It’s the Fourth of July, which really only means something in the US. Over here it used to be “Philippine-American Friendship Day”, but apparently that was phased out while I was still in grade school.
A quote
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts” - W. Churchill
The world:
- Our current president and one of our possible future presidents, who are ostensibly allies / partymates have been feuding over the past week. Just another sign of how tenuous political alliances in this country are; they are no match for ambition.
- The DOH says we are now “low risk” for COVID-19 (which feels a bit like Obama awarding himself a medal, but whatever). While it’s nice to be optimistic, we should still be cautious, especially in light of the delta variant ravaging our neighboring countries.
- Other than the pandemic, if you need to be reminded of the world’s other problems, the Pacific Northwest in the US and Canada have been experiencing record-setting heat waves over the past week or so. Also, the ocean was on fire for a while.
Links of interest:
- The Rotting Internet. Related: Link Rot
- A Responsive Grid Layout Without Media Queries. Just a CSS thing I’m using to revamp the photos view on this site.
- Github recently announced Github Copilot: Your AI Pair Programmer, basically autocompletes code snippets based on your intent? They do have access to a large dataset of written code so this just might turn out to be the next big thing for making things easier for devs. I’ve signed up for the technical preview, let’s see if I get in.
- I enjoyed this twitter thread of people posting great shots from movies of the past decade, although I have a complaint.
- I like this Tumblr post about Bert and Ernie at the end of the world
Visit the Links page for more links of interest.
From the archives, this week in history:
- 2020: It’s been one year since I deactivated my Facebook account! Here’s the corresponding essay.
- 2013: Google shut down Google Reader, forever changing the adoption trajectory of RSS.
- 2011: Google launched Google Plus
My stuff:
- Was again a busy week due to family-related errands, mostly involving escort missions to the hospital (nothing major, just routine checks and such.)
- I hit the 900 daily streak on Duolingo! Road to 1000!
- Still sketching; this week, I really liked my rendition of the classic Icy Manipulator:
- Watching:
- Movies: Actually managed to watch a fair amount of movies this week! Watched both Dalton Bond films: The Living Daylights (1987) and License To Kill (1989); looking forward to Brosnan next! Caught the Matt Damon film Downsizing (2017) because I was stuck in a waiting room, and Under Siege (1992) because the Saturday gaming group decided we can do watch-alongs while playing our online boardgames. I actually have been paying attention to r/movies lately so I keep wanting to actually watch more movies, let’s see if that happens.
- Managed to catch up with most of the Arrowverse stuff this week. That’s Flash, Legends of Tomorrow and Superman and Lois (Supergirl still on hiatus). Current season rankings: S&L > Legends > Flash. These shows are pretty good to have in the background while I do other stuff.
- Gaming:
- Dove into the Frozen Wilds DLC for Horizon Zero Dawn on PS4! Apparently I wasn’t too tired of the game yet, despite playing it for over two months now.
- Still playing Guilty Gear Strive. Wrote some words about it here.
- Regular Saturday group played some Root and Blood Rage this weekend, same as last weekend. I finally rolled Lizard Cult in random select!
- Still managing to avoid Steam Sale damage! (A few days still remain.)
- Reading: Finished reading: Linchpin by Seth Godin and also Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman (will probably write a short review this week)
- No online quiz night for the trivia team this week, although we’ve still been regularly doing the Saturday NY Times crossword and spelling bee.
This coming week:
- New Loki, Rick and Morty, etc episodes.
- Black Widow is out this week!
- New set Adventures in the Forgotten Realms drops this week on Magic Arena! I’m not a big D&D fan (though I am a bit familiar), so I’m not super hyped specifically for the set, but any shakeup to constructed formats is welcome.
See Also