Reading

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Erin watches: “Bad Apple but it’s…”

Fell down a rabbit hole of watching “people recreate the iconic Bad Apple music video on the wildest, most improbable devices” videos. (“Can it run Doom?” is so passe.)

Frame of Bad Apple on a vintage oscilloscope

Got any favorites of your own to rec? Here are mine:

Entry tags:

books,
reading

Wednesday reading

Finished since the last reading post
Beyond the Door of No Return, which was really enjoyable all the way through.

Mystery in the Minster by Susanna Gregory, taking Bartholomew and friends to York to claim an inheritance for the college, with the usual amount of intrigue and bodies piling up.

Currently reading
When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson. Some slow progress with Jonas, Dennis, & die Liebe

Reading next
Not entirely sure, I've got a bunch of new books at home, so probably try to pick up one of them.

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Wednesday is lucky to be remembered at all

Work is hellish. I worked both Saturday and Sunday on three hours of sleep, I have very little recollection of what I've done since last Thursday, and I literally startle up from sleep thinking about databases. It's bad enough that today my coworker and I sat our team lead and his boss and his boss's boss down and said that our team lead needs to start prioritising things better, because his demands are ridiculous and this can't go on. No, not even when we're trying to deploy the project from hell. Especially not when we're trying to deploy the project from hell.

So, what I've needed have been books by an author I know I can trust and whose writing pulls me in so that I can make it to bedtime with my sanity intact. And you can see below just which author that has been.

Recently read

Annick Trent, Oak and Ash (The Old Bridge Inn #3)

A new-to-me author. Historical M/M romance between a surgeon and a valet. I haven't read the previous parts of the series, but they are standalone enough that it didn't matter. I don't have anything to say, because my brain is kaputt, except that I really liked this.

K.J. Charles, the Charm of Magpies series: The Magpie Lord, A Case of Possession, and Flight of Magpies

The first two parts were re-reads, the last I'd never read. No idea why. Anyway, it had been so long since I'd read this that I'd managed to forget basically everything, so it was all delightfully new to me.

K.J. Charles, Spectred Isle

Another re-read. Another one I'd read so long ago I didn't remember anything.

K.J. Charles, All of Us Murderers

KJC's newest, which was released everywhere yesterday. (I guess UK readers of physical books got theirs last week. Lucky them.) Gothic romance. Finished it yesterday evening, slept a full 8 hours afterwards for the first time in far too long. 5 stars, no notes. Loved it.

Currently reading

K.J. Charles, Any Old Diamonds (Lilywhite Boys #1). A reread, because my brain is still not online.

Up next

Christ, I don't know up from down. How would I know this? Probably more KJC, tbh.

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Wednesday is feeling slightly less post-vaccinial blah

What I read

Finished This Real Night and went straight on to Cousin Rosamund (1985).

Then a change of pace: Simon R Green, Stone Certainty (Holy Terrors Mystery, #2) (2025): less about the Horrors from another dimension than the horror of being stuck in a remote stone circle with a bickering TV crew.... not bad.

Angela Thirkell and CA Lejeune, Three Score and Ten (The Barsetshire Novels #29) (1961), in order to be completeist. This was at least less all over the place than Love At All Ages, which one suspects was down to CA Lejeune, undervalued film critic of the day who was apparently a neighbour and pal of Ange from the War years but the 2 bios I have just mention that they were friends and not much else (not that they did movie nights together or whatever, only that Lejeune was massive Barsetshire fangirl), barely that she got this into publishable condition.

KJ Charles, All of Us Murderers (2025). I have been a bit less whelmed by Charles' more recent work - maybe just me, or maybe because the bar is set so very high?

On the go

Simon Goldhill, Queer Cambridge: An Alternative History (2025) - having been there and done that, lo, these many years, about what do we mean, to talk about queer or homosexuality historically, found the intro a bit woffly, but now we are on to Oscar Browning and JK Stephen things are moving a bit more.

Up next

A bit spoilt for choice with my birthday books.

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plant and garden

More bulbs, adhd taxes, and random gardening drawbacks

Wax and I planted 136 bulbs yesterday evening: tulips (including 7 more of the red and white stripey Carnaval de Rio), crocus, daffodils, fritillarias, and three kinds of allium flowers - a few of the big dramatic puffy purple ones and then 40 smaller blue and red-clover-colored ones.

We bought a bulb planter a few years ago, a very handy little low-tech device. But we both have ADHD and we couldn't remember where we put it or find it again. Unfortunately, garden... stuff... tools... are spread around in the basement (very poorly lit and low-ceilinged so I hit my head on a beam at least 1/3 of the time I go there...), the boatshed that I can't enter because there's a smell that makes me like unable to breathe that nobody else can smell, and our uninsulated-but-enclosed porch, which WOULD be the ideal place, but it's too small. I guess if we lined the walls with cork board and cubbies and shelving and drawers like a garage workshop all the small garden tools would fit, but it's also the entryway/airlock area from the front door so... nah. There's a cabinet (one of the original wooden homemade kitchen cabinets from the house, so smaller than current cabinet sizes) that currently holds most of our tools, and there's one of those island-height tables with a vinyl tablecloth on it for basic repotting and stuff (whose top quickly fills up with muddy gloves and birdseed bags etc, because we have ADHD, but it's too necessary to eliminate the surface).

So we planted them with trowels, which is much more work, and I tried REALLY hard not to put my knees down on the ground but I ended up having to scrub the knees of my sweatpants anyway. Then we raked a few big bags of potting soil over the bare ground left after our plumbing excavation, because the surface left by the digger guy was mostly sand, and then we scattered the clover seed over that. Feeling very accomplished right now!

We put a bunch of bulbs near the new bushes, at the side of the house along the street, which is a place we don't usually think about much becasue we hardly see it. But we're running into a problem with our perennial beds:

There are two long rectangular beds with perennials in them running along the edge of the embankment/retaining wall leading up into the main yard. (We live on a hill.) And they have had perennials in them before, because a diligent gardening genius USED to live in this house - not sure if it's just the original owner, from 1950-, or her daugher-in-law, who moved out somewhere around 10 years before we bought the house. The intermediate owner did nothing to the garden, just let grass cover everything and mowed it flat, so the grass took over most of the perennials, and they only gradually started to come back when we weeded etc. They didn't ALL come back, but the shape of the beds as originally intended was still clear, so over the past 6 years we and our tenants have gradually added more perennials to these two beds. But kind of at random. In different years.

So looking at this long rectangular bed NOW, in the fall when everything has stopped blooming, it's like:

"I know there are a lot of daffodils... I think sort of mainly over here on the left?"

"Don't they go more towards the middle? I think there are daffodils out to HERE."

"Okay, let's try to put them down here I guess. What about this side of this bush? Some more tulips?"

"I think some of the tulips are there already. Aren't they? Were't there some tulips like over... here?"

"Oh, maybe. And what about up here then, in the upper left corner of the bed?"

"I think we put something there. I can't remember what though. Maybe it died."

Etc. Etc.

We need a complete map of these beds. Wish us luck remembering to document them next year.

(no subject)

Happy birthday,

shopfront!

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Daily Happiness

1. Meetings today were the good sort, where there's actual discussion and figuring things out, so that was good.

2. Last night we got Chinese food from a new place and it turns out they have really, really good char siu pork. Tonight we used the leftovers to make rice and it was amazing. Definitely want to get from there again. (Sadly their hot and sour soup, which is the main thing Carla wanted as she is under the weather again, was not good.)

3. Look at this cutie Gemma!

Current Mood: dorky
Current Music: LL Cool J- Momma Said Knock You Out

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Spy X Family Season 3- No Spoilers

Watched the first episode of the series on its third season and so far, so good. Anya seeks to protect the world without letting her foster parents know about her telepathic powers, Loid and Yor try keeping the family appearances without revealing their identity to each other, and Agent Nightfall seems to have more to go on around. The episode didn't show much about Loid's current task at hand, but being the first episode, I'm sure that will change. No word on Yor's obsessive brother yet either.

Hope any reading this has been able to watch it as well. I'm sure it won't disappoint.

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Some Vengeful Princess stories

The Common Event:
A Prince and his mistress hold a public ball, attended by all the Prince's supporters, while the King and Queen are away. At this ball (henceforward 'the ball' or 'the betrayal ball') the prince accuses the princess of a number of crimes that boil down to "bullying the mistress". Often there's an accusation of having pushed the mistress down a flight of stairs. As punishment for these crimes, the Prince annuls his engagement to the Princess, and announces his intention to marry the mistress instead.

These stories involve a Princess who, ultimately, doesn't simply head off and live her life somewhere else.

( Now for some Story. )

Sanders' Union Speaker

Sanders' Union Speaker: Containing a Great Variety of Exercises for Declamation, Both in Prose and Verse by Charles Walton Sanders

Another collection of extracts for the scholar. This differs from his Union Readers and New Readers in that it is, overtly, aimed at performance before crowds. Some have directions on how they are to be staged, down to the observation that the poem about being a man is more comic when told by a young boy than an older one.

Many more comic pieces. Also, the time of publication is clear, since many pieces directly address the war. More speeches and poems and fewer essays. But its selection does cast quite a light on the times.

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Unhelpful

Remember when I said my nibling was getting here in four weekends?

Well, yeah, now it's this weekend.

I have not gotten remotely everything I wanted done, but there's a place for him to sleep and a mattress and we can figure everything else out I guess.

At some point I started clearing out the vanity in our room because Bug wants to get a tree frog and that seemed like the best surface to put a vivarium on, and then I also cleaned out the secretary dresser because we were considering moving it into the other room for Nibling to use, and a few months ago I switched to floor sitting so I had emptied out my desk and....

...well the takeaway is there's a lot of stuff in our bedroom, unsurprisingly, and I'm trying to actually sort/declutter it instead of just... popping it all away again.

I've been categorizing and binning things in useful ways but I just hit the realization that I need a bigger bin for notebooks unless I want to put the larger ones somewhere else, which I don't. And that I have painting stuff stored in multiple bins right now, and also I have sewing stuff in multiple bins. Both of those started because I had loose stuff wherever and I was trying to corral it, but I don't have enough space in the current storage to put it away, so those both also need to be re-sorted into different bins.

(And the ephemera/junk journal stuff is in a temporary box but I don't have a good larger category to put them in, and zines keep ending up in with it Because Paper and that's Not Correct, and then I realize my memory bin could probably stand to be switched out too, but if I'm doing that I should figure out how to solve the problem where Moth's memory box doesn't close correctly, and and and...)

And I know there are other things I should be spending my time on, and I also wish that I had a more "aesthetic" alternative to the sturdy, stackable plastic bins I end up using (they come in multiple sizes that work together, though!) except that more aesthetic ones are generally not clear and not matching and I don't have the space to properly store things aesthetically yet and I need to accecpt that.

But regardless my brain is stuck on "I cAN't PuT tHe ThInGS Aw4Y c0rREcTLy!!!11!" and it is profoundly unhelpful.

Hope y'all are doing better than I am in this department! And honestly I'm not that bad off, I promise. This is just the thing driving me crazy this morning.

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Recent Reading: One Dark Window

Minor spoilers below for One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig

I didn't pick this book up so much as had it breathlessly thrust into my arms (along with the sequel) by a dear friend who I couldn't disappoint by refusing. I swore to give it a real chance, despite the fact that she and I frequently disagree about what is quality writing, and initially I was able to sink into the conceits of the story. I enjoyed the Nightmare and his relationship with Elspeth (although I suspected I would be disappointed that he did not end up being the love interest, and I was right about that), the general mystery of Blunder, and the way even the characters themselves seem to know little about how the magic of their world works.

The initial set-up chapters were the most enjoyable; once the real plot reared its head, the book started falling apart for me.

A significant part of that is the romance, which had me rolling my eyes at various points. You could make a drinking game out of how often Raven--sorry, Ravyn--is referred to as "the captain of the destriers" instead of his name. I don't mind that Elspeth and Ravyn's romance is telegraphed early and clear--sometimes you're into someone from the get-go--but as a love interest, Ravyn is a surly, controlling killjoy who believes he has the right to demand other people behave the way he wants them to. He intentionally keeps information from Elspeth and then gets angry with her for acting without that knowledge. Then again, maybe they fit, since they both seem to immediately dislike most other people around them.

The book wants Ravyn to be sexy with his competency and knowledge, but he often comes off as infuriatingly patronizing and Elspeth embarrassingly infantile. The hissy fit she throws when he doesn't want to pretend to be courting her was cringe-inducing. Girl maybe it's just not about you, a woman this guy has known for less than 48 hours.

The writing itself quickly becomes repetitive, and the author lives in terror we might forget a single character's eye color. The rhymes which begin each chapter get old, as they themselves are internally repetitive, and not very clever.

None of the characters are ever allowed to do anything embarrassing, because that might render them marginally less sexy. Elspeth is, as are so many female main characters in romance novels, a klutz, which gives her plenty of opportunity to be cutely embarrassed over absolutely nothing without doing anything that might actually be embarrassing.

Blunder is a mishmash of European cultures and time periods without taking clear inspiration from any of them, which I could almost let pass, except that at any of the times which lend inspiration to Blunder, Elspeth would have scandalized by repeatedly and openly spending time alone with single adult men and no chaperone. The book clearly takes vibes inspiration only.

At the halfway mark where I ended my journey through Blunder, our little gaggle of card thieves does not seem particularly competent, and I can't say I have any interest in how their adventures resolve. I'll have to tell my friend they're just not for me.

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dentists

Success at the dentist

I had my appointment today and it went fine. The specialist found the third root canal and was able to treat it. He didn't seem very impressed with the way my dentist had gone about looking for it. But given he's the specialist getting the referrals, he must be seeing things he doesn't agree with all the time. So my dentist was right to refer me to him and reassure me he was good, and I was right in going ahead with the treatment rather than opting for having the tooth out and getting an implant instead. And I'll be going back in two weeks for him to finish things off, and then eventually back to my own dentist for the crown.

I was properly numbed so didn't feel a thing at the time, but it seemed to take forever for it to fade away. Talking on a call after coming back home and starting work again was a bit of a challenge.

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So much WTF

This was posted over at agonyaunt but I see the post is locked so not linking there. It's I was asked to provide proof that I wasn’t involved with my husband’s death" (second one down here at Ask A Manager):

I woke up next to my husband in May and found he was dead. I am a teacher in training and the university I go to is well aware of the situation. I have a tattoo on my neck which is the last message he wrote to me, and one day a colleague at work said, “Do you have your name on your neck?” I explained the situation.
Last Friday I was pulled into a room by myself with no warning and asked if I had a letter from the police clearing me of his death. I was told I had overshared at work, and due to the nature of the death (he was only 49 and died unexpectedly) they would like to see a letter from the police clearing me of any wrongdoing. I became extremely upset, and told her I wouldn’t go any further than this unless HR was there to document the conversation and take notes. She then followed me into the car park and asked me not to leave as she “didn’t want me to leave like this.” I told her I was too upset to talk and she still asked me to stay.
I’m only three weeks into my course and am terrified they will look for any reason to throw me off. Am I making a mountain out of a molehill?

Somebody asks about her tattoo, she responds, and then (this person or somebody else) says she's 'overshared at work'. What.

Why even mention the police? One assumes a doctor was involved and provided a certificate that it was a natural death. These happen. At much younger ages than 49.

(And ugh at the pursuing upset person.)

In a former former workplace the I think under 30 husband of a colleague died very unexpectedly of an asthma attack. Our sympathy was somewhat limited by the fact that she was having an affair with a colleague and was visibly ungriefstricken, but we didn't go around muttering 'she done 'im in' rather than making bitchy remarks about merry widows.

There was the famed fitness guru who dropped dead during a marathon.

There was some instance I think I commented on when scandalmongering tabloid journo was trying to drum up a case that some gay celeb had died in Sex Orgy because fit young men don't just drop dead, whereas in fact there are known syndromes that cause that.

But perish the thort that this should stop somebody who fancies themself - well, NOT Miss Marple, would Miss Marple have been anything like so crude if she had the slightest suspicion?

(no subject)

Happy birthday,

liadnan!

Current Mood: content
Current Music: Sting- If I Ever Lost My Faith In You?

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Watching blue exorcist

I first learned of this Anime when reading the first volume of the Manga its adapted from, and it got me interested. I'm currently watching as many episodes as I can of it. It does make me feel entertained and get that "good feeling" out of it as well.

Anyone else has thoughts on it?

SMaCK!

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LLM Word Salad but it’s specifically chess words

The promised recs for “videos about the reality of LLMs attempting to play chess” from the GothamChess channel.

ChatGPT versus Stockfish (an actual, functional chess-playing program)
ChatGPT versus GothamChess himself
ChatGPT versus Google Bard (they both make absurd moves at each other)
ChatGPT versus DeepSeek (it starts with valid moves, then deteriorates, and both boths keep giving nonsense explanations of their moves)
The most recent ChatGPT versus Stockfish (this one has a twist at the end, I won’t even spoil it)
He also did his own Chatbot Chess Championship (playlist is in reverse order, so I linked the last video in the list, which is the first game).

The host plays the games out on-screen for you, with explanations and commentary. These ones aren’t for serious chatbot-testing purposes, they’re for entertainment — so when the bots make up illegal moves, he usually just runs with them. Sometimes with narration like “and here ChatGPT summons an extra rook from another dimension” or “You might think this is just a pawn, but Grok knows it’s secretly a horse pawn!”

Once in a while, he’ll tell the bot its move is illegal. Some of them go into “yes, of course, you’re right, my mistake” sycophancy mode. Others just get weirder.

The bots teleport pieces through each other. Manifest already-taken pieces back from the Shadow Realm. Spawns more pieces than it had to start with. Move pieces in directions they don’t go. And just because it’s making up moves, doesn’t mean it’s making up good moves! Sometimes it takes its own pieces. Sometimes it puts itself in check!

Sometimes they also generate their opponent’s moves. Because “black moves 1” is typically followed by “white moves 2, black moves 3, white moves 4” — and the bots don’t actually have a meaningful sense of “stop auto-generating text at the end of move 1.”

I was curious if the LLM’s idea of moves included “making up whole new categories of pieces” or “moving to squares that aren’t on the 8×8 chess grid.” Haven’t seen either of those so far.

One thing I didn’t anticipate is, sometimes a bot tells the other player their move is illegal. Even when it’s not! Saying “there’s a piece in your way” (when there isn’t), or “the king can’t move to E7” (not for any rules-based reason, the bot was just gatekeeping E7).

The newer bots also give general paragraphs on “here’s the explanation for my move,” which are absolutely just LLM Word Salad(TM) made of chess words. As a person who knows Basic Chess Rules but doesn’t actively play the game, sometimes I need GothamChess’s breakdown to see why they’re nonsense. Other times it’s just the bot saying “I have put you in check!” when the other player is blatantly not in check.

The whole thing was very informative, and also really entertaining. (…And it doesn’t involve the chatbots doing anything consequential, so it’s a nice break from all the stories about LLMs putting someone’s life in danger.) Give it a look.

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Daily Happiness

1. I didn't have any meetings or anything today and finished up a good amount of work without interruptions, so I came home a little early. (I do have a bunch of meetings tomorrow, but hopefully they will be productive meetings and we can sort out some of the things that need to get sorted out.)

2. We got our ballots for the special election. There is only one thing on the ballot: the proposition to redraw California districts to be almost entirely blue if Texas tries to gerrymander themselves to be all red. Not a fan of gerrymandering in general and wish it were illegal, but if it is legal, Democrats should use it to their advantage, since Republicans are determined to keep as many people from voting as possible. This measure will only go into effect if Texas does it first.

3. We ordered dinner through Grubhub tonight and there was an item missing, which was disappointing as it was one I was really looking forward to, but it was just a side, not the main meal, and the refund process for missing items is really easy. This was my first time needing to get a refund like that, but I'm glad they let you do it through their site and not have to call the restaurant directly.

4. Chloe loves her box.

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dentists

A new appointment

I had a call from the dental practice where I'm due to see the specialist at lunch time to say they had a cancellation available and would I like to bring my appointment forward. So I said yes, as my original appointment is still two weeks away and I didn't have anything on my work calendar that I can't miss. The only difference really having to switch an office day from Tuesday to Thursday, but that's fine. I have a second appointment in the calendar too, so that's moving to my original slot on the 21st.

The tooth hasn't actually been that troublesome for about a week now, but that was preceded by a week or so when it was so sore I was taking painkillers at least twice day. I can only hope the specialist can find and treat all the root canals still currently untreated.

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Ponderings

I observed over the weekend woezering about universities introducing courses teaching students how to read the books on their courses; that is, the courses in e.g. EngLit, that they signed up for and presumably knew would involve reading texts of various kinds? And instead of being Brigadier Disgusted-Hedjog of Tunbridge Wells, 'In my day we were doing C18th novels for A-levels [true]', I observed, when looking this up, that round about the same time last year there was the same round of woe unto this generation which do not rede ye bookz.

So my scepticism, she is considerable.

I suspect there have been allotropes of this one since Ye Classix were no longer the essentials for a degree/when EngLit became an actual degree subject/when philology and Anglo-Saxon were no longer compulsory/NOVELS! they are going to uni to read NOVELS!!! Sivilizashun B DED!!!!

Okay, possibly thick little Tarquin & Lucretia who got in through PULL may be astonished at having to read big fat books but in these days, and with the general attack on the humanities, I have to suppose that anyone who turns up with the intention of doing an English degree know what's in store.

***

So, we have had a woman Archbishop of Canterbury.

Has anyone - I haven't seen it anywhere yet - remarked on the SYMBOLISM, in the present parlous state of the Anglican communion over various abuse scandals, that her background is in A Healing Profession?

***

There are a lot of reasons why I am glad I am of the generation I am, and one of them is Having Missed Out on this sort of thing: risking our health in the name of beauty is totally normalised.

***

And today I got vaxxed.