Eric TF Bat's Journal

Ary is still at it, plowing through all the Simple Heraldry devices, shooting them all down. So far we've only found one device that is completely clear, and despite all her work it was me who found it! It's Or, a chevron inverted vert, and it's about to be the device of our own Arts and Sciences Mistress, luckydipdays. There's a catch, though. This could be the last Simple Heraldry device left untamed, and it's considered a valuable piece of history (by me, at least). So Domhnall (actreal) Rocket has delivered an ultimatum: get it submitted this week, along with the name, and it'll go into the February Letter of Intent and be on its way. After that, all bets are off...

Meanwhile, one of our other members boggled me by coming up with a design that is completely clear. Tony's purple boat on a white and blue field appears clear, so we're going to send it off for registration too, if he can come up with a name.

Strictly speaking we don't really need to get all this stuff done so early, but it's an excellent way to encourage a sense of belonging, and these are some gorgeous heraldic designs, so why not let people get involved?

Didn't do much today. The monkeys have been stir crazy, so I took them down to the Betty Park, the playground in Port Huon down from our old rented place, so named because it's across the road from a nice lady named Betty who sells the produce of her extensive garden. The Boy Wonder is proving himself a real monkey, leaping about the play equipment with gay abandon and showing no fear. His big sister is less confident, but she's getting the hang of things and is justly pleased with herself.

Tonight I gave them back their computer, and set it up in their room. I need to figure out how to run some shell scripts from a PHP script, so we can connect remotely via Apache and do things like turning the volume down and restricting their access to certain sites (mainly ABC iView). It needs to be a solution we can just bookmark, so none of this sshing in and typing commands. In theory, we should be able to tailor their computer use and still leave them with something useful, but to do that I'm going to have to teach myself about Linux permissions, which is a scary thought.

Quite a productive day, in between the shouting at evil babies. I've been trying to sort out a device for one of our canton members, something in purple and yellow with owls, and a discussion on the SCA Heralds Facebook group revealed this: Purpure, three owls Or. It's clear! I'm rather pleased at that, and the owner, one Morwenna Du Bonney, is too. There's a complication, of course: a friend of ours, Mathilde Hastings from Politarchopolis, was planning to register Quarterly purpure and vert, three owls Or, which conflicts. But Morwenna and Mathilde are each willing to give the other permission to conflict, so regardless of who submits first they should both be able to coast through. Win!

I still need to help her document the name, of course, and get her husband's device sorted (his name will be William du Bonney, so there'll be no problem there), but we've gotten over the hard part.

So engrossed in the thrilling washing up, I nearly lost track of time. Not that there's much to write about lately. The mothers of the house (and those of the small people I'm not genetically related to) went off to Hobbiton today, so I was left with my beautiful but evil monkeys. We were going to pop down to the shop to buy ingredients to make a long-delayed birthday cake, but the aforementioned simians managed to leave a car door ajar last night so there was no battery power left for the ignition. So we went for a walk instead, when I realised it was entirely too close to evening and we'd done nothing much of value all day. As usual, their stamina cut out before we were a quarter of the way home again, but by then the brains of the outfit (both of them) had arrived home so I got a lift home for the Boy while the BatPup and I headed back at our own pace.

And that's pretty much it. Life is not exactly a thrill a minute round here at the moment, but that's life in the non-big non-city, I guess.

Here's what I would do if I had hands that worked.

First, I'd start my own business, doing just about anything and everything. I can build websites, teach people how to use computers, write software to solve problems... so I'd do that. I'd need a room to work in, of course, ideally with fewer rats and a less leaky roof than my studio, and some slightly beefier computer hardware, and so on, but that's the sort of thing I could earn if, you know, my hands didn't crap out after a couple of hours typing every few days.

Honestly, I could probably do a fair bit with just those couple of hours, but not enough to cover expenses and pay the mortgage.

I'd find a physiotherapist who did more than talk about stretching exercises. I've met good ones, but not recently. I'd get my arms and hands insanely strong again, the way they were before something clicked inside my spine and rendered me less than average.

I'd get the farm fenced, and the house painted, and a shitload of shelves up everywhere to store our stuff. I'd also decide which stuff we really needed and chuck out the rest. This is where the Vimes principle applies, of course: rich people can afford shoes that last for generations, whereas poor people can only afford ones that fall apart, which is why rich people spend less on shoes over time. Same with everything.

I'd turn the laundry into a pantry, the mudroom into a laundry and the kitchen into less of a joke. I'd renovate the bathroom and install a floor that's not rotting, and hunt down and block all the entrances that the rats use to get into our walls. I'd install a toilet that doesn't wobble.

I wouldn't buy another car, or get a flat-screen TV, or go on ridiculous holidays, because even if I had the money to do all that, what would be the point? We have a pretty minimalist lifestyle already, and we're heading further in that direction. It would be nice to be able to provide for my family and not have to worry so much, but why go beyond that?

I wouldn't work long hours at a job where they don't bother with ergonomic assessments or chairs worth more than ten bucks for the development staff. I wouldn't work for people who lied and cheated to make a buck.

I'll never be rich. I don't want to be. I wouldn't like me if I were. I've met people who do what they need to do to be rich, and they're like alien creatures. But I'd like to not worry. I'd like to be able to look at my bank balance and see that it's hovering around $0.00 but know that that's because the mortgage is pre-paid and the bills are all automated and there are no nasty surprises lurking.

I want an end to worry. That's all, really. Everything else grows out of that.

Sometimes I really really hate everybody who has anything at all to do with the software I use.

Consider: Firefox, Wordpress and Ubuntu. There's something about the versions of these that I'm using that simply... doesn't work. I asked on Facebook the other day if anyone else was having trouble accessing some websites I've set up that use Wordpress. Nope, no problem: from Amsterdam to Lutana, from Bungendore to Brisbane, the sites were coming up with no trouble at all. A bit slow, maybe, but that's NearlyFreeSpeech.net for you: versatile but not blindingly fast. But when I try accessing them, I get random time-outs, 80% of the time. It's clearly something in the set of tools I'm using: Aurora for the latest Firefox goodies, Ubuntu Linux 11.10 with the still-flakey-in-bits Unity window manager, Wordpress 3.3.1, Internode ADSL, Thinkpad L512, NearlyFreeSpeech.net using BSD 7.2, Apache 2.2 and PHP 5.3. None of those is a problem by itself but, as Vetinari said, "the problem came to light only if you ate the bread and then drank the water".

So I figured I'd swap out the only component I can: I'd use Chrome, which is a better browser in general once you get past the lack of absolutely essential add-ons. I first tried Chromium, but a niggling bug stopped me: it doesn't integrate with the Unity dock/taskbar thingy, showing up as a blank space instead of an icon. Bugger that; I downloaded the real thing, Google Chrome. And that's fine, and it appears in the dock and runs much better than the generic version... but it doesn't recognise Aurora, so I can't import bookmarks or passwords.

I found out how to import bookmarks via an HTML file (in case you're wondering, it's easy: you go down to the cellar with a torch, noting the lack of stairs, then look in the bottom of the locked filing cabinet in the disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the UX Designers Who Deserve To Be Castrated") but I can't seem to import passwords. This is the sort of thing that Firefox does easily and painlessly, because Firefox is the ultimate swiss-army chainsaw, but the colourborg like to keep things simple even when the result is unusable.

So anyhow, I'm going to do things the way they want. I'll uninstall Aurora and reinstall Firefox, and just for a lark see if the problem with the Wordpress sites is present in that. Then, while Firefox is present on my system, happily sharing the settings from Aurora without the slightest hassle because the Mozilla UX designers actually know what they're doing, I will rerun Chrome, import my settings and see if the WP problem exists there.

If it does, I'll dunk the computer in a vat of pademelon piss and get a job picking fruit.

After several days of swatting bees as they ventured out via the gap behind the wood heater from their home up in the old chimney, we finally just got sick of it and decided to give up on elegance. I started by applying masking tape to the gap, but they kept finding ways out. While I was out doing some errands, my Beloved went wild with duct tape, poly sealant and wodges of paper stuffed every which way, and finally with a sheet entirely covering the wood heater. There have been no further buzzy excursions, so it would appear we've found the solution. It's ugly, but it won't need to last. By the time we want to light a fire again, they'll be hibernating.

We're somewhat broke at the moment, what with insurance companies being fucktacular arsetrons and so on, so we're trying to cut down on the profligate use of petrol. To that end, and again with the aid and assistance of my quite remarkably clever Beloved, I tried a new trick for taking time off in town: I stuck my laptop bag and hat into a backpack, and rode my bike. It worked quite well, and I got a bunch of stuff done that I will talk about some other month, and had some time off.

Speaking of the beloved Beloved, it's her birthday on Friday, so on Thursday night I'm taking her out to dinner at our favourite cafe! Dylan has promised to look after the munchkins by her amazingly brave self, so we may actually get to celebrate without a chorus of whinge just one time. That would be nice. I hear the tirimisu is to die for, if you like that kind of thing; me, I think I'll have sticky date pud.

Lovely birthday today. We started with pressies. My Beloved gave me three t-shirts, all perfectly suited to me: this one, this one and the one I'm wearing right now. Lovely! This is a woman who clearly knows me well.

Next up, a trip to the lolly shop, where my monkeys let slip that it was my 516th birthday so the proprietress threw in a bag of rather scrumptious lollies gratis. They were that amazing "rock candy", the stuff with intricate patterns embedded in them. How do they do that, anyway? I went looking for YouTube videos tonight and they seemed to suggest that they make the shapes at macro sizes and then pull them until they form a very small and very long extrusion. Which is utterly weird.

After that, it was off to the imot. We had five visitors from the barony, and we got rather a lot done. Elena discussed feasty stuff with my Beloved and others who were interested in the cooking side of things, while I worked out a budget with David de Derlington. Maddie took the ideas for a branch device and did some brainstorming with everyone there, and came up with one that is (a) striking, (b) simple and (c) inexplicably clear of conflict! So disregard the sad fish: our proposed arms are Quarterly argent and gules, an apple tree Or within a laurel wreath counterchanged. It's got the colour scheme I wanted, and it's far simpler than I ever dared hope: a complexity count of (3 tinctures + 2 charges) = five, which is almost as low as you can go with branch arms because they have to include laurel wreaths. And we came out of it with firm promises from all our active non-members that they would soon be members, and half of them volunteered to be officers too, so we now have a seneschal, a herald, an A&S mistress, a reeve and a potential marshal. Not bad for a day's work!

Tonight my Beloved made tofu curry, my favourite, and we finished the evening with a game of Wildcraft, an amusing and non-combative board game she gave the BatPup for Christmas. The Boy didn't eat much of anything apart from lollies all day so was a bit painful, but as soon as he lay down he went clunk. Note to self: when the Boy is tired, put him to bed. You'd think that'd be easy to remember, but no...

So that was my birthday. Not bad at all, and an improvement on many previous years, not least because the weather here is much more civilised. Could do with fewer bees, rats and possums, but no system's perfect. In general, I am most pleased.

We have a new Attack Of The Fifty Foot^* Bees in our living room lately, though they've stopped right now because it's the middle of the night. While I was bothering to keep count I squashed fifty of the buggers with our trusty fly swatter after they crept out from under the wood heater, but that was just a buzzy, stingy drop in the ocean all day. They seem to be coming from a gap that I can't seem to fill up no matter how hard I try, so I suspect tomorrow I'll have to go get some of that Expandafoam stuff and just make it impossible. How that will react when next we light the fire is anyone's guess, but I think we just need a solution.

Some time, when I have the money and some time, I'll build a bee hive and try to attract them into it, but right now there are a million other things that need doing. When I do and it's established, I plan to let my Beloved do the honey extraction, because I have a vague memory from early childhood that I might be allergic to bee stings. Probably should ask my dear mother about that, now I think of it...

^* Size exaggerated slightly for effect.

Had a major sitting-on-arse day today. Didn't even get dressed until about midday, and didn't do much after that either. This was for sound medical reasons: both my feet and calves have been very sore indeed after the abuse I gave them on the weekend, and I really needed to stay right off them and be a lazy bugger for a while and let them get over it. This seems to have worked; they're a bit stiff still, but much better. Tomorrow I'll be back to normal.

Highlight of my lazy day was re-watching the Robert Downey Jr Sherlock Holmes and realising that, while it is very good, it's really a pale shadow of the Benedict Cumberbatch version. The relationship between Holmes and Irene Adler has no chemistry to it at all, quite unlike the one in Sherlock, and Jude Law as John Watson is quite one-dimensional compared to Martin Freeman. Still very good though, as I said, but my standards have risen sharply since I first saw it.