Discovered that we do in fact still have a tin of hot chocolate mix in the cupboards, and it’s still good! Which means I’m brewing up a very yummy Manoncore potion. (She loves hot chocolate, and it always makes me think of her whenever I have some.)
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Nothin’ better than a steaming mug of rich hot chocolate with a good topping of whipped cream on top…
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FLEDGE DAY!
Three gawky, uncoordinated little baby wrens popped out of the pot and have been hopping all over and squeaking. It’s beyond adorable. They try to fly and get a little lift but don’t stick the landing and keep falling over and flopping into things. They just popped through the fence and are heading into the ravine. Bon voyage!
I just can’t believe that actually worked out.
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I’m actually shocked too! I thought they might end up as feathery doggie popcorn. Congratulations!
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Yesterday I presented a new algorithm I developed at a conference. The audience loved it, I got a lot of questions and a lot of comments, and one person wants to collaborate on applying it to a different ancient writing system.
Today I found out the conference is going to have published proceedings, which is amazing news for me. Because neither I nor my advisor has any real connections with people in the field, which means I can’t really reach out to people in the field to ask questions or suggest collaborations without being written off as a crank. But once I have some part of my work published, including a citation will get me a bit more respectability.
I also had a surge of inspiration in the last couple days and created a new thing that I think might end up being incredibly significant. The short version is that there are a few instances of ancient scribes writing cuneiform with a pen (exactly three of them in fact) and it turns out their conventions for how to draw the signs are way more readable than our modern conventions. So I hacked together a system that can render any sign in an imitation of the ancient style (or, well, my interpretation of it, I only have a half dozen ancient signs to work from) and I think it’s actually more readable than anything we use now.
And then tonight I had another surge of inspiration and now there’s another IF I just have to write. Maybe for IFComp; it’s short enough there should be time to polish it. Maybe for ECTOCOMP. Who knows! Maybe I can collaborate with one of the people from Loose Ends or Labyrinthine Library again…
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Oh, she really, really wanted to. Here’s a screenshot from a video we took of a baby wren landing on the windowsill just after fledging. The pot they nested in is about 2 feet away from the window. The dog (nose and ear visible) was transfixed. She very, very badly wanted to meet the little morsels.
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Marathon in the bag! Big personal best and managed to run it nonstop, no walking. Very pleased.
Now looking forward to a restful week.
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Just curious if Irving Finkel is one of those.
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Just got back from holiday, with one day of rest before returning to a normal schedule! There was this whole thing where our second flight of two kept changing up until the point where we only were given 40 minutes to check in, and then the plane got delayed even further, so we were given the next flight, which was all well - until the people at the counter while leaving one of the terminals (to head to our other terminal) said that the queue was SO MASSIVE that we wouldn’t catch this flight either! Which was scary, until we got the old airlines to get us through quickly.
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TTRPG session went resoundingly well, and set us up for an interesting place to dive back in again next we meet. I cleaned up some logs, organized them into folders, and started a lore history document to summarize the events of each scenario (I crushed out two of them today, one of which is quite long) which I imagine will come in handy with a long spanning campaign to later flip back to and reference for plot threads and characterization notes.
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Duuuuuuude! Look what I found today:
(For those who can’t read it [it is fairly blurry], it is the cover of a handmade box for an infocom-style disk. On the cover, it reads:
Milliways
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
[and then in small letters]
The long awaited sequel as brought to life by Douglas Adams and Max Fog
That’s really cool! I don’t know if it was somebody on Intfiction who did it or not, but that’s awesome!!
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Where did you find it?!?! That’s great!
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A really good night’s sleep last night and then a day seeing family today.
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Uh … I forgot the site! Don’t worry, I can go back and find it.
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FINALLY.
We have finished recording and editing our first song. That has taken OVER 6 MONTHS! 3 months of which was us recording for about 2 hours a day, excluding weekends. Doesn’t that say something? 
Not that it’s a very amazing song. But at least it’s finished. And this time I am not changing it!
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I love canals and am currently near one, so was able to do a slightly hobbly recovery run along the towpath while the rain was still holding off.
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…aaand another canal run today. Legs feeling so much more recovered!
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I’ve eaten a handful of crackers and slurped down a full mug of matcha and I’m so beautifully caffeinated right now. Sleep has been so-so as of late, but it certainly has helped beat back the worst of the little case of the sniffles I temporarily had there. It’s rainy and dreary, but it was so delicious just laying in bed this morning, enjoying the soft slip of the blankets over my legs- I went to sleep in shorts, and how cool and soft the lighting and room was.
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Had our annual gas boiler service today. Our boiler is working, but the engineer found signs of the heat exchanger failing. So that will be replaced in a week. Meanwhile we have heating. I think we will just have to pay £60 for the repair - the excess on our insurance cover. Normally it can cost £500-600. Phew! Long term we want to switch to a heat pump, but are not quite ready yet, and this buys a bit more time to research etc.
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We’ve finally hit the time of year where the sun sets after 7PM and suddenly I understand how people are so productive in the evenings. It’s insane, how much of a difference in my mood it makes when it isn’t the same pitch darkness of one in the morning at like, 5 or 6PM.
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