bluelander | Entries tagged with books

Doing quite a bit better today. Spent some quality time with my spouse last night, which I needed. Had to sacrifice some sleep to get some rest, but it was worth it.

It's been raining for like the last two weeks, and mushrooms are popping up everywhere. They're mostly the plain white puffball variety, but it's still neat. I almost never see mushrooms at all, and never in this quantity.

( mushroom pics )

I like how they appear in neat lines, like groups of little extraterrestrial tourists seeing the sights. I can see why they have a much bigger cultural footprint cultural in damp climates like England and Japan, because they're quite a sight when they pop up in large formations. They're a really interesting form of life. I keep meaning to read that mushroom book everyone recommends. In fact, I'm going to check and see if the library has the audiobook

several seconds later

There's one copy available on the Libby app but it's in use, so I placed a hold. Nice! It's rare that I go looking for a specific book and they actually have it. It says there's a two week wait, but it's okay. If the mushrooms can wait for a period of sufficient wetness, I can wait for this.

I saw a discussion recently about all the lawsuits being filed against the internet archive. There was the Hachette suit they lost, and now apparently every major music label is suing them for their collection of digitized 78RPM records. Their collection preserves a lot of stuff that's gone out of copyright that one wouldn't be able to hear anywhere else, but it also has a lot of artists whose back catalogs are being exploited by the labels and "intellectual property" holders. I don't see how any of these cases have merit, but it's very disheartening.

Anyway, the cultural assault on physical libraries came up, and I'm seeing a lot of people say that you should never use apps like Libby and Overdrive because the contracts are so punitively expensive compared to physical media, but I don't know if this is true? I'm pretty sure every actual librarian I've seen express an opinion on the subject says any use of services offered by libraries helps them, because demonstrating use is how they get funding. I do understand the argument that Libby/Overdrive is owned by a for-profit investment firm and is subject to the same cancerous deterioration as every capitalist scheme (I'm familiar with the Cory Doctorow-coined term) but it seems to me that if they turn the screws, the libraries will stop using it. They're not getting rid of physical media, they're using the tools that are available to make media accessible to more people. It would suck if that goes away, but I don't see it being an existential threat to libraries. I'm inclined to trust the librarians on this one.

In my case, work and the state of our public transit system are too burdensome for me to get to the library during opening hours, so learning about these apps has been a godsend. I'm a patron of the library for the first time in years, and I expect there are a lot of people in a similar boat. Surely getting more people to use the library can only be good? They (used to?) have bookmobiles to help people in remote areas get access to books, that's an expense that wasn't strictly necessary but helped make books accessible to more people. I think the apps are a modern extension of that. Yeah there needs to be a version of this that's not controlled by a corporation, but I think telling people not to use them is unhelpful at best.

I do think it's beneficial to encourage people to check out physical items in addition to using the apps if it's at all feasible. In fact, I just looked up my local library hours, and while they do close at 5 or 6 most days, they're open until 8:30 on Mondays. I might start making an effort to make a weekly library trip. I'd be interested in checking out their physical audiobook selection.

I do actually have a CD/Cassette player next to my desk at work. I assume it belonged to a previous employee and just became property of the office. On rare days that I work alone, holidays and the occasional Saturday or Sunday, I like to plug my phone into the line input and listen to podcasts over the speakers. It's nice to be able to not wear headphones for awhile.

I haven't actually tested the CD and cassette player, but if they work, that'd be a novel way to get more audiobooks into my media diet, although the way my desk is set up there's no elegant way to plug my headphones into it. Maybe I can get one of those little bluetooth transmitters.

Also, the library may have some of those little dedicated audiobook players. They're neat. I mean, they're incredibly wasteful, all of this is, if we didn't live in such a capitalist hellscape the supercomputers we carry in our pockets could have seamless 24/7 access to all the information in the world, but in the context of finding more ways to support libraries, they're interesting. Techmoan did a video about them, which prompted me to pick one up at a library book sale a couple years back and see if they can be hacked. If they can, it would have to be by someone with more skill than me, because it's pretty much just an SOC under a black blob. It didn't occur to me that the library might have books in this format I'd be interested in listening to, or that there would be a reason to go this route instead of checking it out from Libby or pirating it.

Torrenting audiobooks is an exhausting process. Audible's pissed in the pool with their 32kpbs, 22khz 8-bit mp3s that sound like a talkboy being played over shortwave radio, to the extent that it can be difficult to find audobooks in decent quality, especially older ones. Even some of the ones I've got from Libby have been compressed to the point of unlistenabilty. The playaways seem to have pretty decent quality files on them, which makes sense, because bulk 4GB eMMCs cost about a penny, and that's enough to hold just about anything short of the encyclopedia in perfectly acceptable quality.

I focus on audiobooks because practically, the 40 hours a week I need to fill at work is the time I'm most likely to get a lot of reading done. Historically I've listened to more podcasts than audiobooks, but that trend is starting to inverse. A lot of the podcasts I used to love have ended or I've grown tired of them, and a lot of the ones I've started to enjoy more recently have an insufferable number of ads. Even skipping them is starting to take its toll because having to skip ahead and backwards until I find the right spot every few minutes is hell for my focus.

I wish I had an easier time getting into audiobooks. There's a lot of, I dunno what to call it, onboarding anxiety? Like even a short audiobook is 8 hours, and that's a big commitment for an unknown quantity. Fiction is the hardest, I don't know if I'll like the world, the characters, the quality of the writing, the story, or the narrator. If it's sci Fi or fantasy, there will probably be a lot of new words and concepts I need to learn about. If I'm lucky, the book will start off with a strong character moment and get me through the door. If I'm unlucky, it's hours of turgid world building and scene setting and I nope out before I can even meet a character I care about.[^1][^2]

Nonfiction is easier for me, because it's already set in a world I kinda understand, and I can appreciate a deep dive on just about any subject if the writing is good and the author is passionate enough. Like mushrooms! Hey look at that, I brought it back around.

I want to write about the podcast I've been re-listening to instead of trying new books, because it's kind of interesting and kind of embarrassing; and I also wanted to talk about the untimely demise of cohost; but I'm already at 1500 words, so I'll save it. My god, a callback and a tease, it's like I'm some sort of blogger

[^1]: If I'm really unlucky, it's Neal Stephenson's Reamde, a book I spent an audible credit on back in 2011 when I could afford it and listened to for 30 hours before I realized I was bored out of my mind and stopped like 80% of the way through the book, my god someone get that man an editor (please don't use this statement to own me re: the quality of my own writing)

[^2]: now that I think about it, I don't know if the version of markdown used by dreamwidth supports footnotes, I think it's a non-standard feature that happened to be included in bearblog's MD flavor. I hope it is, because those are really fiddly and annoying to do in HTML. I guess I'll see

Current Mood: awake

Well, it's been an eventful (glances at watch) two and a half weeks?! I didn't mean to go that long without a new journal entry, but I guess that's how eventfulness goes sometime.

Ranking the Atari 2600

Recently I was talking about Jeff Gerstmann's "Ranking the NES" series, and expressed interest in potentially doing something like that with the Atari 2600. My friend Mike, who I've collaborated on and off with for years, saw the entry, said that he liked the idea and suggested we could so something like that together. I was initially hesitant, because I didn't know how well it would work as a collaborative project, and was going to decline but suggest we find something else to play and record together instead (which may not have ever happened, you know how life can go.)

But I thought about it, and I realized that a second perspective could be just the shake-up that format needs. One of the best things about Jeff's series is watching him play a game he knows well and can explain in detail, both the game itself and its place in history; one of the other best things is watching him be impressed by a game he knows nothing about (whether it's impressively good or impressively bad.) With two people, we can get the best of both worlds for each game.

The idea is this: every week, each of us selects 3 games to bring to the show. For my games, I study the manual beforehand and try to learn as much as I can about it, and Mike does the same for his 3 games. We each play the games and record our local play session while talking about them over discord, alternating between one of his choices and one of mine. After each game (which we try to play for at least 10 minutes, but we can go over if we need more time) we switch to the shared google sheet showing the list of the best game ever made, and decide where it goes.

I was worried about this part too, since I wasn't sure how much our opinions would diverge, but it turns out that even when we disagree, it's fun to negotiate. We can state our positions, why we think the game deserves to be in Xth place on the list, and either persuade the other person or not. The stakes are so low that neither of us is going to get super heated, and it doesn't take long for us to find a compromise.

I think the format works really well, and I'd have fun with it even if we weren't recording for youtube, but I also think this is maybe the most entertaining thing we've done together and it'd be cool if we maybe got some more viewers. Mike's recording of our first session, by some mysterious blessing of the unknowable algorithm, has gotten 1,700 views, a number which is still slowly climbing up. He got about 10 new subscribers out of it, which puts him at around 90. I was more active on youtube in the mid 2000s than him, so I have 2,300 subscribers from sheer "right place at the right time" syndrome; I was doing "let's play" videos just as that was becoming a thing. It's a meaningless number though, since my videos still get on average about the same number of views as his. Nobody actually looks at their subscriptions page on youtube, they look at the homepage, which doesn't show you new videos from people you're subscribed to unless they're popular. Even "ringing the bell" often doesn't work; my spouse should get notifications, but she wouldn't have known about the new videos if I didn't tell her.

So Mike's recordings of the first two videos have gotten 1.7K and 73 views, mine have gotten 115 and 38. Not bad, considering our most recent videos before that have gotten somewhere between 10 and 30.

Of course, youtube doesn't recommend videos by anyone who isn't already popular except for the occasional weird fluke, so the only real way to get new viewers is to upload "shorts". Mike had the idea first, and he spent a long time cutting our first 2-hour show down to a 1-minute summary, for which he got a respectable 118 views. (note: I wrote this over a number of days, so as of this point the preceding numbers are out of date.)

I've taken a different tactic, uploading a larger quantity of simpler videos related to the main ranking show, which have gotten between 56 and 277 views. Nothing seems to have translated into more exposure for the real videos, but I can't focus on the day-to-day number or I'll go bonkers. Maybe after doing this for a few months, I'll see the overall trend line go up and feel more encouraged.

Not that my motivation ultimately comes from views; it would just be nice. The main thing I get is hanging out with my friend and doing something fun. However, I think these videos are pretty good, some of the most entertaining we've done. I like them, anyway. They're the kind of videos I'd want to watch. And it'd be nice if we could get them in front of the eyeballs of people who feel the same way. I know it's not for everyone, but there's a respectable number of people out there who would like what we do. But the algorithm doesn't care about niche potential, it just tries to put attention on whatever will get the most billions of views. Oh well, I'm still gonna have a good time and there's nothing they can do to stop me. If watching a couple old friends goof around with some even older video games is something you'd be interested in, here's my channel. If not, I get it.

Garbage day

A couple saturdays ago, I spent all day helping a friend of a friend get their apartment cleaned up to avoid getting evicted. I think it succeeded for now, but this person is in a dire psychological state and I'm very worried about them. The less said about this, the better.

Garbage day for my brain

I have a new psychiatrist and therapist. When I first moved from [home town] to [current town], it was at the height of the pandemic and telehealth was becoming more and more of a thing. So I was able to keep the same doctors I've had in [home town], which was nice. However, at some point they told me I'd have to have an in-person appointment for them to continue prescribing my necessary medication, so I had to start looking for someone local. I really should have done this a long time ago; the clinic administration was very disorganized and had messed up my prescription refills on multiple occasions, and I hadn't actually had a therapy appointment in a long time because my therapist there wasn't able to help with my current problems. I'm not upset with her, when I first started therapy she was very good at helping me process the trauma I'd never talked about, come to terms with myself as an adult and become a person I like. I'll always be grateful to her for that, and I guess since she was no longer able to help me, I figured I didn't need therapy anymore.

Obviously I do, and I was sort of in denial about that because I didn't want to go through the arduous process of finding a new therapist and having to explain my whole life history again, what I wasn't getting from my last therapist and what I need. Well, I asked my primary local doctor to help with a referral for a psychiatrist. There was nobody taking new patients, so I got put on an indefinite waiting list, which sucked, because I had to have an in-person appointment with my psychiatrist in [home town] in April or they wouldn't be able to help me anymore. Maybe my primary doctor would've been able to continue prescribing my meds in the interim, I don't know, but I didn't want to have to find out and I hated having a ticking timebomb hanging over my head like a mixed metaphor after a bender.

One day in December, I got a notification from my "health care app" (still a relatively new concept to me) that a psychiatrist in my healthcare system was taking new patients, and since I was on the waiting list I could make an appointment if I tapped "accept" within the next 30 minutes. If I was in the shower or otherwise not available during that 30 minutes, I guess I would've missed my chance and it would've gone to someone else on the waiting list. But I didn't hesitate, and they made me an appointment in January. It was still a month and change out, but at least I knew I'd be okay before the April deadline.

So I went in for an intake with the psychiatrist, and it was... a video appointment. The nurses took my vitals and led me to an exam room, where they brought in a little tablet computer with a zoom window open, and I talked to him like that. As it happens, he works out of [hometown]. Cue laugh track.

I understand why I had to come in though, it was for all the vitals stuff and for me to sign all the forms the government needs for me to keep getting the pills that make my brain work. It just struck me as funny, especially since nobody told me I'd be talking to the doctor on a tablet; so when I was in the waiting room before my appointment, my healthcare app popped up a notification informing me that my video appointment would start soon, and I could go ahead and join the meeting and the doctor would talk to me shortly. I went up and told the person at the reception desk what the app said, and confusedly said "uhh... am I supposed to be here?" They apologized that nobody told me and explained how it would work.

The actual appointment was fine. Medicaid only covers 15 minute appointments for psychiatry, so it was really just going over my meds, making sure I still need them, any side effects, need anything adjust, okay we'll talk again in a couple weeks. Most importantly, I said I wanted to start talking to a therapist again, and he made me an appointment with someone who was physically in that building, the same week as my psych follow-up. So I'd get to talk to him again via telehealth, but I'd have to go in the next day anyway. I didn't care. I was excited to get to talk to someone again. I didn't realize how much I needed it.

There's always that initial trepidation because I'm not sure what the person I'll talk to would be like—I looked her up on the clinic's website and it didn't have much information, other than she had a couple specialties that aren't particularly relevant to my problems, but they're good specialties to have and I felt optimistic we'd be on at least a more similar wavelength than me and my old therapist.

And I was right, she's great! She's closer to my own age and I felt like she understands the world much closer to the way I do than my last therapist, who was a decade or two my senior. Nothing wrong with that, but I was so happy when I told her I'm nonbinary and she didn't ask what that means or seem taken aback. I know this should be the expectation, but my country has one of the worst healthcare systems in the world and I live in the most backwards part of my country, so my expectations are in the gutter.

For therapy, we got an hour-long intake, and I was astonished that I was able to bring up pretty much everything I wanted to talk about and answer all her questions for the intake within the time limit. She's a much more efficient communicator than my last therapist, but not so efficient that I felt like I was being rushed. She was very engaged and seemed genuinely excited to talk to me. It was such a relief.

We scheduled weekly follow-ups, three telehealth and then one in-person. We've had one of the telehealth appointments so far, and it went fine, but it did make it a little bit awkward. I'm thinking of going back to in-person for all our future appointments, because I've since discovered that I'm allowed to stay late at work to make up time for doctor appointments pretty much whenever I want. I like having a low-anxiety reason to go somewhere besides work in the morning, and since our appointments are only 30 minutes now, it'll be nice if we can talk as efficiently as possible.

Books

I played halfway through Omegaland again so I could capture the frames for my "ghost reading a book" icon when I post about books, but I unfortunately haven't read much lately. I tried to take Angela Collier's advice about finally actually reading Lord of the Rings in her video The Scourge of the Shire: I acquired the audiobooks narrated by Andy Serkis. The thing is, he does have a wonderful voice, and I love listening to him, but reading it as an audiobook only amplifies the problem I had when I tried to read the books: they. Are. So. God. Dang. Slow. I don't care that the books are long, I don't automatically hate long books, but in the long books I like, they tend to be long because a lot of stuff happens in them. LotR seems to be long because every scene is 2-3 times longer than it needs to be. In the audiobook version, I listened as long as the entire length of Peter Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring (theatrical cut) before we even got out of the dang birthday party. I dunno. I love The Hobbit (the book and the Rankin-Bass animated version) but maybe the full epic saga just isn't for me.

The other book I've been reading in fits and starts on my phone is a memoir, and it's interesting but I don't know if it's worth talking about because I feel like the majority of it might be complete horseshit. I'll talk about it when I'm done maybe.

I guess that's it for now. I'll try to remember to make bite-sized entries more frequently for ease of consumption.

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: V.Snares - A Giant Alien Force More Violent & Sick Than Anything You Can Imagine