development corrupts

woot dooo

I'm basically going to have spotty (ahem *expensive*) internet connection between May 16-25, and then from the 26th to the 31st I may have internet but I'll probably only be taking advantage in the evenings.

Afterwards I'll be back online because YAPC :D

If anyone needs me, email is your best bet <3

So @misskat recently posted Dreamwidth-themed Christmas song filks. Here's one of them in red and green script. I like the second photo because the angle emphasizes the similarity of the letters somehow ;) (it's a bit rushed because I'm late as it is, but I'm posting anyway because that's the nature of the challenge!)

Done with red and green Staedtler Calligraph duo markers, on wove ivory Conqueror paper. Title is done in 3.5mm; text in 2mm.

Ahhh so household water filters are finally cheap enough that we've decided to try installing one at home (it's still 15,000 pesos, the hell!). The guy who installed it showed me how it works. At one point, he turns on the purified water faucet, and lets it run, says that this is the drinkable water, I nod my head dutifully... and hide my intense cringe reaction over wasting the purified water.

This is sort of ridiculous because, while drinking water has often been inconvenient here, I've never had to worry about it being scarce.

When I was a kid, we used to fill these huge stock pots with water from the faucet, boil them to kill any bacteria, then keep them to the side for several hours to let any sediment settle before we could use them for drinking. This could be inconvenient and meant that we didn't take drinking water for granted, but it was never a matter of scarcity or worry. We had several of these huge pots, so in practice we just always made sure that we boiled a new batch of water when we were down to one or two. There was a bit of waste because you didn't want to drink the water at the bottom of the pot, and you had to be very careful when getting water near the bottom because you wouldn't want to stir up the sediment, but you know, it worked!

After that, and for a long time, we bought water in five-gallon containers, delivered weekly. Now that is very convenient, but the cost adds up, and you still have to keep track of when the water supply is running low and order new ones and wait for the new delivery....

And now it's coming out of the faucet. Granted, it's not the main faucet but drinking water. From the tap. ASDFHHH. I'm a bit weirded out by just how strong my reaction is. But ASDFGGFHFHHFHFHF.

So here's the rest of the alphabet. I only had a blank notebook available and no easy way to make guidelines or grids so errr. Lots of falling letters, beware!

I am excited :D next two months will be filled with a ridiculous amount of travel.

It all starts May 16 when I leave to go through Alaska with family (cruise, lol) for a week, and then a trip to the Canadian Rockies (because mountains, ice, beautiful amazing views, what's not to love :DD).

The amazing thing is that the timing is *perfect*. Two days after my family flies home, YAPC starts. And through sheer luck, that's also when we've scheduled the DW folks gathering this year. My People, man :)

Off to Boston for work/play (if you are local and interested, and haven't signed up for the Boston area hackathon yet, please do :D). I uh, hear tell there are lots of cool folks in Boston <3

Then OSBridge from June 18-21, and then back across the ocean for me :)

I'm excited! Looking forward to seeing people and doing stuff. (Conferences are an amazing jolt in the arm, I wonder if what we'll come up with by then... phew!)

So who's going to YAPC and OSBridge? And who's around in Boston / Portland (maybe Vancouver, depending on the date)?

Every time I get invited to something (assuming it's not completely spam), I say yes.

So far, I've attended a couple tech events which were okay.

I've started hooping, which has led me to discovering a group of people within that community who a) are interested in coding for fun b) are interested in the arduino c) know a local(!!!!) supplier for arduino/raspberry pi/suchlike. I'm terrified of hacking on electronics btw, but perhaps starting to inch towards interest with this group of people.

I've hooped in public, even. In front of strangers.

I've learned that a.) hooping will bruise and b.) how to bruise just a bit less.

I've been included in an ad for TV(??), among a group of ~ 20 strangers. (v. brief, anonymous crowd shot)

I've signed up for calligraphy classes for pointed nibs (ooops).

I'm considering doing a 30-day challenge. I considered 100-day, but I've upcoming travel which will interfere. Buuuut man. This saying yes is paying off

I've learned more techniques in hooping, other than the basic hoop around and around and around the body, plus I'm no longer dropping the hoop (and catching it against my shin/ankle) as much, so I'm much less bruised :D

Spent Saturday afternoon hooping with enthusiasts. So many things that they made look easy were hard, but so much fuuuun. I think I've found something I can love: simple enough to do for someone without grace or physical strength, but with enough depth that it's possible to just keep learning more and more tricks even after picking up the basics.

The fact that the people I met seem to be a pretty laid-back bunch is okay too. Nooooo shaming or strong focus on exercise leading to weight loss or anything that I'm trying to avoid from home. I mean yeah it's moving around and some people will lose weight by doing it, but that gets a nod as a side effect. Meanwhile most of the focus is on the actual mechanics of movement and how fascinating it is. I am enjoying it a lot.

Now I just need to find a clear space at home where I won't break things, and I'm all set for practice ;-)

Having the hoop twirl around your waist is reasonably easy and unlikely to break anything. It's things like the hoop moving around your hands, and passing it around, that's hard. Like this!



Now that guy is good so it looks easy, but the weight distribution of the hoop is awkward when just held. I lack the wrist / arm / bicep(!!!) strength to look anywhere near that good *rueful*. but I'll get there :DDDDD Somewhere there. In the approximate area of.

And have fun trying :)

Came back from vacation with a bad case of the fixits. So far I've:

• cleaned my closet

• taken my inbox down from 50+ to 36 (it's a work in progress)

• taken my flagged messages from 93 to 7 :D

• increased my todo list by an indeterminate amount of small tasks >_>

• fixed folders in apple mail to sync with gmail, especially making trash mapped to "all mail" (easier keyboard shortcut than archive)

• unsubscribed from mailing lists I knew I'd never read

• saved a copy of my irc logs from my server to my computer, where I can easily access them

• cleaned out unimportant irc logs

• set my irc logs to logrotate

• figured out how to get Sublime Web Inspector to work

  Seriously it's awesome. Live reload of styles and JS, when you edit them in the text editor! Potential for debugging in the text editor too! (I couldn't get breakpoints to work, but exceptions do. The trick, apparently, is to use cmd+shift+r to trigger the web inspector palette, rather than the normal palette under cmd+shift+p)

• nerved myself up to email customer service types thrice(!!)

• setup my Fitbit (!!!) to track sleep / steps

  Had a bit of trouble because it's not technically available in my country, so I couldn't get the app, and the process of setting up kept leading to dead ends because everything is helpfully geared towards getting you to download their app -- but figured it out in the end. Just need to make sure you're on the full website view, rather than the mobile view. After that things go a lot more smoothly

Now I just need Apple to get back to my email about an app which I downloaded as an HTML5 reference, that magically became a travel app when it tried to get me to update it, and I'll have wrapped up all loose ends from the week.

I worry that I'm becoming jaded because these things don't impress me anymore. But but maybe not. Because I don't want more luxury more gold more bling more wow. All I want is less.

Sigh. Well I'm in a quieter place right now and feel better. Maybe I'm just an introvert running out off cope?