On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

Chores.

That's my word for today.

Bedding-laundry, shopping, computer-mouse replacement, new colour-pencils for Mom, and if I can push myself the rest of the way, new storage bins to keep the basement reorg process going. Not sure that last item is going to be doable with today's local weather. Hot and humid.

Talked with the writer of San Francisco 2161 last night about proposed maps for his now-finished Trek-inspired fanfic project about the negotiations to co-found the Federation. What maps should there be attached, what forms they should take, that sort of thing.

I'm also toying with an idea for a prose fanfic project of my own centred on one of the participants in that story and a prequel, In the Raptor's Claws about the Coaltion-Romulan War that preceded the Federation. Specifically Nathan Samuels, whom Enterprise-watchers may remember as portrayed by Harry Groener. Not sure if this is going to go anywhere beyond maybe a couple of paragraphs before getting derailed by a job offer or loss of housing or whatever.

We'll see.

I just finished scanning a batch of old Local Hero pages into my current primary computer. Twenty years onward, and it's as if the technology and its affordability finally caught up to the needs I have for it. I'm planning to continue digitally inking the better-pencilled pages as time allows over the next weeks to months.

My knees feel mostly fine now.

No pain.

Now, the "t", "o" and "i" keys on my A1243 Apple keyboard seem to be wearing out under continuing heavy usage...

My new HDMI switch works with the Mac Mini, the office loaner machine and the external monitor I need those two machines to share.

More on other topics later. On to work!

1. Mikmaq keyboard to be available for Apple products. I first heard of this via CBC Weekend World Report on the radio.

https://www.kinu.ca/stories/mikmaw-keyboard-available-in-apple-products

2. Anti-trans laws in the US getting support from a Canadian researcher. CW: anti-trans rhetoric quoted at some length, with "protest"-march posters to match.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/investigates/james-cantor-gender-affirming-care-bans-1.6979356

3. The argument for off-planet mining is gaining strength in some quarters.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/10/space-is-starting-to-look-like-the-better-mining-operation/

4. The political state of "British Columbia", from one perspective:

https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/10/20/BC-New-Political-Map-Right-Split-Kevin-Falcon-Conservative-Surge/

5. An argument for Pharmacare in Canada:

https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2023/10/19/Pharmacare-Big-Moment-Political-Will-Trudeau-Liberals/

Okay. We need ways of getting our hands on good-quality self-administered COVID tests, no matter what our respective current local governments want for our futures. Wherever we live.

I am wondering what we need to do to make that availability happen.

I'm not sure if this is a good idea or a bad one.

https://notbyai.fyi/

Throwing it open to discussion, though.

My glasses just broke at the left-side hinge.

Passing this along from the management:

"Well, the good news is that Dreamwidth is hopping this week! The bad news is that our recent changes to make the site auto-scale during periods of high server and database load have apparently been too conservative, and that's leading to the Varnish/503 errors that people are getting. (The mysterious ones that say "backend fetch failed, guru meditation error" -- the error message is highly unhelpful, but in our defense y'all aren't supposed to see it!)

We are continuing to tweak things to improve performance, and we apologize for the errors. We'll have them fixed as soon as we can."

Source for that explanation?

https://dw-maintenance.dreamwidth.org/90468.html