the phrase.

I came up with more than five meanings!

Read more... )

kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
kaberett ([personal profile] kaberett) wrote2025-08-27 10:42 pm
Entry tags:

[food] today's adventures in EYB indexing: The National Trust Book of Puddings

Subtitle 50 irresistibly nostalgic sweet treats and comforting classics... featuring "Trinity burnt cream":

Also known as crème brûlée, old recipes for versions of this pudding are found in various parts of Britain and Europe. Its association with Trinity College, Cambridge goes back to at least the nineteenth century.

Despite my documented interest in crème brûlée and, you know, having grown up in Cambridge, I had somehow never come across this before?! And yet it's inexplicably clearly attested on Wikipedia. Nominally this means I should probably be indexing the "Ethnicity" of the dish as "English" as well as "French" but, frankly, je refuse, and even Trinity have the grace to say:

The story that crème brûlée itself was invented at the College almost certainly has no basis in fact.

It's not even like the National Trust is making a point of having all the recipes in this book be of British origin! Clearly-identified non-British culinary sources include Italy, Latvia, and Russia! (... the Welsh- and Scottish-origin puddings have headnotes mysteriously quiet on said origins, though.) AND YET. Crème brûlée! Trinity! Really.

kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
kaberett ([personal profile] kaberett) wrote2025-08-26 10:46 pm

possibly the most constructive thing I have actually done today is hunt tomatoes

-- no wait that's a lie, I also investigated an apple tree. (Unremarkable eating apples.)

But! Tomatoes!

a lap full of tomatoes, in reds and oranges and greens and golds and purpleish

Pictured varieties: Purple Ukraine, Blue Fire, misc green stripey, Orange Banana, Moneymaker. Buried so you can't see it is a Feo di Rio Gordo. I did not get the whole rainbow I was aiming for this year (alas the Yellow Pearshaped all failed, as did the Known green stripey), but I'm nonetheless pleased!

yrieithydd ([personal profile] yrieithydd) wrote2025-08-26 09:43 pm
Entry tags:

Sermon at Out@Greenbelt Eucharist

So a few weeks ago - 4th July to be precise, I was contacted about whether I was going to Greenbelt and whether I'd be interested in being involved in the OUT eucharist at Greenbelt. I said I'd be there, and was interested, though I'd have to arrange the time with my volunteer team leaders. On 10th July, this developed further into being asked to preach. After some time, and wibbling and talking to various people and remembering a TSSF principle, I eventually agreed.

I wrote what I could and printed what amounted to two drafts, neither of which really worked, on Tuesday evening before leaving for GB on Wednesday. On Saturday morning I sat down with the drafts and scribbled over them and came up with something that made more sense, but had interesting navigation! People have said good things about it (and not just the people I knew, and not just to me) and a couple asked for the text, so I've tried to type up my notes. I ad libbed slightly in places and I've tried to add the one I remember best in, but I haven't tried to remember how I expanded the bullet points about the state of the world and the church.

The readings were "verses from Isaiah 43" (actually Isaiah 43:1-4, 14-21) and Luke 19:29-40

Text under cut )