My two hobbies are thinking about Auron and running the mv command

Really most of what I have done on the computer over the past 25 years or so is just implement various systems to organise my files in what I consider to be the optimum way. I feel like this is one of my principal hobbies … and yet, our house can most accurately be described as “random shite everywhere”. If only there was a way I could redirect this obsession towards physical objects.

Anyway, here are some things I did in March, many of which relate to organising files in one way or another.

1. Fic writing

  • Posted chapters 9–13 of the boyo. It’s all kicking off … in the last month, or four in-universe days, Jecht has discovered the true consequences of the pilgrimage and given up drinking (he’d swear those two things had nothing to do with each other), Auron has discovered Wen Kinoc might not be as good a friend as he thought, and Braska has promised the fayth of Djose Temple not to be mean to Auron (a promise he will have variable success in keeping).

2. Gaming

  • My latest brief Pokémon phase seems to have reached its natural end (so I’m just back to thinking about final fantasy ten 100% of the time lol), but I’m sure the next one will occur in a few months when I least expect it.
  • Still working through Rise Of The Ronin on midnight mode, although I’m probably getting to the limits of my abilities.
  • Bought a couple of games in the Steam sale: one was Undertale for a quid, the other a dating sim about monks?? This concept sounds entirely up my street. Can’t wait to get to these in 10 years or whatever!

3. Home

  • Took advantage of the bank holiday to put a single door on the Kallax. I had wondered how I would be supposed to know where to fit it given that the shelves themselves have no screw holes, but I’d forgotten the Extreme Logic with which Ikea designs everything. I’m sorry I doubted. We just have to get four more of these doors now plus four glass ones and two sets of drawers and three magazine racks aaargh help.
  • Framed my guy. The picture doesn’t give any clues about the size but he comes up to just past my knees, certainly big enough to be noticed.

4. Music

  • Somehow we managed to perform Rachmaninov 2 pretty decently.
  • I treated myself to a bafflingly diverse CD/record order consisting of a Massive Attack album (banger), a Sonerien Du album (banger, and I will not hear a bad word said about the binioù), a relatively recent Paul Simon album (variable), Now That’s What I Call Music 88 from the golden age of 2014 (10% bangers, 40% “oh yeah remember that one from 2014”, 50% dross).
  • Made the mistake of listening to the Manic Street Preachers’ compilation album (another banger) and got Motorcycle Emptiness stuck in my head for days once again … very much not a problem, I just need to remember to take adequate precautions every time I put the CD on because this is a guaranteed side-effect.
  • Went to see a punk band from across the water. Good fun but my friends seem to think going to gigs means you have to miss the support act and just get there for the headliner? As someone who wants to listen to All Music, I’m incapable of understanding this.

5. Reading

  • Read two more volumes in the excellent work-related series I’m working through. Told a colleague (eminent professor of literature) that I’m reading work stuff for pleasure and she found this hilarious.

6. Recs (er this is all just nice final fantasy pictures plus sci-fi trains)

  • New FFTCG cards look excellent as usual. I’m so delighted to see new Crimson Squad art … Baralai is gorgeous as always. Every day I mourn the one subscription service that existed for these and then just stopped doing so (existing, that is) all of a sudden.
  • Really good Auron gifset (also aeon!Jecht is there I guess).
  • Another really good Auron gifset. I actually don’t understand how anyone could see this man and not fall in love with him immediately. I guess that’s what they mean when they talk about theory of mind problems.
  • As promised, sci-fi trains.

7. Techbro

  • Updated to the latest version of GoToSocial … also added a certain set of emoticons with high nostalgia value
  • Currently in what may be the final stages of the long process of my divorce from Google, having moved ¾ of my photos away from their service (remember when they had unlimited free original-quality storage lol) and onto Piwigo, which, after some initial confusion about how to make PHP work, I’ve installed on a subdomain. Like all good open source software, it is French. A thousand or so photos remain to be transferred and I also need to set up some plugins to make it do what I want; it already does a lot of good stuff in its fairly vanilla state, although the red theme I’ve chosen is perhaps an unwelcome reminder of work intranet lol.
  • Related to the above, having once sworn I would spend as little money as possible on web stuff because It’s Not Real It’s Just HTML, I upgraded to the next tier of the VPS for more storage space lol oops. One day I’ll make my threatened post about how much I’m paying for the privilege of not having my stuff hosted on other people’s domains.
  • Wiped my Dreamwidth comments as thoroughly as possible, see “not having my stuff hosted on other people’s domains”. I think it’s pretty rotten of them not to offer comment deletion at the point of account deletion, tbh.
  • Adjusted the stats pages on my fic archive so they use emoji instead of OTW symbols for categories, ratings etc.
  • In the last week or so, I’ve been writing lots of Python scripts to make TCG stuff more efficient, a fun challenge!

8. Work

  • Teaching is over until September! Crazy stuff. Everyone but me loves talking about how relaxed they’re going to be for the next 5 months. Everyone but me is not in charge of exams and assessment.
  • Went for dinner at eminent professor of literature’s house and I’m fairly certain that we managed not to disgrace ourselves despite having kir royale absolutely heaped on us from the point of arrival (quite a lot of it ended up on my hand/sleeve, admittedly … yes, I still count this as not disgracing myself … the bar is low).

9. Upcoming

  • Going very briefly to Budapest for work next week; not sure how worth going to the work event will be, but at least I’ll get to see some Architecture.
  • Shortly afterwards, we’re going equally briefly to Glasgow to see a band @adt likes. I have chosen not to take formal time off work so will be spending two days in a heightened state of “but what if someone emails me about exams and assessment”. If this is anything like this time last year’s Trip Away To A Gig, I will also become a huge fan of this band at an alarmingly rapid rate, although maybe that kind of thing only happens once.
  • Have to sing not one but two services over the Easter weekend, with a choir I find it increasingly tedious to be part of, and one of them is a baptism service and at the other one we’re doing Brewer in D (shite) and Gjeilo’s Ubi caritas (also shite).
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