Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Review of Tensei Kizoku, Kantei Skill de Nariagaru {Reincarnated as an Aristocrat with an Appraisal Skill] ep 1-12

    I have no idea why I thought that it was a good idea to watch this. MC is annoying and gets handed all the aces. Worldbuilding is non-existant and full of weird anachronisms. Other characters are weak chliches that exist to reassure MC that he is a very special boy.

  • Mode

    One could remark on the woeful lack of musical education, though humans have a lot else they stuff their brains with these days, and music theory may not be the most profitable of things to brain-stuff. This is your chance to exit!

    Okay so in the modern Western system the major and minor scales are typical, C D E F G A B C (C major) and A B C D E F G A (A minor) being two common forms. The starting note can be moved around, e.g. D E F-sharp G A B C-sharp D (D major) and D E F G A B-flat C D (D minor), but the intervals remain the same. This for modern Western music generally assumes but does not require the 12-tone equal temperament tuning, but alternate tunings are a rat-hole we shall not delve into here. The major scale interval sequence is 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 and the minor scale 2 1 2 2 1 2 2. A piano keyboard may help to count between keys.

  • On Florida Water (it's okay to use it)

    For those who might not have heard of it before, Florida Water is a cologne (technically an eau de toilette), named from the Spanish word "florida" meaning "floral" (nothing to do with the area of Florida). It was invented by an apothecary in New York, and marketed across the world, including the Caribbean where it became popular because it was pleasant and cheap; it was then adopted into some open spiritual contexts (e.g. espiritismo) there because of an existing use of perfumes for cleansing purposes, even though it was not designed or marketed as an inherently spiritual product or substance on its own. However, because of its eventual use within a spiritual context, it's sometimes confused with holy water, i.e. water blessed by a priest (generally within a Christian, and specifically Catholic Christian, context).

  • Habit Hooks

    Okay, warning for the hopeless leading the hopeless here because I am really really really bad at picking up new habits, buuuut I think I stumbled onto something!

    Add the new habit in before something else you’re already doing. Like, “before I eat I should get my vitamins.”

    Many years ago I read in a book that a key technique for picking up new habits is to tie them be triggered by something else you’re doing. Like, every time I’ve laminated the stasis which I always do, I should then distim the doshes after which is the new habit I’m trying to pick up.

  • How not to ‘support’ people

    Someone with disability, chronic illness, trauma, or grief expresses the difficulties and challenges they're facing. In response, a number of people will express sympathy/empathy, by saying something like “Sorry you're having to deal with this”, and maybe asking “Is there anything I can do to support you?”

  • Messaged Mediums

    The medium influences the message; how strong this influence is varies. Some will claim that "the medium is the message", often in reference to dark patterns, algorithmic attention addiction, and other such features of this most benighted of eras, as discussed with varying degrees of glee to despair on the Orange Site. Certainly in some cases arguments can be made for the strong form of the medium being the message, though there are weaker (and perhaps less sinister) influences which one may observe in, say, the largest printer a department has to produce a poster with, or regulations on maximum (and minimum!) poster sizes that an organization may set so that bling-bound poster-makers are at less of a disadvantage, and so that nobody with excessive clevers prints a QR code on a postage stamp as their submission.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Re: Wide Technology

    I somehow managed to lose my dads old pocket watch many years ago, which saddens me. It just worked and I was very happy to just carry it around and it makes for a good fidget spinner when winding it. 😂 They are difficult to find or expensive these days, so I doubt I will get another one.