Optical Deportment

My preferred eye doctor isn’t in-network for me right now, because my former employer switched their insurance a few years back and I’m still on their plan. This turns out to be a good thing in 2020, because she’s located inside Lenscrafters, which is inside the mall, which is closed by decree. My current plan is accepted by Costco, which is open. The waiting list was six weeks, but someone cancelled and I got in the next day.

No change in my prescription, and they still had the discontinued “big man friendly” frames I liked, so now I’ve got spare bifocals. Since they had a sale going on, I also bought a pair of dedicated computer glasses in another “large head” frame; the doc confirmed that I’d calculated the adjustment correctly when I ordered a pair online last year.

More fun with WSL2

Surprisingly, one of the things I haven’t done in these months of lockdown is fire up my big gaming PC. At all. Last night when I was rearranging my office, I ran a full backup, downloaded all the updates since March, manually upgraded to the May release of Win10, and set up WSL2/Terminal.

Despite their docs telling you to use the Microsoft Store for Terminal and your Linux distros, both are available on Github (I’m using the good CentOS 8.2 build). And once you’ve got a distro set up the way you like it, you can just export it to a tarball and copy it to another machine.

On this machine, my primary use for the Linux environment will be editing game save files. 😁

(if the lockdown continues much longer, perhaps I’ll finally get around to sorting through all of my obsolete computer hardware, wiping the disks and e-wasting anything that’s not useful to me)

Historical isekai novels…

“Accidentally sent back in time, I used my superior knowledge of science and technology to impress the king, reform the country, and get the girl, only to be done in by a malicious wizard.” By Tsuwein Maruko.

Astra Service

After carefully examining the relevant scenes in the “simulcast” and “uncut” versions of Kanata no Astra, I can confirm that whatever changes made did not include adding more detail to either Quitterie’s shower scene in episode 4 or the bikini atoll scenes in episode 5. Pity.

Mostly Peaceful

Will the last adult to leave Portland please turn out the lights.

Earth-Shattering Kaboom

Ruger sells a .454 Casull revolver with a 2.5-inch barrel. I’m not sure why it holds six rounds; maybe they expect you to enter the bear den with two friends, so you have enough hands.

Astra Lost In Exposition

I noticed that Funimation now has an “uncut” version of Kanata No Astra up for streaming. Since there was really nothing to cut from the broadcast version, I assume they’re just using this label to mean “Bluray version”, with whatever cleanup was done for that release. Not that I’d complain if the swimsuit episode was more… detailed.

I didn’t really notice any changes in the first episode, but watching it really cemented my opinion that the talk-em-to-death resolution in the final episode completely destroyed all the world-building they’d done up to that point. The lengthy, detailed explanation of How Everything Happened is simply incompatible with the world the characters are shown living in.

Related, the Amazon price for the coming-soon Bluray of The Demon Girl Next Door just dropped from an insane $70 to the slightly-saner $50.

Eaten By Morlocks

I’ve gotten used to Apple’s Time Machine occasionally failing to a NAS, because their model for network backups is incredibly fragile. Until last night, though, I hadn’t had a failure with my encrypted external USB-C SSD. Then TM barfed up a lung, and I couldn’t unmount the drive because the indexer was grinding away on it. When I looked at the drive, I saw 894GB in use, but nothing at all in ls -al output, not even . or ...

Nothing wrong with the SSD, just the OS losing track of the file system that’s on it. Likely the result of a momentary California Power Blip, because the single USB-C port on my MacBook can’t drive both a hub and an SSD without external power.

Stir crazy

Scientists (I use the term loosely) spent time and money to discover that microwaving water in a coffee mug makes bad tea. Their conclusion was that the flavor extraction is poor because the temperature is not uniform from top to bottom, and their solution was a special container designed to heat the water more like a kettle on a stovetop.

Apparently no one involved in this study ever heard of a device called a “spoon”, or a process known as “stirring”.

Round 4

Next week will be my fourth round of interviews with the company that has matched their stated interest with actual action. This will be a four-hour tag-team technical interview of a sort that I haven’t done since 1993, when Synopsys flew me out from Ohio.

Over Zoom, of course; even after they hire me, I likely won’t be meeting my new co-workers in person until sometime next year.

“​…and they vote”

The New York Attorney General is apparently unaware that NRA members are a well-motivated voting bloc, and so she has provided them with additional motivation. Perhaps she believes that this will encourage them all to take more moderate positions. Perhaps she also believes that throwing gasoline on a grease fire will put it out.

Rewatched Bofuri

This really, really needs a US Bluray release. Also plushies and Funko Pops. And maybe a set of Izu/Kasumi/Misery body pillows.

Meanwhile, Kanata No Astra came out on Bluray this week, and The Demon Girl Next Door comes out next month at the wallet-scaring price of $70.

Benito Newsom’s clip job

Went out to get a haircut yesterday, only to discover that’s illegal again. Are they trying to flip California red?

The Worst Part Of Waking Up

The problem with convenient single-serving coffee makers is that when they fail, you’re forced to diagnose the problem without coffee.

(machine was turning off because a bad k-cup required excessive water pressure, tricking the machine into thinking it needed descaling)

Family Matters

Finished watching Umbrella Academy season 2. Worth the occasional slow spot. Reginald Hargreeves is my spirit animal.

Echo Madness

J: “Alexa, porch light on.”

A: “Calling J.” (my cellphone rings)

I’ll spare you the possible rants and just say that it didn’t show up in the activity section of the app, so I couldn’t “train” it to understand that it misheard me. Or find out what exactly it thought I said.

Anti-Patterns

I remain baffled by the fact that Slashdot remembers how far down you had scrolled in your previous visit and then reproduces that offset the next time you come by, forcing you to scroll back up through everything you’ve already read to see something new. Even more fun when that scrolling position no longer points to the same story.

Ditto the “view N comments” link on blogspot sites that scrolls past all of the existing comments and sets focus in the add-a-comment box.

Best. Flagpole. Ever.

“Thank you for your (fan) service.”

Our long notional nightmare is over…

Yesterday, Safeway had three kinds of yeast on the shelf and three varieties of King Arthur flour, both in sufficient quantity that they’re probably still there today. Costco has had a steady supply of 2-pound vacuum packs of Red Star active dry yeast for at least a month now, but the occasional shipments of the little envelopes and jars that most people use weren’t keeping up with demand.

(speaking of which, I’ve been checking the manufacturing date on those 2-pound bricks, and the ones that arrived last week said June 22nd; this is why you can’t just treat an economy like a series of light switches that you flip on and off at whim)

Everyday Life With Starter Pokémon

Not a harem comedy. Probably for the best.

Faking it in the kitchen

Pretty much every recipe for sweet/spicy mixed nuts begins with “buy raw nuts” and ends with “roast in oven”. But what if you already have roasted salted nuts and just want to zip them up? To me, the obvious solution was to toss them with just a little bit of olive oil, then add whatever you’ve got handy, in my case splenda packets and a few shakes from a jar of chili powder. Gets on your fingers, but we’ve all learned how to wash our hands now, right?

Faking it in the SJW community

Beloved Native American anthropology professor on Twitter now believed to be complete fraud. Apparently claiming she was killed by Corona-chan after her heartless university bosses forced her to teach in person was a bit too much for people to swallow, and the discovery that every picture she ever tweeted came from a stock photo agency isn’t helping.

“Nuns, no sense of humor”

Finished up Warrior Nun, so I’ve finally seen all the scenes from the trailers. My take on the season finale is that they thought they were being clever by piling revelation on revelation, but instead created a massive car wreck with color commentary. The characters mostly carry you through it, but it’s full of fridge moments that hit you as soon as you stop to think about them.

Given the numbers being reported, the second season is almost certain, but given 2020, there’s no way to predict when they’ll actually be able to start shooting it, much less do all the post-production work and release it.

I’m invested enough to want to see what happens next, but unpacking what happened is going to require a lot of talk-talk or a lot of handwaving, which has the potential to stop the story dead in its tracks.

The Brady Apocalypse

Umbrella Academy season 2 is mostly interesting, but I find myself turning it off in the middle of an episode because there are subplots I really don’t care about. These are adjacent to the parts I like, so I take a break, go do something else, and then finish the episode.

I’m kinda liking Dad.

Font “fun” with Windows Terminal

Setting fontFace to “Office Code Pro” produces significantly different text size than “Office Code Pro Medium” at the same fontSize setting. Going through the open issues on Github revealed a lot of interlocking font issues; the workaround for this one is the new fontWeight parameter. I updated my earlier config to reflect this.

Related, the problem I had where manpages and line numbers became unreadable is a bug unique to Windows Terminal. Where other terminal apps have an oddball mix of behaviors when confronted with the escape codes for “bold” and “bright” text in various colors, Terminal’s the only one that interprets bold without an accompanying color as “bright white”, regardless of the current foreground/background colors. So for any light-background-color scheme, you must set “bright white” to a dark color.

Unrelated, scrolling with the Control key held down changes the font size for the current session, while scrolling with Control-Shift changes the window opacity; never have I ever needed to scroll either of these settings. Transparency should always be 100% opaque for readability, and the standard Ctrl-(+/-/0) for font zoom are more useful and less likely to go off by accident. Scrolling them with the mouse is like Apple’s trackpad gestures that spontaneously change the icon size on my desktop.

Like skittletext, whenever I come across shit like this, I picture the programmers responsible as characters from the movie Hackers, and then I picture them locked in a room that’s on fire.

(by the way, kudos to Microsoft for developing this application in the open, with a real feedback process that gets incorporated into new releases)

Rice Twinklies

My Zojirushi rice cooker plays “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” when you push start. Never change, Japan.

Sticky stuff

Those 3M Command hooks hold their rated weight for about fifteen years. Ask me how I know.

If you name your town “Animosity”…

…you’re just asking for trouble, Brand New Animal. Thanks to Mauser for bringing this fun little Netflix anime series to my attention. If you haven’t watched it yet and need a little more push, note that it’s directed by the author/director of Little Witch Academia, and the cast includes Koyasu as someone other than the big badass and Yoshimasa Hosoya (Welf from DanMachi, Kanata from Kanata no Astra, etc) literally chewing the scenery.

Nun Shall Pass

I’m about halfway through the first season of Warrior Nun, and still not up to much of the footage that was used in the trailers. This is a bad way to make trailers.

Umbrella Academy, season 2

I really liked some of the performances in season 1, and it looks like the new one will deliver the same.

“You guys are never gonna let me live this down.” – Vanya Hargreeves, season 1 recap

The Sacred Texts!

rcs is no longer available in CentOS. At all. Not even in EPEL. Installing it from the Fedora 31 source RPM pulled in most of X11, because it inexplicably depends on Ghostscript. (just for the source, not the resulting binary)

Why do I need it? Because while I store most of my personal projects in Mercurial, and use Git to pull in code from other people, for config files and random text I use ESR’s src, which wraps a modern UI around RCS in a single portable Python script. As a bonus, if you decide to migrate a directory of files into Git or Mercurial, it generates fast-export files.

“Is it weird to play as the opposite sex?” – Reddit

“No, but it’s weird to think it’s weird.”

Seriously, you’re playing a game where you’re a 12-year-old monster trainer. Or a vaguely-immortal warrior. Or a space marine. Vampire. Elf. Alien. Sentient tank. Space freighter captain. Combat archaeologist. Pirate. Ninja. Murderhobo. Detective. Pick-up artist. Gangsta. Thief. Pimp. Mercenary. Leader of a biker gang. Cartoon dog and bunny. Post-apocalyptic parent. Marlow Briggs!

All this and many more, and you’re worried about the naughty bits your avatar doesn’t even have?

How to hold a fair election

Trump should tweet support for mail-in ballots that are allowed to arrive up to 30 days after election day. Within an hour, the Left will be demanding in-person voting with mandatory ID, active poll monitoring, and transparent auditing.

Teach Them Well…

In 1985, I went in to pay my OSU tuition for the quarter, and in the line was a large group of young men in identical clothing, looking like a centipede as they moved in lock-step in a tightly packed line, their identities subsumed into the group. At the time, I didn’t recognize the Marxist indoctrination that was common in black fraternities.

Close enough

Of all the actress/models whose careers are based on “looks kinda like Ai Shinozaki but gets nekkid”, I think Nanami Matsumoto (松本菜奈実) is the best. Link is NSFW, of course.

Disclaimer: I haven’t seen any of her video work, just the photos.

Switching to phase 3

Interview with hiring manager complete, moving on to technical interview with team. Amusing note: he started at Synopsys soon after I left, so we know a lot of the same people.

Dear Phoenix Pick

This is an absolutely dreadful book cover. Art commissioned for a classic novel by a grandmaster of the field should have a budget higher than a trip to Starbucks.

I suppose it’s better than just randomly cropping out-of-copyright SF art with no regard for relevance. Love the random elbow.

Endless Update

No, not a Windows machine that’s been turned off for a few months, the free game Endless Sky. They’ve added a lot of content since the last time I played 2+ years ago, and there are more story-focused third-party addons.

One thing that’s changed is that my old Blackbird Bus Driver build may no longer be viable due to more intelligent behavior by pirates. Which is a good thing.

Breaking the rules…

Apparently in the current Sword Art Online arc, Our Hero Kirito has been in a coma, and thus almost entirely absent. That this has not vastly improved the story violates my expectation that, after the first season, SAO is best when Kirito’s not in it.

(and did you know that the author wrote a non-canon short story set after the resolution of the Alicization arcs where all the girls forcibly marry Kirito inside the Alice-verse and sleep with him?)

I might someday rewatch the first season. I have no interest in slogging through the rest, largely because my favorite character is the tragically underused Liz. I did however just rewatch Gun Gale Online, the spinoff written by the author of Kino’s Journey. The only disappointment was that Netflix labeled every episode with a nudity warning, but the only thing that happens is that her friend Miyu is briefly shown taking a bath in one episode, with nothing showing.

Related, according to the wiki, Karen is canonically six feet tall (183 cm). They try to show this in the anime, but don’t quite manage to drive home just how freakishly tall that is for a Japanese woman; Karen should feel alienated and isolated. Compare to original Morning Musume member Kaori Iida, who towered over all the rest of the girls at only five-foot-seven (170 cm).

WSL2/Terminal configs

The current incantation to disable skittletext in PowerShell is:

Set-PSReadLineOption -Colors @{None='black';Comment='black';Keyword='black';String='black';Operator='black';Variable='black';Command='black';Parameter='black';Type='black';Number='black';Member='black'}

You need an additional incantation to be able to put that into a Documents\WindowsPowerShell\profile.ps1 file that’s read on startup:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope CurrentUser -Force

The user experience for customizing Windows Terminal is pretty poor. Out of the box, clicking on Settings will bring up a window asking you to find an app in the Microsoft Store to read JSON files. And it doesn’t tell you that it will do a live reload of the file every time you save it, until you make a mistake and it reverts your changes.

It also automatically adds config entries for all registered Linux distros, as well as Azure. You can hide, remove, or reorder them by editing the JSON file and remembering to add/remove trailing commas from arrays. Holding down Alt while clicking on Settings loads the default file containing color definitions, which you can copy into your settings and customize.

    ...
    // GUID of the profile you want by default
    "defaultProfile": "{5d9039ec-62cd-5628-abab-f769d05a6baa}",

    // left-drag to copy, right-click to paste, plain text
    "copyOnSelect": true,
    "copyFormatting": false,

    // make the most of the limited screen height on the SP2
    "launchMode": "maximized",
    "showTabsInTitlebar": true,
    ...
    "profiles":
    {
        "defaults":
        {
            // "No, BIGGER!"
            "fontFace": "Office Code Pro",
            "fontWeight": "Medium",
            "fontSize": 17,
            "colorScheme": "Readable",
            "cursorShape": "filledBox"
        },
        "list":
        [
            {
                "guid": "{5d9039ec-62cd-5628-abab-f769d05a6baa}",
                "hidden": false,
                "name": "CentOS8_2",
                "source": "Windows.Terminal.Wsl",
                /// otherwise you get your Windows homedir
                "startingDirectory": "//wsl$/CentOS8_2/home/jgreely"
            },
    ...
    "schemes": [
        {
            // work in progress...
            "name": "Readable",
            "foreground": "#000000",
            "background": "#FFFFFF",
            "cursorColor": "#7F7F7F",
            "black": "#000000",
            "red": "#EE0000",
            "green": "#00EE00",
            "yellow": "#000000",
            "blue": "#0000EE",
            "purple": "#000000",
            "cyan": "#000000",
            "white": "#FFFFFF",
            "brightBlack": "#222222",
            "brightRed": "#FF0000",
            "brightGreen": "#00FF00",
            "brightYellow": "#222222",
            "brightBlue": "#0000FF",
            "brightPurple": "#222222",
            "brightCyan": "#222222",
            "brightWhite": "#000000"
        },
    ...
    "keybindings":
    [
        // disable these!
        // { "command": {"action": "copy", "singleLine": false }, "keys": "ctrl+c" },
        // { "command": "paste", "keys": "ctrl+v" },
    ...

Skittletext in most Linux command-line utilities is typically enabled by the default shell profile in /etc. You can either not pull that file in at all, or undo the damage. Append-to-bashrc version:

# skip if non-interactive
[ ! -t 0 ] && return

for i in egrep fgrep grep l. ll ls xzegrep \
        xzfgrep xzgrep zegrep zfgrep zgrep; do
    alias "$i" >/dev/null 2>&1 && unalias "$i"
done
LS_COLORS=
alias ls='ls -F'

Skittletext in Notepad++ is unfortunately tied to the automagic detection of file type, each of which gets a completely independent set of color definitions. IMHO, the correct solution is to install Emacs (terminal-mode, not X11), but N++ is useful for light editing of config files on the Windows side. I might look for something else at some point. Emacs launches a bit sluggishly under Terminal, but when I tried emacsclient, it was no faster, wasting time showing me the scratch buffer before loading my file.

I had to add another line at the bottom of my standard .emacs file, to deal with the fact that with Office Code Pro at 20 points, even a fullscreen Terminal window is only 85x22 on my Surface Pro 2. Apart from the shortage of rows, it gives off a warm and fuzzy “classic Sun console” vibe as I set up a development environment.

(menu-bar-mode -1)

I suppose I should have added it years ago when they first started crufting up the UI, but I just never got around to it.

UPDATE

Font handling in Terminal turns out to be in the middle of a messy transition right now, with a lot of cleanup on the way. I’ve updated my config file above to reflect the new fontWeight option, which produces significantly different results from specifying the weight directly in fontFace. I’m now getting 85x23 fullscreen with the size set to 17 points, and it keeps the same size changing between “medium” and “light” (but not “bold”; that’s smaller).

Corona-chan Locally

The daily report for my county finally started including breakdowns by age and race for deaths. The data was available elsewhere, if you knew exactly where to look, but now it’s right up front in the report. They’re fudging a bit by only breaking down deaths into under-55 and 55-and-older, but since the total number of deaths is still only 26 out of 434,000 (with 274 hospitalizations), the bottom line is that very few people have been directly impacted by it, as opposed to the measures taken against it.

Yesterday I went out to get the mail and saw six kids riding their bikes up and down the street, socially-distanced and wearing masks. Who were they going to catch it from? Who were they going to spread it to? Feh.