vivdunstan

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: angry

sartorias

I need to remember to mention these (rare) things in case one or two of you have free time at 9:00a.m. Pacific time Sunday the 7th. B Cubed Press Sunday Brunch, on Youtube, hosts a live chat. Tomorrow I'm to be included, for what will begin as a chat about preparing for readings, but might go in any direction.

smbc_comics_feed

Posted by Zach Weinersmith

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/steinbach

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
The worst part is that there's always one guy among the flock who can't stop also replying all.

Today's News:

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/steinbach

muccamukk

Thirty-six years ago today, a lone gunman murdered fourteen women at Polytechnique Montréal, before taking his own life.

The names of the women were:

Geneviève Bergeron
Hélène Colgan
Nathalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward
Maud Haviernick
Maryse Laganière
Maryse Leclair
Anne-Marie Lemay
Sonia Pelletier
Michèle Richard
Annie St-Arneault
Annie Turcotte
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz

CBC: Montreal to honour 14 victims of Polytechnique massacre at ceremony.

Globe & Mail: Progress on combatting intimate-partner violence stalling under new government, advocates fear.

dotaturls_feed

Posted by Tony Finch

https://biosrhythm.com/?p=2143

https://dotat.at/:/QMRAL.html

2025‑12‑05 - Typewriter pen plotters.

https://biosrhythm.com/?p=2143

redirect https://dotat.at/:/QMRAL

blurb https://dotat.at/:/QMRAL.html

atom entry https://dotat.at/:/QMRAL.atom

web.archive.org archive.today

https://biosrhythm.com/?p=2143

https://dotat.at/:/QMRAL.html

oursin

What is this that this thing is, when, okay, one is aware of all the woozing and grumbling about the various delivery services, but here is the ROYAL MAIL being pretty bad.

Yesterday I had an email saying they had delivered a parcel.

There was no parcel.

I looked at the proof of delivery and behold, that was Not Our Front Door they were sticking it through, it was the wrong colour and one could see the corner of a glass panel (ours is solid wood).

So I went on to their site to try and delve a bit further and, my dears, it is HORRENDOUS, one suspects it is designed to make people Just Give Up.

For example, the 'contact us' link, that actually goes to a 'Help and Support' page that lists a whole range of possible contingencies that one has to sort through to discover one that matches the occasion.

And once I had come across the Advice relating to item (presumably) misdelivered to wrong address, advice was, to contact the sender.

I have no bloody idea who the sender was being as how I was not even expecting a Royal Mail delivery, have been back over my emails and texts and no, I did not receive any previous message involving that particular tracking code.

There is a passing allusion to possible scanning errors.

The only means of contacting them is by phone, and when I tried, and had made my way through the menu options, the wait to speak to a person was 50 minutes.

I am leaving all this pro tem in case a) it was misdelivered and gets put back into the system b) it never actually existed in the first place.

But, really.

And in other, perhaps more minor (?) annoyances of Modern Life, what is this thing that this thing is of 'Cooking Instructions on Back of Label'? that you then have to detach, in the hope that it will actually come off in one piece that one can actually decipher....

ETA Parcel has now turned up, either in today's post or popped through letter box by neighbour to whom it was delivered in error.... Is friend's book I was in anticipation of.

alfreda89

However. From the lengthy comments on one of these photos? Buying fairytale mushrooms dried, in a package, can give you the wrong mushrooms. Worst case, the packaged ones may be a poisonous substitution.

Maybe we should wait until the spores are isolated and can be cultivated?

https://nhmu.utah.edu/articles/experts-explore-new-mushroom-which-causes-fairytale-hallucinations

Current Mood: cold
Current Location: Great Lakes

puddleshark

( Dodging the showers )

dewline

Geneviève Bergeron (b. 1968), civil engineering student.
Hélène Colgan (b. 1966), mechanical engineering student.
Nathalie Croteau (b. 1966), mechanical engineering student.
Barbara Daigneault (b. 1967), mechanical engineering student.
Anne-Marie Edward (b. 1968), chemical engineering student.
Maud Haviernick (b. 1960), materials engineering student.
Maryse Laganière (b. 1964), budget clerk in the École Polytechnique's finance department.
Maryse Leclair (b. 1966), materials engineering student.
Anne-Marie Lemay (b. 1967), mechanical engineering student.
Sonia Pelletier (b. 1961), mechanical engineering student.
Michèle Richard (b. 1968), materials engineering student.
Annie St-Arneault (b. 1966), mechanical engineering student.
Annie Turcotte (b. 1969), materials engineering student.
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (b. 1958), nursing student.

Current Mood: Empathizing
Current Location: Home-for-now
Current Music: The House on CBC Radio

wychwood

My boss gave me a Christmas present, which is very nice of her! It's... a coffee mug (I only drink cold water) with snowy London landmarks on it (why).

In other puzzling news, I haven't had to wade through two inches of water to get to the station since last spring! I was assuming it was just because we'd had such a dry summer, but there have been several downpours which 100% would have flooded the station entrance last year now. We had a whole thing where the back of our site kept flooding and our management company spent months arguing with the water company about whose fault it was, and eventually the water company admitted it was them and did a bunch of work on the main road to fix it; I'm thinking the flooding by the station must have been part of the same problem, since it's the parallel road downslope. Who knew it was actually fixable without completely reconstructing the whole rear station entrance area! My wet boots thank them from the bottom of their soles.

I've been experimenting again with the automation software at work; at this stage it's a process of continuous failure - you create a process, you run it, it falls over, you spend ten minutes working out why, you fix that, it falls over at the next step, you spend fifteen minutes and call a colleague to fix that, rinse and repeat. On the other hand, the buzz from getting anything to work (I would say "a process" but I haven't actually got a complete flow for anything yet!!) is pretty good. And if I can get the flow I was working on yesterday up and running, it'll save me a couple of hours of extremely tedious manual checks every fortnight, and I'm all in favour of that.

rmc28

I'm playing for Cambridge Womens Blues against Oxford Womens Blues tonight. My BUIHA stats page tells me this will be my second game for Cambridge WBs against Oxford WBs, hopefully it goes better than the last one three years ago. None of my teammates from that game are playing today, although five of the Oxford women are the same (and one of those five was on my Biarritz tournament team this summer).

My stats page also tells me that I have scored more points against Cambridge Huskies than for them (1 is more than 0), and that two of my current teammates were my opponents in my WBs v Huskies game three years ago. I have no memory of either of them in that game.

The Womens Blues game is immediately followed by a matchup between the Mens Blues teams, so I'm looking forward to watching that, before we all pile on the coach back to Cambridge.

dotaturls_feed

Posted by Tony Finch

https://www.linusakesson.net/hardware/frontpanel/index.php

https://dotat.at/:/9ZU81.html

2025‑12‑06 - Front-panel booting an ATmega88 microcontroller.

https://www.linusakesson.net/hardware/frontpanel/index.php

redirect https://dotat.at/:/9ZU81

blurb https://dotat.at/:/9ZU81.html

atom entry https://dotat.at/:/9ZU81.atom

web.archive.org archive.today

https://www.linusakesson.net/hardware/frontpanel/index.php

https://dotat.at/:/9ZU81.html

oursin

Happy birthday,

gillo and

laughingrat!

daily_otter_feed

Posted by Daily Otter

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2025/12/6/can-you-believe-it-its-sotterday

Via Mark Dumont

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2025/12/6/can-you-believe-it-its-sotterday

darkoshi

It took me all day to clean out one small box out of many that I have around the house. This one had a few items I brought back from Qiao's house after breaking up with him. Deciding what to do with each item. Where to put them, and which things not to keep. It takes me forever.

The dog tags were the hardest. I finally found a small cushioned box to keep them in.

The colorful shiny metallic foil chocolate wrappers compacted into various shapes, I put together with others, in a bigger box with clear lid.

..

I came across the receipt of a 14" flat CRT TV and a Memorex DVD player I bought from Sears in 2006. The TV cost $99. The DVD player cost only $34.99! Both prices were much less than I would have guessed. I still have the TV in a bedroom though I rarely use it. My mom has the DVD player; I have other DVD players now.

I also have a large CRT TV which used to be Qiao's; he didn't want it anymore. As well as an extra LED TV which I was going to replace the CRT with. But the CRT TV turns on instantly while the LED TV (a Toshiba FireTV - avoid them is my advice) sometimes takes several minutes. I suppose I will eventually get rid of the CRT. I don't know if I can find someone local who would want it, considering it still works. I might have to pay someone to take it to the dump. Or take it myself if it's not the horrible smelling landfill place that it would need to go to.

..

On the coffee table is a row of audio cassettes, on which I had copied music for Qiao back when he had a vehicle that played cassettes. I still have the original copies of the music; I don't need the cassettes. So I don't know what to do with them, and they sit there and sit there. I could erase them and take them to Goodwill, I guess? I have occasionally seen home-recorded tapes like that at Goodwill which weren't erased. But I don't think I'd do that.... Hmm, then again what could it hurt. They won't have my name. They won't follow me home to arrest me for having copied copyrighted music to audio cassettes, and then having given the cassettes away.

If someone wants the cassettes for recording their own music to, they can record over them. And if they get a kick out of listening to the music that's already on them, that's great too. But cassettes are old tech; few people would probably want them either way.

Well good, that's one decision made, and an easy solution. Give them to Goodwill in a box along with other stuff I've already put aside to take there.

dotaturls_feed

Posted by Tony Finch

https://alvyray.com/Memos/CG/Microsoft/6_pixel.pdf

https://dotat.at/:/1KC0G.html

2025‑12‑05 - A pixel is not a little square. (1995)

https://alvyray.com/Memos/CG/Microsoft/6_pixel.pdf

redirect https://dotat.at/:/1KC0G

blurb https://dotat.at/:/1KC0G.html

atom entry https://dotat.at/:/1KC0G.atom

web.archive.org archive.today

https://alvyray.com/Memos/CG/Microsoft/6_pixel.pdf

https://dotat.at/:/1KC0G.html

sholio

We finally got around to watching the first Stranger Things new episode drop! Somehow I had remained completely and utterly unspoiled for it, to the extent of having even forgotten that there was a new season until suddenly a post with "stranger things spoilers" arrived on my Tumblr dash and I immediately blocked the tag. So I knew literally nothing.

( Random spoilers in no particular order )

sovay

Realizing last night that I have for decades thought of myself as a full year older than I chronologically can have been for my first real job—I was fifteen—led into a crumble-to-dust reminiscence about the number of bookstores once to be found in Lexington Center, which gave me some serious future shock when we walked into Maxima while waiting to collect our order from Il Casale and it occupied the exact same storefront as my second job, also as a bookseller; it was perhaps the one form of retail to which I was natively suited. My third job was assistant-teaching Latin, but my fourth I accidentally talked my way into by recommending some titles to a fellow browser.

spatch's anniversary gift to me was a paperback of Satoshi Yagisawa's Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (trans. Eric Ozawa, 2010/2023). It was teeth-shockingly cold and we all but ran with our spoils back to the car.

( Twenty-four hours every day. )

We had set out in search of resplendent food and found it in polpette that reminded us of the North End, a richly smoky rigatoni with ragù of deep-braised lamb, and a basil-decorated, fanciest eggplant parmesan I have encountered in my life, capped with panna cotta in a tumble of wintrily apt pomegranate seeds. Hestia investigated delicately but dangerously. After we had recovered, Rob showed me Powwow Highway (1989) right before it expired from the unreliable buffer of TCM because he thought and was right that I would love its anger and gentleness and hereness, plus its '64 Buick which has already gone on beyond Bluesmobile by the time it is discovered in a field of clunkers and a vision of ponies. It has no budget and so much of the world. As long as we're in it, we might as well be real.