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April turned out to be reasonably productive in various ways; I had a week off work after Easter so I spent a lot of time doing website stuff that week, and the impetus to do more of it seems to have remained with me.
1. Fic writing
- Posted four more chapters of the long lad. Auron is now starting to lose it, just a bit, just gradually.
2. Gaming
- WOTV GL is end-of-servicing at the end of May, so Iāve switched to the JP version. Iām gradually unlocking stuff without any particular urgency, but all I really care about is hoarding vis for the next FFX rerun so I can get my guy back (and label myself an āAuron Devoteeā again). I briefly attempted to watch some of the story cutscenes in GL ā talk about better late than never ā to see if it interested me at all, but the writing is a bit too cringe unfortunately.
- Made a fair amount of progress in the game set at the terf wizard school, which I donāt tend to talk about online for obvious reasons. Oddly enough, itās the wokest game Iāve played by a long way, so I guess the terf herself was too busy funding the removal of basic human rights to have much input.
3. Music
- Went to see Ghost in Glasgow because @adt is a big fan; I wasnāt expecting it to be a transformative experience Ć la Judas Priest last year, and ā¦ it wasnāt. The music was interesting and I had a nice time, but this was partly because I spent the duration of the gig thinking about Auron and Braska.
- It did however remind me of how great JP were ā¦ bought myself Firepower on CD. I have a horrible feeling itās going to be Nostradamus next. I am a secret Nostradamus enjoyer.
- Easter eve service was surprisingly enjoyable despite my misgivings and despite going on for two hours. Part of this extreme length was because there were five hymns, which is at least two more than any service needs.
4. Reading
- Read volume 1 of Chroniques de la mariĆ©e de Bretagne, wrote a short and uninformative post about it, and since then Iāve been into manga in a big way, it seems. I bought the other three existing volumes in the series and read two of them; also subscribed to the Viz manga app and started reading a few things, including the whole of The girl that canāt get a girlfriend, which was cute.
- Spending more time than usual travelling meant I also had more opportunities to read Actual Books:
- Intermezzo by Sally Rooney: two bereaved brothers negotiate their unorthodox heterosexual relationships. Pretty gripping, well executed, very Irish, although I wasnāt hugely emotionally moved by it in the way that all the critics seem to have been, but this is characteristic of me.
- Stupeur et tremblements by AmĆ©lie Nothomb: Belgian woman spends a short time working for a Japanese company and contravenes the rules of etiquette such that she is demoted enough times to end up as a toilet cleaner. Had a touch of surrealism not unlike much of the Japanese literature that seems to become popular in the west. I didnāt find the narrator very likable, which was odd as I think it was meant to be at least somewhat autobiographical. I wouldnāt say no to reading Nothombās other one about her time in Japan, though, Ni dāĆve ni dāAdam.
- The anxious generation by Jonathan Haidt: non-fiction, centred on the premise that smartphones and social media are ruining young peopleās mental health. I suspect this would have had more of an effect on me if I hadnāt fervently believed that already.
- Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck: eerie Swedish SF short stories (translated by the author iirc), some of which I found more gripping than others. āPyretā was my favourite, about a cryptid that tries to integrate into human society by taking the form of various large mammals ā¦ itās much more scary than Iām making it sound, I promise.
- And one more book in the work-related series Iāve been referring to in the same vague terms over the last few months, just as much of a banger as its predecessors.
- Bought the new Hunger Games prequel, which I fully expect to be like all other Hunger Games books: great setting, exciting story, intriguing characters, irritating and embarrassing prose. This is why I prefer the films.
- Also bought Selected poems by Jack Clemo.
5. Recs
- Time for some more entries from the Very Good Gifs Of Auron series: arm, ponytail, āforgive meā.
- You Canāt Post Your Way Out Of Fascism (404 Media).
6. Techbro
- Gradually started redesigning parts of my site ā¦ I figured out how to do a sidebar in desktop mode that transforms into a collapsible menu on mobile. Itās looking pretty tasty and Iām looking forward to implementing it on a few more pages.
- At the same time I worked out how to fetch the latest entries from a selection of RSS feeds using JavaScript, so the homepage now has live updates on what Iāve been doing recently. This in turn inspired me to generate RSS feeds of the books Iāve been reading and films Iāve been watching based on my journal files. Iām still planning to turn these into proper Goodreads-esque pages, someday!!
- Discovered security headers dot com which led to a. finally learning how to do CORS headers properly and b. moving my git repositories onto the VPS and changing the software from Gitea to (a much newer version of) Forgejo.
- I also realised I could use LiveJournal as an OpenID server, so I can use my siteās URL as the basis of an OpenID account on Dreamwidth, which is encouraging me to perhaps do some commenting in comms even if I never go near a personal journal again.
- I finally wrote up the Auron and Braska cosplay we did in 2023, and then wrote up how Iām implementing comments on this site such that all relevant data stays within this server, which Iāve enabled on the cosplay post and am planning to use more widely elsewhere as soon as Iāve refined the comment form a little bit more.
- And I made a wee Auron shrine! Iād been wanting to do this for about three years. Iām pretty pleased with the CSS on this one.
7. Televisual
- Watched Jungle emperor Leo (1966) in my apparent continued quest to become acquainted with classic Japanese cinema.
- Also showed @adt episode 2 of Rev, i.e. the pinnacle of coalition-era Anglican comedy.
- Now that recent films are one of the things being tracked on the index page, Iām keen to watch more than about five of them per year ā¦ weāll see if that ends up going anywhere.
8. Work
- Iāve been promoted to āseniorā lecturer (fairly routine and ultimately meaningless, just a different title and more dolla) so maybe Iāll finally stop being mistaken for a student (unlikely).
- Went to Budapest for a conference; the conference was mildly interesting, the city more so.
- Exam season has started. Only two emergencies so far, although they were both on the same day. Two weeks remain (and then another two weeks for marking and boards, which certainly wonāt be straightforward either).
9. Upcoming
- The remainder of exam season, pray 4 me.
- Iām on tea duty at orchestra this week, my least favourite Tuesday night of the year simply because making and serving tea for c. 50 people requires a. manipulating physical objects and b. talking to people somewhere on the continuum between āstrangersā and āacquaintancesā, probably two of my least developed skills.
- More enjoyably, more website stuff will almost certainly be happening!
