The World

• OpenAI releases a new tool to generate "realistic"-looking video from text prompts.

• Russian opposition figure Navalny has died in prison.

• Donald Trump ordered to pay almost half a billion dollars in his NY fraud trial.

• Madame Web is terrible and nobody is surprised. I still have no idea what Sony was thinking with this entire slate of films. Maybe I'll wait til Kraven comes out then marathon all three of them.

My Week

Busy again with medical errands this week, as expected. This time it was mostly prepping for the infusion this coming week, but I also had to accompany someone on an unexpected dental visit. I also had a slight anxiety attack when something we needed to buy for next week was out of stock at the usual supplier and we had to worry about where to get it. Luckily one of my friends pulled through and it was available where she worked.

Wednesday was Ash Wednesday (and Valentine's Day I suppose). We attended Mass at noontime and it was punishingly hot, which I guess is appropriate as a sort of Lenten sacrifice.

Our Cignal installation also went through Wednesday morning. They reused the same coax cables used by SkyCable! I was told we had to wait 2-3 days for the account to be activated, so we could not actually use Cignal TV until then. Today is day 4 and I have yet to be called about activation. I contacted their support yesterday and they said they were waiting for the installer to submit the required documentation. Until then, we are still using Sky Cable; when the Cignal account is activated we have to switch over the cables over from Sky to Cignal.

On the blog: I wrote about some fediverse drama from this past week. I was kind of anxious re: writing about this because it's a bit of a complicated and serious topic apparently. No worries, this coming week I'll be back to writing about frivolous stuff like comic books and video games.

Media Diet

• Gaming:

  • Single player: I believe I am very close to finishing Persona 5 Tactica (the last few stages seem a bit tedious though); still unsure if I want to go for completion on this one, looks like it requires a partial second run. I've also found myself playing a lot of Stellaris, and I realized I've never written a blog post about it so maybe I will at some point. The game has changed a lot since I last played it in 2020, enough that although I was considering getting some DLCs to spice things up, it now seems unnecessary.
  • Online: Still doing regular grinding in Magic Arena and Marvel Snap, sometimes Eternal. Been doing Karlov Manor drafts on Arena; it hasn't been going that great, I've only gotten one trophy in 8 attempts, but that's already much better than LCI!

• Reading: Still mostly just comic books. Should be fairly close to finishing the Doctor Strange run.

• Watching: I have not watched any new films for the past 2 weeks! I have been watching S2 of Abbott Elementary, mostly while doing Arena drafts. It's decent for background watching.

Walking and Health

This past week (Sunday through Saturday) Google Fit says I walked a total of 70,038 steps.

Some Links of Interest

• [this is aaronland] Wishful Thinking – A critical discussion of "extended reality" technologies in the cultural heritage sector: A talk that discusses why we should prefer open web technologies over proprietary emerging technologies

• I f-word love the web・The Jolly Teapot:

• Write code for the web: > "Write code that runs on the web. We’re lucky to have a shared platform that no single entity owns. Even benevolence can be ruined by incompetence."

Check out the linkblog for past links!

Site Changes

None this week!

Things I've been thinking about

How hot is this coming summer going to be, house repairs, drama, help from friends, creativity, Duolingo, the sun melting neoprene, mortality.

This Coming Week

This week is our third infusion session. That probably means at least one of my weekdays I'll be in the hospital all day.

I think the new Avatar: TLA show drops on NF this week.

We are having another family get-together next weekend (we have soooo many Feb birthdays!)

Hopefully this coming week will be much less busy than the last one.