venta | Reading

One: the Greens now have five seats on my borough council, up from none. ( Brief further local politics. )

Two: we took ourselves out on a walk this evening; A spotted a deer, we followed it further into the trees, and spent a fun little while following deer (&c) paths through what looked like... they might perhaps once have been greenhouses on half-brick walls? but with proper big trees growing up through them now and zero evidence of any glass or metal frames or anything remaining! Had no idea that was all in there; hurrah for Tiny Explore :)

Three: I have got my bike baaaaaaasically back to working order (I might need to replace the rear brake cable, which is tedious, but braking is actually extant), and am looking forward to taking advantage of the increased mobility it provides!

Four: spent the afternoon inhaling the new Murderbot. That's definitely a Murderbot.

Five: more rye-caraway-poppy bread, including an end-of-loaf with my mother's fig jam and the fancy goats' cheese I got to have with asparagus yesterday. (The nice shop human warned me that it was best before the 11^th, and was that okay? I explained that that Would Not Be A Problem. I am very much enjoying causing it to Not Be A Problem.)

satyrica

I'm back to covering the Chelsea drop-in regularly on Mondays, then had D&D online in the evening. On Tuesday I was working from home, cooked in the evening, then headed over to The Dome (by bus and then a walk, as this week's on-off Tube Strikes had kicked in) for a gig. I got there during Maiden Races, a 5-piece who were woozy and enveloping. Next up was a band called Matt-Felix, a 5-piece who were slick and MORish but perfectly pleasant. I was there for Balancing Act, another five-piece, who I was seeing live for the first time: I had become aware of them as David, who had been the guitarist for Blackwaters, was a member [playing bass, it turned out, which I hadn't realised until I saw them live]- I'd initially been a bit ambivalent to their musically but two songs they had released more recently had kept suckering me in whenever they came on the playlist, so I decided to go along; at some points they seemed quite smug and safe but they'd won me over by the end.

I took a long way round to the South Kensington drop-in on Wednesday morning to avoid the strike, which was actually a very pleasant journey, given it involved walking down from Paddington, across a sun-dappled Hyde Park, although I made an idiot of myself when I got there by calling their worker on duty by her colleague's name, despite knowing them both very well. The tubes were back on by the afternoon and I headed home then back down to the hated Lower Third for a gig: support came from Hunny Buzz, a female-fronted indie-rock outfit who were pretty good; I was there for headliner Tom A. Smith, who cemented his more dancey, more sexy style to an older, vocal crowd. I was able to get the tube to the South Kensington drop-in on Thursday but this time the strike had kicked in for the afternoon so, rather than go home, I very slowly progressed across London: a bus from Fulham to Soho, a felafel grabbed on Compton St, Lizzy Line fron TCR to Liverpool St, finally had success in my quest for radicchio at [not cheap!] Eataly, then an onward bus to The George Tavern, by which time it was gig o'clock. They were holding a Scandi Night, showcasing bands with Scandiwegian connections of varying plausibility. First up were Luck Machine, who played some punky, some funky tunes; their drummer and guitarist also featured in the next band, Knuckle Draggers, with the drummer this time taking on singing duties and the songs ranged from the offbeat and plinky to the more straight-up punk. Vrengt were actually from Norway and singing in Norwegian, a five-piece who were much more bouncy, with some crowd invasion and acrobatics thrown in. I had come for Kitchen Lover, headliners although the crowd had thinned out a bit: for me they were definitely another level in terms of live experience, though, and I got another shout out from the singer, whose Scandi-connection is apparently on the grandparental level.

I was WFH again on Friday, then did a Sainsbury's shop afterwards in preparation for my parents coming to visit at the weekend but otherwise just cooked and did a crossword with N in the evening. Naz came around first thing on Saturday to size up all the potential work that we need him to do on the house, then it was mostly cleaning until it was time to head down to Waterloo to meet my parents off the train. They had ended up coinciding with Southampton fans coming up for their FA Cup Semi-Final, so had had quite a boisterous journey but we negotiated the tube and overground fairly successfully and made it back to the house. After showing them around and letting them settle in a bit, we all headed over to the Bruce Castle Museum, where N seemed to end up with a personal tour from one of the volunteers whilst the rest of us looked around; it was a sunny day so nice to just get out into the park as well. We had tea at home and then hung out for a bit before I started cooking in time for Cousin A & E (who my parents hadn't met yet) to come over for dinner, which was all very pleasant.

On Sunday we headed out fairly early on a bus down to Stoke Newington, where we took my parents for a wander around Abney Park Cemetery, for a coffee on Church St, then to The Three Crowns for a Sunday roast, which they insisted on paying for. After that we went along to Clissold Park, terrapin-spotting, and it was another sunny day, before heading back home. It could have been a more peaceful afternoon as our Brazilian neighbours (who have been very quiet the whole time we've been here) were having a party- it wasn't objectively that bad (and didn't go late) but I was conscious of my Mum's curiosity at all the comings-and-goings, much as I was of all of the rubbish strewn across Tottenham's streets everywhere we walked. We had cheese for dinner and all Zoomed together with my brother, after finally figuring out how to get it on the TV.

kaberett

One: bread/avocado/scramble breakfast exactly as good as I had been looking forward to, with bonus realisation that we currently have some plum jam open so I got to finish with the rye-caraway-poppy (still mostly white wheat but those were the flavours) + butter + plum jam and this, too, was magnificent. (Bonus food excellence: ASPARAGUS that is now in season; some brownie bar + strawberries.)

Two: gym!!! I made the decision that the traffic was awful enough that buses would be a bad idea so I got bonus admiration of some excellent front gardens I have been otherwise oblivious to, and also observed More Coot Eggs.

Three: Murderbot is apparently managing to occupy a sweet spot in terms of complexity and degree of emotional engagement that means I'm actually managing to read the new one. (Bookshop.org very much does NOT have the ebook in the UK store so I even don't feel bad that I forgot it existed until after I'd given Kobo money.)

Four: post-therapy treat was Completing The Speedrun Achievement for the arcane library game, thereby sorting me out with All achievements, so I am now probably ready to contentedly move on.

Five: spent a chunk of the evening removing labels from the Child's clothing, and it is very very nice to know that his life will be materially improved as a result.

kaberett

One: I have spent much of the day indulging the desire to Quietly Hyperfocus On Game and it has been a very relaxing autism to have.

Two: I have finished the questionable Ryvita we... somehow... came into possession of (I apparently object to things that are not salt & vinegar extruded potato twirls containing potassium chloride) and can now merrily go back to overpriced high protein crackers until such time as I get around to buying vital wheat gluten with which to make my own.

Three: two loaves of bread (because I strained a Lot of whey off the most recent batch of yoghurt), which are a slightly silly set of shapes but also extremely aesthetic. I am very much looking forward to extravagant breakfast featuring avocado and also scrambled egg. (New oven needs less time to do them than old one; new oven also would ideally get them rotated halfway through baking if I want them done evenly. I am trying to work out what the best way to freeze the second loaf is...)

Four: Adam brought me home British strawberries from the supermarket, all with their petals still attached.

Five: new Murderbot purchased. (When I will get around to reading it is another question, but the possibility exists!)

kaberett

The other highlight of the day was my ongoing experiments on myself with respect to movement, which I had intended to witter about, but (1) it got late and (2) when I came to actually look up "neuromuscular/movement patterning" as terms for That Thing about The Process Of Learning Physical Skills I could... only find a bunch of people selling movement coaching services. Working out what the academic terminology for this is: now on my infinite todo list.

(tl;dr I made a back muscle very unhappy a few years ago now; ever since it has been prone to Twinges but not actual dysfunction, which I've been interpreting as Nerves Primed To Go AAAAH; managed to push it past twinge into persistent unhappiness on Saturday, and have spent the past few days playing around with how it responds to various kinds of movement in terms of better/worse/about the same...)

kaberett

( tada )

( tada 05/05 )

( tada 06/05 )

kaberett

Reading. I am up to AUGUST 2025 in my She's A Beast back-catalogue catch-up. Will I be able to read Anything Else At All Soon? Maybe?

Among several library holds that have now turned up (... ulp) I have technically started Run Towards the Danger (Sarah Polley), another memoir about embodiment, which I... suspect was recced via SAB one way or another. By "technically" I mean "I am a couple of pages into the preface, and trying to decide whether the formatting fuckery is worth sticking through".

Writing. So. many. e-mails. about. objects. and I have barely even Started the damn Object E-mails good grief.

Progress on Book also continues (look at me not using qualifiers!). Currently I am slightly going in circles about (1) how much background I need to give on why I think "biopsychosocial" can be a useful frame at least to the extent of providing structure for the first big chunk of the book, (2) what you've got to be very careful you're doing if you want that to be the case, and (3) whether I need to engage in depth with the goddamn philosophy of it all in re e.g. "it's not a model if it doesn't have predictive power" (which I am extremely inclined to sidestep by just......... calling it a frame).

Playing. ... we have tripped and fallen and are playing Librarian: Tidy up the arcane library. Initially we were co-playing with A doing most of the driving and me going LOOK THERE'S A PATTERN-- but then it became apparent that my ideal mode of gameplay (keyboard rather than controller, Manually Shelve Each Book Individually) is not compatible with A's (controller rather than keyboard, Use All The Magic). So I got a second copy. And have been playing through it merrily and slowly. To my amusement it turns out that my specific bullshit here............ gets you the rarest of the Steam achievements. (I am about 2/3 of the way through shelving, and things are speeding up substantially in more or less the same way as they do with jigsaw puzzles. This has eaten my brain and I really really need to do Other Things that are Not This but gosh it gets quiet in here when Allow The Brain To Just Focus. Will I do any further rounds of it? Unclear.)

Cooking. Continue to appreciate braised chickpeas in all their forms (still v keen on Adding A Tin Of Artichokes to the party).

Eating. Had my second hundoburger, which I had deferred until after E1, for the purposes of having an additional day where I didn't need to think about food. Also: STRAWBERRIES; bakery brunch (feat. both the bread pudding and the cardamom bun); ... almost certainly other things but the brain it says no.

Exploring. Bakery brunch featured a detour to visit a red horse chestnut I'd spotted from the bus on my way back from yesterday's hospital appointment, and also pointing out to A the pink bits on some of the flowers on the standard horse chestnuts on the way there.

Technically Finchley Memorial hospital, but mostly I got on a bus I was familiar with and played sudoku to keep myself vaguely calm, and then I managed to NOT panic and get onto a bus going in entirely the wrong direction by dint of it pulling out of the stop sufficiently far ahead of me there was no way I was gonna catch up with it, and then got the unfamiliar bus in the correct direction and... spent significantly more of that panicking quietly. There was definitely A Point at which, it having become apparent that the bus was On Diversion and Not Following Its Usual Route and None Of The Normal Stops Were Happening, I equally quietly Gave Up and decided this was simply going to be yet another hospital service I got discharged from for being disabled, BUT in fact that service TERMINATED at the hospital (and was the only one serving it!!!) so it did get there in the end. I would still prefer to not do that journey again please and thank you, even though I did per the above spot a convenient local red horse chestnut on the return leg, and for that matter several dramatic wisteria hidden from road level but NOT from upper-deck-of-bus level.

Growing. A took me to the allotment this afternoon! The josta is setting quite a lot of fruit and the cherry is even managing some despite my utter failure to water them! I put some marigold seeds in the ground in between rows of broad beans though this is clearly futile because the red ants are already Very Definitely farming on them; the oca in the bottom half of that bed are starting to come up despite the utter lack of watering, as above; none of the seedlings at home died while we were away; ... I did some weeding?

Observing. BABY BIRDS incl. cootlets going WHEEK WHEEK WHEEK all the way up and down the river; the Egyptian goslings are now at the stage of mostly having vaguely competent adult plumage coming in but still managing to turn into balls of ungainly fluff when they sit down; a second batch of coot eggs is being Definitively Incubated. We did not see the duckle again but we did see a very small starling. It was a very pleasant brunch down by the aqueduct.

kaberett

Today I have:

successfully navigated some unfamiliar-to-me public transport with only the normal amount of panic
MADE IT TO THE GYM post-unfamiliar-public-transport (having been Indisposed this morning, when I had planned to--)
- achievement unlocked: asked to borrow a pair of dumbbells from a much-stronger-than-me human For One Set while they were resting (because warm-up); they were a delight
- achievement unlocked: politely asked the human in the next rack if I could have the yellow plates they... seemed highly unlikely to use
... tripped and fell into Computer Game instead of doing most of the afternoon/early evening things I had grand plans about...
and we UNFUCKED THE KITCHEN SOME, good job us.

(Everything is still very much a post-event disaster, but. Made food ate food made a stand against the forces of entropy. It Is Well.)

wildeabandon

In today's Coptic homework I've been translating from the Constantine of Assyut's (almost certainly pseudonymous) second Encomium for Athanasius, and came across this absolute gem.

ⲡⲥⲛⲥⲓⲱⲧ ⲙⲉⲛ ⲁⲑⲁⲛⲁⲥⲓⲟⲥ ⲁϥϯ ⲛⲧⲇⲓⲕⲁⲓⲟⲥⲩⲛⲏ ϩⲓⲱⲱϥ ϩⲛ ⲟⲩϩⲃⲥⲱ ⲙⲙⲛⲧⲟⲩⲏⲏⲃ. ⲛⲉⲕⲗⲏⲣⲓⲕⲟⲥ ϩⲱⲟⲩ ⲙⲡⲉⲓⲕⲁⲓⲣⲟⲥ ϯϯ ⲥⲟ ⲉϫⲟⲟⲥ ϫⲉ ⲁⲩϯ ⲛⲧⲙⲛⲧⲣⲉϥϯϩⲉ ϩⲓⲱⲟⲩ ϩⲛ ⲟⲩϩⲃⲥⲱ ⲉⲥⲗⲁⲁⲙ ⲏ ⲛⲑⲉ ⲛϩⲉⲛⲧⲟⲉⲓⲥ ⲛϣⲣⲱ.

"Indeed, the most holy Athanasius clothed himself in righteousness with a priestly garment. As for the clerics of this age themselves, I refrain from saying that they clothed themselves in drunkenness with a filthy garment, like menstrual rags."

And my dude, my dude, that is an abject failure on your part to refrain from saying what you clearly desperately wanted to say.

kaberett

Today has been. the first time in A While that I have spent mostly horizontal and mostly asleep on account of migraine, despite drugs. I am Not A Fan.

( Read more... )

pauamma posting in

dw_dev

It's time for another question thread!

The rules:

- You may ask any dev-related question you have in a comment. (It doesn't even need to be about Dreamwidth, although if it involves a language/library/framework/database Dreamwidth doesn't use, you will probably get answers pointing that out and suggesting a better place to ask.)
- You may also answer any question, using the guidelines given in To Answer, Or Not To Answer and in this comment thread.

kaberett

Went into town this afternoon to post some things, and observed Several Creatures. The blue butterfly around the lilac near the top of the hill was very welcome; the Egyptian goslings are starting to look almost grown up, with eye markings and a general reduction in fluff and increase in sleek!

(Elsewise today: SLEEP, post-gym Spatzen, more free electrons and therefore more laundry; both social and solitary wiggles; good therapy; and some Tentatively Positive Communication re Admin: the LRP.)

wildeabandon

I am resisting the temptation to get into an argument on the book of face, and instead coming here to observe that it irks me when people say things like, "You shouldn't blame violent behaviour on people's mental illness. Mentally ill people are more likely to be the victim of violence than the perpetrator." As though it's not possible for the same factor to increase both vulnerability to and propensity to commit violence. The overwhelming majority of the violence that I've been on the receiving end of occurred whilst I was in psychiatric hospitals, surrounded by other mentally ill people.

Of course there's nuance to the conversation. Some varieties of mental illness, particularly the most prevalent ones of depression and anxiety, probably have little to no effect on violent tendencies, whereas others like addiction which have a major effect on impulse control almost certainly do, and still others literally have aggression and violence as part of the diagnostic criteria. It's also important to think carefully about how we assign culpability for violence committed by mentally ill people, and about the impact of speech which uncritically conflates all mental illness with violence. But the idea that violence committed against mentally ill people means we shouldn't speak about the link between mental illness and that which they commit, or even that no such links exists has absolutely none of that nuance. Thank you for listening to my TED Talk :)

kaberett

DID make it to the post office and get A Parcel into the post!
DID make it to THE GYM, and was Charmed to notice that one of the other regulars was wearing unexpected-by-me nail varnish.
We brought home many Field Treets and I am continuing to merrily vacuum them up with my horrid little mouth!
Saw the bat! Hello bat. What a good bat you are.
Very much enjoyed the Graun on a photographer who spent a year following the ZSL veterinary team (NB multiple images of post mortems in there).
Negative electricity prices for a while in there today meant: Much More Laundry (most of which is dry), surprise and delight at A running the underfloor heating in the bathroom (WOM FEET); b r e a d; experimental autopyrolitic oven cleaning.

kaberett

Last week I:

finished weaving in the ends on A's gloves (before we hit site for the first event of the year)
read more She's A Beast
ate a bunch of food I didn't have to cook (current experiment: do Lichfield brownie bars only taste That Good in a field?)
explored Steeplechase LRP Centre when it had PEOPLE on it (and also when it didn't)
including seeing a green woodpecker!
and SO many birds of prey
made a bunch of unilateral decisions about where tents would go directly affecting two other departments in response to external constraints, and redesigned internal tent layout on the fly in response to different external constraints, and... it all worked???
rethought several steps in the lost property process and goodness that works way better and is much less stressful

and then today has been about half and half "sleep" and "endless lost property paperwork". And Now: To Bed.

github posting in

changelog

Branch: refs/heads/main Home: https://github.com/dreamwidth/dreamwidth Commit: 5b483b9dd7ee5b52211b7da808b7d2a5fec60d35 https://github.com/dreamwidth/dreamwidth/commit/5b483b9dd7ee5b52211b7da808b7d2a5fec60d35 Author: Mark Smith mark@dreamwidth.org Date: 2026-04-28 (Tue, 28 Apr 2026)

Changed paths: M cgi-bin/DW/Search.pm

Log Message:

DW::Search: drop mysql_enable_utf8 to match bytes-everywhere convention

Was causing Wide character in syswrite from Starman.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) noreply@anthropic.com

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diffrentcolours

Last weekend was rather busy. After work on Friday, me and cosmolinguist cycled to Station South for a pint. It's the first time I've been on a bike since my hernia operation six weeks ago, but it didn't seem to cause any problems. Of course, I took it gently. And it was lovely to sit outside in the sun and drink and chat.

On Saturday morning, we met up with some Internet friends to walk around Sale Water Park with some doggos. It was nice being sociable, and the slow sniffy labrador meant we didn't go very fast. We chatted to a lot of people, and ended up having a nice pub lunch, again sat outdoors in the shade. We headed home briefly, to recharge my phone (and myself), before heading into the city centre for a friend's birthday, drinking in the sunshine at North Beer. It was fun to meet some new people, and have some good conversations about Manchester's history, culture and attitude. We ended up in the beer garden at The Salisbury, my old haunt from the 90s which is now much closer to its old rock pub self than its weird mid-noughties wine bar incarnation, but it was too noisy and smoke-filled so me and E headed home after a token pint of Old Perculier.

On Sunday, we went to visit Bud Garden Centre for their birthday party! We pottered round and looked at plants, but this was the point where my abdomen had had enough and started twingeing, so I went to sit in the car while E and V did the shopping, and took part in the raffle and other fun things. When we got home I had a nap, and in the evening we watched an MR James livecast.

My standard metric for a good weekend is "does last week feel like a long time ago", and with all these things it definitely does! I'm glad that I could do the exercise I did, and that I rested as soon as my tummy started hurting so it didn't get any worse. And it was great to get so much sunshine.

kaberett

Headline: hooooooome.

github posting in

changelog

Branch: refs/heads/main Home: https://github.com/dreamwidth/dreamwidth Commit: 74b8d9586e2a47978ec4faae27b184e25425a788 https://github.com/dreamwidth/dreamwidth/commit/74b8d9586e2a47978ec4faae27b184e25425a788 Author: Mark Smith mark@dreamwidth.org Date: 2026-04-27 (Mon, 27 Apr 2026)

Changed paths: M bin/ecs-shell M src/dwtool/internal/aws/ecs.go

Log Message:

ecs-shell + dwtool: pick the worker container, dedupe selection logic

The container-resolution logic in bin/ecs-shell and dwtool was duplicated across four spots and missed log_router as a sidecar. For worker tasks where the first container in the list happened to be log_router, both tools picked it — bin/ecs-shell got TargetNotConnected because log_router has no shell, and dwtool's dashboard CONTAINER column showed log_router instead of the actual worker container.

Centralized to one source of truth per language, with cross-references:

bin/ecs-shell — single $APP_CONTAINER JMESPath fragment defined once at the top, used by both list_tasks (display) and resolve_container (connect/exec). connect_to_task now just calls resolve_container instead of inlining the same query.

src/dwtool/internal/aws/ecs.go — single pickAppContainerIndex helper. ecsTaskToModel (which fills task.ContainerName) and findAppContainer (which feeds FetchServiceImages) both delegate via a containerNames adapter. The unused exported ResolveContainer is removed.

Selection policy in both: prefer "web" (web tasks) or "worker" (worker tasks); fall back to anything that isn't cloudwatch-agent or log_router; final fallback to the first container.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) noreply@anthropic.com

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