So last week I was rushing to get a webpage up and coded for an event and, while I did get it done, stylistically it's not what I had envisioned. I just didn't leave myself enough time to learn something new. I was kind of getting what I needed to do but things weren't quite working out so I went with something I already knew how to do. The important part was the information anyway. If you'd like to take a look, head on over to The Radical Garden.

With our current government, I've felt at times lost as to what to do and, occasionally, a little bit hopeless about the whole situation. In an effort to combat that, I've been collecting information on actions to take, things to learn, reputable news sources and examples of people fighting back and also just information that may come in handy someday. This site, though, has a kind of vibe going and I didn't want to harsh it with this other information. I was waffling about what to do and then this codejam came up and gave me a direction to go. I just hope others find it useful, too.

I hand-build my webpages using Notepad (not even ++! OG Notepad). This is not my first foray into hand-coding webpages but, even with my first foray in the 90s of making my own webpages, I was kind of a gremlin with how I was doing it and that hasn't changed. I haven't made an ordered, progressive step of learning html/css. I learn what I need to know for what I need to do, or do a lot of view page source and copy and tweak from that. That ends up both leaving big gaps in my knowledge and also some sketchy coding.

I did my best to make The Radical Garden legit. I ran the code through both an HTML validator and a beautifier. It's a simple little site but I'm really happy with how it came out. I was so inspired by myself that I decided to go through Divergent Rays and clean things up. I needed to update my reading log in the Library so I started with that page.

Man, there was a lot of fixing to do even on that simple little page! The biggest new thing I learned was that my "home" nav button that I have in the top left of most of my pages isn't legit. Like, it works but you're not supposed to have a button nested in an a. So I searched on how I could make that happen without Javascript and changed it to a button wrapped in a form tag. That will be uploaded tonight with this blog post. Now I just have ... oh gosh, so many more things on so many more pages to fix!

Listening

Here are some podcasts I've listened to this week:

Best Son dropped by for a visit earlier in the week and shared some awesome tunes:

Reading

I finished The Last Murder at the End of the World and I really liked it. It kept me guessing until the end and had some neat twists.

I love the author CJ Cherryh. Her Chanur series is one of my all-time favorites and one of the few books I will reread regularly. I've read some of her other series, too: The Morgaine Cycle and the Rusalka books.

I've been wanting to get into her Union-Alliance Company Wars series but wasn't sure where to dip into it. You can read them either in publication or chronological order and Cherryh herself has said that she's written her entire Alliance-Union collection as if it's a history and you can read it at any point.

After doing some research on Reddit's r/PrintSF and r/sciencefiction, I decided to start with Downbelow Station. I'm really enjoying it so far but I had to reread the initial chapter that gives you the 300 year history of humans building outposts in space. I read it initially, started the actual story, got lost pretty quickly, and reread it and now have a firmer grasp on who's who and what's going on.

Watching

I'm a few episodes into season 3 of Babylon 5 and the parallels that can be drawn between the Narn/Centauri war and certain things that are going on currently is pretty interesting.

One of the YouTube people I watch, struthless, did a great video this past week Why doesn't 2025 feel like the future? It's a really cool look at our present, seen from our past.

He goes through a book from 1999 that predicts what the future (our present) will look like. Some predictions were spot on, some not so much.

There are video clips from shows of that period with future possibilities. The VR glasses did come true but the past's version is kind of clunky. There are also clips with a teen living in a house with an integrated AI. She's personalized the voice and look of the AI and it acts kind of like a mentor. There are interview clips with British kids and some of their thoughts on what the future will be like are quite deep. This is a 45 minute video but really worth a watch. If you do watch it, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on it!

When I first started using Zonelets I had Disqus set up as a commenting system but it looked obnoxiously ugly and I ditched it. Some people are happy to not have blog interaction but I'd love to hear from you if you have any thoughts you want to share! You can respond through my guestbook or email. If you found this link on Discord or the 32-Bit Cafe Discourse, you can message me there or leave a message on my Neocities profile page.