Reading

Entry tags:

beasties,
work

i've made enough of my own mistakes on my own

I'm home. I'm pretty well caught up on classwork; mostly what remains is a big group project and a final exam. And I need to finish writing the final report on my practicum. Weird to think this will all be in the rearview in three and a half weeks.

I'm still jobhunting, which remains a reliable depression trigger. Not worth talking about other than to note it's ongoing, on all counts.

Mr Tuppert has decided that what is best in life is to demand scritches/pets from the cat-mat next to the laptop spot on the table, while I'm eating and reading ye internette. Sometimes he also gets brushed, which he generally ... somewhere between tolerates and enjoys. Eventually he decides that he's had enough company and isn't it time for me to go be somewhere that's not in his space? He expresses this through the medium of lightly biting my hand. Not ideal but one works with what one has. Treats can redirect him away from being cranky, but that is not really a road I want to go down.

For now I keep sending out resumes. If I continue to get no bites by the end of the month I will have to regroup. In the meanwhile it's threatening to be early summer out there. Things as they currently are aren't so bad.

NATG XV, Standing

It's day 1 of the annual Newbie Artist Training Ground. I'm again attempting to morph Generation 4 My Little Pony cartoon entities into a somewhat realistic equivalent, this time with round pupils. Silly people are nuts for cat's eyes but horse eyes, not so much.

This year there will be only 15 tasks with 48 hours to complete each one. This first one is "Draw a pony standing // Draw a pony planting their hooves". I'm just phoning the first one in (I drew it last week) as I recover from the working weekend. If I can get my mojo alight, I'll try for the hoof planting thing.

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Sunset between storm fronts, en route to Publix and Walgreen’s.

Taken on 21 June 2024 at 20:33 US Eastern Daylight Savings Time, as I hurried up the street through the break in the rain.

My limited equipment does the scene nothing even remotely resembling justice: neither the gauzy rainbow-sherbet luminosity nor the grand theatricality of the skyscape, with the air of a vintage book illustration or a meticulously painted film backdrop. A detail I particularly like is the small dark cumulus cloud at bottom center that suggests a person astride a charging (pig? bear? huge dog?)

Entry tags:

so there

(Keanu-as-) Constantine 2!

"Peter Stormare Gives Update on ‘Constantine 2’; Keanu Reeves Reportedly Unhappy with Script" by Meagan Navarro (very similar articles seen on a number of other entertainment news sites).

"'But to do a sequel, the studios want to have, you know, cars flying in the air. They want to have people doing flip-flops and fighting action scenes,' Stormare said."

I think I agree with Keanu. We already have the John Wick franchise. IT IS AWESOME. But we don't need the Keanu-as-Constantine franchise to turn into another John Wick franchise.

I hope they resolve this soon because I am DROOLING at the chance to see Stormare play Lucifer again.

Current Mood: accomplished

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Photos: House Yard

These pictures are from Sunday, but it's after midnight, so the post says Monday.

( Walk with me ... )

Current Mood: relieved

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celiac test is negative

My GI doctor says the celiac test is negative. This is both unsurprising and a relief: the doctor ordered the test because of comorbidities, not because there were any signs of celiac, but celiac is common enough in people with collagenous colitis that it was worth checking.

I do still need to contact her office tomorrow and ask about that follow-up appointment.

State of the Swag

Back in May 2011 I had about 5 "blind bag" style ponies and the "Gift Set" of five slightly larger plastic My Little Ponies. Now I have so many that taking a group shot is way too much work for a result in which every pony is reduced to a speck of colour, showing nothing. Did you know that some of those books are for sale on eBay for $800 and up? Madness.

Flickr has removed the option of getting the URL for the "original" size of an uploaded picture and "view source" is not working, but "inspect" is... The hard part is finding the correct o.jpg URL in the wall of code. Oh I found it, probably by dumb luck: https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54555084133_9c55c9ba7a_o.jpg but it looks like I won't need it for the Equestria Daily submitter gizmo, but I might need it for posting pictures on FiMFiction (MLP fanfiction archive).

Entry tags:

links

amodei's warning

Upon due reflection, I think this Axios piece (which I read yesterday) deserves more attention:
https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/ai-jobs-white-collar-unemployment-anthropic

AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs — and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next one to five years, Amodei told us in an interview from his San Francisco office.

Don't panic. Strategize.

Entry tags:

Osprey nesting

I got to see an Osprey sitting on its nest!

brown and white raptor sits on a nest at the top of a wooden pole

When I came back later to show my partner, we talked to another birder who said this nesting platform has been there for a long time but in past years Ospreys have only stayed for a short time and not fledged any young. This year they've stayed much longer than usual so hopes are high for a baby! The other adult was perched in a tree nearby.

Ospreys eat only fish. (The platform is above a river.) It's interesting that small birds seem to realize they're no threat, and completely ignore them. While we were there, we saw a flock of blackbirds furiously mob and chase away a Cooper's Hawk while the Ospreys calmly looked on.

blood draw, etc.

I'm fine, as far as I know everyone's fine, but my trip to get blood drawn was more exciting than anticipated: the bus driver had to slam on the brakes to avoid either a bicycle or a pedestrian crossing in mid-block. She did that, checked to make sure that everyone on the bus was OK, then drove to the next corner, pulled over, and asked again if everyone was sure they were OK.

A few stops after that, someone asked me where he should get off the bus to get to "the little mall with Trader Joe's and MicroCenter." It took me a moment to figure out what he meant, because the bus we were on doesn't go there. So first I told him I wasn't sure, because this bus didn't go there, and then I started thinking about the problem. He said he wasn't good at directions, so I suggested a route that involved more walking but less chance of getting lost. I wound up signaling for his bus stop, and then telling him I was sorry, I'd forgotten they'd moved the bus stop, so [revised directions]. I should note, he didn't ask me for most of this, just what bus stop to use, and I was in the mood to do the extra bits.

The rest of the trip to Mt. Auburn to get blood drawn went smoothly. Once I got there, I had very little wait, and the phlebotomist did a very good job; I made a point of telling him so. On the way back, I stopped in Harvard Square to put more money on my Charlie card; buy and eat a slice of Otto's mashed potato and bacon pizza; and then went to Lizzy's to get Adrian a pint of non-dairy chocolate ice cream.

I was going to withdraw some cash from the ATM at the 7-11 at Comm Ave and Harvard Ave, but when I got there the screen said "windows 7. Press ctrl-alt-del to log in," which was literally impossible with the numeric keypad, so I just came home.

Entry tags:

animal: turtle

Turtle from the Kyzylkum desert

For more details about our trip to this desert (in Russian), see here: https://pilottttt.dreamwidth.org/445028.html

Entry tags:

reflection,
tools

back to school, 3/?

(These are out of sequence because I edited the pen post earlier but wrote most of this post before it.)

6 The looseleaf-paper textbook format that I've chosen for two classes is great. One went into a three-ring binder, with bookmarks for the necessarily open-book exams; the other used two binder rings, and I turned the pages carefully (it's very cheap paper). They came hole-punched! Would use similar format again, 9/10. What even is a glued binding---the USD 300+ option of textbook format---for 700-1100 roughly A4-sized pages that'll be superseded within a year or two, anyway.

7 I was amused to find that a company that advertised a few months ago for a technical product manager is a textbook purveyor. Their web interface uses <iframe>. To dodge their printing limitation (capped at 10 pages per day for individual human users but already ingested by AI), one may right-click to open the current frame in a new browser tab, then make pretty PDF, as though it were 25 years ago.

( shallowly comparative publisher stuff )

8 So far, my instructors have structured our exams to limit what AI-fueled cheating could accomplish. Good. It suggests recent pooling of resources and information amongst the teaching staff.

Entry tags:

wiscon,
wiscon 2025

Wiscon report

This year's Wiscon was all-online, and billed as a "gap year," with fewer program items than I'm used to, and no dealers room.

I went to two program items--a "US immigration law and worldwide fandom roundtable" and a panel on "the wild world of modern agtech and why isn't it showing up in current SF."

The roundtable was about as cheerful as you'd expect, with a lot of discussion of both past and feared legal difficulties in traveling to cons, and alternatives like smaller gatherings and online cons. Most of us thought that online wasn't as good as in person, but that it's significantly better than nothing. (There may be some selection bias here: people who didn't think an online con was better than nothing wouldn't bother attending.) And a couple of people noted that their choice has been online or nothing at least since 2020, for reasons like disability or budge that don't have much to do with Trump.

The panel on current and future agriculture was fun. Some of the "what SF is getting wrong" was about TV and movies, showing a garden plot that's much too small for the population it's allegedly feeding, and that the fictional future is even worse/stupider about monoculture than the real world today.

Other than that, I hung out on the Discord server. Most if not all of the program items were recorded, and will be available to convention members for a week after the end of the con, but I may not get around to watching any of them, even less interactive things like readings and the guest of honor speeches.

Entry tags:

5 Things Always Make a Post!

1. I participated in Science! This involved an MRI of my right calf while at rest and before, during, and after doing a minute of movement. I got paid, and used part of it to finally buy the Shape Note song book a college friend (from choir) worked on. The next step is to try and make at least a few of the monthly sings in my neighborhood this summer, while I'm off from regular choir.

( Read more... )

Current Music: “Underground” by David Bowie

Entry tags:

Burrowing Owl nesting site, taken 28 April 2024 at 19:24 EDT.

Taken last year, this is pictorial tax for my previous post; this little guy was one of a family headquartered in a vacant lot along one of my habitual shopping routes.

Note the ropes cordoning the space off, as well as the designated perch set up for the owls. In the upper background, across the path, is another staked-off owl nesting site; unusually for birds of prey, Burrowing Owls are social animals who sometimes form communities of multiple families.

(If I’ve slipped into Earnest School Essay Mode, it’s because this is stuff I myself am very much newly learning.)

Current Music: “Diggy Diggy Hole”.

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New neighbors!

Lizards have been somewhat fewer in the apartment complex than last year, and the other night I learned a possible reason: a Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia) couple have set up housekeeping on the back lawn next door! (No pictorial tax as yet: their nest, less than five feet from the curb, overlooks a back alley heavily travelled by garbage, service, and delivery vehicles as well as human cyclists and pedestrians—meaning that they’re probably experiencing botherance enough without amateur paparazzi. (1)

Burrowing Owls are regarded as local mascots and rigorously protected here; standard procedure upon discovering an inhabited burrow is to erect a little designated perch for the owls and cordon it off, crime-scene style, halting any human construction until the young have left the nest.

(1) Rule of thumb is that if the owls are reacting to your presence, you’re too close; the risk of attracting gawkers is one reason that doxxing Burrowing Owls nesting on private property is frowned upon around here. Schools, museums, and other such facilities, however, will encourage on-site nesting, observable by remote cam.

I’m finding varying accounts of how capable they are of digging their own burrows, but certainly the owls prefer the convenience of found housing when they can get it, not only taking over burrows constructed by other animals but occupying such human artifacts as PVC pipes; it’s quite possible to build artificial burrows to attract them.

Funny how nobody belongs to The Common Herd.

This eternal verity from

thanekos:

There's never yet been a definition of " ordinary people " without some kind of self-aggrandizing exclusion.

Context is a

scans_daily post on Nightwing #125 and law enforcement arms escalation.

Current Mood: busy

Entry tags:

animals,
hobby

Birdfeeding

birdfeeding is a community started on January 1, 2023. It's all about birdfeeding, birdwatching, and other topics relating to birds. It also touches on nature in general, and observations that may effect bird activity such as local weather. Both text and image posts are welcome.

Community resources include posts about birding events, nurseries that sell seeds or plants attractive to birds, bird identification apps, the benefits of birdwatching, and other useful materials. Check out the anchor posts from Three Weeks for Dreamwidth.

Recent posts:

Garden for Wildlife Month

Poem: "Birdsong" by Matt Merritt

Photos: House Yard

Photos: Prairie Garden

Baseball birds

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Heron takes flight

I accidentally walked up on this lovely heron at the lake today (US Midwest, small man-made lake that just happens to be close enough for me to walk to), and he was obliging enough to stand still until I had a chance to get out the camera! I see a lot of birds out there every year (right now we also have ducklings, a small geese population, and a lot of red-winged blackbirds), but this is the closest I've ever gotten to one of the herons, and I thought this community might like to see him.

a gray and black heron taking flight from a lake

a gray and black heron taking flight from a lake

Fairly sure it's a great blue heron, though I'm not a bird-identifying expert.

Entry tags:

playing games

avowed

Since I end up not posting about gameplay-completed computer games because I rarely approximate "completion," let's try a slice of one while I'm definitely not finished with it.

Avowed (Win/Steam, 2025) is a fantasy RPG evocative of the Elder Scrolls titles. It is surprisingly and rather thoughtfully accessible. Though it's very pretty, one may play it on a sturdy older machine without much framerate stuttering.

(Already we have footnotes! In reverse order: my venerable laptop has 32 GB of RAM. Many reviewers cite Oblivion, ES 4, but then they reveal they're too young to've met ES 3 = Morrowind, which I'd argue has the more meaningful callbacks. Apparently, Avowed shares a setting with Pillars of Eternity, which I haven't played and which the wiki summary links to Planescape: Torment.)

Alongside the planned-out accessibility, Avowed breadcrumbs its worldbuilding thoughtfully, too, as a former Polygon journalist explains in deliberately spoiling an early sidequest for analytical purposes. If you're very picky about spoilers: some quick, unremarked-upon visuals in the 10-min clip are from farther into the game, and they're too short to affect any playthrough realizations. (RIP Polygon, sold and many of its writers laid off since that clip was released.)

Further remarks on Avowed's gameplay have been shelved because of hand pain, the one thing so far that can keep my posts fairly short. Morrowind was a good friend 20+ years ago, and it's mostly pleasant for me to wander around Avowed. I'm so glad it doesn't require the use of a game controller.

For anyone Elder Scrolls-curious, see Walker's quick guide at Kotaku to getting Morrowind running nowadays, and a similar guide for Daggerfall (ES 2). And of all the Oblivion-rememberings I've read lately, I'd suggest The Guardian's as the most readable---just the first chunk of the linked page---although MacDonald and I disagree on playability and enjoyment.