Tag: Life

Quick Notes for a Sunday Afternoon

Unexpected Game Revival

A while back, there was this mobile game, Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. It had a pretty decent story and the central conceit of the play mechanic was also pretty nice. The art and music was good for a mobile game. They had a gacha system that was reasonably generous, though as time went on and they continued to need to release new characters, the power creep became super real. It shut down back in 2024 (the Japanese servers went until 2025, but did eventually also close). Kind of a shame, it was pretty fun for what it was.

Well, it’s back, as Final Fantasy Resonance. They took the story and art and music and cleaned it all up, got rid of the gacha system (while adapting the “vision” system the game had introduced to explain the gacha system, since it’s kind of central to the story), and fleshed out the world map and dungeons, and so now it’s a full fledged standalone 2D-HD Final Fantasy title. I played through the demo (which is the entire first chapter of the game, so the save carries over when the full title comes out), and it was a really pleasant JRPG experience. So, y’know, kudos to the development team for seeing the bones were good and not throwing them out, just because the online service had to close. Good work, and I hope you’re rewarded for it.

The Block System Sucks

We recently migrated Simone’s site, and it was the first opportunity I had to really dig into WordPress’s block editor system. I can certainly see why they bothered creating it – you can do a fair bit of customization with just their built in site editor, without having to touch a line of HTML, PHP, CSS, or Javascript. If you want to make creating your own site more accessible, it makes a ton of sense. I also kind of hate it.

I realize some of this may be me being a curmudgeon and having gotten used to the old system, but it all ends up feeling disjointed to me, where it’s not very clear where you make a distinction between a template, a part, a pattern, or a page. And what’s worse, is it’s super non-obvious where any of those customizations live on your server (answer: in your database, and all the stuff like font and color changes are tied to that specific theme). If you started customizing a default theme and have now decided to turn it into either a child theme or its own theme, good luck getting those settings migrated (even though it’s super easy to start messing with stuff without realizing you run the risk of screwing things up if the theme gets an update).

So let’s say you want to export all those customizations you’ve made. Where do you do it? It’s not in the export settings, it’s not an easy link on the main page of the site editor. Answer: it’s on some editor pages if you go to a menu and look for an “export site” link, which downloads a zip that you can then modify and manually upload. It’s fucking stupid. Like, you’re all too happy to add a link for resetting any style customizations you’ve done on the style page, but not an “export/import styles” link? Did you even stop to think about the user experience, or that people might want to back things up, or that by making it easy to import, export, and share styles, people would be more willing to experiment?

I’d been debating making a new theme for this site using the new block editor, but nah. I’ll stick with what I have for now.

Falling into Fall

September went by really fast. I was hoping to get out and about more, but that’s just not how it panned out. We’re starting to see some color, which is always a delight.

We’ve been planning some trips for later in the fall and winter, so there’s some things to look forward to (important, since the winters here can be a little brutal). If we’re going to be here for another winter (and it certainly looks like that’s the case), we’re also thinking we should double down on the hygge, do our best to live the cozy life while preparing to try and sell the house and move *hand waves* somewhere in the spring. If you’ve got thoughts on how to encourage the cozy hibernation vibe, let me know.

Still Alive

Still alive, still kicking. Sorry for the radio silence, gomen.

So, what happened in the two months? I’ve been feeling tired/fatigued lately, and not in a “oh, you’re just out of shape” sort of way, so I went to the doctor, who was a little alarmed at how loud my heart murmur had gotten since my physical last fall, so I got sent off to get an echocardiogram. That came back with a few things that necessitated a second echocardiogram, only this time more invasive, a transesophageal echocardiogram (where they sedate you, then shove the sensor down your throat so they can get the scan from immediately next to the heart, for higher resolution/fidelity). Long story short: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The murmur is loud because it’s loud, I now have regurgitation on two valves, but neither severe enough to do anything about. And I’m not (really) any closer to knowing why I’ve been so wiped lately.

So, y’know, could be worse, but it did end up eating a bunch of time and mental headspace, and writing anything here ended up falling off the priority list. (I do find it a little amusing that this escapade dovetailed into my first colonoscopy a few weeks later, so a second round of sedation, and a second time getting a camera put inside my body — you could say they got me coming AND going.)

In other news, I took an extra few days off around Labor Day and had a nice wander around northern New Hampshire and the interior of Maine. Even ended up wandering up Mt Washington, something I don’t recall having ever done before, despite growing up in the general region. It’s beautiful out in that neck of the woods, and even with it being Labor Day Weekend, the roads were pretty quiet and pleasant to drive.

For some personal projects, I’ve been fiddling with a few things. I’m taking a stab at building a family tree/genealogy site that uses json-ld and the Person schema from schema.org to create the map of people. The data side is going pretty well, the visualization is where I keep bogging down, dealing with edge cases like where someone might’ve been married, divorced, and widowed, with kids from different partners, and how do you visually represent that in a tree without it turning into a mess. It’s still been a good pastime – if I manage to get it to a more usable state, maybe I’ll toss it online somewhere so others can use it. I’ve also been experimenting with seeing how hard it’d be to set up AsciiDoc support in Astro.js. Doing a full integration seemed like way too much work for my needs, but I’m getting pretty far as a content loader, using Asciidoctor.js to process the files into embeddable content that Astro can work with.

It’s getting to be my favorite time of the year. A friend of mine joked that I was “Basic” for loving autumn, but hey, I’ll own it. I’ve always loved the transitional seasons (fall and spring) most. They come and go fast in New England, and you can feel the change. That scratches an itch for me, probably the same one that leaves me restless when I stay put for too long.

Some Quick Thoughts

I’m on vacation, dangit. Signed off Tuesday evening. It took a while to actually disconnect – I still found myself absentmindedly loading up Slack on my phone and checking what messages and notifications I’d received. I managed to keep it to only a few times a day, at least, but still not exactly the sort of proper separation from work I was aiming at.

It’s now Saturday, four days later, and I’m only really starting to feel disconnected and unwinding now. I’m still wound a little tight, not going to lie, but I’m a little less work-brained, at least. I’m at Squam now, and it’s a reunion year, so the house is filled to the gills with cousins and aunts and uncles – I can hear folks playing guitar together in the other room, while I’m sitting out on the porch listening to the rain. (Despite the rain, I’ve still made a point of swimming each day. As long as it’s not thundering, swimming in the rain is actually kind of fun, it’s interesting to basically be at eye level with the raindrops hitting the lake.)

Since it’s a reunion year, I get to see folks I don’t see as often, and inevitably the question comes up of what’s new in my life and what I’m up to – one thing I sort of appreciate about my family is that when they ask that sort of question, it does seem to generally be about what you’re doing with your life, not necessarily what you’re doing for a living. (As a side note, I’m pretty sure most of my family only has a vague idea of what I do, basically just that it has something to do with computers.) I have some things to share at least, about the selling the house and the figuring out what to do next after that, but also reminds me just how much is up in the air. I genuinely don’t know where we’ll be in a year, let alone five. Not really even a plan, just some vague ideas. That is both exciting and a little scary when you think about it.

The priority has been on socializing with folks, but my social battery drains pretty quick, so I’ve also been ducking out to hide and recharge a bit like now. Something I appreciate about here is that’s actually pretty easy to do without it getting weird or having to find somewhere esoteric to extract myself to. That reminds me – because pop psych is always fun, there’s apparently a new “third” -vert option: there’s introverts, there’s extroverts, and now there’s otroverts. The Wikipedia page has a succinct description:

An otrovert is someone who identifies as an eternal outsider in groups, even when they are friendly and socially capable. Media descriptions of otroverts commonly emphasize emotional independence from groups, original thinking, low interest in joining or in adopting group rituals, and a tendency to seek depth in a small number of relationships rather than broad group belonging.

I took the test and it identified me as an otrovert. I’m not remotely surprised, but honestly I’m not putting much credence in it all, since frankly I feel like that definition basically just describes modern human existence – who doesn’t feel like an outsider in most groups these days? Anyone? Bueller?

I’ve been catching up on my RSS feeds, finally – I’m most of the way through March at this point. I thought about just declaring feed bankruptcy and starting from here, but I don’t want to. It’s a nice way to find out about cool and interesting new projects, which makes me feel at least somewhat connected and clued in about what’s happening out there. Even the more inane posts still feel like at least a reminder that there’s other humans out there, and that what I’m reading feels vaguely organic and not prepackaged. I might be in the minority, but I’m sick of Content™. I’d rather get what someone wants to share and talk about as a person, not as a personality, and while I still respect professional writing and journalism quite a bit, when it crosses into feeling like talking as a personal brand, it’s started to feel increasingly gross.

But that’s just me, and maybe I’m just in a Mood.

Getting back to things

This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

Douglas Adams

Sorry for the radio silence for the past little bit. Life has been keeping me busy, but in all honestly mostly I’ve just been a little burned out and tired. Not “burnt to ash” levels of burnt out, but enough that most of my energy has been spent just trying to maintain, while a lot of stuff is happening both in life and at work.

Continue reading “Getting back to things”

That time of year again

It’s my birthday. I’ve always felt uneasy about my birthday for a variety of reasons – it feels like a lot of my life’s bigger emotional upheavals have happened within a few weeks of the day. After a while, I actually started planning to take myself on trips around now, both as a treat for myself, and also to put some distance there. It’s worked pretty well, I think. Today’s not much different – I’m actually writing this post the day before and have it scheduled, as I’ll be on the road. Just a day trip this time, but still.

I’ve been feeling a little weird lately anyway, honestly. We’re in the process of preparing the house to sell (planning to list it at the end of the month-ish), and so I’m trying to go through old boxes from the last move that I just hadn’t gotten to (you know how it is), and we’re whittling things down to put stuff in storage while we hit the road again – this time, the plan is to take a few months to trek across Canada. Exactly when and where will depend on when the house sells, but regardless it’s the next plan. (Some of you may be wondering “didn’t you just move in there?” And you’re right – it’ll be not quite 2 years here. Lovely house, no real regrets, but for various reasons I’m not going to bother enumerating, we decided it was time to move on.)

I’ve always had this sort of vision of having a place that acts like a base of operations – a spot to come home to, yes, but also a spot to re-collect yourself before you take off on another wander. I’m pretty sure I’d need to win a small lottery to pull off affording both the home and the travel these days, though. So for now it seems like an either/or, and the scales for both Simone and I have tipped towards the wander.

I’ve been trying to put out a weekly longer, non-life post the past few weeks, and I plan to continue that, but I’m taking an indulgence this week. It’s my birthday, so I’d appreciate it if you could do me a favor: just do your best. Even if it’s small increments, move forward on getting a little bit happier, a little bit safer and more secure, a little bit more in a good headspace than you were yesterday. That’s all I really want for my birthday, just everyone I care about to be alright, or at least moving in that direction. I know that’s a lot to ask these days, but try. It’d mean a lot to me.

Kindness, Empathy, and Respect

Adam Savage on enduring today’s uncertain, hostile times (found via Chris Koerner):

It’s some good thoughts, and I agree: the experiences that I think about most fondly, and the work that I’m most proud of, were all approached with a sense of kindness, empathy, and respect. (And as he mentions, the regrets that I do have largely center around occasions where I failed apply or communicate with those principles in mind, and let others down in the process.)

Welcome to July?

Just got back from a week in Bristol (UK) for work. Nice time, good folks. I sincerely like my coworkers, and I love to travel, so it feels more like an opportunity than a task when these work trips come up. That said, one of these days I need to allocate some time off around the trip, so I can go see more of the country and say hi to various folks I know.

I was back at work for a week (three days, really), and now I’m on vacation at Squam, as is our annual tradition. It’s been humid and keeps threatening to rain, but the temperatures have been nice, and it’s nice to disconnect for a little bit. I find myself, more often than not, still stuck in work brain at the end of the day (and the days where that’s not the case, it’s because I’m wiped and my brain is mush), so it’s nice to have some dedicated time off to reset.

I’ve got a small handful of projects I want to work on while I’m on vacation, but frankly if I just manage to swim every day, I’ll consider it a win. Happy July, y’all.

Some Photos behind the Cut

First Creemee of the Summer

It’s been a chilly spring – a few warm spells here and there, but the back half of May basically didn’t break 50 and was raining more often than not. Even Memorial Day weekend was pretty wet and cool. So yesterday, when it finally climbed into the 70s and got sunny? A delight. The ice cream stand down the street is now open for the season, so what better way to inaugurate the summer with a creemee?

Yes, I’m spelling that right. It’s a Vermonter thing – think soft serve ice cream, but where the cream they’re using is 10% butterfat instead of the usual 5%. Combine that with a nice maple syrup for your flavoring, and the result is an excellent treat with a creamy sweetness that’s not too overpowering and a mouthfeel that’s better and richer than most soft-serves. If you’re ever in Vermont in the summer, I highly recommend snagging one from one of the random seasonal ice cream shops that pop up all over the state.

2025

Here we sit, wrapping up the first day of 2025. It’s been a busy year. We started the year continuing our year-long wander around the country, while continuing to work remotely and taking on a significant project that took most of the year. We finished our walkabout and moved to Vermont. We bought a house! We adopted a second dog, Mabel! On top of the walkabout, I also flew out to Portland for the last XOXO, and just a few weeks ago, Simone and I spent a week in the Bahamas.

I’ll be honest with you: while the year has been filled with a lot of good things, I’m tired. One of the things that fell off was writing here (and gathering notes and journaling in general). I could make lofty goals and resolutions to make 2025 the year of the blog (there’s certainly been a lot of call for it in various circles), but nah. I’m certainly going to try and get back into a groove for sharing interesting bits and thoughts, but I’d prefer to roll with it and see where things go rather than promise some sort of cadence or content here.

So, no new resolutions. At best, there some general direction I’d like to go on a few things. And I’m okay with that. My New Years wish is that you’re okay with that, too: be gentle with yourselves this year. Pursue what makes you happy, but do so with kindness and acceptance, not pressure and stress. Play with and explore what excites you and makes you happy, without the trap of turning it into a job.

Happy New Year.