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Oct. 2nd, 2025 02:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ursulaMy October AMS Feature Column, The Hypergeometric Flower Pot, follows a train of thought from high Balatro scores to a famous infinite series.
ursula
Things
Oct. 2nd, 2025 10:16 pmvassBooks
Still rereading Stargazy Pie.
Listened to the audiobook of Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice. Yes, my first time with this series. I didn't read them back when they first came on my radar (late 90s, early 2000s) because I heard unpleasant things about the author's attitude to fanfic, and held a grudge. They came to my attention again recently because a Tumblr mutual was reading them and kept reblogging pretty fanart and also made me aware of the gender stuff.
That certainly was a 90s fantasy novel, for better and for worse.
After I finished, I read this person's shitposty summary of Assassin's Apprentice, and decided on the strength of it to put a hold on Royal Assassin at the library so I can read the next summary after I finish that.
Games
Hades II launched, and I went back to playing it (having set it aside back in March.) On a new save. Which is how I reminded myself that gaming for a long time really hurts my neck and shoulders and back and everything. Got as far as Granddad.
Crafts
sekrit!cross-stitch still in the drafting phase, but I did make some progress.
Tech
Still playing through Reeborg's World. I switched from the original levels to the Saskatchewan CS20 set to give myself a bit more practice before tackling Rain 2 and Storm 2 through 4. Currently I'm on level 19 of the Saskatchewan CS20.
Also dug out an old monitor with the intention of plugging it into my laptop. Couldn't find a DVI or VGA cable (I did say it's an old monitor!) and ended up buying a new DVI to HDMI converter cable. After which I couldn't find a power cable for the monitor. After which I found where I'd been storing the spare IEC connectors. You'll never guess what else was coiled up with them... oh, you guessed. (No, not a snake. A DVI cable and a VGA cable, of course!)
Garden
Impulse-bought and planted a couple of heirloom tomato seedlings (Tigerella and Cherry Roma.) It begins.
Cats
Wrestling and face-biting. All in good fun.
Nature
Saw a couple of magpies investigating some yellow leaves which I'd pruned from the broccoli and left to mulch.
Misc
Unwisely kept working on the miniblocks pumpkin after I'd run out of concentration, and started skipping steps without noticing. Disassembled it and started again. This is what audiobooks are good for.
Still rereading Stargazy Pie.
Listened to the audiobook of Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice. Yes, my first time with this series. I didn't read them back when they first came on my radar (late 90s, early 2000s) because I heard unpleasant things about the author's attitude to fanfic, and held a grudge. They came to my attention again recently because a Tumblr mutual was reading them and kept reblogging pretty fanart and also made me aware of the gender stuff.
That certainly was a 90s fantasy novel, for better and for worse.
After I finished, I read this person's shitposty summary of Assassin's Apprentice, and decided on the strength of it to put a hold on Royal Assassin at the library so I can read the next summary after I finish that.
Games
Hades II launched, and I went back to playing it (having set it aside back in March.) On a new save. Which is how I reminded myself that gaming for a long time really hurts my neck and shoulders and back and everything. Got as far as Granddad.
Crafts
sekrit!cross-stitch still in the drafting phase, but I did make some progress.
Tech
Still playing through Reeborg's World. I switched from the original levels to the Saskatchewan CS20 set to give myself a bit more practice before tackling Rain 2 and Storm 2 through 4. Currently I'm on level 19 of the Saskatchewan CS20.
Also dug out an old monitor with the intention of plugging it into my laptop. Couldn't find a DVI or VGA cable (I did say it's an old monitor!) and ended up buying a new DVI to HDMI converter cable. After which I couldn't find a power cable for the monitor. After which I found where I'd been storing the spare IEC connectors. You'll never guess what else was coiled up with them... oh, you guessed. (No, not a snake. A DVI cable and a VGA cable, of course!)
Garden
Impulse-bought and planted a couple of heirloom tomato seedlings (Tigerella and Cherry Roma.) It begins.
Cats
Wrestling and face-biting. All in good fun.
Nature
Saw a couple of magpies investigating some yellow leaves which I'd pruned from the broccoli and left to mulch.
Misc
Unwisely kept working on the miniblocks pumpkin after I'd run out of concentration, and started skipping steps without noticing. Disassembled it and started again. This is what audiobooks are good for.
Things
Sep. 27th, 2025 06:45 pmvassBooks
Listened to the audiobook of Yevgeny Zamyatin's 1921 dystopian SF novel We, translated by Bela Shayevich and narrated by Toby Jones. I don't have any basis for comparison for this particular translation, but I thought it was good. The narration was exceptional.
This edition also included a forward by Margaret Atwood, an old review by George Orwell, and an essay by Ursula Le Guin, 'The Stalin in the Soul'. By the time I'd finished the novel, I had forgotten the Atwood forward. The Orwell review was interesting. The Le Guin essay got up my nose: it was about how market forces can suppress ideas just as effectively as state censorship (a valid point), but somewhere along the way became about the dangers of unserious writing.
Read Victoria Goddard's newest novella, Olive and the Dragon, and her previous ones Clary Sage and Traveller's Joy.
Currently rereading her second ever novel Stargazy Pie, because the fan server I'm in is doing a reread of the Greenwing & Dart series, and I'm hoping it'll lend me the momentum to read the rest of them.
Fandom
Still working on the concluding chapter to the fic I posted part one of at the start of this month. I've added at least a thousand words to the draft, and struggling with it.
Missed the nomination period for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
trickortreatex and, subsequently, the signup period. Things have been difficult.
Did my Yuletide nomination a couple of hours before the AO3 server outage.
Games
Achieved A10 with all four characters in Slay the Spire and also killed the Transient before it faded; am now taking a break.
Tech
I've been working through the original levels of Reeborg's World, a gentle guide to programming using Python. As of this post, I've completed all the original levels except Rain 2, Centre 1 and 2, and Storm 2 through 4. (Edit with breaking news: I beat Centre 1 and Centre 2.)
Garden
Harvested some broccoli, purple and green varieties.
Hired a mower to come do what I was not managing.
Misc
Got out my old Lego Classic set, sorted the contents, and started working through the instruction booklet in order. I've never been into Lego: as a kid, I had my older brother's hand-me-down bricks and half an instruction manual with crayons scribbled across it. In my early teens I was in love with the short unit we did at school, using Logo to program Lego Technic sets (this was long before Mindstorms), but I couldn't get my parents to buy me Lego Technic to have at home. And as an adult the Lego kits just seemed too expensive and also too specialised. Recently I've been thinking I'd like to give Lego another look, in particular the less... "spend a lot of money on a playset to assemble and then dust" side of it.
Subsequently bought myself a "miniblocks" Halloween pumpkin kit from KMart, and have started building that. Much swearing has ensued. The quality really isn't as good as Lego, and the smaller size does not help.
Listened to the audiobook of Yevgeny Zamyatin's 1921 dystopian SF novel We, translated by Bela Shayevich and narrated by Toby Jones. I don't have any basis for comparison for this particular translation, but I thought it was good. The narration was exceptional.
This edition also included a forward by Margaret Atwood, an old review by George Orwell, and an essay by Ursula Le Guin, 'The Stalin in the Soul'. By the time I'd finished the novel, I had forgotten the Atwood forward. The Orwell review was interesting. The Le Guin essay got up my nose: it was about how market forces can suppress ideas just as effectively as state censorship (a valid point), but somewhere along the way became about the dangers of unserious writing.
Read Victoria Goddard's newest novella, Olive and the Dragon, and her previous ones Clary Sage and Traveller's Joy.
Currently rereading her second ever novel Stargazy Pie, because the fan server I'm in is doing a reread of the Greenwing & Dart series, and I'm hoping it'll lend me the momentum to read the rest of them.
Fandom
Still working on the concluding chapter to the fic I posted part one of at the start of this month. I've added at least a thousand words to the draft, and struggling with it.
Missed the nomination period for
trickortreatex and, subsequently, the signup period. Things have been difficult.Did my Yuletide nomination a couple of hours before the AO3 server outage.
Games
Achieved A10 with all four characters in Slay the Spire and also killed the Transient before it faded; am now taking a break.
Tech
I've been working through the original levels of Reeborg's World, a gentle guide to programming using Python. As of this post, I've completed all the original levels except Rain 2, Centre 1 and 2, and Storm 2 through 4. (Edit with breaking news: I beat Centre 1 and Centre 2.)
Garden
Harvested some broccoli, purple and green varieties.
Hired a mower to come do what I was not managing.
Misc
Got out my old Lego Classic set, sorted the contents, and started working through the instruction booklet in order. I've never been into Lego: as a kid, I had my older brother's hand-me-down bricks and half an instruction manual with crayons scribbled across it. In my early teens I was in love with the short unit we did at school, using Logo to program Lego Technic sets (this was long before Mindstorms), but I couldn't get my parents to buy me Lego Technic to have at home. And as an adult the Lego kits just seemed too expensive and also too specialised. Recently I've been thinking I'd like to give Lego another look, in particular the less... "spend a lot of money on a playset to assemble and then dust" side of it.
Subsequently bought myself a "miniblocks" Halloween pumpkin kit from KMart, and have started building that. Much swearing has ensued. The quality really isn't as good as Lego, and the smaller size does not help.