An update!

[flamebyrd]

It's been exactly 4 months so I suppose I should post to say I'm still around! I just don't have a lot of free time right now.

Website
My website was down for a couple of days, so I'm sorry if that affected anyone! I have pondered switching to a static HTML site generator instead of what I'm currently using, which would avoid this happening again, but see above re: free time. (If I do, I will write a tutorial for how to do it, specifically to make your own fanfic archive so you can upload a work and it automatically adds it to whatever index pages you want and then upload it anywhere that supports plain static HTML... let me know if that's of interest to anyone.)

A couple of people have emailed me with bug reports and feature requests recently, so there have been some changes:

AO3 Statistics CSV Bookmarklet: Should now work properly with Unicode characters (e.g. Chinese, Japanese) and quotation marks in titles

AO3 Works List CSV Bookmarklet: Now includes the work's recipient (if available). I also reordered the columns so apologies if that's messed everything up for you.

Games
Theory of Magic (AKA Arcanum). A couple of years ago my brother linked me to this idle/clicker game where you work a wizard up through the ranks. I suddenly remembered it the other day, figured a game where you mostly just let it sit there and do its thing was perfect for my life right now, and have been playing for almost a week at this point. Documentation is very light so it's a "discover it as you go along" sort of thing - there's a new wiki with very little information, an old wiki with lots of info that's only available on web.archive.org, a Reddit that is mostly inactive (but at least not private) and a Discord I haven't joined. But I'm having fun!

Beastieball: This is a Kickstarter for a new game by the people behind Chicory and Wandersong, both of which I loved! It seems to be a Pokemon-like Volleyball RPG. It's fully funded but they are still working on stretch goals so check it out if that sounds fun to you!

Twitter
I finally quit Twitter - Tweetdeck going away was the final straw. Still figuring out how best to fill the idle-scrolling/refreshing void in my life. Maybe I need to pick up a game?

Reading
I picked up a copy of Witch King by Martha Wells but I haven't had the chance to read it yet. I recently reread Death of the Necromancer (which is getting an updated rerelease soon) and the Fall of Ile-Rien, which I still enjoyed. I also picked up the Murderbot audiobooks in a Humble Bundle (which has already ended, sorry) so I'm looking forward to listening to those someday.

Food
I got an Instant Pot after a deep anxiety spiral about trying to reduce the amount of cooking with gas I do. I've never used a pressure cooker OR a slow cooker before! If you are a multi-cooker user and have favourite (vegetarian) recipes, please send them my way!

Comments

[alias_sqbr]

*waves*

[flamebyrd]

Hi! *waves back*

[fred_mouse]

That static site generator with adding things to an index does rather sound like something I'm trying to get my head wrapped around, although I'm kind of thinking book reviews rather than fic.

[flamebyrd]

I really don't want to go back to the days of having to manually update index pages, but I see the value of static HTML in hosting/speed/etc. A static site generator seems like the perfect compromise but it's new to me so it will require some research and experimentation. Hopefully I will be able to carve out some time soon!

[fred_mouse]

I've been flirting with ideas in R, with possibly a link to Airtable, but more likely an excel spreadsheet. But I've also been looking at blogdown. And css. And a whole heap of other things. My current expertise is shiny, so small amounts of css and JavaScript, but not enough to have decided how i want to do this. And it is probably more at the 'what are the nuts and bots' ideas stage.

Which is to say: I'd be interested in working on it with you, if that is useful, and if you see a space that my skills fit.

[flamebyrd]

I just looked up Blogdown and it uses Hugo, which is what I was pondering using, so that's neat! Feel free to ping me on Discord (or whatever) if you want to chat about it in a more synchronous fashion - I'm usually available in the evenings, daytime is variable.

If you don't mind a bit of Javascript and using Google Sheets as your data source I have used https://chriszarate.github.io/sheetrock/ in the past to easily pull data from a spreadsheet and put it in a table or list (that I can then write filters for etc) - not sure it will meet your needs but I thought I would throw it out there as an option!

[fred_mouse]

Hugo is also on my 'I should learn about it' list. I had not got far enough to work out that blogdown uses Hugo, so, ah, I guess I'll move that up the queue.

And yes, moving this to a discord discussion is a good idea.

[fred_mouse]

Pressure cooker is great for beans. Doing them in the pressure cooker and then adding them to something to be stew in the slow cooker might seem silly, but it is important for beans to be brought to the boil for enough time to do things to proteins. This is especially important for red kidney beans, which need 10 minutes at a full boil. From memory, I've done chickpeas in the slow cooker after soaking them for 24 hours. What I don't remember is if that was any good.

I've some cookbooks that I should look through for suitable recipes. If I remember, I'll blog them.

[flamebyrd]

Cooking legumes were one of the main reasons I decided to get the Instant Pot instead of a rice cooker or a Thermomix or something else. I have a pantry with many jars of legumes that are several years old at this point, hopefully they're still good! I'll definitely have to soak them first.

Thanks in advance if you find anything! I'm going to see what the local library has next time I'm there.

[cesy]

My favourite slow casserole recipe is basically veggie mince (Quorn or soy), tinned chopped tomatoes, onion, carrot, celery, haricot beans, sweetcorn, peas, mixed herbs, sweet peppers if you feel like it, mushrooms, any other veg I'm in the mood for, chuck it all in and let it simmer for a couple of hours.

Goes well with potatoes, pasta or rice, can be frozen in batches.

[flamebyrd]

Thank you! That sounds good, particularly that it's freezer-friendly. I've never even investigated vegetarian slow-cooking before because I figured it was mostly good for meat (and I didn't have a slow cooker), but it turns out there are many options to explore.

[cesy]

My other regular one is some sort of dahl or lentil stew - lentils, tomatoes, spices for a base (I tend to start with cumin), whatever veg I feel like (chopped spinach works well), and again it can freeze in batches, defrost in the fridge and then microwave. Goes well with rice or roti, or I often eat it plain.

[cesy]

Ooh, Arcanum is great, kind of like the Kittens game. Have you figured out how to log in and sync across computers or do you just back up manually?

[flamebyrd]

I feel like either it was partially inspired by the Kittens game or they both shared the same inspiration, they have a lot in common! I'm only using one computer at the moment so I haven't tried any of the syncing options - I know I read somewhere about needing to log in for it to work (makes sense) but I've never seen any way to log in.

[arduinna]

(If I do, I will write a tutorial for how to do it, specifically to make your own fanfic archive so you can upload a work and it automatically adds it to whatever index pages you want and then upload it anywhere that supports plain static HTML... let me know if that's of interest to anyone.)

I would love to see that, if you wind up doing it!

[flamebyrd]

I will do my best to carve out the time!

[bluedreaming]

Your bookmarklets are such a lifesaver (especially the stats page one) a million thank yous! (I've been meaning to email that the dreamwidth html buttons have stopped working for me but I'm still not convinced that it's not something I've inadvertently done)

specifically to make your own fanfic archive so you can upload a work and it automatically adds it to whatever index pages you want and then upload it anywhere that supports plain static HTML

This would be brilliant and I know a lot of people would be interested! (might be cool to share on fancoded if that's of interest)

The Murderbot audiobooks are absolutely delightful; I also picked up Witch King (audiobook) but haven't started yet.

[flamebyrd]

Oh yay, I'm glad they're useful! It's not just you with the Dreamwidth HTML buttons, I also noticed it while writing this entry. I know they pushed a change recently to add a rich HTML editor so it's probably related to that - I'll get a fix out soon.

I will join fancoded! Thank you for the reminder, I've been meaning to do that. (Not sure my imposter syndrome will allow me to post, but that's a later problem.)

[bluedreaming]

(I'm glad to know it wasn't just me, because that's definitely happened before, what with extensions and scripts and external css sometimes conflicting.)

Joining and lurking can be a first step!

[flamebyrd]

I've updated the Dreamwidth buttons userscript! You can reinstall from https://random.fangirling.net/scripts/dreamwidth_html_buttons - I also added the appropriate metadata so automatic updates via Tampermonkey should work in future.

[bluedreaming]

Oh thank you! I just got on my desktop (busy weekend alas) and saw the update!!

[lannamichaels]

(If I do, I will write a tutorial for how to do it, specifically to make your own fanfic archive so you can upload a work and it automatically adds it to whatever index pages you want and then upload it anywhere that supports plain static HTML... let me know if that's of interest to anyone.)

Oooh, this is definitely of interest to me!