Update for 10/1/2017

Project generator

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I’ve been tying up loose ends for the first release and planning my roadmap for the features I want to add.

Beliefs report

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I made a lot of progress on the bibliology section, but I didn’t want to rush the update, so I have a bit more to go.

Futurism

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The previous AI meetup group I joined stalled after the first meeting, but last week I found another group on the broader topic of futurism, and it’s been going for about a year, so I’ve joined that one. I’m planning to attend the next meeting that’s in a couple of weeks.

Books

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Experimental literature has been creeping back into my life after a few months of being crowded out. I’m going to try to finish cataloging the authors in The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature by the end of the year.

It turns out the “superbook” concept I was developing pretty much covers the same territory, so I’ll probably merge that article into whatever other experimental literature content I put on the wiki. I always try to connect my work with other people’s, so this correlation was actually a welcome discovery.

TV

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Episode 3 of The Orville was surprisingly good. This show is growing on me. The Moclan writer Gondus Elden makes me want to explore serious literature.

Because of some delays, Tim and I only got through about half of the first Star Trek: Discovery episode, so we’re trying again this week. But my first impression is that the visuals are a lot better than the writing. It seemed like they were dumbing it down for a wide audience. Star Trek series usually take a while to mature, so I’m hoping the writing will catch up to the production values. I especially like the technical drawing theme of the opening credits.

Socializing

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On Sunday our church had a get together for 20s and 30s to start things rolling on a young adult ministry. I only have about six more months in that demographic, and I wasn’t feeling very social that day, but at the last minute I decided to go anyway. My main reason was that if I wanted to voice opinions on what kinds of ministry the church should be doing for people like me, I should see for myself what they’re saying so far.

We were divided into smaller groups by birthday and were led through some icebreaker questions. I ended up talking more than I expected. When the pastor gave an open lunch invitation at the end, I even joined in for that. This was one case where I’m glad I made myself be social.

Video games

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Nintendo has released a new version of the Super Nintendo console from the ’90s called the SNES Classic. They did this with the NES console last year, and it sold out way too quickly. Very frustrating for many gamers. I didn’t care back then, but now I’m more interested in old Nintendo games, so I made sure to preorder this console. I picked it up on Friday.

But my other technology at home is old, and I don’t have any displays with an HDMI port. So Saturday was largely spent finding an adapter and setting up the console. It comes with 21 games installed, including several I’ve wanted to play. When will I play them? It’s anyone’s guess. But I’ve added the whole set to my game backlog.

Death

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This weekend I was hit with the news of two deaths. The first was a long-time close friend of the family who died unexpectedly after a brief illness. The second I only learned about because it happened near a part of town I visit a lot, though I wasn’t there till hours later. It was a high-speed car crash, and the victim’s car caught fire. I gathered that she was trapped in her car and burned to death. She was not at fault.

These were sobering stories. They reminded me that while it’s true that “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans,” death can be too. It also brought back the confusion and wrongness I feel as I try to continue with life as usual while tragedy goes on around me. Fortunately there are ways to respond.