michaelboy

I don't really listen to public radio anymore, but am encountering good articles via social media elsewhere. Here's an article that's an introduction to Iranian art:

https://www.npr.org/2026/03/03/nx-s1-5734031/iran-books-movies-music

It reminded me of seeing the film Dance of Dust as part of the Seattle International Film Festival in high school (late '90's). I still wish I could get ahold of a copy of it to watch it again. It was just filmed so beautifully and was so very different from other films I've seen.

kaberett

This evening I am having A Headache. It's an annoying headache; it's definitely a distracting headache; but it's "just" A Headache. No other symptoms that I'm noticing.

... except that it's Exactly The Right Time For A Migraine, and yesterday I had a bunch of migraine prodrome symptoms. (Being Too Warm. Wanting to close my eyes a lot. Nausea. Overwhelming despair.)

I find myself Wondering whether my regular menstrual migraines actually started on 1^st January 2021, or if that's just the point at which symptoms tipped over into very obviously photosensitive migraine. At that point I was on continuous acute pain relief, and it is slowly dawning on me that An Annoying Headache with no other symptoms distinguishable from background noise (anxiety, depression, thesis-related stress, ...) is the kind of thing I'd have just merrily ignored, and for that matter that I'd still be ignoring if I weren't now Keeping A Headache Diary...

rebeccmeister

Bureaucratic hell got so frustrating today that I decided I should just go and get out of the house to deal with the lingering project of getting updated passport photos. I believe both major drugstore chains advertise passport photos as a service, but from my recent visits to the CVS I was pretty skeptical they'd have things up and running. So I went to the equidistant Walgreens instead.

The Walgreens has a rack for bike parking, right there out in front of the store. (the CVS does have bike parking, too, but it's around the corner). I actually walked this time, but good to know for the future.

The Walgreens has WAY more inventory than that CVS did, and doesn't have weird markups on things like double-sided sticky tape (price checking it because we use it to tape ant heads onto index cards to measure how wide they are). I was even able to find the type of toothbrush I've had on my shopping list for months now, and a phone backup battery and backup charging/data cable of reasonable quality for prices that weren't outrageous! It's ridiculous but it feels like a major breakthrough to be able to walk into a store and buy the kind of toothbrush I want, in this day and age. Far less packaging to deal with, hallelujah.

I still have no love for these chain stores, but at least it feels like slightly less of my soul got sucked out?

It was 50 degrees by the time I got home, so I set about adding more reinforcement netting to the catio so that Martha can join George outside again (she figured out how to shimmy up the wood and escape onto the back porch last fall).

Not the prettiest addition, but it's on there, at least!

This is a good illustration of how Going Outside blows George's mind:

Martha was a little unsure of things, too, but at least the catio's keeping her occupied while I ~~continue to procrastinate from grading~~ grade more papers.

I also finished getting the front porch plant rack set up:

I'm starting more lettuce in the squirrel boxes, finally. Between the seed starting mat underneath and the sun coming in from the window, this mini-greenhouse does all right, temperature-wise.

teaotter

Bandcamp Friday returns this Friday, March 6.

For 24 hours, every purchase you make on Bandcamp sends even more money directly to the artists and labels you support.

On select Fridays throughout the year, we waive our share of sales. This means fans can support artists more directly. It’s a great time to pick up that album you’ve had your eye on, explore something new, or revisit an old favorite.

For whatever hours those 24 hours are in your time zone!

puddleshark

Strange weather. A grey fog hanging round the edges of things all day, smoke-like, but not smelling of smoke. As I was driving home, the sun, seen through the fog, was pale as the moon. Of course, by the time I got home and rushed out with the camera, the sun had vanished. No sunset at all. So I wandered round the forest practising the art of dusking.

( Grainy high ISO photos )

brickhousewench

Tuesday - Four inches of icy snow.

Wednesday - 56F / 13.3C and brilliantly sunny

Thursday/Friday - Four more inches of snow predicted.

Saturday - 50F/10C and cloudy.

Go home Mother Nature, you're drunk.

susandennis

Yes. It's true. By the time I got Biggie into the carrier - he would NOT go into the smaller one and I had to chase him around the room for 5 minutes before he would go into the smaller one and he was so pissed. I knew then, that it was The Last Trip. But, the tests all came back fine! No bladder rocks. No chrystals. No nuthin!

She even gave him his vaccines early so we don't have to go back until March 2027.

On the down side, it means no more cry kibble and no more treats ever. Just prescription canned food. Chewy will be Happy. And she doubled up the size of the one medicine so now instead of 4 tablets a day, he only gets 2.

So... pretty much a Vet Victory. I did forget to have them trim his nails - I mean as long as he was pissed off anyway, but oh well.

badly_knitted posting in

get_knitted

Hello to all members, passers-by, curious onlookers, and shy lurkers, and welcome to our regular daily check-in post. Just leave a comment below to let us know how your current projects are progressing, or even if they're not.

Checking in is NOT compulsory, check in as often or as seldom as you want, this community isn't about pressure it's about encouragement, motivation, and support. Crafting is meant to be fun, and what's more fun than sharing achievements and seeing the wonderful things everyone else is creating?

There may also occasionally be questions, but again you don't have to answer them, they're just a way of getting to know each other a bit better.

This Week's Question: What is a craft that you tried but abandoned?

If anyone has any questions of their own about the community, or suggestions for tags, questions to be asked on the check-in posts, or if anyone is interested in playing check-in host for a week here on the community, which would entail putting up the daily check-in posts and responding to comments, go to the Questions & Suggestions post and leave a comment.

I now declare this Check-In OPEN!

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

arlie

Yesterday I decided to work on the long postponed adaptation of ancient DOS games, long ago purchased from GOG to run on my current linux system. They were neatly packaged for an earlier version of Ubuntu, but the DOSBox version they included was so old it required specific ancient versions of libraries neither present nor available for current versions of Ubuntu.

The fix was to install a current version of DOSBox, then modify each game's startup script to use that rather than the version included in their package. Bonus if I also freed up space by deleting the DOSBox version they came with. This proved to be utterly trivial - more trivial than changing each game's DOSBox configuration so that it will play nicely with my monitors, and allow me to conveniently move my mouse out of the game window. (I'd already had to do that earlier, to get them playable on a previous linux system.)

I went a bit farther than that. I condensed the scripts and other extras for one game, losing the ability to report issues to GOG, which doesn't support these games on recent linux versions. I got it down to one ultra-short script. And then I downloaded some games that weren't pre-packaged to run on linux - first DOS games I already owned from GOG, then others, elsewhere on the net, which I'd owned on diskette several decades ago.

I now have CIV I working on the linux box, and Merchant Prince ready to adapt. Both were games I loved, back in the day, which GOG hadn't chosen to adapt. (Possibly there were license issues.)

( Read more... )

smallhobbit

I started the year with only 11 books on my TBL list, plus 2 pre-orders, which has now grown to 13 books and 3 pre-orders, but I should clear most, if not all, by the end of the year.

I've had 2 DNFs, and here are the first 5 I've heard:

Parsley Sidings a BBC radio series, full cast
Typical radio comedy from the early 1970s which still made me laugh. I listened on and off for a few months, and enjoyed the nostalgia of my early teens.

A Three Dog Problem by S J Bennett, read by Samantha Bond
The second in the series where Queen Elizabeth II solves crimes around the palace. I'm a republican (Small R!) but find the series entertaining and relaxing. I have the next two in the series which I shall be listening to later in the year.

The Happiness List by Annie Lyons, read by Jaimi Barbakoff
I enjoy books by Annie Lyons, again easy listening and the people seem very real, even if the Happy Ever After is not entirely realistic - but then, why not have a happy ending for characters we care about? The Happiness List is about three women who each have their own, very different problems, and are challenged to make a list of things which make them happy over a ten week course. The items which they include in their individual lists are very relatable.

Dishonour and Obey by Graham Brack, read by Alex Wyndham
The next Master Mercurius title, where Mercurius joins a diplomatic mission to England to arrange the marriage of Princess Mary, the daughter of James, Duke of York, to Stadhouder William of Orange. There's murder, espionage and general skulduggery. I shall be adding the next book to my list soon.

Death and Boules by Ian Moore, read by Ian Moore
The latest Follet Valley mystery. As bizarre as ever, this time involving, amongst other things, a pétanque tournament. I hope there are more, I really enjoyed listening to this one.

lydamorehouse

Apologies for the long silence.

I've mostly just been keeping on keeping on, as they say. I'm still regularly going to my mutual aid place, the Food Communists. Their work continues apace, although Monday was fairly quiet, as such things go. By yesterday, the pace had picked back up, but they're closing today and tomorrow due to renovations at the church they work out of. So I have two days completely off! What will I even do with all that time? She asks, looking around at housework she's ignored for almost two months.

I'm still doing the school patrol (M-W) and mosque watching too. Although, at the mosque we have switched to evenings (and every day of the week) during Ramadan at the request of the imam. I have not been standing outside every single night of the week, however. I signed up to be the point person on Fridays and Saturdays, but am otherwise trying to let other people fill the slots. We are getting some help from neighborhoods outside of our own, so it's looking a little less sparse than the last time I reported, by all accounts.

I'm noticing some cautious hope during the school patrol, too. More moms are willing to bring their very little (pre-school aged) ones with them when they come to meet elder siblings at the bus stop. Very heartening. It does feel like the cloud is lifting finally.

I'm starting to be able to write a little bit again, which is lovely.

naomikritzer and I started working on something together that has lit a fire under me. We'll see what, if anything comes of that, but it's been nice to feel inspired again. Hopefully, that will bleed into the Boy. net sequel (and it should. I tend to be like that. Writing anywhere seems to mean writing everywhere. I am, apparently, polyamorous in my wirting style--I have more to give than to just one project!)

We woke up today to dense fog. Shawn was actually telling me that she hoped it would last all day, because she really wants to go for a walk in it s she can pretend we live on heather-strewn moors.

How've you been?

I guess it is Wednesday? I have nothing of note to mention in terms of things I've read. I've been listening to an extremely boring podcast about the Roman Empire--it's exactly my speed right now, but it's run by a university and I have notice a distinct lack of salacious factoids about what the Romans got up to... ah, well. It helps me get to sleep and that's really what I am using it for.

What about you? Listening to or reading anything fun?

susandennis

Biggie takes 3 pills every morning and 2 at night. He's pretty good about it. But, on vet days, he takes two additional ones and, turns out, 5 pills in one morning is 2 pills too many. And now he's under the bed in a drugged sleep. In an hour and a half, I have to get him out from under the bed and into the carrier which he will not like. And then to the vet which he will like less.

While I was swimming this morning, I decided that unless there has been massive forward progress, this is the last trip for a while. He has crystals in his urine and a high pH and bladder stones. But, he's had all of those things now for months. He's happy. He's eating well. He's pooping and peeing like every cat should. So torturing him every month is beginning to feel just mean. We're on to a quality of life issue here - his and mine. It's a risk but one I'm ready to take.

Nothing else going on today. I got a new jacket/sweater/hoodie on Amazon that I really like but the sleeves are too long. The internet says that hand sewing really needs "steel needles made for fabric" so Amazon is bringing me some today. Now I wonder what all the needles that I have now are made from and for. I'm willing to try new for $5.

I probably should do a load of laundry today, too. My hamper is full.

But first the vet's and probably I should get dressed.

rizzy_rosie8 posting in

poetry

The well shall not
Dry up
The river shall not
Stop running
So long as we are clouds
And our hopes are drops of rain.

- Fouzi El-Asmar

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3215/

This replaces the previous solar activity watch, which was issued last month when the sun took off its sunglasses.

https://xkcd.com/3215/

calzephyr posting in

1word1day

Feijoada - noun.

Today we travel to Brazil to learn about its national dish, feijoada. The Brazilian version of this Portuguese dish (called feijoada à brasileira in Portuguese, or "Brazilian-style"). This stew consists of black beans, beef, and pork and it served with rice, collard greens, sliced oranges, to name a few sides.

By Bradleyzm - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

cosmolinguist

I am not surprised at all that someone is gonna try to primary Klobuchar. I'm only mildly surprised it's someone I know online because he's on the same fedi instance as me. I just know him as the Cookie Mom and now he's doing a new thing!

He's campaigning on abolishing the Department of Homeland Security, bringing our neighbors home, and not taking the support of the DFL base for granted.

prettygoodword

miliary (MIL-ee-er-ee, MIL-yeh-ree) - adj., of or pertaining to millet seeds; small and numerous, (med.) having many small lesions are the shape and size of millet seeds.

So no, not a typo for military. From Latin miliārius, of millet, from milium, millet. It's a little unclear, but it looks like the medical meaning developed in Medieval Latin and ported over (as Middle English miliaris, the name for a disease so characterized) as a separate import from the other senses, which arrived around 1680.

---L.

osprey_archer

A wild episode of Books I’ve Abandoned appears! I kept on slogging through Maeve Binchy’s A Few of the Girls on the grounds that it’s a short story collection and therefore might eventually cough up a story I like, but finally decided it was just too many downer stories about people in bad friendships and bad marriages and bad adulterous relationships.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Getting my St. Patrick’s Day on with Eve Bunting’s St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning, which I actually picked up on account of the illustrator, Jan Brett. This was one of Brett’s earliest books and the publishers clearly gave her a very limited palette to work with, just black and white and yellow and green (and a yellow saturated to the point of orange for the Irish flag). She does the best with what she has, but how fortunate for us all she has more colors to work with in her later books!

But her characteristic attention to detail is still visible here: the stone walls in the green fields, the multitude of toothsome sweets in the Mrs. Simms’ Half-Way-Up Sweetshop, the sleepy boy and his sleepy dog curled up in the rocking chair once they’ve walked all the way up Acorn Mountain and all the way back in their very own St. Patrick’s Day parade.

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve begun E. Nesbit’s The Wouldbegoods, and am happy to report I find the Bastables much less stressful than the children in The Phoenix and the Carpet, possibly because the Bastables don’t have a magic carpet that might just strand them in Outer Mongolia. Capable of getting up to plenty of mischief without magical aid however! They are about to fill a lock to float a barge, under the impression that this will be a good deed, but I strongly suspect that the barge is simply going to float away downstream.

What I Plan to Read Next

My coworker lent me John Green’s Everything is Tuberculosis.

rebeccmeister

Last Friday and Saturday's rowing-related activities managed to piss off my hips and lower back to the point where I'm nervous about going back to practice. Back to more quality time with my friend Priscilla Patrick!

I have a stack of lab reports to grade. NOW is the time to work on them. Oh, look, what's that shiny fun thing over there??

I've been stuck in bureaucratic hell related to my volunteer role organizing Events for the rowing club. I think I just have to draw the line, hard, at the end of this year. This feels like a year where I need to reclaim who I am in the midst of a pile of responsibilities.

Although the forecast through the rest of the week is for warmer weather, yesterday afternoon we received another 2-inch pile of snow. You might recall that I drove to work yesterday, for a change. It actually wasn't so frustrating to drive home, but it was interesting to learn how the car reacted when I lost traction on some slippery side streets (no major loss of traction, just a little slipping and sliding, heh). I was glad I had those 5 cinderblocks in the trunk, for ballast.

I just don't really feel like biking to work through the slop today, so I'm going to stay home and grade. Or, you know, work on painting oars and other fun shiny projects.

I clearly need to come up with a grading incentive strategy.

elainegrey

I was obsessing with retirement through much of February because (1) approaching birthday (2) colleague on Big Project retiring (3) my uncertainty about what happens with Big Project when i retire. Not that it won't happen without me, but more assumptions that i will be there.

I took Friday through Tuesday off, partly as a birthday, partly to practice for retirement. I don't know when i will retire. I've decided i don't need to really think about decisions until the end of this year and that's if i want to give very graceful notice. Things i am considering though are how well i am ding at work and how well i can manage myself without the big stick of work expectations hanging over me.

This long plus weekend was less than ideal in some ways. In ways it went well, i got outside on the two nice days and made significant progress in the north end of the garden plot. I cleaned most of that end up last year, held back stilt grass. It's now very mulched between the rows and some greens planted. I also set some time aside for birthday celebrations - Friday night with family, Sunday brunch with a friend.

But, broadly a good bit of the time was reading or sitting and poking at my digital stuff. My todo list is in worse shape now. My gardening data is a little better off: after making something complex, i turned around and simplified it so there is a prayer i can keep up. I didn't make progress on any of the miscellaneous to dos cluttering (like installing the new rain gauge). I shopped for new things to do, like some raised beds with my Dad's birthday gift to me that will then have some feijoas (pineapple guava, an evergreen to screen the heat pump compressor and all the power boxes on the wall) and a yuzu in it. Christine has bought a smart telescope for us, which will be very fun because it has an equatorial tracking mode that looks very easy and will make using it in our back yard easy. Watching people do astrophotography on Tokyo rooftops was amazing; our skies are reasonably dark: Bortle 4, "rural suburban transition" which one of the Dutch astrophotographers described as what he would travel to get.

In really good news, Bruno asked to come out of his room a few times in the evening and all of us sat in the living room together in the evening. Marlowe was indignant, but there were long peaceful stretches. Bruno and Carrie are getting more used to each other: Carrie is still excited to see Bruno, but settles. Bruno relaxes around a relaxed Carrie. Did have a bad pee event on the couch on my proper birthday, and i think the foam might still be drying out. Piffle.

Back to retirement thoughts: i have lots of vacation banked. I need to practice setting intentions and following through without work acting as the structure and the excuse for not doing things. Plants offer a touch of motivation as they at least have certain unstoppable issues, and the scion wood i bought to graft on the crepe myrtle and the fig is waiting for me in the fridge.

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michaelboy

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Network

NPR is coming through for me lately.

[migraine] a belated realisation

Turns out I've been going to the wrong pharmacy all this time [status, cats]

BANDCAMP FRIDAY RETURNS

Dusking

New England Weather

See you in a year!!

Check-In Post - March 4th 2026

Linux Progress

Audiobooks - January and February 2026

What month is it, anyway?

Enough

Expectation

Solar Warning

Wednesday Word: Feijoada

Paul Ference for MN

miliary

Wednesday Reading Meme

Things that frustrate [status]

(morning writing, observe, retirement, cats, garden)

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March 2026

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