This is old but I only just discovered it: an NPR interview all about EB White and his famous book Charlotte’s Web. This is one of my all-time favourite books, and I can still remember exactly where I was (the babysitter’s house before school) when I read about Charlotte’s death. I sobbed my little heart out. Apparently, so did EB White. 🩷🕷️
Category: Reading (Random Links)
Links that I’m reading
Lethonomia
This word means the tendency to forget names. This is something I’ve struggled with a LOT in recent years. I’m not sure what the cause is: the fact that my jobs at YOW and AWS meant meeting so many people? Did I get long Covid? Or is it one of the many joys of perimenopause? Or maybe it’s just getting older… At any rate, it’s incredibly frustrating to be able to picture someone or something, to know you know the name, and just not be able to grasp it.
Nightly Puzzling
For the past month, I’ve been establishing a new nightly routine. First, at 10pm I have an automatic reminder to write a journal entry. I’ve been using the iOS Journal app for this, which allows me to easily incorporate photos and maps from the day. I haven’t been using any of their prompts, but rather just jotting down what I did. I like being able to look back at everything I’ve done.
And then come the puzzles! Nothing like a little brain exercise to close out the day.
- Both Rodd and I do the NYT Connections. Maybe this is a humblebrag, but I’m always surprised when I see people complain that it’s hard! We’ve actually been challenging each other to find the purple category earlier rather than leave it to last.
- We also both do the five different daily puzzles over at Word Nerd. I’ve only managed to get all 23 Words like twice, and most days I struggle to hit 10. Rodd’s much better than me at that one! Maybe I’d have better luck earlier in the day with some caffeine in me. We also compete to see who can do the shortest Word Chain.
- I do the Daily Waffle and Waffle Royale (and every now and then the Deluxe Weekly Waffle). These are Scrabble-style letter tile switching games, with a fun mechanism that highlights when letters are correct or jumbled up.
- Rodd likes the OEC’s Pick 5 and Tradle games. These are where you have to identify which countries export certain goods. He’s really good at them both, but he thinks the Pick 5 is more fun.
Have you got any fun puzzle recommendations for us?
Volatile Quartets
From Metafilter I discovered this long retrospective on the Breeders and consequently went down a rabbit hole reading about the lineage from Throwing Muses to the Pixies to the Breeders and then Belly. I was a latecomer to these groups, getting first into the Breeders thanks to Last Splash and then moving on to Belly. I can remember driving home with my sister after high school tennis practice, belting out Belly’s King along to my car’s crappy cassette player…
The Breeders in Big Sur
A lovely little video of the Breeders performing some of my favorite songs – mostly acoustically – among the redwoods in Big Sur.
Still can’t believe I sold them craft supplies 14 years ago without realising who they were. 😂
Links that amused me today
- Sydney Sweeney Knows Her Boobs Drive People Crazy – LOL. Good for her! I want that sweatshirt.
- The Man Who Killed Google Search – Deliciously scathing post about the enshittification of Google Search. Guess what? AI-generated content is only gonna make it worse.
- 27 Takes On What It Means To Be a Serious Person – Both Rodd and I agreed that “purpose” is really critical and that neither of us have it, which is but one of many reasons why we are not serious people. Great piece.
- Any John Cage fans? “This is may be the most beautiful accidental explanation of the power of a work of art I’ve ever read in my life.” Agree. I also rather liked this reply.
Teacup power-ups
I spent a good twenty minutes today playing with the browser demo of Jane Austen’s 8-bit Adventure. It’s awesome! Can’t wait for the full version to drop.
We don’t talk about Backstreet… 🎵
Every New Year’s, there’s a happy moment when I remember that the latest Best of Bootie compilation is out! We’ve been listening to it for the last hour, and my favourites are definitely “We don’t talk about Backstreet” and “Take it as it was.”
And OMG we just got to the last track and I did not expect that. 😂
Random Links
Some random links I’ve had open in my web browser lately:
- The BBC have been broadcasting daily episodes of a dramaticization of Susan Cooper’s book The Dark is Rising. It’s also available as a podcast (on pretty much all the platforms), and we’ve been listening along and really enjoying it. If you’ve only seen the terrible 2007 film, you should listen to this and then go out and read the whole series. (Rodd and I have also been having fun casting an imaginary version of this for Netflix. He reckons Peter Capaldi for Merriman.)
- The Most Popular Series Eats Recipes of 2022. I’m amused how many of these are just simple potato recipes. And hey, it includes Tartiflette! I will definitely be making that pork and bean stew next winter.
- Mapping Sydney Billboards: Every QMS advertising panel in Sydney. I saw this linked on a Mastodon thread griping about the new electronic advertising panels. We’ve only been home for 2 weeks and already these things are annoying me. They’re huge and intrusive, and they take up disproportionate space on Sydney’s already narrow footpaths.
- How to Sew Like a Mathematician. Making continuous bias tape has already been a favourite sewing trick of mine – I have a whole blog post and video about it – but I hadn’t thought very deeply about the topology of it. That post goes deep into the details and then tries an interesting technique to start with a regular torus, resulting in “almost” bias tape. 🤯
Random Links
A couple tabs I’ve had open in my browser this week:
- Fine Points: Cleveland Yarn Shop Featured on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert – Apparently this is a running segment that features small businesses in silly sketches to give them a “bump.” Very cute idea!
- Mike Flanagan is creating a TV series for The Dark Tower – Fingers crossed he can pull it off. The movie was such a disappointment, despite having nailed the casting of the main characters. I really need to see Susannah and Eddie!
- Bourdain’s World Map – An interactive map of everywhere he ate across all his shows. It’s probably a good thing we didn’t have this at the start of our European sojourn or we’d be even chubbier and poorer than we are now!
- 99 Good News Stories You Probably Didn’t Hear About in 2022 – So much goodness here. I’m keeping this one open so I can read a few more whenever I get depressed.