Notes from May 2025#

2025-05-01#

I just did a very visual work with CSS, and it was such fun and pleasure. It's been a while.

2025-05-05#

Months ago, I saw a videoclip on LinkedIn. Funnily enough, it was a video of a guy playing another video and repeating what was said in the nested one. Anyways. It was about how to sleep: if you sleep on your left side, you squish your heart, and it's unhealthy. Sleeping on the right side is better, but sleeping on your back is the best. Until that point, it was impossible for me to even fall asleep on my back, but after the clip, I started doing that and stayed like that for good.

Ah yes, "Shadow Man Remastered." I have been wanting to play the game since it was released, but it didn't happen at the time. Then, quite recently, I learned about Nightdive's remaster, and I had it on my list ever since. Over a quarter of the century after its release, I finally get to bit my teeth in it.

• Full thread

2025-05-06#

Reading a long semi-autobiographical interview with Werner Herzog, I got to the point where he says that he didn't choose to be a director. It was something that happened to him. While I don't think I can say that fully about myself, it made me realise that making websites is my thing. I might entertain the notion of being a writer one day or something, but for now, I'm a web developer. I feel more aligned with my profession now. And it's only the beginning of the book.

2025-05-07#

Once again, for clarity, a jQuery object is a monad.

2025-05-09#

"Friendship is something in the soul. It is a thing one feels. It is not a return for something."

-- Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter

My first physical Brian Eno (with brother and one more fella, "Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks." It was not easy to pick an album from Brian Eno because there are many good ones. The Moon theme won. I listened to this album many times during work, but I really focused on it only when I played it from CD, and it's way more ambient than I registered. At times almost like Aubrey Hodges' soundtracks for Doom. I don't dig the second disc, which came with the remaster I got, but might give it a go.

2025-05-10#

I have this threshold of temperature. Below it, I'm cold. Above it, I can wear whatever. There is a narrow window between where I need to put on some clothes, but it's manageable. Ever since I abandoned winter-plagued lands, my life's been a delight in that matter.

2025-05-12#

My wife started watching a documentary about Mehmed II. It's more of a show intertwined with historians commenting, but the final categorisation is that it's a documentary. But that's not the point here. I didn't know that Mehmed was a childhood friend of Vlad Dracula the Impaler, and so now the show also follows the Impaler Lord, and it's so much better than any "Dracula" story. The guy was a real monster. They're wasting a perfect plot for vampire shenanigans. :D

While Donatello is my favourite turtle from the original pack, my favourite turtle from the whole franchise is Slash. Sometimes a turtle-like alien and sometimes a mutated snapping turtle (you might wanna be careful with your fingers around that one), he has this savagery which speaks to me. The 1987 animated show version was a bit slow in his mind, but Archie Comics' one was a full-blown space troublemaker. And his undying love for palm trees is where we align.

I think I wanna give "Turok: The Dinosaur Hunter" a shot. I played it on my 3DFx God knows when (the card itself would suggest 1999), but never finished it.

Pigeons started using Żółw the Turtle's water. He eats there, then defecates there, but I'm not gonna forbid them. I was suspecting that such a big plate of water will be of interest to birds.

2025-05-13#

New Doom, and I'm kind of indifferent. It looks cool and all, but I'm in a different place now.

I found an article to check if I correctly recognized Żółw the Turtle's sex. I did. It's a he.

2025-05-15#

Tired.

The family of hogs that used to hang around in the area is gone, but there are two black hogs now. They rather keep their distance, and my dogs have gotten even better at sensing them, so I know in advance that we're approaching any.

2025-05-16#

It'll be my first weekend off in a month. I had this end-of-the-project mode that allows me running on 120% for a while. Then it ends. Once we were live, and despite some issues to tackle, I had to scale down. I think I like this intensity. It was also a chance to write some interesting piece of software (a couple of years ago, I wouldn't be able to write "software" about a website, but things shifted in the meantime).

When I got my first smartphone in 2009, Google G1, the one with a physical keyboard, I discovered Shazam, and I started catching all the weird songs I heard. That's how I found Murcof, among other artists. What I would do next, though, was to download them from YouTube (of all places). The thing went on for at least next 5 years. Then I stopped, but I have a folder of hundreds of single songs like that. Due to quality, it feels like listening to mix tapes recorded from radio (which I never did).

Most of modern front-end projects are not, in fact, destined to last. They're short-lived organisms that usually wither and die pretty soon. Realising this is liberating because it means I can focus more on delivering fast something that should work decently for the time being, but doesn't need to be perfectly fool-proof. At first sight it doesn't sound very optimistic, but doing work that would be otherwise thrown out in a short time can be debilitating just as much.

In other news, I feel ready to write down my experience from working on a microfrontends project. It will take months to get to that, but I'm leaving it here in case I ever forget, so maybe, just maybe, I'll find this note later.

Now that I know that WebStorm is free for private, I have this urge to build a fully brutalist Mastodon client. At first I was thinking about Nostr, but I don't use it that much. Web Components and outsourcing logic to ServiceWorker. But who would have time for that. :D

2025-05-17#

The olive tree we bought in Lidl is blossoming.

My wife has been recommending me Ádám Bodor's "The Birds of Verhovina" for a while, and I finally caved in. The book tells the story of a peculiar town with hot springs and its water brigade. The pacing is marvellous and the story is told non-linearly, jumping between various events. It feels as if someone captured the process of remembering old events from one's life, so they mix and distort. There's also a fair dose of magical realism. One of the best books to me.

Despite the book being its own thing, I noted other things it reminded me of: Cormac McCarthy's "Suttree" (general nostalgic atmosphere), Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (magical realism), Jerzy Kosinski's "The Painted Bird" (Eastern European village), Haruki Murakami's "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" (the End of the World part), "From Inside" (animation about a bleak post-apo world), and finally, "Sky: Children of the Sky" (again post-tragedy world).

Season 3 of "The White Lotus" takes us back into more exotic from my point of view place: Thailand. It's a strong continuation, and I applaud the arc they managed to build in a bit stealth mode. I did not expect that! This season had a sort of a hero (but still not the main character), which I found to be a nice addition. It also showed me that Walton Goggins is a very talented actor. Due to anthology character of the series, season 4 would not be a stretch.

Alright, it's confirmed. "On January 22, 2025, ahead of the third-season premiere, HBO renewed the series for a fourth season." Again in Europe.

With its season 4, "Barry" closed the story. The first half is the "find out" part of earlier "fuck around," and the the second half is a variant of distant finale. There is no theme during the opening and the tone is generally more sombre. There are still a lot of funny moments and twists, but the reality caught up with characters' actions. And because it's a closed story, I can recommend it to anyone. A really good show.

"The Passion of Darkly Noon" (1995) is a intimate story with just a handful of characters (and some nice names: Ashley Judd, Viggo Mortensen, Brendan Fraser, and Grace Zabriskie). The title confused me and I had no idea what genre I'm actually watching, which was brilliant because I couldn't figure out where it's going. Similarly to "The Reflecting Skin," his previous movie, Philip Ridley is playing with a palette here, to an interesting effect.

On May 8th, 2024, I started taking notes as an exercise. The idea was to write a single post every day about anything. A year later, I am glad I decided to do that. A couple of months later, it evolved into a website.

At times, it was hard because to keep up a steady pace, so I started saving notes as drafts, which I still have, not always sure "what the artist meant to say." Maybe I'll go over them at some point.

I would also like to gather posts from before May the 8th.

2025-05-18#

A funny thing about reading your old notes is that it feels at times that "wrong" aspects have been remarked about. Or that I wrote things clumsily. But that's the nature of taking notes. They capture something of the moment.

At this point, it might be more reliable to link to Wikipaedia's article on someone than their, say, Twitter profile. Did I just write Twitter? Oh noes. (Not that it's better with Mastodon profiles.) People's pages might be more reliable, but one way or another, the Internet is not so forever and immutable as we were threatened with. Things disappear at a horrifying pace.

I was mentioning this album: "BUY NOW" by Eyeliner in an article I'm preparing, and I decided to buy it. I listened to it on a plane in April, and it was an exquisite experience, so FLAC is in order.

Of course I'm not going to add %20 manually to links selecting text fragments.

function sanitiseTextFragment(...fragments) {
  console.log('#:~:text=' + fragments.map(encodeURI).join(','));
}

I was glad to mention here we're going to say our farewells to Skype, but I skipped making a note about how it was gone now. It's gone now. Some use Teams (and cry), some went to Telegram (and should be crying), the rest is as lost as children in fog.

2025-05-19#

I learned yesterday that Jean Michel Jarre composed sounds for my car, like for instance when I open the door and it starts. Of course, not only my car specifically. It's not many sounds, but it's cool anyway. Jean Michel Jarre is an artist whom I know and like thanks to my father, who would listen to him and show me his concerts, so there's this connection. And now, I'm going to Jarre's concert in July, and I know that I'll drive there in a car with sounds composed by the artist himself.

Correction: [...] I checked, and my friend was wrong. It's not my car model. I learned that because I thought that maybe it's on YouTube.

2025-05-20#

Yesterday, I had coffee at a later time, and it must have been too strong, so it was eating my insides. Or so it felt. I had to drive like that. After coming back home, I found Greek yogurt in the fridge and decided to use it to ease my stomach, and I'll be damned if it wasn't the best yogurt I had in a long while.

Then the smaller dog licked the cup. Doesn't she like all this dairy.

2025-05-21#

I am impressed that in Russia, they do dubbing of politicians, and the voice person imitates Trump's speech intricacies.

https://mstdn.social/@noelreports/114544571406866569

Bare-foot time of year has started.

The first thing I felt in Malta was being undertatooed.

A post from Jason Lefkowitz#

Tech guys be like "we made the world safer by rewriting the Torment Nexus in Rust"

/source

2025-05-22 (Thursday)#

My smaller dog likes rolling in stinky smells, which is a dog's way of achieving smell camouflage. Nothing special. Today, however, Żółw the Turtle pooped on a terrace, and the dog tried to roll in it. Luckily not directly, but rather in what was carried with the shell, but still. You can never leave them unattended.

It felt like Friday today.

2025-05-23#

My favourite coffee mug started as an ugly duckling. We had 4 mugs (one broke since then), of which 3 had interesting colours and one was meh, roughly like caraway-seed soup which I remember my grandma eating in the early 1990s (I tried it once or twice). I would avoid the caraway mug, but then a strange thing happened, and I started feeling sorry for it. :D As a result, I started using it and it, unironically, became my favourite coffee mug. Strange roads lead to a man's heart sometimes.

child of baphomet:

THOU SHALT NOT MAKE A MACHINE IN THE LIKENESS OF A HUMAN MIND

THOU SHALT NOT MAKE A MACHINE IN THE LIKENESS OF A HUMAN MIND

THOU SHALT NOT MAKE A MACHINE IN THE LIKENESS OF A HUMAN MIND

"Hello, the Dune police? This man is making a machine in the likeness of a human mind."

2025-05-24#

"Smiling Friends" is an animated series from Adult Swim, and it's as if someone took all the limitations from creators, and they did something without any inhibitions whatsoever. Visual styles mix and plots go in the wildest directions, and it still works. Episodes last around 10 minutes because no sane person could follow what's going on there for longer time. It gives me similar feeling like I got watching Cartoon Network ("Cow and Chicken" school) when I was a kid.

Screenplay to "The Sixth Sense" by M. Night Shyamalan was an interesting read. It's rich in details, far more richer than the average of what I read so far, sometimes to the point of being ridiculous ("she's an angel," kind of statements), but it doesn't stand in the way of the story. Reading it now, I was surprised that I didn't see the twist coming 25+ years ago. But hey, these were new back then.

A side note. I didn't realise (or completely forgot) that Toni Collette played Cole's mother.

"Crime and Punishment" from 1983 is Aki Kaurismäki's debut. As title suggests, it's Fyodor Dostoevsky's book adaptation. What's impressive is that it was adjusted to then-modern times and yet, it managed to keep faithful to the source material (as far as I remember now). Finns deliver sufficient amount of deadpan for the movie to be funny, despite its subject.

"Rigor Mortis" (2013) is nominally a horror, but felt more like real-live anime. More action-packed than scary. Not a bad thing, just know what to expect. Sadly, I had English-dubbed version which broke immersion a bit for me. The creators managed to build a very dense atmosphere, somewhere between brutalist hell and liminal space horror. If you're into these things, that film is for you. I think the final twist could be cut off with benefit for the story.

When Kyle Simpson wrote a book about monads, "Unwrapping Monads & Friends," I decided to read it. I'm done with monads in my life at this point, but I was curious how he tackled this. Kyle has a talent to nail various subjects without pretentiousness (and Lord only know how much of that there is around monads). I still think that monads are rather exotic concept in JS, but on a theoretical level, it's beneficial to be aware of it.

New Book Launch! 🚀 Unwrapping Monads & Friends by Kyle Simpson

"Don't Worry Darling" (2022) is the second movie directed by Olivia Wilde. It's a solid sci-fi, which brings memories of "The Matrix," a bit of "Barbie" (the world seems off in a certain way), "The Stepford Wives," but also "The Talos Principle." I had fun watching it, but it kind of flew by. It doesn't really say anything, although it does it in a new way. The "villain" was apparently modeled after Jordan Peterson, which is a funny tongue-in-a-cheek.

To follow up on my newly found soft spot for Australian outback, I saw "The Royal Hotel." A story of two Canadian girls who went to work-and-travel and ended up with no money which led them to finding a job at a bar for miners out in the middle of nowhere. I didn't know the genre, and I didn't know what to expect at times (is it a thriller? what trope this guy falls under?), and that's always good. Kudos for Hugo Weaving for me not recognising him at all until the credits.

To fill in a gap after "Curb Your Enthusiasm," which itself was filling a gap after "Seinfeld," I moved on to "Veep," which stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a titular vice president of the U.S. It's like "House of Cards," but less serious. The amount of insults that the characters throw at each other is nothing short of amazing. Don't even pick it up if you're not fast with English. I am curious to see how some stuff got old in the new world of the U.S. politics.

I missed on "Wedding Crashers" when they were released in 2004. But I never forgot about it, and when the circumstances were right, I reached out for it. It wasn't that funny, although it had its moments, and what I was wondering the most about was how would I have taken it back then. I don't know. I can't say. It's a bit of a relic of its time. A lot of rape-related jokes, which wouldn't fly today. Act cautiously. But I like Owen Wilson, and he always delivers. And he did.

Surprisingly for me, I got to rewatch 1996's "From Dusk Till Dawn." Since I saw it last time, I've seen season 1 of the Netflix show, so I could compare some stuff. What I realised this time was how much nods to old horrors there was. It's hard to say now if cheap-looking special effects got old or were always intended to look like that. George Clooney's character was also much less sympathetic than I remembered. The whole thing feels like The Ultimate 1990s Experience.

My favourite anecdote about "From Dusk Till Dawn" is this. When Quentin Tarantino was shooting "Reservoir Dogs," he was cash strapped, and someone did something related to the production for him for free, but under one condition: he would write a screenplay based on his short story. Guess what that story was.

Doing a movie was a bonus, I suppose. It was also a way to give people QT acting (apparently a thing people were asking him for).

And finally, knowing now about Quentin Tarantino's foot fetish, I can spot all the scenes that he must have written for himself. Salma Hayek shoving his foot into his mouth and pouring alcohol? C'mon. :D The whole "I gave people my acting they asked for" begins to look like a half-baked excuse.

"Fata Morgana" is 1971's film from Werner Herzog. I would add it's an experimental movie, but I already said it was Werner Herzog's. Shot 2 years earlier, mostly in Sahara, it tells a story of something, but I focused on visuals. I like desserts, not only Australian outback. I think he captured some things and some people which are not of usual interest to anyone. It's unthinkable for me that there are people living like that. But also, a little tempting?

To stay in the Australian outback, I started watching "The Tourist," Max's show about a man who wakes up after an accident with no memory. And then various people want to kill him. Back in the days, I loved a good amnesiac story as I find this framing device very appealing. The show is on par with "Fargo" (the show), although, it gets heavier at times (more like the movie, then). Season 2 moves action to Ireland, alas.

"You," season 4, is a mixed bag. I was stalling to start it, and when I finally did, season 5 started. :D But let's have it. It starts pretty strong, with Joe ending in a whodunnit and very meta-referential, but then it does twist number 1, which lowers the bar, and then mega twist 2, which brings it to the levels of ridiculousness, and it doesn't end there. In the end, there are too many heel turns for me to really care. I'm a little curious what they have for the final chapter.

"Mickey 17" is a science-fiction dark comedy from the director of "Snowpiercer" and "Okja," and it really shows at times. I suppose he has his favourite themes. Robert Pattinson plays an Expendable, a man who gets reprinted every time he dies, and he's used for various experiments and dangerous operations. On a higher level, it's a very brutal commentary on how the rich people are deranged in their detachment from reality under them. Excellent Mark Rufallo as a mix of Trump and Musk.

How to write faster TypeScript: don't write it at all.

2025-05-25#

We're doing a road trip to Madrid. I was expecting more emptiness on the way, to have more of a road movie impression, but it's still cool.

Lunch in La Mancha.

Madrid is too big for me. I prefer smaller places.

I didn't sleep much tonight, and I'm still recovering from the month+ marathon, and as usual, I noticed that my empathy shuts down first. If I ever had to do something morally objectable, like being a war criminal, I would probably sleep for 6 hours tops to achieve that.

I saw the "Dracula Untold" trailer in 2014, when the movie was released, and at first it seemed like a fresh take on the character. Mid-trailer, however, the vampire showed. *sigh* After seeing recently a documentary about Mehmed II and Vlad (they were childhood friends!), I decided to check it, and sadly, my reaction to the trailer was correct. There are traces of historical accuracy, but it's a mediocre production at best. The ending suggests they were planning a follow-up.

2025-05-27#

In Spain, at least in the South, every construction site is a "which Roman building we find this time" bingo. Then, a delay follows.

Unlike in Tenerife, in Madrid we booked a room in a budget hotel. It's small and reminds me of Polish trains, but the idea was that we're only gonna sleep there, so it suits us just fine. The breakfast buffet is cutely modest when it comes to selection. There is a TV in the corner, but we didn't turn it on.

2025-05-29#

I had a lot of fun with a screenplay for "The Usual Suspects" from Christopher McQuarrie. It's a shooting script, so close to the final material (which I shall confirm next week with a rewatch of the movie). The funniest bits are dialogues between the titular characters, who are outright mean to each other, which was a communication style back in the 1990s. I also learned that it was impossible to eat decently after 1:00 in Los Angeles (from a point of view of a New Yorker).

An interesting thing that I noticed now is that I used to think that Verbal Kint told the truth the way Customs Agent Dave Kujan missed who he's dealing with, but it's way deeper: it's impossible to say what really occurred. Probably what Kujan says, but all the rest, including scenes in retrospect, are anyone's guess. I saw something similar to that end in Netflix's "Ragnarok."

I just clicked in the #TheUsualSuspects tag and learned that Giancarlo Esposito starred there, and I was like, "But where?" Quick googling with DuckDuckGo, and there it is, agent Baer. This retro-recognition places the actor much earlier that I thought. But wow, just wow.

El Rey León#

I'm not a fan of musicals, but I'm open to new experiences, so I decided to see "El Rey León" (Lion King) in Madrid. And it was a blast. The animatronics were amazing, as well as practical special effects. Story is what you might know from the movie, although it has some Spanish references threaded in (like Zazu singing flamenco). Timon and Pumba were amazing. I think now that musicals as movies don't work for me, not musicals.

Next musical: "The Neverending Story" in December.

After the musical, they were selling some merchandise, and one of them was a CD. Something I simply cannot pass, especially that the edition is very rich: not only including usual descriptions and pictures from the show, but also musical notes and full lyrics split into roles. And all that for 20 euros. Some of the rare releases I follow on Discogs cost more. I need to plan a listening session now.

2025-05-30#

Who said that front end is a safe choice?

2025-05-31#

Smart casual#

Funny thing happened yesterday. We had a company event, and it turned out that I don't understand the concept of smart casual, and I was denied entry to the place. I was there 7 years ago, and they had nice food, and I was curious if they kept their level, but I guess I won't be finding about this now. :D The situation was so ridiculous that I refused to engage with it. I turned around and drove home where I had a glass of fermented milk beverage and watched 2 episodes of "The Last of Us."

They had these artichokes boiled or dipped in butter with garlic, and each artichoke petal would be soaked with it. It's the only time I ate something like that. I need to find out on Monday if this was served. If not, I'll feel even less concerned about being kicked out from there.

I know it was mainly my fault, critical research failure, but I have to put the restaurant in question on my black list. If there is ever an event, and I have a say in where, they lost my sympathy, and we'll go elsewhere. Not that I think I'll get even remotely close to a situation like that. :D

This does remind me, however, of an event from 2004. At the time, I would go for these industrial parties (I was a mod on a heavy-music forum), and as the Summer came, I switched to sandals. I was also sporting a "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" hat. All went well, but the next time, they started putting a clause on their posters that "anyone not adhering to the dress code might be asked to leave." If anything, I found it funny, but some people on the forum were pissed with my "lack of respect."

I always played smart casual by the nose, and it would always work. Until now. I might have been lulled into this predicament with a laid-back atmosphere of the place and the industry I'm in (and leniency of the food venues in these regards). Anyway, it's time to buy fancy pants and some summer shoes. I'll use it once a year or so, but they won't surprise me like that any more. Beaten, I shall return stronger. :D

Madrid#

Madrid is a big city. I come from Cracow, which I never considered a small city, but still, Madrid eats it alive for breakfast. Buildings on the main street are enormous and reminded me of New York, which I know only from movies and shows. Many of the buildings would make me feel very small, which is something I remember finding appealing in a "NaissanceE's" review. That you could feel really small in the world there. And the decorations. Majestic.

Madrid also has the biggest metro system I have used to date. Warsaw had one 11-km-long line when I used it and Prague had 4, but I think they were shorter (still very useful). The journeys, again, reminded me of New York. At one point a guy came in with a guitar and started playing, while everyone else apart from me tried to look the other way. Too bad I had no physical money on me (it must be tough for these people). The other time, a green-painted man got onboard, but as a passenger.

There generally was a much wider variety of people and their clothing and haircuts, etc., than I'm used to, but I can't say now if this was Madrid as the big city or that normally I don't use public transportation and I have somewhat limited access to a wider general public.

That being said, I prefer smaller cities. I couldn't and I wouldn't want to live in a city that big. Something I cherish is lost there. But I can always visit.

"The Handmaid's Tale" is finally over. Season 6 brings some closure to June Osborn and her friends. I was curious how are they going to end it because Gilead is too big to be brought down by one person, and I think the creators managed to do it smartly. Probably too many characters survived, but I can hand-wave it. The rules of narrative. What I liked the most is that it left a lot of things dangling, which felt realistic. The last episode was sort of "the day after."

Now it's time for the book.

I realised now that I don't care what people wear unless it stinks. If it's fine in this regard, I'm good with anything. Perhaps that's why the whole smart casual thing hit me so hard, to make a thing out of it.

"Vice Principals" is a show with Danny McBride and Walton Goggins playing the titular vice principals who fight for the position of the principal. But first they will have to side to get rid of the official replacement. It's a new comedy show (2016), and it shows. Jokes are very brutal, but what I find the most fascinating is that the main characters are so unlikeable, with Goggins' one not having any redeeming characteristics. Extra points for Mitch Murder music (and when!).