andrewducker | Reading

What have I been up to?

Lots of things.

Youth Rugby - team going well. Had a big league win last weekend. Looking ahead to the National Cup semi-final the weekend after next. At home on the main pitch. Next weekend I'll be on a bus to the south of Scotland for several hours for a league game. Exciting times for the team.

Improv - I've just finished an eight week Introduction to Improv course with a local improv group in Edinburgh. It was superb. Really good course, well designed, well delivered. Also, unusually full of really interesting, engaging people who are good improvisors. I don't mean that it is unusual for people in an improv class to be really good at improv or fun and interesting to hang round with but pretty much everyone was cool and groovy and I could see myself on stage with them. So that was nice.

FAT Rugby - has been paused due to the clash with Improv but I'll be back to that next week. Looking forward to that.

TTRPG - or Bingly Bongly as MLW calls it. Finished one Cyberpunk 2020 campaign; Land of the Free. Started a second continuation campaign; Tales from the Forlorn Hope. Lots of fun. I've become a bit obsessed with my character. This is normal. I've enjoyed playing the system and role playing the character. It's provoked lots of thoughts about RPG systems. Playing with nice people. Sadly we only manage games fortnightly as the GM works shifts.

RPG Systems - I've been designing my own RPG system. Not in the hope of doing anything different or better than anyone has managed before. The aim is to learn how the systems work and how the game design process works by doing it. I'll cross reference to the separate blog for it later. So far it's spawned one sub-project. I have written about one third of a book on the Taxonomy of Magic Systems in Table Top Role Playing Games. Coming soon to a pdf on DriveThruRPG sometime in the 2030s.

Weight - nudged my weight below 100 kgs for the first time in years. Weight loss slowed a bit over the summer. I think it will pick up again once I go back to Fat Rugby. That extra bit of exercise will help. As will the discipline. If the annual bonus is decent I'll start ozempic in the New Year. I've demonstrated to myself that I can make the long-term changes in habit and lifestyle needed to lose weight and maintain weight. It would be better to lose that weight in six months rather than two years.

Reading - I appear to have started reading again. Well done Lois McMaster Bujold.

Other stuff - lots of family business going on. Not all of it bad but all of it busy.

What have you been up to?

tamaranth

2025/181: Murder Most Foul — Guy Jenkin

Even in Deptford, you can’t carry bodies far in daylight... [loc. 1402]

In which William Shakespeare is suspected of the murder of Christopher Marlowe, and makes common cause with Marlowe's sister Ann (formerly Will's lover) to find out who really killed Marlowe, and why. Well-researched, witty historical whodunnit with a credible denouement and some excellent dialogue (Jenkin is an award-winning scriptwriter) and lots of period detail. Also, set in my neck of the woods...

The premise sounded excellent, but didn't quite ring true for me.( Read more... )

Current Mood: exanimate

ysabetwordsmith

Carcinization is a form of convergent evolution in which non-crab crustaceans evolve a crab-like body plan. The term was introduced into evolutionary biology by Lancelot Alexander Borradaile, who described it in 1916 as "the many attempts of Nature to evolve a crab".

Crabs have evolved five separate times – why do the same forms keep appearing in nature?

... including at least one sexbot whose lower body is a mechanical battle crab. :D

Current Mood: busy

lovelyangel

Japanese Maple Under Gray Skies
Strolling Pond Garden • Portland Japanese Garden • Portland, Oregon
October 30, 2025
Nikon Z8 • NIKKOR Z 24-120mm f/4 S
f/8 @ 33mm • 1/500s • ISO 1600

The weather forecast for Wednesday, October 29 was sunshine, and I really, really wanted to go to the Portland Japanese Garden to get photographs of the trees in autumn glory. The red and orange leaves are aglow when backlit by the sun, and this was the perfect opportunity.

The only schedule conflict was the contractors coming to bring me the extra bookshelves I had ordered. They were scheduled to come at 10:00 am, and I figured they’d be no more than 30 minutes. Easy.

Unfortunately, that morning I received a text from my interior designer saying the contractors were delayed and would arrive between 11:00 am and 11:30 am. OK. That wasn’t great, but I could still get to the gardens by noon or 12:30 pm.

I was dismayed when the contractor did not arrive until 1:30 pm, and they departed at 2:00 pm. I could maybe get to the gardens by 2:45 pm. I know that the trees and the west hills begin blocking the sun much earlier than sunset. Basically, I had to cancel the attempt to get photos. I was pretty disappointed as sunshine during fall colors is uncommon in Oregon. Also, I knew the forecast was for overcast skies on Thursday.

( Thursday, With Cloudy Skies )

ysabetwordsmith

The November 4, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl made its $300 goal, so there will be a half-price sale in Polychrome Heroics from Monday 17-Sunday 23. Mark the dates on your calendar, and I hope to see you then!

Current Mood: busy

pennyarcade_feed

https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2025/11/12/manifold-delights

Gabe has been pushing this new Frankenstein shit pretty hard, but I don't have to be nudged with any intensity into seeing a Guillermo Del Toro movie. I can close my eyes and see one, I love his shit. Apparently this new one balls out of control, and a wisp of a scene at the very end of the runtime hints at the kind of structures in play.

https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2025/11/12/manifold-delights

ysabetwordsmith

Happy Monsterotica Launch Day!

The crowdfunding campaign to fund publishing of our next erotic anthology, Monsterotica: Tales of Unusual Courtship and Coupling, is now live on Kickstarter!

Now through December 2nd, 2025, we seek to raise $10,500 to cover publishing of the anthology and creation of the related merchandise. This awesome book contains 16 queer stories by 16 awesome authors, each story up to 7,500 words long. We encouraged authors to pitch us stories featuring unusual creatures and unconventional genitals; you won’t find any vampires or weres here, but you will find insectoid aliens, mountain cryptids, scales and feathers, tentacles, detachable anatomy, interspecies shenanigans, courtship confusion, and much more. And of course, in addition to featuring monster x monster and monster x human relationships, every single story also includes queer characters and queer relationships!

Current Mood: busy

redbird

After putting it off for a while, I read through the manuscript of a non-quite-autobiographical book about my mother's life, and sent the editor some comments. This was difficult because it's largely about her experiences as a child survivor of the Holocaust. It's based on a series of interviews with my mother, which the editor was doing and compiling when my mother died unexpectedly. So that went back this afternoon.

The delivery pharmacy somehow got the wrong dosage of one of my prescriptions. This is annoying partly because I noticed the problem, told them, and we both contacted my doctor. (The prescription is 1/day, and they filled it as half a pill every day.) I thought we'd agreed that they would hold off until one of us heard back from her, and I took delivery yesterday because I thought they were bringing the other thing I'd ordered. So now I have to contact Carmen again, and figure out what to do here.

After several days of looking at Medicare open enrollment stuff, I sent an email this afternoon to the state-funded office that provides free advice on the subject, asking for an appointment. The questions are, roughly, do I want Medicare Advantage next year, or do I want basic Medicare, a separate (Part D) drug plan, and a Medigap policy. My existing Medicare Advantage plan isn't being offered next year, so I have options, but also have to decide something.

We have, however, heard back from the handyman/moving guy, and arranged for him to take the air conditioners out of our windows, and also bring more things from the storage unit. He took just long enough to get back to us that Adrian was trying to find someone else to do the job, but I'm glad we don't have to.

ysabetwordsmith

My poem "GAMING" is up on

computerworld.

beavertech has been commissioning poems to be posted in The Freaks Club family of communities.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

In praise of the small things in life: DDG Bangs!

DuckDuckGo is a privacy-respecting search engine launched in 2008 that has been slowly expanding into something else truly. (I mean, come on, Identity Theft Restoration?). Well, nevertheless, I still use DuckDuckGo because it's easy, their search results aren't polluted with all sorts of nonsense, they did introduce an AI summarize feature but I don't use it and it's easy to opt out thankfully. But all of that pales in comparison to the best DDG feature, Bangs!

Bangs are… well it's kinda hard to describe them, it's basically a shortcut from your search engine to wherever else, so if you have DuckDuckGo set as your search engine, you can basically search using other search engines quite easily!

Current Mood: busy

conuly

I'm sure their families are still grieving

Watch on YouTube

ysabetwordsmith

Here is an interesting discussion about what it costs to buy kitchen equipment. None of this is how I'd go about it, unless someone handed me grant money earmarked for that purpose. (Fair disclosure: I could make a crude but usable knife by busting a rock, and I could cook on a flat rock or with sticks. Kitchen equipment is a beloved convenience for me.)

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

calimac

I should have written this yesterday, because it's about a veteran, but though I read then the piece I'm going to write about, it was late in the day.

I'd gone down to the city library to return some books, figuring they'd be closed so the parking lot would be empty, but it turned out that, though it was a federal holiday, it wasn't a city holiday and the library was open. So I went inside and browsed around a little.

There I found, but didn't check out or remember the title of, a book of political commentary essays. One of the essays was a profile of John McCain from the time of his presidential run in 2008. In this profile, McCain is annoyed. Here he is, a heroic ex-POW who kept his honor by refusing early release, and subsequently an experienced legislator, and he's losing the election to ... what? An inexperienced community organizer? How can this be?

Allow me to explain how it could be, because McCain was operating on invalid assumptions. Sure, he was a POW hero. What should we do about that? We should honor him! But that doesn't mean he should be President. The presidency is not a reward for valor.

I voted in that election, and I chose Obama for a simple reason. I agreed with his policies and principles a lot more than I did with McCain's. Nothing more need be said, but it can be. For voters want not just policy agreements, but the ability to do the job. And Obama exuded the gravitas and sober approach that convinced me that he would know how to be president, how to communicate and delegate and the other tasks a president must perform. And indeed, he turned out to be just fine in those respects. Whereas McCain was famously impulsive and hotheaded, and was a 72-year-old man in dicey health who thought Sarah Palin would make a dandy successor if anything happened.

For experience can be overrated. No other job in government is like being president, and experience in other positions cannot always predict how well you'll do. The most experienced earlier president, with many years and varied positions in his résumé, was James Buchanan, not a sterling argument for the importance of experience.

Besides, was Obama's experience all that thin? Consider his résumé at the time he first ran for president. He was a lawyer from Illinois with a fair chunk of service in the state legislature and a couple of years in Congress. The previous time we'd elected a president with that résumé, he turned out to be pretty good.

That's not to say Obama was another Lincoln or anything like it. But it does show that the important thing is not experience, but what you make of it.

mellowtigger

I've lost count of how many times that I've needed to go to the restroom today. I don't even start the chemical preparations until tomorrow. This is just my second day of So Very Much Water with low fiber diet.

Yesterday, on the first day of this regimen, I got through work and ended the shift needing bathroom breaks every 30 minutes. I'm short on sleep now, after needing to get up 4 times last night too. Today, I worked 1.5 hours before giving up. The bathroom recurrence time shrank from 30 minutes to 20 minutes, then 15 minutes. I gave up after 1.5 hours, and I just called it a sick day and logged off.

I'm eating even less today while still drinking So Very Much Water. I switched from pants to robe, making those bathroom trips even easier. *laugh* I do my final cleanse routine on Thursday evening. I show up at 6:30am on Friday morning for the GI exam.

As usual, I'll be glad to eat regular food again as soon as it's done. And stop drinking so much water.

ysabetwordsmith

Massachusetts is turning retired cranberry bogs into natural wetlands. They’re on track to rewild 1,000 acres

In November 2024, the DER funneled $6 million in grants to the restoration plan. According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, more than 500 acres of retired cranberry bogs have already been converted into wetlands — with hopes of restoring 1,000 acres in the next decade.

“These projects will transform degraded former cranberry bogs into thriving wetlands that will provide habitat to important species, flood control in time of storms, and access for all to beautiful natural areas,” Governor Maura Healey said in a statement.

This is a brilliant plan that will provide tremendous benefits for wildlife, as wetlands are among the most biodiverse communities. It will be especially helpful to migrating waterfowl of the Atlantic Flyway.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today is sunny and mild, a beautiful fall day.

I fed the birds. I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches plus a fox squirrel.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 11/12/25 -- I planted 4 clusters of Egyptian walking onions.

EDIT 11/12/25 -- I filled a trolley with dead weeds and dumped it in the firepit.

EDIT 11/12/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 11/12/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 11/12/25 -- I filled another trolley with dead weeds and dumped it in the firepit.

As it is getting dark, I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3167/

'They really shouldn't let those small cars drive in traffic. I worry I'm going to kill someone if I hit one! They should have to drive on the sidewalk, safely out of the way.'

https://xkcd.com/3167/

james_davis_nicoll

39 Mythos-history-fringe-weird treatises from Pelgrane Press.

Bundle of Holding: Ken Writes About Stuff

lovelyangel

I have really, really missed working with my full, dual-monitor computer setup. It is such a joy to have six Workspaces distributed across two 5K monitors.

A new joy is the uncovering of the tall window to the right of my fireplace. That window had always been blocked because the light coming in was harsh. Now that it’s open (after, like, 20 years), I’ve discovered that the covered deck that we added in 2020 blocks some direct sunlight – and also the neighbor’s trees have grown, and they also filter the light. My view outside is now a pleasant, green scene with my patio table and chairs in the foreground.

Belldandy is fully connected now. Yesterday I activated the twin Time Machine drives (Makina II and Michiru II) and manually launched an initial backup, building off the older archives on the drives. (Belldandy/Madoka has never had a Time Machine backup. The previous Time Machine backups were Belldandy IV (Frieren)/Amane back in May 2025.)

Today I moved the printer from the bedroom to the library. I’ve connected the subwoofer and desktop speakers to Belldandy and tested sound. I borrowed a Cat6 Ethernet cable from my stash of cables so that I could connect Belldandy directly to the Netgear box, bypassing wifi. I have to say, I wasn’t able to avoid a massive snarl of cables and cords behind my desk. I don’t know if there’s a solution to that.

I am slowly re-adding items to my desk. I’m trying not to bring back the full clutter, and I’m bringing back only things that are essential to operations. The lesser-used items I hope to store offline (that is, in the office cabinet). It’s a process. A slow, deliberate one. This will take weeks, I think.

The printer cabinet and the oak file cabinet are temporarily set about 10" behind my desk. They look pretty crude compared to all the new furniture in the library. I’ve asked my interior designer to look for a single furniture piece to replace them both.

I have to say, though, the view from my chair at my desk is totally wonderful. I’ve very much spoiled myself.

The View From My Desk, November 2025
iPhone 13 mini photo

cosmolinguist

I had so much work to do today, and yet an hour after I started I still hadn't managed to log in to my computer.

I had to change my password yesterday (yay security theater! thanks I hate it!). Today I could log in on my phone but not my laptop. I carefully typed my password so many times. Always the same response. I even went through the inaccessible process to change the password AGAIN so then had to remember the new new one and not mix it up with the old new one all these times I typed it... (I even tried the old old one a few times, just in case.)

I felt like I was coming unglued from reality.

I had to call IT.

I hate my workplace IT. I hate it so much I just lived with a fairly significant problem (not being able to access some documents I need), for years, after repeated attempts at getting them to fix this problem that ended with them not even listening to it or understanding it. As soon as they heard a word that meant it could be someone else's fault they switched off, and no amount of me explaining that there wasn't anything anyone else could do and it started when they made me use an authenticator app which I get is more secure than SMS but also didn't fucking have the settings I needed... I just gave up trying and do without access to those things.

So for me to call them is really dire straits. But I have a ton of work to do and it has to be done today! So I called.

The guy I got told me to do a thing that I said I couldn't when I couldn't even log in. He barely let me finish talking before he said, "Totally incorrect."

I don't know if you've ever offered a simple problem -- like "how can I do anything on the computer if I can't log in?" --only to be met with "Totally incorrect" as a reply but lemme tell you, it has a really physical effect!

I could hardly hear what he was saying after that because I was doing that wheezing, disbelieving laugh that I associate with Michael Hobbes being on a podcast where he's just been told something that a fascist has said. I was actually speechless. It actually knocked the breath right out of me.

People just...should not talk to each other like that!

I just hung up on him.

In the process of treating me like a Victorian schoolboy who was about to get beaten for making a mistake in his Latin, he'd inadvertently reminded me of something that would actually help me address the problem, so I hung up and did that.

But at 10:30 this morning I still hadn't gotten any work done because I had to log back into everything on my phone since I'd changed the password again, and process all the emotions I've been through before I'd even had a chance to make tea... It took most of the morning to do that, make breakfast and settle down to my task. I didn't manage to empty the dishwasher or give Mr. Smith his meds or get my laundry out of the dryer or anything else I might do in a day. I barely managed lunch.

But! I sent off the much-awaited long-overdue first draft to my boss and his boss, the next stage, at 16:44 today. Is it a good first draft? No! Is it done, 16 minutes before the end of the last possible work day I said it'd be done for after pushing the deadline twice? Yes!

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andrewducker

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November 2025

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Page generated Nov. 13th, 2025 11:15 am

Very cool, if true

Reading

On Generally Catching Up

2025/181: Murder Most Foul — Guy Jenkin

Vocabulary: Carcinization

Overcast Autumn

Half-Price Sale in Polychrome Heroics

Manifold Delights

New Crowdfunding Project: "Monsterotica"

a few things make a post

Read "GAMING"

Cyberspace Theory

It's apparently been 50 years

Shopping

honor and experience

GI exam prep

Conservation

Birdfeeding

Car Size

Bundle of Holding: Ken Writes About Stuff

Library Update #21: Rebuilding

Never was a story of more woe...

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November 2025

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