Just some place - blog

Reading more...or, wow, that went quick!

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 11:02:00 +0000

Published: 14 September 2026

I used to be a voracious reader. I would sit in a restaurant booth, eat some food, drink some tea, then progress to read for hours and hours. I'm surprised that I never got booted from any place. Many, may days were spent like that, consuming a lot of series and titles.

It was much easier when I had no family, just me, myself and I. Now that I've aged and have a large number of other distractions it's a little more challenging to find the time to get a chapter in here and there. I will admit, that it's not just the family obligations that have imposed a limit on what I've been able to read. I have plenty of other items that have competed for my attention: social media, reading online sites, binging the latest whatever-show-is-currently-playing. You get the idea.

Over the past couple of weeks I have, not really forced, but attempted to create the internal desire to crave reading for pleasure once again. Making an attempt to create a new habit to crack open the book (or e-reader) and take in yet another chapter. It doesn't take long.

I think it's working, too.

I started the final book in The Expanse series on September 1 and finished it on the 13th, 528 pages. I haven't done that in a very long time. I read at least half of the previous book, Tiamat's Wrath, from August 8 through to the 23rd. The book before that, Persepolis Rising....eh, not so quickly as it took from December 2025 until May of 2026. Needless to say, I'm stoked about my current progress. I have this desire to read more and more. It feels really good.

My next read is currently The Mercy of Gods, also by James S. A. Corey. I'm really looking forward to getting into a new universe and seeing just how it grows.

Some wondering thoughts on how much is too much

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 11:07:00 +0000

Published: 05 September 2026

I sit here on a Saturday pre-afternoon, it's not really morning and it's certainly not noon nor is it after noon, so I call it pre-afternoon.

Language is a funny thing.

I have a habit of listening to the local npr station during the morning, as well as any time that I'm in the car. Used to be a time when I listened to music, but about a decade ago I got tired and burned out on commercial radio. It was all the same crap and I decided that I'd rather know more about what was going on in the world than listen to the dregs of whatever the next "big thing" was. If anyone had told younger me that I'd prefer public radio and the bbc World News to listening to tunes, well, I'd call you crazy. But there we are.

The other day I was listening to an interview that was being done with Marlon James, which was mainly about a new book that he has coming out (The Disappearers, should you be curious), but there was a section of the interview that touched on another book that Marlon had been invited to write a forward for. I believe that the title was Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. During this portion, there was one quote that really stood out to me - which, I am ashamed to admit that it's something that has never, not once, occurred to me:

...Because the - one of the things that people use to justify liking it [violence] is saying that the violence isn't gratuitous. And I recount arguing - this is one of the most gratuitous, violent novels ever written, and that's the point. All violence is gratuitous. If you're saying there's such a thing as too much violence, then you're automatically saying there is such a thing as just enough, you know?

The emphasis is mine.

The statement completely blows my mind - it's absolutely correct, and it had never entered my thought process as truth. He also included rape, and there could absolutely be more included there as well. It reflects very much on where we are as a society. As a people. As humans.

Any how. Food for thought.

Way too much in my head now

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 13:11:00 +0000

Published: 02 September 2026

As per the title of this post, I've got this feeling that there is just way too much noise going on my head currently.

It's getting difficult to try and filter some of the extra details out that I would like to de-prioritize. I used to be better at this sort of thing.

I've got a site that I would like to re-launch. Oddly enough, it's the very one that I'm writing on at this point in time - one of the handful of domains that I have. One of the issues that I've got to get worked out on my own is trying to talk myself into downsizing a few of these. I don't need them. But then, for some reason when I'm on my work machine, using the work provided vpn, the domain name that I'd really like to use for my personal blog is unable to be resolved. It's been that way since they upgraded the vpn app, and it's very annoying. That does put a bit of a damper on being able to easily update things.

My main personal blog will now, once again, be published by way of emacs and org-mode, using a fork of a fork of org-static-blog. Template modifications have been made, org-social integration has been added (from the mainline org-static-blog, into my forked version), along with a small handful of other changes related to how the indexes are built. I'm actually kind of happy with how it's turned out. I'll probably never write an actual colophon, nor write up one of the "how I built this blog" posts. Just not something I feel is necessary.

I have been able to utilize my not-quite-self-hosted forgejo instance and docker-in-docker for a runner, so I can at least have a fresh emacs instance build the site and push it out to where it lives. Where does it live? Well, currently it's on uberspace and works really well. Besides the previously mentioned inability for the dns name resolution from the work vpn. Sigh. The only thing that I've yet to get sorted out is having the workflow properly use the imagemagick convert binary to build the open graph images. But that's not a huge problem. The old "it works on my machine", but not "their machine" issue.

There are some professional development things that I need to do. For one, I would like to continue my journey into common lisp. I've gotten quite a ways into one of the books and really need to move on.

I know there is more, and heck knows that my list of opened tabs spread throughout all of my browser sessions can attest to that. But right now, it's tough to keep track and my memory just is not what it used to be.

Oh, on a side note tangent kind of deal, this will also be an excellent test for feedecho from the new blog.

Some decisions

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 13:10:00 +0000

Published: 30 August 2026

No more pagecord

I think I'm no longer going to be blogging from pagecord.

Instead I'll be using my org-static-blog fork and integration with my static hosting.

Desires of the config

I would like to set up some better window handling of eww buffers within elfeed.

Which reminds me, I still need to set up some better way to add feeds into the elfeed.org file.

Might want to consider adding in the emacs-server as well. Not that I use it that much.

Do some more research into what I can do with easysession.

A final test

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 09:59:00 +0000

Published: 30 August 2026

This is the final test.

How well does. 11 this work?

I've got things mostly sorted out, I'm hoping, so that I can finally pull the trigger on this.