vyvyanx

My mother died in March. That feels like basically the only thing that happened this year, but of course it's not. Theoretically you stay in full mourning for a parent for a whole year (which hasn't ended yet); I haven't quite managed that, as done properly it's really quite intense, no social gatherings or live music for example, but it has definitely been the major theme in my life. And helping Dad to figure out what his life will be like as a widow.

I continued to be a student rabbi, making it through to the halfway point of my studies. I took on more and more complex rabbinic work, and got to know the incoming first year students. (We're the grownups now, there is actually only one finalist ahead of my cohort.) My much awaited and also somewhat dreaded trip to Israel got cancelled, due to the decision point coinciding with the particularly scary time when Israel was actively at war with Iran. I did some other short travel, even making it to Germany and Sweden.

Significant events:

Mum went from being officially terminally ill but mostly coping at the beginning of the year, to the drugs not working and being in a lot of pain in January-February, to actively dying. March-April was all the immediate aftermath of her death.
I had a few days with jack in Skegness, which I remember basically nothing about because it was in the middle of the final weeks of Mum's life. I think we stayed in a cute tiny house and did a bit of walking in the countryside. I have more memories of our trip to Norfolk in May.
I spent a very intense and overwhelming week in Germany at an Abrahamic faith retreat.
doseybat and verazea got married on a lightship on the Thames, and my partners had a Jewish blessing of their 20-year-old marriage, both on the same weekend.
I did a completely absurd amount of travelling for the High Holy Days, first day Rosh HaShanah in Southampton, second day in the Isle of Wight accompanied by the intrepid cjwatson, Shabbat Shuva in Stoke, Yom Kippur in Cornwall where I had to respond to the first fatal antisemitic attack in this country in my lifetime, Succot back home in Cambridge, a very flying visit to Sweden for the Shabbat during Succot with ghoti_mhic_uait, and back for Simchat Torah and returning to college.

( other wrap-ups )

Previous versions: [2004] [2005] [2006] [2007] [2008] [2009] [2010] [2011] [2012] [2013] [2014] [2017] [2018] [2019] [2020] [2021] [2022] [2023][2024] Amazingly this is my 19th review of the year; I've been going since 2004 but there were a couple of years in the middle I missed out.

Current Music: Nine Inch Nails (feat Judeline): Who wants to live forever

mtbc

Our couple of small road trips down into England afforded some success though plans were a little derailed by sites having holiday closures that weren't previously obvious. Fortunately, my plans include fallbacks so, among other things, our dog L. had a good time running around on Bamburgh Beach in Northumberland (near the impressive castle) and Roanhead Beach in Cumbria (near Morecambe Bay). He also got to see swans at Annandale Water from as close as I dared let him get. Roanhead Beach turned out to be enormous: by coincidence, we arrived at around low tide when there is an awful lot of walking along the sand that one can do before getting near any sea. I also learned to avoid Windermere: narrow roads full of tourists.

L.'s been suffering some gastrointestinal issue over these holidays; there has been an infection going around. They now seem to be on the mend but it slows us down and distracts us while we focus on making sure they're okay. We actually left Northumberland early to make it to an appointment with our regular vet. With luck, we won't need a second appointment.

After a quiet New Year at home, we'll go to visit family in Dundee then be back at work. R. works tomorrow too, at least from home, helping to fill out the support rota.

rmc28

I managed to get out for my yoga classes Saturday and Sunday mornings. Saturday afternoon I spent a lot of time faffing and failing to go to the public skates I'd tentatively pencilled in; eventually I dragged myself out for the last one and unsurprisingly I felt much better for having done so. It was much easier to drag myself there on Sunday, and I had a bonus surprise meeting with a work colleague, and a lovely long chat while we skated.

Then it turned out Charles's usual lift to hockey practice (alternate Sunday evenings) had fallen through, so I said I'd take him. I had the bright idea of asking the coach if there was room for me to hop on too as a one-off addition to the class, and so I got a bonus 2-hour ice hockey practice. Oh, that felt so good.

Yesterday I switched things up and took Nico swimming in the early afternoon, which I found surprisingly tiring, and went to yoga in the evening. I got chatting to a fellow student afterward, and it turns out she also works for the university on the same site as me, and knows some of my colleagues, because Cambridge is Like That. We swapped some class recommendations and may stay in touch.

I'm really glad I picked up the hot yoga pass, it's been fun to do regularly and if nothing else it's ensured I left the house pretty much every day. If money were no object I might consider a more regular membership, but it's pretty expensive when not on a promotional pass. Plus between my hockey commitments and the additional gym sessions I want to add in January, I'm really not sure I have the time. Maybe I'll think about it again after the university season is over.

Tomorrow I'll see out the old year with one last yoga class, and then go to the last public skate of the year at the rink in the early afternoon. I'm vaguely planning a movie night with Tony and the offspring, watch the fireworks broadcast from London, and then probably zonk.

Aside from exercise I've mostly been reading, with a side of listening to hockey podcasts fall in love with Heated Rivalry.

squirmelia

A lunchtime lark and the foreshore was full of tourists.

One man was showing his small daughter how you should scrape the top level off, in an area where no surface disturbance is allowed. That annoyed me.

Anyway, apart from the tourists, there was one other mudlark there that lunchtime, wearing wellies, mostly in the mud.

I didn't find a lot. A chunk of a John Maddock plate, possibly from between 1906 and 1927. I don’t usually find sherds with words on in this area. A bit of a plastic flower. A bit of glass that said 72 on it. A piece of Staffordshire style slipware, some bits of Bellarmine. I was happy to find a button.

It was near to low tide so I walked underneath Grant’s Quay Wharf. It's a bit dark under there so more difficult to mudlark but it feels like you're somewhere secret when you're amongst the wooden struts.

(You need a permit to search or mudlark on the Thames foreshore.)

squirmelia

I was awake at 5AM and I was the only person to get on the first train of the day at my station.

It was Solstice, and at sunrise, I was on the foreshore, staring at the Thames and the pink sky.

I found a broken plastic domino! I found a jack (alley gob) similar to the one I found previously!

–

I found a sherd from an inventor who exhibited in the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace!

The sherd says 17 Silver-Street, Wood Street on it.

Mayo & Co were located at this address and appear in a catalogue for the Great Exhibition, which was held at Crystal Palace in 1851.

Description from the catalogue:
“Patent syphon vases, for containing aerated or gaseous mineral waters. They afford the means for withdrawing at pleasure such quantities as may be desired, whilst that which remains for subsequent use retains its purity and effervescence. The vases exhibited are specimens of the combination of metal with pottery. The process of manufacture is the invention of the exhibitor.”

Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, 1851:
https://wellcomecollection.org/works/pdp6m5e3/items?canvas=406&manifest=2&shouldScrollToCanvas=true

Silver Street no longer exists, but there is still a small garden - St Olave Silver Street, where a church once stood. There's also a plaque in the garden for Shakespeare as he had lodgings on Silver Street.

–

I found a pink plastic star spokey-dokey, that may once have been attached to a bicycle.

I found an orange button.

I found a stoneware sherd that says “gin”, but it probably contained ginger beer.

Two pieces I haven’t figured out:
The dark brown sherd that has the word “king” visible
The lighter brown sherd that has “N.Higg” visible.

Glass:

–
A good chunk of a bottle that says “216 Kingsland Road” and “Batey” on it. Batey made ginger beer and mineral water and “Batey’s Britannia Steam Works” was located at 216 Kingsland Road from 1847.

How it looked in 1920:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DrLNoPDW4AELDkw?format=jpg&name=medium

212 - 216 Kingsland Road is now the Suleymaniye Mosque.

–

Another piece of a medicine bottle with “Sp” on it, which would have had measurements for tea spoons or table spoons on it.

R Whites, always so much lemonade.

“Ingsland” - likely another Batey.

“Bourne Denby 09” - Probably from 1909.

Not yet identified:

“eet.w.”

“re”

“ford”

–

Dominoes and jacks - the white ones were the ones I found this time:

(You need a permit to search or mudlark on the Thames foreshore.)

vyvyanx

It's been a slightly challenging time. O came down with what seems to be Covid on Christmas Eve, preventing him from going to midnight mass or his Christmas Day service as usual, and leaving him largely unable to taste our elaborate Christmas dinner. He's much improved now, but still not back to normal. On Saturday I started developing a sore throat, have had two nights with minimal sleep, and am now definitely Ill as well. Also our elderly cat - who has been suffering with chronic diarrhoea for more than a year now, caused by IBD (probably) - has had a flare-up of his symptoms and has been off his food, being sick etc. And of course there's an especially cold snap coming on top of that. But in spite of these things, we've still had a fairly nice time.

I hope 2026 will be an improvement on 2025, for us and the world at large.

squirmelia

Any you'd like to join me for, or do you have any other suggestions I should add?

New things in London:
1. London Museum (opens end of 2026?)
2. V&A East (opens April)
3. Climb on the roof of Alexandra Palace (opens February)
4. Duck tour - amphibious bus
5. Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration (opens May)

Museums to visit in London:
1. Peek Freans Biscuit Museum (Bermondsey)
2. British Vintage Wireless and Television Museum (West Dulwich)
3. London Transport Museum Depot. (Acton)
4. Sewing Machine Museum. (Balham)
5. Freud Museum. (Finchley)
6. Whitewebbs Museum of Transport. (Enfield)
7. Magic Circle Museum. (Euston)
8. Queer Britain Museum. (King’s Cross)
9. Kempton Steam Museum & Kempton Hampton Waterworks railway (Kempton)

Toilets and temples and caves and stars:
1. Go on a tour of public toilets in London. (Loo Tours).
2. Visit the Neasden Temple.
3. Visit Leighton House.
4. Go on a tour of a crypt, at St Alfege. (Greenwich).
5. Try out LARPing or dance at a goth night in Chislehurst Caves.
6. Visit an observatory and look at stars.
7. Sing songs at Maraoke (karaoke where the lyrics are changed to be about video games).
8. See at least 10 more Invaders (street art).
9. Climb the Beckton Alps.
10. Visit the Tower of London.

Robots:
1. Robot coffee
2. Robot bubble tea
3. Robot waiters

Some exhibitions/light festivals that look interesting:
1. Internet Cafe at 1 Poultry (30 January – 7 March 2026)
2. Chiharu Shiota: Threads of Life at the Hayward (17 February - 3 May)
3. The 90s at the Tate Britain (8 October - 14 February 2027)
4. Canary Wharf Winter Lights (January 20 - 31))
5. Vibrance festival of light and sound (January 29 - 30)
6. Robert Cervera - Hiddenware at Space Gallery in Ilford (performances 31 January & 21 March, exhibition until 15 April)

Near London:
1. Foulness Island - either walk the Broomway or visit the information centre.
2. Diggerland
3. Chatham Dockyard
4. Citadel in Dover
5. London bus museum
6. Epping Ongar railway

Tunnels not very close to London:
1. Williamson Tunnels in Liverpool & Mersey Tunnel tour
2. Air raid shelter tour in Bristol & Clifton Suspension Bridge vaults

Even further away:
Will 2026 be the year I fly a one person helium filled airship through a cave, dive in a gasometer, wander through the ghost town of Craco, climb the slag heaps of Charleroi or visit an abandoned gingerbread factory?

squirmelia

1. "What the aliens heard when they landed on Earth" - If aliens landed on Earth, what would the first thing they heard be? Using locations of UFO sightings in London, I will record sounds at these locations. If you touch the location on the map, you can listen to the sounds and also a description of the UFO that was sighted.

2. A pinwheel that you blow on, and then you can hear sounds of the wind on Mars.

3. Items found on the Thames foreshore that you touch and then you can hear sounds of where they originally came from.

jack

Play online: https://cartesiandaemon.github.io/rusttilegame/programming_release.html

Drag instructions onto the flowchart and press space or click the map to start executing. On later levels click the map while executing to increase the speed.

Since my last post I added some more programmer-y levels up to level 15, cleaned up some of the earlier levels, and improved a bunch of UI things like saving which levels you've unlocked. Most easily played on web, on either desktop or mobile, but you can clone the source and build for windows or linux too. (https://github.com/CartesianDaemon/rusttilegame I should compile a windows binary to download too if that would be useful for anyone.)

If you do play, it would be really helpful to hear how far you got. And if you have time, which levels were easy, which were hard, what was nice or difficult about the UI, etc.

rmc28

Shoresy is a Canadian comedy show about an ice hockey team, currently available to stream on ITVX. It is very crude (swearing, sex & toilet humour) and very funny, and it loves hockey. The episodes are short, around 20 minutes, and the seasons only have six of them, so it's relatively fast watching.

(ITVX insists on checking in with me at the start of each episode that I really want to watch "very strong language and adult humour". This made it great for watching in bed because if I fell asleep, it wouldn't keep playing past the end of the current episode.)

Anyway, despite the aforementioned crudity, it is often weirdly wholesome. There's a lot of little repeated catchphrases, I think maybe the show's own meta-commentary on how much of hockey discussion is cliché-ridden, but like Terry Pratchett wrote, sometimes things become clichés because they are true. Hockey brings people together. Hockey players give back. By the community, for the community. Go till you can't go no more. Episode 3.6 in particular manages to capture how a high-stakes hockey game feels, and is probably my favourite of the entire four seasons.

So anyway, this weird crude funny show got past my usual reluctance to watch TV on my own, and even to rewatch some of my favourite parts. I gather season 5 started showing in Canada on 25 December, but no idea if it too will come to ITVX.

(Trivia point: the executive producer of Heated Rivalry is Jacob Tierney, who also produced Shoresy. I didn't realise this until I'd started watching, but ok, this guy loves ice hockey, just like Rachel Reid does, no wonder he chose to adapt her books.)

sparrowsion

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

rmc28

We had our usual quiet Christmas Day: stockings, family zoom, salmon-elevenses, roast bird dinner with my brother Jonny, a silly film (Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon). I even managed to drag the children out to the park for an hour or so before dinner, including some table tennis and frisbee.

One of my personal Christmas traditions is watching the Nutcracker, usually in a cinema broadcast, and I just couldn't make that work this winter. So I was really charmed to find a broadcast of the Royal Ballet's production on iPlayer; the advantage of watching it at home is that I can have a quiet chat with my brother alongside without bothering anyone else.

This morning I woke up nice and early and headed out for another of my booked hot yoga sessions, followed by dropping in on my old friend Shaun for a long-overdue catchup. This afternoon has mostly been reading and TV, and the evening will probably continue the same way.

fanf

https://dotat.at/@/2025-12-25-shuffle.html

Here's a pearlescent xmas gift for you!

There are four variants of the algorithm for shuffling an array, arising from two independent choices:

whether to swap elements in the higher or lower parts of the array
whether the boundary between the parts moves upwards or downwards

The variants are perfectly symmetrical, but they work in two fundamentally different ways: sampling or permutation.

The most common variant is Richard Durstenfeld's shuffle algorithm, which moves the boundary downwards and swaps elements in the lower part of the array. Knuth describes it in TAOCP vol. 2 sect. 3.4.2; TAOCP doesn't discuss the other variants.

(Obeying Stigler's law, it is often called a "Fisher-Yates" shuffle, but their pre-computer algorithm is arguably different from the modern algorithm.)

( Read more... )

rmc28

Yesterday (Christmas Eve) I worked a half day from home before finishing for the year. I spoke to a few of my family on the phone. I went skating with some of my uni teammates on the last public skate until Saturday, but sadly failed to persuade any of the others to wear a santa hat along with me. I brought a teammate's kit back to my house so I know I have it to take to meet her in Prague next month (did I mention I'm going to hockey camp near Prague in January with the Women's Blues? same coaches & place as I went to last June). I got stocking supplies for the household.

In the early evening Tony, Charles and I gathered for the ritual watching of Die Hard and followed it with Knives Out. I enjoyed both films very much, still. I filled the stockings for everyone before going to bed, and fell asleep over a library book.

I am grateful for my home, my family, my friendships, and all the good things in my life.

rmc28

Turns out one of my uni hockey friends has a long-standing history channel on YouTube, and of course he made a video about ice hockey history. I think I'd have liked it even if I didn't know the creator, enjoy:

Watch on YouTube

rmc28

The hot yoga place has two levels of classes: "hotpod flow" and "nurturing flow". In January I found the nurturing one a bit too relaxing and slow, and I've been doing the free yoga classes through work pretty consistently all year, so I thought sure, I'll be fine in the standard class. I'll have to modify some of the harder positions but I'm used to that.

It was hot in the class. Not sauna hot, but I was definitely finding it harder than I'd expected based on the January classes. I took the teacher at her word about it being fine to take breaks and drink water as needed, but well before the end I just had to stop, sit, and let my heart rate come down. She checked in with me, and I assured her that I know my body and I'm not going to let myself faint, but yes it was harder than I'd expected. I've switched my classes for the next couple of days to the "nurturing flow", so we'll see how that goes.

slightly gross body stuff

My workout clothes were saturated when I finished. I thought I was sweaty after Huskies practice (two hours skating hard, trying to keep up with young men), but this was a new level. Luckily I had a hoodie and skirt to throw over the top for the bike ride home - it's a weirdly mild December week but not so mild I wanted evaporative cooling all the way. Absolutely everything went in the wash when I got home.

I emptied my 950ml water bottle in/just after the practice, and had another couple of litres of water over the course of the evening, this time with my trusty electrolyte tablets, and managed to see off the lurking dehydration headache. I'm going to make sure there's electrolytes in the in-class bottle too from tonight onward.

diziet

tl;dr:

There is a Debian git transition plan. It’s going OK so far but we need help, especially with outreach and updating Debian’s documentation.

Goals of the Debian git transition project
- Achievements so far, and current status
Core engineering principle
Distributing the source code as git
- Tracking the relevant git data, when changes are made in the legacy Archive
- Why *.dgit.debian.org is not Salsa
Roadmap
- In progress
- Future Technology
Mindshare and adoption - please help!
- A rant about publishing the source code
- Documentation
Personnel
- Thanks

( Read more... )

rmc28

Sunrise at 08:07
Sunset at 15:49

On this shortest day of the year, Nico and I went to Clip-n-Climb first thing, cycling there and back together through a heavily overcast but weirdly mild December day. We did a little Co-op run on the way home, and then I unpacked the hire car before returning it. I decided against buses or scooters and walked the hour or so back home, including a little diversion to collect a yoga towel from Decathlon. If all goes to plan, I will cycle to hot yoga this evening in the dark (and quite probably the rain) for the first of my "festive pass" sessions.

(I mean it about being weirdly mild: both cycling and walking I had to take my hoodie off because I was too hot.)

Technically I started the 21st of December still awake at midnight, and watching the first couple of episodes of Shoresy, a Canadian comedy TV show about ice hockey, on a friend's recommendation. (Same director/executive producer as Heated Rivalry although I didn't realise that until after I'd started watching.) Very crude, very funny.

Ice hockey, climbing, walking outdoors, yoga. Spending time with my offspring, thinking of my friends, and taking care of myself. If this is a turning day of the year, it's a good set of things to mark it.

Strictly we are not yet into the "mellandagarna", the in-between days of Christmas-to-New-Year. I'm still working until lunchtime on Wednesday, but a lot of the usual rhythms of my life and my household are paused now. School's out, hockey practice is out, everything has "holiday opening hours" listed and I'm feeling a bit unmoored. (Being ill most of the last fortnight probably hasn't helped.) My yoga pass is part of my attempt to put a little structure on the downtime.

mtbc

My goodness, all I wanted to do was set up e-mail reminders of vehicle tax, which I'd already managed to pay online. I already have my Government Gateway login details all set up, etc. But, no, I had to go through a whole other palaver involving setting up my GOV.UK One Login mobile app with a new account and photo ID and suchlike, before I could set up those reminders.

I'll give it to them that at least they don't change the system every year but a smoother migration to whatever the critical new functionality is than just set up an entirely new account would be appreciated.

(Of course, I have a separate login for the Scottish Government but that seems reasonable. Accessing any US Federal Government services is a pain without a US cellphone number.)

wildeabandon

Classes for the first semester are done, and I'm back in the UK for Christmas. According to my study schedule I'm about 8 hours behind on where I should be at this point, but said schedule also assumes that I don't do any schoolwork between now and my return to Belgium on the 29th of December, so I should be able to get caught up without too much difficulty. I am feeling pretty pleased with myself for a)having made a realistic schedule for the semester, and b)having pretty much stuck to it - sometimes getting a day or so behind, but never more than that, and occasionally actually getting a couple of days ahead. It's also been quite helpful at times when I've definitely felt as though I was getting behind to be able to look at it and say "No, actually I'm on track to get everything done as long as continue to work at the same rate as I have been doing so far."

I didn't manage to get to the conversation table I had planned for last week, because I stayed up too late the night before and then spent the day translating Ugaritic tablets, which meant I had absolutely no brain left by the evening, but I shall try again in a couple of weeks. I did go to the cabaret on Sunday evening, which counts both as 'doing a social thing' (albeit with someone I already know, which is much less stressful), and 'practising my French' (albeit largely receptive rather than productive).

The big food order arrived this morning, and I've just got two more presents left to buy, and one to finish crocheting, so that's my plan for today, and I think I'll then be basically ready for Christmas. Tomorrow I'm heading to York for the day, to see

leonato in "Anything Goes", which should be a lot of fun.

Profile

vyvyanx

December 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

Page Summary

Style Credit

Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Dec. 31st, 2025 08:55 pm

Reading

Year in review 2025

Moderately distant beaches

Mellandagarna

Mudlarking 76 - Grant's Quay Wharf

Mudlarking 75 - Solstice

Christmas illness

Things to do in 2026, mostly in London

Three projects for 2026

I added some more programmer-y levels to my puzzle game

Shoresy (seasons 1-4)

A Long-expected Update

Christmas Day and Boxing Day

doubly dual shuffles

Merry Christmas

Ice hockey history

In shock news, hot yoga is hot

Debian’s git transition

Solstice

Accessing His Majesty's Government services online

And breathe...

Profile

December 2025

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags