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Ferris Bueller's day off seems to have been on June 5. I took the day off, as appropriate.
June 6 is the national day of Sweden, a national holiday. I spent it slightly hungover after having attended a concert with Covenant the night before.
I haven't been to a concert like this in a long time. I made some effort in dressing up for it:
(Description: A white man with shaved head, a white goatee wearing mirrorshades in a black, tight t-shirt tucked into a pair of black combat trousers, tucked into black combat boots.)
The concert was very nice, but I think there's very little rejuvenation going on in the dark scene in Malmö... Most people were my age, the youngest perhaps 10 years younger? Unfortunately I recognized very few people. Most people I know in the scene seem to have moved away.
There was a club afterwards according to flyers but when I got there it was a cramped little bar with no dance floor so I went home instead and spent some quality time with some single malt, IRC, and Fedi.
P and I went to Stockholm for the Stockholm marathon on June 3. Both P and my friend R ran. Both finished! I'm so proud of them! I watched them pass me by twice, the second time while I was drinking beer in a park, which I think was much more enjoyable than running 42 km in the summer heat. Then I met them at the finish.
After meeting P at the finish we went to our hotel, rested for a while, and then on to a restaurant for PIZZAAA!!! AND BEER!! as you do when you've been running 42,195 metres, apparently.
We left #3 alone at home this time. They managed fine and had watched the first three seasons of "Sherlock"! We seem to have a similar taste in TV series, to noone's surprise.
Typically we spend most of the summer in our cottage. As soon as #3 finish school we usually move to the cottage. Unfortunately, the kitchen isn't quite finished, so we're staying in our Malmö flat for a little while longer.
Even the traditional Midsummer celebration on Friday June 23 was in the flat, for once.
As you probably know, Midsummer is kind of a big thing in Sweden, typically celebrated by dancing around a huge phallos (look up "midsommarstång") and getting quite inebriated. We didn't do any dancing, but we had some vegan version of traditional midsummer food and some wine and beer. Schnapps, although traditional, is not our thing.
I spent most of the long weekend with stomach trouble. The usual IBS thing, I think. Dammit. I slept a couple of hours during the day on Friday and Saturday and spent most of the rest of the time reading "Harrow the Ninth", Tamsyn Muir's wonderful followup to the hilarious "Gideon the Ninth". Necromantic sword lesbians in space!
Chaos Communication Camp, Chaos Computer Club's summer camp, is coming up this year. I've never been to one of the summer camps, but as you know I'm a regular at the winter conferences. Apparently some people would like to see me go to CCCamp. I'm not sure yet. I seem to have missed the last opportunity to get tickets because I hesitated so much...
My friend with the big military tent is unfortunately not going this time so I don't know where and how I would sleep. I don't even have a tent of my own.
Anyone else going?
Then there's Bornhack in Denmark, of course... But that overlaps quite a lot with the 40th Medieval Week in Visby! Of course me, P, and #3 is going to be in Visby, not least to visit P's parents. But, I mean, medieval week? Did I mention swords?
It's also the Pirate Week, something like the NSFW version of the festival, with a lot of satire and humour... #3 was quite excited when I explained about the pirate week but, well, they're a bit too young... Not much of the Pirate Week seems to remain, but there's at least the Alternative Medieval Week in Nordergravar. Still: "Gottes Freund und aller Welt Feind!" or, perhaps better for the non-monotheists among us, "Gute Freunde und aller Welt Feind!"
(Music video with Visbypirater singing "De gamle i havet" in Swedish, about the overlap of the Elder Gods and the Likedeeler, and the terrible island of Fårö, or something.)
Not much else planned for the summer, really. We'll move out to the cottage first chance we get and then stay there as long as we can.
> Computing can be more than the ever-growing techno-capitalist juggernaut. It can be about things other than speed, or scale. It can be about human creation, and human interaction. It can be about people finding new and creative uses for old hardware and software. It can be about computing as an art, not as a production line. It can be about sustainability. It can be about cleverness. It can be about small things.
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It seems I'm going to the US in October for the Open Source Firmware Conference in Mountain View/Sunnyvale. There's also the FIDO Alliance Authenticate conference in Carlsbad outside San Diego the week after, but I'm not sure I'm going to that one. Depends on what dayjob wants me to do.
Not sure how long I can stay in the US but it feels very wasteful to just attend a couple of days at OSFC, so I'll probably stick around, visit San Francisco and maybe trying to travel up to Seattle, probably by train.
Anyone want to meet?
All this is, of course, depending on if the US is going to let me into the country at all...
My friend Rasmus invited me to the defence of his Ph. D. thesis at Karlstad University on June 12. He also kindly arranged for me to give a talk in the Colloqium series of seminars about the TKey later the same day.
Since the defence would be early on Monday I left Malmö on Sunday by train. Unfortunately the train from Gothenburg broke down but we found a way to get to Karlstad anyway. We then had a nice dinner talking about chip design, digital sovereignty, and other things.
Rasmus defence on Monday went very smooth. He's completely brilliant. His thesis is a collection of papers and the overall title is "On Certificate Transparency Verification and Unlinkability of Websites Visited by Tor Users" available here:
Or here on his own web pages:
The opponent was Professor Steven J. Murdoch:
We had lunch in the CS department's lunch room, then the examination committee showed up and told us their verdict: pass, of course, with distinction if that would have been possible.
In the afternoon I held my talk in the same room as Rasmus defence. Perhaps just 30 people turned up, but it included Ramus' opponent and some of his examination committee! It went OK, especially considering how nervous I was and how inexperienced I am at these things. This time, however, I didn't even have any presentation notes and just talked around my slides. Thankfully, this time I could do the entire presentation from Org Mode in Emacs, like Goddess intended.
In the evening we had a nice 3-course meal at local restaurant Frost. They managed a soy-free vegan meal for me! Really good.
It was quite hot in Karlstad so I wore a black Utilikilt to the restaurant. Got some nice comments on the way there and at the restaurant but on the way back to the hotel some people screamed at me. Well... You can't please everyone.
I've been slowly tapering off the antidepressant Mirtazapine I've been on the last eleven years. The evening of June 1 was the first day I didn't take any Mirt at all.
Most nights after that for the next 14 days I slept only 3--4 hours. Magnesium and L-theanine helped some, but not a lot. On day 16 I slept OKish for the first time. Interestingly, Magnesium seems to have helped with another health issue!
The reasons for tapering off are complex... The easy explanation is that I don't think the mediciation do much for me anymore. Apart, apparently, from making me sleep easier.
mc,
Pungenday, the 42 day of Confusion in the YOLD 3189
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