Pete's Log

New Windows

Fri, 23 Feb 2024 02:54:00 GMT

We got our new windows installed today. We are pleased with the result. The biggest thing that we weren’t expecting was how happy we are with having the awnings removed. The house looks nicer from the outside and feels more open from the inside without awnings obstructing the view.

Still plenty more projects to go.

Lover's Wordle

Sat, 17 Feb 2024 14:58:00 GMT

At the beginning of the year, I predicted "I don't think HEART will do much better than fifth place" on Valentine’s Day and as it turns out, it made it to sixth place, chosen by 2.9% of Wordle players:

I also tracked CANDY, which rose to 245th most popular starting word, compared to its usual rank around 500 in the days before and after February 14.

I'm not doing a graph this time, but HEART is generally in 12th or 13th place.

What I didn't see coming (and thus didn't track ahead of time) was LOVER, which made it up to 13th place with a 0.8% share. For comparison, its rank today is 193 (and that's the only other data point I have).

SharePoint Designer doesn't like when you change BDC connection strings

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 03:29:00 GMT

Sometimes you need to change what database server an External Content Type in SharePoint points at. And SharePoint Designer makes it easy to change the server name for an External System. After making your update, your external content types should happily load their data from the new server.

Problems won't surface until the next time you want to add or modify External Content Types using that External System, at least in the case where the old database server is no longer accessible. You'll get an error like one of the following:

If you're trying to create a new External Content Type it will tell you "The system definition with the same name as this data source already exists in the Business Data Connectivity Metadata Store and it refers to a different data source. Cannot complete operation generation. Add a connection to this data source with a different name and try again."

And if you're trying to edit an existing one, you'll get something like "Cannot connect to the SQL Server database defined in data source connection." with helpful added details like "Cannot connect to the LobSystem (External System)."

The reason for this is that SharePoint Designer (in all its wisdom) creates its own hidden reference to the external system, and when you update the connection details for the external system, it only updates the "production" reference to the external system, but not the hidden one that SharePoint Designer uses when you're editing External Content Types. So the External Content Types continue to work, but you can't edit them.

I could not find an "official" way to solve this problem. Microsoft does have a workaround for SharePoint Designer 2010, but none of their methods worked for me.

So instead I resorted to directly modifying the SharePoint BDC database. This is definitely not supported by Microsoft, but it happened to work for me (in SharePoint 2019). Proceed at your own risk.

In your BDC database, look in the AR_Property table for "RdbConnection Data Source" entries:

select * from AR_Property where name = 'RdbConnection Data Source'

Look for rows where the Value column contains the old database server name and update them to contain the new server name.

If you don't know the name of your BDC database, you can find it with PowerShell:

Get-SPDatabase | where {$_.Type -eq 'Microsoft.SharePoint.BusinessData.SharedService.BdcServiceDatabase'}

Again, directly modifying SharePoint databases is not supported by Microsoft, so make sure you know what you're doing before you proceed. And don't forget to have a backup available!

Friday Night Shenanigans

Sat, 10 Feb 2024 06:14:00 GMT

Andrew sent out a text this evening to see if anyone wanted to join him see his coworker’s band play and I decided to do so. So we drive to the bar and pay the cover and a pretty decent Grateful Dead cover band is playing. Andrew texts his coworker to try to meet up before they go on. While we wait we grab a beer, play a round of pool, and enjoy the music.

Then we learn this venue has multiple spaces and the coworker’s band is playing the other space. So we wander over there and the people at the door act like we aren’t supposed to be there, but finally tell us it’s a fundraiser and it’s $80 a person to get in. Andrew doesn’t feel that level of support for his coworker so we decide to go play another round of pool and then call it a night.

Andrew’s coworker instead insists he can sneak us in the back. So we do that. Once in the space we immediately feel underdressed and out of place. A different band is playing and then transitions into raffles and auctions. The coworker’s band was supposed to go on at 10 and we figured we should see at least their first song. But as we were approaching 11 with no sign of the raffles ending, we gave up and headed out. Probably should have played that second game of pool instead. But we were entertained.

Counting

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 04:26:00 GMT

On the drive to preschool today, JB decided we should do some counting. In a collaborative effort we made it to 154 by the time we pulled into the parking lot. She was very proud.

Return to the Light

Sat, 27 Jan 2024 19:09:00 GMT

The chickens got to return outside today after nearly two weeks in the garage.

Olaf and Elsa immediately set to dust bathing.

They were also intent on keeping an eye on me as I freshened up their coop back in its outdoor location.

The weather is still grey and foggy and though I was willing to let them have more freeranging time, they all made their way back into the run on their own.

They seem pleased to be back in the fresh air again.

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien, narrated by Andy Serkis

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 04:05:00 GMT

I've read the Lord of the Rings trilogy several times, but the last time was just before the films came out. Since then, I've only consumed Lord of the Rings in Peter Jackson film format. A good number of times. So many times, in fact, that the narrative of the films had mostly replaced the narrative of the books in my mind.

Having completed the audio book of The Fellowship of the Ring, it feels way past due to have returned to the original. As it happens, my last viewing of the film trilogy was only a few months ago, so I had it fresh in my mind to compare to the book.

And let me tell you, I feel aggrieved. I mean, I'll never not love the films (here is where I should mention that I pretend the Hobbit film trilogy never happened), but I had forgotten just how fleshed out the characters of Merry and Pippin are in the book. And then the film goes ahead and makes them idiots who came along by accident. And makes it them who lit a fire on Weathertop when in reality it was Aragorn. Aggrieved, I tell you!

The friendship between Gimli and Legolas also has so much more depth to it in the book. I'd also forgotten that 17 years pass between Bilbo leaving the shire and Frodo leaving the shire. Tom Bombadil is perhaps the biggest difference that I had not forgotten. It was nice to encounter him again.

Also: the book is so cozy! Obviously not when our protagonists are in danger, but the times when our hobbit friends are safe just feel so nice. The world is so well built and we get such a nice time experiencing it. Ah no wonder it's a classic.

I'm not much of an audio book listener, so it's harder to comment on the narration. There is a "classic" audio book narrated by Robert Inglis which some fans prefer to Andy Serkis's interpretation. I'm tempted to give it a try some time to compare, but for now I will stick with Serkis. I mostly enjoyed his narration. I have two main complaints:

In the beginning a bunch of minor hobbit characters had strangely deep voices that were not at all appropriate to hobbits. Luckily our four primary hobbits did not suffer this problem.
Aragorn sounded too much like Gandalf, just quieter. I'd have liked more distinction here.

Andy Serkis, if you're unaware, is the voice and motion capture actor who portrayed Gollum/Sméagol in the Peter Jackson films. So it was interesting when other characters fell sway to the ring at times, you could hear a bit of Gollum sneaking into their voice.

I'm excited to listen to The Two Towers next. I remember always struggling with this book when I read it way back when, but I never had any issue with the film version. So it'll be interesting to see how it goes in audio format.

Oh yeah, one last thing: Gandalf sure is annoying, isn't he? Just answer a question directly for once in your life, you goofy wizard!

Another Esgerdev Update

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 04:40:00 GMT

"Progress" continues on the esgeroth.org rewrite. Some highlights:

PHP 8.2 has become available to me, so I've done some refactoring to take advantage of new features
Having implemented support for PSR-15 middlewares, I wrote a CSRF mitigation middleware. Any request that isn't a GET/HEAD/OPTIONS requires that the origin of the request be www.esgeroth.org and that a token be passed in the request body that matches a token stored server-side for the session.
I fleshed out my implementation of PSR-7 UriInterface and implemented a somewhat comprehensive test suite for it. This exercise got me no closer to completing the rewrite, but it was mentally soothing to read through RFC 3986 and code to the spec. And I even learned a few new things about URIs (all edge cases though).
I added PHP-CS-Fixer as an additional tool to run my code through, primarily because it can detect unused "use" statements, which none of the other checkers I'm using currently do.

Stats:

Test coverage has dropped since last reported, but only because the denominators have been growing faster than the numerators. The amount of covered code has increased. I'm also less worried about maximizing test coverage than I was when I started this project, because with strictness set to 8, phpstan now catches the sort of errors that lead to the issue that kicked off this rewrite to begin with. So as long as phpstan reports no errors, I can live with less than 100% test coverage. I still want more than I have now, though!

OK, but incomplete, skipped, or risky tests! Tests: 427, Assertions: 1086, Skipped: 1. Code Coverage Report: 2024-01-21 03:27:18 Summary: Classes: 31.25% (25/80) Methods: 41.76% (185/443) Lines: 33.21% (653/1966)

I neglected to record what arguments I previously used for siege. I am now going to try to track two result sets, with and without the --no-parser flag. With that flag, siege is only requesting php pages and measuring how long they take. Without the flag, the pages also get parsed and all other items like images, css and so on gets loaded. So here's where we're currently at.

$ siege -r 100 -f esgerdev.txt -c 25 -i --no-parser Transactions: 2500 hits Availability: 100.00 % Elapsed time: 3.20 secs Data transferred: 4.50 MB Response time: 0.03 secs Transaction rate: 781.25 trans/sec Throughput: 1.41 MB/sec Concurrency: 24.75 Successful transactions: 1702 Failed transactions: 0 Longest transaction: 0.05 Shortest transaction: 0.02 $ siege -r 100 -f esgerdev.txt -c 25 -i Transactions: 18041 hits Availability: 100.00 % Elapsed time: 14.93 secs Data transferred: 16.46 MB Response time: 0.02 secs Transaction rate: 1208.37 trans/sec Throughput: 1.10 MB/sec Concurrency: 23.72 Successful transactions: 17251 Failed transactions: 0 Longest transaction: 0.07 Shortest transaction: 0.00

Breaking Bread with the Dead by Alan Jacobs

Fri, 19 Jan 2024 03:48:00 GMT

This evening I finished Breaking Bread with the Dead by Alan Jacobs. I think my favorite result of having read the book is having discovered Professor Jacobs' blog, which now adds some pleasant variety to my RSS reader.

The book is subtitled "A Reader's Guide to a More Tranquil Mind" and argues that the literature of the past can help us gain insight that contemporary works can't offer. For the most part Jacobs makes his case well and the book is a fun read. My biggest gripe is that the book is primarily focused on the why of reading old books, when I would have appreciated a bit more how as well.

Near the end, in a footnote, Jacobs writes "no one will do any of the things I counsel in this book without possessing the virtue of stubbornness." And perhaps that has to be enough of a how. I zoned out on the parts of high school and college that tried to teach me to appreciate classic literature, and so while middle-aged me is now enjoying classics like David Copperfield, it's the kind of thing that takes me a month to do and only stubbornness got me through that book. With enough stubbornness, perhaps, the how will become easier with practice.

Incidentally, I originally meant to read this book after completing David Copperfield. Jamie had recently read it at that point and made it sound compelling to me. But somehow I didn't get into it then, so I was newly motivated to read it before I take a stab at Der Zauberberg.

Jacobs includes some examples of individuals who found wisdom or refuge in books of the past. I'm not certain he always makes a convincing case that the benefit of those books was that they were from the past. One example was a young Pakistani woman who, after growing up in the USA for a time, was forced back to Pakistan. There she was not allowed access to books like she had grown up with, but she finds a copy of Little Women at a market and buys and hides it under her mattress. I don't doubt the impact this book had on her life. But could only a book from the past have performed this role?

The title of Jacobs' book comes from a W. H. Auden line: "Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead." Jacobs, I've learned, is an expert on Auden and Auden gets a few mentions in the book. Auden also featured prominently in Time Shelter. It's enough of a connection that I was inspired to pick up a book of poems by Auden. Jacobs calls this "reading upstream" and recommends that we read upstream from our favorite authors. I guess there is a little more how after all. Although if you've read my Time Shelter review, you'll know that reading upstream has gotten me in trouble before.

I have many more thoughts on this book and think I may need to reread it. When Jacobs introduces the idea of reading upstream, his starting point for reading upstream from is Tolkien and I happen to be listening to The Fellowship of the Ring at the moment, another connection. A big theme of the book is the information overload of the present and our need to triage the information we process, something which resonates with me. Jacobs is also a Christian scholar, and while there is nothing explicitly Christian about this book, there's a vibe of a certain underlying tension between Christian scholarship and a modern rejection of anything non-scientific. There's a lot there that I can't seem to unpack right now, but it's been weighing on my mind.

Lastly, there's an obvious conundrum inherent to this book, namely would anyone read it that doesn't at some level already agree with its premise? But Jacobs explicitly calls his book a self-help book: "In other words, this is a self-help book. I don't mean that as a joke." And who is going to pick up a self-help book who doesn't already want help?

So if you want help thinking about what the dead can offer us through their words, then I can enthusiastically recommend this book.

Barbie

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 03:27:00 GMT

Jamie and I watched the Barbie movie this evening. We're probably at the perfect stage in our life to be watching it, having a young daughter who's into both Barbie and asking questions about death. That being said, it'll probably be a few years before she gets to see it.

I can't remember if I saw a trailer for this movie or not, but I did know it was well received and targeted at adults. It surprised me a lot. I cried twice. I laughed a bunch more. I told Jamie how well I thought the movie was cast at least twice. The attention to detail was phenomenal and I'm sure there are more details I missed. We have the Barbie dog that poops, so having that show up in the movie was amazing.

While the movie does some good exploration of some serious themes, ultimately it is still produced by a company that wants to sell you dolls. But it's way better than any movie that wants to sell you dolls has any business being.

Guess we should watch Oppenheimer next.

Party Years

Fri, 05 Jan 2024 03:44:00 GMT

Time for another one of these. For the New Year, YEARS seemed the obvious candidate, but then on New Year's Eve I saw PARTY all the way at #11 compared to #27 for YEARS. But YEARS rallied on New Year's Day, hitting #7 compared to #12 for PARTY.

I didn't start tracking PARTY until the 31st, so my graph is incomplete again.

Valentine's Day should be interesting: I'm thinking CANDY and HEART so far, but HEART is already one of the top 15 most popular starting words. HEART is usually chosen by about 0.8% of Wordle players, and when MERRY and YEARS both broke the top 10 on their respective holidays, they got about 1.5% of the vote. So I don't think HEART will do much better than fifth place, since #1 ADIEU rakes in more than 7% of the vote and 2-5 are all above 3%. But we shall see. Stay tuned to find out!

2023

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 02:00:00 GMT

When I posted on January 1, I noticed that it was the first time in the history of Pete's Log that I had posted on the first of the year. Meaning an opportunity presented itself to post each day of the year for the first time ever. By coincidence, the math also worked out that if I posted every day, I would hit entry 2500 two days short of the 25 year anniversary, bringing the annual average back above 100 entries just in time. So I had to try.

It didn't work out, but I did make it to May 4 before I missed a day. In all, I'll hit 300 entries for 2023. Which is a lot. I think trying to post every day definitely impacted quality. But I did manage to post on three days which I'd never posted on before: Jan 1, Jan 5 and Dec 30. That leaves February 29 and August 17 as the only days of the year with no log entries. Next year being a leap year, my goal is to knock out February 29. And keep output above 100 entries a year.

2023 was also an occasion to celebrate multiples of 5:

5 years of being married to Jamie!
10 years since moving to the US and meeting Jamie
25 years of Pete's Log
30 years since moving to the US the first time
45 years since being born

I read 29 books in 2023. I haven't kept good count of that in the past, but I'm pretty sure that's way above my average. A breakdown of those books:

24 fiction, 5 non-fiction
27 paper, 2 audio
29 in English
Over 11,000 pages, not counting the couple books I DNF’d

Jamie’s book count is more than double mine, but she’s a reading machine. Hopefully I can keep the reading momentum going in 2024.

Esgerbeastie continued trying to factor Pete's Number. We've made it past 12 trillion in this futile search.

Jamie, JB and I flew this year for the first time since 2019. In fact we had three trips by air: Florida Keys, New York City and Crested Butte. NYC was particularly exciting because we made JB officially Belgian.

We also had a good number of visitors this year:

Mamie in April
Annie in May
Tony in June
Mom and Dad in September
Annie and David in September
Christoph in September

I'm ending 2023 on a 113 day Wordle streak.

The low point of 2023 was losing Boogie. We still miss her every day.

It’s cooled off enough that it’s snowing today, but not enough for the snow to stick. Bubbles has upped her backyard mud game.

Happy New Year, dear readers. Wishing you all the best for 2024. JB helped us put coins on our windowsills. I think we’re ready.

Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros

Sun, 31 Dec 2023 04:26:00 GMT

I just finished Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros. It is the sequel to Fourth Wing. I did not enjoy Iron Flame as much as Fourth Wing, but it was still an entertaining page-turner. I think the most telling thing about Iron Flame is that Jamie did not read over my shoulder (to check which plot twists she could talk to me about) as often as she did when I was reading Fourth Wing. Although once I hit the last 100 pages, she started hovering again.

First, some of what I didn't like. One, the narrator was too whiny. I learned a new term today: New Adult Fiction. I wrote that Fourth Wing "reads a bit like young adult fiction, but with a lot of violence and sex." I guess "New Adult" is like "Young Adult" but with less restraint on the violence and sex fronts. Pretty apt description of both Fourth Wing and Iron Flame. Our narrator is a young 20-something, so I guess we should forgive her for being so emo. It was just a bit much at times. Two, it felt repetitive, both in terms of plot points but also in terms of phrases. Nobody smiles in this book, everyone just has the corner of their mouth curve up. Three, it was probably 100 pages too long. I suspect maybe this sequel was a bit rushed.

But it was 600+ pages that put up little resistance. And I really like the dragons. And I will definitely read the next in the series. Whenever it comes out.

The best part about having finished Iron Flame is that Jamie can now share with me all the fan theories she's read up on. Hopefully Rebecca Yarros can finish the next book soon. But not too soon. I'd rather it feels less rushed than this one did.

Muddy Days

Sat, 30 Dec 2023 04:28:00 GMT

Jamie and I lured Bubbles to the end of our driveway today and then just hung out there with her for a bit, rewarding her with treats for being so brave. Baby steps with our baby dog.

It's been a lot of grey and rainy here and just warmer than it should be as well. So our yard has become quite muddy. Bubbles feel plenty comfortable in the yard, though, so we now seem to spend a good chunk of our day wiping down her paws and our kitchen floor.

JB spent last night at Gaga and Grampa's house. We brought Bubbles with us to pick her up so she could spend some time with Cooper and Blue. She'd done so once before, but that was just a short outdoor hangout. This time we hung out inside for a while and Bubbles did a great job. So that's reassuring at least.

The most exciting thing for Bubbles, though, was when she first spotted JB. She missed her kiddo.

2023 Music

Fri, 29 Dec 2023 03:46:00 GMT

I acquired a good amount of music this year. Much of it on bandcamp. Not sure how the whole bandcamp thing is going to look next year. But right now we're focusing on this year.

I also felt like making a playlist. It contains a few songs acquired last year, but I feel like it captures how 2023 in music felt to me.

Amyl and The Sniffers - Hertz
The Chats - Smoko
Wet Leg - Chaise Longue
Pacifica - Premature Rejection
Office Dog - Spiel
Sports Team - The Drop
The Drowns - Live like yer dyin
Origami Angel - Thank You, New Jersey
carolesdaughter - My Mother Wants Me Dead
Speed of Light - Teeth

The easiest way I thought of to share it was a YouTube playlist, but if you ask me nicely, I'll try to remember how to burn a CD.

Anyway, here are my 2023 acquisitions. Unless otherwise noted, these are albums. In all, 325 songs with a length of 18 hours, 26 minutes and 58 seconds.

Atmosphere - Okay
Released February 2023
I only bought the single. Jamie came across this song on Spotify and we both liked it.
Camper Van Beethoven - Telephone Free Landslide Victory
Released June 1985
I only knew the "Take the Skinheads Bowling" song and I'm not sure what made me decide to purchase the album, but I'm glad I did.
carolesdaughter - please put me in a medically induced coma
Released August 2022
After JB becoming a fan at Riot Fest last year, it felt like I should own some of her music.
carolesdaughter - Violent
Released November 2020
This is the single of carolesdaughter that JB keeps requesting.
The Chats - Get This In Ya
Released July 2017
Andrew recommended this band to me. Australian punk rock. Smoko gets stuck in my head often (hence its inclusion above).
Company Flow - Funcrusher Plus
Released July 1997
This is apparently "a landmark independent hip-hop release" from 1997. Somebody posted about it on Mastodon and I decided to broaden my horizons.
The Cure - The Head on the Door
Released August 1985
After really enjoying The Cure at Riot Fest I realized I needed to own more of their albums.
The Cure - Wish
Released April 1992
See above.
The Drowns - Lunatics
Released May 2022
Andrew introduced me to "Live Like Yer Dyin" off this album and it made me want the whole album. I later discovered I already owned one Drowns song - see below.
FM359 - Some Folks / A Little Sign
Released December 2017
My purchase of "What's It Like To Be Fifty?" (see below) included a download code for these two songs. FM359 is a folk/country/punk/americana band that features a couple members of the Dropkick Murphys. Might investigate them further someday when the mood for this sort of music is stronger.
Highly Effective People - The Hizhaus Sessions
Released Nov 2022
No idea how I came across this four-song album. Couple songs have a bit of a Fugazi sound. I enjoy it.
The Men - New York City
Released Feb 2023
More punk rock that I have no idea where I found it, but I've listened to this album a bunch. Thought of trying to include one of their songs in my playlist, but couldn't decide which one.
Office Dog - Spiel
Released Aug 2023
I introduced Jamie to Pacifica (see below) and after her Spotify played them, it suggested Office Dog and I instantly liked them. They're from New Zealand and I guess they'd be considered Alternative Rock or Indie Rock?
Origami Angel - Somewhere City
Released November 2019
We liked Origami Angel at Riot Fest this year, so I figured I'd buy some of their music.
Origami Angel - The Brightest Days
Released June 2023
See above.
Pacifica - Freak Scene
Released September 2023
Pacifica is a newish band from Argentina. YouTube recommended "Premature Rejection" to me and it's been constantly stuck in my head since then. They didn't have an album out yet at that point, so I waited for them to release one and bought it.
The Planet Smashers - Too Much Information
Released May 2019
I seem to impulsively buy "new" Planet Smashers albums when I learn about them. This one definitely sounds very Planet Smashers but doesn't have any particular standout songs for me.
Ratboys - The Window
Released August 2023
I always feel like I should support Ratboys. My favorite album of theirs remains Printer's Devil, but I do like this one more than their previous one.
R.E.M. - Murmur
Released April 1983
After yet another music discussion with Andrew I decided I needed more early R.E.M.
Ryuichi Sakamoto - 12
Released January 2023
Heard about this on NPR. I'd never heard of Ryuichi Sakamoto (or Yellow Magic Orchestra - see below) before, but after hearing the story I decided to check him out. This album was released shortly before his death and it is very minimalist and melancholy electronic album.
Skating Polly - The Big Fit
Released 2016
This album features my favorite Skating Polly song: Pretective Boy.
Skating Polly - Chaos County Line
Released June 2023
Figured I should buy their latest release after enjoying them at Riot Fest last year.
Speed of Light - Teeth
Released 2023
Another random YouTube recommendation. This band consists of three Californian teenagers. They don't seem to have released an album yet, so I purchased this as a single.
Sports Team - Gulp!
Released 2022
I heard "The Drop" on the radio and wanted to hear more. Alternative rock from England. "The Drop" is another song that's spent a good amount of time stuck in my head this year.
Stomper 98 - Stomper 98
Released September 2023
Came across them in some Pirate Press Records promotion. An Oi! band from Germany.
The Suicide Machines - Revolution Spring
Released March 2020
While revisiting an entry about seeing the Suicide Machines in 2019, I saw I had written that "apparently they have a new record coming out soon" so I went and found that record. It's better than some of their mid-career stuff, but can't match their early albums.
Suzi Moon - Dumb & In Luv
Released September 2022
Suzi Moon has a track on "What's It Like To Be Fifty?" (see below) and I think that's what made me check out more of her music.
Tai Verdes - TV
Released May 2021
Since JB was so into him for a little while, it seemed reasonable to own this album.
Various Artists - What's It Like To Be Fifty?
Released December 2022
I didn't even know Cock Sparrer, but apparently they're an English punk rock band that has now been around for 50 years. Pirate Press seems to know how to market to me. They released a gold vinyl of various of their artists (including The Drowns and Suzi Moon) covering Cock Sparrer songs to mark the 50 year anniversary. It was a one-time pressing of 1500 records and I decided to get one despite being unfamiliar with Cock Sparrer. I've enjoyed it and should perhaps check out the originals at some point.
Yellow Magic Orchestra - UC YMO
Released August 2003, but it's a compilation of songs mostly released 78-81
So I'd never heard of this band before but they seem to be one of those early electronic bands that is perhaps as influential as Kraftwerk on the genre. I learned about them through the NPR story about Ryuichi Sakamoto and picked up this compilation of theirs. It's very much "of the era" and fun and goofy.

Christmas Wordle

Thu, 28 Dec 2023 03:26:00 GMT

I fear I might need to get through all the major holidays before I can end this obsession.

Just like for Thanksgiving, I tried to track a few Christmas themed words to see how popular they became as starting words. Originally I could only think of GIFTS, but then I also came up with CAROL.

What I didn't anticipate was people choosing a starting word with a double letter. So while CAROL was the 47th most popular starting word on December 25 and GIFTS rose all the way to #12, MERRY was the dark horse that made it all the way to #6.

Since I didn't anticipate it in advance, I only have three days of data for MERRY.

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov

Mon, 25 Dec 2023 19:12:00 GMT

I grew up about 80 miles from the "Iron Curtain" and in many ways, "Curtain" is an apt metaphor, since we were always looking to the West and rarely peaked beyond that curtain to the East.

So while I could pick out Bulgaria on a map, there's not much else I could have told you about it. On some recent bookstore visit, I picked up a Bulgarian novel, Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, and I'm glad I did, even though it wasn't the easiest read.

It was published in 2020 and written before the pandemic (strange that this fact seems important context, but the pandemic did weird things to time). The English translation by Angela Rodel was published in 2022 and won the International Booker Prize. I learned that that prize is split evenly between the author and the translator, which I find quite interesting. There were many sentences through the book that I wanted to note down, and that in part is the translator's doing.

I remember, of course, several particularly important silences, but I have no way of retelling those.

-Georgi Gospodinov, Time Shelter

I love that sentence.

Time Shelter is a book about memory, both individual and collective. The book is meandering; does not, for the most part, put quotes around dialog; doesn't name most of its characters. The plot feels secondary to the ideas that it explores.

Before yet another aside, the narrator states "I will exercise my right to marginalia" and it feels like only a meandering review full of marginalia of its own could do it justice. It is a literary book, full of references to Auden, Melville, Donne, Dostoevsky.

A day (and perhaps 50 pages) into reading Time Shelter, I chanced upon The Closing of the Bulgarian Frontier, an essay published earlier this year. It too is full of literary references and also explores time. How strange a coincidence to find such an essay by a Bulgarian as I read my first Bulgarian novel. If you'd like to know if Time Shelter is for you, I'd recommend checking out that essay and if you like it, then proceed to Time Shelter.

I personally have a complicated relationship with literary fiction. It often makes me feel like an outsider. But when I do understand a reference, I get rewarded with a dopamine hit, just like when playing trivia or doing a crossword and I know an answer outside my wheelhouse.

Several lifetimes ago I enjoyed Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and upon learning how filled it was with literary references, I took upon myself the task of learning those references. This endeavor ultimately failed—I never made it through the Borges I bought. Appropriately enough, Borges gets several mentions in Time Shelter as well.

Eco hides his literary references, though. I wouldn't have known they were there if I hadn't read about them outside the context of The Name of the Rose. A wink to insiders while still producing a compelling story that outsiders can enjoy. Gospodinov sort of beats you over the head with literary references. But perhaps this invites the outsiders in to explore that world.

On more than one occasion I had to think of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Darmok" where their universal translators can translate the literal meaning of what Tamarians are saying, but because the Tamarians speak only in allegory, the crew of the Enterprise can't understand them. "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" indeed. Oh to be an insider of this type of language.

And then you get quotes like "Happened stories are all alike, every unhappened story is unhappened in its own way." I know that's a reference to Dostoevsky without even having read Anna Karenina. The dopamine hit wasn't diminished for having been unearned.

In the end, I can't help myself. Both Time Shelter and "The Closing of the Bulgarian Frontier" make multiple references to The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. So I found a complete edition in German. Hopefully it fares better than Borges.

Themed Wordle

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 02:59:00 GMT

I recently came across the Vanity Fair article Inside The New York Times' Big Bet on Games, which is interesting enough as is, but it included the tidbit that after buying Wordle, they considered doing special words: "She briefly experimented with a themed word—FEAST on Thanksgiving—to the ire of some players."

Interesting to know, given my recent holiday analysis.

I still haven't though of many five-letter non-proper-nouns for Christmas yet. The only one I've come up with so far is GIFTS. I used it this morning and then forgot to check its popularity. Luckily, thanks to the magic of private browser windows, I was able to check just now and see it clocked in as the 262nd most popular starting word today.

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

Tue, 19 Dec 2023 03:35:00 GMT

Jamie thoroughly enjoyed Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros and audibly gasped at the ending. So she pre-ordered the sequel and its arrival felt like a big deal in the shops around us. So I figured I should check out Fourth Wing myself.

I enjoyed it. It was a fast read and entertaining. The premise is a young lady who is prone to injury (due to a condition similar to Ehlers–Danlos syndrome, which the author has) was supposed to study to become a scribe, but at the last moment is forced to study to become a dragon rider instead. This is obviously far more dangerous, especially for her condition, but something like three quarters of the students die before graduation.

The story reads a bit like young adult fiction, but with a lot of violence and sex. The dragons are fun. I’m planning to read the next one, which Jamie conveniently already owns.

The Boy and the Heron (君たちはどう生きるか)

Sun, 17 Dec 2023 02:15:00 GMT

Jamie and I watched The Boy and the Heron at the La Grange Theater today. It is the latest film by Hayao Miyazaki. We both went in knowing little about the film. If you enjoy the experience of seeing a movie without knowing what it's about and you also enjoy Miyazaki movies, then I would suggest you go see it and stop reading this.

At the start of the film, it felt like on the spectrum of Miyazaki movies it might trend towards the less fantastical. It takes place in wartime Japan and it seems like it might just be about a boy who loses his mother and has to come to terms with a new step mother.

There is a grey heron living near their new home, and the first time I saw that the heron had teeth is when I started thinking it might get weird. And boy did it get weird. Unlike the weirdness of Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away, I don't really understand the weirdness of this movie. I'm torn between wanting to read up on what (if anything) it all means, or just letting the experience be what it was.

The art was beautiful. The soundtrack was minimalist but fitting. I'm glad I saw it but I don't know if I'd see it again, and generally Miyazaki films have high rewatchability for me.

We did catch it in Japanese with English subtitles. So I can't comment on the English voice cast.

Reading Update

Wed, 13 Dec 2023 04:24:00 GMT

It's been a few months since I posted one of these. The past few months just haven't been great reading months. But let's see what I've read since August.

Golden Son by Pierce Brown
This is the sequel to Red Rising and I didn't enjoy it nearly as much. But it was a page turner and ended on a cliff hanger, so next I started reading...
Morning Star by Pierce Brown
This is the third book in the Red Rising series and I did not finish it. I was probably 80% of the way through the book when I hit a plot point that annoyed me enough that I closed the book with the intent of never opening it again.

Spoilers
The protagonist keeps thinking people who have betrayed him can be redeemed, and then those people keep betraying him. It was a plot point that kept happening again and again. So despite his friends warning him not to, he trusted someone he shouldn't have and got betrayed. And I was just so tired of this recurring plot point by then.
Lotharingia: A Personal History of Europe's Lost Country by Simon Winder
Another book I didn't finish. I picked this up because the history of Lotharingia is also the history of Belgium. And it started out promising. It felt like it gave you the vibe of what it was to be caught between the great powers of France and Germany (a.k.a. the Holy Roman Empire), but it became trying as it started to feel like a repetitive attempt by the author to prove how erudite he is. And then about halfway through he dropped "[...] although I can see that it does not reflect well on me that at an age which is for most boys an eye-rolling frenzy of coughed-over cigarettes and self-abuse I was enjoying making a little cardboard wheel go round." At that point I just couldn't get myself to continue any further.
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, narrated by Andy Serkis
I don't really listen to audio books, but I had been thinking I was due for a reread of the Lord of the Rings and then I found out Andy Serkis (who plays Gollum in the LotR movies) narrated The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and I decided this was something I had to experience. It was excellent.
Unlike Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies, which I rewatch from time to time, his Hobbit trilogy didn't do much for me. So it was nice to return to the book, which I don't think I've read in 20+ years. There were definitely some plot points I had forgotten. And Andy Serkis made the whole thing come alive. So I am definitely planning to listen to his narration of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree
This is a prequel to Legends & Lattes, which I had immensely enjoyed. In this prequel, our heroine Viv is forced by a battle injury to spend some time recovering in a backwater town. As in Legends & Lattes, there is a lovable cast of characters and much coziness. At times it feels perhaps too much like Legends & Lattes, but there is also a well crafted sense of melancholy. It's an interesting exploration of meeting the right people at the "wrong" time in your life. It's certainly worth a read if you enjoyed Legends & Lattes.

Esgerdev Update

Mon, 11 Dec 2023 02:26:00 GMT

At the current rate of progress, my esgeroth.org rewrite will probably be done in another decade or so. But very slowly I am making progress of sorts.

I'm already using PSR-4 and PSR-11 and for some strange reason decided to implement PSR-7 and PSR-15.

PSR-7 defines how the HTTP request and response messages are modeled. I already had my own approach going, but figured implementing a standard would make it easier to swap in other libraries or frameworks if I ever decide to go that route. PSR-15 defines how those requests are turned into responses. PSR-15 also defines an interface for middlewares, so in theory if I've implemented this correctly, I should easily be able to use existing middlewares if I choose to.

Anyway, there are a number of NotImplementedExceptions floating around, but it's far enough along that pages render again, which is nice.

I also discovered siege which is a little load tester I can unleash on my development environment to make sure I'm achieving reasonable performance. Esgerdev as it currently stands is achieving transaction rates of about 1100 transactions/second and that seems kind of OK for a development VM. Just tracking that as a data point I can compare against in the future. I think that transaction rate includes all the css and graphics included in a page load, so those surely skew the number upwards. Need to play with it more.

A Quarter Century of Online Journaling

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 13:52:00 GMT

Once upon a time it felt perfectly normal to drive to a friend's apartment because you kept getting a busy signal when you tried calling their landline. And I captured that time.

Twenty-five years ago today I posted my first log entry. This morning Jamie surprised me with a cake. Since our daughter likes to ask about the "olden days", I figured we could celebrate a quarter century by revisiting some stories from way back when.

The biggest lifestyle change has to have been the acquisition of a cell phone. I first got one in August of 2001 and it's wild to look back and remember a time when we weren't constantly available. Or didn't have easy access to directions to anywhere.

Like if you copied the directions to a friend's house wrong, then you might have to rely on the kindness of strangers to help you find the rest of the way there. Or when going on lengthy road trips, you had to rely on paper maps.

Taking pictures also sure has changed in that time. I bought my first digital camera just a few months before my first cell phone, and it would be a while before I'd have a device that could serve as both. In fact as recently as 2011, I felt the need to point out that pictures I'd taken had been taken on my phone. My current brain actually has a hard time coming to terms sometimes with how few pictures I have from before 2001.

Now before I kindly ask you all to get off my lawn, I will leave you with a bulleted list of other quaint reminders of the olden days:

Remember taping shows off the tv? Apparently this was still a thing I did well into 2000.
It's weird to think about how often I used to go to Blockbuster, although only five entries mention it by name.
Using Wi-Fi for the first time felt incredibly cool.
Remember messing with IRQs?
It's entertaining to remember DeCSS being a big deal and it's nice to see the link in that entry still works.
Remember when YouTube was new and exciting?

Join me after my next quarter century in 2048 to find out why I think Large Language Models are quaint!

The Results Are In

Tue, 28 Nov 2023 13:14:00 GMT

Nothing too surprising. We are entertained by what it says when you expand the “3 more”:

She weighed in at 50 lbs today.

Thankful Words

Sun, 26 Nov 2023 23:05:00 GMT

With holiday Wordle words fresh on my mind, I started tracking the two five-letter Thanksgiving words I could think of on Tuesday. The words were thank and gravy.

Both performed well on Thanksgiving day with thank hitting the 8th spot and gravy getting to 24th.

I tracked their performances through today, so you can see that both seemed to outperform their averages.

Ghost seems a more popular "average day" starting word than either, clocking in at #60 today. Now I just need to think of some five letter Christmas words.