- Breaking imagery down to unicode: these artworks combine the historical with ASCII - These creations are really cool! The artist uses the Image to ASCII tool on public domain images and creates wonderful things.
- The Ancient Art and Intimate Craft of Artificial Eyes - Fascinating article about artificial eyes through history and current day eye-makers, known as ocularists.
- Every outfit that proves ‘Sailor Moon’ did ’90s fashion best - Fun look at the intersection of Sailor Moon and haute couture.

Look at this handsome man! Ceelo spent the weekend with me while his mom was on a trip. It went mostly well. The first night he was here I was hoping he'd sleep on the bed with me but he chose instead to sleep under the bed. The next morning I had to fish him out and he was mortally offended at that for most of the day. I was forgiven by the evening, though, and he either hung out with me in the computer room (I have a cat tree conveniently next to my computer desk) or we sat on the couch together and watched TV. His mom has another trip next weekend so he'll be coming back over again.
Both of my laptops are running Windows 10. They are both capable of "upgrading" to 11 but I am avoiding that because Win11 (and Microsoft in general) seems to involve a whole lot of stuff I don't want to deal with. I have known for quite a while that Microsoft is planning to put Windows 10 out to pasture next month. And I had vague concepts of a plan of doing ... something ... about it. But just this past week the abstract knowledge of 10's end-of-life date and the concrete knowledge that October starts THIS WEEK hit me. Does that make sense? Sometimes I know 2 different things that are related but for some reason don't actually put them together in my mind until, I don't know, planets align or something and all of a sudden it's like OHHH!
I don't want to move on with Windows. I don't want to go over to Apple. So I've been watching lots of YouTube videos on switching to Linux. I found a video that I really liked, Trying Linux as a Complete Beginner. I am not a very computery person. The idea of switching operating systems makes me nervous. I've been using Microsoft since MS DOS days. It's not that I like Microsoft - it's just that it's what I know and I'm very comfortable in my rut. But this person is coming at it from the same level I'm at (complete n00b) and I'm fairly comfortable with how she explained things. So, I think my plan is to try out Linux Mint in, at least for now, a dual boot situation.
I didn't leave myself a whole lot of time to figure all this out. I have until mid-October but procrastinating is my superpower and it exponentially increases when there's a deadline looming. So I bought myself some time and enrolled in Microsoft's extended Windows 10 support. Now hopefully I actually get this done and I'm not writing about this again next year!
Listening
Some of the podcasts I've listened to this week:
- Absolute Units - The Art of Dog Poo Posters
- Hyperfixed - Garbage Fruit [Or, The Fruit of Theseus]- Have you ever wondered why Red Delicious apples are a lie? Alex finds out.
- You're Dead to Me - Empress Matilda: civil war in medieval England
Super cool song I heard on a TV show last week: Reckless Youth - The Home of Happy, Wayne Murray and James Corbin (YouTube link)
Reading
I am almost finished with the Plantagenet history book I've been reading for the past couple weeks, The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England by Dan Jones. It's been such a fascinating read!
I have a library book waiting for me to pick up. Like an actual book at the actual library building. I check out books all the time using Libby/Overdrive and the e-reader. I can't even tell you the last time I checked out a physical book at the library. This one wasn't available electronically and they had to request a copy from one of the other libraries in the system. I can't remember where I read about it but the book is Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution by Caroline Weber. It looks like it will be a fun read! From the publisher's site:
In Queen of Fashion, Caroline Weber tells of the radical restyling that transformed the young queen into an icon and shaped the future of the nation. With her riding gear, her white furs, her pouf hairstyles, and her intricate ballroom disguises, Marie Antoinette came to embody--gloriously and tragically--all the extravagance of the monarchy.
Watching
Still working my way through Babylon 5. Franklin and Marcus have gone to Mars to try to coordinate with the resistance, Garibaldi is on some serious outs with Sheridan and Delenn and Sheriden have engaged in the umpty-billionth ritual as part of their upcoming marriage. Woohoo! (IYKYK)
I've been keeping up with Big Cats 24/7. This show is SO GOOD. It's almost like a soap opera, with all the drama going on! Last time I talked about it, there were intruder males encroaching on the territory and the resident male lions were nowhere to be found, leaving the lioness moms to defend the cubs on their own.
You know where the resident males were?
They went off and found themselves a new family! Crazy!I'm so bummed this show is only 6 episodes each season. I could watch big cat shenanigans all day.
All right, that's about it for this week!
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