I like French, comics, books, podcasts, (board and roleplaying) games, biking, and trains. I try to stay organized and in good (physical and mental) shape.

Moi, j'aime le français, les BD, les livres, les podcasts, les jeux (de plateau et de rôle), le cyclisme, et les trains. Je fais de mon mieux de rester organisé et en forme (physiquement et mentalement).

You can subscribe to this content through this RSS feed or this Mastodon account.



Current status: Copying information from one text message into another and reflexively almost adding Markdown blockquote formatting.



For the first time in a few years, I’m sorting feed subscriptions into folders instead of having a “monofeed.” Combined with Reeder’s lack of unread counts, I’m pleasantly surprised how this has encouraged more mindfulness in subscribing and checking feeds.



Next self-imposed challenge for improving my website-first approach to social media: How can I “repost” content from either Mastodon, Bluesky, or Micro.blog in a way that embeds it in the post on my site but then links to (or otherwise shares) it when that post goes out to those platforms?



Scientific inquiry report: Hand warmers work well enough that I feel dumb that I haven’t been using them, but they don’t fix the main problem of numb fingers. My current winter gloves usually do the trick, but it’s time to invest in some “lobster claws” for really cold commutes.



In the spirit of scientific inquiry (and getting my colleagues off my case about the color of my fingers when I get to the office), let’s see how much protection these expired-in-2022 hand warmers provide against this morning’s freezing temperatures.



Some of my recent posts that I like the best have naturally been to the one part of my site for which my Micro.blog POSSE relay isn’t working. Guess it’s time to teach myself some JSON in hopes of building a more reliable set of feeds.



Today’s bike commute getup. One more distant colleague didn’t know who I was until I spoke to her. Other folks who see me more often could recognize me by my helmet alone. 🚲

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I often wonder if a “sandbox” board game is possible. Played 7 Wonders tonight, and it’s close: I so enjoyed playing that endgame scoring almost didn’t matter. It also made me want to finish Carse’s book on finite and infinite games.



Reorganizing folders in my RSS/Mastodon/Bluesky client is making me curious about how emoji get alphabetized.

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🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'If You Like Mille Bornes, You’ll Love One Billion Users'



I wasn’t sure about a retheming of Mille Bornes for this game, but this post on design decisions was actually really reassuring. link to “If You Like Mille Bornes, You’ll Love One Billion Users”



J’ai une petite collection d’aimaintins au travail qui me donne de la joie, même si la plupart serait incompréhensible à mes collègues.

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📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories about People Who Know How They Will Die, by Ryan North, Matthew Bennardo, and David Malki !



This is one of the first books I bought for a Kindle I got in 2010. I don’t know why, but it popped into my head recently and I decided to reread it. Filled with a post-election feeling of wanting to do something amid all this powerlessness, I decided to buy a DRM-free ePub off Gumroad instead of reread the Kindle version, since it was pretty cheap and I want to further reduce my support for Amazon.



I think one of my favorite things about following a They Might Be Giants lyrics bot on Mastodon is that I’ll occasionally get a TMBG song I haven’t thought about for a while stuck in my head for a few hours.

📺 tvblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Agatha All Along



This was fun! Interesting characters and stories, and that gets it a lot of credit. Not a lot of it holds up to close scrutiny, though—character motivations don’t always make sense, and plot explanations can feel unsatisfying. Glad to have tried it, though.



Have people ever used Snopes as a verb, à la Google? Or is this just the best throwaway detail in a science fiction short story ever?

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Rather than feel dumb for losing control of my bike taking a turn too fast, I am choosing to focus on the wreck’s superficial similarity to the Akira slide.

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The thing about the Kobayashi Maru'



The Kobayashi Maru scenario is one of the best things to come out of Star Trek, and this is one of the best takes on it I’ve read. link to “The thing about the Kobayashi Maru”

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Batman: Wayne Family Adventures, by CRC Payne



Look, I’m still tired of Batman stories, and I don’t think this series really pushes back against the grittiness and violence that finally pushed me over the edge, but this is as close as you get to “wholesome Batman,” and it’s kind of fun.



Finally trying Bigelow’s “Constant Comment” after several months of meaning to. So far, it ranks pretty high on my list of non-desserty teas.

setting up an iOS image posting POSSE workflow for Hugo



Several days ago, I posted that: One of the biggest gaps in my current website-first approach to social media is an inability to snap a picture and quickly post it. I’ve wanted to tackle this for a while, but an upcoming cool vacation has me thinking I should really go for it. A couple of days later, I realized I wasn’t alone in this when Alex Sirac picked up the post on their website, and it got another sympathetic comment there, too.

📺 tvblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for The Diplomat (Season 2)



I still enjoyed this season, but I don’t think it’s as good as the first one. The characters and situations remain interesting, but the plot feels more slapdash and less carefully constructed than it did in the first season.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for Batman: Failsafe, by Chip Zdarsky



I picked this up because it had Zdarsky’s name on it, and Jorge Jiménez’s art looked gorgeous. It was a fun read, but there are all the problems with it that I have with most modern Batman: It’s violent, absurd, and bogged down in continuity. I’m glad I tried it, but I don’t miss Batman all that much.



Love me a creative rickroll, so I’m glad my brother sent me this right after I got my image posting workflow working.

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📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for How Comics Were Made: A Visual History from the Drawing Board to the Printed Page, by Glenn Fleishman



I’ve listened to Glenn on The Incomparable for years, and a rule I try to follow is to pay for creative works from creators whose content I’ve often consumed for free. This sounded interesting, I do like comics, and so I bought it on a whim. I don’t think buying a print copy was ever in the cards for me, but I wish I’d at least read it on a bigger screen than my phone: It’s beautifully designed, and there are lots of visual goodies in there.



It’s been messy, but pretty sure I’ve finally figured out how to post images to my website (and from there to social media) from my phone.

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🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on '[Article] <You have reached the clipping limit for this item> – Alex'



It never occurred to me that you could use a Kindle in such a “de-Amazoned” way… and it also infuriates me that Amazon still interferes this much. link to “[Article] – Alex”

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Bluesky, the Fediverse, and the future of social media'



I agree with a lot of this post. link to “Bluesky, the Fediverse, and the future of social media”

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'I Miss What The Mandalorian Was'



Excellent article that sums up a lot of my thinking on this show. link to “I Miss What The Mandalorian Was”



… and as long as I’m posting about fun-but-unnecessary website hacks I don’t have time for, I’d also love to redo the taxonomies and templates on my site to make it easy to navigate media reviews by author, title, series, etc. No one would use it but me, but I’d have a lot of fun with it.



One of the biggest gaps in my current website-first approach to social media is an inability to snap a picture and quickly post it. I’ve wanted to tackle this for a while, but an upcoming cool vacation has me thinking I should really go for it.

some thoughts on joining Bluesky, maintaining platform independence, and tweaking Mastodon



It’s now been over two years since I ditched Twitter, and I recently made the decision to go ahead and outright delete the account rather than leave it there to ward off imposters. It’s been really interesting to explore the new landscape of social media during this time, and I wanted to put together a post with some of my current thoughts. I’m on Bluesky now, I guess? First, I set up a Bluesky account a number of weeks ago, and I’ve been following other Bluesky accounts for a while (first via RSS, now via the Reeder app alongside RSS), but I’ve finally started actually using it since the election, which seems to be sparking some new interest in ditching Twitter.

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'A classic that really made me laugh this morning: Pachelbel’...'



Nearly spit out my lunch while watching this! link to “A classic that really made me laugh this morning: Pachelbel’…”



Il y a beaucoup plus de photos de train sur mes fils Mastodon et Bluesky qu’il y en avait sur mon fil Twitter, et ça donne de la joie.



Il arrive que je passerai bientôt quelques jours en Alsace, et j’accepterais avec plaisir des conseils pour quoi faire pendant mon séjour.



“Your browser settings are preventing an optimal experience with Microsoft 365.” Yes, and that’s how I know they’re set up properly.



Despite all the Bad Stuff happening right now, what my brain has chosen to get anxious about this morning is how I have my RSS + Micro.blog + Mastodon + Bluesky reader set up.