Soon It Will Be Cold Enough To Build Fires

It was really cold in Seattle this week. Literally freezing, with a heavy sprinkle of snow on the side. Which I realize is child’s play compared to many places, but for thin-blooded me it was a shivery experience.

Weather like that always makes me want to just stay inside and read books under the blankets, with a roaring fire going (hopefully in a fireplace) and hot cocoa by my side. Unfortunately the only fireplace in my apartment is a little electric space heater with fire effects, and it’s so warm in that room (b/c the iguana lives there) there’s no point in turning it on. Also it might trip the breaker if I did. Reptiles, man, they take a hell of a lot of juice.

I’ve been learning python, and it’s been good to get back into coding again. I’m still in the mud of “this is how lists and loops work!” at the moment. But soon the book I’m using will have me making a 2D game and building a web app, both of which sound rad to me and like decent basic portfolio pieces.

I’m also working on a shell script to give my laptop, a Thinkpad Yoga 11e (3rd generation), a tablet mode. Right now I’ve gotten a few pieces of it figured out, like basic screen rotation and disabling the touchpad. The issue I’m running into when messing around with shell/bash stuff is that I can’t seem to get the touchpad to turn all the way back on. It’ll click, but it won’t move the cursor. Which is kind of a killer bug for this theoretical script.

At one point on Friday I tried having it just dump the trackpad driver and reload it as the closest thing I could find to restarting just the input part of xserver. Except I was using someone else’s commands and when the trackpad came back up it didn’t have two finger scrolling. Or “don’t let me use the trackpad while I am also typing.” Luckily a restart seems to have fixed it, but I’m obviously going to need to look for another solution.

Today I’m looking forward to modifying Jabberwocky’s enclosure. I’m planning on mounting the space heater I use to keep her ambient temperature up inside a box attached to the outside of the enclosure, so the air is forced into the vent instead of partially deflecting so it heats up the whole room. I’m also going to seal up the roof a little better. In an ideal world I’ll be making it so that her temps stay good but I can sit at my computer during the day without sweating. Dare to dream and all that.

She’s also done with her most recent round of meds, which were to restore her calcium:phosphorous ratio. We went to the vet on Friday, so we should get the blood test results back soon. I’m hoping she’ll be good to go so I won’t have to mediate her and socialization can begin. Right now she mostly tolerates me if I’m functioning as a jungle gym, but doesn’t like me touching her with my hands. Which, given she’s been abducted by them twice a day for two weeks to have a syringe stuffed in her mouth: fair. But it’ll be nice to get her to the point where I can pick her up and hold her and it’s relaxed for both of us.

Work on The Shivering Deeps is going shittily slowly. I can’t seem to find a good time of day to get “serious” writing in, where I can actually concentrate. Too tired in the evenings, morning is busy enough already, coworking space has people in it… However, I did get into writing the re-write version’s climax last Sunday, so this draft should be done soon! Just in time for me to go to Rainforest and noodle around with something new for a little bit, hopefully.

I also have a couple of essay ideas I’m chewing on. One is to sub to an anthology of nontraditional masculinity in science fiction, that I think I’ve mentioned before. The other is about Shadow of Mordor, so we’ll see how well my premise holds up once I’ve finished the game. It definitely works until the halfway point, so I’m optimistic.

And that’s it for this week, or at least this post. I want to write something up on the lo-fi web design movement I’ve been reading about, but if I want it to be more than just a link dump I need to give it some more thought.

Hope all is well with all of you. What are you up to lately? Will you tell me about it in the comments? Or via carrier pigeon, as the Old Ways demand?

P.S. Title is a reference to this fantastic album by Emancipator. Check it out!