Bundle of Holding: Good Society (from 2024)
Feb. 25th, 2026 02:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
james_davis_nicoll
The Good Society Bundle featuring Good Society, the Jane Austen-inspired tabletop roleplaying game from Storybrewers Roleplaying.
Bundle of Holding: Good Society (from 2024)
Babel no Toshokan by Tsubana
Feb. 25th, 2026 08:52 amjames_davis_nicoll
What could possibly go wrong with playing along with an unhappy teen's delusions?
Babel no Toshokan by Tsubana
Testing, Testing
Feb. 24th, 2026 06:47 pmbillroperToday was spent writing unit tests and fixing bugs that turned up when I ran the unit tests.
Which is, I suppose, the best reason for writing unit tests.
I have a few more unit tests to write tomorrow and then I can move on to the next project.
Which is, I suppose, the best reason for writing unit tests.
I have a few more unit tests to write tomorrow and then I can move on to the next project.
The Rift by Walter Jon Williams
Feb. 24th, 2026 09:15 amjames_davis_nicoll
The New Madrid Fault teaches a memorable lesson about the transience of things.
The Rift by Walter Jon Williams
Back to Work
Feb. 23rd, 2026 09:19 pmbillroperIt was back to work today. I think I've gotten a bit of coding done, but we'll see what happens when I finish writing the unit tests *and* the guys who are supposed to hook it up to the UI take a run at it.
In other news, I was pinged by one of my fellow programmers today who was playing around with the OLE compound document format that our desktop files are stored in. I showed him the set of Java code that I wrote on top of Apache POI to provide additional support for features that we're using. Then I said, "Watch this."
I bounced into VS Code and fired up Cline and told it to look at these classes in my source base and then write a code snippet that would open up a desktop file and dump out all of the custom settings from the user defined property set. Now this isn't overly hard code to write, but even so, the resulting code was very nice and took advantage of features like try-with-resources and such. I cut the code out and emailed it to my coworker, suggesting that he could put this somewhere that we could get at it. :)
It was, in any case, faster than writing it myself and certainly not bad code.
On a completely different note, if no one is interested in the treadmill, I am going to list it sometime in the next few days as available for free on Nextdoor, which is a pretty good way to get large objects to leave my home. If you *are* interested, let me know.
In other news, I was pinged by one of my fellow programmers today who was playing around with the OLE compound document format that our desktop files are stored in. I showed him the set of Java code that I wrote on top of Apache POI to provide additional support for features that we're using. Then I said, "Watch this."
I bounced into VS Code and fired up Cline and told it to look at these classes in my source base and then write a code snippet that would open up a desktop file and dump out all of the custom settings from the user defined property set. Now this isn't overly hard code to write, but even so, the resulting code was very nice and took advantage of features like try-with-resources and such. I cut the code out and emailed it to my coworker, suggesting that he could put this somewhere that we could get at it. :)
It was, in any case, faster than writing it myself and certainly not bad code.
On a completely different note, if no one is interested in the treadmill, I am going to list it sometime in the next few days as available for free on Nextdoor, which is a pretty good way to get large objects to leave my home. If you *are* interested, let me know.
Bundle of Holding: Mists of Akuma
Feb. 23rd, 2026 02:10 pmjames_davis_nicoll
A bundle for Mists of Akuma, the tabletop roleplaying campaign setting of Eastern fantasy noir steampunk from Storm Bunny Studios for Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition.
Bundle of Holding: Mists of Akuma
A Brief Survey of Canadian Political Thrillers
Feb. 23rd, 2026 10:02 amjames_davis_nicoll
You may be surprised to learn that "Canadian thriller" is not an oxymoron.
A Brief Survey of Canadian Political Thrillers
Smaller Steps
Feb. 22nd, 2026 09:25 pmbillroperI spent some time today dealing with some smaller projects around the house. One of these was to take some measurements in the library, which is now done.
The next trick is going to be finding someone who wants our old Reebok RX-3000 treadmill which is sitting in the library taking up space. It is free to a good home. A good home is currently defined as "someone who is willing to take it away". :)
I am continuing my efforts to get the Flash pinball in the basement up and running. One of the projects that I may be able to handle myself is to fix some screw holes in the playfield where the screw no longer bites in properly, resulting in loose parts, which is not good. Filling these with toothpicks and wood glue has been suggested. Curiously, that is the same suggestion that has been made online for fixing Julie's bedroom door, which will not latch. I figured that I like the pinball machine better than the bedroom door, so why not experiment there?
The door still does not latch. It *might* latch if I had carved out a bit more wood to make room for the strike plate, because the door actually *does* latch if I *remove* the strike plate. But the toothpick and glue method is a bit messy.
I fixed one of our bathroom cabinets that had a similar problem using some very nice wood filler and I am thinking this may be a better solution to the problem. I will think about this a bit longer before taking a run at it. :)
Anyway, tomorrow it will be back to work, so projects will wait for a bit for me to catch up...
The next trick is going to be finding someone who wants our old Reebok RX-3000 treadmill which is sitting in the library taking up space. It is free to a good home. A good home is currently defined as "someone who is willing to take it away". :)
I am continuing my efforts to get the Flash pinball in the basement up and running. One of the projects that I may be able to handle myself is to fix some screw holes in the playfield where the screw no longer bites in properly, resulting in loose parts, which is not good. Filling these with toothpicks and wood glue has been suggested. Curiously, that is the same suggestion that has been made online for fixing Julie's bedroom door, which will not latch. I figured that I like the pinball machine better than the bedroom door, so why not experiment there?
The door still does not latch. It *might* latch if I had carved out a bit more wood to make room for the strike plate, because the door actually *does* latch if I *remove* the strike plate. But the toothpick and glue method is a bit messy.
I fixed one of our bathroom cabinets that had a similar problem using some very nice wood filler and I am thinking this may be a better solution to the problem. I will think about this a bit longer before taking a run at it. :)
Anyway, tomorrow it will be back to work, so projects will wait for a bit for me to catch up...
Dance the Eagle to Sleep by Marge Piercy
Feb. 22nd, 2026 09:33 amjames_davis_nicoll
Can America's well-financed, highly-experienced, heavily-armed war machine hope to prevail against a numerically insignificant, poorly-armed, American teen movement?
Dance the Eagle to Sleep by Marge Piercy
Warm weather and little stuff
Feb. 22nd, 2026 07:49 amjohnridleyWe had a few days of exceptionally warm weather, up in the 50s. That was nice, the snow mostly went away, but it seems to have snowed about 2 inches (on a 0.6" forecast) overnight. We'll see how that clears by Monday night when I have rehearsal in Ypsi.
I found and bought an industrial drill press off Marketplace. It was listed as having issues, but the only thing I needed to do to get it working was to replace the control transformer and rewire the motor, it had been wired incorrectly for 120, I rewired it for 240. It's OK as is though it's kind of noisy. I sort of suspect a bad bearing somewhere. There's a knocking that could be a bearing under side load.
I guess Capricon happened since last update. That was nice, my goal at conventions is to catch up and visit with friends and that happened.
I've decided to slack off on the gym a bit, or at least not sweat it if I have something else to do or the weather is bad. I'm making progress there but no need to go crazy.
Planning is proceeding for the Isle Royale trip. There's not THAT much planning to do, just bring a sleep system and food and a way to prepare the food. And of course book passage to and from.
I also have a couple of things I'd like to build for the event afterwards, neither of them terribly difficult, I just need to get going on it but probably not until there's decent weather. One of them is probably a one day build, the other 3 or 4 days. Still, better to finish early.
I found and bought an industrial drill press off Marketplace. It was listed as having issues, but the only thing I needed to do to get it working was to replace the control transformer and rewire the motor, it had been wired incorrectly for 120, I rewired it for 240. It's OK as is though it's kind of noisy. I sort of suspect a bad bearing somewhere. There's a knocking that could be a bearing under side load.
I guess Capricon happened since last update. That was nice, my goal at conventions is to catch up and visit with friends and that happened.
I've decided to slack off on the gym a bit, or at least not sweat it if I have something else to do or the weather is bad. I'm making progress there but no need to go crazy.
Planning is proceeding for the Isle Royale trip. There's not THAT much planning to do, just bring a sleep system and food and a way to prepare the food. And of course book passage to and from.
I also have a couple of things I'd like to build for the event afterwards, neither of them terribly difficult, I just need to get going on it but probably not until there's decent weather. One of them is probably a one day build, the other 3 or 4 days. Still, better to finish early.
Doing Things
Feb. 21st, 2026 09:47 pmbillroperNow that the taxes are out of my hands, there were other things to do today. Happily, none of them was laundry.
I took a box of stuff to Goodwill over lunch, getting it out of the house. Then it was off to Sam's Club, where I restocked a great many items. I have been intending to hang the GAFilk quilt that Gretchen won in absentia out in the hallway for a while now and *that* is finally done. While getting that sorted out, I put away the old CPAP as a backup, which cleaned that mess out of the chair in the bedroom that it had shared with the quilt.
I am filing a warranty claim for our leaky iSense mattress. They requested photos of the stripped mattress and the platform that it sits on, so I got that done (with a bit of help from Julie to stand the mattress on end so I could easily get photos of the platform) and sent them off. We'll see what they have to say, but the answer should be "let us fix this now". If it is not, there is going to be a problem.
And I ran the next-to-last session for the computer division in our APBA league, so I just have one more to get to the end of the year. All of the adjustments are made for three of the four teams, so this should be pretty straightforward once the fourth manager reports in.
Meanwhile, Gretchen made a lovely pot of beef stew using the stew beef that I picked up at Sam's Club earlier in the day. And then we went back and watched the recording of the Olympic women's free skate, which was a lot of fun.
Now it is time to go put the bed back together. Happily, the mattress is sitting on the platform, not standing on end...
I took a box of stuff to Goodwill over lunch, getting it out of the house. Then it was off to Sam's Club, where I restocked a great many items. I have been intending to hang the GAFilk quilt that Gretchen won in absentia out in the hallway for a while now and *that* is finally done. While getting that sorted out, I put away the old CPAP as a backup, which cleaned that mess out of the chair in the bedroom that it had shared with the quilt.
I am filing a warranty claim for our leaky iSense mattress. They requested photos of the stripped mattress and the platform that it sits on, so I got that done (with a bit of help from Julie to stand the mattress on end so I could easily get photos of the platform) and sent them off. We'll see what they have to say, but the answer should be "let us fix this now". If it is not, there is going to be a problem.
And I ran the next-to-last session for the computer division in our APBA league, so I just have one more to get to the end of the year. All of the adjustments are made for three of the four teams, so this should be pretty straightforward once the fourth manager reports in.
Meanwhile, Gretchen made a lovely pot of beef stew using the stew beef that I picked up at Sam's Club earlier in the day. And then we went back and watched the recording of the Olympic women's free skate, which was a lot of fun.
Now it is time to go put the bed back together. Happily, the mattress is sitting on the platform, not standing on end...
Books Received, February 14 — February 20
Feb. 21st, 2026 09:02 amjames_davis_nicoll
Seven books new to me. four fantasy, one horror, one ostensibly non-fiction, and one romance. Three are series. Yeah, there does seem to be a shortage of science fiction.
I had a bunch of stuff come in just after the cut-off time for these. Next week will look very different.
Books Received, February 14 — February 20
Poll #34247 Books Received, February 14 — February 20
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 45
Which of these look interesting?
View Answers
I Want You to Be Happy by Jem Calder (May 2026)
3 (6.7%)
In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir by Francis Fukuyama (September 2026)
5 (11.1%)
A Divided Duty: An October Daye Novel by Seanan McGuire (September 2026)
15 (33.3%)
Wickhills by Premee Mohamed (September 2026)
17 (37.8%)
Hallowed Bones: A Sons of Salem Novel by Lucy Smoke (October 2026)
2 (4.4%)
Falling for a Villainous Vampire by Charlotte Stein (October 2026)
6 (13.3%)
I Am the Monster Under the Bed: A Novel by Emily Zinnikas (September 2026)
14 (31.1%)
Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)
Cats!
38 (84.4%)
Waving Bye to March
Feb. 20th, 2026 10:44 pmbillroperOk, it *wasn't* March, but weather around here was certainly like the end of March -- and a *temperate* end of March -- for several days in a row. I was able to go to my lighter coat, the sun was shining. It was gorgeous.
February has now reasserted itself with a cold and blustery wind. It seemed even colder just because it had so recently been relatively warm.
Overall, it made sitting at my desk and getting some programming done look really good. :)
Real spring will be here soon.
February has now reasserted itself with a cold and blustery wind. It seemed even colder just because it had so recently been relatively warm.
Overall, it made sitting at my desk and getting some programming done look really good. :)
Real spring will be here soon.
The Friend Zone Experiment by Zen Cho
Feb. 20th, 2026 09:10 amjames_davis_nicoll
A successful businesswoman has the opportunity of a lifetime offered to her, only to have an old friend greatly complicate matters.
The Friend Zone Experiment by Zen Cho
Mamma Mia!
Feb. 19th, 2026 11:41 pmbillroperThe winter musical at the high school is "Mamma Mia!" and Julie and I headed over to see it tonight on opening night. It went well. The cast, crew, and orchestra did a fine job and everyone had a lot of fun.
Note for those who didn't get the memo (like me): this is the first time that I've seen a show at the high school with assigned seats, so if you're planning to go, get your tickets early. I managed to get a pair of decent seats today, but not where I usually sit when it's general admission seating.
Note for those who didn't get the memo (like me): this is the first time that I've seen a show at the high school with assigned seats, so if you're planning to go, get your tickets early. I managed to get a pair of decent seats today, but not where I usually sit when it's general admission seating.
All Regulations Are Written in Blood
Feb. 19th, 2026 12:10 pmjames_davis_nicollTTRPG campaign idea.
PCs are field agents in charge of finding and dealing with arcane occupational safety violations. That six-sided summoning pentagram? Flagged. That storeroom where the universal solvent is next to the lemonade? Flagged.
That deadly-trap-filled dungeon abandoned by its creator when the maintenance fees got too high? Red tagged.
This isn't the same as my recent FabUlt campaign. That was about discouraging the worst excesses in a world run by oligarch mages and there weren't really regulations. This would be set in a regulatory state, and would be more an exploration of normalization of deviance.
PCs are field agents in charge of finding and dealing with arcane occupational safety violations. That six-sided summoning pentagram? Flagged. That storeroom where the universal solvent is next to the lemonade? Flagged.
That deadly-trap-filled dungeon abandoned by its creator when the maintenance fees got too high? Red tagged.
This isn't the same as my recent FabUlt campaign. That was about discouraging the worst excesses in a world run by oligarch mages and there weren't really regulations. This would be set in a regulatory state, and would be more an exploration of normalization of deviance.
Slow Gods by Claire North
Feb. 19th, 2026 08:52 amjames_davis_nicoll
Against the gleefully hypocritical, exploitative Shine, the very gods themselves contend in vain.
Slow Gods by Claire North