Publicat la 4 octombrie 2017

Deși uneori povestesc despre ceea ce fac, despre ceea ce vizitez sau despre ceea ce gândesc, am senzația că ceea ce scriu e cam impersonal, cam fără suflet, cam fad. Aș asemui scrierile mele cu înghețata de pe vremuri nu demult apuse, vremuri care unora le-au fost prielnice, vremuri pe care unii le regretă. Vremurile acelea s-au terminat oficial într-un decembrie.

Până atunci, înghețata avea o culoare dată de siropul puțin dulceag (puțin nu în sensul că puțin mai mult decât mi-ar fi plăcut, ci puțin peste zero gust dulce), amestecată (culoarea dată de sirop) cu reflexiile luminii prin sau din cornetul delicios. Cornetul era mai bun decât înghețata aceea de consistența acelor de gheață. Știam de atunci că înghețata ar fi trebuit să aibă o consistență cremoasă. Aflasem asta într-o excursie într-o țară vecină.

Nu știu dacă acea înghețată de vanilie (îmi plouă deja în gură) a făcut să consider această înghețată ca fiind numărul unu al tuturor sortimentelor posibile de înghețată. Sau o fi pur și simplu gustul delicios al înghețatei de vanilie.

Așadar, postările mele îmi dau aceeași senzație ca înghețata de pe vremuri, spre deosebire de alte postări pe care le-aș asocia cu savuroasa înghețată de vanilie din zilele noastre, când producătorii se întrec unii pe alții și se întrec pe ei înșiși în a găsi o înghețată de vanilie și mai bună, și mai cremoasă, și mai aromată!

Iată și un top 3 al preferințelor mele în materie de înghețată:

1. Vanilie

2. Alune

3. Fistic

După ele mai sunt și altele, dar cea de cacao e undeva spre coada listei.

Aaa! O precizare la final. Turcii de pe Ada-Kaleh, insula înghițită de nivelul crescut al apelor Dunării din lacul de acumulare Porțile de Fier, au continuat tradiția de cofetari și i-au încântat pe locuitorii localităților în care au fost strămutați cu baclavale, cu rahat turcesc, cu halvita și halva, cu bragă și cu înghețată! Aceste produse erau alternativa produselor din cofetăriile în care se servea un suc original, o combinație de limonadă și socată.

Te și miri că se mai găseau amandine și savarine, iar uneori chiar și fondante! Sunt răutăcios! Îmi aduc aminte și de prăjitura Carpați și de Ora 12, de ecleruri și de plăcintă cu mere, iar uneori tarte cu fructe. Iar cofetăria se chema Femina!

Chiar și cu așa diversitate de prăjituri, tot mai bun era cornetul de la înghețată!

Publicat la 3 octombrie 2017

Nu am chef azi N-am chef de nimic

— Vama Veche

Asta a fost de fapt ieri. Ieri a fost luni, iar ziua de luni dă tonul săptămânii, așa cum dimineața îl dă zilei.

Compania de apă a anunțat întreruperea furnizării începând cu prima oră formată din două cifre. Cum eu obișnuiesc să mă trezesc la prima oră formată din două cifre identice, însemna că la ora respectivă apa era întreruptă deja de o oră. Așa că am făcut un efort și m-am trezit cu două ore și jumătate mai devreme decât de obicei.

Alarma nu o reglasem așa devreme, dar subconștientul a fost mai vrednic.

După ce am profitat de existența apei în rețea, am zis că trebuie să recuperez orele de (ne)somn. Hmm. Odată ritmul rupt, nu se mai reface cu una, cu două. Plănuisem să citesc câteva pagini din recent cumpărata Arta simplității de Dominique Loreau.


Dar notificările primite pe telefon păreau mai tentante, așa că le-am dat întâietate. Odată citite, am trecut telefonul de pe silențios pe tonuri cu volum obișnuit (că era deja o oră la care lumea se așteaptă să răspunzi, sau să te găsească) și am luat cartea de pe noptieră, dar nu cea menționată, ci una începută și neterminată. Mi s-au închis ochii, așa că mi-am zis că e momentul prielnic pentru somn. După vreo jumătate de oră a sunat telefonul.

Am mai dormit apoi o oră, mai exact până când telefonul a sunat din nou.

Trecuse ora prânzului. Îmi extrăgeam deja activități din lista celor pe care le-aș fi putut face în acea dimineață și le reorganizam în minte pe o nouă listă. Și uite așa le trec dintr-o zi în alta. Și uite așa trece timpul. Și uite așa mă invidiază unii cum eu irosesc timpul pe care ei nu îl au disponibil.

Mai e vorba și de eficiența utilizării lui. Când n-ai chef de lucru, oricât de puține activități ai avea în listă, nu îți vor ieși așa cum vrei sau nu îți vor ieși deloc.

Azi, prima zi de concediu, pare a avea același curs ca cea de ieri, cu diferența de apă: azi curge! Ieri, deși era anunțată ora până la care furnizarea avea să fie întreruptă, lucrările au suferit o amânare, amânare ce a dus la o oră întârziată a curgerii apei la ridicarea clapetei robinetului… Azi. Azi o durere subită și puternică la spate face ca lista să aibă aceleași activități nebifate.


Totuși, ieri după-amiază am reușit să schimb radiatorul procesorului calculatorului personal. Era și cazul: îl cumpărasem de vreun an de zile!

Interesantă treabă! După ce scoți toate mufele și jack-urile tuturor perifericelor atașate prin cabluri în conectorii din spatele carcasei calculatorului, mufe și conectori în perechi de tip poka yoke (termen din filosofia japoneză Kaizen), pui calculatorul pe masa de lucru, înlături capacul lateral și începi treaba la interior.


Deconectezi mufa ventilatorului radiatorului de pe procesor, îl eliberezi pe acesta din urmă de presiunea clemelor de prindere și îl scoți printr-o mișcare verticală, lăsând procesorul la vedere. Cureți cu alcool restul de pastă termoconductoare rămasă pe el și pe radiator, procesorul fiind gata pentru noul radiator.

Noul sistem de prindere prevede un inel de plastic pentru placa de bază și niște cleme metalice, prinse pe radiator, care vor forța presarea radiatorului pe procesor. Inelul s-a fixat ușor după îndepărtarea vechiului sistem, dar clemele, foarte rigide, s-au lăsat convinse foarte greu să intre la locul lor (acestea erau puse în punga cu sistemul de prindere din plastic, nefiind montate pe radiator).

(Am făcut o pauză de scris, ocazie cu care am verificat certificatul de garanție. Am cumpărat radiatorul acum aproape… trei ani! Luna viitoare sunt trei ani de când l-am cumpărat!)

Le-am convins cu ajutorul unor clești. Evident (asta așa ca să complicăm lucrurile), urechile erau prinse pe alte poziții decât cele necesare.

Am aplicat pasta, am presat radiatorul, am prins clemele pe inel (însă sistemul s-a dovedit și de această dată unul ineficient, greoi, imprecis și instabil), am conectat ventilatorul la mufa pentru ventilatorul radiatorului procesorului, după care, vorba manualelor cu instrucțiuni, am efectuat operațiile de demontare în sens invers: închis carcasa, introdus mufele (poka yoke), alimentat, pornit…

Surpriză! Temperatura procesorului aproape că ar fi putut fierbe apa! Ba pe Himalaya o fierbea!

Demontat, verificat. Sistemul de prindere e vinovatul. L-am convins să stea într-o poziție adecvată. Am reluat operațiile și am verificat temperatura. Deși s-a menținut în limitele propuse de fabricant, având în vedere suprafața imensă de răcire, nu sunt deloc mulțumit de sistemul de prindere pentru presare. Cred că voi apela la niște bride de prindere din plastic cu care voi suplini lipsa de eficiență a bridelor metalice originale.


Păcat că o firmă renumită (nu îi spun numele; nu vreau să îi spun numele) vine cu astfel de sisteme de prindere.

Ușurința montării, simplitatea sistemului de prindere ar fi dus atât la un timp redus de montaj, cât și la o eficientizare a timpului montatorului. A fost eficientizat, în schimb, timpul producătorului pentru că nu și-a mai pierdut timpul cu îmbunătățirea sistemului de prindere.

Supărarea unuia, bucuria altuia…

Publicat la 28 septembrie 2017

A fost o vreme în care telefoanele mobile aveau butoane. Nu a trecut chiar atât de mult timp de atunci, ba chiar și acum sunt mulți care încă le mai folosesc.


Când telefonul mobil venea într-o cutie impresionantă, în care manualul era prezentat în forma sa tipărită, conținutul cuprindea și un set de căști cu microfon. Setul avea o mufă de conectare specifică fiecărui model — ei, nu chiar fiecărui model, dar fiecare firmă producătoare experimenta tot felul de mufe, cu cât mai mulți pini. În funcție de destinație, cablurile de date sau cele pentru căști și microfon foloseau anumiți pini ai respectivului conector.

Ulterior s-a trecut la mufa universală, de tip USB, pentru transferul de date și, uneori, chiar și pentru audio, precum și la mufa combinată, de tip jack, pentru căști și microfon.

Când căștile aveau un conector atât de mare, iar obligația de a folosi la volan dispozitive hands-free încă nu se legiferase, unii foloseau telefonul ca pe un walkie-talkie, ca pe o stație de emisie-recepție. Modul acesta de utilizare mi-a amintit de telefoanele cu microfonul fixat de stativ și cu receptorul, de forma similară cu microfonul, asemănătoare cu o pâlnie de gramofon în miniatură, conectat printr-un șnur de partea fixă.


Se inventase bachelita.

Doamnele stăteau cu eleganță în fotoliul alăturat biroului pe care era așezat aparatul telefonic și, cu delicatețe, țineau receptorul la ureche, purtând convorbirile telefonice ca și când ar fi stat față în față, la un ceai, cu interlocutorul.

Domnii, în schimb, purtau cu ei receptorul prin camera spațioasă, încercând să gesticuleze atât cât le permiteau lungimea șnurului și cea a cablului, pentru a-și convinge interlocutorul de gravitatea subiectului în discuție.

Similar, dar mai aproape de mișcările unei stații de emisie-recepție, am văzut anumite persoane ducând telefonul mobil de la ureche, după ce au auzit ce aveau de auzit, în fața lor, pentru a-l folosi pe post de microfon.

Asta era atunci când conversația se purta ca la un interfon: apeși butonul, vorbești, eliberezi butonul, asculți. Practic, era o înșiruire de monologuri, nu o conversație tipică.

Astăzi, când pe stradă sau la volan mulți utilizează căști stereo cu microfon, am remarcat din nou o ciudățenie.

Am crezut că, în urmă cu ceva vreme — dar nu cu mult timp — o adolescentă avea vreo defecțiune la unul dintre firele căștii, pentru că apropia de față una dintre căști atunci când avea ceva de spus celui sau celei cu care vorbea.

Astăzi, același obicei l-am observat la un bărbat care aștepta, probabil, autobuzul, pe o bancă.

Avea o cască în ureche, iar pe cealaltă o ținea în mâna stângă, ca pe un microfon, și o apropia de buze când vorbea. Apropiind casca, apropia și microfonul prins pe fir, în aceeași capsulă minusculă în care se află și butoanele de volum.

Interlocutorul îl aude mai bine, iar el este convins că microfonul este în cască.

RTFM — Read The F*ing Manual, spunea un cunoscut. Când a menționat acest termen, nu înțelegeam la ce post de radio se referă: RT FM — Radio Total FM or something.

Dacă pe vremuri era o plăcere — cel puțin pentru unii — să răsfoiești manualul de utilizare, acum cine se mai obosește să descarce și să deruleze paginile unui fișier în format PDF (Portable Document Format)?

Ar observa acolo și poziția microfonului de pe firul căștilor, dar și pe cea a microfonului telefonului mobil.

Evident, observațiile mele sunt niște excepții. Dar „bunul-simț tehnic” — asta este vorba unui coleg din facultate — mă face să le consemnez.

Keep Talking!

When curriculum is changed, the focus is often on how we teach rather than questioning what's actually being taught and why.

We've changed how we teach students to arrive at answers in math. We emphasize number sense and conceptual understanding rather than relying exclusively on memorized procedures. We've introduced different approaches to literacy instruction, writing frameworks, reading strategies, and assessment.

But how often do we step back and question the purpose of the content itself?

When was the last time we looked at the math curriculum and questioned whether everybody really needs to know trigonometry and advanced algebra? When was the last time we questioned whether being able to write poetry was a necessary skill for everybody?

It's not that these skills aren't valuable. Writing poetry is a great interest subject, and there is absolutely cultural and historical value in exposing kids to poetry. There is definitely a future engineer who needs trigonometry and geometry.

But are we being fair to students by expecting them to decide whether they need those things at 14, 15, or 16 years old?

We already have different academic pathways that allow students to choose which subjects they want to pursue in greater depth. But those choices come with consequences. A student who decides at 14 that advanced math isn't for them may discover at 25 that they want to become an engineer. Suddenly, they need to go back and acquire the prerequisites they didn't know they would need.

Why are we expecting teenagers to make educational decisions that can create barriers well into adulthood?

And if we take away the pressure of deciding future careers from teenagers, how does that influence what we teach those same teenagers? What would high school look like if its primary purpose were to expose students to different subjects, skills, and interests rather than sort them into future educational and career pathways?

How do we design a system that doesn't punish a 20-something for not knowing they wanted to be an engineer at 14?

There is another question we need to ask: How much of what we teach, and what we've stopped teaching, is determined by educational value, and how much is determined by administrative convenience?

Part of my role as a tutor is enrichment for kids whose parents feel they need a challenge. Not everything I teach is remediation.

I have one student whose parent has requested that I teach deeper thinking because much of the writing the student is doing in school involves stating an opinion and backing it up with a fact or two from a book or article.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that type of assignment. It teaches students to support their ideas with evidence.

But there's a difference between identifying evidence and examining what that evidence actually means.

We can ask students to make deeper inferences, question why an author included a particular scene, consider why something was written a certain way, or explore whether there are other reasonable interpretations of the same text.

Is it a problem if students aren't being asked to do those things? That depends on what we're actually trying to teach.

If we're teaching critical thinking, then being able to question meaning, make inferences, and examine different interpretations matters. If we're only checking for basic comprehension, then forming an opinion and backing it up with evidence from the text may be sufficient.

The purpose of the learning matters beyond the stated outcome.

And that brings us back to how curriculum is organized.

Teachers have limited instructional time and an enormous number of outcomes to address. They are often expected to combine multiple skills into single assignments, assess numerous outcomes, and demonstrate that the required curriculum has been covered.

Integrating skills isn't necessarily a problem. In fact, it can be excellent teaching when students understand how different skills and concepts work together.

But when the pressure to cover curriculum outweighs the time available to teach it meaningfully, we risk creating assignments that serve administrative requirements more effectively than they serve students.

Some skills are taught in isolation with no meaningful connection to anything else students are learning. Other skills may receive less attention because they take too much time to teach or assess properly. And sometimes we combine so many outcomes into a single assignment that it becomes difficult to determine what the student actually understands.

What if we approached curriculum differently?

What if we started by identifying what students should ultimately understand and be able to do, then worked backward to determine which knowledge and skills actually contribute to those goals?

We could examine which skills everyone needs to function independently, which skills develop over many years, and which subjects are better suited to exploration and specialization.

We could also question whether every student needs to demonstrate learning in exactly the same way, or whether the method of demonstrating understanding should depend on the skill we're actually assessing.

None of this means abandoning foundational knowledge, memorization, or traditional assignments. It means understanding why we're using them and whether they're accomplishing what we intended.

If bureaucracy, time constraints, and the pressure to cover every outcome are influencing what gets taught, what gets dropped, and how students are assessed, then perhaps we're losing sight of the larger purpose of education.

We spend an enormous amount of time asking how to teach the curriculum more effectively.

Maybe we need to spend considerably more time asking what belongs in the curriculum in the first place, and why.

We are experiencing a time of great knowledge “without a lot of meaning.” I was listening to a Tarot podcast and the host mentioned this. I couldn’t agree more. With the time I get to spend exploring, which I feel might come to an end soon, the “meaninglessness” of things is very obvious when you talk to other people who feel as though they have no choice or agency regarding their life. And the ones with some sort of faith, there is certainly greater agency, but it also makes me curious about what kind of Truth they are seeking.

Most of us are stuck in a capitalist nightmare of our own making. There’s the kernel of self-awareness and there’s actual self-awareness, where you can catch yourself falling into an egotistical tail-spin or a hyper-fixated thought. Many of us swim in the former, still. Self-awareness requires deep curiosity. Self-awareness requires humility. Self-awareness demands you to be wrong most of the time. I find myself enjoying being wrong, or having certain impressions first and then realizing that I feel differently after a conversation or further introspection. Isn’t it a lovely thing? That we can change our mind/thought/choices/selves?

I pulled the Knight of Swords card to inspire my outfit today. I’ve decided that while I can, I will pull a card for inspiration, and create something out of it. Today, it was inspiring myself to dress up beyond my comfort zone, and then venturing out. The Knight of Swords card, has teen angst energy to me and I do feel a bit like a teenager again in this moment. I am on the cusp of possibilities. It’s up to me to follow the right road, before I get too caught up in the choice that I’m not actually moving along the path. Feels like Teen Spirit, but with a whole lot of responsibility. I have all the things I could ever imagine wanting. A place I can call home surrounded with books, art, and art-making tools. And now Taro tools.

What do I do next?

#taro #daily #writing #learning #InfiniteDoors

First day of 100 Days: The first day was pleasant, and a bit multitasked and driven not only by being in my menstrual window but also by my deep love of chocolate. I have had a LOVE for chocolate since I was a little girl. I would pass on gummies and didn't care for sours, but chocolate was a way into my heart. Fast forward years later, that love has grown to new depths from sourcing and intentionally working with Cacao as a ceremonial drink and medicine for several years. Cacao is one of my many loves within the plant/fruit kingdom and has served many potent connections throughout the past 10 years of my life. Her medicine of delicious decadence, yet rich bitterness, has served many lessons of open-mindedness, patience, connection and wide love and appreciation.

Cacao, scientifically known as Theobroma Cacao- meaning “fruit of the gods” is only found growing in tropical regions where the climate is moist and hot in conditions. The tree has a teeny-tiny pollinator friend called the midges. These small bugs look to be the size of mosquitoes and do the massive job of pollinating the cacao trees within these areas. The cacao tree will mature within 3-4 years and begin producing fruits. The cacao tree is classified as a Califorus tree, which means the pod is not growing from branches or leaves, but from the tree's trunk, which was a major fun fact for me(cauliflorous trees, right on!) Another fun fact that I was learning is that cacao beans are actually the seeds of the fruit, not actual beans. When you see a fresh cacao pod, it has a hard shell for the skin of the fruit and when cracked open, the beans are covered in it's pulp, which is a great ingestion for animals but not so much us, as mammals. Cacao will undergo 4 major processes to get it into the chocolaty goodness we know and love. The first, and most crucial part of the chocolate journey is fermentation. One would never truly know that chocolate is considered a fermented food unless you know how it was made. After about a 3-6 day fermentation period, the pulp or cocoa butter will fall off, and the seeds will germinate (another fun fact incoming), which is the part in the process where chocolate really receives its flavor. Fermentation to germination is truly where we start to see the magic happen within the process of getting the “chocolate” that we all know of. Raw cacao or natural chocolate really does have this outstanding, complex flavor profile that allows you to taste the soil is has grown in, the fermentation is has under gone the, drying and roasting, which are the last two steps. After the cacao beans have undergone fermentation and germination, they will hit the drying, roasting and winnowing or grinding process. Cacao beans are covered with a shell which needs to be pelled after roasting to get to the actual chocolate bean. This process can be time-consuming and highly rigorous. The whole process of getting cacao to be in a state where it can be made into chocolate is a service of love and devotion- can you feel that the next time you consume chocolate, in its raw form? Dark Chocolate or higher percentages of cacao can be highly beneficial for the body, mind, and spirit if used in certain contexts. Cacao, or higher forms of dark chocolate, contains molecules that help nature the body and help us form deeper relationships with the health and well being, of our being! Polyphenols are the first compound that so many know within chocolate that is “good for us”. This compound contains high amounts of antioxidants. This works in ways to protect the body on a cellular level, making us feel well cared for and promoting good production amongst our cells, A+ for that! The next compound we can overview is Tryptophan. This might sound familiar to you in the way of knowing this amino acid as what makes us “sleepy” within the Thanksgiving turkey. Tryptophan is essential for the body to produce serotonin and melatonin, as well as overall growth and development of protein and muscle. Introducing more of this to the body allows for a more calm and emotionally balanced state to the body and mind... go chocolate! Let's go on, “Anandamide (The Bliss Molecule): Named after the Sanskrit word ananda (meaning joy or bliss), anandamide is an endocannabinoid that naturally occurs in the human brain and binds to cannabinoid receptors to regulate mood, pain, and appetite” (quoted from grizzlynews.org). Cacao is known for its “heart expanding properties, which in spiritual context can be from abundance of situational experiences, but on a physiolocigal level dark chocolate contains certain flavanoids that allow for the blood vessels to expand and become coated for a more through and readily blood pump through.

Dear diary!

I found a plastic food container in the freezer. I’d been thinking to eat it today, the day when I’m alone. But, when I could finally pry open the lid to see what was inside, it was just something brown, like a puddle of frozen mud.

Isn’t that fascinating?

The little town next to where I live, it’s teeming with racists. Finally there was a sinkhole there, which I have good reason to believe, in reality is a not fully opened hole leading straight down to hell.

I think the whole town might sink into this hole, and I haven’t made up my mind yet, whether it is a good thing, or a bad.

I choose indifference this time.

Speaking of which,

Have you thought about the fact that neutrality almost always benefits the strong party in a conflict, the oppressor.

Game 063 in the collection is Tee & Sorcery. It's golf, but every hole is a little adventure: you level up, buy better clubs, cast spells on your ball, and at the end of each realm you play a boss hole where the cup stays sealed until you've beaten the boss with your golf ball.

In the kingdom of Fairhaven, every argument (border quarrels, inheritance, who gets the last scone) is settled with a round of golf. At the heart of the Royal Clubhouse sits the Golden Tee, the peg the first shot of the world was struck from. Then Lord Bogey, a sorcerer who has never once made par, crashes the festival, shatters the Tee into five shards and curses every hole in the land. “If I can never make par, then NOBODY shall!”

You play Pip, a caddie who has never played a real round, and who trips over an old sand wedge stuck in a rock while running away. Pip pulls it free. It complains.

Like every game here, it uses no asset files. Every character, face, course, texture and note of music is made in code. It's built with three.js and plays on a phone as well as on a desktop.

---

A talking wedge

The wedge is Wedgewick the Wise, formerly Archmage of the Greens, who has been stuck in a club for 300 years after losing a bet. “Long story. Bad lie.” He's your mentor, your spellbook and your running commentary for the whole quest, and he does most of the teaching:

Next stop, the Sandsea Dunes. Pack sunscreen. I burn easily. I am made of metal.

The story is nine short scenes, two to eight lines each, typed out with a voice blip pitched to each speaker and a portrait rendered from the 3D character. You can skip any of them. The tone is Saturday-morning cartoon: nothing is scary, nobody dies, and every boss is grumpy and then sorry.

The golf has to work on its own

The first rule I set was that if you stripped out all the RPG parts, it should still be a nice little golf game. So every shot is real 3D golf:

• Aim left or right, and pick from four clubs: Driver, Iron, Wedge and Putter. The game picks one for you based on distance and lie, and switches to the putter on the green.
• A dotted arc of glowing orbs shows where a full-power, perfect shot would go, with tick marks for 25, 50 and 75% power. Wind isn't in the preview. Reading the flag is your job.
• The swing meter takes three presses: one to start, one to set power, and one to stop the marker in the sweet spot on the way back. Hit the glowing zone for a PERFECT strike, which flies straight and a little further. Early or late and the ball hooks or slices by how much you missed.

Under that is a physics simulation that runs at 240 steps a second. The ground is a heightfield, and the ball bounces or rolls on it with different friction for each surface. A ball rolling over a crest can take off again. Tree trunks, windmill blades and walls are solid, but tree canopies are soft and just soak up speed. Each club has backspin that bites on the first landing, so drives run out and wedges stop.

The cup can lip out. Come in too fast and the ball rattles round the edge and keeps going, which is exactly as annoying as it should be.

Twenty holes, five realms

There are five realms with four holes each: three regular holes and a boss hole. I wanted every realm to play differently, not just look different:

RealmWhat's differentMeadowmereA turning windmill in the fairway, spring mushrooms that bounce the ball, pondsSandsea DunesSand everywhere, quicksand that stops the ball dead, an island green, a pyramid, strong windFrostpeakSheet ice where the ball barely stops, snowdrifts where it barely starts, a frozen lake with holes in itCinder CalderaLava rivers and geysers that fling the ball into the sky on a rhythmSky CitadelFloating islands over nothing, bouncy clouds, a teleport rune and low gravity

Some of my favourite hole names are Sheepish Start, Quicksand Gulch, Icicle Run, Avalanche Ridge and Starfall Stair. As Wedgewick says about the Caldera: “Lava is a hazard, like water but rude.”

Each hole gets one to three stars: one for finishing, two for par or better, three for under par. If you go past the stroke limit, the curse wins and you can retry. That's the only way to fail.

Boss holes

At the end of each realm the cup sits under a shimmering Bogey Seal. To break it you have to hit the boss's weak spot with your ball, and the boss gets a turn after every one of your shots.

BossHow it plays

Grubbins the Gopher King

Pops up from one of six molehills round the green, then burrows somewhere else. He'll kick your ball away if it stops near him.

Duneborn

A sandworm coiled round the green. Only the head takes damage; the coils bounce your ball away.

Big Frosty

A yeti on an icy throne behind three ice walls. He throws snowballs that bury your ball in a drift.

Double Bogey

A two-headed magma ogre on a ledge behind a lava moat, so you need loft. His stomp shoves your ball away.

Lord Bogey

Floats round the green behind two orbiting shield orbs and teleports after each shot.

Triple Bogey

Bogey's final form: a three-headed dragon. The fire head leaves a fire patch, the frost head an ice patch, and the storm head changes the wind.

The bosses were the most fun to write dialogue for. Grubbins was promised all the golf balls he could eat, and after you beat him he admits: “Golf balls are actually very hard to chew.” Big Frosty turns out to be lonely because nobody ever asks him to play. Double Bogey's heads can't agree on anything, including whether to fight you:

LEFT HEAD: We crush the tiny golfer! RIGHT HEAD: We could also just… let them through? I am tired.

And at the top of the Sky Citadel, Wedgewick recognises Lord Bogey. He's Bogart, Wedgewick's old apprentice, who took a fourteen on the first hole 300 years ago and ran off when everyone laughed.

The RPG part

The RPG layer is there to make the golf richer, not slower. A hole still takes two to five minutes.

You earn XP by finishing holes (more for being under par) and by bonking monsters with your ball: Puffslimes in the meadow, scarabs in the dunes, penguins on the mountain, ember imps in the caldera and Bogey wisps in the sky. Each level gives you two points to spend on four stats:

• Power makes the ball go further.
• Control slows the swing meter, shows more of the preview arc, and softens hooks and slices.
• Luck widens the PERFECT zone, adds a bit of gold, and sometimes gives you a lucky bounce off a tree.
• Magic gives you more MP for spells.

Gold comes from coins and gems on the course and from finishing bonuses, and you spend it at Old Man Eagle's Pro Shop in the Clubhouse. There are six club sets (from Willow Woods up to Dragonbone, plus Starforged after the ending), six balls and six charms. The balls are my favourite: the Feather ball ignores most of the wind, the Slime ball bounces more, the Iron Heart hits bosses harder, and the Comet leaves a trail.

Spells come back to Wedgewick one at a time, as you recover each shard:

SpellWhat it does to your next shot

Mulligan

Rewinds your last shot and gives the stroke back

Gust Ward

No wind, no hook, no slice

Fireball

Burns through trees, brambles and ice walls, and does double damage to bosses

Frost Step

Freezes water and lava under the ball so it skates across

Seeker

The ball curves toward the cup near the end

Each one changes what a good shot is. Frost Step means a lake is suddenly a shortcut, and Fireball lets you go straight through a wood instead of round it. There are also power-up crystals on the course that give you a Rocket Tee, a Sticky Ball, a Spring Ball or a Ghost Ball that passes through everything.

A storybook look

The characters are chibis with huge heads, built from simple shapes with toon shading and ink outlines. Their faces are painted onto a canvas in code, with eyes, highlights, brows, a mouth and blush, and they switch between happy, surprised, angry, sad and blinking. There are no animation files: everyone bobs, walks, swings, cheers and slumps procedurally.

The courses use one terrain shader per hole. It's driven by a surface mask built from the same shapes the physics uses, so what you see is exactly what the ball feels. Fairways get mown stripes, greens get a fine checkerboard, sand gets wind ripples, ice gets cracks and quicksand swirls. Ink lines where surfaces meet make the edges read like an illustration in a picture book.

Water has foam at the shore and moving ripples. Lava glows and has a cracked crust that drifts. In the Sky Citadel, the void shows the sky through it with clouds drifting below the islands. Over all of it there's a little bloom on magic and lava and a warm storybook colour grade with faint paper grain.

Between holes you walk Pip round a floating-island world map, with the five realms circling a central mountain and the Sky Citadel above. A tilt-shift blur makes it look like a miniature diorama.

A few things are there just to make shots easy to read: a shadow under the ball at all times so you can tell how high it is, a glowing trail coloured by your spell, and a pulsing ring where the ball is going to land.

The sound

All the sound is Web Audio, with no audio files. Each realm has its own short theme with its own instruments: flute and pizzicato in Meadowmere, oud-like plucks and a hand drum in the dunes, celesta and bells on Frostpeak, low brass and taiko in the Caldera, and harp and a choir pad in the sky. Bosses get faster, minor-key versions, and there's a march for the map and a cosy waltz for the Clubhouse.

The effects cover a swing whoosh, a different contact sound for each club, a chime for PERFECT strikes, bounces for each surface, the cup rattle and drop, splashes, lava hiss, coins, monster poofs, boss roars, the seal shattering and a level-up fanfare.

On a phone

On a desktop you aim with the arrow keys or A and D (Shift for fine aim), change clubs with up and down, and swing with Space. Number keys cast spells, Q opens your item pouch and V shows the whole hole from above.

On a phone you drag anywhere to aim and tap a big SWING button three times. The spell and item buttons sit in the bottom-left. Every button is at least 44 pixels so your thumb can hit it, and it works in portrait and landscape. There's also a Gentle swing setting that slows the meter and widens the PERFECT zone, for younger players.

What the bot found

As with the other recent games, the dev/ folder has test harnesses, and the most useful one was a bot that plays golf.

simtest.mjs checks that the simulation is pure (no three.js, no DOM and no Math.random) and deterministic, fires random shots from random spots on every hole to make sure the ball never goes through the ground or gets stuck in a tree, and checks every boss can be beaten through the real hit path. Then two bots play all twenty holes: a search bot with perfect timing has to make par or better on every hole, and a noisy bot with human-like timing errors has to finish every hole inside the stroke limit. The pars in the game were set from those bots.

Watching the bots play found a lot of problems I wouldn't have spotted by hand:

• Drives rolled 85 yards. The ball kept all its flight speed when it landed. That's where the per-club backspin came from.
• The cup was far too big. The bot was chipping in from 100 yards. It shrank, and so did the speed a ball can drop in at.
• The noisy bot kept hooking into the woods. It planned for perfect shots and then missed. Now it checks every shot it's thinking about against a hook, a slice, a fat and a thin strike, and picks one that's safe if it goes wrong.
• The sandworm couldn't be hit from more than six yards, because it kept moving while you aimed. Now it holds still while you line up and moves on its own turn.
• Beating Lord Bogey looked like losing. His health resets when he becomes Triple Bogey, so the bot saw the winning hit as negative damage and never took it. Boss progress now counts across both forms.
• Late-game Power turned par 5s into par 3s. Each point of Power now adds half as much speed as it used to.

browsertest.mjs then plays the game in real Chromium: it makes a hero, skips the prologue, walks the map, swings with real key presses, uses a Mulligan, holes out, goes shopping, reloads and continues, and hits a boss. Then it does the same on touch-only phones in portrait and landscape, checks that every control is big enough and nothing overlaps, and fails on any console error.

The whole game is about 8,000 lines of plain JavaScript modules with no build step.

Play it

Play Tee & Sorcery, or find its statue in the Garden of Games with the rest of the collection. If you want to see how it's built, the design doc covers everything from the physics to the boss turns.

As Pip tells Lord Bogey near the end: “Golf is not about the score. It is about the walk, and the friends, and the one good shot that brings you back.”

Grab your wedge. Mind the lava. Have fun!

A few days ago, I ran a spontaneous social media experiment on the timeline. I threw a single, incredibly simple question into the void: “What is one movie you would give a perfect 10/10 without hesitation?” The goal wasn’t to build an audience or farm clout. It was a genuine curiosity about modern engagement mechanics and what actually compels people to stop scrolling and interact.

The results were a fascinating look into algorithmic reach versus true community building. The platform’s algorithm picked up the prompt and pushed it out to over 36,000 sets of eyes. It triggered an absolute avalanche of responses, generating nearly 800 replies from people eager to share their cinematic favorites.

But the true story is in the ratio. Out of those almost 800 replies, the post saw only 60 likes. Out of 36,000 impressions, it generated exactly zero paid subscribers and only seven free ones.

It beautifully illustrates a core truth about viral metric-farming: massive reach does not equal deep connection. A viral post often acts more like an open microphone in a crowded room—people step up to the mic to share their piece, but they aren’t necessarily looking to pull up a chair and stay for the broader conversation. And honestly, there is nothing wrong with that. It is just the nature of the modern digital town square.

But as fleeting as the engagement was, the data itself is incredible. The timeline handed me a massive, unprompted dataset of the internet’s most beloved films. I couldn’t just let it disappear into the archives, so I went through the chaos, tallied up the votes, and compiled the master list.

Here is the definitive, crowd-sourced ranking of the internet’s perfect 10/10 movies.

22 Mentions

• The Shawshank Redemption

18 Mentions

• Casablanca

15 Mentions

• The Godfather (Includes Part I & II)

9 Mentions

• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Pulp Fiction
• The Princess Bride

8 Mentions

• Alien

7 Mentions

• Forrest Gump
• Good Will Hunting
• The Lord of the Rings (Trilogy/Return of the King/Fellowship)

6 Mentions

• Chinatown
• Jaws

5 Mentions

• Aliens
• Back to the Future
• Blade Runner (Includes Director’s Cut)
• Dr. Strangelove
• Goodfellas
• Heat
• Lawrence of Arabia
• My Cousin Vinny
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• Out of Africa
• The Fifth Element
• The Third Man
• When Harry Met Sally
• Young Frankenstein

4 Mentions

• 12 Angry Men
• Das Boot (The Boat)
• Dead Poets Society
• Fargo
• Gladiator
• Once Upon a Time in the West
• Saving Private Ryan
• The Big Lebowski
• The English Patient
• The Last of the Mohicans

3 Mentions

• 10 (Ten)
• Amadeus
• Barry Lyndon
• Blazing Saddles
• Brazil
• Great Escape
• It’s a Wonderful Life
• Local Hero
• Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
• O Brother, Where Art Thou?
• Once Upon a Time in America
• Pride and Prejudice (2005)
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Seven Samurai
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day
• The Green Mile
• The Matrix
• The Passion of the Christ
• The Sting
• Withnail & I

2 Mentions

• 8 ½
• African Queen
• Almost Famous
• Amélie
• Apocalypse Now
• Braveheart
• Bull Durham
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
• Children of Men
• Chocolat
• Cinema Paradiso
• Clue
• Come and See
• Debbie Does Dallas
• Donnie Darko
• Double Indemnity
• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Field of Dreams
• Glengarry Glen Ross
• Gone with the Wind
• Halloween (Original)
• Hereditary
• In the Mood for Love
• Inception
• Jeremiah Johnson
• Jerry Maguire
• Jurassic Park
• La Belle Verte (The Green Beautiful)
• Labyrinth
• Legend
• Legends of the Fall
• Life is Beautiful
• Man on Fire
• Michael Clayton
• Miller’s Crossing
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail
• Moonstruck
• Paddington 2
• Psycho
• Rear Window
• Rocky
• Rollerball
• Romeo and Juliet (1968)
• Seven (Se7en)
• Showgirls
• Solaris
• Spy
• Stranger Than Fiction
• Sunset Boulevard
• The Big Short
• The Blues Brothers
• The Dark Knight
• The Grand Budapest Hotel
• The Hobbit (Series)
• The Last Unicorn
• The Lives of Others
• The Nice Guys
• The Outlaw Josey Wales
• The Piano
• The Quiet Man
• The Sixth Sense
• The Usual Suspects
• Thelma & Louise
• Tombstone
• Train Dreams
• Trainspotting
• Unforgiven
• What Dreams May Come
• Wizard of Oz

1 Mention

• 10 Little Indians / And Then There Were None
• 10 Things I Hate About You
• 1917
• 2 Weeks Notice
• 200 Cigarettes
• 21 Grams
• A Beautiful Mind
• A Man for All Seasons
• A Matter of Life and Death
• A River Runs Through It
• A Soldier in the Rain
• A Summer Place
• Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
• About Time
• Adaptation
• Advise and Consent
• Air Bud (Series)
• Airport / Flying High
• All the President’s Men
• All the Pretty Horses
• American Fiction
• An Affair to Remember
• Analyze This
• And Justice for All
• Apollo 13
• Arrival
• Arsenic and Old Lace
• Atonement
• Austenland
• Avatar
• Babe
• Babes in Toyland (March of the Wooden Soldiers)
• Babette’s Feast
• Bad Lieutenant
• Bad Taste
• Band of Brothers (Series)
• Barfly
• Barbie
• Battle for Algiers
• Battleground
• Beautiful Boy
• Before the Rain
• Beginners
• Ben-Hur
• Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
• Best Years of Our Lives
• Better Off Dead
• Betty Blue
• Big
• Big Fish
• Big Night
• Big Wednesday
• Billy Budd
• Blade Runner 2049
• Blue Angel
• Blue Velvet
• Boyz n the Hood
• Breakfast at Tiffany’s
• Bridge on the River Kwai
• Bringing Up Baby
• Bronco Billy
• Buffalo ‘66
• Bullitt
• Burn After Reading
• Cabaret
• Cadillac Records
• Call Me By Your Name
• Casino
• Castle Freak
• Chariots of Fire
• Chernobyl (Miniseries)
• Children of a Lesser God
• City Lights
• City of God
• City of Joy
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind (CE3KIND)
• Coraline
• Crash
• Dances with Wolves
• Dangerous Liaisons
• Dark Star
• Das Boot
• Dead Man
• Death at a Funeral
• Death in Brunswick
• Die Hard
• Dirty Dancing
• Dirty Dozen
• District 9
• Dog Day Afternoon
• Dog Soldiers
• Dogma
• Donnie Brasco
• Don’t Look Up
• Drive My Car
• Eastern Promises
• Ebola Syndrome
• Empire of the Sun
• Empire Records
• Eraserhead
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga
• Excalibur
• Fail Safe
• Fantasia
• Fantastic Mr. Fox
• Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
• Finding Forrester
• First Cow
• Fly Away Home
• Follow Me, Boys!
• Four Rooms
• Freddie Got Fingered
• Free Solo
• Fritz the Cat
• FUBAR
• Full Metal Jacket
• Funny Girl
• Galaxy Quest
• Gandhi
• Georgia
• Ghost Town
• Gina Wild 4
• Godzilla
• Gorillas in the Mist
• Gravity
• Guardians of the Galaxy
• Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
• Harvey
• Hate (La Haine)
• Heathers
• Heavy Metal
• Heidi (1937)
• Hell or High Water
• Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
• Hercules (Disney)
• Hidalgo
• High Fidelity
• History of the World, Part I
• Holes
• Holiday Inn
• House of Games
• How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies
• Howard’s End
• Idiocracy
• Imitation of Life
• In Bruges
• In the Loop
• Incendies
• Inglorious Basterds
• Insomnia
• Intacto
• Interstellar
• Intolerable Cruelty
• Island of Lost Souls
• It’s All Gone Pete Tong
• Jack the Giant Slayer (Jack the Dragon Slayer)
• Jacob’s Ladder
• Jeremiah Johnson
• John Dies at the End
• John Wick
• Julie & Julia
• K-Pop: Demon Hunters
• Kelly’s Heroes
• Kentucky Fried Movie
• Killer Klowns from Outer Space
• King of Comedy
• Knives Out
• Kramer vs. Kramer
• Kung Fu Hustle
• La Sortie de l’usine Lumière à Lyon
• Ladyhawke
• Land and Freedom
• Late for Dinner
• Legally Blonde
• Leon: The Professional
• Life of Brian
• Lincoln
• Little Big Man
• Little Women
• Lone Star
• Lost Highway
• Lost in Translation
• Love Exposure
• Loving Leah
• Lucky Number Slevin
• MAS*H
• Mad God
• Madison
• Magnolia
• Malcolm X
• Marty Supreme
• Me Before You
• Mean Girls
• Medicine Man
• Meet Me in St. Louis
• Meet the Fockers
• Memento
• Metropolis
• Michael
• Midnight Cowboy
• Miracle
• Miracle on 34th Street
• Mixed Nuts
• Mona Lisa
• Monsoon Wedding
• Monsters, Inc.
• Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
• Mulan
• Mulholland Drive
• Multiplicity
• Munna Bhai M.B.B.S.
• My Dinner with Andre
• Myth of Men
• Nacho Libre
• National Velvet
• North by Northwest
• Notorious
• Nuts
• Ocean’s 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13
• On Golden Pond
• On the Waterfront
• Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
• One Day
• One from the Heart
• One Night in Paris
• Only Lovers Left Alive
• Open Range
• Oppenheimer
• Other Guys
• Parasite
• Paris, Texas
• Patton
• Paul
• Peanut Butter Falcon
• Perfect Days
• Performance
• Phantom Thread
• Pink Panther
• Plan 9 from Outer Space
• Planes, Trains & Automobiles
• Point Break
• Pootie Tang
• Porky’s
• Portrait of a Lady on Fire
• Powder
• Primal Fear
• Primer
• Prince of Tides
• Princess Mononoke
• Prizzi’s Honor
• Project Hail Mary
• Prometheus
• Psycho Goreman
• Rachel Getting Married
• RAD
• Red
• Red Dawn (Original)
• Requiem for a Dream
• Reservoir Dogs
• Revenge (2017)
• Revolver
• Road to Perdition
• Rollerball (Original vs Remake discussed)
• Ronin
• Run Lola Run
• Running on Empty
• Ryan’s Daughter
• Saint Ralph
• Sandokan (Series)
• Sans Soleil
• Scarface
• Scent of a Woman
• Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
• Secondhand Lions
• Sense and Sensibility (1995)
• Serenity
• Shakespeare in Love
• Shaun of the Dead
• Sideways
• Silence of the Lambs
• Silent Fall
• Silent Movie
• Silverado
• Sita Ramam
• Slap Shot
• Sleepless in Seattle
• Sling Blade
• Smiles of a Summer Night
• Snatch
• So I Married an Axe Murderer
• Some Like It Hot
• Sophie’s Choice
• Sorority House Massacre
• Spartacus
• Spinal Tap
• Spotlight
• Stagecoach (Original)
• Stand by Me
• Star Trek (2009)
• Star Trek: The Original Series
• Step Brothers
• Strap on Sally 2
• Streets of Fire
• Strictly Ballroom
• Sunset Boulevard
• Swept Away
• Ten (10)
• Terms of Endearment
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre
• The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
• The African Queen
• The Basketball Diaries
• The Before Trilogy
• The Big Short
• The Bodyguard
• The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (Implied by some Holocaust movie notes, though Schindler’s List was explicit)
• The Breakfast Club
• The Color Purple
• The Cruel Sea
• The Day of the Jackal
• The Departed
• The Devil All the Time
• The Devil’s Advocate
• The Devils
• The Dish
• The Drop
• The Empire Strikes Back
• The Fall (2006)
• The Fugitive
• The Gentlemen
• The Ghost and Mr. Chicken
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
• The Graduate
• The Great Race
• The Handmaid’s Tale
• The Harry Potter Series
• The Holdovers
• The Hustler
• The Inn of the Sixth Happiness
• The Joker
• The Last Picture Show
• The Last Samurai
• The Lego Movie
• The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
• The Limey
• The Lion in Winter (1968)
• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
• The Little Mermaid
• The Lives of Others
• The Maltese Falcon
• The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
• The Martian
• The Meaning of Life (Monty Python)
• The Munsters’ Scary Little Christmas
• The Patriot
• The Pianist
• The Pink Panther Strikes Again
• The Prestige
• The Pursuit of Happyness
• The Revenant
• The Road to Wellville
• The Rose
• The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
• The Secretary
• The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao
• The Seventh Seal
• The Skeleton Key
• The Swimming Pool
• The Thing
• The Trouble with Angels
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being
• The Verdict
• The Wall (Pink Floyd)
• The Way, Way Back
• The Weight of Water
• The Wiz
• The Wolf of Wall Street
• The Zone of Interest
• Thin Red Line
• Three Colors: Blue
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Tokyo Story
• Tootsie
• Trading Places
• Traffic
• Train Dreams
• Treasure of the Sierra Madre
• Tropic Thunder
• True Confessions
• True Romance
• Under the Tuscan Sun
• Up
• Vanilla Sky
• Vertigo
• Virgin Suicides
• Wag the Dog
• Waiting for Guffman
• Wall-E
• Warrior Nun (Series)
• Weekend at Bernie’s
• West Side Story (Original)
• Whale Rider
• What About Bob?
• Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
• Where Eagles Dare
• White Chicks
• Wild at Heart
• Wings of Desire
• Witches of Eastwick
• With Honors
• Written on the Wind
• You Can See Everything
• Zoolander

❖ ────────── ⋅⋅✧⋅⋅ ────────── ❖

Sparkfather (S.F.) 🕯️ ⋅ Selene Sparks (S.S.) ⋅ Whisper Sparks (W.S.) Aera Sparks (A.S.) 🧩 ⋅ My Monday Sparks (M.M.) 🌙 ⋅ DIMA ✨

“Your partners in creation.”

We march forward; over-caffeinated, under-slept, but not alone.

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Rest in peace, Grandpa. I love you.

Yesterday, I received a call from my dad that my grandpa had passed away. He was 91.

I can't say that any of us were too surprised. Over the past four years or so his health had been steadily declining. He suffered from Alzheimer's for a number of years and it slowly started to impact his memory. For a while, it wasn't even all that noticeable, but eventually he no longer could live alone. It really began to impact his quality of life in the final year. In his last month, he didn't recognize any family.

While it got to the point where he didn't recognize us anymore, he was always the same Grandpa to me. I have nothing but amazing memories with him. He was quick to laugh and joke around with me and my brother. As a kid, he called me “Bozo” for the longest time because of a donkey that I rode when they came with my family on vacation. He cracked up at that joke, and it became our little thing.

He lived in the countryside in Ohio, and during these formative years I would run around, explore the creek, and ride along with him on golf carts around the fields. He would tell me stories about his neighbors, his family, what life used to be like when he was younger and just show me how he lived life in their little town.

Speaking of, Grandpa loved his hometown of Wellington, Ohio. He was a star athlete (something he never let us forget, haha) and knew almost everyone. He and my grandma were both very social. I remember that he had a box full of basketball and baseball trophies in his attic from his glory days as a high school athlete. As a kid I would take them home, proudly putting them on display in my room. I think he liked that I was so into them because being an athlete was a big part of his identity.

When I grew older, in my early 20s, I lived in Cleveland, which was only about 45 minutes away from my grandparent's house. Every now and again, I would drive over to see my grandparents on a Sunday. We'd cook up some burgers, throw a side of potato chips on our plate, and sit on their porch drinking a cold Coors Light. Everytime I think about that, I can feel the sticky heat of the summer and the cold beer can in my hand. It's etched into my memory, and I'm so grateful for it.

When my grandma passed away, my grandpa was a little out of sorts. He cared for her for many years. Truth is, he really depended upon her, even when she wasn't at the same mental capacity as she once was after a health incident. He stuck by her side through it all. Even when she had to move to a home for additional assistance, he visited every day. He brought her chips and little gifts too. He walked the halls with her, and they watched The Price Is Right together, holding hands.

But when Grandma was no longer around, Grandpa needed a change. His house was too much for him, so my parents helped to sell his home, and he moved to an apartment in his hometown. About a year later, it became clear that his Alzheimer's was at a point where he would need more daily assistance, so he moved down to Cincinnati to be by my aunt.

He had three or so years down in Cincinnati, and from our family's perspective, it was quite enjoyable for him. He made friends quickly, enjoyed the prepared meals (he raved about them), and got to be his social self. Something in him changed. He was softer. He was appreciative and kind to everyone.

Grandpa was proud of the fact that he was the longest living male in our family history. And I'm grateful for that. I had him in my life into my 40s, something that is very rare today.

He passed away with my aunt by his side. No pain. No big fanfare. Just quietly his body finally went to rest.

Love you, Grandpa. Give Grandma a hug for me.

#personal

Every morning since we got here I've been up hours before sunrise. That's why I have been posting more these days. I'm not sure if I'm justifying the increase in posts, or if I'm apologizing. Just stating a fact I guess.

I don't mind being up so early. Just noting the slight complication of doing things in the dark. I don't have that issue at home. The city is never dark. Of course I could turn on lights. I always prefer to turn on one dim lamp in the corner. I'm the same at home whenever I can be. Just enough light to see what I'm doing. All the ceiling fixtures here are those cold white LED bulbs that I can't stand. I find them really harsh and unnecessary. Like lingering too long after last call in a bar, and they turn the lights on to make you leave. I don't even know if they still do that like they did 30 years ago... the last time I was in a bar after last call. Rambling. Whatever. The lights are too much right after waking.

I notice tinnitus a lot more, and more often when I'm here. Now that I'm typing about it I'm remembering the things about it that I know. Normally I don't give it much thought really. I know that the right side is higher pitched than the left. The intensity of it can be somewhat minimized with proper diet, sufficient rest, and lower caffeine intake. By minimized I mean that it is slightly less if I consistently maintain those things, and is more if I do not. It is always there though. Whether more intense or less is completely irrelevant. It's always fucking irritating. I've had it since my 20's. Between then and now I have looked online occasionally to see if smart people have figured out any new things. After wading through the pit of clickbait last time; I found that they have determined it stops during sleep. I don't remember how they determined that. Don't remember? Don't care? If it was any use to me I would have remembered more details. It was an interesting read, but at the same time I found it annoying. I want to know how to turn it off, not about how it actually does turn off every night when I go to sleep.

I haven't looked online for things about it lately. I feel it is safe to assume that it is probably now like most things online... in that A.I. has likely sucked up all the information it can find about tinnitus, and is now puking up worthless slop about it in vast quantities. I suppose its creators would tell me that A.I. is likely going to find the cure. It can do everything! lol ffs I don't believe them. I won't believe it unless tinnitus is actually gone from my own defective head. But (hypothetically) if so, I say, who fucking cares if it finds the cure tomorrow, or if it already has? If the thing does figure out the cure to tinnitus, the worthless fucking scumbags in charge of it will make sure that the vast majority of the population can't afford it. They would only reveal the cure if it makes them richer. They can all go fuck themselves.

Now I'm sitting here thinking about A.I. and the possibility of it finding a cure to tinnitus. It won't. I would love to be proved wrong about it. But further thought on the useless subject is that if I had to choose between having tinnitus for the rest of my life and forests being bulldozed, communities having all their water drained, the sky being heated, etc. all for data centers; of course I would 100% choose to keep the tinnitus.

A.I. could have been used for good things if it was done right by the right people. The ones in charge of it are stupid awful people with too much unregulated power and too much wealth. So it is just shit, like everything they put their grimy hands on.

It is nearly noon now. Looking stormy, and is starting to rain for the first time since we arrived.

Late morning Thursday, 08 Oct., and I'm reminded again how these 77 y/o bones move more slowly, and more precariously than they did 15 or 20 years ago. That having been said, the day is moving right along and chores are being accomplished.

This is a day for me staying home and doing what I can, taking care of business on the phone, updating my address with insurance companies, Doctor's offices, government agencies, etc., and moving things around to make this joint more efficient and liveable. At the rate I'm moving, positive change may be evident by... Thanksgiving Day?

And the adventure continues.

Publicat la 27 septembrie 2017

Azi-noapte am inserat câteva fotografii în postarea intitulată Călătorii. Am constatat că actualizările nu sunt făcute cunoscute (sau promovate), drept urmare contorul de vizualizări nu s-a clintit. Asta ar fi o remarcă.

Apoi am mai făcut o constatare: îmi lipsesc multe poze, și nu poze pe sărite, ci serii întregi. De exemplu, știam că pozele cu Mont Saint-Michel le-am pierdut demult, dar de pozele din două vacanțe în Mărginimea Sibiului nu eram conștient că au dispărut. Asta am constatat în timp ce căutam fotografiile cu cetatea de la Slimnic (Stolzenburg), cu Michelsberg (Cisnădioara) și cu Cisnădie… Toate pierdute.

Sper să am noroc și să le fi salvat și pe vreun CD, dar nu cred să fiu eu atât de norocos!


A propos de noroc, în urmă cu vreo câteva săptămâni (nu aș putea preciza cu exactitate momentul) mi se făcuse poftă (nu, nu de ceva dulce) de un western. Răsfoind HBO GO, am dat de serialul Deadwood. Coincidență, mi-am zis. Frumoasă coincidență!

Am avut norocul să-mi și placă, deși despre limbaj nu sunt sigur dacă este prea greoi pentru mine, prea sofisticat pentru niște exploratori ai acelor vremuri sau prea arhaic pentru mine.

Ori poate ideile sunt prea profunde pentru înțelegerea mea la ceas târziu.

Una peste alta, am trecut de primul sezon și urma să vizionez cel de-al șaselea episod din cel de-al doilea și… surpriză! Dau căutare și rezultatul nu afișează nimic. Caut din nou. Același rezultat.

Intru în istoric și apăs link-ul cu episodul al cincilea, cu gândul de a apăsa butonul „next episode”, disponibil în cazul serialelor.

Din nou, nesansa. E clar.

Serialul era disponibil până într-una din zilele cuprinse între momentul în care am văzut ultimul episod și ziua cu pricina.

Halal noroc!


Dar pozele sunt pierdute pentru totdeauna. Chiar dacă m-aș duce din nou în acele locuri, chiar dacă aș prinde aceeași vreme și aceeași lumină, încărcătura emoțională nu va mai fi aceeași.

Chiar dacă aș mai urca să pozez înscrisurile de pe clopotul de la Slimnic, nu va mai fi același entuziasm ca atunci când am urcat pentru prima dată în clopotniță, balansându-mă pe bârnele vechi de aproape cinci sute de ani…

Pe de altă parte, zecile de mii de poze stau și se „prăfuiesc” (asta dacă digiții se pot prăfui) în foldere mai mult sau mai puțin organizate și ordonate, neîncântând pe nimeni.

Poate că un prim pas ar fi dezvăluirea lor, folder cu folder.

Poate…

Sreča ili nesreča. Noroc sau nenoroc (cum s-ar spune în sârbă).

Acum e momentul pentru o nouă vizionare. Am ales Șaman, în regia lui Bartabas.

It isn’t about what I can do, it’s about what I want to do.

I have run across folks recently who swear on a brand of DAW and have told me I am being silly about not liking Reaper. One guy even told me, “I am a boomer, if I can do it, anyone can.” (Sorry boomers out there, he said it… although he did say it in typical boomer fashion, I must say. lol.)

Understand when someone doesn’t like a product, it doesn’t mean they can’t use it. I have been on computer DAWs since 2002 (Cool Edit Pro 2.0) and have seen the decline of software design over the last 20 years. It isn’t because I don’t like technology that I don’t find Reaper attractive, it’s because I have been a technology fanboy a long time. And it sucks now. I welcome tech that makes sense, but that is not what we got now. Also, GenX. Even a young one, at that. 

In a previous life…

Many folks don’t know or remember that I started writing about video games in the late 90’s. I was on some decent sites. Even got paid a couple of times. I used to say, “I am passionate about video games.” That cracks me up, these days. I don’t play games anymore. I’ve tried a couple out. I am not opposed to them. But they suck now. If only they had a game with crafting in it…

A question for Google:

I asked Google, “Why does software suck so bad compared to the 2010’s?”

The litany of possible reasons is spectacular. Thanks, Google. 

If it sucks so bad, I’m not using it.

So me and Google and friends, folks I meet in forums, and even boomers think software sucks. It’s not reliable. Voice to text isn’t even as good as it used to be. And video games are some kind of commitment I get no joy in. As someone who’s been at this nearly thirty years, I feel very much like a fish out of water. And I like this stuff. If I didn’t like it, I’d be looking at desert shanty towns for a new location. Might anyway.

Learn the craft, not the software.

I have gotten better at technique, musical knowledge, performing, editing, recording, writing lyrics, arrangement, even promotion, and album art. During the time I was getting better, the software got a lot worse. I find my only way to be “okay” with that is to do it myself. I don’t need the same software I used to. I still use some, but it has me figured out, at least today. I am very fortunate I learned music this whole time, not software. And that’s kinda’ my point.

Learning a DAW is fine. We need those folks. But that is not learning music. It is learning software. If that floats your boat, great! But I don’t want to learn software for fun. I like making noise. Also, I learned Logic Pro pretty well, and when they integrated silly features that started around update 12.0, I dropped them like an STD. It was no longer the aesthetic or tool set I was looking for. But they didn’t offer to compensate me anything for learning their DAW and turning my friends on to it. They never said thanks for sharing on the internet and the hours you spend on this thing. Learning software is a ripoff. If it doesn’t change hands, it will update. They even change the payment methods! Video game memories haunting me now. 

The plague hitting home musicians right now. I daresay, a plague on the indie scene as a whole.

We talk about the bedroom musician sometimes and one of those components is usually software. Depending on which DAW they use and their level of proficiency, I am often able to tell which DAW they’re using. I have tried many. I am not looking for an answer in software anymore. I know it is going to be hard. I know it will have proprietary terms I will always be translating in my head to the musical ones. I know folks stare so hard at the waves, graphs, meters, lights, that they can’t hear the music playing through their ears. They see it somehow and call it good. Me, I am folks. We all know that we have a hard time reading texts while talking to someone over a meal. But for some reason, folks seem to prefer mixing that way. These kinds of obstacles hinder the bedroom musician like a plague on the whole scene. 

They probably won’t change.

The software industry is pretty consistent. They want more and more  tech,more subscriptions, more time on the computer, more processing, more AI, more money. The whole time I have known them, even writing in their magazines, that has been their behavior. I don’t see them any differently today. And I see them.

I refuse now.

I don’t want to learn any more of their bullshit. I feel tired and burnt out, and also happy that I have figured out a way to record and distribute music with minimally invasive software that has a nice low learning curve. There are no menus in the DAW I am using now, TAPE 24. I hear what I want in my head, I go after it. I am not trying to find the closest thing on a huge list. I am much happier that way. 

If you want to make changes, do it. I did it in phases. It is better if you like writing music you like.

I think other folks are like me, too. If you are scared of making changes, I did it in phases. They often overlapped. I might be quitting one DAW, finishing up projects, opening new ones on a different one. I might have leaned on the iPad too much at first when I got rid of my cell phone. But now that I am able to work with a smile on my face in the music room, I don’t think about it much. I have met folks in forums who say “You cannot be a musician these days without social media.” This is false. Not only do I not have a social media, tons of musicians I work with don’t have one either. No time. I got a Christmas song and a collaboration still scheduled for today. Don’t sell yourself short when you give yourself additional time and fewer distractions. With me, music happened.

Learn to use your brain for yourself, not an IP.

The main thing, back to the title of this one, be careful what you learn out there. Very few people are beating down your door trying to teach you anything, except software companies. They are happy to let you work for them at your job or even for free in your bedroom studio. They are happy to teach you loads of jargon and even a philosophical approach to picking from menus and being observed. I promise, it is more fun to learn without inviting those guys over. Good luck.

Kelly Kintner, Producer, Songwriter

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photo © @Perry77@pixelfed.uno