Reading

Current Mood: helpful
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag

Entry tags:

Signal Boost: The World as It Ought To Be

If you've been following this blog for the last year you will have run across references to our little publishing business, HyperSpace Express (often abbreviated HSX). And you may have noticed that my housemate N has been writing a book. IT'S FINISHED!

Go take a look at The World as It Ought to Be -- Stories from a protopian future, by Naomi Rivkis.

It's protopian rather than utopian -- sixteen linked short stories about ordinary people building a world that doesn't suck.

Protopia (n.) A world that is not perfect, but is getting better; one that is on the long arc toward justice, carried by human hands.

( Come visit for a while in The World As It Ought to Be: )

Buy it now from Smashwords (which has a free sample you can read online). It's also available at Kobo, Apple, and Barnes&Noble. Kindle and dead tree editions are coming in a few weeks.

Current Mood: grateful
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag
Current Music: at StudiOjo

Entry tags:

thanks

Thankful Thursday

Today I am thankful for...

Getting more walking in. One kilometer or so is pretty sad, but it's what I can do these days.
My folding cane. (I was going to say "canes", but the others seem to have been lent out to other family members.)
N finally getting her book published. Get The World As It Ought to Be at Smashwords. (More info and more links tomorrow when I'm less brain-fried.)
Not having a fixed mininum target number of gratitude entries. See above.

Current Mood: worried
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag
Current Music: practicing, a little work in the studio

Entry tags:

done,
links

Done Since 2025-09-28

Mixed, as usual. Four walks (which sounds good except that the total was only 2.9km), a little work on the HSX website (fixing a busted link counts, right?), and a little work in the recording studio (with disappointingly little to show for it). Pretty sure I'm not getting enough sleep, either, although it's been somewhat better now that I'm using the duvet and duvet cover (a bit of a weighted blanket effect?), and going to bed a little later.

Lots of difficulty with motivation. Nothing new there, either.

N and G are going to be gone for two weeks (plus a bit) at the end of the month. I have been looking into "personal alarm" buttons/pendants, in case I need emergency help. Somewhat problematic.

Here, have an amusing link: Portlanders mock Trump by posting pics of peaceful weekend activities in ‘War ravaged’ city | The Independent.

( Notes & links, as usual )

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More Soothing YouTube Videos

No embeds this time, just links.

Everyone is calm and competent and cooperative

calamitykim1 is a 20-something woman who loves driving big rigs and fixing machinery and narrates as she goes, but autocraptions. In September 2025, she drives a tractor trailer through small-town Britain, carrying a piece of metal so large it requires a police escort—her typical length is 30 minutes. Moving traffic, but no flashing lights.

Ocean Creatures

exploreoceans features both livestreams and highlight reels. Super soothing is the 2025 Highlights of Pacific Walruses Hauling Out on a Beach—no narration or music, just surf on the beach and moaning walruses for 25 minutes. It’s part of the explore.org network, which I discovered via their delightful Fat Bear Week contest.

Admire Our Planet from Space

I love astronauticast’s 3-5 minute timelapse compilations from the International Space Station. They’re compiled by ISAA, the Italian Space and Astronautics Association. They travel at a steady rate over various parts of our globe, with a handy reference diagram in the upper left corner. Witness hundreds of thunderstorms from the west coast of Mexico all the way to Portugal. Admire auroras and airflows above North America. I shouldn’t have been surprised that deserts are readily visible because so few clouds. No words—pleasant classical-ish music.

Current Mood: not yet caffeinated
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag
Current Music: assorted earworms

Entry tags:

recurring

"Rabbit rabbit rabbit!"

Welcome to October, 2025!

It's the start of Fourth Quarter, so try to finish up Third Quarter's paperwork without too much agony.

Current Mood: worried
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag
Current Music: progress on Winds of Time

Entry tags:

done,
links

Done Since 2025-09-21

Welcome to (Northern Hemisphere) Autumn. This last week appears to have gone quickly and left very little in the way of a lasting impression. Perhaps that's for the best. (Hopefully guitar practice, at least, will stick around, and the bits of paperwork will have wound up where they're supposed to go.)

N and I have now been beshotted. Pfizer. Flu and pneumonia are week after next. Hopefully the effects of those will stick around as well. We've also scheduled studio time over the next couple of weeks. (He says after suddenly remembering to make sure we didn't get double-booked. Apparently not. Whew!)

I have not been logging my thrice-daily servings of what Colleen used to call "pill salad" as carefully as I ought to. But there's nothing still in my pill sorters today, so apparently I've been taking them. This week, anyway -- I remember there have been a couple of weeks when I missed one. I also haven't been very careful with logging my sleep. Not really all that surprising; I tend to walk over to my computer and promptly fall down a rabbit hole rather than making whatever log entry I intended to make.

Hopefully you won't need to know How to Set Up and Use a Burner Phone, but these are perilous times.

( Notes & links, as usual )