Funke is a girl growing up in Lagos, Nigeria with her brother, mother, and father when a car accident tears her family apart.
She is shipped off to Britain to live with her mother's family, but her mother's sister is racist. Fortunately, her cousin Liv tries to make sure she has a nice time even though the family insists on calling her Katherine instead of Funke.
The chapters switch back and forth between Liv and Funke's viewpoints.
There is often important information hidden from one or the other main character, and they both end up suffering due to this.
Some of the plot points were obvious. The Stone family in Britain was a little too vapid and racist.
There were a number of phrases in Yoruba sprinkled throughout the book.
Nikki May is an Anglo-Nigerian author. She was born in Bristol and raised in Lagos. Her main character, Funke, has a parrot and a bicycle at the beginning of the story, just like May had when she was a child.
This is crossposted from Curiousity.ca, my personal maker blog. If you want to link to this post, please use the original link since the formatting there is usually better.
A book nook built from a kit. It’s a diaorama showing a train going over a river with shops and cherry blossoms, and it has been lit up with leds placed inside the diorama.
In my previous post about fiber goals I’d claimed not to have done anything new in July, but I forgot I made a book nook! It’s not apparent from the photo but it’s sized to fit on a bookshelf.
This was a kit I bought online a year or two ago. I did decided some of the pieces needed extra glue because the friction fits were not sufficient. But other than that, it was pretty simple and relaxing to put together over a couple of days.
Not going to be a new hobby since this is the only kit I bought for myself, but it was nice to do something different!
Space mission badges, patches, and stickers, from the ones that I've worked on. They always look so good. I never stick them on anything, though. I just hoard them in little stashes like a greedy dragon. Occasionally I'll put one of the pin badges on my suit lapel.
If you could make one ice cream flavor, what would the ingredients be and what would be the name?
I don't feel the need to invent a flavour when mint chocolate chip is already my all-time favourite.
What can't you go a day without?
I mean, I *can* go without it and I have before, but it isn't pleasant: Coffee.
What position do you sleep in? *back, right side, left side, stomach . . . etc.*
Curled up on my right side in a defensive ball.
What is your typical morning routine before work/school?
Get up, feed cats, empty dishwasher, make breakfast, make coffee, fill everyone's water bottles, pack snacks and lunches, lay out clothes and shoes for the kids, get dressed myself, pack rucksack, sneak in 15 minutes of work or email before shovelling everyone into the car.
I have left out showers, shouting about putting shoes on, and scrubbing toothpaste off school jumpers, but those things usually feature somewhere in there too.
This is crossposted from Curiousity.ca, my personal maker blog. If you want to link to this post, please use the original link since the formatting there is usually better.
We’re a bit more than halfway through the year so let’s see where we’re at!
Revisit Old Goals
Started strong in January by finishing up a rainbow shawl that had been on the needles for quite some time:
A rainbow bias knit shawl/wrap of my own design.
I’d intended to release the pattern since I had an old goal about writing patterns but… honestly, I haven’t felt like it, and I focused my time on other stuff that was bringing me joy. But I have a bunch of pattern notes and a bit more time right now so I may publish what I have without bothering to polish it.
February I worked on an old Beanie Bag kit from Jimmy Beans Wool that spanned 3 months. It was… honestly kind of boring and the pattern had a bunch of mistakes/confusing bits, but I finished one month’s worth and will likely do the other two at some point.
The first part of the Textures of Nevada Shawl that was part of a Jimmy Beans Wool kit subscription some years back.
March-April-May I finally got around to knitting Wingspan, which was on my “something famous” goal plan but I never made it. It was a pleasant knit once I got into the swing of things, but by the time I finished it was too warm to wear it here so I haven’t really gotten pictures! Here’s one from before it was blocked, though:
Wingspan shawl knit in a gradient yarn that goes from burgundy to red to orange. It has no been blocked so it looks a bit lumpy and smaller than the final product looks.
June I took a break from old goals (and focused on writing).
July I pulled out some gradient balls and made socks for my mom’s birthday (a bit early because the timing worked out), plus I did tour de fleece stuff.
Blue/green/yellow-green gradient socks using the Affixed pattern from Shoreland Socks by Hunter Hammersen.
Overall, A+ on revisiting old goals. I have a couple more “use kits from stash” ideas but I may otherwise declare this particular goal complete and focus on some other stuff.
Try Something New
January started strong with me working on a hexagon blanket, which I’m still working on between other projects.
February I tried assigned pooling and made the “Shard” shawl by Romi Hill. It was fun and I’ll likely do other assigned pooling patterns!
Me modelling my Shard shawl (pattern by Romi Hill) knit in Chemknits yarn from valentines day 2024. It’s a red shawl with purple “shards” from assigned pooling.
March-April-May I worked on Wingspan for the old goals and didn’t bother doing new stuff.
June again was a break from all knitting goals. (I was writing instead.)
July was mostly finishing up work/travel and I didn’t feel like learning something new.
There’s probably some more to be done here but… honestly, I’m not sure this goal is playing well with my burnout? I’ve got some tentative plans for learning some bookbinding in August if my kid is amenable so that might be up next. But I think I may just focus on finishing up the hex blanket rather than pushing myself to come up with new things to do if I’m not feeling it. So this goal may be as complete as it’s getting unless something fun occurs to me.
Stash Something Stash / Write more
I’d planned to run some kind of stash-focused event about appreciating what you have (as opposed to feeling guilty about what you have, a common vibe in a lot of “use your stash” events) and I got as far as coming up with a nice list of prompts and ideas. But then I realized that… I didn’t actually want to run it. I was burned out on social media and wanted to spend less time on my phone. So I’ve declared this goal as complete as it’s going to be. The prompts will keep if I decide I want to run things later.
That said, I replaced this goal that no longer fit with a goal of “Write more” instead since it was what was bringing me joy and it deserved some focus and time.
I’ve done a bit more writing for this blog but the biggest part of my writing this year has been fanfic since I’m having fun. I joined a discord to hang out with other writers in my current fandom of choice and I took part in a prompt challenge (which is why I didn’t knit as much in June-July so I could write). I’m now over the 40k “that’s a novel’s worth” of words since January and I’m pretty delighted with myself.
There’s something deeply satisfying in the current economic environment about making something that is basically non-monetizable put on a website run by a nonprofit (that I donated to!) and my output only serves to make strangers/new friends happy. And I definitely made a bunch of people happy! (Including my kid, who helped with some ideas in one of my stories.) Also I’m amused that my existing community of open source people and my new community of fan writers are somewhat similar and overlapping nerds. Not a surprise that people who share their creative outputs for free have some similarities but it’s still a delight.
I expect I’ll keep writing through the end of the year (and beyond but this post is about 2025 goals). I’ll probably join another challenge or two but even if I don’t do more than finish my current story in progress, I feel like this replacement goal has been met *and* it’s brought me a lot more joy than the original goal. And these goals have always been about finding time for things that bring me joy!
Game Design
It took waaaaay too long to get approval from work saying that my silly games weren’t going to conflict with my job at which point I was so frustrated with my boss for other reasons that I was intentionally trying to get put in the layoff pool (and I succeeded). But the end result is that I haven’t actually *done* any games stuff beyond a bit of helping my kid learn Scratch programming for his robot. I’m not replacing this goal because I still want to make games, but I haven’t figured out an actual plan yet so that’s on my list for part 2 of the year. So far I’ve got my personal laptop set up a bit better for game work (attached it to the kvm with my big screen and mouse) and I think I might aim to play around with some existing frameworks and make silly things with my kid as a goal for August.
More Thoughts
It turns out this year it hasn’t been *fiber* that was really keeping me happy. I mean, I still knit/spin/whatever but it’s writing and video games that have helped me cope with the burnout and grief (particularly from losing a friend earlier this year, but there’s grief tied up in climate and politics right now too). The fact that fiber wasn’t the perfect solution for this type of burnout makes sense because I needed something that engaged more of my brain and took me away from worrying about geopolitics/work/my deceased friend. I knit to focus my brain but when my brain is spiralling that’s not the right thing to do. I do knit-and-write-in-my-head a lot so it’s compatible with what works to distract me, at least, but fiber hasn’t been as much of a focus for a few months and I’m not sure if that’s going to change. I am wondering if I should stop calling these “fiber goals” next year so I can encompass some other hobbies, though.
With work as a stressor out of the way for now but more “international move” and “find a new job” stress coming, I’m intending to just roll with what works for these goals in the second half of the year. I *am* really enjoying using my fiber and stationary stashes now that I’m trying not to spend so much money — past me bought some lovely stuff and now I have time to use it. I think doing some game stuff is going to be fun when I sit down and start playing. And I’m really enjoying writing fanfic in a way that I haven’t in a long time, so I’m happy to keep leaning into that too. Last time I was involved in a fandom I presented as an artist, and writing is a different experience, and I’m loving it so much.
Taking this proof-of-concept to a ridiculous destination, imagine taking a very simple secret message, converting it to sound, and tasking a starling to smuggle it out somewhere. (This seems very impractical compared to an amateurishly knitted scarf with a code in the seemingly random purl stitches.)
I liked the structure of this story and the theme, but I found the details excruciating.
The book starts with a man Toby Fleishman who is getting a divorce. He has downloaded an app, and he is finding his identity in meaningless sexual exploits with women that he does not know. One is an Iranian woman named Nahid. This is so tedious and goes on for too many pages. His ex-wife is supposed to pick up the kids, but she doesn't come get them, and he has to be both the parent in charge and a hepatologist while juggling the kids. Does he impulsively decide to also buy a dog? Yes.
He reconnects with his party friends from college. One is bored with her marriage, and the other one is a man with Peter Pan syndrome. He never grew up or got married. He was just one of the good time party people.
In the end, we see the same story from the perspective of the missing wife.
Eliza Raindisabled_eliza posted an excellent 1:30 skit on how to interact with busybodies who can’t cope with the reality of ambulatory wheelchair users. (I'm also able to stand and reach for some things, so I appreciate helpful scripts.)
I loved her response to a stranger portrayed as complaining about the unbelievability of wheelchair users who can briefly stand. Eliza says, in a level tone, "Okay well, it makes no difference to me if you do or don’t believe me, this is my reality and I need a chair to get around."
You can watch it on on her Instagram or stream with open captions as well as narration from loud text-to-speech plus human dialogue ( right here )
Do you have go-to scripts to shut down invasive strangers (or family members, for that matter)?
Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (azurelunatic) wrote2025-07-2809:54 pm
July 22: I message my symptoms team for a refill on my primary pain med (which is still only the next step up from Tylenol 3). And yet, it's what keeps me from regularly screaming when I exert myself in a way that stresses my right hip. I have 21 + 5 (a week plus a day and 2/3) left.
July 24: A list of detailed follow-up questions from the symptoms nurse, and my detailed reply. About 20 left.
July 25: Hi [Azz],
I wanted to let you know that [doctor] sent a refill of the [med] to the Costco!
[Discussion of discontinuing another med]
And can I just say how much I enjoy your MyChart messages; I am always impressed at how in tune you are with your body.
Take care, [Nurse]
Me: It's time to renew my prior auth again, alas.
Nurse: Aw dang! No worries though, you gave us time (thank you by the way). I have asked our billing specialist to help with this so we will call the Costco when we get it and then let you know. Thanks, [Nurse]
About 17 left.
***
July 26: About 14 left. July 27: About 11 left.
***
July 28 Different nurse: Hi [Azz],
We needed a new prior authorization on [med]. We received approval for this over the weekend. However, Costco has been unable to get this medication to process. They are in the process of calling your insurance to figure out where the issue lies.
[Image of prior auth as sent to doctor]
I will keep you updated
Thanks, [Nurse]
Me: Thanks for the update!
***
A hair bleaching, trip through the shower, and time to drip dry later, I figure I will call Costco pharmacy and see what they've discovered, since they're still open and the symptoms care office is not.
[Call time: 6 minutes 54 seconds]
***
Me: I talked with darling [Don't Panic Pharmacy Assistant] at the pharmacy, who had my back the last time UHC was like this, and we had a real good chat about the state of things at UHC, and she is putting me through for 12 days so I can have some breathing room while you and she go and wrestle alligators. I will get that picked up tonight and we'll see when UHC can be made to see the light.
I drive to the pharmacy. I receive my jar. I tell our friend that I was so glad it was her who picked up when I called. Don't Panic Pharmacy Assistant tells me that when she took my call about the prior auth on my med, the rest of the pharmacy was looking at her funny, because she swapped registers straight out of professional. "Is that a family member on the phone?" And yet again we had words about United Healthcare. Also, the pharmacy we used to go to is shutting down; she has this from her friend and ours, the guy with the Emperor's New Groove pin. He prefers to stay with that company, so he's not coming to Costco.
I've been working in and around consensus systems for a long time now and I still find a lot of the writing on the subject very vexing. The protocols are often very complex and very subtle and it is often very hard to see the forest for the trees.
I decided this weekend to try to write down what I am fairly sure I actually know about consensus algorithms, in a form I could fit on one page. Here it is!
Consensus
We want some computers to agree on a thing, but there are problems:
The speed of light
Computers can stop running
Computers can keep running but be disconnected
Computers can keep running but have bugs and lie
We have some tricks that we have found help, that most consensus algorithms are some combination of:
Promises
Voting
Preemption
Epistemic levels (I know that you know that I know...)
Digital signatures
In particular:
If you promise me you'll do something in the future, and put that in an envelope, then even if I don't get the message for a while because of the speed of light I will know at least a little about your current instantaneous state when I get the message: that you're doing, or about to do, or have done the thing you promised (unless you crashed or lied). It narrows the space of possible futures: if you're an honest node, you won't be doing some other thing than what you promised. Faster-than-light communication!
If we agree not to do a thing unless there's a majority passing a vote then:
We can pick a fault probability and then size the number of nodes to ensure that vote-majorities are achievable even with the expected worst case number of simultaneous faults, which handles most cases of nodes stopping.
We know there can't be two different things decided by a majority because there can only be one majority, which helps with some bugs (though not lies) and races due to the speed of light.
We know that if there's a network partition then only one side can possibly get to a majority, and the other can only get a minority and never observe the majority, which transforms the nodes in the minority into a special case of "stopping".
If we agree on a mechanism where a vote initiated by one node can be preempted by another node initiating a new vote, then we can handle any case where the initiating node itself fails or is isolated in a partition or is slow or whatever.
If you tell me not just what you know about yourself but also what you know about other nodes, or even what those nodes told you about what they know about other nodes (ideally conveyed with digital signatures so I know you aren't lying about what others said to you), then:
I can ask you to tell me both your vote and, later, what you saw as the outcome of everyone else's voting. This further limits the set of possible futures of the system: once I know a majority say that a majority voted for X then the decision for X is no longer subject to being lost or reversed due to even massive node stoppage or network failure. Any one node in that majority has enough evidence to convince anyone else that X is the majority decision. A node can only decide not-X after that point if someone was buggy or lying.
I (or other correct-and-honest nodes) can compare those observations and catch any bugs-or-liars, at least up to some given scale of collusion, because some buggy-or-lying node L would by definition be making statements inconsistent with the protocol (eg. "I vote X" as part of a majority, but later "I saw the majority including myself vote Y"). And this "say X and also Y" inconsistency will be caught. If L sends this pair of inconsistent messages directly to some correct-and-honest node M, then M immediately knows L is buggy or lying. If L sends the X message to M and the Y message to some other correct-and-honest node N, it still gets caught when M and N exchange their statements-received-from-L. And this covers both intentional lies and bugs -- though an intentional liar knowing this part of the protocol exists will not bother to lie because they know it will be caught, so it only leaves bugs.
I think that's it! There's also some more stuff about livelocks, timeouts, leadership, fast paths, censorship resistance, fairness, pipelining and information dependencies that all seem like .. eh .. details? Fine tuning? Perhaps just "easier to digest in small pieces if you can keep the big picture in mind". Also much more variable between different protocol families.
Anyway I hope this is useful to someone besides myself. At least I can print it out and stick it on my wall when I am next trying to decide what makes a give protocol safe. Also if you think I've either overlooked one of the main big picture elements and/or gotten one of them wrong, please let me know!
This is crossposted from Curiousity.ca, my personal maker blog. If you want to link to this post, please use the original link since the formatting there is usually better.
I’m on a trip!
My travel stationary: a Travelers Notebook monthly undated calendar with a plastic zippered pocket thing attached for holding stickers, two fountain pens and a writing board that matches the calendar. On the right is a red pencil case that opens flat which is currently holding a vial of ink, a zippered plastic bag with a paper towel and pipette in it, a pair of thin washi tapes, and a mechanical pencil (pikachu themed)
I don’t travel as much as I used to, so I think this is the first time I’ve brought a vacuum filling pen on a plane. I picked up a Nahvalur Original Plus last year when I was collecting a bunch of different fountain pens mostly to see what would stick.
This is a nice pen. I really love that the sparkles in the black parts are rainbow iridescent, which definitely sparks joy when I use it even though it’s not easy to photograph. I got a stub nib in it because I love the way it forces me to write with a bit more care to get something a bit more elegant. The wider nib might not have been the best choice for travel but I rarely get much time to write on my journeys nowadays so I’m not concerned about using a full tank of ink or too much paper, and I’ve shifted to using a pencil with my calendar so this is just for journal entries. So I guess the only downside for me personally is that I can’t use it as easily with cheaper pocket notebooks, I guess? It didn’t seem like enough reason to choose a smaller nib. The stub in this pen feels a bit less forgiving than some of the others in my collection when it comes to writing at different angles and starting on an up-stroke, but I can train myself on that.
A close up of my Nahvalur Original Plus fountain pen in the “Lovina Graphite” colour which has a clear ink resevoir and black cap/ends that have rainbow sparkles in them.
No leaks on the plane, as expected. I’ll see how I feel about it after more trips, but so far I think it’s what I was hoping for as far as a travel option.
That said, it’s not really a favourite pen for regular use because it holds too much ink! I’ve been rotating my pens and inks monthly and this pen will last a lot longer than that, so once I put something in it I have to kind of work around that in my colour planning or handle the longer process of cleaning it. Good thing the vacuum mechanism is fun, but I have come to accept that this pen is probably not the best fit for me. Still, it is convenient for travel and I’m not sad to have bought it. This time it’s filled with Pilot Iroshizuku Yama-budo which is at least an ink I love to use so it won’t be too bad to make a dent in it before I get tired of it and clean out the pen.
Since I normally switch between 2-4 colours in a month mostly to keep me engaged and also to make it easier to see where the days switch in my journal, I decided to bring a second pen. This trip’s choice was a Kaweco Sport with a medium nib, because it’s small, has a very small converter, and it’s very easy to clean, so I could bring it with a sample vial of ink and clean it out before flying home. Easy peasy! I didn’t love this pen at first because it didn’t sit well in my previous pen case, but it’s been good in this new one and the tiny converter has worked out really well for my usage patterns of late where I’m writing in my journal a bit less (on account of writing more fiction, mostly). This time I brought another Pilot Iroshizuku ink to go with it, Ama Iro. I wanted something without sheen or shimmer to make life easy.
The Kaweco Sport has become among my favourite pens to clean because the converter is so easy, and sometimes my kid will even clean it for me if he’s bored and on the hunt for something. It’s not a screw, so it’s very quick to push it in and out. This is the older style of converter and it’s slightly easier to clean than the folding one but they’re both fairly easy you just have to be a bit more careful with the folding version. I’m actually tempted to get a shiny blue Liliput or one of the AL sport pens because I love shiny colourful aluminum, but I’m trying to cut back on spending while I’m unemployed so it likely won’t be soon unless I happen to catch a nice sale.
On the stationary front, I didn’t bring my current A5 journal because I assumed (correctly) that I’d get very little time to write on this trip and might as well use the blank pages at the back of my calendar since I’ll be switching it out in September and didn’t really need all of them for ink testing. (I use the calendar for tracking a few things and decided I wanted to bring it on this trip, though I don’t always.) I don’t *love* the slimmer format for journal writing when I’m at home and don’t have size constraints, but it’s nice for travel and I really love the zipper pouch attachment I bought so I can carry stickers around and actually *see* them.
And the pen case is the same one I’ve been using for a while now to keep my pens contained in my knitting bag. I definitely could have just thrown the pens in a zippered plastic bag in the bottom of the A5 pouch I use for everything, but I know the kaweco sport has gotten scratched up a bit from me carrying it so it’s nice to have it contained better in a case. And I really like this one!
Overall, it’s all worked quite well for tracking and journal writing this trip! Now if only I had a bit more time to write…
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drwho) wrote2025-08-09 08:06 am
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disabled_eliza posted an excellent 1:30 skit on how to interact with busybodies who can’t cope with the reality of ambulatory wheelchair users. (I'm also able to stand and reach for some things, so I appreciate helpful scripts.)
