Emojis that are converted from emoticon text such as :) turning into a happy face
Emojis that are entered using an emoji picker, such as the one in Windows 11:
The former work fine on this blog, but because the database goes all the way back to the ancient internet time of 2005, it uses an old type of character encoding that can’t handle emojis and turns them into question marks instead, like so: ??
This means creolened.com can never show the full and resplendent range of emojis.
🙁
I could convert the database over to accommodate this, but that risks mucking things up on a sitewide scale. And as much as I’d <31WordPress support suggest this should auto-convert to a heart emoji, but alas it does not appear to do so. to have a full array of emojis to draw from, as I am a silly person, I am also at least a little practical.
We’re already seven years past Billy Joel’s projected dystopia of “Miami 2017”, 2010 (the year we make contact) is now 14 years in the rearview mirror, and Blade Runner’s dystopian Los Angeles of 2019 was supposed to happen five years ago.
By these cultural yardsticks, we are doing:
Better than Miami 2017
Better than Los Angeles 2019
Well, about 2010…
The movie 2010 came out in 1984 and imagined a world where Russians and Americans worked together in space (but were on the verge of starting WW3 on Earth). Despite Russia descending into an autocracy ruled by a brutal, invasion-loving dictator since then (meet the new boss, etc.), that cooperation still happens today (albeit with more tension) with the International Space Station. But humans have never ventured past the moon (nor even been there in the last 50 years), let alone voyaged out to Jupiter. We’ve left most of our exploration to unmanned probes and the movies1Unmanned probes are actually a very effective way to explore the reaches of our solar system.
So we are doing better than the dystopian versions of the future, but kind of standing still or regressing on the space exploration part. And any alien life that may be out there has not seen fit to help us with our various crises of climate, politics and all that. Maybe they look at us like the Joe Pesci character in Goodfellas. We amuse them.
But here’s to 2024, and to things getting better, hopefully, even as we continue to deal with the ills, problems and plagues of 2023 that don’t pause because we flip the calendar over to a new year2As I write this, there are reports of a 7.5 major earthquake in Japan. Another reminder that the world doesn’t pause for a new year.
I wished my living room had looked like this when I was 30. (Image generated through NightCafe)
I don’t mean old-timey music like ragtime or something, rather I’m talking about eschewing a streaming service like Apple Music and going back to my old music collection, which consists mostly of CDs I’ve purchased and ripped over the past 30+ years. All of the files are local, tucked into a folder on my PC. The app to play them, Windows 11’s Media Player, provides album art and metadata, and that’s it. It doesn’t curate, recommend, provide radio stations, “for you” or anything else. It just lets you listen to your music library.
And it’s kind of refreshing. I can listen for hours and know I’m not burning bandwidth (I know I have the bandwidth, it’s more a principle thing). There’s a tangibility that’s missing with streaming. And everything is something I’ve already picked out, bought and listened to many times already. There is a welcome familiarity, but also a chance to revisit albums (kids, ask your parents what an “album” is) I haven’t listened to in years. Certain music invokes memories of other times and places. It’s weird and, usually, kind of wonderful.
Unlike my phone, which has a truncated version of my music library, the PC has everything, so when I hit shuffle, I never quite know what will come up. I like that.
Now I’m off to listen to Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe, which sounds more like a law firm than a majority of the members of Yes.
Firefly has been extensively trained on chicken scratch.
I couldn’t remember if I had made resolutions for 2023, which may give you an idea of how well I did at keeping them. Let’s find out and have a good cry together!
The 2023 resolutions were:
Get to 150 pounds by the end of February.
Verdict: Massive fail. As of today, I am 171.8 pounds, which is exactly seven pounds higher than a year ago and more than 20 pounds above my intended goal. I dreamed of being a hummingbird and ended up being a blimp.
Keep running.
Verdict: Success! Despite knee issues, I kept running regularly throughout the year.
Finish my Gum Gum game.
Verdict: Neither success nor failure, as I put the GGP game on pause to develop a different game first as a prototype.
Do more bird art.
Verdict: Success! I am working on more bird art right now.
Keep birding.
Verdict: Success! But this was a gimme.
Finally finish my blog redesign.
Verdict: Failure-ish. I did tweak the design a bit, but the big redesign still awaits.
Finally start doing some stretching.
Verdict: Success! After the issues with my knees and a couple of visits to a physiotherapist, I now stretch before I run.
Weird bonus resolution:
Record an original song in Garage Band.
Verdict: Failure. I think I opened Garage Band once. Fortunately, this was a silly resolution.
Overall: Eight resolutions, four successes. This is actually better than I expected. Onward to 2024!
My Fancy Resolutions for 2024
NOTE: For 2024 I am skipping the "easy" stuff that I would probably be doing anyway, like running and birding.
Get to 150 pounds. But for real this time. Gotta go with the classics.
Finish my prototype game. Title to be revealed soon™.
Complete my blog redesign. Another classic. It could happen!
Revive my newsletter. I am actually working on this now, and have moved from Substack to Buttondown for the hosting.
Complete one of my unfinished novels. Likely either The Mean Mind or Road Closed. I’ve been itching to get back into writing again, and either of these stories will be fun to noodle around on.
Start a new blog or something. I kind of have something in mind, we’ll see what happens.
Focus on:
Being happy
Staying healthy
Bringing good into the world
Getting decent sleep, which will help with all of the above
New for 2024: I will check in at the end of each month to see how well I am doing on these things and use a letter, star, number or some other system to mark my progress or lack thereof. It’ll be fun!
…unless you are talking about grammar, then your Boxing Day email flyer may suffer a little under the load. I remember working Boxing Day in retail1It is the abyssal hell you imagine, so I’ll cut the proprietor here some slack and not call them out by name.
I remember way back (we’re talking about the 1990s here at the latest) when Boxing Day sales were items featured on local news, mainly because people would line up at A&B Sound at some absurdly early hour to get great deals on stereo and related AV equipment. Remember when people would line up for the new iPhone? It was like that, except it happened every year, for decades.
Now it’s mostly just a ton of e-flyers in my inbox and people placing orders online. And Boxing Day starts on Christmas Day…or earlier.
And I’m okay with that, really. I do not want to stand in a line.
(Also, I would be remiss to not point out the somewhat odd choice of using “It Gets Better!” as a shopping slogan, since it is best known for the It Gets Better Project to help out LGBTQ+ youth.)
I remember at least part of a dream I had last night. It went like this (insert dreamy music and transition effects):
I was in a large house, possibly a mansion, and had a sniper rifle. But wait, it’s not what it sounds like! It was a pew-pew laser rifle, like you use in laser tag. In the dream I apparently had a reputation of being a good shot (this is definitely not taken from any actual skills at video games and/or real life) and so even though we were in some kind of timed game that was ostensibly a free-for-all, it was really Everyone vs. Me.
I would emerge from a room and take a shot. I didn’t have time to use the scope, so I’d just quickly eyeball using the sight, and down an opponent would go. After a while, when they probably started thinking about how I was never not going to use my laser rifle, I switched it up and began using a grenade launcher. No, I don’t know how you could possibly simulate a grenade launcher in a game of laser tag, but in my dream, it not only worked, it worked very well.
I woke up just as the timer was running down, and I was declared victor, going undefeated. Basically, in this dream, I was a complete badass. Why I had this dream, I can’t say. Maybe my subconscious felt I needed a little ego boost for the end of the year, and delivered it in a way I could understand. I’m pretty sure the grenade launcher was due to recently rewatching Aliens. I had better luck than they did.
4,823 translates to about 253 posts per year, or 21 posts per month. That’s not bad when you consider how seldomly I posted in the early years of this blog (especially 2005-2015 or so). I’m not saying the quality has improved at the same rate, but there’s some decent stuff here, and in the near future, I will try to make it easier to find, so that others can better question my sense of humour, priorities, and fashion sense.
Yes, I’m a few days early, but unless there is a radical shift in the weather in the next few days, we will not only not see snow for Christmas, it will continue to be unusually mild, with most days averaging 10-11C, where the norm is 5-6C.
As I look out my office window, I can see green grass and, well, weeds, but everything is pleasantly green. I don’t need to wear five layers to go outside. I might get wet, depending on the particular time and day. It’s nice.
And yes, could this be climate change? Is this mild weather secretly bad and a dark omen of a crazy weather future? Maybe, but I think this time it’s more due to the effects from El Niño, which came in this year and didn’t really affect summer much (last year’s summer was a lot hotter and humid), but does seem to be taking the chill off winter. And I’m not going to object to that.
Tomorrow it is officially the first day of winter. If it is snowing, I will update this post to add a nelsonlaughing.gif aimed at myself.
Last night I dreamed I was back living in my basement suite at Tim’s old place (I last lived there in 2011), but as is the case in dream versions, the layout was different and it had a hallway where one did not exist before. Apparently we were having water issues. More specifically, something broke or sprung a leak because I was walking through water (rather unperturbed, too. I think I was barefoot and enjoying it in a way).
Rather than have a plumber fixing the issue, we appeared to have an entire crew working on whatever the problem was. One especially cheerful member of the crew stopped to explain to me how the problem was fixed and confirming it was fixed, and they were leaving. Even in the dream, I was curious why the whole place was still flooded. I approached another worker who was moving the fridge (back?) but then it turned out to be a mattress. It may have actually morphed when my sleep-brain decided a mattress suddenly made more sense, somehow.
But the best part was when about half a dozen pigeons flew into the hallway (which was not flooded) and started milling about as pigeons do. This was treated as essentially a normal thing in the dream and I bent down to one pigeon and moved an index finger under its belly, toward its feet, the way you would do to a budgie to get it to hop on your finger. The pigeon hopped onto my finger. I then carried the pigeon around on my finger for most of the rest of the dream.
Then I woke up. It is dry and pigeon-free as I type this, so my dream does not appear to be prophecy–so far.
After a two-year break, it’s time to interview myself again, to see what’s new and/or exciting as I and 8 billion others continue to experience life on Planet Earth.
Previous parts in this series can be found at the links below:
At the end of Part 4, posted June 22, 2021, promised future topics included:
Writing
Drawing
Programming
Other stuff that ends with -ing
Vague promises to discuss dating experiences from days of yore
Not mentioned but implied: More exciting foot news
As always, the interview will be conducted by my doppelgänger, who in this particular interview will be known as Ned.
Ned: Hello again.
Me: Hello there.
Ned: What’s new and/or exciting since the last interview, lo those 30 months ago?
Me: Much has changed. Much has not changed. My underwear has changed. I do that every day.
Ned: Let’s dig into some specifics.
Me: About my underwear?
Ned: …no.
Me: All right. I’m feeling cooperative right now, so seize the moment!
Ned: When last we talked, the world was still in the grip of a global pandemic. How are things now, in December 2023?
Me: I had a COVID-19 vaccination less than two weeks ago.
Ned: So the pandemic is still a thing?
Me: Yes and no.
Ned: Explain.
Me: No, in the sense that life has pretty much reverted to pre-pandemic behavior/reality for most people. Masks are optional, everything is open, and so on. Yes, in the sense that COVID-19 is still around, mutating merrily away, but it’s no longer clogging up hospitals with patients due to vaccines and everyone otherwise catching it at some point. Long COVID is a concern. I’m also unsure if I should capitalize covid or not. Anyway, it’s more a background thing now, unless you’re squashed into a bus with 500 other people, then some guy without a mask next to you starts coughing into your shoulder, and you start thinking about how it would be nice to have a giant hamster ball you could just roll around in public with instead.
Ned: Sounds kind of terrible. I mean, the hamster ball part sounds neat, the rest sounds terrible.
Me: It’s not that bad. I’m sure in a hundred years we’ll all look back and laugh at this pandemic thing, as heads in jars.
Ned: Like on Futurama?
Me: Yes.
Ned: OK, what other big things have changed that you want to talk about?
Me: Define big.
Ned: Pressing global issues and concerns.
Me: Doom.
Ned: How so?
Me: The rise of authoritarianism, the invasion of Ukraine, the invasion of Gaza, probably some other invasions I’m forgetting. The climate is also still getting worse. We are doomed, slightly doomed, or maybe not doomed, depending on what reports you read or which people you talk to. There is generally a fair amount of doom, though.
Ned: How do you cope with all the doom?
Me: I stopped checking the news.
Ned: Really?
Me: Totes for real. Anything truly big still gets to me, so I’m not living in a complete news-free bubble. But it’s nice to not actively and voluntarily read about doom all the time. It makes it easier to relax when I’m having a bubble bath.
Ned: You have bubble baths?
Me: Of course! They are awesome. I do some of my best thinking when immersed in bubbles. I am a fan of Dr. Teal’s bubble bath, specifically elderberry and citrus, both of which smell great. This is not a paid promotion. But it could be. Call me, Dr. Teal, I’ll be your marketing shill!
Ned: So you avoid the news now. What else?
Me: What else do I avoid?
Ned: Sure, let’s go with that.
Me: Social media, by accident. You see, I would always post photos to Instagram and then check it and Facebook when I was tucked into bed every night. Then I thought the blue light from my iPad might be keeping me awake, so I started reading with my non-blue light Kobo ereader instead. My sleeping improved. And then I never found another regular time to check social media, so I just kind of stopped. It’s been nice. Not as nice as a bubble bath, but nice.
Ned: So you are one of ten people on the planet who does not do social media?
Me: No. I still check in every few months. And I am on Mastodon, but the experience there is very different, because there are no ads or algorithm. If I want to see nothing but photos of cats, I can get that on Mastodon. On Facebook, I get an avalanche of ads, a billion “Suggested For You” recommendations that grow increasingly bizarre and questionable as I keep scrolling, then, a lone post from someone I actually know before the avalanche starts again. As an experience, it is gross and awful.
Ned: Have you tried other social media besides Mastodon?
Me: I have peeked in at Bluesky and Threads. I have no idea if Blueksy will amount to anything. They tried making the word “skeet” a thing, which is cringe times five hundred billion. Threads is owned by Meta, so it will eventually be ruined by ads and garbage, just like their other platforms. I deleted my Twitter account, though I rarely used it.
Ned: Oh right, Twitter.
Me: More doom. In one year, it has been transformed into flaming wreckage full of Nazis, conspiracy theorists and racists. Kind of impressive, in a way. Yet it shambles on, because the doom is powerful. But enough about doom. I’m trying to end the year on a positive note and you, sir, are not helping.
Ned: Right, sorry! Moving on, let’s talk about your feet.
Me: I have feet, two of them.
Ned: Last time, you were having problems with your feet.
Me: I am happy to report my feet have been problem-free since then.
Ned: That’s great.
Me: Yes. I have happy feet now. But don’t ask about my knees.
Ned: What about your knees?
Me: I think there’s a strong chance I was awful in a past life, and I am now being punished in this life via my knees.
Ned: Sounds bad. Yet intriguing!
Me: It could also be a hereditary thing. My dad had famously bad knees. Well, not that famously.
Ned: What happened to your knees?
Me: Once I quit my job in IT–
Ned: You quit your job?
Me: Yes. Ask me again later, I may elaborate. Or not. But after I quit my job, I had time to resume a regular running schedule, and eventually was back to doing 10K runs at Burnaby Lake. It felt good to be on the trail again, touching trees and such. I never actually touch trees while running, though. That’s probably dangerous.
Ned: Go on.
Me: In the spring of this year, I noticed my knees staring to get stiff after runs. It got worse. It then got a little worse again. I was concerned my knees would explode or something. I took pictures (of my knees). I went to my doctor. He identified a Baker’s cyst™ behind my right knee.
Ned: That sounds gross.
Me: It is, kind of. Basically, your knee cap has a bunch of fluid under it, to keep it lubricated and allow it to shift around without horrible things happening to it. With my right knee, that fluid was instead pooling up behind my right knee. Sort of a squishy bulgy thing.
Ned: Yuck. Did they amputate?
Me: This isn’t the 14th century, you know.
Ned: I know. I just wanted to say that. So what happened?
Me: I went to a physiotherapist, and he poked and prodded my knees and legs. By the way, when a physiotherapist says they’re going to do apply pressure to a part of your body in a way that “won’t feel great” believe them. Eventually, my doctor and physio guy cleared me to resume running. My knees are mostly better now, but I’m still mainly doing 5K runs, building back to 10K eventually. It’s meant I have run less in terms of distance, but have still managed to run regularly for most of the year. The whole thing lasted longer than the foot thing, but was less painful.
Ned: So you are now fit as the proverbial fiddle?
Me: Well, my weight keeps going up, despite efforts to lose it.
Ned: Have you been on an all-donut diet?
Me: No. But now I kind of wished I had been, because the results may not have been that different, and I’d have had a bunch of yummy donuts in the meantime.
Ned: Any new plans for fighting the fat?
Me: Less snacking. Vaguely hoping for a miracle. Things like that.
Ned: Excellent. Now, let’s talk about that job you quit!
Me: My last day was August 27, 2021, about a week before the school would have re-opened to in-person classes. I was vaccinated, but the idea of going back, and of enduring that commute, was not something that made my socks roll up and down with excitement.
Ned: Did you quit because of the pandemic?
Me: I’d say it accelerated the process. I had reached a point where the work was immensely unrewarding, even boring. I did not want to keep doing it. And the manager of my particular section of IT assured me that there was nothing else for me there, just working on the service desk, doing the same monotonous stuff with no foreseeable hope for promotion or a new role or anything.
Ned: That sounds less than ideal.
Me: Indeed. But it brought clarity to my position and made it easy to leave. Then I left!
Ned: And then what?
Me: I started learning how to program, so I could make my own games. I figured if it didn’t work out, I could just dig ditches or something until my body was reduced to a broken heap.
Ned: Fun! How is the programming going?
Me: Math is hard. I started working with the game engine Unity, then the executives there decided to enact a bunch of idiotic policies and destroy all trust with their users, so I switched to Godot, which is free and open source. I am making progress. It has been an interesting experience. It’s better than having a Baker’s cyst.
Ned: When is your first game due out?
Me: Next year. And by next year, I don’t mean in 19 days, when it will technically be 2024. But some time in 2024. I am keeping the details mostly mum for now.
Ned: That’s quite a change from working at a service desk.
Me: Yeah. I’ve gone from soul-crushing work to brain-crushing. But it’s by choice, plus I get to make my own hours and the commute can’t be beat.
Ned: Let’s talk about stuff you avoided talking about last time.
Me: I hear my kettle boiling.
Ned: You big fat liar.
Me: I’m not that fat. Fine, ask away.
Ned: Writing?
Me: Yes.
Ned: You are writing?
Me: Yes.
Ned: What are you writing?
Me: Mostly blog posts about whatever pops into my head. I also started a Substack newsletter which features some writing. Newsletters are hard. I did five issues, with the time between issues growing more…expansive.
Ned: Is the newsletter dead and buried now?
Me: Nothing is ever dead and buried on the internet. That’s what makes it great. And terrible. But for my newsletter, I decided to reboot it and start again in 2024.
Ned: 2024 seems like it will be a busy year.
Me: You know it, baby. Maybe all this work will help me shed some flab. *sobs*
Ned: I have complete confidence in you, unless you are secretly hiding cookies.
Me: No cookies, except for the internet kind.
Ned: Anything else, writing-wise?
Me: I’ve started noodling around again on my novel, The Mean Mind.
Ned: Aren’t you just the ambitious little go-getter!
Me: With so many plates in the air, I’m bound to, uh…hmm. I think I lost the analogy there. But yeah, I’ll be working on that, too, plus comics and things. And the game. And vacuuming.
Ned: Excellent. I look forward to hearing about the success of your many projects in Part 6!
Me: Whoa, let’s not get crazy here.
Ned: Sorry. A final writing thought to share?
Me: Just this random piece of trivia: I once wrote and submitted a teleplay for Star Trek: Voyager, called “Worlds Apart.” It was decent. And rejected.
Ned: Moving on, you refused to talk about dating last time. Let’s hear you dish now.
Me: Kettle boiling.
Ned: …
Me: Someone is at the door. With my boiling kettle.
Ned: …
Me: What? What is there to say? I’ll give you a very short summary, and you’ll have to try again in Part 6. Or Part 60.
Ned: Fair enough.
Me: I lost about 40 pounds in 2008. I was feeling spunky after this, and started dating again. I had many experiences, that ranged from, “What was I thinking?” to “What was he thinking?” to “This guy seems to want to end the date suspiciously close to the start of tonight’s episode of Survivor.” (It was 2008, people still watched regular TV.) You’ll have to wait, possibly forever, to hear more than that.
Ned: Aw. Just a little more?
Me: If I wrote a book about my dating experiences, I would call it Fruits and Nuts.
Ned: Any other personal, embarrassing experiences you’d like to share?
Me: No.
Ned: Not even one?
Me: Let me think. No. Also: No.
Ned: No?
Me: Correct.
Ned: Until next time, do you have any inspiring words to pass on to anyone reading this?
Me: Yes, actually.
Ned: !
Me: At the last scrum on the last day I was actually working in my previous job as a drifting, directionless slob at an IT service desk (my last two weeks were on vacation, which is a nice way to quit a job), I was handed the proverbial mic. After nearly nine years of being there, I offered my soon-to-be ex co-workers this: Do what makes you happy. Unless it’s being a serial killer. Don’t do that.
Ned: Great advice! See you in a couple of weeks.
Me: What? That’s not in the contract!
Ned: Haha, I’m kidding. Maybe in 2024, the year you do everything.
Me: Maybe.
Stay tuned for Part 6 of this apparently endless interview, coming in 2024. Or some other year. Probably not, like, 2397 or something, though.
