The Mandelbear's Musings

Not a great week. Started out well, with cat cuddles and walks Sunday and Monday mornings. Then came my GP appointment.

Then yesterday I tried attending Festival of the Living Rooms, the quarterly online filk con that started almost by accident during Covid. But instead of using the Zoom app, which just works, they insisted on going through the web app embedded on their shiny new website. Calling it beta quality is being generous. FotLR may have jumped the shark this time.

Naturally I didn't get much done otherwise, although I did go back and look at the scratch tracks I'd recorded for my next album, Amethyst Rose. Um... They were recorded between 2004 and 2010! WTF? I'll have to see whether anything can be rescued from that debacle.

Enough griping. Links! How about Grooming a Giant Rescue Maine Coon Cat? And Monday's APOD, Flying Over the Earth at Night, a time-lapse from the ISS. Particularly noteworthy for the footage of the Aurora Australis starting at 1:20

If you have lots of free time, take a look at WikiFlix. CONTENT WARNING: very deep rabbit hole full of old movies.

And finally, because of the season and because it's incredibly cool, here's The Ukrainian Origin of “Carol of the Bells” | The Story of Shchedryk (Щедрик). Turns out the tune was taken from an old New Year's Day chant, from back when New Years Day was celebrated on Beltane. Better, here's the Original Ukrainian Version, sung first in a pretty littleral English translation (with Ukranian subtitles!), then in Ukranian. And best of all, here's a Remix by the B&B project for bandura and button accordion.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Mixed. A couple of minor high points, including a very nice Thanksgiving (observed) dinner yesterday evening, but enough lows to more than compensate, plus enough problems with both my health, and my abject failure to get those across during my appointment Friday morning, to throw me into a tailspin that I still haven't fully recovered from. Oh, and Leslie Fish died yesterday. There's another bit storythere, too, but it'll wait for another day.

Three walks. One guitar practice, Friday, but after spending the day in a funk it lifted my spirits a litte, as did a little more Dutch on Duolingo. I take what I can get. The top quote of the week, from Paradox of hedonism - Wikipedia:

Happiness is like a cat, if you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you; it will never come. But if you pay no attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap.

Apparently the same thing applies to sleep. But it's only 20:48, so I have two hours, more or less, before I have to not-try to put that into practice. If the cats will let me. But I'll stop here, incoherent as this post is, because between now and then I have to compose an email to my doctors. (Or at least their clinic. It's complicated, and a large part of Friday's trainwreck was because I didn't know how complicated it had gotten while I wasn't looking.)

Why Nature will not allow the use of generative AI in images and video So apparently Nature abhors AI.

How about ending with The Illustrated Version of “Alice’s Restaurant”?

( Notes & links, as usual )

So I did, in fact, need a live appointment about the pain in my right ankle. Edema, which I could have checked for a couple of weeks ago if I'd thought of it. (I did think of it late last week, and immediately made the appointment.) I am now on two more blood pressure meds, and I'm supposed to keep my feet up and avoid salt. So much for brine pickles and pizza with anchovies.

The only places where I can put my feet above the level of my heart are in bed (with my feet on the wall, so I can only do it for a little while in the morning), and the living room couch. And about the only thing I can do in that postition is breathing exercises. Growf. I have a follow-up appointment this coming Wednesday.

I re-stacked the plastic bins under my desk, so I can at least keep my legs level if not up. Don't know whether that will help much, but it can't hurt. (Much; it's a little hard on my unsupported knees, and starts hurting after a little while..) Still no idea why I always feel cold in the late afternoon and evening, but I've gotten Colleen's fake-fleece-lined scooter cape out of the closet and it helps. The cold feeling might be partly -- or even mostly -- anxiety, but, well, Colleen's cape.

N is back from London, after getting m and Cricket settled there. Not clear what that will do to our recording schedule -- not much given that it was already a shambles. Lizzy, the folding mobility scooter, is also back. She appears to need some work, and definitely needs a new battery.

I don't think I've mentioned N's book, The World As It Ought to Be, since it came out in hardcopy and Kindle. Go get yourself a copy. I finally got her author's website more-or-less done; she's having it professionally desighed, but the one I hacked together will do until that's done. I got the Website Portfolio, which I mentioned last week, more-or-less done as well.

Some links: The rebellion will be federated – 2025 edition - Elena Rossini. She saved a baby goat. Now they travel the country, share a bed.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Not a bad week. The housemates returned from OVFF Wednesday morning, so I'm off the hook for taking care of Cricket and Brooklyn. So I'm back to caring for two cats in one room again. And I was fairly productive -- not much music but a lot of work on the HyperSpace Express website, and N's author site. Which should have been done a month or more ago, but better late than not at all.

I wrote a post yesterday that wasn't one of the usual repeating ones (Thankful Thursday, Done Since, and Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit). It's been a while since I did that.

Only four walks this week :P -- I woke up with a leg cramp yesterday; the other two missing mornings were a matter of timing. See above about Wednesday. I think Monday I just slept in. Or fell down a rabbit hole. So far the main thing the Sansung smartwatch is good for is tracking my sleep. The main reason I got it in the first place was for emergency calls, but I haven't tested that function -- or even ordinary calling -- at all. Should fix that.

I also haven't made a portfolio/list of all the websites I've build over the years. I'm not even sure how many there are. Need to fix that too.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Rough week. Mostly my fault. Stuff that should have been done weeks or months ago, having to be done at the last minute and not very well. Have I mentioned that I suck at getting things done?

Okay, I did finish my US income taxes a three days before the deadline. But not having looked at them for months I appear to have lost track of some paperwork. Or I never had it. I'll probably get my refund, then get a bill -- probably in a couple of years. If they ever notice. I'm not going to worry about it.

Should have started on N's author website months ago, along with the updates to hyperspace-express.com, which is actually the publisher's website. Should really have had the author site and the mailing-list automation done before the book went to the printer. Months before. Oops. It'll work, but it'll be awkward and not as good as it should be. We're still learning how to do this, of course, and I'm learning that I'm not nearly as competent as other people think I am.

And then there's the "personal alarm" fiasco. You see, N and G are out of the country for the next two weeks (family visit, then OVFF). N thinks (and I kind of agree) that I should have some kind of alarm pendant to wear, to easily call for help with. The first one we found -- a couple of weeks ago -- would have been perfect, except that the company is in Ireland and despite saying that they serve all of the EU I'd have to make my own arrangements with local emergency services.

So -- after I put off deciding for way too long -- I wound up with something that on the surface looked okay, and could ship quickly. But when it arrived, I found out that there was no two-way voice communication in the pendant -- you have to be where you can talk through the base station. Non-starter, in this house. I tried to tell the installer to take the damned thing back, but he kept repeating the same line about pressing the button if I fell over (pantomiming a heart attack). I'll keep it as backup until N and G get back, then we'll bring it back and get our key back.

Meanwhile, suspecting that something like that might be the case, I had already ordered a smartwatch (Samsung GW-7) which will probably do what I need it to -- it has fall detection and emergency calling. It would work better if I had a Samsung phone, but Google's watches are twice as expensive. So some of its myriad of features won't work.

And of course that's assuming I can actually wear the thing without it hurting. There are reasons why I stopped wearing a wristwatch 50 years ago.

Something good came out of that fiasco, however. N and I were over at StudiOjo, for one last coaching session before N and G's trip, to discuss our changing plans for recording (which I'll talk about later in the week). N mentioned that, in order to get the personal alarm, they were going to want a local friend or neighbor who could go over and check on me. So now we have a local friend, just a short walk away.

Linkie! Go watch The Nine Billion Names Of God - short film - YouTube. Very well-done adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's story.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Mixed, as usual. Four walks (which sounds good except that the total was only 2.9km), a little work on the HSX website (fixing a busted link counts, right?), and a little work in the recording studio (with disappointingly little to show for it). Pretty sure I'm not getting enough sleep, either, although it's been somewhat better now that I'm using the duvet and duvet cover (a bit of a weighted blanket effect?), and going to bed a little later.

Lots of difficulty with motivation. Nothing new there, either.

N and G are going to be gone for two weeks (plus a bit) at the end of the month. I have been looking into "personal alarm" buttons/pendants, in case I need emergency help. Somewhat problematic.

Here, have an amusing link: Portlanders mock Trump by posting pics of peaceful weekend activities in ‘War ravaged’ city | The Independent.

( Notes & links, as usual )

A very busy week. Perhaps not quite as productive as we'd hoped. But anyway, we put down a lot of scratch tracks, and put in a total of eight hours of studio time. Some of which is definitely going to have to be re-done. Not clear how much we can salvage, but we learned a lot.

Meanwhile I re-strung Plink, in part so that I could replace the battery. I broke a wire in the process of trying (unsuccessfully) to get the new 9V battery into the clip. Thereby accelerating my long-term goal of mounting the battery outside. An ill wind, and all that. I still need to buy a new battery holder, and see if I can locate my soldering iron.

As if I didn't have enough rabbit holes to fall into, I've discovered a static (web)site generator called Hakyll. Written in Haskell. See Tuesday. I am (so far) not looking in that direction.

And as if we didn't have enough problems to throw money at, we decided to call in a plumber after the kitchen sink leaked all over the floor one time too many. He confirmed my speculation that the mess (not a rat's nest -- that's wires; maybe a can of worms) under the sink was caused by a previous owner who thought they knew what they were doing. It looks much saner now, and everything empties faster after reaming out 12m of drain. The temperature control on the first-floor shower is still broken; since all the works are inside the wall it may stay that way, unless their "old guy who knows everything" can identify the brand and point the way to a fix that doesn't involve tearing into the wall from the other side.

The best links are on Saturday this week -- these include guinea pig rental services in Switzerland and an an amazing Bohemian Rhapsody Flashmob. Although last Sunday's Busy Beaver article may be worth a look if your taste runs to Turing machines and insanely large numbers.

( Notes & links, as usual )

We then spent the rest of this week working on scratch tracks.

I'm too sleepy to hunt down good links -- not a whole lot anywaay because see above about working. (I'm too old for this. Nevertheless...)

( Notes & links, as usual )

On the whole it's been a pretty good week -- busy and productive. (You can identify the busy and productive days in the log -- they're the ones with the fewest links. Most of the productivity was in band practice -- we're working on scratch tracks for the new album, and rehearsing for our upcoming concert gig at MillCon 4, which is a week from yesterday. There is a lot of overlap between the setlist and the tracklist -- there will only be one song in the set that isn't on the album. (The reverse is not true, because the concert set's only half an hour.)

Yesterday's rehearsal went particularly well, and I realized that my guitar-playing is back pretty close to pre-COVID levels. My singing is better, thanks almost entirely to m's warm-up exercises and associated coaching. There's a reason why they're our music director. "Riverheart", in particular, was a real high.

We're planning to release the album, to be called Winds of Time, early next year.

There were also a couple of st/rolls with m -- there are a coffee shop and an ice cream stand in Wateringen -- it's about 2.5km round trip, which is double my current walking range, and almost too far for m. Taking turns on (folding scooter)Lizzy, they're possible, and fun.

Down in the links, you can find Robert-van-Engelen/tinylisp: Lisp in 99 lines of C and Build an Emergency Food Supply List, both on Wednesday.

( Notes & links, as usual )

It has not been a very productive week, but I did manage to take a walk every day except Friday. Monday's was short, but other than that I've been getting to the nearest cross street North, for a total of 1.2km (3/4 of a mile) round trip. Sometimes, like today, just barely. But still.

And I've been getting quite a lot of cat cuddle, though that's also contributed to what I suspect is chronic sleep-deprivation. Thank you, Bronx. :/ Wednesday G and I raised a glass in honor of the lovely Desti, our household's incarnation of Bast, who crossed the Rainbow Bridge two years ago.

In a couple of news articles I linked to last Sunday, Solar is now 41% cheaper than fossil fuels, new UN report finds: 'The sun is rising on a clean energy age', and The year of the European Union Linux desktop may finally arrive, thanks to a perfectly understandable desire for digital sovereignty.

On the other hand, Tom Lehrer is dead. But even if his website, where he dropped all of his songs into the public domain, goes away, his legacy will live on at The Internet Archive

On the gripping hand, if you haven't tried "vibe coding", enjoy this website of AI Coding Horrors, of which this is one of the worst examples. If you have been vibe coding, good luck with that.

( Notes & links, as usual )

A couple of notable good things happened this week. The first, on Thursday, was that we decided to go to Majorca next year to see the total solar eclipse, and I noticed at the time that it made me happy. That's rare. The other was that my Framework Laptop 12 arrived. So that's three days (including Saturday, because a new computer always uses up a couple of days) that I didn't get much, if any, work done. But still...

I was doing pretty well for a while. *sigh* Maybe I'll be able to get some practicimg in today. Have to remember to write up my work log, which is similar to my "Done Since" log (see under cut), only different. Speaking which I probably need to revisit that.

It didn't help that my cat, Curio, crossed the Rainbow Bridge ten years ago Tuesday. He was the first cat I'd had since I was very young. There will be three more such anniversaries -- Desti, Colleen, and Amethyst -- in the next three weeks.

Some good news -- Linux Reaches 5% On Desktop - Slashdot. More links on Tuesday. And here we have a The Balfolk Boombox, A Synth Gurdy.

And finally, Finishing up the Bendix G-15! from Usagi Electric.

( Notes & links, as usual )

It doesn't feel like a very productive week, but I have gotten a few things done. Five (short) walks, four (short) guitar practice sessions, some patio furniture assembled (one Adirondack chair fully assembled, the other partly assembled, table unboxed).

The Adirondak chairs each have a curved, removable leg-rest. It's not exactly an ottoman, so I've decided it needs to be called a nottaman -- hence this post's music.

The weather has gone from unpleasantly hot to pleasantly cool (with a reverse or two) over the course of the week; we are now enjoying a light rain. Or at least I am -- I'm the one who sits closest to the sliding door in the living room. It opens to half the width of the house, and fortunately has a screen behind it. Because cats.

Between ADT and anemia, my body's temperature sensing has become very wonky; I feel like I'm freezing at temperatures that the rest of the household thinks are too hot, but if I put on something warm I quickly become overheated. It is not conducive to sleeping well. I don't so much mind having the cats wake me in the middle of the night, because my bladder is also wonky, but it would be nice to be able to get to (or back to) sleep in a reasonable amount of time. On the flip side, if all goes well I won't have to talk to a urologist until November.

Not much to say about what's going on in the US. But One Million Rising: Strategic Non-Cooperation to Fight Authoritarianism · No Kings looks like something you can do.

And go watch The FIRST images from the RUBIN observatory! - YouTube

( Notes & links, as usual )

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 )

... 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 )

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 )

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 )

I actually got a few things done. Go me? A little too down-to-the-wire on some things, so I'm frazzled and down on myself. I think they'll get done, though, which is the main thing. Several have already gotten done, thankfully, despite my habitual procrastination and easy distractability, so there's that. And I seem to have been pretty successful (finally!) at re-establishing my toothbrushing and exercise habits. Minimal, but still... I've let a lot of things go over the six -- no, seven -- months since we moved.

Some of the things accomplished have included a couple more medical appointments. I still worry, but not as much. I'll be getting a call later this week to schedule a CT scan. Another is switching my laptop over to Atkinson Hyperlegible fonts. (Still using Inconsolata for monospaced things like terminals and emacs.) I'm starting to work on my websites, as part of a general accessibility push. Hopefully there will be a detailed post about that when I get farther along.

There are a few bright points in the general gloom that is the US, for example Washington State Passes Bill To Cover Some Hormone Therapy Stockpiles. My advice is to stock up right away. And an increasing number of judges are ruling against the administration (which, however, is ignoring them). On this side of the pond, the EU fines Apple €500M and Meta €200M for breaking Europe’s digital rules

On the other hand, if you have travel planned either into or out of the US, here are some tips on How to Protect Yourself From Phone Searches at the US Border, and These are the most LGBTQ+ safe countries on Earth right now. If you're not ready to move just yet, Meet the new American refugees fleeing across state lines for safety.

On the gripping hand, here's another version of Three Kobolts (sic) In a Trench Coat -- this one has lyrics and chords in the description, along with a link to the (original?) animated version.

( Notes & links, as usual )

I'm always hesitant to put down just "okay" as my mood -- I'm not sure I know what it's supposed to feel like. But it's not a bad morning. The rest of the week hasn't been so good. According to my doctor, who I had an appointment with on Monday to discuss the results of last week's bloodwork, I'm very anemic. Also I have a referral for cardiology now, to go with the previous oncology referral. Both of those appointments are tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes.

There are yellow tulips blooming in two of the planters on our back patio. Sometimes I have trouble wrapping my head around the fact that we're really Dutch residents now, but the tulips are very convincing.

In the links, Is It Time To Leave The US? is alarming. Good luck. To leave on a much lighter note, watch Three Kobolds in a Trenchcoat (Animated Music Video) - YouTube. And if you're my kind of geek, read 20 years of Git. Still weird, still wonderful by Scott Chacon, one of the authors of Pro Git and one of the founders of GitHub.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Last week was physically quite uncomfortable for me; the problem has (mostly?) resolved this morning, thanks mainly to macrogol and senna. I also learned that constipation can cause back pain. On the other hand, I finally got the email from VGZ saying that I have health insurance. (I'm annoyed that it took so long; the fact that I am living in a house that I own should have given them a clue three months ago.)

There was music this week, starting with Leslie Hudson's Hemlock in the Honey tour playlist listening party (all American stops on the tour having been cancelled), and ending with this Star Wars Medley played on the Finnish Kantele, and, by the same performer -- Ida Elina -- the Evolution of Kantele (Finnish Harp). In between, N and I had a practice session. Which, among other things, finally got me off my arse about starting to bring the Kaleidofolk up to date, since one of the songs we worked on, "Life Cycle of Flowers", didn't have chords on the site. (I found the original, printed using an unknown program, in one of my notebooks.)

More music links below, mostly on Saturday. It's been a good week for rabbit holes.

Monday has quite a few good links about how to De-google-ify Internet. My favorite, though, has to be CHATONS. It's French (but easily switched to English or German), and stands for "Collectif des Hébergeurs Alternatifs, Transparents, Ouverts, Neutres et Solidaires". "Chatons" is French for "kittens". Honorable mention goes to a crowdfunding site called "KissKissBankBank".

( Notes & links, as usual )

The week has been mostly okay, or at least not particularly (not okay), but with occasional nostalgia attacks and nostalgic rabbit-holes. Unpacking boxes of books can do that, apparently. Especially when one box contains mostly the contents of my TBR shelf, and another some of the old favorites dating back to my parents' house in Connecticut, and their Heritage Press subscription. No idea what I'm doing with two copies of the NESFA Press edition of The Rediscovery of Man, though. But since I have all of Cordwainer Smith's short fiction in digital form, I don't need to have multiple dead tree editions taking up shelf space.

Do I? Many of those editions have memories associated with them. Maybe I should write some of their stories before I put (some of) them into boxes to go back to storage. I should certainly inventory them. Of course, the same goes for the boxes of assorted memorabilia, which won't all fit in the curio cabinet that we have yet to put together. How am I supposed to decide what to do with the things I'm unlikely ever to use again, but can't bear to part with?

The unpacking was, of course, enabled by N and I having finished putting up the four bookcases in the living room. A 78cm shelf roughly corresponds to the contents of a loaded 16" moving box or banker's box. It's not all going to fit, even after the serious culling before this and the previous moves. I mean, books! I'm a firm believer in the maxim that "there is no such thing as too many books, only not enough bookshelves." As, I would expect, are most of my readers.

Also, my birthday was Thursday, and Colleen's is today. I wrote about Colleen's yesterday, and combined writing about mine with Thankful Thursday. I might be just a bit confuzzled.

In the links, you ought to read How to Use Signal Encrypted Messaging, if you're not using it already. You ought to read Leopards eating faces, if you haven't heard that phrase before, or been puzzled by its meaning.

( Notes & links, as usual )

It was a pretty busy week, as my weeks go these days. It might even be considered productive, as my weeks go. Four walks, some music (including two sessions with m and N). Puttering with boxes (a stack fell over a week ago; nothing was broken fortunately, but it gave me an excuse to go through some more boxes.

There are still quite a few things missing. Some were undoubtedly left behind deliberately -- pretty sure that's what happened to the tablets and old phones, because batteries. No idea about some of the other stuff.

I finally got enough paperwork in to get SVB (Dutch equivalent to SSA) to agree that I need to get health insurance. I'm living here, and it's required, and that damned well should have been obvious two months ago. Grrr. N's is still up in the air and she's half-owner of the damned house.

I don't really feel at home. Anywhere. Seattle wasn't really home, either. But, really, I've been somewhat adrift since we left San Jose, and more so since Colleen died. Cue Where the Heart Is. Apparently five years in a place isn't quite enough. Ask me again in 2030. If I make it that far. If I start listing the places, people, and things I miss, I'll be here all night.

Cats and chosen family help a lot, though.

If you're sad about Joann Fabrics closing, here's a list of other places to shop for fabrics online (From Friday).

( Notes & links, as usual )

I survived Valentine's Day mainly by making a difficult phone call (all phone calls are difficult for me) to the SVB (the Dutch version of social security) to get things moving on why I don't have health insurance yet. Should have called a month or two ago; N and I didn't realize that in order to get anything done here you have to make a phone call, or if you're lucky a live chat. Pretty much everything uses phone apps, too. The day wasn't a total loss; it also included a walk with m.

We (N and I, though I did all of the interactivestuff) got our business bank account going. Getting it approved required, you guessed it, multiple chat sessions with support, which also included several narrated screen-capture videos. Never having done that before, I also had trouble figuring out how to stop recording. From start to finish took Monday through Friday. Which of course wiped me out nearly as much as the phone call. I didn't get much else done all week.

I did re-fill two of my fountain pens, with Parker blue-black Quink, in hopes that taking handwritten notes while studying Dutch. Based on this morning's test run, it does seem to help a little. And, having also found my laser pointer in the boxes, I played chase-the-red-dot with the cats. Ticia clearly had it figured out, and lost interest. Bronx, well, Bronx is in many ways a perma-kitten.

There are a lot of links. Many are to list posts, and some of those point to other list posts. Exponential expansion, in other words. I have read very few of the second-level list entries, but many of them might be useful to some of you. I thought about using an emoji or other symbol in place of the @ on, e.g., the political ones. Maybe next week I'll do that.

Meanwhile, there were a couple of useful ones today that I've tacked on to the tail ind of the links; you'll see them again a week from now. And to end on a happier note, here you will find hundreds of animated cat gifs pulled from the wreckage of GeoCities.

( Notes & links, as usual )

As if it wasn't enough to be grieving for Colleen, now I'm grieving for my native country. Relieved to be out of it, but... It's hard to watch, and to know that it won't be fixed in what's left of my lifetime. And to know that my kids and my friends are stuck in it. Monday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which did not help.

And with my new location, I have a whole new set of worries. (Mostly about health insurance at the moment, but taxes are looming.)

I've been feeling anomalously cold, especially in the afternoon and evening. A few days ago it occurred to me to wonder whether it's anxiety and/or tension rather than temperature, because my body temperature is normal and the house is warm enough. Turns out that anxiety chills are an actual thing. (Or it could be anemia, which is another known problem, dating to October of 2023. But the chills are more recent.) Or it could be both.

I have not been particularly functional lately.

Yesterday was apparently #GlobalSwitchDay. So if you're thinking of switching.software, here's a good place to start. And here are European Alternatives.

Here, have some cat memes. (That list has some of my favorites.)

( Notes & links, as usual )

Our ship came in! That was Mondaty. Our house is now full of boxes. Some of them are full of other boxes and packing paper -- those will be taken out around 10pm for pickup tomorrow. Wednesday N and I went to the Chamber of Commere (KvK) to complete the registration of our DAFT business. I need to get busy on websites. Friday I rented us a storage unit.

I am feeling somewhat depressed, somewhat sore, somewhat accomplished, and very tired and lethargic. (The first and last are probably correlated, now that I think of it.) I have taken ibuprofen, and will have something to eat after I post this.

I'm thinking seriously of getting a Pixelfed account

I very much want to see Flow, which won a Golden Globe last week for best animation, Maybe I'll be able to put together the time and energy to rent it.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Some good things happened this week: I finally, with a lot of help from the Fred Hutch pharmacy, got my abiraterone picked up, to be carried here by m next week. The New Year's Eve filk circle on zoom, which actually went on for about 28 hours, was grand (see below).

Some things aren't going so well, in part because many of my go-to over-the-counter meds, including Flonase, PEG 3500, and senna, seem to be hard, or in some cases impossible, to find here. And I didn't sing -- or sleep -- as much as I wanted to Tuesday night because the (illegal) fireworks going off nearby were pretty extreme. I went upstairs to encourage my cats to hide under the bed, and wish that there was enough headroom for me.

I sang five songs Tuesday night, and six on Wednesday after rejoining the circle. (You'll only see three five songs listed under Wednesday because Travelers is a twofer: "Where the Heart Is" and "Windward".) A few more of my songs were sung by R and a friend of theirs, and different versions of some of my favorite Yeats songs were done by others. When I joined the circle Tuesday, I was just in time to follow someone's recitation of "The Song of Wandering Aengus" with my setting of "The Cap and Bells".

Friday was my 49th anniversary, which may help explain why not a whole lot got done last week. Or at least it makes a plausible excuse.

For links this week, here are the NYE songs, with links mostly to the pages on steve.savitzky.net: (2024) "The Cap and Bells", "The October Country", "Get Up and Go", "Ship of Stone", "Riverheart". (2025) "The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of", "Eyes Like the Morning", Ripple (Official Music Video)", "A Tribute to the Middle-Aged Bear", "Where the Heart Is", "Windward".

My performance of Ripple was execrable; what you have in the links is the official video, which I hadn't seen before. Worth watching. For mine, I need to track (sic) down more audio.

( Notes & links, as usual )