![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
An Overdue Update
Dec. 13th, 2025 06:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
megpie71In the aftermath of the move, my brain went into "overload" mode, and hasn't shifted from there since about the end of March. Which means there's huge chunks of adulting that my brain has basically locked off and said "nope, not looking at those". End result: we haven't progressed very far in the search for a permanent place to live; in the meantime, the property market in my home city has become that much more expensive, so our options are even more limited.
We know what our budget is. The problem is the only things available at that price point are effectively "dog box" apartments built in the 1960s and 1970s (so they're needing a lot of renovation or maintenance) which don't have much more space than the area we're occupying at present, and it would probably send both of us stir-crazy inside about three months. Or there's "park homes" which come with the disadvantages of being located further away from where I work than where I currently am (I'm starting to get a pressure injury on the underside of my right thigh from driving for at least an hour each way two times a day four days a week) and which require a "site fee" to be paid on top of the cost of the actual "home" itself (basically, they're on-site cabins in a caravan park, and you have to pay the caravan site rental on top of the cost of purchasing the physical cabin), as well as not really being much larger than the space we're in now on top of things, and not being the best-insulated living spaces either (so higher costs for heating and cooling on top of everything else).
We're still looking (hope springs eternal, after all).
Big day!
Dec. 13th, 2025 02:50 amtygerWent into town and met up with A today! It was a lot of fun! We derped around poking at stuff a lot, particularly art stuff, which is always fun! :D
And then there was multiplayer Terrarira when I got home! Which was ALSO fun! Just, both of those things in one day was a lot.
However! I did manage to get an SD card, and it booted as an install device and... um. Pretty sure the entire computer is running off the SD card, and it can't see the freaking internal SSD. Which is a problem! So tomorrow there will be Some Research. But also I'm going over to catsit for A overnight - she's going for a family Christmas thing that's too far away for a day trip - so idek how much I'll actually get done. Still! Progress has been made, which is always nice! :3
Also even if I don't have an actual fix tomorrow I'll get to poke around the new desktop environment and see if I DO actually like it, which is also important! (The place I have it set up for installing the OS is also not great for actually using the computer, simply due to the fact that if I'm installing an OS I want to have my desktop on as well so I can Do Computer while waiting for shit to download/unpack/install, heh.)
Anyway, bed now. Am very sleepy! Hopefully I can get to sleep without pulling the blanket out since I'm... not gonna be here tomorrow night and who knows what the weather will do... it's Quite Warm and I suspect I will melt in my usual doona.
more on visual culture in science
Dec. 12th, 2025 11:04 amkaberettThis morning I am watching the lecture I linked to on Tuesday!
At 6:53:
Here is an example of how the Hubble telescope image of the Omega nebula, or Messier 17, was created, by adding colours -- which seem to have been chosen quite arbitrarily -- and adjusting composition.
The slide is figure 13 (on page 10) from an Introduction to Image Processing (PDF) on the ESA Hubble website; I'm baffled at the idea that the colours were chosen "arbitrarily" given that the same PDF contains (starting on page 8) §1.4 Assigning colours to different filter exposures. It's not a super clear explanation -- I think the WonderDome explainer is distinctly more readable -- but the explanation does exist and is there.
Obviously I immediately had to stop and look all of this up.
(Rest of the talk was interesting! But that point in particular about modern illustration as I say made me go HOLD ON A SEC--)
Music: Christmas Time is Here
Dec. 11th, 2025 09:25 pmstonepicnicking_okapiNew! Computer!!! :D
Dec. 12th, 2025 03:25 amtygerIt came!!! :D :D :D
( Extremely geeky linux rambling here )
Anyway, the keyboard-computer bit is pure white, so I'm thinking it'll be called Reshiram, since I've been on a pokemon kick for a while. Though maybe Kyuurem since the screen is black? Not sure. Will think about it, since I'mma reinstall the OS it's not something I have to decide yet!
Other than all that, really not much today, hahaha. I did washing, and cleaned the catboxes, that's about it. Also fic reading and some Terraria. But mostly new! computer!!! And attendant geekery.
Survey your level of job burnout today! (not a scam)
Dec. 11th, 2025 04:31 pmkiestanI've joked throughout the past few years that "argghhh i'm burned out at work" but only recently did I realise it wasn't a joke, haha! So I read about it and I found this interesting way of defining job burnout that helped me clarify my experiences better.
Dr Christina Maslach gave a talk about Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), a survey developed by her team that you can fill in.
Here's a free copy on Scribd, though officially the paid version on Mind Garden's costs ~50 USD.
That's my infodump of the day 😼
side-tracks off side-tracks
Dec. 10th, 2025 11:08 pmkaberettOne of the things I found yesterday, while getting distracted from transcription by regretting not having taken History and Philosophy of Science (or, more accurately, not having shown up to the lectures to just listen), was some tantalising notes on the existence of a four-lecture series entitled Visual Culture in Science and Medicine:
Science today is supremely visual – in its experiments, observations and communication, images have become integral to the scientific enterprise. These four lectures examine the role of images in anatomy, natural history and astronomy between the 15th and the 18th centuries. Rather than assessing images against a yardstick of increasing empiricism or an onward march towards accurate observation, these lectures draw attention to the myriad, ingenious ways in which images were deployed to create scientific objects, aid scientific arguments and simulate instrumental observations. Naturalistic styles of depictions are often mistaken for evidence of first-hand observation, but in this period, they were deployed as a visual rhetoric of persuasion rather than proof of an observed object. By examining the production and uses of imagery in this period, these lectures will offer ways to understand more generally what was entailed in scientific visualisation in early modern Europe.
I've managed to track down a one-hour video (that I've obviously not consumed yet, because audiovisual processing augh). Infuriatingly Kusukawa's book on the topic only covers the sixteenth century, not the full timespan of the lectures, and also it's fifty quid for the PDF. I have located a sample of the thing, consisting of the front matter and the first fifteen pages of the introduction (it cuts off IN MID SENTENCE).
Now daydreaming idly about comparative study of this + Tufte, which I also haven't got around to reading...
Rec-cember Day 10: Murderbot
Dec. 10th, 2025 11:33 pmfalenaWikipedia has a pretty goog summary, for those who are not familiar with the books:
The Murderbot Diaries is a science fiction series by Martha. The series is told from the perspective of the titular cyborg guard, a "SecUnit" owned by a futuristic megacorporation. SecUnits include "governor" modules that control and punish the constructs if they take any actions not approved by the company. The ironically self-named "Murderbot" hacked and disabled the module but pretends to be a normal SecUnit, staving off the boredom of security work by watching media. As it spends more time with humans, it develops genuine friendships and emotional connections, which it finds inconvenient.
It's got humour, emotional depth, action; it's the perfect comfort read, because Murderbot grappling with what it means to have free will and catching human cooties feeling is weirdly heartwarming. Murderbot is the best protag, I swear. I can't believe I saw this series mentioned around for years and never checked it out because I thought it was going to be gruesome, since its titular character is called Murderbot, ha. It's now also a tv series,starring Brad 'the Iceman' Colbert Alexander Skarsgård. The tv series is fun, a good adaptation, really, but the books are far superior, imo.
All these stories probably contain spoilers, so do not read them if you haven't read the books (you won't be safe if you've just watched the show, I supspect).
In Control. 8K words. Four times having a governor module fucking sucked, plus one time [REDACTED: FILE MISSING]. (Or: Murderbot has Emotions for 8,000 words. ART tries to help. So does Dr. Mensah, but like, in a decidedly less assholish way.)
Re-Initialization. 38K words. When the infamous rogue SecUnit of the Preservation Alliance gets captured, the corporate techs assigned to it expected to be able to get some juicy data, or at least some insights into its cracked governor module. They didn't expect something so… basic.
Changelong. 377 words. helpme.file: Changelog Various additions made by the units who pass along Murderbot’s governor module hack. Tremendously fun!
The Pitt
I adore how most of fandom has decided that Frank is a good guy, despite his many flaws, that he has fallen head over heels in love with Mel and that he'd do anything to be with her. Sometimes I like a darker interpretation of canon, though. In this vein, let me offer you my kingdon for a horse 14K. Langdon drives Mel home after the longest first day in the world. This is an amazing fic, so perfectly in character, hot and it packs such an emotional punch. The ending is absolutely brutal. It needs many more hits, kudos and comments.
Thanks!
Dec. 10th, 2025 05:19 pmblueswanFweeee
Dec. 11th, 2025 03:36 amtygerWow I'm suddenly really tired. I wasn't until like. Five minutes ago. Which given the time is actually pretty weird, heh.
Anyway! I forgot to say yesterday, Sushi has been banned back into the cone full time, because he licked his tail enough that part of it was a raw pink colour, siiiigh. It healed up again pretty quick, so I don't think it was actually raw, but we're not gonna let him do it again! Nope!! We'll see how the tail looks tomorrow, since that's when he's supposed to be fully healed, but I'm guessing I'll leave it on another day or so to be sure.
Honestly didn't do a whole lot today, annoyingly. But I DID get to play multiplayer Terraria for a couple of hours, so that was fun! Had to finish early because of my father's bday dinner, though, which was also great!
( Food rambles )
Other than all of that, mostly just reading today. Some solo Terraria this evening too, but that's about it. According to the tracking new computer should be here tomorrow! It maintained it was gonna come today until mid-afternoon, even though that was clearly not gonna happen (it wasn't even in the right city yet!), but hopefully tomorrow is accurate! Am excite!!! :D
Tanks A Lot
Dec. 10th, 2025 07:44 amkallowayBecause I am silly, and the best thing to do with German WWII tanks is be silly, here is Astray Blue Frame 2nd with a tank:
The tank itself needs a bit of glue at some point to not fall apart at the tiniest of movements or drafts, along with a tiny hand-painted snake-mark, but overall it passes the two-foot test and I am pleased. (Blue Frame also needs a bit more work but I misplaced her decals and have gotten varying degrees of annoyed at her color-correction. I'll get there.)
Life lived in dot points
Dec. 10th, 2025 08:15 amfred_mouseWell into 'it's not one thing after another, the damn things overlap' territory here
- nominal deadline for my confirmation of candidature to have been submitted has passed without anything from my reviewers (one of three from our school has theirs)
- Eldest's quilt has been somewhat abandoned, which is annoying me but I haven't had the cope
- Instead I've been working on logistics of Youngest's quilt, which is very heavy in the planning stages (picture quilt, converting it from a photo)
- Took a week at home on light duties last week, this week I'm back in the office. Did surprisingly well yesterday. Surgery site looks to have healed on the surface but the internals are still quite sore, so I'm still sleeping with the post-surgery bra.
- Middlest and their partners have bought a house. They move in January. There was a messy blow up with the fourth housemate, who has since moved out, so they are learning how they fit together as a trio, and it sounds like things are going well. R's parents are providing lots of important support for the process.
- Saw the nurse for follow up on Monday. They didn't like the wound support stuff I'd found in the pharmacy (because it is plasticky) and replaced it with a stiff fabric 'can be washed but blow dry it after' dressing that was so annoying/itchy I took it off last night (and it took off lots of ick; that area has an unsurprising build up of Stuff) and put the second piece of the wound support stuff on. That is so much better -- it is a clear plastic lattice that actually moves with the area, rather than digging in. Also, I'm not reacting to the glue.
- My middle sibling and their partner are moving to Perth for two years. D has a job at UWA, K's job will allow 'remote' work from the Perth office. Amusingly, D described UWA as 'not restructuring' and Youngest laughed when reading that out. My comment was that from my perspective it has never not been restructuring, it is just the level that is changing. Plus, there was a leaked minutes from some meeting that suggested they were going to try and get a merger with Curtin, which I learned about when the Curtin Guild sent a 'not if we can help it' email out to all students. Pointed out to sibling that as they and I share a family name there is a non-zero chance they are going to get spotted as related.
a confession: today I have bought two more translations of Descartes
Dec. 9th, 2025 09:54 pmkaberettItem the first: the 1972 Harvard University Press Treatise of Man, translated by Thomas Steele Hall. This translation is quoted by two of the other books I'm working with, Pain: the science of suffering by Patrick Wall (1999), and The Painful Truth by Monty Lyman (2021). It is also an edition that, as I understand it, contains a facsimile of the first French edition (1664, itself a translation of the Latin published in 1662). My French is not up to reading actual seventeenth-century philosophy, but being able to spot-check a couple of paragraphs will be Useful For My Argument.
Item the second: Descartes: Key Philosophical Writings, translated by Elizabeth S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross (1997). This doesn't contain Treatise on Man, but it's the translation of Meditations on First Philosophy that's quoted in The Story of Pain by Joanna Bourke (2014).
Meanwhile the Descartes essay, thus far composed primarily but not solely of quotations from other works, has somehow made it north of 4500 words. I think it might even be starting to make an argument.
( Read more... )
I am resisting the urge to try to turn this into a Proper Survey Of Popular Books On Pain, because that sounds like a lot of work that will probably involve reading a bunch of philosophers I find profoundly irritating, and also THIS IS A TOTAL DISTRACTION from the ACTUAL WORK I AM TRYING TO DO. But it's a distraction that is getting me writing, so I'll take it.