Forced cleaning

Thanksgiving will be at my house… next week?!? Time for some serious housework, at least in the public areas. I could call in a maid service, but I don’t think they have any Mysterious ones.

…and don’t call me Shirley

FYI, Anne of Green Gables has long been quite popular in Japan, one of the few things my friend Dan knew about the country (having spent time dealing with tour groups to Prince Edward in his misspent youth). So it shouldn’t be a surprise that there will be a new anime series next spring. From the brief description, it sounds like it will run for multiple cours.

(not planning to watch it; I’d rather have more Frieren)

Amazon Primer

The most useful announcement in this streaming roundup is that Amazon is folding Freevee into Prime, which means that I’ll finally be able to watch the newer Bosch seasons without ads. It never made sense to me that there was no way to watch Freevee shows without ads, no matter how much you paid the mothership each month.

Well below the fold is the announcement that Apple is losing a fortune on AppleTV+ and is trying to license their $20 billion in original productions to other services. Which means I might finally watch some of them. Now if only Disney and HBO would do the same…

(the only time I ever see television ads is when I’m in the barber chair, and it feels like Alex’s “treatment” scene in A Clockwork Orange; Amazon often tries to sneak one in when you start watching a show on Prime even if you pay the ad-free premium, but you can skip it)

Separate Rubbers

I mute every xTwitter account that displays an ad on my timeline, except for the truly obnoxious ones, which I block. They don’t provide any real management tools for these lists, so I can’t say how many accounts I’ve muted, but with an average of one ad for every 3 tweets viewed, it’s easily several thousand. Most are for products I’d never buy, sites I’d never visit, and people who wrongly think they have something to say that’s worth paying for, but many just seem like desperate cries for help.

Honestly, the one I came closest to engaging with was for an Etsy dealer advertising handmade bedside emergency condom boxes, and my only interest was in finding out if they were deliberately using the word “discrete” instead of “discreet” to name their product (and it was not a one-off typo).

…Yatta

(coincidentally, around midnight the clouds burst open and my neighborhood was inundated with liberal tears…)

Loser Food

I’ve never wanted turkey on a pizza, but it at least sounds plausible. Green beans and cranberries, however, are way over into hell-no territory. Might as well eat the bugs at that point.

(classical reference)

If we make it to January…

…we get more Maomao. With luck, we’ll still have Western Civilization as well.

We’ll also get Behemoth…

TL/DR: half-nekkid busty elf and friends who really like her kitten. This is definitely based on the manga, since the light novels collapsed after only two volumes.

(unrelated half-nekkid busty elf chick is half-nekkid, busty)

Age-old problem

Massad Ayoob’s advice for people having trouble getting crisp front-sight focus with pistols as they get older is to have reverse bifocals custom-made, where the reading prescription is on the top. My eye doctor’s advice on Sunday was to just go to Amazon and buy stick-on bifocal lenses and optionally trim them to cover just the part of your glasses that you use for sighting.

Ayoob talks about using your reading prescription, but the doc recommended using a computer prescription (diopter = NV-ADD / 2, rounded up to nearest 0.25; add to Sphere for dedicated computer glasses). Of course, Ayoob was talking about wearing them out in public, while I just want want them on my range glasses (which are safety glasses from Zenni).

Another idea comes from Good Glasses, which recommends splitting your prescription, putting your computer prescription in the dominant eye and distance prescription in the other.

My concern with the stick-ons is based on my historical inability to get window film to cling properly with no bubbles, and some reviews I’ve read have matched that experience.

(in addition to the new prescriptions and shooting advice, he also had some interesting reloading recommendations for light revolver loads for kids)

(related, his office is attached to a Costco, and while I gather that in some states their stores post no-gun signs, that is not the case in Ohio)

Bye-Bye Earth, the novels

Translation of the first one coming in April. I don’t know if I’ll be willing to take one for the team, but it would be nice to find out if the adaptation was bad, or if the source material was incomprehensible dreck, too.

How to sell an American SF novel…

Sexy catgirl with a blaster.

(this is not your daddy’s C’Mell)

Grid of thirds

JetPens has an interesting kanji practice notebook, with a useful feature I hadn’t seen before: thirds markings. It has the usual half-grid lines, but also dots at the thirds to help you balance characters that aren’t split evenly. Naturally I immediately cloned this feature into my Perl script and made a PDF to try it out.

Explaining The Lost Dangerous Visions

So, The Last Dangerous Visions is out, finally completed after Harlan Ellison’s death by executor J. Michael Straczynski. I’m working my way through the stories slowly, but I thought I’d comment on JMS’ intro and explainer, in which he gives a brief history of his close relationship with Ellison over the decades. What explanation does he give for all the delays, broken promises, and outright falsehoods that surrounded this project?

TL/DR: Ellison was manic-depressive for his entire adult life and not only refused to recognize it for most of that time, but held off on seeking treatment until way too late.

Yup, that’d do it. I don’t discuss family here much, but I am very familiar with what happens when a bipolar person goes off their meds, and it maps well to Ellison’s reported behaviors. I would never have tried to diagnose him myself, since I was only ever in the same (large) room with him once, and his behavior that hour was quiet enough that I only knew he was there because he loudly harrumphed upon learning that C.J. Cherryh had just written a Lois & Clark tie-in novel. The crowd’s oh-Harlan reaction was louder than he was.

How are the stories so far? Pretentious twaddle from a vanished world where the Left still thought their ideas were “edgy”. Some of them have the excuse of having been written decades ago by people who died waiting for Ellison to publish, but others do not.

My-HiME, revisited

Not by me, I haven’t lit one up in years; the original show just had its 20th anniversary. The busty and titular heroine Mai was easy on the eyes, and the spoiler-heavy episode previews they inserted for the DVD release led off with a memorable slow-pan of her in lingerie, but the story was a mess, with too many heroines and too many mechs and too many easily-killed keys/hostages. Much of this was due to the fact that the original manga was more of an action/harem story centered around Tate, who got some memorable “unlocking” offers from various girls.

The second and third series were better planned out.

Unrelated, “secondhand smoke” was always bullshit

…and the American Cancer Society finally agrees. Yes, cigarette smoke is foul stuff. Yes, constant exposure has an impact on people with respiratory conditions. Personally, I’ve always rated it right up there with “excessive hairspray” for interfering with my breathing, and second only to pot for leaving rooms and clothing reeking.

Pipe smoke, on the other hand, is potpourri.

White Clouds Can’t Sync

Earlier in the week, my brother called to inform me that his kids wanted to come over to my place and hang out on Saturday. I thought this was a grand idea, so I blocked out the time on my iPhone’s calendar. This morning I was rearranging a few things on my Mac’s calendar, and noticed that it wasn’t showing their visit.

I had to edit it on the phone and add an alert, and then it immediately appeared on the Mac. How long has “sync” been a feature of Apple’s cloud offering, and they still can’t get the basics right? It’s not like I’d been wandering in and out of coverage areas; they were on the same wifi when I made the calendar entry.

Speaking of which, I once again have the problem where all of the music synced to my iPhone has incorrect cover art, because I told it to sync some videos. So it’s not just their cloud…

Dear Apple,

Why is it that Terminal.app occasionally loses the Command-1 through Command-9 keyboard shortcuts for the open windows? This bug has been around for years now. Is it because the few MacOS QA people left only test the default “use shortcuts for tabs” option, and have forgotten the older mapping?

The interesting thing is that opening additional windows assigns the shortcuts to them starting at 1, so the app’s not losing the functionality, just the current mapping.

Coke adds cookie

Nope, not on a bet:

Why you shouldn’t use wide-angle lenses to photograph models, Reason #34C

The sad thing is that neither the photographer, the editor, nor the site that reposted this set noticed how ridiculous it looks. Fortunately there are some shots that actually flatter her.

NSFW

(via Big Boobs Japan, a site that should never be visited without an ad-blocker and Javascript-disabler)

“Back on the bus, y’all”

I have returned from Belfast. It was deeply weird sitting in an office surrounded by people for the first time since March, 2020. Good people, fortunately, although I had to keep my mouth shut at the occasional Irish-splaining of American politics. Fortunately Israel changed the subject quite spectacularly last week.

It’s easier to go to Japan

• Saturday, 3 PM UTC-4: arrive at Dayton airport.
• Saturday, 3:30 PM UTC-4: only United employee in the place opens counter.
• Saturday, 6 PM UTC-4: board flight to Chicago.
• Saturday, 6:45 PM UTC-5: land in Chicago.
• Saturday, 9:30 PM UTC-5: board flight to Dublin.
• Sunday, 10:45 AM UTC+1: land in Dublin, stay on plane.
• Sunday, 11:15 AM UTC+1: power restored at Dublin airport, plane directed to new gate.
• Sunday, 12:00 PM UTC+1: pass through Immigration/Customs.
• Sunday, 12:20 PM UTC+1: board bus to Belfast.
• Sunday, 2:20 PM UTC+1: arrive in Belfast, google-walk to hotel.
• Sunday, 2:30 PM UTC+1: check in at hotel.
• Sunday, 6:15 PM UTC+1: dinner with boss’s boss’s boss.
• Sunday, 9:30 PM UTC+1: brain and body switch off.

(the fresh batch of Maiko Mouths my sister sent after her recent business trip to Japan were a hit at the office)

Everything’s closed

I knew that retailers generally close earlier in Ireland than they do in the US, but I didn’t expect pretty much everything but bars and dinner restaurants to lock up by 6 PM every night but Thursday. It’s a good thing I added some vacation days at the end of the trip, or I wouldn’t have been able to buy gifts for family, much less anything for myself, since I was in the office 9-5 all week.

Admittedly I hedged my bets by getting the free trial of Prime and ordering a bunch of stuff on Amazon UK. Oddly, several of the things I put in my cart wouldn’t ship to Northern Ireland at all, but I could pay through the nose and have them sent to the US, which would kind of defeat the purpose.

(file under annoying that the WH Smith that swore on their web site that they were open until 9 PM is inside of a small strip mall attached to a bus station that just shut down for good, and now closes at 5 PM)

(amusing note: when I asked a security guy where it was located (because Google sent me around in circles), he was really curious why everyone he runs into seems so interested in going to a WH Smith, like it’s special; I couldn’t help, because my answer was “it was on the way back from my office to my hotel”)

DP Considered Absent

Until I went into Boots (pharmacy), I was convinced that there was no Diet Pepsi in Belfast. The sugared varieties were widely available, but for non, Diet Coke and Coke Zero were what was widely stocked. There was a very-subtly-labeled non-sugar Pepsi MAX in some stores, but it doesn’t taste like DP, which I’ve reluctantly gotten used to over the years.

I can drink Coke Zero, but I don’t like it much unless it’s been dosed with Splenda. (liquid; the sweetener packets have a Mentos effect)

Cookies Considered Cooked

European Internet is not my friend; it’s just too damn annoying with all those “privacy” popups demanding that I either accept all cookies or spend three minutes de-selecting “legitimate interest” checkboxes and dodging deceptive buttons.

Spoiler alert: hey, tracker-boy, your fucking cookies will get auto-deleted anyway when I close the window, so it does you no good to get cute and try to hide the “no, I don’t want to blow hobos in an alley” option behind a wall of text. Also, 99% of your ads are being blocked by Pihole anyway, so fuck y’all.

Sadly, actually preserving my privacy exposes me to 10 times as many protect-your-privacy popups. Sigh.

(and how exactly does visiting a store’s site to find their (incorrect) hours create a “legitimate interest” for 518 third parties across a dozen categories?)

(note that blocking ads with a Docker-based Pihole on a Mac now requires manually disabling the kernelForUDP flag in Docker’s settings.json to stop it from screwing up the ability to bind to port 53)

Pastries Considered Decent

Two of my co-workers took me out for a walk around the neighborhood. Y’know, the one where the recent riots kept them away from the office for two weeks. On the way back, we stopped in at a local bakery where Paul was determined to buy me a proper Northern Irish pastry. He chose the Flies’ Graveyard, which wasn’t as sweet as I expected, being basically a currant jam pastry sandwich sprinkled with sugar.

(I’m sure all the walking was good for me, but my left knee was happy when it stopped; even with an aisle seat on the way out and no one next to me on the way back, flying coach forced me into uncomfortable positions)

(I amused myself by thinking of how I’d feed them proper native food in Ohio, which basically comes down to Wendy’s Frosties and Cassano’s pizza; I don’t count Skyline Chili as proper Ohio food, since I’d never heard of it until college)

(it would be amusing to feed them London Bobby Fish & Chips, but that brand’s been basically defunct for decades, and is only available at a few Cassano’s locations)

Dear Harris Campaign Aides,

If Kamala asks you to carry her pager, just say no.

March Of The Useful Idiots

The jew-haters were out in force Saturday, proudly marching down the streets of Belfast carrying professionally-printed signs and custom-made Palistinian-solidarity flags, banging on drums, and shouting slogans comparing Israel’s “occupation and genocide” to historical English oppression of the Irish.

Y’know, morons.

Gift shopping

Since I extended the trip over the weekend, I was able to hit a craft market for presents: St. George’s Market (small, but I met some nice local crafters). I also stopped in at Carrolls Irish Gifts on Thursday, because Thursday. I made one final stop at Carrolls on Monday, to pad out the small gaps in my suitcases, mostly with good wool socks.

Tourist-y things

I reluctantly bought a ticket for a small full-day group tour to Giant’s Causeway, with an assortment of other sites thrown in. I’d have preferred to just go there on my own, but my schedule was tight, and this was the best thing I found that didn’t involve hiring a driver for several hundred Pounds.

I have zero interest in Game of Thrones filming locations, negative interest in anything related to the Titanic (ship or movie), and complete indifference to The Troubles, so this was pretty much my only “tourist” activity.

The coastal drive was quite scenic, which was a significant improvement over the path the Aircoach takes to and from Dublin; you could basically only see the trees lining the highway.

How was it? Giant’s Causeway itself was a lovely rocky coastline with a brisk wind. Fortunately we had un-Irish weather the entire week, so it was sunny and warm enough for a light jacket.

The Dark Hedges did nothing for me (“um, a row of trees?”), the Bushmill Distillery was just for shopping, and the other minor stops are blurred together in my memory.

Connections…

Bushmills Village had a bunch of signs on the streets featuring an assortment of largely American celebrities. Our bus was just driving through, so I couldn’t read the fine print, but Neil Armstrong was one, which didn’t surprise me since I was vaguely aware he had Irish roots. But The Beverly Hillbillies? I’m guessing they were supposed to be descended from Scots-Irish Planters, but I don’t know if that was ever stated in the show or just assumed.

Note to self:

Next time I order British currency, don’t let them give me so many £50 notes; most of the places that’ll take them, I’m spending enough to use a card anyway. I want an even mix of £5, £10, and £20 notes, and a decent amount of £1 and £2 coins; a few £50 notes only if there are new craft markets to visit.

Ten Square

The company put me up at Ten Square Hotel, which was a nice place with only one real flaw: live music on weekends, which I could hear from my third fourth-floor room until at least midnight.

Not well enough to enjoy it, even if it had been pleasant, just enough to annoy me with thumping bass coming up through the walls and vibrating the headboard.

(my room was of course nothing like the suites in their gallery; pretty standard, really, with nothing noteworthy about it)

Fall anime

(which should start premiering around the time I catch up on the last few shows I was watching this season…)

• Shangri-La Frontier 2: Choco! Bunny! Good Good!

• GGO 2: The return of LLENN.

• Loner Life In Another World: the “loner” quickly gets surrounded by hot chicks, and eventually ends up banging two gorgeous gals every night in increasingly depraved ways while occasionally molesting the other hot chicks with his magical tentacles. Downside: he’s somewhere between incomprehensible and batshit crazy. Screenshot material, basically.

Priorities…

As I was coming out of HellCat Maggie’s Sunday afternoon into the first rain I’d seen since arriving in Belfast, I found two college-age men waiting for it to stop. They were friendly, first joking around with an older gentleman who was heading in, then chatting with me. Their primary interest: was cannabis legal where I lived in the States?

(for family reasons, I could not possibly ignore a diner named Maggie’s; TL/DR: decent pie and champ, slightly undercooked chips)

(best chips I had? The Nook at Giant’s Causeway; pity I didn’t have time for a full meal, since the driver highly recommended the place)

Dear xTwitter,

Please stop making me manually choose to sort replies by “latest” every fucking time I click on a tweet. Your opinion of what’s relevant is not interesting to me.

Also, what’s up with scrolling back to the top of the thread every time I mute an ad?

Blogging’s going to be light-to-nonexistent next week, for business reasons.

Labor of Love?

I did not have a brand-new Negima! online RPG with microtransactions on my Bingo card. It doesn’t sound like a gotta-poké-em-all game…

Core competencies!

There are days when it’s quite clear that the people pasting English onto product pictures at Amazon have no idea what the words mean.

Anime adaptations we need…

…based on how this season has gone: Elf With Bikini And Machine Gun.

(from the author of the novels Cat Planet Cuties was based on)

If you mindlessly smash clay pots to music…

…is that Terracotta In A Fugue, To D Minor?

(…or are you just in a Zelda game?)

“My AIs are up here!”

WIRED has the vapors over third-party auth services like Google, Apple, Patreon, X, Line, etc, being used to… authenticate to web sites; specifically, the sort that paste heads onto naked bodies. I’m sure they tried to blame Elon Musk, but reluctantly had to admit that X’s auth wasn’t the only one being used.

So, nothing to see here. Literally; it’s like the folks at WIRED and Ars have never heard the phrase “pics or it didn’t happen”. 😁

I’m sure there’s a ToS issue in there somewhere, but they seem to be particularly upset at the idea of teenage boys using the sites to generate imaginary nudes of their female classmates, demonstrating that they’ve never met a teenage boy.

NSFW

“What’s holding back America’s move to electric cars?”

…asks Slashdot, quoting The Verge’s transportation editor.

Answer: electric cars.

See also “winter”, “spontaneous combustion”.

UC2P: the testining

Building a test suite for a PDF generator requires some way of validating what ends up in the binary output file. For PDF::Cairo, I supplied a reference PDF file and used Poppler’s pdftocairo to render to PNG for comparison. Unfortunately, what this really ended up testing was the underlying libraries rather than my code, which is why the CPAN automated tests keep breaking.

For this script, my testing can be limited to determining that known text ends up in the correct region of the page, at the correct size, and it doesn’t have to be precise. It turns out that Poppler’s pdftotext extraction utility has a -tsv option that reports the bounding box of each word on every page, which will suffice.

Once that’s in place, I think I’ve got everything compatible as far back as Python 3.9.x and Reportlab 3.6.x, and for the regular test suite I can just dump the internal state object to compare to a reference version stored in Configparser format.

But I still think I’ll work on page-styling first.