The bizarre secrets I found investigating corrupt Winamp skins - This was the coolest link I came across this week. The person who runs the Winamp Skin Museum details the strange things he found hidden inside Winamp skin files. Passwords, games, skins within skins, all kinds of stuff!
The Internet Phone Book is a project one of the users of the 32-Bit Cafe Discourse posted about this week. An actual, physical phone book of websites is being created and, if you have a website, you are invited to add yours to the directory! What a neat little project! Not sure how it's going to pan out - the physical book is not going to be in wide release - but it's a cool idea.
The other link I have to share this week is a scholarly paper, Evolution of the Italian pasta ripiena: the first steps towards a scientific classification. Total nerd nip! This is a legit study examining the evolution and spread of filled pasta and ultimately proposing two clades of pasta - a ravioli clade (characterized by flat shapes) and a tortellini clade (characterized by three-dimensional shapes). I think using a classification system usually reserved for plants and animals to categorize food items is a unique way of looking at things.
Speaking of food, I've been experimenting with a pre-made meal delivery service the past couple of weeks. I am a household of one and for a long time now I've struggled with cooking for just me. I'm just not very invested in it! Back in the day, with a family, I would preplan the weeks' meals and try to do something big on the weekend that could then be used for leftovers or incorporated into other meals during the week. I just don't have the energy or desire to do that anymore. I end up doing a lot of scrounging around to feed myself or ordering out, which gets expensive. Or, I buy groceries with the intention of meal prepping and end up not using everything (because I got tired and was pretty demotivated in the first place) and having to throw stuff out. I was living on a lot of sandwiches or just snacky kind of stuff and that gets old after a while.
A couple of the YouTubers I subscribe to were hawking a particular company and finally I just thought, "Fuck it, you know what? I am going to let someone else cook for me." I researched the company and the food got really decent reviews so I used a code, got a deal and for 2 weeks now I've been eating their meals. I have to say, I am pretty impressed! The meat is tender and flavorful and the veggie sides are tasty. I am super impressed with the packaging because lately the temps here have been 115F (46C) or more but my meals arrived while I was at work, sat outside in their packaging and were still cold by the time I was able to get to them.
The deal I signed up for got me a certain percentage off for 6 weeks. Will I keep it up after that? Maybe! Is it expensive? Well, yes, but the money I'm NOT spending at the grocery store is going towards this instead so it kind of evens out.
I've been thinking of a Neocities friend lately. He decided a while ago to pull away from being online so much and just live in the moment with his family and friends. Every few months he'll pop in and maybel leave a blog post or at least a shout out on his profile. It's been a hot minute since I've seen him around so I decided to shoot him a quick email, just letting him know I was thinking of him and hoping all was going well. Usually I would dither about contacting someone and overthink the situation - would he think it's weird, would it bother him, does he even remember me? But I didn't let myself get caught up in my anxiety-induced procrastination and just DID IT and got a lovely reply in return. So my pro tip for you all this week: if there is someone you've been thinking about, reach out to them and let them know! Share those happy thoughts and good feelings and let someone know you're thinking of them!
Listening
I'm continuing my quest to liberate my music from iTunes. I have installed foobar2000 and started moving music files into it. I have all my music files from my old laptop on a thumb drive but I don't know that I want to load them all onto the current laptop because 1.) not sure I have the space - it's a crap ton of files and 2.) a lot of them I don't actually listen to or like that much! Either I have albums where I really only liked a couple of songs or I downloaded a compilation at some point in the past and don't like everything but because I'm a packrat at heart I can't bear to get rid of anything. Like, I enjoy disco music but I have so much disco music that I don't really care for sitting on that drive!
Just because I'm dithering about the music I do have, it doesn't mean I'm not continuing to acquire music. I pre-ordered a most excellent sounding album I found on Bandcamp, Synthesizing the Silk Roads: Uzbek Disco, Tajik Folktronica, Uyghur Rock & Tatar Jazz from 1980s Soviet Central Asia. There are 3 songs you can listen to now and they are delightfully funky! So looking forward to when the rest of the songs come out on August 30.
I started going through some of the favorites I had saved on YT Music and purchased a couple of mp3s this weekend. Changing by Sigma ft Paloma Faith is an old song but it was new to me when it came up on my Discover list a month or 2 ago. I've been playing it a lot - I just love how anthemic it is. The Discover list showed me Feel It (Lee Mvtthews ft Christina Harrison) this week, drum and bass with some awesome vocals.
I didn't buy it (yet?) but last week YT Music also thought I would enjoy a power metal/bluegrass mix: The Brothers Bayou and ... umm ... I can't say it was wrong. I might end up owning this one of these days.
Reading
I wasn't sure if I was going to continue right away with the Tad Williams' Shadowlands series but I didn't have anything else I was eager to get into so I took the path of least resistance and started the second book in the series, Shadowplay. My gripe with the first book was that the writing just wasn't as good as his previous books. The quality of writing has picked up in this book and I feel more invested in the story so I'm happy with my choice to keep on with this series.
Watching
I was loving my Slow Horses TV series so much but not wanting to shotgun it so I looked for some more spy stuff to watch. I found 2 shows, The Bureau, a French espionage thriller and Condor, an American spy thriller based on the book Six Days of the Condor, about a CIA analyst who stumbles onto a nefarious plan by a rogue element within the Company. I watched the first episode of The Bureau and quite enjoyed it. I binged the entire first season of Condor. Not that it was so much better but I need subtitles for The Bureau because French is not one of the languages I poorly speak/understand. On the other hand, I could multi-task and work on my cross-stitch while watching Condor.
I hadn't picked up my cross-stitch in almost a month but I got motivated this weekend and started working away at my colorful kitty project again. I am SO CLOSE to being done but because I am such a slow stitcher I also feel I am SO FAR AWAY from being done! In addition to working on that, I also was able to wind 36 skeins of thread onto bobbins while watching TV. I'm such a messy stitcher, I usually just pull thread straight from the skeins and often end up with a jumbled mess. But I got some divided plastic boxes and a bunch of cardboard bobbins and I am determined to get myself organized.
Whew, that was a lot this week! I hope you have a lovely week!