Category: Uncategorized

Hobby I used to enjoy (and hope to again)

My Dad pointed me to Long and Short Reviews‘ Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge for 2024. As the blog says:

Blogging is a fun way to meet people and get to know them. We’re offering a weekly “prompt” for authors, non-authors, bookish folks and others to share something weekly and gain new friends and visitors to the blog.

As a fairly young blog, I loved the idea of the virtual mix and mingle. Thus, Moment of Joy is moving to Thursday (as much as I enjoyed it on the hump day). The opening topic is “Hobbies I used to enjoy.”

One hobby I truly miss is hiking. A couple of years ago, I frayed my achilles tendon. Ouch. Steroids, PT, and a walking boot got it on the road to recovery, but damn! it’s a long process. It’s come a long way and I don’t have to ice it so much after biking or walking. I hope this spring, I can take to the woods again. There’s nothing like a nice stroll in the wilderness. I do often put on an audiobook, podcast, or music on my headphones, but not so loud that I lose awareness of what’s around me. (Good thing too – hearing a rattle ahead of me was how I discovered PA still has rattlesnakes. I was out by French Creek. The snake was sunning in the path ahead of me with deep grass on either side. Knowing it was more scared of me that I was of it, I backed off so it could slither off the path. Nope. It was happy in the sun and had no plans on moving anytime soon. Fortunately my All Trails app helped me find a detour around it, only adding about a mile and a half to my walk). As I’ve noted, All Trails has also been useful in figuring out travel times for some of my characters taking fictional hikes but I miss the real thing. 

 

Goodbye, Jezebel

I came to Jezebel from IO9, the SFF blog that, at the time, was owned by the same media company (Gawker) and enjoyed it back in the day. IO9 had been one of my favorite reads and Jezebel became a regular read too. I drifted away from them, then gave up completely when (under G/O media), IO9 (now merged with Gizmodo) put up a AI-written Star Wars story riddled with errors. They offered this defense (from a WaPo article on the chaos):

On June 29, Merrill Brown, the editorial director of G/O Media, had cited the organization’s editorial mission as a reason to embrace AI. Because G/O Media owns several sites that cover technology, he wrote, it has a responsibility to “do all we can to develop AI initiatives relatively early in the evolution of the technology.”

but the critics were right that you develop and experiment off-screen, not immediately put it out publicly without even an editorial check for accuracy.

But I digress. Although I haven’t read either IO9/Gizmodo or Jezebel in sometime, I heard this morning an interview with the founding editor of Jezebel Anna Holmes on what Jezebel meant back in the day. A good listen. And prompted me to with Jezebel farewell.

Clippy Must Die

My father and I were talking on the phone when he suddenly discovered that his smartwatch had managed to turn back on its coaching function, telling him to stand up and walk around. We started talking about annoying “assistance” from our digital devices. I have all the coaching on my smartwatch turned off, even the “Yeah! you’ve reached X goal.” Recently, I switched my bedtime listen from Audible to an audiobook that I had on Apple Books from way back – and I started getting notices that I had “reached my reading goal for the day.” Okay, first I wasn’t actually reading, second I hadn’t set a goal that I know of, and third, just stop! (I did find the setting and put and end to that). But all that reminded me of this Classic from “Wait, wait, don’t tell me!” on NPR, a flash from the past that I just had to pass along: “Clippy Must Die!”

Clippy Must Die

Come wander with me…

I’ve finally started a blog! I did create my baking diary with Google Sites during the pandemic (while I was learning how to create a website for remote learning), but it lacks the interaction of a blog. And, as the title implies, this blog will be less mono-themed. It will wander around topics from the serious to the ridiculous, on books, movies, music, and  whatever catches my fancy. Above is the Midas City Monument in the Phrygian Highlands of Turkey. I’m the second from the right.