markc1957

Not a great week -- very down on myself for having sent N off with the wrong charger for (scooter)Gizmo. It was hiding in a box, and I overlooked it several times. G found it immediately, when asked. I need to change some of my habits to keep it from happening again. N finally managed to get one locally on Friday, with help from the seller and the hotel concierge. The seller had express-shipped one, but it somehow got held up in Turkish customs despite their having charged N extra for getting it expedited. She got back yesterday evening, and we now have a spare charger for Gizmo.

Meanwhile our other scooter and scooter-like vehicles are still out of commission: (Folding scooter)Lizzy is still in the shop, (carlet)Scarlett came back from the shop without her charger, and (walker/wheelchair)Roman is still unusable without a software upgrade. Which requires some kind of special interface (being shipped by boat) and Windows. All of this is due to my procrastination and phone phobia.

On the other, um..., foot, I now have two pairs of compression socks. Getting them on is fairly easy, because I can pull. Getting them off is not; I have ordered a foot-extraction tool. And I walked every day, so there's that.

Germany Just Made Open Document Formats Mandatory! This is particularly timely, because WireGuard And VeraCrypt Developers [were] Locked Out Of Microsoft Accounts... It may or may not be fixed by now, but the fact that they did it means that it will almost certainly happen again.

(Filk-adjacent, s4s-adjacent) linkies: (from Monday -- great way to start a week!) (also serious rabbit-hole warning) Angine de Poitrine - Full Performance (Live on KEXP) - YouTube (h/t to siderea) polka-dotted aliens with loopers, polyrythms and a double-neck quartertone guitar/bass. The band name, Angine de Poitrine, translates as "chest pain" More on Monday and Wednesday. Possible s4s post soonish; this will do until then.

And from Friday, Take a mind-bending ride through the cosmos at light speed Deep time and beyond: the great nothingness at the end of the Universe, both from Aeon.co. Take note: eternity is longer still.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Today I am thankful for...

• Compression socks. (Writing this in the waiting room; we´ll see whether they fit in a few miutes.) (Update: they fit.) NO thanks for having to wash them after every other use, but...
• Battery life.
• Linux Mint, LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition), and Linux Weekly News.
• Emacs. See also, The Agent-Native Editor Was Invented in 1976 (N.B. I have not, and may never, tried adding AI to Emacs. But with a small local model it could work.)
• Induction cooking -- we just acquired a 2kW induction hob. Because we have to worry about our gas supply.
• Sometimes, for sleeping with cats.

... is Hurrian Hymn #6, addressed to the goddess Nikkal (wife of the moon god Nanna) and dates to around 1400 BCE.

Here it is on YouTube. The actual song, with lyrics in Hurrian and English, starts around 8:20. That's what I encountered first.

Here's an article on OpenCulture.com, which quite a few different videos; the first of which has the lyrics all on one screen (under the cut). I'm going to assume that the song is public domain. By a lot. The article has a quite a few good related links.

( lyrics, if you don't want to click through: )

Welcome to March 32, 2026!