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Things
Jul. 17th, 2025 11:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vassBooks
Read Cliff Jerrison's short story 'Question 3', which is (as the author himself writes), "an ongoing mood".
Finished Freya Marske's A Power Unbound. Quoting my own reply tosovay in a comment on an earlier post, after finishing the trilogy: "it tries to do some interesting things with the nature of power and privilege, with reference to land ownership, aristocracy, cultural heritage, but I'm not sure how well it stuck the landing. I get the feeling the author was wrestling a bit with the politics of the system she'd set up, the implications of those politics, and the fact that she had to wrap up an Edwardian period fantasy romance trilogy with a happy ending."
The ending I got was fine for a romance novel, which is what this is. But I wanted more exploration of what the denouement really changed for everyone, and what I wanted would have been incompatible with that romance novel ending.
Started reading R.A. MacAvoy's The Lens of the World. I'm about 3% through and found it a lot rapier than I was expecting, although considering that it was published in 1990 I should have braced myself.
Comics
Tense about current events in Dumbing of Age and Questionable Content, for different reasons. Re QC, what I haven't seen mentioned yet in text is that the worst Anh's father can do to her is not simply cut off her allowance. [after the cut, spoilers and also psychiatric abuse triggers]
( more )
Fandom
Beta-read the latest chapter of![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
Drel_Murn's 'Wheel and turn'. First time I've betaed in a while.
Games
Unlocked Ascension 5 for all four Slay the Spire characters. The last of them was the Silent, tonight, with a lot of luck, Donu and Deca, and Corpse Explosion my belorpse explosion.
Tech
Finally got a secondhand laptop to replace the one which died. I've been spending a lot of time trying to get it in a condition in which I'll be comfortable using it.
Unfortunately, I made the decision that I'd try switching to Wayland, which necessitated exploring a lot of different utilities, and... yeah.
The most ridiculous shark I encountered, however, was not a Wayland problem but rather a font installation problem. In that when I installed font-awesome (a font package that is mainly symbols, often used for decorative purposes, e.g. pseudo-icons in one's status bar) none of the few fonts I had thus far installed had configured themselves as a default font family. font-awesome... did.
So all of a sudden my app launcher, my terminal windows, and some websites (including the Arch wiki) were displaying in font-awesome.
Some features font-awesome has:
- ligatures which convert the string "OSI" to the Open Source Initiative logo, "windows" to the Windows logo, and of course "at" to an @.
Some features font-awesome does not have:
- visible colons, virgules, or periods
Did I mention this was happening in my terminal?
The solution was just to install another font that considers itself a default font family (e.g. DejaVu) and clear the font cache. I managed to find a post by someone on Reddit who had the same problem, same font, same window manager, in a different operating system (Void.)
Links
Nature
Saw a red fox crossing the road last week.
Read Cliff Jerrison's short story 'Question 3', which is (as the author himself writes), "an ongoing mood".
Finished Freya Marske's A Power Unbound. Quoting my own reply to
sovay in a comment on an earlier post, after finishing the trilogy: "it tries to do some interesting things with the nature of power and privilege, with reference to land ownership, aristocracy, cultural heritage, but I'm not sure how well it stuck the landing. I get the feeling the author was wrestling a bit with the politics of the system she'd set up, the implications of those politics, and the fact that she had to wrap up an Edwardian period fantasy romance trilogy with a happy ending."The ending I got was fine for a romance novel, which is what this is. But I wanted more exploration of what the denouement really changed for everyone, and what I wanted would have been incompatible with that romance novel ending.
Started reading R.A. MacAvoy's The Lens of the World. I'm about 3% through and found it a lot rapier than I was expecting, although considering that it was published in 1990 I should have braced myself.
Comics
Tense about current events in Dumbing of Age and Questionable Content, for different reasons. Re QC, what I haven't seen mentioned yet in text is that the worst Anh's father can do to her is not simply cut off her allowance. [after the cut, spoilers and also psychiatric abuse triggers]
( more )
Fandom
Beta-read the latest chapter of
Games
Unlocked Ascension 5 for all four Slay the Spire characters. The last of them was the Silent, tonight, with a lot of luck, Donu and Deca, and Corpse Explosion my belorpse explosion.
Tech
Finally got a secondhand laptop to replace the one which died. I've been spending a lot of time trying to get it in a condition in which I'll be comfortable using it.
Unfortunately, I made the decision that I'd try switching to Wayland, which necessitated exploring a lot of different utilities, and... yeah.
The most ridiculous shark I encountered, however, was not a Wayland problem but rather a font installation problem. In that when I installed font-awesome (a font package that is mainly symbols, often used for decorative purposes, e.g. pseudo-icons in one's status bar) none of the few fonts I had thus far installed had configured themselves as a default font family. font-awesome... did.
So all of a sudden my app launcher, my terminal windows, and some websites (including the Arch wiki) were displaying in font-awesome.
Some features font-awesome has:
- ligatures which convert the string "OSI" to the Open Source Initiative logo, "windows" to the Windows logo, and of course "at" to an @.
Some features font-awesome does not have:
- visible colons, virgules, or periods
Did I mention this was happening in my terminal?
The solution was just to install another font that considers itself a default font family (e.g. DejaVu) and clear the font cache. I managed to find a post by someone on Reddit who had the same problem, same font, same window manager, in a different operating system (Void.)
Links
- UK signal boost: this post by kaberett about PIP/UC reform (the House of Lords is debating it next Tuesday)
- Five Lego walkers versus seven different obstacles. They are all very good robots and doing their best.
- New Ann Leckie book on the way! Set in the Radch!
Nature
Saw a red fox crossing the road last week.
june booklog
Jul. 13th, 2025 11:57 amwychwood( 53. Beautiful Just - Lillian Beckwith ) I don't love this any more, but I can see why I did.
( 54. The Whig Supremacy - Basil Williams ) Moving into ever more familiar territory...
( 55. A Tale of Time City, 56. Eight Days of Luke, 61. The Game, and 62. Dogsbody - Diana Wynne Jones ) Apparently I have strong feelings about Dogsbody still. But these were all very readable, if in some cases rather slight.
( 57. A Problem for the Chalet School and 58. The Chalet School Triplets - Elinor M Brent-Dyer ) Always a pleasant time re-reading these.
( 59. A Sorceress Comes to Call - T Kingfisher ) Kingfisher is just generally reliable for me, and this is not an exception.
( 60. The Incandescent - Emily Tesh ) I enjoyed this a lot, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing where Tesh goes next! Recommended to anyone with an interest in pedagogy and school stories; what a great combination that definitely should be more common.
( 54. The Whig Supremacy - Basil Williams ) Moving into ever more familiar territory...
( 55. A Tale of Time City, 56. Eight Days of Luke, 61. The Game, and 62. Dogsbody - Diana Wynne Jones ) Apparently I have strong feelings about Dogsbody still. But these were all very readable, if in some cases rather slight.
( 57. A Problem for the Chalet School and 58. The Chalet School Triplets - Elinor M Brent-Dyer ) Always a pleasant time re-reading these.
( 59. A Sorceress Comes to Call - T Kingfisher ) Kingfisher is just generally reliable for me, and this is not an exception.
( 60. The Incandescent - Emily Tesh ) I enjoyed this a lot, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing where Tesh goes next! Recommended to anyone with an interest in pedagogy and school stories; what a great combination that definitely should be more common.
Embodiment requires sacrifice
Jul. 10th, 2025 11:00 amsporky_ratStupid little walk for stupid little brain chemicals in stupid heat.
It was either heat or humidity, so heat.
i might get a manned moon flyby for my birthday!
Jul. 8th, 2025 06:59 pmwychwoodI have indeed played lots of ME:A (up to 34% completion, apparently). Also done many other things but all while lacking any desire to put any effort into documenting them! However, I have visited the Stourbridge Glass Museum with Miss H last Thursday, which felt more art-gallery-ish than really museum-y to me, but did have some lovely glass things. There's a big historic gallery, which has lots of... glasses and vases and things, mostly in categories by technique and with plaques that talk about the local connections and the like, and a big 20th century and contemporary gallery with lots of cool and fun modern art glass, with some glasses and vases and the like as well. They also have a "hot shop" with actual glassmakers working, which was my favourite part. I bought a ladybird suncatcher which is hanging on my window and looking very cheerful even behind the slatted blind.
Then on the Saturday we went to Thinktank, the science museum, to see the Space Vault exhibition and also TWO shows in the planetarium because we are suckers for a planetarium. Unlike the Leicester Space Centre we did not get to vote on any trivia questions, but we did learn about summer stars and also the Artemis project. The exhibition itself was full of space-and-astronaut objects that mostly weren't actually very exciting (a piece of broken insulation! a manual! some gloves!) but they did a good job of contextualising the artefacts and adding audio and visual components (although the audio was frankly not loud enough to actually listen to, given the volume in the rest of the floor) and I enjoyed myself. Although, as with last time I went to Thinktank, it was obscenely hot and humid, so I started dragging fairly quickly; possibly I am cursed.
Otherwise I have mostly been preparing for GRADUATIONS, mostly the part where I have to be on campus every day. I made what eventually turned out to be twelve portions of pasta bake, now largely filling my freezer, to be eaten for lunches etc, and attempted to mentally adjust to the prospect. Today was the first day, and so far I have done one ceremony (the first of the season!); I'm signed up for a second already, so we'll see how it goes...
Then on the Saturday we went to Thinktank, the science museum, to see the Space Vault exhibition and also TWO shows in the planetarium because we are suckers for a planetarium. Unlike the Leicester Space Centre we did not get to vote on any trivia questions, but we did learn about summer stars and also the Artemis project. The exhibition itself was full of space-and-astronaut objects that mostly weren't actually very exciting (a piece of broken insulation! a manual! some gloves!) but they did a good job of contextualising the artefacts and adding audio and visual components (although the audio was frankly not loud enough to actually listen to, given the volume in the rest of the floor) and I enjoyed myself. Although, as with last time I went to Thinktank, it was obscenely hot and humid, so I started dragging fairly quickly; possibly I am cursed.
Otherwise I have mostly been preparing for GRADUATIONS, mostly the part where I have to be on campus every day. I made what eventually turned out to be twelve portions of pasta bake, now largely filling my freezer, to be eaten for lunches etc, and attempted to mentally adjust to the prospect. Today was the first day, and so far I have done one ceremony (the first of the season!); I'm signed up for a second already, so we'll see how it goes...