Hmm, it seems I had my week numbers wrong, so I’m adding a fictional 53rd week this year and will promise to use the correct numbering next year – if I continue with this week note format.
Anyway, it was Christmas week. I went home to my family, which basically means to my younger brother and my mom. Not a long trip, even by German standards (it’s 60km). We had a nice Christmas eve, I stayed two nights in my old room, and we had a festive lunch on the 2nd Christmas holiday (or “boxing day” for some).
I’m generally annoyed by everything Christmasy. Too many lights, too many awful songs–one category where McCarnety is worse than Carey–and I don’t even like those plump snowmen. But whenever I travel home, that’s (often literally) just background noise. We spend a nice time together, I see that everyone is doing fine (my mom is in her eighties, and still fit as a fiddle). I give out some presents, receive some, eat well, then back home.
I mean, the most “interesting” fact about our Christmas is that we’re using the same wrapping paper for all my life. My mom used to work at a paper factory, and brought home a big roll of thin, but very sturdy wrapping paper. Not too long in the future and we’ll get 50 years of Christmas out of it.
Health #
Cheat day week, y’know. But I got my 10k steps in almost every day.
Media #
Alright, I’ve started making a list…
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Yet another political book started, this time A Nation of Shopkeepers by Dan Evans, which examines the Petty Bourgeoisie, mainly in the UK. It’s quite Marxist in its analysis, and I’m not dyed-in-the-wool enough to not wonder a bit about some premises. But the different “sub-class” strata are an interesting way to look at things.
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Almost done with The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman. I gifted this to my kinda-sorta-parents-in-law, and thought I better read it myself so that I can argue about things. It’s really good for anglophile me, Osman is as witty with the written word as he was whenever I saw him on British panel shows.
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No Christmas movies at all this year. I usually watch some old staple like Bad Santa or Die Hard, but couldn’t be bothered.
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While staying at my mom’s, I watched two movies, Heretic and Miss Sloane. Both really hinging on the acting and scenery-chewing abilities of their main actors, Hugh Grand and Jessica Chastain respectively. Both exploring interesting themes (religion / lobbyism), but in the end a bit disappointing in that aspect.
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Once back home, I wanted to watch some Sci-Fi, and preferably nothing too grimdark or too hard, so no Solaris or Alien franchise movie. I ended up watching Mars Express, a French animated movie that’s vaguely cyberpunk, but pays homage to a lot of famous movies (Blade Runner and 2001 were obvious, but I think I even caught a bit of The Conversation). I liked it a lot, the near-future tech seemed plausible, even if the computer code was C# and HTML, and the ending was at least interesting.
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After that, there was a lot of background noise watching (Vox Machina S1, two Estevezes in Men at Work), plus some mediocre Wu Xia and surprisingly bad mystery in Detective Dee 2.
Gaming #
Apart from talking to my brother about his favorite games of recent times, not a lot happened here.
Consumerism
…unless taking part in yet another Steam Sale counts. All older games, apart from one recommended Korean X-Com-alike.
And of course Christmas gifting was done. I didn’t express any big wishes, so I did the worst thing one can do here: Just point people to an Amazon wish list, with items consisting of minor stuff I just placed on there. I feel a bit guilty…
Side Projects
Nada, to be honest. Apart from ideas of others, it was a vacation week where I didn’t spend that much time in front of a primary programming or writing computer (I had my old 11" Macbook Air from 2013).
Links
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McMansion Hell just started a series about Neuschwanstein – This was a very pleasurable read, and there’s even more coming. I basically grew up in the wasteland of taste that remains from “Mad King Ludwig”s days. School trips to Herrenchiemsee were a staple, I shortly dated a guide from there.
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Mastodon thread about a simplified almost-terminal-only Linux – Not a fan of a few of those “modern” command-line applications, but I like using a kiosk mode of wayland for Firefox. With a decent PDF reader, this would cover a surprising amount of my daily life on Linux (I’m way more into widgets and apps on Macs), and given that I find that having my ex-x-ray display in portrait mode attached to my Mac doesn’t really spark joy that much, it might be time to make a glorified terminal again. Either this, or more Plan 9…
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XNU font for the Linux console – Is this the one that got displayed when you open OpenFirmware to eject your CD? Anyway, I need something if I switch to the Linux console like it’s the ‘90s. The one used by the author in the thread above is apalling, and this looks more serious than my own apalling choice, t.fnt / tektite.
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Hoptimism – I got one of those bouncy persons for Christmas, definitely better than Funko toys. We all will need more optimism for 2025…