The Mandelbear's Musings

It's been a rough, busy year, even though it feels, looking back, that I wasn't very productive. A lot of what I'd planned on doing didn't get done; I'm trying to convince myself that packing up the Whidbey Island house and my Seattle apartment, buying a house on another continent, and moving into it lock, stock, and kittycats (it's not the first time I've had occasion to use that phrase) was enough.

Oh, and selling my car, Molly, and buying a new 3-wheeled enclosed mobility scooter, which N dubbed Scarlett. Because it's a car-let.

( The details -- goals from last New Year's Eve )

Total (85 + 100 + 70 + 100 + 100 + 50 + 40 + 70) = 615 out of a possible 900, so a bit over 68%. Not great, but twice as good as last year's 34%. I'll take it.

Another unscheduled action was writing a "what has the bear been doing lately" infodump to be distributed mostly by email to people who aren't keeping up with Dreamwidth. Next year, I guess.

... and so ends another year. Not as bad as the previous one (a very low bar), but I've gotten very little done.

1. The new top goal is moving down to Seattle to live in N's ADU (variously called "the studio" or "the lair"). In particular, I have to move the cats before c leaves in the spring; that means also moving a bed and a recliner, minimum.
   Well, the recliner wouldn't fit, and the bed is really too big for the room -- maybe I should have left the bed and kept the chair. But home is where the cats are. 95% is pushing it a little, but it's my list. I'll take it.
2. I'm keeping self care near the top; I actually did fairly well with this one last year. Not going to be any more specific.
   I'm going to say 75%. Pretty regular exercise (thanks to my physical therapist), not a whole lot of walking -- not going to look at the counts. A trifling amount of weight loss. Two COVID boosters. As for mental self-care, I'm in a couple of grief support groups, and as I said last year, "I didn't actually do much, but I didn't fall apart either."
3. Write more, doomscroll less. I still want to add a couple of "real" posts to my week. I'll settle for an average of one, besides done, thanks, and the occasional s4s. Track by appending the previous month's summary to the monthly Rabbit Rabbit post.
   Well, so much for tracking. But this year's stats so far are: 95854 words in 195 posts total in 2022 (average 491/post), compared to 107466 words in 170 posts total in 2021 (average 632/post). So I wrote fewer words, but averaged nearly four posts/week. And this doesn't count a few posts in GoingSideways, plus a couple more attributed to a certain crab. So I'm going to give myself 75% on this one.
4. Finish what I call my EOL paperwork -- will, advanced directive, power of attorney, and guides to my paper and electronic files. Five items. Includes finding a lawyer and maybe an executor.
   Well, I got maybe half of the documentation done, no lawyer, no executor. So 10%, if I'm being generous.
5. The remaining parts of wrapping up Mom's estate. The financial part is still in progress, and I've done nothing about her computer, files, and online accounts. And I still have to make her memorial page. EEK.
   Um... I think the financial part is basically done, except for the transfers to my own brokerage account. And a few of her belongings have been distributed to the kids and others. So... 50%?
6. Sell or give away Colleen's medical equipment. That will probably mean going through an agent.
   Nothing. Zip. Zero.
7. Singing, dammit. Not much more detail (see last year for that).
   Some planning, a little practicing, and one concert. Maybe 30%? That's stretching it.

So all-in-all, 95+75+75+10+50+0+30 = 335 out of a possible 700, or about 49%. Which, honestly, is lot more than I expected it to be. It was 41% last year (65% the year before, but that was then). So I'll take it.

I really should have included getting the house ready to sell. Which would have rated about 20% at the outside. But I didn't. I hired an organizer to help with putting an estate sale together, but she turned out to be an anti-vaxxer and I decided I couldn't work with her. Other things not done include the landscaping -- the yard is a total wreck after having been abandoned for two years -- and repairs on the house.

Things I did accomplish that weren't on the list included getting the cats to vet appointments (at vast expense), and maintaining and updating GoingSideways.blog. (Mostly not writing -- N did most of that -- but actually getting posts and photos together and uploaded. I should write up the process -- it's effective but probably wouldn't work for anyone but me.)

Posting stats:
all of 2022 by month:
   9076 words in 22 posts in 2022/01 (average 412/post)
   6034 words in 15 posts in 2022/02 (average 402/post)
   6961 words in 18 posts in 2022/03 (average 386/post)
   6624 words in 12 posts in 2022/04 (average 552/post)
   6742 words in 13 posts in 2022/05 (average 518/post)
   7601 words in 21 posts in 2022/06 (average 361/post)
   8632 words in 17 posts in 2022/07 (average 507/post)
   9263 words in 20 posts in 2022/08 (average 463/post)
   8397 words in 16 posts in 2022/09 (average 524/post)
   7634 words in 11 posts in 2022/10 (average 694/post)
   8734 words in 15 posts in 2022/11 (average 582/post)
  10156 words in 15 posts in 2022/12 (average 677/post)
---------------------------------
  95854 words in 195 posts total in 2022 (average 491/post)

So far I have seen the first four episodes of Apple TV's series based on Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. My 7-day free trial period ended Thursday afternoon, i.e. before the fourth episode came out at midnight East Coast time. So, since they've already charged me for the next month, I could presumably watch three or four more episodes before I drop (kick) my subscription in disgust. After seeing Episode 4 last night, I'm not sure my blood pressure will take that many.

I think Gizmodo's Review said it best:

They said Foundation couldn't be filmed, and it still hasn't been [...]

For people who don’t know or care about the source material, the result is extremely pretty but not particularly compelling sci-fi. For people who know or are fans of Isaac Asimov and his work, I feel compelled to warn you that if you watch the show you will see a scene so enraging that you will tear your TV in two with your bare hands; then you’ll realize how utterly unnecessary the scene was, and tear it into four.

The New York Times said It could have been better, if only, like Hari Seldon’s disciples, it had faith in the plan, but I rather doubt that even intervention by the Second Foundation could save it at this point. Maybe the Mule works for Apple?

OK, if that quote leaves you baffled, the rest of this post (under the cut for spoilers) will be even more baffling, but on the other hand there's a slight chance you might even like the series if you stop here. Ignore the gratuitous violence and the plot holes big enough to drive a starship through, and just enjoy the absolutely gorgeous sets and the occasional sex scene. But I think you'd be better off reading the books.

I'm not going to summarize either the TV series or the books -- the Wikipedia articles linked in the first paragraph do a good enough job for my purposes, and in any case I expect that if you're still reading, you've at least read Foundation, if not the whole trilogy. Perhaps multiple times. Or the whole series. Anyway, onward!

( Here there be spoilers. )

Reviews mentioned, with their actual titles:

• Foundation review – a galaxy of money can’t save Apple’s Star Dreck - The Guardian
• Review: The Math of ‘Foundation’ Doesn’t Add Up - The New York Times
• Foundation Review: Apple TV Show Unfaithful to Sci-Fi Classic - Gizmodo

For some time now I've been eyeing Lenovo's ThinkPad Compact Bluetooth Keyboard with TrackPoint with a mixture of gadget lust and skepticism -- most of the reviews I saw said that the Bluetooth connection had a tendency to be laggy. Combined with the amount of trouble I've been having with Bluetooth on Linux Mint lately, and the lack of a USB connection, and the high price, it's been pretty far down on my list of things to buy.

Anyone who knows my fondness for addiction to Thinkpad keyboards can figure out what was going to happen when Lenovo came out with the ThinkPad TrackPoint Keyboard II, featuring both Bluetooth and a wireless USB dongle, but otherwise looking almost exactly like my wired KU-1255 keyboard and the keyboards on most of my Thinkpad laptops. I discussed that in "The Curmudgeon Contemplates Keyboards", a couple of weeks ago.

It arrived yesterday, much sooner than I'd expected. It's lovely, and just about what I expected. It's hard to go wrong with a Thinkpad keyboard.

Being nearly icon-blind it took me a while to puzzle out the switches, because the quick-start sheet had nothing but a few pictures to explain them. It didn't say anything at all about the "Android/Windows" switch. So I went looking on their tech support website and found nothing but a PDF of the quick-start. Not helpful. (After a day and a half I found a review that explained that it gives F9-F12 Android-specific functions, and indeed I was eventually able to make out the tiny markings above them on the beveled edge of the bezel.)

The website -- and most of the reviews -- also mentioned its support for "6-point entry for the visually impaired", but DDG and Google found nothing except references to this keyboard. Braille, maybe? Whatever. There's nothing about it on the tech-support site.

There are some things I really appreciate as a cat's minion. It's exactly the right size to sit on top of my laptop (Sable is a Thinkpad X230; the keyboards are almost identical) with the lid closed and an external monitor plugged in. If a cat shows signs of wanting to sit on it, I can set it aside (or close the lid), and pick it up later. (I broke the micro-USB connector on one of my wired Thinkpad keyboards, because I often flip it up behind the laptop with the keys away from me -- and the cat.) If a cat does sit on it, the on-off switch is easily reachable on the right-hand side. Much easier than unplugging the cable.

So let's sum up. On the positive side: the wireless USB, Bluetooth, the classic ThinkPad feel and layout, the TrackPoint nub, and two of the three buttons are exactly as I would expect. (The middle button is in the same plane as the two side buttons, and the raised dots are much lower and are no longer blue.) The charging connector is USB-C. I haven't used it long enough to evaluate battery life, but it's been on since yesterday and claims to be at 99%; Lenovo claims two months, so that's believable. It's just the right size to sit on an ultrabook like a Thinkpad X230 with the lid closed.

I'm not sure whether to count the low-contrast markings on the function keys as positive or negative. I've pretty-much abandoned my old emacs key-bindings for them, and some of the functions indicated by the icons are actually useful. I'll get out my label-maker, or label them with white-out.

On the negative side: the USB cable is just for charging. For goodness' sake, how much circuitry would it have taken for it to make that a third connection mode? The documentation is sketchy -- the QuickStart page is nothing but icons and arrows, and for an icon-impaired curmudgeon that's a bit of a problem. Nowhere in the documentation does it explain what the Android/Windows switch is for. There's nothing on Lenovo's tech support website, either. There's no backlight, and the function keys are labeled with low-contrast tiny letters. The dongle is, of course, incompatible with Logitech's, so it uses another USB port. (This is a minor quibble, because I had the slot I unplugged the old keyboard from.)

Some people would make the position of the Fn key, to the left of Ctrl, as a problem. They might also complain about the Page Up and Page Down keys' flanking the Up-Arrow in the inverted T arrangement. Since I've be using Thinkpads since sometime in the last Millennium, and the new page-up/page-down positions for 95% of the last decade, I don't have a problem with either of those -- they're exactly what I want. Some people would miss the trackpad and palm rest; I've been using a wired but otherwise identical keyboard for years, and don't miss them. Your mileage may vary.

Another fine post from The Computer Curmudgeon (also at computer-curmudgeon.com).
Donation buttons in profile.

Recently I started reading this Ruby on Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl. It's pretty good; very hands-on, and doesn't assume that you know Ruby (that's a programming language; Rails is a web development framework). It does assume that you know enough about software development and web technology to be dangerous. And if you're not dangerous yet,...

It points you at a web site where you can learn enough to be dangerous. Starting from knowing nothing at all.

It's the author's contention that Tech is the new literacy [and] [l]earning the basics of programming is only one piece of the puzzle. LearnEnough to Be Dangerous teaches [you] to code as well as a much more powerful skill: technical sophistication. Part of that technical sophistication is knowing how to look things up or figure things out when you don't know them.

There are seven volumes in the series leading up to the Rails tutorial, giving you an introductory course in software development. I haven't gone to a bootcamp, but I'd guess that this is roughly the equivalent. More importantly, by the end of this series you'll be able to work through and understand just about any of the thousands of free tutorials on the web, and more importantly you'll have learned how to think and work like a software developer.

The first three tutorials lay the groundwork: Learn Enough Command Line..., Learn Enough Text Editor..., and Learn Enough Git to Be Dangerous. With just those, you'll know enough to set up a simple website -- and you do, on GitHub Pages. You'll also end up with a pretty good Linux or MacOS development environment (even if you're using Windows).

I have a few quibbles -- the text editor book doesn't mention Emacs, and the author is clearly a Mac user. (You don't need a tutorial on Emacs, because it has one built in -- along with a complete set of manuals. So you'll be able to try it on your own.)

The next three books are Learn Enough HTML to Be Dangerous, Learn Enough CSS & Layout, and Learn Enough JavaScript. The JavaScript is a real introduction to programming -- you'll also learn how to write tests, and of course you'll also know how to use version control, from the git tutorial.

At this point I have to admit that after starting the Ruby tutorial I went back and skimmed through the others; I'll probably want to take a closer look at the JavaScript tutorial to see if I've missed anything in my somewhat haphazard journey toward front-end web development.

The next book in the series is Learn Enough Ruby to Be Dangerouse. (If you skip it on your way to the Rails tutorial, there's a quick introduction there as well.) Ruby seems like a good choice for a second language, and learning a second programming language is important because it lets you see which ideas and structures are fundamental, and which aren't. (There's quite a lot of that about JavaScript -- it's poorly-designed in many ways, and some things about it are quite peculiar.)

Another good second or third programming language would be Python. If you'd like to go there next, or start from the beginning with Python, I can recommend Django Girls and their Tutorial. This is another from-the-ground-up introduction to web development, so of course there's a lot of overlap in the beginning.

Another fine post from The Computer Curmudgeon (also at computer-curmudgeon.com)

NaBloPoMo stats: 593 words in this post, 1172 words in 3 posts this month.

Yesterday was the last show of the season for the Lamplighters, the mostly-Gilbert-and-Sullivan company that we've had season tickets to for over three decades. So the flower_cat, chaoswolf, B. (WINOLJ) and I headed up to San Francisco a little before noon. (The Y.D. doesn't usually like to go, for some bizarre reason, so we take a friend.)

The show was Gilbert & Sullivan Straight Up, With a Twist, written and directed by the redoubtable Barbara Heroux, the Lamplighters' artistic director. It's basically a series of selections from all the operettas, in chronological order, staged between two actors playing the roles of G and S. Their dialog is taken from diaries and letters, and provided a fascinating look into their occasionally-troubled collaboration.

There were nine singers: five men and four women. I really didn't know what to expect going in, but found it delightful. The singing was first-rate, of course, and the whole thing hung together surprisingly well as an artistic biography. The ending, after their death announcements, was especially effective: "The world is but a broken toy" from Princess Ida, followed by an ensemble rendition of "Once more gondolieri" from The Gondoliers.

I'd say, "Go see it!" but the season's over, so you lose. The program notes point to the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive if you want more information, and of course the complete libretti. Next season is The Mikado and Iolanthe.

We came home via I280 and stopped at Buck's for dinner; a delicious end to a pleasant afternoon out.

I finished off the day practicing some songs that aren't on the Baycon setlist but will probably come up in circle -- I'm sadly out of practice. And, a little surprisingly, the start of a setting for "The Collar-bone of a Hare", which started tickling my mind a couple of days ago while I was working on a (not totally unrelated) new song of my own.

Conclusions and developer recommendations

I'm through hoping that the next version of Fedora Core will fix all of the problems with the previous release. Fedora's identity has gradually eroded over six releases, finally ending up as a second class clone of Ubuntu. On the other hand, Red Hat Linux was never really all that easy to install, configure, and use, so I guess this is just the natural evolution of a product that was destined to be eclipsed by more complete distributions like Mandriva and more easily configured distributions like SUSE.

I appreciate the fact that distributions like Fedora Core are still focused on free-as-in-rights software, but today's Web content requires more proprietary browser plugins than yesterday's did, and today's hardware is increasingly designed to be dependent on proprietary binary blobs in the form of firmware and driver packages. Programmers are not falling over themselves to write free replacements for these things (or they are unable to because of a lack of documentation from hardware manufacturers), and the projects that do exist are non-operational and/or several generations behind current technology. Users do not want to hear reasons and excuses for why the operating environment doesn't work with their favorite Web sites or computer hardware -- all they know is that it doesn't work, and making it work is not a simple or obvious process. It is possible to keep the distribution free-as-in-rights while making it easy to add proprietary extras, but the Fedora Project is not willing or able to do it after six releases.

The Fedora Project has failed six consecutive times to produce a viable desktop operating system. I say pack up, move on, and let Fedora Core die, but remember it fondly as the last of the holdouts from an era when desktop GNU/Linux meant missing out on most Web media while struggling to get network drivers installed and configured. It's nice that my video cards worked with the 3D desktop effects with little effort, but wobbly windows and the cube desktop switcher don't make up for a lack of basic network functionality and ease of configuration.