Christian Leonard Quale @clq@clq.im

Here we go.

After struggling to decide which instance to use for a while, I decided to go for what I see as being most in the spirit of the Fediverse, and host my own personal instance. Somehow it feels like the most right, and future-proof, way to follow people from across many different instances.

It also conforms with the "everyone hosting their own data whenever possible" idea I am rather fond of.

They're probably a good idea. But the citizens of Oslo have and are demonstrating that they don't have the maturity, spacial awareness, or regard for others that is required to have this particular nice thing. Good game everyone, let's try again in a few years.

I'm fine with loud music. I'm fine with general shouting in the streets late at night. But rentable electric scooters (or, rather, many of the people using them) might just be the thing that makes me, finally, transition into shameless, grumpy get-off-my-lawn'ness in my life.

PSA: Project Hail Mary (by Andy Weir, who wrote The Martian) is another spectacular book. I'd recommend reading at least the first few chapters without reading the synopsis (which I think gives away a little too much) or anything else about the book. Do it right now.

I don't mind the sense of familiarity within Norwegian politics. In fact, I like the fact that politicians are on first name terms with each other. I also don't mind that reporters are on first name terms with the people they report on. But not when doing the actual reporting.

Pet peeve: Media referring to politicians by only their first name. It creates an impression of familiarity which detracts from what they're actually saying or doing. Whether it helps or hurts the politician in question, it's unfair at best, and manipulative at worst.

I think I just thought of a solution to electric scooters being a menace to pedestrians. Make them all, by by law, emit a loud, relentless, terribly annoying, noise (including frequencies that tend to penetrate headphones). People will hear them coming, and much fewer people will want to use them!

Thought: DRM on ebooks isn't about preventing piracy, it's about locking readers into ecosystems. Heavily watermark every part of an ebook I download, sure, but let me read it in my third-party app without feeling like a criminal. It's not about the author, it's about the store.

I need to start whatever the opposite of the Boston Tea Party is. For the third time, the Norwegian postal service has, apparently, just not bothered to charge me the toll I should have been charged for the tea I've bought online.

Consequences of home office #523: The lack of casual chat with colleagues, and therefore lack of a natural warm-up of the voice, puts a significant additional strain on it when you're suddenly doing a presentation for an hour straight.

Was given an appointment for my vaccine today: they had me down as being in a vulnerable group. Called my doctor to confirm that I am, in fact, not in a priority group for the vaccine, and called them back to give my spot to someone else (for which they thanked me profusely).

Funny feeling... Hoping that I have an underlying condition I'd forgotten about so that I was entitled to get the vaccine earlier. I hope they get them rolled out en-masse soon.

I'm not sure how highly rated it is, but, regardless, Peter Gabriel's voice is surely underrated.

Not the most severe problem with working from home, but even a year into this, the way in which I'm picking up and drinking from cups of hot tea is becoming increasingly careless, and at this rate I project that some form of incident will take place in around two months if I haven't returned to the office by then.

Clubhouse: the current Giffen good of the Internet. Content that has its perceived value elevated through an illusion of exclusivity.

New phrase suggestion:

GOMO: Glee Over Missing Out.

What I feel when I see that this and that has happened on Clubhouse, and am delighting in both not caring, and not having spent my time keeping up with it.

So... I hate to admit it, but... I kind of miss the hourly: "The future of MIIIICCCCCEEEE"

What even is the future of MIIICCCEE any more?

How will anyone know?

Random thought: good intentions are underrated, and get an undeservedly bad rap.

"The intention was good", if genuine, is worth a lot - regardless of outcome.

One of the saddest thing about this whole Brexit mess is that the UK seems to think it's entitled to a certain special treatment by the EU. They *still* don't seem to realize that they decided to leave the union which entitled them to preferential treatment.

@adam The default internal player in PodcastAddict (ExoPlayer) is unable to play the latest episode (NA-1294-2020-11-12-Final.mp3). It works when I switch the player-Engine to the Android built-in player. This is the first and only episode I've noticed this with so far. Figured I'd let you (and/or @podcastaddict) know, in case there is something new and fancy going on in the metadata.

I think we should all take a moment to appreciate that the list price of Obama's upcoming book is $45.

Random note: after ten days of use, I'm incredibly impressed by the Onyx Boox Nova 3. Kindles are great, but the flexibility of full Android, wonderful front-light, and a just-as-good reading experience catapults the Nova ahead of the Kindle for me, for now.

(The experience of buying books obviously isn't quite as smooth, but given that I've bought most of my books from non-Amazon sources lately, that doesn't matter much to me.)