Network

(meanwhile at home)

Our long-delayed front porch and mudroom project finally began construction while we've been away, and within a couple of days they notified us that they'd found dry rot and more asbestos. This house, I swear.

As God is my witness, I will have a mudroom this winter!

So, the way I grew up I'm actually shockingly good at deep cleaning

I'm even not bad at decluttering, so long as it's okay to literally throw everything out. (They'll sooner or later send another copy of that late bill, don't worry! And you can always order another birth certificate, probably.)

But I'm not so good at routine maintenance. Does anybody have any already set up daily/weekly/monthly/periodically checklists for various areas of the house that they can recommend?

Entry tags:

wales

Yesterday (the "today" of yesterday's post) was great!

A beautiful hike in unexpectedly beautiful weather

The morning dawned cloudy with intermittent bursts of rain. For some reason all we wanted for breakfast (aside from coffee with that delicious local milk) was toasted laverbread with butter and jam! The bread is crumbly and hard to slice, so we sometimes ended up with more chunks then slices, and there's something in it that makes my tongue tingle, but it tastes good and it's exceedingly Welsh and I so rarely have butter and jam, it's just not usually my thing, so it was a big treat. But all that beautiful sausage and bacon and the eggs (two of their hens lay blue eggs! Four of our six eggs are blue!) went unloved.

Mike came by to say hi and check in, and showed us radar on his phone suggesting that the rainburst that had just passed would actually be the last one; the official BBC forecast was for (possibly thundery) showers off and on all day, but the radar showed nice clear skies coming in from the west. (He said that he often finds the Irish forecast more useful than the British one, since that's where the weather's coming from.) So we set off walking around noon. We asked him and Christine, who also stopped by on her way to tend to the chickens, what the best way to get from here to the coast path would be, and they gave us directions northward on the road, past a cemetery and a small named settlement/farmhouse and a church that was attacked by about 1400 French soldiers in the last ever invasion of the British Isles, in 1797. The soldiers mostly absconded and/or got drunk, one local woman is reputed to have rounded up eight of them while armed only with a pitchfork, the invasion fell apart, and a peace treaty was signed on the site of the pub we had dinner at last night. One of the local attractions that we will not make time to see is a tapestry depicting the battle, modeled after the Bayeaux Tapestry.

Anyway, after the church Mike's directions degenerated into "I don't know, find a path, follow your instincts!" Which was reasonable, considering that the coast path we were aiming for runs, you know, along the coast, and we could see the water from the churchyard, so when we found a path marked as a public footpath leaving the road and heading toward it, we took it, and indeed it shortly intersected the Pembrokeshire Coast Path. (Wales has a marked and maintained footpath/hiking trail running the entire length of its coast, which is amazing.)

The B&B is north-northwest of the town, and we went north to reach the coast path, so our plan was to turn right and follow it east and south again, back to the town's harbor, and thence home. And Mike was right; the weather was absolutely beautiful, sunny with clouds but never even a threat of rain, and although it was sometimes briefly quite windy, it was always blowing onshore from the water. Which was a good thing, because a good chunk of this part of the path runs along high rocky cliffs over the ocean. Signs on some of the gates leading from farmers' fields warn, "CLIFFS KILL. Stay on the path," and indeed, as I think Buffy once said, "Fall down there, be dead a long time." I never felt genuinely in danger, the footing was generally good although sometimes a steep scramble up or down and we each have a good hiking pole, but I did once make the mistake of imagining what falling would feel like, and I kind of freaked myself out. I was glad when the path moved away from the cliff edge again. And we never admired scenery while walking; we always stopped first and then looked around. I would definitely not want to do that walk in stormy weather.

The path wound up and around, edged with gorse and other brush, and giving us some great views of waves hitting the cliffs, and places where the cliff had calved into the sea. As well as fields on the inland side, of course, but we didn't actually see any livestock in them. (Though at times there was certainly a lot of manure.) We saw the big ferry making its way from Fishguard Harbor toward Ireland. We stopped now and then to eat handfuls of trail mix and drink water and watch seagulls soaring far below us.

And at one point, when we'd been walking for maybe three hours in all, we were startled by a call from behind us of "Track!" and four trail runners overtook us! We're in boots, with poles and a pack and layers (including rain gear just in case, because hello), slogging along the hilly and precipitous terrain (happily! But slogging!), and they come cheerfully loping past us in Lycra shorts and t-shirts! We got out of their way, everybody said hello as they went by, and as the last guy passed me I said, "well, we're impressed!" and he called back something cheerful-sounding in Welsh. It definitely put our sense of trekking accomplishment in perspective!

Eventually we hit the outskirts of town, and descended on roads to the harbor. At the point where we left the coast path (and the coastal national park) a sign noted that, to control plant growth and encourage biodiversity, the area was being grazed by ponies! but unfortunately we didn't see any.

We didn't want to keep asking Mike for rides into and out of town, but we also didn't want to climb the steep hill back to the B&B late in the evening (extremely narrow road with no pedestrian walkway, after dark; also we just, you know, didn't want to climb the steep hill back to the B&B). So we hit a fish and chip shop on the harbor and got two huge pieces of fresh-fried cod, and also a large order of chips to share. I was the one who said "let's split a large," and holy shit a regular would have done; that order of chips would feed four. We sat in the sun on a concrete ramp leading down to the water (not the most comfy, but the benches in the actual waterside park area were exposed to the very strong wind) and managed to finish our fish and put at least a visible dent in the chips. Somewhat to my surprise, we were not harassed by seagulls! One or two landed fifteen or so feet away and eyed us consideringly, but never actually tried for our food. Very polite. So that was our early dinner, and we wouldn't need to go out later in the evening.

We also picked up some pies (one beef and onion, one chicken and mushroom, one Cornish pasty) and a couple of beers to bring back for the next day's dinner (tonight's), because today's weather was predicted to be abominable and we didn't want to have to go out.

We walked out on a long mole/breakwater into the harbor, just to see the water and the land from a different angle. I was amused that, although it was completely wide and firm and level and there was a wide flat path along it with lots of other people strolling out (and two teenage boys fishing off the far end), a sign at its foot warned that the breakwater was not designed or intended for pedestrian access, walk at your own risk; like, they disavow this completely easy and innocent stroll, but the cliff trail is public access?

There is a town bus that sometimes stops a hundred meters from the B&B (and that last hundred meters is virtually level; the bus covers all the steep climb), but trying to figure out exactly where we could catch it and which of its runs went to where we'd want and not somewhere else had defeated me in the pre-trip research. And if you think that sounds silly, here is a map of the bus route (the long thin thing sticking out is the breakwater we walked out on):

A map of a bus route that looks like a demented spiderweb

But Google Maps' transit info feature came to my aid, informing me that we could catch one going where we wanted in about half an hour. And waiting for the bus was a much more attractive idea than struggling on the road up the hill; we'd been out for almost five hours, and we were full and tired. So we hiked uphill a couple of blocks to what Google indicated was the right corner, and settled in to wait.

After a while a man came out of the pub across the street and called out to us that we'd be waiting quite a while, and we assured him that we knew that. He was waiting for the same bus in the opposite direction; it was going to arrive from the southwest, pick him up and bring him northeast, then reverse direction back to us, pick us up, and bring us west and north. It was very reassuring to have him confirm that it was coming! He also told us the fare: 95p each. I was confident that we'd be able to tap a credit card, since all the buses do that, but I asked him, just in case, and he said he wasn't sure, and actually came across the street to give us two pounds! So nice of him! But I knew I had two pound coins in my bag, and was digging them out. And when the bus arrived for him, he called out to us, before boarding, that he would tell the driver that we were waiting to be picked up on her return.

So he did, and we were, and we enjoyed the feeling of the bus laboring its way up the hill instead of us doing it. Then there were hot showers and a nice quiet evening, with cups of tea. It is very quiet here at night so far out of town (and, I mean, behind two-foot-thick walls).

That was yesterday, and I will post this before starting to try to write up today!

City Mapper

There’s a transit app called City Mapper, that I used to use. (For values of “used to” ending very emphatically this morning.) It showed a variety of transit routes based on where you were, comparing them with each other and with biking and walking. It plans a route based on the schedule and then uses GPS to say how far away the next buses are coming. Useful for “this bus is crowded, I’ll take the next one in 5 minutes” or “the next one won’t be for half an hour.”

This morning I got up early to get to Somerville because there were things I wanted to do in the attic before meeting people at 11. Thanks to City Mapper, I just wasted an hour trying to make a bus connection that does not exist. The bus is not going through that neighborhood today. That’s fine, I hope it’s enjoying itself at the block party on the other end of town, but I want the transit app to know where it is. It is not fit for purpose.

Entry tags:

scavengers reign

(no subject)

We watched Scavengers Reign because it was enthusiastically recommended to

genarti as fun animated science fiction about being stranded on an alien planet with interesting alien biology. Which is true! This is not incorrect! Not Mentioned was the extent to which it is also very definitely lovingly animated body-and-survival horror ..... every time we watched we checked in with each other like 'still good to proceed? not too much eugughghhhhhh?' '[grimly] let's watch at least one more episode and see what happens,' and in this way we eventually crawled through all twelve episodes.

NONETHELESS I do think it was very good, once we acclimated to the eugughghhhhhh factor. (I ended up higher on it than

genarti did, in some part because I liked the ending for my favorite character better than she liked the ending for hers.) The first episode introduces you in media res to the several sets of people stranded on this planet that the show will be following:

- Sam and Ursula, an older man and younger woman traveling together, who've developed a plan to bring down their heavily damaged ship, the Demeter,, still in orbit around the planet with most of the crew in cryosleep; Ursula is fascinated by the planet and interested in learning more about it, while Sam is laser-focused on Getting Out Of There
- Azi, a motorcycle butch who's been in crop-growing survival mode supported by (a) Levi (unit), a pleasant manual labor robot whose behavior is becoming increasingly altered by some kind of planetary growth thriving in its innards
- Kamen, alone and still trapped in his escape pod, on the verge of death until he encounters a telepathic creature that brainwashes him into symbiotic/parasitic collaboration, and yet somehow his biggest concern is still His Divorce

Over the course of the story, we learn through flashbacks more about who these people were on the Demeter and what happened to strand them on the planet, while they cope (or don't) with the various challenges of the planet and the hope of escape provided by the Demeter. The real fears that the show evokes, IMO, are isolation and transformation -- being, yourself, transformed without your knowledge or consent, or, perhaps even worse, seeing your only companion changing into something unrecognizable and untrustworthy. These are things that scare me personally very much and so I often found this a very scary show! But -- like Annihilation or Alien Clay, the two other stories that Scavengers Reign reminded me of the most -- it also evokes the flip side of this fear, the beauty and wonder of the transformative and strange. The animators loved animating these weird alien ecosystems.

You can watch the trailer here:

Watch on YouTube

(The trailer is very clear and accurate to the amount of body horror in the show. From this you will be able to tell that we did not in fact watch the trailer before we began the show itself.)

A second season was planned, but has not been ordered and may never be made; IMO the first season does stand as complete but I would very much like to see the second season and I hope it happens.

Entry tags:

ice hockey

Milestone

Cambridge Kodiaks B played our first WNIHL game yesterday, against Invicta Dynamics in Gillingham. We had seven players making their WNIHL debut, including me. As team manager I'm delighted, as newbie player I had pre-game nerves for the first time in months, and the biggest smile on my face afterwards.

We lost, but that's almost not the point. Here's a team I didn't even think would exist three months ago, and we've made it happen, creating opportunities for players to grow and develop. One game down, 19 to go (and a playoff game against the North division next May to aim for ...)

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The Friday Five on a Sunday

What is your favourite fruit?
Guava. Close behind are mango, papaya, and sweet sop. I will never turn down a lychee, a peach, a plum, a satsuma, or any berries. Basically, all the fruit.
What is the last book you read?
Alan Tribble’s “The Space Environment: Implications for Spacecraft Design”. It was a real page-turner. Some good example problems, anyway.
Do you like any of your school photos?
No, not really. My smiles in them are all pretty fake.
Do you ever blow-dry your armpits to get the deodorant to dry quicker?
I’m pleased to announce that this has never, ever occurred to me.
What was the last film you watched?
No, shan’t (tell you).

(no subject)

Happy birthday,

brewsternorth!

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Tumblr meta on 90s TV

I fell down a rabbit hole this evening reading the comment reblogs on this Tumblr post on 90s TV. I ended up deciding to copy some of them here to save them from the inevitable linkrot and post decay.

https://www.tumblr.com/laylainalaska/794609119262900224

Original post:

I don't know what those '90s sci Fi TV writers were putting in their shows but I wish they'd start doing it again

#they de-escalated the stakes every once in a while so that you can see what the characters are like when they're not under duress
#they made statements about the world through allegory
#they invested in depicting developing friendships and relationships between their characters
#they assumed that their audience was paying attention to the screen and wanted to be there
#and that their audience has enough intelligence to follow narrative clues and even sometimes to predict the ending
#dont even get me started on this i will go ALL DAY

I don't agree with every single point in every reblog. I also think there's quite a bit of TV now that still does most or all of this, though usually it's the dramas and procedurals rather than scifi, and a lot that's not great about 90s and earlier TV. But there is also a lot of food for thought in here, so I just threw a bunch of the comments into this post to mull over.

The asterisks separate out each different reblog; basically each is its own separate comment, generally in dialogue with the original post rather than each other.

Thoughts are welcome!

( Under the cut )

went to a concert

I went out to a concert on Saturday evening. It was a local community orchestra doing Baroque pieces with a chamber ensemble, and I'll have more to say about that after my review of it is published in the Daily Journal next week.

Here I wish to point out that this is the first time I've left home for anything other than a grocery etc. run or a medical appointment in over a month, since August 10. That it's slow season for concerts isn't the reason for this, it just made it easier. The reason is the covid I contracted on the 10th, which showed up a couple days later. The infection was over in less than two weeks, but the effects on my general energy and on respiratory and food-ingesting systems have been lasting.

The difficulties with the last of these mean I'm not yet ready to approach dining in a restaurant. I can't eat much food and I need much more water than a restaurant is likely to serve. So, very unusually, I ate a quick dinner at home (B. was out at mass) before going to the concert, which fortunately was local. I forgot that there isn't a light at Alma and Channing, but otherwise I remembered how to get where I was going.

I found the concert-going experience a bit stressful, though the music was good. I may be ready to do this again in another couple of weeks, which is when the concert season really gets going.

Current Mood: accomplished

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Candy Jar Terrarium Part 2: Plants

This post covers planting the candy jar terrarium. Begin with Part 1: Setup.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: accomplished

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Candy Jar Terrarium Part 1: Setup

Today I assembled the large candy jar terrarium. Continue with Part 2: Plants.

( Read more... )

Palestine/Gaza Awareness

Hi, it's been a while. I'm going to try to post like once a month on Palestine stuff so there's some more awareness of things that are going on. Because there's a lot.

Israel continues to bomb multiple Arab nations and threaten them; they last struck Qatar attempting to assassinate Hamas leaders who were there at the invitation of the US to discuss a ceasefire with Israel. The result of that is now Arab nations are rethinking their relationships with the US. They are also continuing to bomb Gaza daily and round up people in the West Bank.
Laura Loomer got the US to stop issuing travel visas to Palestinian children traveling for humanitarian and medical treatment.
Meanwhile, in the US, the House just passed a Lauren Boebert amendment to the Pentagon budget that would target the BDS movement.
Rep Brian Mast just introduced a new bill that would allow Marco Rubio to revoke US passports, including US citizens, at his whim, but basically if you criticize Israel.
Earlier this week, progressive House Reps and others like Mahmoud Khalil and Cynthia Nixon did a big push for HR 3565 Block the Bombs Act, which would block the President from selling certain munitions to Israel, except under specific conditions. There are now 46 cosponsors, all of them Democratic. 7 joined this month. Although Reps Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene have both made statements opposing Israel, they have not joined as cosponsors.

Orgs and places to donate to:

Entry tags:

health

Well

We're all still alive, but I've learned that I won't be able to keep a dog if I need to walk it 3 times a day and also feed myself or do any other thing (right now I have the dog/cat door).

On the plus side, I've only had my throat muscles once fail badly enough that I inhaled my food, and then coughed till I both threw up and peed, and then couldn't move for a minute in the car, and it has not happened in my bed.

Josh did the drive back and it was glorious seed collecting. I was thinking i should do that drive again and get the apples in Boston Bar and the seabuckthorns just south of Spence's bridge in the same time of year and take it nice and slow. However, I should know by now that whenever I think something might be ok and I'd like to keep doing it or do it again, I will have a crash.

This crash is just compounded because of the cone/medication/walking and making food for avallu.

More later this is just a note to self. Typing is hard

a few notes on ratelimiting

https://dotat.at/@/2025-09-14-ratelimit.html

Last year I wrote a pair of articles about ratelimiting:

Recently, Chris "cks" Siebenmann has been working on ratelimiting HTTP bots that are hammering his blog. His articles prompted me to write some clarifications, plus a few practical anecdotes about ratelimiting email.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: yearning
Current Music: Besides, no matter what one might infer, one must have faith to some degree

Entry tags:

Don't ask a question you don't want answered - Star Wars triple drabble

Don't ask a question you don't want answered (300 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker
Characters: Padmé Amidala, Anakin Skywalker
Additional Tags: Triple Drabble, Mutual Pining
Summary:

Padmé asks Anakin a question and gets a surprising answer.

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Portland Saturday Market 2025

Portland Saturday Market
September 13, 2025
Nikon Z8 • NIKKOR Z 85mm f/1.8 S
f/2 @ 85mm • 1/1000s • ISO 100

It’s just about time for me to start assembling my annual photo calendars. And, as usual, I worry about whether I have enough decent photos for production. Usually I create three calendars, but because of changes in Jenni’s work, I no longer have to create a third calendar. That should make photo selection easier.

Anyway, the cutoff date for calendar photos is the end of September, and I thought I should take one last attempt to snag photos. Today was a perfect day for me to do a quick trip to Portland Saturday Market. The forecast for early afternoon was sunny in the mid 70s °F in Portland.

( Photos, Below The Cut )

Entry tags:

nif,
status

September is nearly half over...

We've packed what we can pack. The movers come Monday to take our library away. We will live out of boxes and suitcase for a week, then depart altogether while the floor peeps come in.

With library going away I've resorted more to TV, and I couldn't resist going back to watch Nirvana in Fire yet again. Between my last rewatch and this time, some team of actual humans (No AI) had gone through the, ah, somewhat problematical subtitles and cleaned up spelling, grammar, and meaning, clarifying a lot of small stuff that watchers who did not know Mandarin could only guess at.

It's just brilliant. Even though on this watch I see the problems with the end starting a bit sooner than I remembered, and I still believe that one more episode would have pulled together all the dangling bits and tightened up the emotional arcs, still the overall emotional velocity absolutely rams you straight through and beyond. For a couple of days I couldn't do anything but go back to look at scenes (some for like the twentieth time, or more). Not perfect, but even after ten years, for me it's the best television show ever made.

Well, back to your regularly schedule chaos.

We need to talk

The New Yorker is trying to convince me that Bluesky has become annoying and everyone’s back on Xitter. Not linking because it’s paywalled. True or false?

I never got the hang of Twitter. I have similar problems with Bluesky. I don’t need a social site to deliver me more links. I want conversation. Is conversation dead? Where is it? (I know there’s some here…)

I miss Usenet, lol

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Land of Hope and Dreams (live) - Bruce Springsteen

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thunder's rolling down this track

A couple weeks ago, I finally realized I was never going to go to someone else to get my hair cut, so with some encouragement from my sister, this morning, I did an extensive detangling (both before and after washing) and then trimmed about 3" off the bottom myself. Is it even? Probably not, but it was in long layers, so I don't think it really matters. It will eventually even out as it grows and I trim it. Mostly what matters is that after 3 years, the old ends have been trimmed away. And now that I know I can do it, I will try to keep up with it on a more timely basis. At least, I don't think I'll let another 3 years go by. *wry*

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The Mets did not get no-hit last night but they did lose, and then lost again today despite leading for 7.5 innings. *hands* There is something very wrong with this team, but who can say what? Sigh.

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