a stream

I saw several fish swimming in the creek¹ this morning, as many as eight to twelve. A grey ghostly shadowed slow shimmering of fins and scales in a protected pocket of murky water beneath the rough old rock wall, across on the neighbor’s side.² I didn’t think I could capture them sufficiently in a photograph or video, especially at that distance.

They looked a little sickly or diseased to me, but perhaps I am projecting that onto them because the creek smells foul these days, and I understand it to be somewhat polluted, both from readings (see link in¹ below) and past personal observations³. In actuality I guess these fish are flourishing? I’ll check on them again soon.

Standalone post link: Murky Shimmer | Picture Not Taken

‘You have new memories of your relatives’ [Email Notification]

‘See memories’ [Action]

Not sure how this actually works, but I’m curious and a bit creeped out on the concept of receiving “new memories” and being notified about them via an email message.

Personal revelation? Phone as urim and thummim? The whisperings of the holy spirit via a neural interface?

Standalone post link: You Have New Memories

Framework and templates for the Watching Log are now live, including display on the now page and enabling “log entries as status updates” custom messages for watches.

However, the watching log itself is not yet populated with the films I"ve actually watched this year, just one of them as a placeholder.

Standalone post link: joshuawxyz changelog 20240808

Made significant updates to the text and layout of the home page, about page, footer, and ‘[ + ]’ menu ordering. Changed the text font to Alegreya.

Standalone post link: joshuawxyz changelog 20240804

I’m trying out Alegreya as the regular text font on this website.

I’d been using Merriweather for a few years and I liked it okay, but occasionally something felt janky with the width and spacing between characters. I’ve wanted to try something else, but messing with fonts seemed like a distraction when I don’t do enough of the basic stuff here, like actually write things, or keep the home page and menu working properly.

However, seeing how excited this guy got about a cool font inspired me to start looking at fonts again. (One of the growing number of personal-ish websites I lurk follow via RSS, a topic for another time.) The font he geeked out about wasn’t the one for me, but I encountered the Novel font, tried out the demo on a local build of my site, and really got my heart set on using it. Eventually I came to terms with the reality that I can’t or shouldn’t spend that kind of money on a font for this little hobbyist website, though.

So, I pulled myself away from browsing Fonts In Use and artisan font foundries, went back to Google Fonts to settle on something I can afford. Some of the Google Fonts, such as Alegreya, do appear to have come from cool artisan font foundries, so at least there is that. I don’t think I open up my “indieweb” site to tracking and other garbage just by using Google Fonts, but I could be wrong. I’m using free services for almost every aspect of this website, so I’m likely compromised and beholden to all sorts of interests.

Headings remain IBM Plex Mono. I have a vague sense that this pairing of a mono heading with a serif is not ideal and wasn’t ideal with Merriweather, either. However, the probability that I’m breaking design rules and conventions is admittedly an energizing agent. There’s something in me that wants things to be purposefully off and ugly and wrong; part boredom with convention, and part fear of the inability to ever get it “right.” Maybe this isn’t off enough, though? Mainly I’m just weirdly committed to these precious mono headings, while I don’t want a sans font for my text because I just prefer serif fonts for printing or displaying text. So it is what it is. I can do whatever I want here, and I can always change it again, and, to quote my old favorite band’s blog quoting Jean Genet, “to achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.” These are individually good fonts, though, so is this cacophony in good taste? Power clashing? Or just sloppy, inelegant.

Standalone post link: A note on the type, 2024-08-04

Finally got around to this one, and Will watched it with me. Should have tried harder to see this in the theater, it deserves as big of a screen as it can get.

On the other hand Will wouldn’t have been ready for this any time before now..

Also have Part 2, need to watch it this week.

Standalone post link: Watching Log: Dune (2021)

I love that in the afterword the author essentially admits that a germ of this book was in fact a crush on an arctic explorer, written for the enjoyment of friends who perhaps share the romantic obsession. I had already assumed as much while reading the narrative, so it was refreshing for her to not be coy or pretentious about this.

Great reminder to me as a would-be writer that a way into this (maybe the way into this?) is to unabashedly pursue an idea that interests me, and learn and write all I can about it. When the writer is interested in what they are writing about and having fun writing it, that intrigue and fun should come through to the reader. It worked in the case of this book for this reader, at least.

Past Log Updates

2024-08-02 :

Picked this up yesterday and tried it out simply because it had the next closest due date of all my current library checkouts, would not be renewable. Spent a couple hours reading instead of doing other things, then stayed up past midnight reading until I got too sleepy to actually finish it.

Not world-shattering but has a little bit of everything, like the blurbs say, and it’s fun. Like a lighter, funnier, more romantic David Mitchell book? (Thinking Bone Clocks, Cloud Atlas, etc.)

Resources

Standalone post link: Reading Log: The Ministry of Time

I’ve been reading this with my son - a reread for both of us, as I read it to him years ago. We finished it last night and were surprised; what we remembered as the final scenes of this book must actually be the opening scenes of The Wild Robot Escapes. Very nice flow from one book to the next, I guess? We will be moving on to the next book.

Past Log Updates

2024-07-25:

Continuing to read this at bedtime with my son, every other night or so.

2024-07-10 :

Started reading The Wild Robot with Will tonight.

We started reading Sheine Lende the night before last but it was making Will feel quite anxious and so wasn’t a good bedtime read.

Resources

• I really hyped this book back in 2016 on Granite Media. The review is still there, and I still stand behind it: The Wild Robot – Granite Media

Standalone post link: Reading Log: The Wild Robot

Past Log Updates

DATE :

Resources

Standalone post link: Reading Log: Ultraviolet

Past Log Updates

DATE :

Resources

Standalone post link: Reading Log: Meet Me in the Fourth Dimension