I don’t really have the spare time to go into detail about inconsequential details of my life tbh

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It’s time:

1. Fic writing

  • 32k of the longboi posted in August. Auron is having issues; I say this every month, and yet, he is having issues. I guess I’ll repeat that three more times with increasing intensity.

2. Gaming

  • Dipping into Pokémon Sword a few times a week to chomp up some legendaries via Dynamax Adventures. I’m trying to fill my dex as thoroughly as I can, partly to make completing the National Dex in Shining Pearl somewhat more possible, although I’ll never get Deoxys, so really what’s the point.
  • I really should get back to the French game, said I, and then I eventually sat down at the PS5 for the first time in several weeks, and played … Rise Of The Ronin. And had a great time. I really think it may actually be … the second best game.

3. Home

  • Went for lunch at a cafe where @adt was given such a massive slice of lemon meringue pie that a passing stranger remarked, “You/re not going to eat all that, are you?” We then spent most of the time trying to guard the food from wasps.
  • Went (the following weekend) for afternoon tea courtesy of some gift vouchers from my dad. We then spent most of the time trying to guard the food from wasps.
  • Autumn has now suddenly arrived, so any forthcoming anti-wasp guarding is unlikely to be scheduled before 2026.

4. Music

  • Did the “come and play Thaikovsky 6” day, surprisingly successful! @adt’s hotly anticipated debut as a violist.
  • Back to regular orchestra rehearsals. Despite saying the New World symphony was boring and easy last time, it somehow sounded pretty terrible last week. We’ll be better at it in October probably?
  • Got a couple of records from the record shop on the corner of the next street (gentrification … it’s coming …).

5. Reading

  • The internet con by Cory Doctorow: more abstract than I expected. I think I finished this right at the start of the month because I remember little else about it.
  • Sunrise on the reaping by Suzanne Collins: sigh, ok, I enjoyed the previous Hunger Games prequel (and the film even more) because it was about a morally dubious posh guy who got whumped a lot, but the protagonist of this one was less morally dubious and less posh, and also, despite being an actual tribute in the actual Hunger Games instead of a whiny school prefect, didn’t seem to get whumped as much. As with the previous prequel (I can never speak its name, nor the name of its protagonist), the pacing was messed up FF15-style. Haymitch’s willingness to get involved in the “let’s sabotage the Games” plan was poorly justified, as was the existence of that plan at all; Effie’s personality made no sense given her future character arc; Haymitch’s relationship with his girlfriend was meant to be this big significant thing but we barely saw any evidence of it and like, they’re sixteen years old? But if SC keeps writing prequels about increasingly obscure characters, she’ll surely get to my fave Caesar Flickerman one day, right? Anyway, I’ll no doubt go and see the film of this when it eventually comes out, and it’ll no doubt be better than the book like all of them have been, so that’s something to look forward to.
  • Just about to finish Pretty straight guys by Nick Cohen, which is a kind of compilation of all the bad things New Labour did (I say in 2025, haha, wait this isn’t funny).
  • Reading a couple of books for work that I’ve promised to review; one is quite good, the other one is quite bad and I’m going to have to try not to be too much of an arsehole about it.

6. Recs

7. Techbro

  • Switched ISP from megacorp dot co dot uk to a smaller company that does carbon offsetting and doesn’t treat customers like idiots – for one, they let you use whatever router you want instead of forcing the use of their own, which came in handy when the router they tried to send was stuck in “customs” because idk, we’re actually not part of the UK, but we are, but we’re not?? Speak to your local DUP MLA for more. Anyway … we have a static IP address now. I’ll try not to get it tattooed on myself I promise. I didn’t just google “custom doormat”. I’m not going to get a shelf made in the shape of each digit and affix them all to the living room wall at quirky angles.
  • Whipped up some proper book tracking pages for the site instead of just an RSS feed, and hooked the generator script up to my new favourite discovery, the firestarter package for Emacs, so as soon as I log some reading progress it rebuilds the pages and pushes them to the server. There are a few more things I plan to add to this, but I like looking at the wee progress bars for now anyway.
  • Found a new font for the FFX pages; still not quite right but the individual letters are closer to what appears in the remaster UI.
  • Worked out how to boost Bluesky posts from the command line with minimal effort on my not-really-real-non-Bluesky atproto account. Reposted various instances of Final Fantasy fanart and lost 50% of my (two) followers, although I wish the other one would unfollow as well because I (grits teeth) hate having a “““presence””” on a site that publicly shows follower counts.
  • Changed the sitemap from “an XML file dynamically rendered in the browser as HTML” to “an HTML file converted on the server from XML” for “google bad” reasons. I’ll probably do something similar for the RSS feed soon.
  • Quite a lot of updates to the TCG SSG,

8. Work

  • Resits are over, some writing has been done (two book chapters due next Friday … ha … haha), preparation of teaching is a thing that is vaguely on my mind argh. At least I know how to use a computer, an advantage over many of my colleagues given that I a. can deal with the learning management system with relatively little friction, b. can deal with teaching room computers with relatively little friction, c. have a backup plan for when our discipline shrivels poetically into nothing.

9. Upcoming

  • The Semester Begins.
  • We’re going to a wine (“and food”) tasting on Friday as part of our ongoing quest to be insufferably bourgeois. It’s wines of the Loire valley though … quite close to the best part of France … contractually obliged et cetera.
  • My mother and three plus ones are coming over for her 70th birthday. It’s the plantation of Ulster all over again. Get ready for the culture clash of the century as wee Presbyterian Mr and Mrs @adt senior come face to face with the good people of Hertfordshire.

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