JF.org BlogJason Fleshmanhttp://www.jasonfleshman.org/brain_farts2024-03-05T12:09:01Z3/5/2024 - To those who are gonetag:www.jasonfleshman.org,2024-03-05:bf2024-03-05T05:00:00Z2024-03-05T12:09:01Z<p>Happy 70th, Mom.</p>2/19/2024 - When did Mötley Crüe become classic rock?tag:www.jasonfleshman.org,2024-02-19:bf2024-02-19T05:00:00Z2024-02-19T00:00:00Z<p>Bowling for Soup's song "1985" is now farther in our past than any point of the year 1985 was in "1985"'s past.</p><p class="code">let y1985 = new Date(1985, 0, 1);<br>let bfs1985 = new Date(2004, 6, 26);<br>let today = new Date(2024, 1, 18);<br>console.log(bfs1985.getTime() - y1985.getTime());<br><span class="output">>> 617410800000</span><br>console.log(today.getTime() - bfs1985.getTime());<br><span class="output">>> 617418000000</span></p><p>You're welcome.</p>2/16/2024 - Slow progress is still progresstag:www.jasonfleshman.org,2024-02-16:bf2024-02-16T05:00:00Z2024-02-16T05:00:00Z<p>I had to buy a new pair of jeans recently. And for once they're a smaller size than the old ones.</p><p>I'm down to a 44-inch (112cm) waist, and about 230 pounds (104kg). That got me wondering how long it had been since I'd seen the metric milestone of 100kg (220lbs). I figured it had been quite a while, probably the last time I got serious about my diet back before I brought Ginger home.</p><p>Turns out I was very wrong. When I wrote <a href="/brain_farts/archive/2008/04/28">about getting a dog</a>, I weighed in at 175 pounds (80kg). That was actually pretty close to my weight goal of 170. And I was that weight as recently as 2008! I've really done a number on myself the last 16 years.</p><p>At my heaviest, before I caught Covid over Christmas 2021, I weighed in at 265 (120kg). It took me <a href="/brain_farts/archive/2022/12/12">almost a full year</a> to get down to 234. And another year after that to get to 230. So that goal of 170 is probably more than a bit aspirational. Can't hurt to try though.</p><p>On the upside, this feels more sustainable. I've gotten myself into a rhythm with the walking and I'm slowly whittling away at how much I eat. Even improving my diet a little bit, little things like lunch meat or tuna salad sandwiches instead of PB&J. I still go out to eat too often though, but that'll probably always be the case given how little enjoyment I get out of cooking for just myself.</p><p>But hey, new pants.</p>1/15/2024 - Baby steps into the 21st centurytag:www.jasonfleshman.org,2024-01-15:bf2024-01-15T05:00:00Z2024-01-15T05:00:00Z<p>The legacy site I've been maintaining since before it was a legacy site is finally starting to ride off into the sunset. Which means it's time for me to write code in something other than ASP Classic and vanilla Javascript.</p><p>I'm not lying when I say I've written Java code this century, but it's pretty close. I'm dipping my toes into edits and additions to the Java projects that every other programmer in the company works on. The Java part is easy, but Spring does a little too much magic for my tastes. But one man's coding basics are another man's boilerplate, so I guess I'll have to get used to it.</p><p>I also made a couple small edits in a Vue UI, but figuring out how <tt>v-if</tt> and <tt>v-else-if</tt> work ain't exactly upper-tier stuff. But like I said, baby steps.</p>7/24/2023 - Wouldn't it be nicetag:www.jasonfleshman.org,2023-07-24:bf2023-07-24T04:00:00Z2023-07-24T04:00:00Z<p>I'm sure I have memories rattling around in my head that would cause emotions other than embarrassment. So why aren't they ever the ones that bubble up at random?</p>6/5/2023 - Tweaking the alphabettag:www.jasonfleshman.org,2023-06-05:bf2023-06-05T04:00:00Z2023-06-05T04:00:00Z<p>I watched a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyGtuBCXlwU">RobWords</a> video today about reinventing the English alphabet. Now, we all know nothing like that will ever happen but let's play along.</p><p>His first change is to bring back Thorn (Þ, þ) to replace the "th" digraph. He mentioned its close cousin Eth (Ð, ð) which is the sound in <i>this</i> as opposed to þ being the sound in <i>thorn</i>, but decided against it because Ð looks too much like a letter in another language. Well too bad, I say. The Icelandic manage just fine, we can too. Be ðe change you want to see.</p><p>Next up he recommends the Turkish letter Sheh (Ş, ş) to replace "sh". But later on he uses the Czech letter Zhet (Ž, ž) for the /zh/ sound, and if we're going to use Slavic letters I think consistency would be better. I think we should use the Esh (Š, š) instead. A perfectly reasonable off-the-šelf replacement.</p><p>After that comes the Cyrillic letter Che (Ч, ч) for /ch/ but like above, I like the Czech Che (Č, č) better. And besides, the Cyrillic letter looks like a number 4. Č-č-čanges...</p><p>Rob proposes getting rid of Q entirely, since it only appears alongside U except in specific instances. He then replaces "qu" with a new, made-up letter to make the /kw/ sound, which I'm too lazy to redraw. I agree with some folks in the comments, just use Q by itself to represent /kw/, and in the rare case it stands alone, replace it with K. Qit using extra letters, even if it means Irak has to change how it spells its name.</p><p>The next update is adding in the German Esszet (ẞ, ß) to replace "ss". Part of me thinks it's unnecessary, but we've already replaced a bunch of other digraphs so let's get this one too. Just don't be an aß and write a Beta in its place.</p><p>Another change is importing Enyay (Ñ, ñ) to replace the /ny/ sound. It makes a good compañon to the others, even if it might look like faux-Spanish at first.</p><p>For the schwa (neutral vowel) sound, Rob recommends the IPA symbol (ə) but I don't like that because it doesn't have a capital form. Romanian to the rescue, they have A-brev (Ă, ă) that works just fine. Ăbout time we got ă letter for our most-used sound.</p><p>Similar to Enyay, he wants to bring in Eng (Ŋ, ŋ) to replace "ng". I have no problem with that, and would like it to become a thiŋ.</p><p>Like I said, năn ăf ðese are goiŋ to happen. And everyþiŋ here completely ignores ðe ăðer spelling oddities like "cough" beiŋ pronounced "kof". Băt as ă þought experiment it's kind ăf fun.</p>5/15/2023 - Supergeniustag:www.jasonfleshman.org,2023-05-15:bf2023-05-15T04:00:00Z2023-05-15T04:00:00Z<p>A few weeks ago I decided I should cut some of the starch out of my diet. Not go full Atkins, just remove the easy and unnecessary stuff. About three hours <em>after</em> I went to the store and bought pretzels and Doritos.</p>4/3/2023 - Silly things for dumb reasonstag:www.jasonfleshman.org,2023-04-03:bf2023-04-03T04:00:00Z2023-04-03T04:00:00Z<p>I'd been having trouble getting my web site "verified" on Mastodon. When you save a URL in your profile on a Mastodon site, it'll go to that site and look for a link with the <tt>rel="me"</tt> attribute that points to your Mastodon profile. But for some reason this site, http://jasonfleshman.org, never worked.</p><p>Then someone randomly retweeted the Mastodon promotional account, which was chiming on on the Twitter Blue/Verified idiocy that the Melon Husk had kicked off. And I asked them, what's up with my site not verifying?</p><p>Turns out only HTTPS sites get verified. I'm not sure why that is, someone can take control of my site with the same level of difficulty regardless of whether it's served over TLS. But whatever, I knew why it was happening.</p><p>And it turns out my host has a <a href="https://letsencrypt.org">Let's Encrypt</a> option right there in the dashboard. Sweet. I turned it on, and all the automated things did their thing.</p><p>So now my site has TLS. Both on the "main" <a href="https://jasonfleshman.org">.org</a> site and on the alternate <a href="https://jasonfleshman.net">.net</a> site that is its twin. All so I could get a checkbox on a social media site that nobody uses.</p>3/20/2023 - DST 2023tag:www.jasonfleshman.org,2023-03-20:bf2023-03-20T04:00:00Z2023-03-20T04:00:00Z<p>Sure, I spent all week being tired in the morning and drank more than double my usual amount of coffee because of it. But the clock in the guest room is correct again, at least.</p>2/13/2023 - Losing the plottag:www.jasonfleshman.org,2023-02-13:bf2023-02-13T05:00:00Z2023-02-13T05:00:00Z<p>I stopped reading comics in the spring of 2019. I didn't stop <em>buying</em> comics until early 2020. Right before the pandemic hit. And since the pandemic didn't change much for me, they sat on a table in the kitchen, piling up for a year, then spending three years as part of the background clutter.</p><p>When I <a href="/brain_farts/archive/2023/02/06">decided to hide some of the crap laying around</a>, I decided to start reading through my backlog before putting them into the longbox that had been patiently sitting around for three years waiting to do its one job.</p><p>I had a pretty decent-sized pull list: Somewhere around 15-20 titles a month, plus new things that the shop would add in to see if I was interested. It took a decent amount of time to get through each week's haul, which is why I fell behind in the first place. After Mom died in early 2018 I spent a long enough time not reading comics to make them no longer be part of my routine. But driving to Fairfax to buy them was. I'm weird.</p><p>Anyway, these are comics I (mostly) had requested because I wanted to read them. See what happened next, check out the crossovers, get the variant covers, all that fun stuff. And now, three-plus years later, there's so much I look at and just go, "nah". It's not that I can't remember what was happening -- that's true for pretty much all of them -- I pick up a title, get a few pages in, say "who cares" and skip it from that point on.</p><p>DC comics come out the worst: Wonder Woman and Justice League Dark are just uninteresting now. Batgirl and Nightwing had interesting plots for a while, then Batgirl kinda went off the rails a bit and Nightwing brought back the Court of Owls which I've never found compelling. So they're basically done for.</p><p>Marvel's in a bit better shape. Deadpool went from funny to boring, Star Wars is dull and Doctor Aphra seems to be losing steam, but Iron Man, Immortal Hulk, Ironheart, Champions and Doctor Strange are all still hanging on.</p><p>The non-big-two are having problems too. Transformers did yet another reboot, but it's really more of a rehash. I think it's on its way out. Firefly seems to have spiraled off into Nonsenseland so it may not be on my read list by the end of this either. Ghostbusters didn't even get me to open the cover.</p><p>I'm honestly surprised what a difference a few years makes. If I'd read all these at the time I probably would have actually read them all. (And with no pile of comics sitting out I may have kept up the subscriptions for a while.) But now it's mostly just "meh". I'd already been griping about how much I spent on comics -- about $100 a month at the end -- so I had one foot out the metaphorical door already, but coming back to these with a bit of a remove kind of lays bare just how much inertia was involved.</p><p>It'll be good to get them into the basement once and for all. They had their time for me, and now it's gone. Just took me a while to get around to finishing it.</p>