mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)
2018-11-09 10:22 pm
Entry tags:

[sticky entry] Sticky: Meta: About this blog

This is (a first cut at) a sticky-post or landing post for mdlbear.dreamwidth.org. I intend for it to be edited rather than replaced, so the link should stay the same.

Counting the imports from LJ (same username; now no longer updated since they broke automatic crossposting), this blog has been in existence for twenty years as of June 10, 2022.

The Mandelbear

... is what I call the fractal you see in my default icon. The Mandelbear is infinitely fuzzy, being a two-dimensional cross-section of a four-dimensional object. It occasionally manifests as an elderly hacker-songwriter, and sometimes as a Middle-Sized Bear.

Series Tags

These tags mark ongoing series of posts (and are mostly lifted from the post I made last Thursday introducing NaBloPoMo, with a couple of additions and edits.

curmudgeon - The Computer Curmudgeon
This series is a combination of public service announcements, mostly about security- and privacy-related events, and longer informational pieces. These posts are cross-posted onto computer-curmudgeon.com. I'd like to work up to one or two per week.
done - Done Since...
Posted every Sunday (sometimes delayed or advanced depending on conventions and where the end of the month falls), this contains my summary of the week followed by (under a cut tag) the week's worth of to.do file entries. The format of the to.do entries is described in How to.do it, and has been described as sort of an online bullet journal.
river - The River
These are posts about, ... Hmm. What are they about? Love, friendship, grieving, ... I guess the overall theme is emotions.
s4s - Songs for Saturday
What it says on the tin. Songs, and occasionally other music. Sometimes posted late, as "Songs for Sunday".
thanks - Thankful Thursday
My weekly gratitude posts. I'm not entirely consistent about these -- you will occasionally see a "Thankful Friday". There's (almost) always one on (American) Thanksgiving. Of course.
trainwreck
Posts about my finances.

Other Tags

  • goingsideways -- signal boost for weekly posts on GoingSideways.blog
  • meta -- Posts about the blog itself, and other self-referential stuff.
  • poem
  • review
  • song
  • Conventions and other annual events get a pair of tags: the name of the event, and the year.

There are lots more; those are just the more important ones.

Websites

mdlbear: Three rabbits dancing (rabbit-rabbit-rabbit)
2025-07-01 11:25 am
Entry tags:

"Rabbit rabbit rabbit!"

Welcome to July, 2025!

It's worth noting that "happy" is a very rare mood tag these days. The last time I used it was in 2019, after Mom's 99th birthday party.

mdlbear: (rose)
2025-06-30 04:15 pm
Entry tags:

River: A shade of purple has left the world

I have heard the sad news from several friends, who heard it from a friend of a friend, that [personal profile] acelightning passed away suddenly two days ago.

Sadly, I never got to meet her IRL; all I knew of her was her signature purple posts and comments that occasionally brightened my days. I was always glad to see that flash of purple on my reading page, and now it's gone, never to be seen again.

Farewell, Ace -- perhaps I'll see you again, with Colleen and Ame, somewhere over the rainbow bridge. The purple rose icon I made for Amethyst has rarely been so appropriate.

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)
2025-06-29 06:57 pm
Entry tags:

Done Since 2025-06-22

I went out walking five times last week. Altogether they probably amounted to 2.5km, but I have been going a little farther most days. Other than that I don't feel like I've gotten a whole lot done.

That's not entirely justified, however. I ordered a replacement for m's keyboard, which was apparently stolen off of their neigbors' porch. I got what I hope will be the last shot in my 2-year course of treatment. (I was expecting a follow-up phone call, but that had to be rescheduled due to a major phone outage. And I updated my LinkedIn profile and my "professional" website (https://stephen.savitzky.net/) to make it clear that I'm not job-hunting. And helped N get most of the patio furniture, in flatpack form, out to the patio. We put together one of the two Adirondack chairs this afternoon.

I also went down some interesting rabbit-holes, many of the m involving the Vera C. Rubin Observatory -- more links under Wednesday.

You don't have to prefix things with "doom" anymore, that's just the default now. You can just say scrolling. OTOH, if you're on Mastodon and need a break, check out #Bloomscrolling.

Notes & links, as usual )

mdlbear: Wild turkey hen close-up (turkey)
2025-06-26 12:10 pm
Entry tags:

Thankful Thursday

Today I am thankful for...

  • Cooler weather.
  • My cats being helpful (see, e.g., this incident.). Also, little furry alarm clocks. (Though, unfortunately, Bronx does not have a snooze button.)
  • Good customer service. Special thanks to Sweetwater. NO thanks to FedEx. Also no thanks to my stupid mistakes with the order. The main one being trusting FedEx.
  • Pretty good airflow. Using the kitchen's hood fan with the back sliding door is a hack, but it's a working hack.
  • A new website building and maintenance project that will Make Money for HSX.
  • Leftovers for lunch, and occasionally dinner. Not today, unfortunately.
  • A fridge with a working ice-maker.
  • A telehealth appointment with my oncologist getting rescheduled automagically after yesterday's outage.

mdlbear: (distress)
2025-06-22 11:08 am
Entry tags:

Done Since 2025-06-15

Welcome to the start of summer, and maybe of WWIII. This post that came across my Mastodon feed this morning kind of says it all:

You don't have to prefix things with "doom" anymore, that's just the default now. You can just say scrolling.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, ...

I had my oncology appointment; I'll be getting a hormone injection (tomorrow, and apparently they do house calls for that) rather than continuing with abiraterone (which insurance won't cover because not metastatic). It's good for six months, which will take me through the end of my 2-year course of treatment. I'm okay with this.

Last night I fell down a rabbit-hole troubleshooting my little script that prints out the URL of one's last post. See this commit. Pretty sure I can blame AI bots for that problem.

I fell down another rabbit-hole Friday, which started by looking for the overture to Wagner's opera Der fliegende Holländer. Turns out that J. Slauerhoff, whom our street is named after, wrote a poem about it. It's in his book, Eldorado. I expect to have a little fun trying to translate it. (And note in passing that doom is also mentioned in that connection.)

ysabetwordsmith has some good links about dealing with Heat. It was supposed to hit 30C (90F) today, but it looks like we may be getting a thunderstorm instead. It'll still be too hot indoors.

Notes & links, as usual )

mdlbear: Wild turkey hen close-up (turkey)
2025-06-19 11:42 am
Entry tags:

Thankful Thursday

Today I am thankful for...

  • My keyboard arriving last Friday without any problems. NO thanks to FedEx, which has failed to deliver m's keyboard to their home in Seattle. Twice.
  • Remembering a very little bit of how to sight-read.
  • Finally solving my audio input problem. NO thanks to Zoom and Audacity, which fail in entirely orthogonal ways to sanely handle my UA-25.
  • Thanks to them, however, for at least allowing the system default as a device. Differently, of course.
  • Linux command-line tools, including (but not limited to) Grep, Find, Ls, Sed, and of course Bash, for always being there when I need to do some trivial but off-the-wall bit of data-mining. Like listing all Thankful Thursday posts with fewer than four list items.
    $ for f in ../2*/*/*thank*; do echo $(grep "li>" $f | wc -l) $f; done |grep ^[2-3] 
      3 ../2019/09/12--thankful-thursday.html
      3 ../2020/06/05--thankful-friday.html
      3 ../2020/06/25--thankful-thursday.html
      3 ../2021/04/25--thankful-sunday.html
      3 ../2022/02/24--thankful-thursday.html
      2 ../2025/01/03--thankful-thursday-addendum.html
      2 ../2025/06/12--thankful-thursday.html
    

NO thanks to 2025!me for continued procrastination., and NO thanks to 2022!me, for letting the MakeStuff/music toolchain languish with no maintenance and inadequate documentation, making it way harder than necessary to put a two-song concert set online. Which might get done this week.

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)
2025-06-15 05:40 pm
Entry tags:

Done Since 2025-06-08

I think this was one of those weeks that makes me want to give up on trying to characterize my week. It wasn't particularly good, it wasn't particularly bad, I didn't get a whole lot done, the US had a lot of mostly-peaceful No Kings" demonstrations, but it also had political assassinations in Minnesota alongside other symptoms of its slide into fascism.

Last Sunday was the 23rd anniversary of this blog's founding, back on LJ. Today is the 27th Father's Day since my Dad's death in February of 1999, and I've been kind of wrecked since Thursday. The keyboard I ordered on Tuesday arrived Friday; it's flawed but will do what we need it to. The one I ordered for m has not arrived yet. I may have the start of a toothache.

Thursday was my first, and so far only, Thankful Thursday post ever with only two items. Since then, both of my kids wished me a happy Father's Day, so next week should have at least that many. I had a blood tests and a CT scan done last week, but I won't get to talk with a doctor about them until tomorrow.

See what I mean?

Here -- give a listen to the recordings of my and m's 2-song "set" at DFDF two weeks ago. In keeping with the theme of the week, the first verse and a half of Millennium's Dawn got cut off thanks to technical difficulties.

Notes & links, as usual )

mdlbear: Wild turkey hen close-up (turkey)
2025-06-12 09:47 pm
Entry tags:

Thankful Thursday

Today I am thankful for...

  • Thomann and Sweetwater. Minor grumps at Thomann for having a US site that looks tempting until you find out that shipping and tariffs are added at checkout. Major grumps at my old standby, Musician's Friend, whose site is totally broken when seen from Europe. Major grumps at ME for not having installed a VPN yet.
  • Online filk circles. NO thanks to the weird audio problems I was having tonight during Eurofilk. But I got one song (The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of) out. (I wrote it for my father, who died 26 years ago. And Father's Day is this Sunday.)

Not feeling terribly thankful today. Sorry.

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)
2025-06-08 04:14 pm
Entry tags:

Done Since 2025-06-02

... so I still haven't done a full con report -- it's been almost a week -- so in the interim I'll just refer you to last week's "Done Since 2025-05-25" (posted on Monday) and "Thankful Thursday" posts. The only parts of the trip it doesn't cover very well are the songs we sang ( "Millennium's Dawn" deserves full S4S treatment), the hotel (the breakfast and dinner buffets, included in the room price), were noteworthy), and the travel.

Right. The travel. Tips:

  • Don't leave anything in (travel guitar)Plink's case -- it could delay inspection (and did, at Hamburg).
  • On arrival, stay in the plane until somebody tells you that your wheelchair is ready. Hamburg again.
  • If you don't look disabled (like m, for example), take a cane and hobble out of the plane with it. This is especially true for Schiphol -- the Dutch tend to be ablist.

Yesterday N, m, and I had a good band practice/conference, including more tweaking on "Millennium's Dawn", scripting for several songs that still had only two-person arrangements, and harmony arrangements because we finally have someone in the band who can reliably sing harmony. We're also going to want a keyboard. Or two, since m is leaving tomorrow for Seattle.

Health-wise, I don't think I'm doing all that well, so it's a good thing I have an appointment with a cardiologist soon, as well as with an oncologist.

If you're interested in word origins, check out the Online Etymology Dictionary, which includes some fascinating articles as well as the dictionary entries.

Notes & links, as usual )

mdlbear: Wild turkey hen close-up (turkey)
2025-06-05 04:48 pm
Entry tags:

Thankful Thursday

Today I am thankful for...

  • The folks we met at DFDF, and particularly the concom, for a wonderful convention. Additional thanks to whoever came up with the con's memorable URL.
  • My nibling and bandmate m.
  • The two wheelchair pushers at Hamburg, without whom we wouldn't have made our flight home. NO thanks to the security people at Hamburg, nor to the wheelchair pusher at Schiphol, who tried to claim that m didn't have wheelchair assistance.
  • Myself, for remembering to check under-seat bag size restrictions on KLM, and Red, my little REI backpack that is squishable enough to just barely fit. NO thanks to companies that claim their bags fit under an airplane seat, when they actually don't. No thanks, also, to airlines that keep reducing the available space year after year.
  • Ticia and, especially, Bronx, for letting me sleep and giving me all the lap-cuddles.

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)
2025-06-02 09:38 pm
Entry tags:

Done Since 2025-05-25

This weekend, Thursday through Sunday, m and I were at D.F.D.F. | Das Frühlingsfest der Filksmusik in Hanstedt, Germany -- one of the two German filk cons. We got in a couple of good rehersals, Sunday and Wednesday. We'd signed up for a two-song set in the Main Concert, which is basically a couple of hours of two-fers interspersed with voice auction items. This is f'n brilliant, because the auction items overlap the tech setup for the next concert set, allowing the whole affair to proceed seamlessly.

Our "set" was Millennium's Dawn and Ship of Stone. We'd done quite a bit of hacking and slashing to bring "Millennium's Dawn" up to date (removing the verse that starts "There ought to be talking computers...", taking out the first chorus, and making some minor wording tweaks.) We absolutely nailed both songs.

The open filking mostly started after my bedtime, We did get to perform Gentle Arms of Eden and The Bears (middle-sized and middle-aged). m stayed up later, and their singing was also well-received. We'll be back.

There may be a proper con report in a few days.

The flight back was not fun, with hassles in both Hamburg and Schiphol. And Sunday afternoon and evening were kind of a blur due to a health issue )

that had me very worried. Fortunately it resolved this morning.

I note in passing that the song pages for Kaleidofolk are in pretty sorry shape right now and badly in need of troubleshooting. Later this week. I also need to put up a page for our new album (in progress), Winds of Time.

Notes & links, as usual )

mdlbear: Three rabbits dancing (rabbit-rabbit-rabbit)
2025-06-01 08:26 am
Entry tags:

Rabbit rabbit rabbit!

Welcome to June, 2025. Almost halfway around the year.

The usual "done since" will be posted tomorrow, after the con.

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)
2025-05-25 08:31 pm
Entry tags:

Done Since 2025-05-18

It feels like it's been a busy week. I have actually gotten a few things done. (Some of them today, which doesn't really count.) Most notably, making travel arrangements to get to D.F.D.F..

It's also been a good week for finding stuff, including an obituary for my father, written by his friend and co-worker Walter Slavin [pdf]. Also, a box containing a small carpet, two plastic bins of memorabilia, and a number of old hard drives (which need to be looked at and erased before being discarded) that I thought had been left behind,

Happy Lilac Towel Day Also note that last Sunday was Mount St. Helens Day, so you'll find several more links immediately under the cut.

You'll also find the Epic v. Apple Contempt order, which is epic in more ways than one. I haven't had that much fun reading a court order since SCO v IBM. It's worth an extended quote:

In stark contrast to Apple’s initial in-court testimony, contemporaneous business documents reveal that Apple knew exactly what it was doing and at every turn chose the most anticompetitive option. To hide the truth, Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, outright lied under oath. Internally, Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction, but Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise. Cook chose poorly. [...] The Court refers the matter to the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California to investigate whether criminal contempt proceedings are appropriate.

This is an injunction, not a negotiation.

For a musical finale, here is Duetto buffo di due gatti (Duet for Two Cats). Put your drink down before listening.

Notes & links, as usual )

mdlbear: Wild turkey hen close-up (turkey)
2025-05-22 03:02 pm
Entry tags:

Thankful Thursday

Today I am thankful for...

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)
2025-05-18 03:13 pm
Entry tags:

Done Since 2025-05-11

So, not a bad week. (Can I accurately call it a "pretty good" week? I'm never able to make judgements like that.) But I did some guitar practice, and got out for a walk four times, and sang a little with m, who came back from the US last Sunday (bringing mail that had accumulated at our US address). N came back from New York yesterday; she gave me a little "engraving and drill pen" as an unbirthday present -- it had arrived while she was gone. j came over as well, so we had all of my Dutch family here. G made baked salmon.

Apparently I totally forgot about posting Thankful Thursday this week. Well, Thursday was pretty eventful, with a urology appointment (I can expect to hear back a week from Wednesday about what my ongoing treatment will be), some singing practice with m, and actually performing the songs we'd practiced at Eurofilk. (Is "at" the right word for attending an event by zoom?)

... and forgot to mention Mother's Day in last week's post, though that's not terribly surprising, since I have no-one to call anymore.

Yesterday I finally stopped waffling and (finally!) pre-ordered a Framework 12" Laptop. I've been eyeing it for some time, and coveting a Framework for years. I increased the specs over what I'd initially configured, but because I'd waffled over it I won't get it until Q3 sometime. Bah! I'll post a lot more once it finally ships.

Also, yesterday was the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia; there's that. Some more trans-related links under Saturday. And today is the 45th anniversary of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. (Which of course sent me down a rabbit-hole involving magma, hollow-Earth fiction, and so on.)

As for links, here from yesterdat is a list of The world's five happiest cities for 2025. Look for your hometown in the Institute for Quality of Life's Happy City Index 2025. Den Haag ranks #65, and Seattle is #80.

Notes & links, as usual )

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)
2025-05-11 05:01 pm
Entry tags:

Done Since 2025-05-04

It hasn't been a very productive week for me, but not totally unproductive either. You can see the improved font selections -- Atkinson HyperLegible Next and Merriweather -- on HyperSpace Express. There's not really all that much to see, it still needs some improvements, and it took me too long to get around to. But it's something.

In my partial defense, CSS is a very deep rabbit-hole, and I am easily distracted. Especially if I can frame it as something I can use.

 

Music. I didn't publish an s4s post yesterday, but I meant to, because I ran across The music of dying stars -- head over to the Zwicky Transient Facility's Sonify the Cosmos page for more information, a combined sonification and visualization, and an interview. You can make your own.

I this is not the first time I've used a sonification as my s4s. Maybe not even the second, depending on whether you count The Songs of Pando.

 

In other news, Pope Leo XIII cared for the poor, fought for labor union rights. He was against Socialism and Laissez Faire Capitalism. What influence Leo XIV will have on the way the US is going remains to be seen, but the fact that his first homily as pope has apparently upset some MAGAts gives reason for hope.

I could use some hope right now.

Notes & links, as usual )

mdlbear: Wild turkey hen close-up (turkey)
2025-05-09 09:36 am
Entry tags:

Thankful Thursday

Today I am thankful for...

  • The cats. Bronx seems to be getting a little more mellow. Finally.
  • My human housemates -- N, G, and sometimes m -- and occasional visitor m's brother j.
  • Warmer weather. NO thanks for anemia, which apparently makes me feel cold, especially in the evenings.
  • 3-d printed geometrical models. Like the mini 120-Cell sitting on my desk right now.
  • Fountain pens.
  • Blue cheese. Especially good with tart apples.
Wrote this yesterday, but fell down a rabbit-hole and forgot to post. Sorry about that.

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)
2025-05-04 06:57 pm
Entry tags:

Done Since 2025-04-27

It's been a busy week. G and N have been in Paris since Tuesday, celebrating their (10th?!) anniversary. (I can't think of a more romantic place to celebrate it, but maybe that's just because of the flashback scenes in Casablanca, which was one od Colleen's and my favorite movies.) They're getting back tonight. Meanwhile, I've been taking care of four cats on three different feeding schedules, and trying (with mixed success) to get my guitar-playing back into shape for recording.

I've also started to get websites switched over to my current favorite set of fonts -- Merriweather for headings, and Atkinson Hyperlegible Next for body text. I like the contrast between serif and sans-serif for headings and text; in print it works better the other way around, but only if you have the extra resolution and contrast to pull it off. I started with Going Sideways, which is probably worst case because of the convoluted way WordPress deals with styles.

(makes a note to work on that rant about WordPress...)

I've been having a lot of trouble concentrating lately. Perhaps relatedly, I have been having a lot of trouble making decisions. From what to work on next to what to eat for dinner. I frequently wind up sitting -- or standing -- frozen in place for minutes. Sometimes, I think, nearly an hour, although my memory for such things is extremely unreliable.

... so, being decision-paralyzed about what links to give you, here are Daniel Kelly singing "Moon Song" by Mildred Plew Meigs. (See also my post about it, with lyrics, from 2007. It used to be one of Colleen's favorites), and Rodin's Celle qui fut la belle heaulmière. More about that under Friday, including links to the poem that inspired it.

Notes & links, as usual )

... and May the Fourth be with you.

mdlbear: Wild turkey hen close-up (turkey)
2025-05-01 09:28 pm
Entry tags:

Thankful Thursday

Today I am grateful for...

  • Good company -- j -- while putting together flatpack furniture. More of that queued up for tomorrow.
  • Filk, filkers, and filking. Also filking over zoom.
  • Public transit.
  • Perfect walking weather. (No thanks for letting myself get out of shape -- my own damned fault of course.)
  • Blue cheese and apples. (A combination Colleen introduced me to.)

mdlbear: Three rabbits dancing (rabbit-rabbit-rabbit)
2025-05-01 07:58 am
Entry tags:

"Rabbit rabbit rabbit!"

Welcome to May, 2025!

The first day of May is the traditional beginning of Summer Also known as Beltane (northern hemisphere), (Samhain, and the start of winter, if you happen to be in the Southern hemisphere), Labour Day International Workers' Day.