This was a delightful combination of palace intrigue, mystery, and exploring how we deal with grief and abuse. All of it self-contained and easy to follow from start to finish.
Set in a fantasy world with elves and goblins, I feel that you could swap out the races with anything and it would still feel as familiar as the author deals with how people look at different races and cultures and how they apply to class.
One of the things that I really enjoyed about this book is the perspective of the main protagonist, Maia. He’s thrust into a very precarious position of becoming a ruler of an empire that he’s only been given a hint of during his joke of an education1. Although there are some emotional outbursts, I’m honestly impressed he didn’t immediately order heads to roll as soon as he was in command; history has shown worse examples.
Another thing about this book that I enjoyed is that it has a mystery that is being solved but doesn’t have the perspective of the detective in the narration. I think of it as if I were the police chef and having Columbo or Sherlock come to me and report every once in a while. It’s important that the mystery is solved but a large part of what occupies the main protagonist is dealing with the responsibility of being a ruler. I don’t know if I’ve ever read so much about what is involved in clerical duties in a fictional setting.
Overview
The book tells the story of Maia, a young man of mixed Elven and Goblin heritage, who unexpectedly becomes Emperor of the Elflands, and has to contend with the court's byzantine power structure as well as racial and social tension in his realm.
Overall, I feel this is a very nice, fairly low stakes read and would recommend it.
I’m reminded of all the times that I’d see empty liquor bottles in the teacher parking lot when I was in high school. ↩︎
Small but significant update to the plugin so that it can handle exceptions as defined in Hugo v0.141.0. I didn’t really notice this when it came out and was very happy that Bryce Wray already had a fix in his theme repository.
I do not know where they are going to go from here. I feel that all the actors really did a great job doing their individual roles. I found them to be believable on a lot of levels. But, I don't feel excited about visiting The White Lotus again in the future.
The White Lotus is like a sugary treat. It’s nice but you shouldn’t eat too much of it.
This season promised and delivered more of the same things that we saw in other seasons; people behaving poorly in exotic location.
I’m ok with that, because it’s part of the shows DNA. It takes a spotlight to the inequities involved with these vacation resorts. Other have written about this so much better than I have, so I won’t go into details1.
I felt the acting was amazing in this, but overall the season felt rushed and yet too long at the same time. I later found out that some things were edited out of the show due to our current political climate and maybe that’s what I’m needing to get this show over the top.
Overview
Set at a luxurious wellness resort in Thailand, the lives of wealthy guests and dedicated staff intertwine in unexpected ways. The season explores themes of privilege, personal transformation, and cultural contrasts, all set against the backdrop of stunning locales and intricate social dynamics.
I writing this while I should really be taking a nap. ↩︎
I've been working on an update for my website theme to scratch a technical curiosity I was feeling related to authorship of individual posts in comparison to the entire site. After reading a couple resources, I decided to ask on the Hugo forums if there was an ideal way to add author information. I kept running into an issues and figured that it might be related to the version change.
Warnings are future errors. A technical debt for waiting to come due.
Here are the warning messages if you want to read over them.
WARN The "gist" shortcode was deprecated in v0.143.0 and will be removed in a future release. See https://gohugo.io/shortcodes/gist for instructions to create a replacement.
WARN The "twitter", "tweet", and "twitter_simple" shortcodes were deprecated in v0.142.0 and will be removed in a future release. Please use the "x" shortcode instead
I have flashbacks of when I was working with another static site generator called Pelican that I enjoyed for many years until one day I did an update1 that took the site down because I had to find fixes for all the different components that weren’t working anymore.
On some levels, I understand that I don’t need to upgrade and that’s part of why I’m on my current hosting provider. The point of my blog is to communicate with the World Wide Web, get my thoughts together, and fulfill that part of me that likes to create. I feel that some of the things that I create for this blog are only used during the creation and never utilized afterwards.
What’s frustrating about these warnings are they are related to shortcodes built into Hugo itself. They are part of the documentation and examples that Hugo has to showcase what the project can do. I feel that it’s a real help when writing an article to avoid pasting the larger and larger code blocks used to embed something into a post. But with the changing technical and political landscapes, I can see why these changes are coming.
I’m sad.
Further bitrot.
I’ve already removed most if not all of the twitter links on my site and based on the last time I checked traffic, no one was reading it anyway. The gist changes are a little sadder for me because I was using them as reference in some of my favorite posts and I feel that people still read those.
But, I’m not updating the version today
The current version on the server is 0.117 and that’s been really solid. There is a version .140 that’s available but I wasn’t able to get it working.
Problem for stoot
I was able to take a code sample from Bryce last year and make it a plugin for Micro.blog users and I named it stoot after the shortcode that Bryce used for it. Unfortunately, it’s now giving me an error in my local environment.
The following is a truncated snippet of the error.
ERROR render of "/" failed: failed to render shortcode "stoot": failed to process shortcode: "/Users/mandaris/Code/local-hugo/themes/stoot/layouts/shortcodes/stoot.html:13:28": execute of template failed: template: _shortcodes/stoot.html:13:28: executing "_shortcodes/stoot.html" at <$urlToGet>: can't evaluate field Err in type resource.Resource
---
toot.html:13:28: executing "_shortcodes/stoot.html" at <$urlToGet>: can't evaluate field Err in type resource.Resource: Resource.Err was removed in Hugo v0.141.0 and replaced with a new try keyword, see https://gohugo.io/functions/go-template/try/
And yes, it did say toot.html even though it was from stoot.html. One problem at a time!!
I’ve decided that my next actions will be the following.
Ignore the gist issue. It’s marked for a future release and there are directions on how to replace it. I have a about a handful of examples in my test suite of content (mostly the same code but on different pages)
Learn how to keep multiple copies of Hugo local so that I can test this kind of thing easier.
I took it for granted that a project would just work better after and upgrade; all reward and no consequences. You should not only backup your content but the environment. Look at how much work people maintain game emulators do in order to keep their backups running. ↩︎
The book description states that it’s part of a wider universe, but I feel the story is mostly self contained with an option to make it the start of a larger series. The author has even set up a webpage that contains information about the book. I especially like the Notes on influence section.
So check it out if you want to do a little light reading.
Overview
Robin Sloan expands the Penumbraverse to new reaches of time and space in a rollicking far-future adventure. It is eleven thousand years from now. A lot has happened, and yet a lot is still very familiar. Ariel is a boy in a remote village under a wizard’s rule. Like many adventurers before him, Ariel is called to explore a world full of eye-popping discoveries and challenges: unknown enemies, a mission to rescue the world, a girl. Here, as they say, be dragons. But none of this happens before Ariel encounters an entity from an earlier civilization, a sentient, sensitive artificial intelligence with a special perspective on all of human history—who becomes both Ariel’s greatest ally . . . and our narrator. Moonbound is an adventure into the richest depths of Story itself from the creator of the Penumbraverse, Robin Sloan. It is a deeply satisfying epic of ancient scale, blasted through the imaginative prism of one of our most forward-thinking writers. And this is only the beginning.
I’ve switched to another theme so that I could feel that I can make more drastic changes and customizations without worrying about effecting other people.
I’m calling this version 1.4.0 and would like to know what others think.
At Braille Institute, we’ve created a family of hyperlegible™ fonts designed to improve legibility and readability for individuals with low vision. These carefully crafted fonts feature clear, highly distinctive letters and numbers that make reading easier and more accessible.
I’ll probably serve it directly from the site instead of linking it from google or adobe.
If you're looking for something light and easy going than this is a good place to find it. Easy to follow plot that one of the characters jokes about being easy figure out.
I was tired of doom scrolling and this popped up. In fact, I started watching it fully expecting to be interrupted. I also thought it can’t be that bad; they’re making another sequel and I got what I expected:
Cartoonish action where there’s ton of danger and yet noone gets hurt so much that they don’t make it to the end of the movie
Jim Carrey acting over the top
All in all, I don’t remember much about the plot but I’ll check out the third one when it becomes available to stream.
Overview
After settling in Green Hills, Sonic is eager to prove he has what it takes to be a true hero. His test comes when Dr. Robotnik returns, this time with a new partner, Knuckles, in search for an emerald that has the power to destroy civilizations. Sonic teams up with his own sidekick, Tails, and together they embark on a globe-trotting journey to find the emerald before it falls into the wrong hands.
The world has always been crazy. The only difference between when I was a child and now is that the world has been become smaller. The effects of the proverbial butterfly wings come faster than I am ready for. How does someone respond to so much so quickly?
In a lot of ways, I guess this is what “we” wanted.
The world’s knowledge at our fingertips.
But, in order to not get lost in the storms that the butterfly wings produce, you have to ground yourself.
To do that, I’m challenging myself to do more reflection at the beginning and end of my day.
I’m just mentioning in on this blog so that those who know me will hold me accountable. I’m also hoping that those who are reading this will find it comforting to know that, if they feel the same way, that they are not alone.
Apple announced the days for the upcoming developer conference and for the first time that I can recall, I didn’t really know what to feel. For years, I’ve had being a Mac user as part of my identity. I have shirts still in the original plastic celebrating different operating system releases. I remember standing in lines for products and software while chatting with everyone else in line about what feature they were looking forward to.
But, what about this one?
What am I feeling?
If I had to sum it up in one word?
It would be “joyless”.
Now - more than ever - I feel that Apple is no longer the Apple that delights but the Apple Inc. we see today.
Is this release going to make development of good to great software easier or is this another chance to navigate more services into our lives?
Mandaris
