five more things

[freckles_and_doubt]

• I would not have believed until it happened the sheer level of relief occasioned by the arrival of a new lightning cable for my Ipad. The old one had semi-disintegrated, it had worn at both ends to the point where the only way I could transfer Stardew Valley files between the Ipad and the desktop was to seize the neck of the Ipad end (already taped up with duct tape and toothpicks to keep it straight), wiggle it until it beeped, and then hold it in exactly the right position with my right hand while I frantically and ineptly transferred files on the pc with my left. Also, charging the Ipad entailed laying the cable out in a straight line and moving it millimetre by millimetre until the charge bar went green, then putting heavy things on everything to hold it in place and fence off the cats. As I darkly suspect that the weakness at the cable ends is a deliberate Apple ploy to make us buy more overpriced specialised peripherals, I have wantonly researched and acquired the most durable, by internet review, non-Apple replacement. (FWIW, Anker). *makes rude signs at Apple*.
  
• Work is very boring, which I think is a combination of work actually being very boring (we're in the post-curriculum-change-period doldrums), and my state of health - I am still very glandular and sinusey and perpetually exhausted. I think a 'flu bout may be incoming, but in addition, following, weirdly enough, someone's Tumblr post diagnosing pre-serum Captain America, I am mentally resolving to research CVID and go and see an immunologist or rheumatologist or some such fancy specialist. Because the constellation of symptoms was startlingly familiar, and, frankly, bored.
  
• Jo&Stv have inveigled me into attending the Grahamstown arts festival in June/July! I have not been for many, many years, the one time I did was in early postgrad, that epic five-person camping expedition with various Andrews and an elderly family VW Combi which blew a head gasket in PE on the way back, stranding five broke students for an extra two nights in the middle of a minor social meltdown. I remember Grahamstown being fun, but cold. Jo&Stv have booked a house and we're flying, so, water restrictions permitting, I confidently expect this to be a far more grown-up event. Also, they are generously standing me the plane ticket as a birthday present, because they're lovely that way and I'm kinda broke.
  
• I spent part of the weekend re-reading Katherine Addison's Goblin Emperor, mostly because dragonlady has been blogging her responses, and it reminded me how much I loved the novel. It's becoming a comfort read, that must have been my, what, fourth or fifth re-read? It's incredibly interesting world-building, but mostly it's a deeply emotionally satisfying read in the same way that I find Jane Eyre or Fanny Price satisfying: gentle, empathetic main characters whose horrible experiences of abuse have not eroded their basic core of steely resolve to be decent. I love watching them triumph against the structures and bastard individuals who try to oppress them. It's the kind of vindication of decency that's very consoling in our current state of general global political fuckwittery. I recommend the novel. keeping the names straight will bewilder you, but it's worth it.
  
• Gosh, this seems to be sort of working. Go five things structure. Also, it gives me happy early-internet flashbacks to be coding the bulleted list in basic HTML. I used to put up my own websites via FTP and with files coded in HTML in Notepad. Backwards. Uphill both ways. Through the snow. There is something pleasingly structured about HTML tags, I always enjoyed their logic and found it intuitive. Probably because, weirdly enough, of a typing course I did in my last years of high school, which left me touch-typing but also introduced me to very early word processors, all green screen and WordPerfect (remember WordPerfect?). WordPerfect used anglebracket commands rather like HTML, I remember at one point diligently coding substitutions for ten green bottles hanging on the wall to end up with ten purple marshmallows sticking to the ceiling, which somewhat disconcerted the teacher. Of such things is our early imprinting made.

Comments

[dragonlady7]

All charging cables are a racket, but Apple's most of all.

I only had TGE out of the library and I'm definitely going to have to buy my own copy. There's a sequel planned! Alas it's not a direct sequel, it's The Noir Detective Adventures of Mer Celehar, Speaker For The Dead, but I guess I'm still excited because that world is so fascinatingly built I'll read just about anything in it.

I also am finding the HTML reassuring. My first job out of college was to redesign a company's website while also working there full-time in another capacity, and I spent a lot of time frustrated with the WYSIWYG editor they were trying to make me use, and I actually coded several pages by hand in Notepad with nested tables to show them what I was trying to do.

[freckles_and_doubt]

oooooh, I didn't know a sequel was planned, last I saw from Sarah Monette she wasn't planning to return to the world, so you have made my day, thank you! I am totally down with it focusing on Mer Celehar, I really liked him as a character.

Hard-coding HTML is, I think, about control as much as anything else. You have absolute instrumentality without having to deal with the arbitrary hard-wiring of an XML. I tend to switch to the HTML window in any blog software by default.

[woollythinker]

Hurrah for 5 things! Yes, it's surprisingly helpful isn't it. And hurrah for Goblin Emperor – just read it recently and in fact just lent to a friend yesterday. I am confidently looking forward to her great enjoyment.

[freckles_and_doubt]

Thank you for the five things inspiration, it's been a lovely discovery. And I am amused to notice how Goblin Emperor fans mimic their protagonist: they are quiet and unassuming and go largely unnoticed until it comes to a point of principle, at which point they reveal themselves as implacable :>.