A blog is a website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries, typically displayed in reverse chronlogical order. A single entry is called a blog post.
2021 November
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I finished The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles this week! A game I've been playing since August. If you're not familiar, it's a collection release of the two latest games in the Ace Attorney series, a series of story-driven visual novel-type games centered around defense lawyering. Both of the games in the collection have not had an English release before. I played and enjoyed the first four games of the series on the NDS back in the mid-00s, so I was looking forward to this release. The two games included are Great Ace Attorney Adventures and Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve. -
A Quote "We've always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible. And we count these moments. These moments when we dare to aim higher, to break barriers, to reach for the stars, to make the unknown known. We count these moments as our proudest achievements. But we lost all that. Or perhaps we've just forgotten that we are still pioneers. And we've barely begun. And that our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, because our destiny lies above us." - Cooper, Interstellar The World Metro Manila still at alert level 2; it looks the daily new cases are -
I've mentioned this before on the weeknotes, but a couple of months ago I availed of a New York Times games subscription, mostly for access to the NYT crosswords, since the trivia team have been enjoying some coop crossword nights over Discord. Aside from the NYT crossword, the subscription also gives us access to some other games. The other one we've been enjoying so far is the NYT Spelling Bee. It's basically one of those anagram puzzles where you have to form words from a set of letters. Each puzzle has seven letters, with one letter highlighted in yellow in -
Bond film no. 25, undeniably Daniel Craig's last, and the culmination of this year's James Bond run. We started watching a bit past 10:30pm which might have been a mistake as the movie is quite long - we finished the film almost 1:30am, with no breaks. One can argue the movie is too long and that a few scenes should have been cut here or there, but I didn't find any particular lulls or pacing issues that were too egregious. The runtime is not helped by the director making the audience bask in each scene, panning and zooming to show
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In October 2020, I migrated this site from serving static Hugo-based files to a site running on a custom Django-based backend. My internal name for that backend is Cypress, which has no particular meaning other than I wanted something that was an alternative to Wordpress. (Yes, I am aware there is a testing framework by that name, that's a problem for future me.) So it's been a bit over a year since I decided to write my own custom blogging system. I decided to write about it for a bit because of some recent posts from other bloggers I follow
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Supergirl had their series finale last week; the usual big superhero fight affair with a heavy-handed focus on "empowering people" typical of the series and relying on Supergirl making a big speech to inspire everyone in the world. Ended with a lesbian wedding, so go diversity. Wasn't a big fan of this season, waaay too much magic and time spent in the phantom zone and such. The last part was basically them chasing a set of McGuffins each with different rules that let them do a different gimmick with each episode and gave Kara an excuse to have another inner
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A Quote "I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can -
Shang-Chi finally came out on BR/D+, so I got to watch it at last. Traditional spoiler-free review (despite not being able to watch day one in the cinema), then spoilery bits follow: Fun kung fu movie. The plot is a bit meh and there's some pacing issues in the middle, but the action is great. The fight scenes are pretty good, although this makes me sad for the lost potential of the Iron Fist Netflix series. Fight scenes felt kinda dragonball-y towards the end though. So many MCU cameos, fun for the MCU fan I found it hard to take
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When the son of the dictator announced he was running for the highest office in the country, I decided to add this book to this year's reading list. The reason was to be better informed about what life was like during the early years of Marcos' martial law regime and in the years leading up to it. The Marcos reign was a dark chapter in our nation's history and reading about it and knowing more about it can help us fight back against the forces that want to revise that history to make themselves look better, all for the sake -
Some notes on posting to Mastodon via their HTTP API using Python. The backend of this site uses similar code to enable automated syndication to my Mastodon account. Creating an access token Go to your mastodon preferences (it's the gear icon above the search bar in the web interface) and click Development. (Or go to [yourservername]/settings/applications) Click "New Application". Specify application name. Default permissions should be fine. Save. Click your application name in the grid on the Development page. Your access token will be in the top part of the screen. Posting a status (or as they call it, a
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It's November, which means we are that much closer to a second Christmas under the shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic. The world: Locally, new Covid cases seem to have plateaued at 2000+, but we'll see what next week brings. The IATF has dropped Metro Manila to the less restrictive alert level 2 as of last Friday, so we'll see whether that causes another spike or we continue on our way to a hopefully merry Christmas (such as it is). Links of interest: Haley Nahman writes about when she was an influencer. A peek into the world of influencers and the
2021 October
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It's the last day of October. And Halloween, I guess. If that means something to you. The world: Local politics still depresses me. Let's not talk about it today. On the upside, local Covid numbers are getting better, hopefully a trend that continues through Christmas. We're actually starting to inch closer and closer to the recommended 5% positivity rate! Though we'll see how the lowering of alert levels affects the numbers in the coming week. Big news in the tech world this week is how Facebook has rebranded as "Meta", which is personally a bit "meh" for me. I mean, -
On our first day back from the hospital stay I found some issues that had rise or that no one had attended to while we were away: the light switch in my bathroom was faulty (looks like some corrosion), so we couldn't turn on the light (I was able to turn it on ONCE, confirming the light itself still works, then never again) some rats had gotten into some extra chips I had stored around my soundbar was emitting a high-pitched white noise my mouse had become faulty, making it hard to NOT double-click And then I had to help
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I struggled for a bit with how to write this post. Privacy of family and medical histories are considerations, so I will not get into too much detail with that regard and limit it to Covid-related concerns. Other than that, writing about the experience might be useful to other people (and besides, if I didn't write this post, future me would find it weird!). The post ended up quite long! TLDR: We got Covid19 and had to stay in the hospital. Covid19 is serious business, be careful and avoid it at all costs. The Covid19 Run Around the last weekend
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It's been about a month since a full-blown weeknotes. Let's catch up on things! The world: PH's 2022 presidential race is in high gear; the deadline for filing of candidacy has passed, but there's still the substitution deadline on Nov 15, so there's still maneuverings going on, with the scions of darkness meeting up for negotiations in Cebu yesterday. Meanwhile, the main opposition candidate is preaching kindness, even as the liberals and the left are kind of squabbling over details and who is supporting who and who is worthy of support and whatnot. The good guys need to get their -
As of tonight, all of the household's Covid patients have been cleared and sent home from the hospital. I wish I could say that was the end of the ordeal, but not everyone came back at full strength and there may still be a significant recovery period to go. What this means for me personally is that my caretaking days are not yet done. I thought I would have the energy for a full-blown weeknotes today, but with everything I've had to handle, it might take me a few more days to get back into my familiar old routines and
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I have a bit more time and energy this week, though I am still unfortunately stuck at the hospital, taking care of loved ones. The good news is that I myself am no longer a patient, I recovered and was "discharged" a while back. Both of the loved ones still here in the hospital are past the worst of it apparently, but we still need to wait for them to recover before we can go home. The doctors are unable to give us a timeline. As you can imagine, the hospital stay has wreaked havoc on my routines, though now
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Finally managed to finish The Three-Body Problem this week, despite the recent challenges. It's a very... interesting novel at the very least. CHaracterization isn't super strong, it's one of those novels where the focus is on the world building and how it affects society and humanity at large. It's nice to have a decent sci-fi story that isn't so American centric though. The story revolves around two main characters: Ye Wenjie, a Cultural Revolution-era astrophysicist who was able to secretly establish contact with an extreterrestrial civilization called Trisolaris, and Wang Miao, a modern day applied physicist, working in nanotech, who
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Vice-President Leni Robredo finally announcing her candidacy for the presidency yesterday injected an interesting bit of energy into the online opposition. A lot of people expressed support, even many of my friends who usually stayed silent during the regular political exercises. In theory, I remain neutral, as I like to give each candidate a fair shake during the campaign period and make my final decisions as election day nears (or on the day itself even!) But this year's slate is especially bleah and bereft of actual, exciting choices that it's easy to see where I will be leaning. It's easy
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The covid situation is still unfolding, but it's no longer at home. I am relatively fine and doing well, aside from some minor things. But there are others to take care of as well. I wish more words could be spared, but that will have to wait until this is all over. Until then, the blog gets little more than a placeholder. The world can wait.: