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fred_mouse) wrote2025-05-23 02:40 pmWeb browser clicky game
hex plant growing game - quick game, simple mechanics, simple win condition. You have to infer those from your interaction with the page; if it isn't clear leave a comment and I'll explain.
found at creator's post
I couldn't get the sudoko land to work - not sure if that is a brower or an extensions issue, but I didn't care to work it out.
tcpip) wrote2025-05-22 10:38 pmChina Trip 1: Melbourne and Beijing
The next morning, Erica and I ventured out to the airport to take the big silver bird to China, where we are staying for the next ten days. The first day was pretty much entirely in transit, first to Shanghai, then taking a connecting flight to Beijing. There is not much to report on this, except to say that the flight was tolerable, the food fine, the staff excellent, and the in-house entertainment limited. "Sirrocco" is a surreal children's animated film of escapism of sisterly love which can appeal to adult viewers with good characterisation and plot, but the animation, whilst creative, lacked a little in technique; 4/5. "Dune 2" was well produced with a good soundtrack, but I felt no sense of appeal with the plot and characters all based around violence and machismo. I am tempted to give it another viewing as I was surprised by how bad it was; 2/5. "Solitude" started slowly, but developed into a grim and tragic tale of loneliness, generosity, and an intergenerational friendship with an ambiguous ending; 3/5.
The first day proper in Beijing started with a visit to Tian'anmen Square, which, of course, is flanked by several important national buildings (e.g., the parliament). The square itself is just a vast courtyard, and it's fascinating in its blandness, even if, with all the usual connotations of Chinese geomancy, it represents the head of the city's land dragon. After that, we went to Qianmen Avenue (the body), which has some rather charming alleyways running parallel to the main drag. In the evening, we were treated to a rather extraordinary theatrical piece, "The Golden Mask", a legendary tale. This show has, in my somewhat considerable experience, the most extraordinary set and costumes, including several performers with actual live white peacocks as part of their costumes and a literal flooding of the stage. Two more days in Beijing are planned, including an excursion to The Great Wall, an evening in the Old City, and finally a morning in the Museum Palace (aka the Forbidden City). But all that will have to wait for the next post on this adventure.
fred_mouse) wrote2025-05-20 12:31 pmNYR update - week 20
I'm a little bemused that it is so far through the year already. I feel like I'm disappointing past me with how slowly things are progressing, but I'm also trying to keep in mind that the list of goals are aspirational, and motivational, in that they are a range of possible things.
craft - incremental progress on multiple projects; nothing new finished.
reading - adding a new goal: to have no more than 20 books total in my currently reading and paused lists. This is a long way from that, because I paused a lot, and I haven't looked at it. However, I've finished a few things recently, and I'm trying to do two off, one on, so that I'm allowing myself to start new books, but not as many. I've finished one book acquired this year (Finding Echoes, Foz Meadows). I'd forgotten my 'read some cookbooks' goal, so at least I've remembered that now!
house - everything that doesn't live in the library is now out; I've started using the open floor as storage for things leaving the house; I'm calling that task done, with caveats.
music with the Really Sore Shoulder, I have been doing minimal music. This is not optimal, and I'm going to have to revisit. Also, I don't think that my goals were the right ones, because I'm struggling with them. I might have to revisit this and write a better set.
learning - I've been experimenting with language learning. Nothing is sticking, but it is getting there. I was doing okay with the learn to draw from the various books, and then I put my visual diary somewhere stupid. I could use something else, but I wanted this as a record of the change. So I've been procrastinating.
physical - I may abandon the ParkRun goal. With the 'I'm about to have income' comes 'I can go back to skating lessons'; this is almost certainly going to be first thing Saturday morning. I'm ambivalent about this, because an excuse to abandon ParkRun is very tempting. The sleeping goal is slipping away from me at the moment, as my insomnia has come back, and I've seen 2am twice in the last few days. Both of those I've been in bed at least an hour at that point.
organisation moving slowly, but at least it is moving. mostly by finding things to declutter.
none of the other categories have significant progress in the last week. I suspect I'm going to have to change the day of the week I write these, if I'm going to be on campus on Tuesdays (likely. I'm enrolling full time; there is a 'it's fine to work from home' clause; I work better from an office more days than not. If I'm going to do one day at home the likely candidates are Wednesday or Friday).
fred_mouse) wrote2025-05-18 09:06 pmdaily notes
- I seem to have mostly forgotten about writing offline blog notes, which means that I haven't had easy to create daily posts. It was definitely a useful thing to be doing, and I'm thinking about trying to prioritise it
- after spending a lot of last week either working on or procastinating about the application I submitted, I've allowed the weekend to be slothing about. I've read a lot of assorted things, including some of my tab backlog, a range of fanfic, and made progress on a couple of books.
- Middlest came over for afternoon tea today, which was a pleasant bit of chatting. We sorted through a small bit of one pile of stuff, identified a possible recipient for some of the items we have no use for, and lazed around.
- I'm making progress on solving my sleep cycle problems. Putting all devices down and reading a physical book is the best option, but not fabulously easy when A is trying to sleep. Putting the laptop down and reading ebooks on the ipad is reasonably successful, but there are a few easy distractions on there. I have the 'it's late, do you really want to do this' set up for all of them, but it is easy to circumvent. Many thanks to pedanther for sharing what worked for them.
tcpip) wrote2025-05-16 08:48 pmChina Events, Immigration Museum
Then, two days later, a high-level delegation from Guizhou Province came to visit as well, and the ACFS hosted a small meeting, which, due to a mutual interest, also included a discussion on the philosophy of mind. Both delegations included future invitations to their respective provinces, so perhaps that will become a combined trip in the new year. In the meantime, on Sunday, I take the great silver bird to Beijing for a two-week visit to that city, the Great Wall, Longmen, Suzhou, Wuxi, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. When I return to Melbourne, I have only a week here before I have to head off again to Nanjing to attend the 70th anniversary conference of the Jiangsu Friendship Association.
On a related tangent, this week I also managed to get to visit the Melbourne Immigration Museum. Despite living here for more than half my life and with the building's architecture rather suiting my tastes, I have neglected in all these years to actually enter the place. With the last week of their Notre Dame exhibition in place, I took the opportunity to take a look and was very impressed by pretty much everything except the Notre Dame exhibition. Nevertheless, I am going again Saturday to the final night that includes a concert.