Once again we pivot into the dark half of the year. Here in the northern hemisphere, anyway. Folks below the equator are enjoying the opposite pivot, the good one into light.
The Autumnal Equinox is my least favorite Solar Occasion (today: 12:44 GMT, 7:44 AM CDT). It means winter is coming. I can deal with the cold, but the short days and long dark nights, that’s tougher.
As I posted Tuesday, I finished the software for my virtual CPU on Monday, but now I’ve finished the most important part: the project graphic.
Now that I’m done, the project is obsolete, and it’s time to start the next version, cj68 vII. The other protocol would be to bump the number, but cj69 might lead to smirks.
Stay processing, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.
∇
Long distance runners talk about “hitting the wall” — the point where their body runs out of resources, making it almost impossible to continue. I hit an intellectual wall late Monday night. Fortunately, I not only finished the race but went an unexpected extra mile. (And now my brain circuits are fried.)
Not an actual race (beyond a vague self-imposed deadline), but a hobby project like one of those ships in a bottle. A painstaking and challenging task in the name of fun and exercise of acquired skill. But no race, no ship, no bottle. This was a software project.
My inner geek rampant, I built a virtual 32-bit CPU (in Python).
Ceiling Cat’s Cradle
Back in September of 2019 I wrote about how the 100-amp main breaker for my electrical power went flakey and then flooey. That ended up being a $2400 service call because I also got new smoke alarms, a carbon monoxide detector, and a main power surge protector. [See Whadda Week!]
I was and am fine with everything. Obviously, glad to have reliable electrical power. Presumably the surge protector is doing its thing, and the CO detector blinks its green light every minute, so it seems happy.
But while I’ve had no fire nor anything like it, the ceiling cats have shown a trying tendency to go off seemingly randomly — all four screeching loudly from their cradles and seriously raising my heartrate.
I’ve been sitting on a fence for several months now, and it’s starting to get a bit uncomfortable. Back in March I opened branch office over in Substack land. Ever since I’ve been trying to figure out whether to shift operations there or remain here. (Or try to do both more or less equally.)
A complicating factor is that, despite both Substack and WordPress being blogging platforms, there is something of an apples and pumpkins comparison. They have, for me, contrasting pros and cons, mead and poison.
Change is hard, but it can also be invigorating, and it might just be time.
The Earth has completed yet another orbit from this particular spot, so here we are (or at least here I am) with another Blog Anniversary. Almost hard to believe the Earth has spun ’round the Sun thirteen times since I began this blog. My blog’s a teenager now!
Thirteen years, fourteen hundred posts (this is post #1400), lots of wyrds (1.8 million). Lots of Wyrd, for that matter. This has been a self-documenting project from day one.
Needless to say, I have lists, stats, and charts (oh, my).
We’ve just now reached that point in Earth’s orbit known as Summer Solstice (June 20, 2024, 20:51 UTC, 3:51 PM local time). Welcome to summer!
I’m dog-sitting my pal Bentley until Saturday, so my attention is elsewhere than blogging right now. Hope you’re all having a good summer!
I was raised by a book-loving dad who passed on to me both the love of reading and the love of books. (He also passed on a love of maps, but that’s a story for another post.)
One of my dad’s lifelong goals was to publish books, and by a round-about path he ultimately accomplished that goal. As an old TV commercial has it, “And I got to help!” He began with a printshop that eventually grew to a (very, very) small boutique book publishing shop. We did maybe half-a-dozen books.
So, a love and respect for books has long been with me.
I don’t drink coffee. I never have. (Call me different and you’ll be right at least nine times out of ten.) In my whole life, I’ve consumed maybe two cups worth. That required multiple attempts — usually friends forcing it on me because “you’ll like this [flavor|variety|brand|style], I promise!”
They’ve all struck out. I just don’t care for the stuff, not even iced, not even extremely flavored and tarted up. In contrast, I’ve always liked iced tea, and therein lies my tale for the day. Because tea has plenty of caffeine, too.
And it gave me a double lesson about [1] why people drink coffee (one word: caffeine) and [B] the downside of drinking coffee (one word: caffeine).
Today is the Vernal Equinox, the official starter gun for spring! Now we get six months of more sunlight than not. And the length of the day is changing (towards the long summer days) at its fastest rate during the year (except for the Autumnal Equinox, the other fastest).
Ironically, the last few days have been chillier than what has passed for normal this winter. The high three days ago (on 3/17) was only 30 degrees (Fahrenheit, of course).
The weather has been so strange (thanks to global warming) that I just had to make a bunch of charts to share here.
Posts pertaining to programming!
Logos con carne 