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Recently read: The Traitor Baru Comorant
Nov. 26th, 2020 08:59 pmI just finished reading The Traitor Baru Comorant by Seth Dickinson. It was a powerful story that pulled me in, and was compelling read. I will not, however, be reading the sequels, nor will I recommend it to anyone who wants at least a hopeful ending. From start to finish, the novel is a tragedy, and that tragedy is colonialism and what it does to people and cultures. Nobody wins; nobody gets a happy ending. Everybody loses, and most of the secondary characters in the cast that you might come to care about die futilely.
So no, not reading any further in this series. I got this one free thanks to the Tor ebook club, so I didn't waste any money on it. The Tor ebook club has offered the first story in several major series; so far, of the ones I've read, I'm hooked on Murderbot, interested in picking up the sequel to Way of Kings, and will be happy to read all the spoilers about Baru Comorant on a wiki page, but do not want to get immersed in her stories ever again. So the Tor Ebook Club has batted 2-1 in getting me interested in buying books they publish. It'll be interesting to see how some of the other books I've pulled down fare.
So no, not reading any further in this series. I got this one free thanks to the Tor ebook club, so I didn't waste any money on it. The Tor ebook club has offered the first story in several major series; so far, of the ones I've read, I'm hooked on Murderbot, interested in picking up the sequel to Way of Kings, and will be happy to read all the spoilers about Baru Comorant on a wiki page, but do not want to get immersed in her stories ever again. So the Tor Ebook Club has batted 2-1 in getting me interested in buying books they publish. It'll be interesting to see how some of the other books I've pulled down fare.
Na Na Na Na Hey Hey, Goodbye
Nov. 11th, 2020 07:26 amGood riddance to bad rubbish. I look forward to the day that feculant piece of human garbage that has been disgracing the office of President for the last four years is finally ejected. I only have two questions: (1) Will the big orange turd concede before Jan 20 and leave with a tiny shred of dignity, or will federal marshals have to drag him out of the White House crying and ranting? (2) Upon being evicted, will the turd defect to his buddy Putin for protection from all the criminal prosecutions waiting for him here in the U.S., or will he stay and try to pretend that ex-presidents are above the law?
cross-posted to my Facebook
I just finished watching the original Hellsing series. (Not the one with the Nazi vampires, that would be Hellsing Ultimate, which I have yet to see).
Wow, that was trippy! Not as trippy as Revolutionary Girl Utena, quite. Some of the weirdness was, I am pretty sure, due to it being a Japanese take on European culture and religion. I mean, I finally figured out that the Hellsing types kept offering brief prayers to "God and the Queen, Amen" because in Japan, the monarch is considered divine. The crazy vampire hunting priest's signature move being stapling pages of scripture(?) to everything with silver knives is, I assume, based on Shinto/Buddhist anti-demon charms, which are strips of paper you attach to your walls.
The rest of the trippiness was because anime, of course. Horror anime. With really big guns. The protagonists really like their guns, when they aren't busting out the ninja moves.
As for Alucard... Sir Integra Hellsing does not have a "mere" B-movie vampire at her command, she has freaking Sauron, or the next best thing. And Sauron likes her. He's also fond of really big pistols and Seras "Police Girl" Victoria, the cute policewoman he "rescues" from death in the first episode. ("Rescues" == makes her into a mostly free-willed vampire). Seras seems to be the relatable character for the audience: she's more like a B-movie vampire, and she's almost as confused as the audience as to what the hell is going on. Unlike some cute girl anime protagonists, she actually grows some backbone over the course of the rather short series; I like her.
This first version of Hellsing manga-to-anime was rather short, only 13 episodes, vs, say, the neverending stories like Inu-Yasha or One Piece. One of these days, I'd like to see Hellsing Ultimate. Note that these are horror anime, which means blood, gore, body horror, bad language, and generally disturbing stuff everywhere.
Wow, that was trippy! Not as trippy as Revolutionary Girl Utena, quite. Some of the weirdness was, I am pretty sure, due to it being a Japanese take on European culture and religion. I mean, I finally figured out that the Hellsing types kept offering brief prayers to "God and the Queen, Amen" because in Japan, the monarch is considered divine. The crazy vampire hunting priest's signature move being stapling pages of scripture(?) to everything with silver knives is, I assume, based on Shinto/Buddhist anti-demon charms, which are strips of paper you attach to your walls.
The rest of the trippiness was because anime, of course. Horror anime. With really big guns. The protagonists really like their guns, when they aren't busting out the ninja moves.
As for Alucard... Sir Integra Hellsing does not have a "mere" B-movie vampire at her command, she has freaking Sauron, or the next best thing. And Sauron likes her. He's also fond of really big pistols and Seras "Police Girl" Victoria, the cute policewoman he "rescues" from death in the first episode. ("Rescues" == makes her into a mostly free-willed vampire). Seras seems to be the relatable character for the audience: she's more like a B-movie vampire, and she's almost as confused as the audience as to what the hell is going on. Unlike some cute girl anime protagonists, she actually grows some backbone over the course of the rather short series; I like her.
This first version of Hellsing manga-to-anime was rather short, only 13 episodes, vs, say, the neverending stories like Inu-Yasha or One Piece. One of these days, I'd like to see Hellsing Ultimate. Note that these are horror anime, which means blood, gore, body horror, bad language, and generally disturbing stuff everywhere.
A number of things to fix when you branch your 1.15.2 code and try to compile it under 1.16.3:
( Cut to avoid cluttering the feeds with mod code discussion )
( Cut to avoid cluttering the feeds with mod code discussion )
Mythic Descent is 20 this year
Jul. 14th, 2020 09:15 pmIt's been 20 years since I first wrote and posted my epic DBZ novel "Mythic Descent" to Fanfiction.net and my own website. (It's also on AO3 now). Hard to believe it's been that long.
Fourth of July
Jul. 5th, 2020 08:48 pmI was going to post the text of Frederick Douglass's famous Fourth of July polemic, but it looks like half the media did already, and I didn't feel that great on the Fourth, so... I guess I didn't post it. I will at least link to it:
What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?.
Parts of it are still relevant.
What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?.
Parts of it are still relevant.
The problem is not ACAB, because ACAB is demonstrably false. The problem is toxic workplace culture.
Toxic workplace culture in a retail business that sells thinggummies at worst results in all the highly-employable workers getting jobs elsewhere, the narcissist, racist, misogynist and/or generally abusive management running the company into the ground, and the less-employable workers living stress-filled lives in retail hell, and helping run the company into the ground because they don’t give a damn about the managers or the company owners any more. It does not generally result in dead bodies, however.
Toxic workplace culture in an organization that specializes in using lethal force to enforce “business practices” it prefers, whose employees have no accountability to anyone and generally can’t even be fired, and doesn’t need to keep customers happy to stay in business? The non-toxic “employees” will rapidly leave, and this toxic workplace will actually attract MORE toxic employees. And innocent people will die.
If a specific police department has a toxic culture, then yes, All Cops (in that P.D.) Are Bastards. If a specific police department has a healthy workplace culture, then ACAB does not hold.
The only way to clean up a completely toxic workplace culture is to destroy it. Fire everyone, tear apart and restructure the organization, and rehire only those people who may be salvageable. (This sometimes happens in corporate mergers, when the buyer’s corporate culture is not compatible with the bought-out company’s culture).
NYPD appears to be really toxic, as does the Seattle PD, Atlanta PD, and, of course, Ferguson’s PD.
A non-toxic, mostly healthy workplace culture can be made healthier through things like re-training and better policies. We do need some law enforcement, because some non-cops are bastards. We don’t need toxic police departments that are worse than the criminals; and healthy police departments do not need to and should not be burdened with responsibilities outside their main job just because the city or state doesn’t want to pay for mental health services, education, tax collection, emergency responders, etc, etc, etc.
Essay originally posted as a response to someone's Tumblr post, but I think this stands on its own and needs to be said.
Toxic workplace culture in a retail business that sells thinggummies at worst results in all the highly-employable workers getting jobs elsewhere, the narcissist, racist, misogynist and/or generally abusive management running the company into the ground, and the less-employable workers living stress-filled lives in retail hell, and helping run the company into the ground because they don’t give a damn about the managers or the company owners any more. It does not generally result in dead bodies, however.
Toxic workplace culture in an organization that specializes in using lethal force to enforce “business practices” it prefers, whose employees have no accountability to anyone and generally can’t even be fired, and doesn’t need to keep customers happy to stay in business? The non-toxic “employees” will rapidly leave, and this toxic workplace will actually attract MORE toxic employees. And innocent people will die.
If a specific police department has a toxic culture, then yes, All Cops (in that P.D.) Are Bastards. If a specific police department has a healthy workplace culture, then ACAB does not hold.
The only way to clean up a completely toxic workplace culture is to destroy it. Fire everyone, tear apart and restructure the organization, and rehire only those people who may be salvageable. (This sometimes happens in corporate mergers, when the buyer’s corporate culture is not compatible with the bought-out company’s culture).
NYPD appears to be really toxic, as does the Seattle PD, Atlanta PD, and, of course, Ferguson’s PD.
A non-toxic, mostly healthy workplace culture can be made healthier through things like re-training and better policies. We do need some law enforcement, because some non-cops are bastards. We don’t need toxic police departments that are worse than the criminals; and healthy police departments do not need to and should not be burdened with responsibilities outside their main job just because the city or state doesn’t want to pay for mental health services, education, tax collection, emergency responders, etc, etc, etc.
Essay originally posted as a response to someone's Tumblr post, but I think this stands on its own and needs to be said.
Minecraft mods: Ashenwheat
Jun. 16th, 2020 09:55 pmI have finally finished porting Ashenwheat to 1.15.2 and 1.14.4. I also have ideas for adding stuff to it, but first, I'm going to get the rest of akkamaddi's mods ported.
I thought Ashenwheat was going to be a simple port from 1.12.2, but noooo... there were a lot of new issues to unravel. Like, how to add seed drops to grass? (Answer: GlobalLootModifers) How to add seeds and other items as dungeon chest loot? (Answer: loot pool injection). Why isn't one of the crops growing once planted? (Answer: you forgot to give it the 'tickrandomly' property). Etc, etc, etc.
Minecraft Forge 1.14.4/1.15.2 modding is such a complete paradigm change from all previous versions that I refuse to support any of my mods from previous versions. I just can't wrap my head around the older way of doing things in addition to everything else.
The golden ages of Minecraft modding have been:
- 1.6.4 (Forge API mature, negates need for jar mods),
- 1.7.10 (Forge & Minecraft stayed on this version for a long time, so a lot of mods were written)
- 1.12.2 (Forge stayed on this version for a long time, because a complete rewrite was needed for the internal changes to 1.13+)
I predict that 1.14.4 & 1.15.2 may be another, because Forge has committed to long-term support of 1.14.4, in addition to following Mojang's updates. That will give mod developers a stable target to aim at. Or we'll all jump to 1.16 when it comes out, because there's a major rewrite of the dimension internals, so makers of dimension mods might want to take advantage of that, I don't know.
I thought Ashenwheat was going to be a simple port from 1.12.2, but noooo... there were a lot of new issues to unravel. Like, how to add seed drops to grass? (Answer: GlobalLootModifers) How to add seeds and other items as dungeon chest loot? (Answer: loot pool injection). Why isn't one of the crops growing once planted? (Answer: you forgot to give it the 'tickrandomly' property). Etc, etc, etc.
Minecraft Forge 1.14.4/1.15.2 modding is such a complete paradigm change from all previous versions that I refuse to support any of my mods from previous versions. I just can't wrap my head around the older way of doing things in addition to everything else.
The golden ages of Minecraft modding have been:
- 1.6.4 (Forge API mature, negates need for jar mods),
- 1.7.10 (Forge & Minecraft stayed on this version for a long time, so a lot of mods were written)
- 1.12.2 (Forge stayed on this version for a long time, because a complete rewrite was needed for the internal changes to 1.13+)
I predict that 1.14.4 & 1.15.2 may be another, because Forge has committed to long-term support of 1.14.4, in addition to following Mojang's updates. That will give mod developers a stable target to aim at. Or we'll all jump to 1.16 when it comes out, because there's a major rewrite of the dimension internals, so makers of dimension mods might want to take advantage of that, I don't know.
Do not do business with Barnes & Noble!
Jun. 4th, 2020 07:11 amIt's hard to go to sleep when you are utterly enraged. Last night, I discovered that Barnes & Noble defrauds e-book purchasers: you do not actually get your epub file. Instead, you get permission to read your purchased ebook in their choice of ebook reader, the Nook App, or in their web viewer. When you "download" an ebook to the Nook App, it is hidden on your device; you cannot access it with another e-reader app, nor can you back it up to your computer or other storage. THIS APPLIES TO NON-DRM books as well, so if you purchase say, a Tor sci-fi book (Tor does not add DRM to their ebooks), you still cannot access your own book.
I purchased Martha Wells' two latest MurderBot stories from B&N, and then tried desperately to get them into my Calibre library and visible to FBReader (my favored e-reader app). No go. The books were simply not available to be copied or moved. B&N's order status considers the books to be "delivered" once your Nook App downloads them, even though you don't have them accessible. Their support website arrogantly tells you that you don't need to backup your ebooks, because they are always available on the Nook server. So when B&N goes bankrupt or decides not to support that format of ebook anymore, they will be "always available"? If I move to another country, they will be "always available"? If I lose my account info in some kind of catastrophe, they will be "always available"? Yeah, no, fuck that shit.
My final solution? I hoisted the jolly roger, searched for torrents of the two books, and within five minutes had unencumbered, accessible, readable epub files of the two books I HAD ALREADY PAID FOR (AND NOT RECEIVED). The lovely Martha Wells has already received her royalties and whatever arcane sales performance metrics from B&N on my behalf, so no harm done. The second thing I did was delete my credit card info from B&N and put in a Data Rights Request to delete all my personal info (since there does not seem to be a way to just delete my account). The third thing I did was write a one-star review of the Nook App in the Google Play store, highlighting the fact that it HIDES YOUR OWN BOOKS and that B&N lies about "delivering" your ebooks to you.
I will never do business with Barnes & Noble again, neither for ebooks nor physical books, and I encourage you not to do so. Businesses should be punished for shady practices in the only way they understand: in their sales. Spread the bad publicity, too; it can only help.
To friends & family: please do not give me Barnes & Noble gift cards in the future; you will be wasting your money because I will not use them.
I purchased Martha Wells' two latest MurderBot stories from B&N, and then tried desperately to get them into my Calibre library and visible to FBReader (my favored e-reader app). No go. The books were simply not available to be copied or moved. B&N's order status considers the books to be "delivered" once your Nook App downloads them, even though you don't have them accessible. Their support website arrogantly tells you that you don't need to backup your ebooks, because they are always available on the Nook server. So when B&N goes bankrupt or decides not to support that format of ebook anymore, they will be "always available"? If I move to another country, they will be "always available"? If I lose my account info in some kind of catastrophe, they will be "always available"? Yeah, no, fuck that shit.
My final solution? I hoisted the jolly roger, searched for torrents of the two books, and within five minutes had unencumbered, accessible, readable epub files of the two books I HAD ALREADY PAID FOR (AND NOT RECEIVED). The lovely Martha Wells has already received her royalties and whatever arcane sales performance metrics from B&N on my behalf, so no harm done. The second thing I did was delete my credit card info from B&N and put in a Data Rights Request to delete all my personal info (since there does not seem to be a way to just delete my account). The third thing I did was write a one-star review of the Nook App in the Google Play store, highlighting the fact that it HIDES YOUR OWN BOOKS and that B&N lies about "delivering" your ebooks to you.
I will never do business with Barnes & Noble again, neither for ebooks nor physical books, and I encourage you not to do so. Businesses should be punished for shady practices in the only way they understand: in their sales. Spread the bad publicity, too; it can only help.
To friends & family: please do not give me Barnes & Noble gift cards in the future; you will be wasting your money because I will not use them.
More Minecraft modding...
May. 21st, 2020 09:04 pmSo. I have finally ported (&updated) all five of the original Simple Ores mods: Simple Ores, Netherrocks, Fusion, Machines, and Aesthetics.
Next up: "akkamaddi's Hadite Coal", which I ported to 1.12.2 at one point, so it should be easier to port than the really old stuff.
Then, I think I'll port "akkamaddi's Ashenwheat", just for a change of pace from ore & tool mods. I'll learn how to do crops in 1.15.2.
Then, if I still have no response from Zot21, I'll fork his mod, "Only Silver", which added silver ore and tools back into Simple Ores (or could be used stand-alone). It's under the Apache open source license, so the author long ago gave the world permission to port his stuff.
Eventually I'll port the rest of akkamaddi's Additions (to Simple Ores). "Sterling & Black" depends on "Only Silver" (or any other mod that provides silver), which is why "Only Silver" is on the menu. I *think* the rest just depend on Fusion, which has been ported. They are also ore & tool mods with alloys, all of which coding I've learned how to do.
I may junk the recycling recipes, since vanilla has added recycling by way of smelting used weapons & armor. Or perhaps not, as fusion furnace recycling yields ingots rather than nuggets, but costs catalysts and extra inputs, so it is a balanced alternative. We'll see.
Next up: "akkamaddi's Hadite Coal", which I ported to 1.12.2 at one point, so it should be easier to port than the really old stuff.
Then, I think I'll port "akkamaddi's Ashenwheat", just for a change of pace from ore & tool mods. I'll learn how to do crops in 1.15.2.
Then, if I still have no response from Zot21, I'll fork his mod, "Only Silver", which added silver ore and tools back into Simple Ores (or could be used stand-alone). It's under the Apache open source license, so the author long ago gave the world permission to port his stuff.
Eventually I'll port the rest of akkamaddi's Additions (to Simple Ores). "Sterling & Black" depends on "Only Silver" (or any other mod that provides silver), which is why "Only Silver" is on the menu. I *think* the rest just depend on Fusion, which has been ported. They are also ore & tool mods with alloys, all of which coding I've learned how to do.
I may junk the recycling recipes, since vanilla has added recycling by way of smelting used weapons & armor. Or perhaps not, as fusion furnace recycling yields ingots rather than nuggets, but costs catalysts and extra inputs, so it is a balanced alternative. We'll see.
And more programming stuff..
May. 19th, 2020 08:59 pmSo "WeatherMaker", the old command-line tool for generating D&D weather reports, has now been cleaned up and made to compile under a semi-modern C++ compiler. I've posted the source code to GitHub, and released both a Windows-64 and a Linux version of the executable. Yay, me! Hopefully the gentleman who sent me the e-mail query gets my replies and the update. It's also possible his spam filter ate my replies.
In Minecraft modding news, I investigated a crash bug one of my users reported, and kicked myself for blowing off testing my code in server-client configuration, as well as in single-player configuration, because the alloy furnace thingy (aka the 'fusion furnace') was indeed "crossing the streams" and calling server-only code from the standalone client. Whoops. I fixed that, but between overhauling WeatherMaker and the Fusion mod's little issue, I haven't moved forward with any of my modding--just fixed bugs for several days now. Meh.
In Minecraft modding news, I investigated a crash bug one of my users reported, and kicked myself for blowing off testing my code in server-client configuration, as well as in single-player configuration, because the alloy furnace thingy (aka the 'fusion furnace') was indeed "crossing the streams" and calling server-only code from the standalone client. Whoops. I fixed that, but between overhauling WeatherMaker and the Fusion mod's little issue, I haven't moved forward with any of my modding--just fixed bugs for several days now. Meh.
Fixing old stuff, namely my website...
May. 17th, 2020 03:26 pmThanks to a gentleman who inquired about a possible update to an 18-year-old weather generator program for D&D, I decided to find it and check on that. That led to realizing I'd never finished repairing my old website from the damage done by my web host's PHP upgrade (namely, all the old pages broke, because they used deprecated/removed functions), including the page with the download for the weather generator. That led to fixing as many broken links and malfunctioning pages as I could and recovering misplaced old sections of the website (I had links all over to old versions of the site, and wanted to move them and reconcile them), and now it's late afternoon, where did the day go?
I still haven't unpacked wthrmkr and checked if it still compiles yet. I think I'll do that next.
I still haven't unpacked wthrmkr and checked if it still compiles yet. I think I'll do that next.
Minecraft stuff
May. 10th, 2020 08:36 pmI finally pushed out Simple Ores: Machines for 1.15.2. & 1.14.4. I added mythril and onyx versions of the smoker and blast furnace, to go along with the mythril & onyx furnaces.
I got tired of worrying about villagers all the time, and needed some space. I moved out of my village in Burnsquare and found a distant mountain-top in a taiga biome, where I plan to build a mountain villa. Of course, I then decided that white terracotta with spruce timber framing was The Only Possibility for the looks. Spruce framing is a natural for living in a taiga biome, but white terracotta? Not so much.
No way was I going to dig and fire and dye that much clay, so I looked up where my server-mates had found badlands biomes and set off towards the nearest one. After dragging my horse across countless rivers and hacking through endless woods, we finally found the badlands area at the seashore. Never will I use a horse for exploration again!
I built a small paddock for the horse, a hut near the quarry, and a warehouse with chests for all the terracotta I planned to dig, and spent a couple of Minecraft weeks digging out terracotta clay. Finally I decided that I couldn't practically carry any more, and tried to find my way back to local civilzation. See, I'd gotten quite lost on my way to Red Sands Pt (my name for the ocean-side badlands).
I built a boat and traveled north along the shore until I hit signs of "civilization" (i.e., something built by a player)--one of my own huts from an earlier phase of exploration! Since it was also near a marked trail (kinda, it lead nowhere useful) someone else had made, I declared it my harbor for travel to and from the badlands quarry. I built a dock, and dubbed the area with the hut 'Dandelion Pt', on account of all the dandelions. Finally, I started working my way cross-country to the east, looking for the built-up area around Main Base (& Spawn), marking my way with lighted stone pillars and overnight way huts with campfires. Eventually I hit the Main Base area itself--in fact, my last way hut had been nearly in bowshot range of an outlying building just over the hill
I got tired of worrying about villagers all the time, and needed some space. I moved out of my village in Burnsquare and found a distant mountain-top in a taiga biome, where I plan to build a mountain villa. Of course, I then decided that white terracotta with spruce timber framing was The Only Possibility for the looks. Spruce framing is a natural for living in a taiga biome, but white terracotta? Not so much.
No way was I going to dig and fire and dye that much clay, so I looked up where my server-mates had found badlands biomes and set off towards the nearest one. After dragging my horse across countless rivers and hacking through endless woods, we finally found the badlands area at the seashore. Never will I use a horse for exploration again!
I built a small paddock for the horse, a hut near the quarry, and a warehouse with chests for all the terracotta I planned to dig, and spent a couple of Minecraft weeks digging out terracotta clay. Finally I decided that I couldn't practically carry any more, and tried to find my way back to local civilzation. See, I'd gotten quite lost on my way to Red Sands Pt (my name for the ocean-side badlands).
I built a boat and traveled north along the shore until I hit signs of "civilization" (i.e., something built by a player)--one of my own huts from an earlier phase of exploration! Since it was also near a marked trail (kinda, it lead nowhere useful) someone else had made, I declared it my harbor for travel to and from the badlands quarry. I built a dock, and dubbed the area with the hut 'Dandelion Pt', on account of all the dandelions. Finally, I started working my way cross-country to the east, looking for the built-up area around Main Base (& Spawn), marking my way with lighted stone pillars and overnight way huts with campfires. Eventually I hit the Main Base area itself--in fact, my last way hut had been nearly in bowshot range of an outlying building just over the hill
I killed the beans.
May. 5th, 2020 09:34 pmAlas, the mung bean sprouts didn't make it. In retrospect, I kept them too wet, and they promptly molded. After throwing out the mess, I looked up how I should have done it in the first place, and I was never supposed to leave them sitting above/in water like that. Oops. And you're supposed to rinse them daily, presumably to get any fungus off them. So, trying again with another batch.
Made hummus yesterday...
May. 4th, 2020 09:12 pmI was cleaning out the pantry of dead grains I'd inherited from my mother a decade ago, tossing everything that had that sharp, musty smell outside for the birds. (They don't really want it, either). When barley and millet and other grains smell like that, and when they seem to have fine cobwebs knitting clumps together, it's time to compost them. Or what's left of them, after the mold has eaten out the good parts. Even hard grain doesn't store that long. (NB: if your flour smells like that, you kept it too long, toss it. Anything made with moldy flour tastes terrible).
My mung beans didn't smell off, but I was dubious that they would still be good after all these years. Still, I soaked a few tablespoons and stuck them in my sprouting tub and, after two days, they are showing some sprouts, so they're not all dead. With luck, we'll have bean sprouts in the salad in a few days.
The chick peas still smelled good, and I remembered that they were something I bought some years back, but not so far back as my late mom bought her health food collection. I didn't think they would keep indefinitely, though, so I decided to start using them for what I bought them for: hummus. I soaked them overnight, then boiled them for 4 hours (it took that long for them to soften up! Next time, I may amend the recipe to add the salt late in the boil). Then I applied my personal recipe, that I've been tweaking over the years. (Note to self: add recipe here when you find it on your hard drive...)
It came out pretty well; I'm finally happy with the amount of cumin flavoring it, though it could maybe stand more lemon juice, and next time I won't go so light on the salt. (I was worried about making it too salty; I should have remembered, this is my recipe, tuned to my tastes, not the general public's.) Sorry, didn't think to take any pictures; my skills are not in presentation in any case.
My mung beans didn't smell off, but I was dubious that they would still be good after all these years. Still, I soaked a few tablespoons and stuck them in my sprouting tub and, after two days, they are showing some sprouts, so they're not all dead. With luck, we'll have bean sprouts in the salad in a few days.
The chick peas still smelled good, and I remembered that they were something I bought some years back, but not so far back as my late mom bought her health food collection. I didn't think they would keep indefinitely, though, so I decided to start using them for what I bought them for: hummus. I soaked them overnight, then boiled them for 4 hours (it took that long for them to soften up! Next time, I may amend the recipe to add the salt late in the boil). Then I applied my personal recipe, that I've been tweaking over the years. (Note to self: add recipe here when you find it on your hard drive...)
It came out pretty well; I'm finally happy with the amount of cumin flavoring it, though it could maybe stand more lemon juice, and next time I won't go so light on the salt. (I was worried about making it too salty; I should have remembered, this is my recipe, tuned to my tastes, not the general public's.) Sorry, didn't think to take any pictures; my skills are not in presentation in any case.
More modding
May. 3rd, 2020 09:08 pmI did get Fusion for 1.15.2 and a backport to 1.14.4 out last week.
Now I'm working on Machines for 1.15.2, etc.
Still haven't dyed my hair, though I finally have most of what I need. (Why did I toss out all the old shower caps? Oh, that's right, because they were 40 years old and disintegrating).
Now I'm working on Machines for 1.15.2, etc.
Still haven't dyed my hair, though I finally have most of what I need. (Why did I toss out all the old shower caps? Oh, that's right, because they were 40 years old and disintegrating).
Fusion is progressing...
Apr. 25th, 2020 10:03 pmI finally got the fusion furnace to actually work with the new custom alloy recipes in the data pack. Wooo! That's like 90% of the functionality right there. I probably want to try adding in JEI support, if available, and an option to disable recipes if SimpleOres isn't loaded... or not. Right now, it's just required. Don't know how much I want to make recipes & such like configurable; it's a lot of extra work I don't really know how to do, so I may just say "tough, it's not configurable".
If I ignore the configuration and JEI support issues, I could probably release an alpha tomorrow.
I've also updated my minecraft links page a bit (It's the one on the sidebar over there ==> ).
If I ignore the configuration and JEI support issues, I could probably release an alpha tomorrow.
I've also updated my minecraft links page a bit (It's the one on the sidebar over there ==> ).
I used to maintain a series of Minecraft mods whose original developers had abandoned: SimpleOres and related add-ons. I'm finally getting back to porting those mods up the the current modded Minecraft version 1.15.2.
So far:
- Simple Ores, the base mod, has been ported to 1.15.2. Shears work properly.
- Netherrocks, the only add-on that does NOT require the Fusion mod to be working, has been ported to 1.15.2. The funky properties of nether metal armor and tools work properly.
Next in my sights: Fusion, because all the remaining add-ons depend on that alloy furnace working.
