2022 September
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Bits and Pieces It is a stormy Sunday afternoon right now. Supertyphoon Karding is barrelling towards Luzon and we are currently on signal no. 4 I think. (The highest level is signal no. 5). This is coming roughly a day before the same day that Typhoon Ondoy devastated Metro Manila 13 years ago. This is the third supertyphoon to hit the country in a month, yet another indication of how the climate problems are intensifying. PH/Covid: Covid cases continue to plateau and maybe even rise a bit here in NCR, and the positivity rate is climbing. Coincidentally, Biden declared that
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I already read the first Mistborn trilogy back in 2017. Happily, Tor ebook club recently gave away the next three books in the series for free, probably as a bit of promotion since another Mistborn book is scheduled to come out this November. The Alloy of Law is the first book of the so-called Wax and Wayne subseries for Mistborn, set some 300 years after the end of the first trilogy. The world and society of Scadrial is now in a kind of western / steampunk era, and the book opens with our protagonist hunting down outlaws in the fringe
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When it comes to technology, my knowledge largely comes from my lack of fear over trying new things and pressing buttons just to see what they do. My consulting clients ask me where I learned how fix that thing that they called me in for – even if I may not have encountered their specific issue before. I explain that the main thing is my lack of fear. That I’m willing to just try things to see if I can figure it out. Push buttons just to see what they do. And, in doing so, I can now fix that -
Bits and Pieces PH/Covid: It looks like our downtrend is at an end, especially in NCR. Hopefully this mini-surge stays manageable. The World: Queen Elizabeth's funeral is tomorrow. The British have been waiting in a miles-long queue to view her remains (or at least the coffin I guess). The Queue has been called "a triumph of Britishness". I scanned this piece of scratch paper that had been on top of my desk for the past week or so: (Click photos to view full-size) The left half is a Superman/Batman doodle I did over the week. Sometime this past week, someone -
This week's header image was generated using DALL-E with the prompt a ultradetailed beautiful panting of a stylish woman sitting on a chair looking over a peaceful bay during sunset, by conrad roset, greg rutkowski and makoto shinkai. Bits and Pieces The big news this past week is the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, Britain's longest reigning monarch. She is succeeded by Charles III. And I think a lot of Brits discovered how many people on the internet weren't too fond of either their beloved monarch or their history of colonialism. PH/Covid: Cases seem to have plateaued, instead of continuing -
I didn't watch any movies the previous week, so I decided to watch a few this week. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) I have a vague recollection of watching this before at David's house, but I have no memory of the plot or anything, so this was practically a first watch. This was so good! Since I was feeling a bit sleepy I planned to watch only maybe half of the film, but ended up just sticking through til the end. Felt a lot less whimsical and a lot more high stakes compared to the other Ghibli
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Maskerade is Discworld book no. 18, from the Witches subseries. Took me a couple of weeks to get through this one, on and off. It's a combination murder mystery/investigation and parody of opera-related tropes. The exploits and schemes of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg are always welcome, but I would have probably appreciated this more if I was into the Phantom of the Opera. Not my favorite of the series. After this one, I only have one more physical Discworld book I haven't read. (Which implies it's time to look for some more...) Side note: I really like this particular -
Bits and Pieces It's September! In the Philippines, that's usually an excuse to start the Christmas season already. TV shows are already counting down how many "sleeps" there are remaining until Christmas. During recent years, it's become a local meme that as September nears, Jose Mari Chan is getting ready to pounce, because his age-old song "Christmas in Our Hearts" is a popular choice for background music in malls and such. The week was a bit busy, as I finally managed to dig into some work I've been putting off. The end of the month always brings with it a -
The next Arena set is already here, so I here's my much-delayed Alchemy Horizons Baldur's Gate limited stats! Events Win Loss Total Winrate Total 11 34 28 62 0.5484 With splash 2 18 18 36 0.5 By Main Colors WB 1 1 3 4 0.25 WR 2 7 3 10 0.7 WG 2 5 6 11 0.4545 UR 1 0 3 3 0 UG 2 11 5 16 0.6875 BR 3 10 8 18 0.5556 By Color White 5 13 12 25 0.52 Blue 3 11 8 19 0.5789 Black 4 11 11 22 0.5 Red 6 17 14 31
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A couple of months ago I got access to the DALL-E, an AI/machine learning model that lets you generate images from natural language descriptions. Basically they have a server they run and you get some limited number of credits per month (?) to generate images. I only got around to trying it last week and posted some of my samples in the most recent weeknotes. Since then, I feel like there's a spike in the number of AI image generation-related news and articles I encounter. (More likely than not, I just notice them more now that I've actually played with