Weekly Notes: March 17–23, 2025

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  • ♿️ Busy week at work. The biggest success there was launching an “Accessibility Liaisons” initiative, looking for volunteers across campus to learn more about digital accessibility to assist others in their area. Sent out a campus-wide email about it, and got the first four volunteers within an hour, and were up to twelve by the end of the day. Promising start!
  • 🚀 This weekend was the all-staff meeting weekend for Seattle Worldcon 2025. Friday afternoon I joined in person and got to put a few faces to names I’d only seen online until now; Saturday I stayed home and Zoomed in, since there was less that day that I needed to be present for, and then Sunday I joined the group for a tour of the Seattle Convention Center Summit building where the majority of the convention will be happening. The new convention center building is huge, and really nice. Going to be a great location for Worldcon!
  • 🎻 After the tour, my wife and I went to the Seattle Symphony’s performance of selections from the Fantasia movies, played live as the film clips were projected on a screen. Really enjoyed the performance, and it was fun to see how they synced the performance to the video.
  • 🚀♿️ Had a nice bit of success in crossing the streams between my paid and volunteer work. One of the pages we’d just set up for the Seattle Worldcon site (page not linked, because it’s not fully public) included a drop-down menu that revealed more information on the page, changing depending on which item in the menu was chosen. While working my way through the Trusted Tester training materials, I realized that the current implementation would fail the testing process because those page changes weren’t being announced to assistive technology. A bit of digging, experimentation, and testing, and I figured out how to properly implement an ARIA live region so that the page passes testing.

📸 Photos

A red Chevy Sonic being strapped onto a flatbed tow truck.

Not the best start to Tuesday morning. And it didn’t get much better from there; a failed water pump had led to the car dumping its coolant and cracking the radiator and coolant reservoir. A lot of money and a few days wait for repairs, that turned into a few more days when the wrong part got shipped to the service shop. Hoping we’ll have it back on Monday.

A wide-angle shot of a huge convention center ballroom, with maroonish side walls and a high ceilig with a pattern that's formed by hanging planks of wood.

The main ballroom of the convention center Summit building is huge. I mean, I know these spaces are big, but standing in it while it’s completely empty was impressive. I spent a couple moments trying to estimate how many times I could fit my entire house in there (stacked vertically as well as arranged horizontally) before just going with “lots” and giving up.

A concert hall filled with people; on the stage are seats for an orchestra below a large screen showing the logo for Disney's Fantasia.

It was good to be back in Benaroya Hall for the Seattle Symphony. The last time we were here was one of the last Messiah performances before the pandemic kicked in and shut everything down.

📚 Reading

  • Read Requiem by Kevin Ryan and Michael Jan Friedman.
  • Started Polostan by Neal Stephenson.

📺 Watching

Started NCIS: Origins. It’s pretty standard NCIS, but the ’90s setting makes for some entertaining music choices, and we’re being pretty impressed by the casting for younger versions of known characters. Also been doing a lot of Antiques Roadshow, because it’s soothing.

🎧 Listening

A few months ago I’d pre-ordered Ministry’s latest album, The Squirrely Years Revisited, where they update a bunch of those early synth pop tracks that Jourgensen has practically disowned for decades. So far, first impressions are good. While a lot of recent Ministry hasn’t done much for me, as they’ve moved more towards straightforward metal over industrial, they’ve done a really good job of blending the original synth pop tracks with their modern sound, landing in a place that works well for me. Glad Al decided to admit that these tracks are part of his history!

🔗 Linking

  • Assuming the old plugin (last updated in 2008) I found still works, this site will be participating in CSS Naked Day on April 9.
  • Robert Alexander, RSS blogrolls are a federated social network: Something for me to dig more into when I have time.
  • Chris Dalla Riva, The Greatest Two-Hit Wonders: “But if one hit is a miracle, then two hits is a near impossibility. Two-hit artists sit in a weird space, though. Pop stars a remembered because they are very famous. One-hit wonders are remembered for the opposite.”
  • Anand Giridharadas, The opposite of fascism: “The best revenge against these grifters and bigots and billionaires and bullies is to live well, richly, together. The best revenge is to refuse their values. To embody the kind of living — free, colorful, open — they want to snuff out.”

Requiem by Kevin Ryan and Michael Jan Friedman

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Book 17 of 2025: Requiem by Kevin Ryan and Michael Jan Friedman: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Picard gets thrown back in time to Cestus III – just days before the Federation’s disastrous first contact with the Gorn (well, first contact before Strange New Worlds started up…I’m still unclear how they’re reconciling that whole thing, but that’s not for here…). Fleshes out the story of the Cestus III colony in really good ways, with a standard but perfectly acceptable framing story as the Enterprise tries to get Picard back.

Me holding Enigma

Weekly Notes: March 10–16, 2025

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This is the second week in a row where I’m actually posting this wrap-up on Monday morning, but backdating it to Sunday evening. Sometimes life just gets in the way!

That said, even with life getting in the way, this is kind of a slow week. Work (both the paid job and the volunteer jobs) has been busy and we’ve had some general home things to take care of, and those have taken up enough time that there’s not really a lot for this week’s wrap-up.

📸 Photos

A store category sign for Artist Canvas that has been vandalized to read Fartist Canvass.

As seen at a local Joann’s Fabrics; I snickered, because I’m that mature.

📚 Reading

Read Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente.

📺 Watching

We almost finished S3 of Evil, but then had a few busy days and wanted to make sure we could concentrate on the show, so took a detour into the soothing regularity of PBS’s Antiques Roadshow. And while we do enjoy it, I kind of want to challenge them to do a “breaking the pattern” episode that does not include a common musical instrument, Rolex watch, or weapon or other war memorabilia. Sure, being formulaic is part of the appeal, but they could vary the formula a little more than they do.

🎧 Listening

Another batch of requests for the Norwescon dances came in, so I’ve added and have been listening to the following albums, plus a few one-offs that aren’t listed:

Of these, Chappell Roan, Kraftwerk, Robyn, and Thumpasaurus have been catching my ear the most. Eisunfunk and Kontravoid have good bits but are a bit too noisy to go in my regular rotation, and Lady Gaga is…well, Gaga. Not bad, there’s some good dancefloor bits, but honestly, for almost all of her songs, I couldn’t tell you which album they came off of. Mayhem is actually a bit disappointing in that regard; for all the pre-release talk of how she was working with artists/producers in the darker/industrial side of things, it really just sounds like everything else she’s released. Gaga does what she does well, but it all blends together.

🔗 Linking

🇺🇸 Too much of what I read online was focused on current news and the fall of America, so nothing of note to share.

Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente

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Book 16 of 2025: Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A hilarious Eurovision-in-space with humanity’s very existence at stake. I love Valente’s near stream-of-consciousness style and descriptions that draw very well deserved comparisons to Douglas Adams. Great, and I’m both looking forward to reading the recently released sequel and seeing Valente at Norwescon in a month.

Me holding Space Opera

Weekly Notes: Mar 3–9, 2025

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  • 🏚️ Ah, the joys of owning a 30-some year old house. We finally got around to having the bathroom fan replaced. We’d said to each other that we didn’t really think the fan that was there actually did much of anything (other than make noise), and the contractor had the same opinion, describing it as a “toy”. Now we have a new fan that’s larger, quieter, actually moves air, and vents into an insulated vent hose instead of the uninsulated one that was dripping condensation back into the bathroom during last month’s cold snap. Improvements have been made!
  • 🕺🏻 Made it out to The Mercury on Saturday night for some stompyboot üntz-üntz gothclubbing time. A slow night, with some faces I recognized but not really anyone I knew, but the music was good and I got some good floor time in, so it was worthwhile.
  • ⌚️🥱 Insert my biannual (semiannual? twice a year) rant on the evil that is daylight saving time, how much I hate the time change, and how frustrating it is that Washington voted to get rid of the time change years ago, but did it the wrong damn way, so it did no good. If we could just ditch DST and stay on standard time, this would all be done with.

📸 Photos

Me sitting in our living room holding my iPhone in my right hand and my iPad with my left hand, and with my MacBook on my lap, as I take a selfie with the latest book I read to blog about it.

From my wife, amused by my lap full of Apples as I took the selfie to go with the blog post about the book I’d just finished.

A skeletal ribcage, head, and arms, with tattered bat-like wings, lit all in red, against blue- and amber-toned bits of ceiling in the background.

Decor at the Mercury.

📝 Writing

📚 Reading

📺 Watching

  • 🇺🇸 We did not watch Trump’s State of the Union. Masochism just isn’t my thing.
  • We started Alone: Australia, where people with far more outdoor skills than we have get dropped in the middle of the Tasmanian wilderness to survive as long as they can. Because, yes, this is totally something normal people do.
  • We’ve also come back to season three of Evil. I kinda want the pop-up books (and love the way what’s essentially an opening sequence gag keeps getting worked into the action of the show).

🎧 Listening

We’re starting to get requests in for the Norwescon dances, which is always a fun way to be introduced to music I don’t know. So far, I’ve added the following to my collection:

🔗 Linking

  • April 9 is CSS Naked Day, which I should get in on: “The idea behind CSS Naked Day is to promote web standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of HTML, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and of course, a good old play on words. In the words of 2006, it’s time to show off your <body> for what it really is.”
  • Mozi: An interesting looking, privacy focused app to coordinate with friends for real-world encounters. An “I’m going to be in [place] at [time]” sort of thing. Currently iOS only, Android maybe in the future.
  • Well, bummer: The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest has ended after a 42-year run.
  • Priscilla Page, Mad Max: Fury Road: Excellent essay on the best of the Mad Max films. There was so much good analysis and commentary on this film in the months after it came out; diving back into that from a more recent perspective was a pleasure.

Uncanny Magazine Issue 63 edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas

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Book 14 of 2025: Uncanny Magazine Issue 63 edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

My favorites this issue were “10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days” by Samantha Mills, “Butterfly Pavilion” by G. Willow Wilson, and “Infinite Halves by J.L. Akagi.

Me holding Uncanny 63 on my iPad

Weekly Notes: Feb 24–Mar 2, 2025

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  • 🍃 Big storms hit the Seattle area on Monday and Tuesday, with lots of power outages. We didn’t lose power at home this time, which was nice. Work lost power early Tuesday morning, and though it was back by the time we got in, there were DNS issues that kept campus offline until almost 8:30. Not an auspicious start to the day.
  • 💸 Friday was the “don’t spend anything” economic blackout day. Honestly, this one was easy for me, as I rarely if ever buy anything on Fridays anyway (don’t get coffee or anything on the way to work, bring my own lunch, all household shopping is generally done on Saturday or Sunday, etc.). I have to admit, my cynical side doubts that enough people actually participated for any company to even notice, let alone for it to actually make an impression. But it’s a start, which is good, and hey, you never know — maybe my cynical side will be proven wrong?
  • 🚀 Saturday was this month’s Norwescon planning meeting, so I got to hang out with con friends for a while. This year, in addition to my usual behind-the-scenes duties (website admin, social media admin, Philip K. Dick Award ceremony coordinator, assistant historian) and visible duties (Thursday night DJ, Philip K. Dick Award ceremony emcee), I’ll also be paneling! I posted my tentative schedule earlier today.

📸 Photos

Panoramic view of trees and grass under a bright blue sunny sky with the Puget Sound and Olympic Mountains in the distance.

The view from the balcony outside my office at work on our first really good (false) spring day this year.

📚 Reading

📺 Watching

  • Finished S19 of Project Runway, and though some contestants left earlier than we would have liked, we were not disappointed with the winner.

🔗 Linking

  • NYT (non-NYT link), The Man Behind the ‘Economic Blackout’ Served Time for Sex-Related Offense: “In 2007, Mr. Schwarz was sentenced by a Connecticut judge to 90 days in jail and five years’ probation for disseminating voyeuristic material, according to a representative from the Middlesex County criminal court clerk’s office who reviewed court records while speaking with The New York Times earlier this week.”

  • Marlies on Mastodon: “The vatican needed a latin word for tweet, because the pope tweets. Or tweeted, I suppose, given the whole dead or dying situation. Anyway, they call them breviloquia (s breviloquium) which is honestly a great word even tho it’s not very brief itself. Given its nature and etymology I think we should be able to use it platform-independently and apply it to toots, skeets and even Truths as well. Anyway thank you for reading this breviloquium.”

  • Joan Westenberg, Why Personal Websites Matter More Than Ever:

    The Internet used to be a connected web of message boards and personal websites. I’m talking 1995 to 2005, when being online meant owning your piece of the web, carving it out yourself, maintaining it, giving a damn about it. It was the age of truly sovereign digital identity and content, built on a direct connection between creators and audiences, who found and fell in love with each other on their terms.

    HTML was an almost democratizing force, giving a generation of people the tools they needed to stake their claim and plant their flag in the ground. The personal website was a statement of intent, a manifesto, a portfolio, a piece of digital architecture you could be damn proud of.

    And then something changed.

  • Apple has its issues, but at least this isn’t one of them. Shareholders voted against removing DEI policies; the board had already recommended this decision.

  • If (like me) you’re still using Facebook (or, unlike me, Instagram/Whatsapp/Meta services), you should follow these simple steps to minimize the amount of data you give Meta. (Also, since this is from John Oliver, the URL is great.)

  • Trivial Einstein on Mastodon: “We have a whole classic parable on the subject of not crying wolf, to the point where ‘crying wolf’ is something of a dead cliché. In the English-speaking world, pretty much everyone knows what ‘to cry wolf’ means, even if they’ve never actually heard the parable. We don’t think about the story. We make the semantic leap from the phrase to ‘false positive.’ And we are taught over and over that crying wolf is always bad. Which is why we find ourselves in situations like the one in which we currently find ourselves.”

My Norwescon 47 Schedule

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Promo image with art by Wayne Barlowe of an orange-tinted alien landscape, and the text, Norwescon 47: Through the Cosmic Telescope, April 17–20, 2025, DoubleTree by Hilton Seattle Airport, SeaTac, WA.

Norwescon 47 is coming up quick, and this year, in addition to my usual behind-the-scenes duties (website admin, social media admin, Philip K. Dick Award ceremony coordinator, assistant historian) and visible duties (Thursday night DJ, Philip K. Dick Award ceremony emcee), I’ll also be paneling!

Here’s my (tentative, but should be pretty solid) schedule for the con; any time not listed here when I’m not sleeping, I’ll likely be found wandering the convention, hanging out with people, getting into ridiculously geeky conversations, enjoying the costuming, and generally seeing what’s going on:

Thursday, 4/17

  • Thursday night dance setup (7–8 p.m.): Making sure the noise goes boom as it should.
  • Introduction to Fandom Dancing (8–9 p.m., Grand 3): Teaching people how to do things like the Time Warp, the Rasputin, the Thriller dance, and so on.
  • Thursday Night Dance: Star Trek vs. Star Wars (9 p.m.–1 a.m., Grand 3): I DJ. Noise goes boom! People boogie.

Friday, 4/18

  • A few Philip K. Dick award related things during the day.
  • Lifetime Dinner (5–7 p.m.): Munchies and chatting with other lifetime members, the guests of honor, and the Philip K. Dick award nominees.
  • Philip K. Dick Award Ceremony doors open (6:30 p.m., Grand 3): Welcoming all to the award ceremony.
  • Philip K. Dick Award Ceremony (7–8:30 p.m., Grand 3): Featuring readings of selections from the nominated works (read by their authors if attending) and the presentation of the the award.

Saturday, 4/19

  • Basics of Accessible Documents and Websites (7–8 p.m., Cascade 10): Aimed primarily at authors, especially if self-publishing, small publishers, but also for anyone distributing writing online. An overview of digital accessibility and tips on how to make sure that what is being published can be read by everyone, including readers with disabilities.

A Very British Murder by Lucy Worsley

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Book 13 of 2025: A Very British Murder by Lucy Worsley: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Historian Lucy Worsley looks at the growth of murder (fictional and real) as entertainment in British media. Fascinating and a lot of fun to read; if you’ve ever enjoyed one if Worsley’s TV historical documentaries (we’ve become big fans), this has the same humor, and it’s decidedly her voice.

Me holding A Very British Murder