Reminder that I’m making my DW subscriptions private! I have just done this, so if I was subscribed to your journal, you may have received a meaningless notification.
October doings below:
Fic writing
I posted four fics in October, tripling my wordcount for the year so far … this is entirely due to ficwip, the only drama-free Discord server in the entire world. First, a FF16 fic U ☉ 1k+
in which no adoption of children occurs, and then, for the “all ships ship week”, three Auron × Braska fics:
On the main WIP, I’ve finished my tagging pass through the story, and signed up to an accountability challenge (also on ficwip) where I intend to complete the rest of the major-ish edits. This means I could still be on track to start posting in January, !!!
Also signed up for /yuletide 🥸
Films
- For once I have attended the cinema. We saw Universal Language (2024) the other night, extremely entertaining, maybe the bizarrest film I’ve ever watched. I can’t explain the part I found funniest without making it seem incredibly laborious, but it was this:
Gaming
- I platinumed Rise Of The Ronin. 🤡
- I continued playing Rise Of The Ronin after platinuming Rise Of The Ronin. 🤡🤡
- I convinced ~lissajous to start playing Rise Of The Ronin. 🤡🤡🤡
- Apart from that … I may have started another FFX playthrough. (By “started”, I mean “loaded my save at the south end of the Mi’ihen Highroad from 2021”, because this is where the game begins in my mind.)
Home
- The bathroom sink did a big leak into the kitchen ceiling … we think it’s fixed. Meanwhile, ~lissajous’s parents had at least two mice running around their house, so at least our problem was comparatively mundane.
- In 2019 we carved the Ubuntu logo into a pumpkin for Halloween, and this year I finally got around to doing another Linux distro root vegetable for the same occasion. I wanted to get a turnip but all Tesco had was swedes (more appropriate for a pasty anyway, not that I was intending to make one, but appropriateness to pasties is always a relevant factor nonetheless). Here’s the Debian swede, the humble contribution of someone with no hand-eye coordination to this worlde.
Music
- Ordered some CDs to build up my FF soundtracks collection; I now have most of the OSTs up to FF12, and some of the other some like piano collections etc. Are the games good because the music is good or is the music good because the games are good?? I don’t even know anymore.
- On a similar subject, I’d like to formally note how much of a banger the Top Champion battle theme from Pokémon SV is.
- I also bought a load of secondhand CDs from the Oxfam shop, mostly classical apart from the one that said it was a The Who compilation on the outside and then turned out to be Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. This is not the first time such a case of mistaken identity has occurred during my recent attempts at secondhand CD shopping.
- The live orchestra EDM night was oddly disappointing; I’m sure it was better in 2016, or maybe I was young and naive at the time. Fortunately, the night was redeemed by the last song being Things Can Only Get Better?! I felt myself ascending into a strange New Labour paradise, my soul leaving my body and joining the great private finance initiative in the sky, etc.
- After several weeks of all of us in the [other, mostly unrelated] orchestra bitching about having to play boring film music, we did the concert and all had a transformative experience and realised how wrong we were. (Not about Gabriel’s Oboe though, the dullest piece I’ve played in recent years and I stand by that.) Next concert is equally boring Christmas music though, sigh. Maybe we will all have a similar change of heart and come to love the shepherd’s pipe carol … this seems highly unlikely.
- Not music, but I guess live events of any kind go in this section: seeing Jon Ronson reading the limone story live was a highlight of my adult life actually.
Books
- I bought the Rise Of The Ronin artbook [insert yet more clown emojis here].
- Finished reading the novelisation of the first three FF games; I’d been intending to leave this until after I finished FF3 and then remembered I haven’t touched FF3 for … two years? … so I just went ahead. As with all FF novels, my assessment was “mildly entertaining”.
- Started reading L’assommoir by Zola. Not to crudely lump all classic French literature together, but I think this is going to demand more concentration than Candide.
- Read 1 book for work, bought another.
Recs
- I enjoyed this Guardian interview with David Gilmour; it’s always a pleasant surprise when the old men from the old bands are woke.
- Article about “digital nomads” from an anti-capitalist perspective. I laughed at the description of The 4-hour workweek because I read the book a few years ago (illegally downloaded, I did not pay money for that trash) and it does indeed boil down to “outsource your work to an army of poorly paid ‘virtual assistants’ in the global south”. Like, the book could have just contained that one sentence. I don’t know how he actually managed to drag this out over 400 pages.
- Trust & Safety Tycoon is a very good browser game about social media moderation. I was slightly frustrated by the fact that it forces the player to run things according to the typical corporate model, but it does give a really good insight into the moral complexities of techbroism. I did not manage to win the game, but my ideological integrity is minimally compromised, I guess.
- The Brutalist Programming Manifesto: I would say I mostly agree with this as it relates to techbro endeavours, with the caveats that a. I do a lot of web stuff so the “no visual gimmicks” line of argument is already a lost cause; b. (more importantly) I’m not a professional in the field, so my relationship with this kind of thing is necessarily different from that of someone who depends on it to survive under capitalism, and as such, I wouldn’t feel qualified to make a serious comment on the moral robustness that it seems to be trying to assert. I was struck by “don’t work for free if you do not enjoy it”, though! I think this (along with all its associated ramifications) is very important to remember in a fandom context as well.
- Perfect FFX meta in two screenshots.
- Nice art of my best boy.
- Cute Pokémon fanart … heracross is so happy waaa …
- Equally nice FF4 art.
Techbro
- I’m writing yet another SSG in Python, lol. Bonus points: it’s not even the one I said I was going to write.
Work
- Went to a wee conference down south, which somehow restored my faith in field X, pretty shocking stuff.
- After a chat with my “personal development” reviewer I now don’t have to spend the rest of this calendar year working on a funding application, but I do have to write and aim to submit at least one journal article by January. I think this is preferable, but nonetheless, yikes!