Cetero censeo "authored" delendam esse

I hate songs such as "All I want for christmas is you". Bah.

Today, the building society had new windows installed in my flat. There had been a timetable for a while, placing my flat in this week, but no more precise than that. That was rather inconvenient of course since this was one of the few times I would be away during the week (returning from BiCon).
Fortunately I could arrange it for the friday - I'd be home at least and have some time to evacuate the space near the windows (up to 3 metre).
They'd start at 7.30... uncomfortably early, but I managed to get up at 7 or so. But they only arrived just before 8. Within 15 minutes, they had removed most of my windows. The only stuff left were the outermost frames, which were attached  to the walls and had to be forced.
Putting the new stuff in took a bit longer. At about 14.00 they were finished with both sets of windows. Fortunately there was no rain, but even if so, they did the living room window first. The balcony window isn't as susceptible to rain, as there is the higher balcony protecting it. But it was still all open and cold for several hours.
To clear the space near the windows, I needed to move my very large sofa (fortunately it is in segments) and a cupboard that has all my CDs and lots of VHS tapes and other small stuff in it. That was the most annoying part. I also had to clear the Amiga 4000 off the desk in the bedroom. The top of the desk stretches along most of the wall, and can't be removed, but at least the workmen (I didn't spot any women in their team) could stand on it. Removing the Amiga 4000 leaves such a nice free spot, I'd like to keep it that way, actually. But then I need to find a space to put the thing in storage, which in turn means that I have to remove something else. A good candidate is some Commodore PC which I once got in a deal together with a PET 8296-D, but which I never really wanted. Also, some bulk computer printout piles can be pruned. Of course, every time I look in those things, I come across interesting stuff that I want to keep...

BiCon was pretty good. Danced with cute people, was a bit flirty with someone, and discovered someone who was at the famous Edinburgh soc.bi party in 1991, and had not seen since. I gave people my card - hopefully they'll also want to stay in touch. Of course there was too little time to chat with all the people I would have wanted to, as usual. It takes me a while to get going in that department, and before you know it, BiCon is over already.
Afterwards, I went to London to Isabelle's (lj:babounet) house, to visit the lodgers. I was hoping to meet other friends of Isabelle's too but that didn't work out. But the lodgers made me very welcome and made me nice food. They had made small but nice improvements to the house. Isabelle's room is in use as a tv room, but her things are still there, it is just rearranged a bit or put away in cupboards. For me that was actually good - it was a lot less triggery that way. (Also it was good that the BiCon venue wasn't exactly the same as when I was there with Isabelle, for the same reason. That is also a reason I booked en-suite accommodation rather than standard, like we had then.) I did randomly rummage through her things, which was rather triggering, but I am glad I still can do at least that.
I also visited Foyle's and bought some books - only two, since it had to fit within my hand baggage mass limit. Since there are lots of building works around the Tottenham Court Road underground station (the one nearest to Foyle's) I walked to Oxford Circus (instead of Goodge Street, I used on the way out), and I was amazed by how incredibly busy it was. Big throngs of people moving into the entrance and through the ticket barriers, and eventually into trains (although I had to let the first one go since it was too full).
Still haven't visited Mornington Crescent.

Back home, they're going to replace my windows tomorrow morning very early, so I need to remove everything that is close to them. This is a lot of work, given the amount of stuff I have. But it looks it'll work out. Hopefully it won't rain to much.

Next month I will visit Isabelle's parents. I'm the only thing they have left of their only daughter, so this is rather important, especially for her mother. I hope it won't be too stressful for me. Fortunately, Rémy will be there too, to help with translations.

(edited 1 time)

 BiCon is over, and I had 3 stickers on my name badge for flirt blindness. Just to make it clear.

Recently I read somewhere that if you're blind (in the conventional sense), that your brain makes up for the lack of incoming signals by just making up some random stuff. A similar thing is exploited by things like the "brain machine" - flashing lights in front of your eyes plus rhythmic sounds. It makes you see pretty moving patterns in various colours, which are certainly not real.

I connected this with flirt blindness. If you never see when somebody is flirting with you, apparently your brain tries to see flirting in "random other stuff". Hence, you may think that somebody is flirting with you, even when they aren't. Which is exactly my experience, but I just hadn't connected the different types of blindness yet.

Stupid insensitive clods...

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("Would you change anything about your significant other? What would it be?")

I'd have her be not dead. Duh.

EuroBSDcon takes place in the Netherlands this year, in Maarssen (near Utrecht), 6-9 October. I suppose I should take the opportunity of going there, now it is held so nearby.
(The Call For Proposals is still open until the end of the month; sponsors are also still being sought)
For those who wonder: DragonFlyBSD is a project forked from FreeBSD by Matt Dillon, who was a very active Amiga developer in the same period that I was. I always was a big fan of his programs and I used Dme (an editor), Dasm (a 8-bit cross-assembler), Dnet (a networking package for multiple login and file transfers over the same modem link), DICE (Dillon's Integrated C Environment), Dmouse (a mouse blanker/accelerator), and probably some more that I'm forgetting, with great success.

Today I bought an ebook reader from the HEMA which is actually the Ambiance Digibook ADB-106 (suddenly called MDB-106 when you look it up now; last week I just googled for "Ambiance Digibook" which is visible in the illustration on the printed flyer) which is actually the OAXIS EB-601.
It was on sale for only EUR 99. Page turning is a bit slow, and when you resize the font, it just scales the page and you have to select some other menu item to actually reflow the text.
Anyway, it professes to run Linux. The software information page even gives a list of various GPL programs that it uses with links to their home pages.
However, this seems insufficient to comply with the GPL.
I see at least the following deficiencies:

1. The full text of the GPL is not included (GPL clause 1), just mentioned (not even by URL).
2. Although general links (to project homepages) are provided, the exact source version that was used for the delivered product must be delivered (clause 3a or 3b; 3c does not apply as an option for commercial distribution).
3. Missing is also "any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable" (clause 3)
4. There is also no tool chain included (this interpretation reads "scripts" to include cross-compilers and the like too).

The site of gpl-violations.org seems to be a bit un-updated the last 2 years. So where can I report this sort of thing, if HEMA is not quickly fixing their copyright violations?

In case you haven't noticed, some brilliant guys have analyzed the 6502. From
microscopic images of the chip they built a netlist and a simulator to actually
run the chip, from this netlist!

http://www.visual6502.org/

This allows to actually analyze all the peculiarities, for example why an
interrupt during a taken branch is delayed by an instruction.
http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?t=1634 - might be worth looking into that
for the Commodore emulators...

(from the cbm-hackers mailinglist)

Oh, and along with BiCon comedown and the discovery of Isabelle's lj draft post, there was another thing today: a friend called me at work to let me know that a mutual friend of ours has died a few days ago, also of cancer. I hadn't seen him very much since he moved out of town. The funeral is Saturday. Everybody seems to die of cancer these days.

BiCon was good this year! As I wrote before privately, I was somewhat afraid that Isabelle's death would be too much on my mind. Fortunately, this was not the case. It was on my mind a lot before and after (which isn't surprising, since I was sleeping in her house twice), but not so often during. In fact, since most of my BiCons I was there on my own, it was strangely "back to normal". Being at BiCon with a partner is definitely different from being on your own, even if you're not being monogamous, certainly if there are health issues you need to give support with.

Last year Isabelle dressed me up in some of her clothes, so I sort of decided to continue that this year, in her honour. I chose some clothes that she herself never wore, because they were too girly for her[1]. I chose a short, red chequered skirt for the ceilidh (it wasn't a kilt but maybe a bit like it), and for sunday night a shortish black dressy thing (which I'm sure has a proper name) which I wore with the bright rainbow-coloured leg warmers from the pound shop (I saw them when I got disposable plates and cutlery, which was needed because the venue supplied scandalously few kitchen things in the kitchen). While the black thingie was warmer than it looked, and the leg warmers were fairly effective too, still, when you go outside the bar for a while and it is windy (which it was) it feels rather strange to have the wind against ones knickers. And the lack of pockets, it is infuriating! It is a good thing that BiCons are safe enough to leave a bag with all your stuff just somewhere in the bar. I got complimented on these clothes a lot, which I liked!

Other highlights include "chatting up" a very cute person I had met before, years ago. Oh I wish I was better at just *saying* what I want to say (writing is *so* much easier), but it worked out allright. And the parties, until late in the night, had an interesting demonstration of a paddle with (I think it was) a leather and a velvety side, and a velvet-like flogger. Really soft, good for nice stroking, only if you work hard enough it becomes more intense. Snogging at the same time makes for a nice combination :-)

I didn't even the parties, and parties need not be late at night, they can also be in the middle of the day!

I handed out some "business cards" (free cards from vistaprint, actually) with my name and email address to some interesting and/or cute people. It shows the face of a cat, I like it a lot, since I am a cat person. Hopefully this works (as it would have been even better if I also took their contact details). I do hope I'll be hearing from these people; I owe one of them a photo so they will simply have to email me ;-).

The card method is something I saw much earlier at BiCon, but I only got around to doing it now. Usually I forget to bring my cards with me, kind of defeating the purpose. Some people even have "flirt cards", cards with a text like "I think you're attractive" or similar things on them; this can be much easier than working up the courage to actually say the words.

Speaking of photos, it occurred to me that I have many more photos of BiCons before the digital camera became popular. The rule that everybody in a photo needs to consent simply wasn't so relevant back then; the chance that a photo would spread outside the owner's photo album simply was rather small. A pity, in some ways.

The things reported in the previous entry happened after I had started writing this one.

Also posted in the BiCon community.

[1] For a while, she had considered changing sex, mingled in trans groups, but in the end decided it was too much bother for her.