Projects
The main development lately is that I found a 'summer job' at the start of June, working for a startup as a data-entry person/junior programmer in Python. I got thrown in at the deep end a little but I can feel my codin' skillz developing and that's very satisfying. In that regard, David and I are still working on Bumble, which needs a bit more love, and Bargains, which now has win and lose conditions and actual map generation! And a backstory, and an entry on IndieDB. You can play it in your browser here. I've also started work on a Firefox plug-in for myself that will take definitions from dict.cc and make Anki flashcards from them, but that's a long way from complete.
Somewhat under duress, I started a science blog under my own name a little while ago. Posting is hopelessly irregular, but perhaps some of it is interesting. After the tantrums I've thrown about this in the past, I've decided I can live with having a non-pseudonymous presence on the internet, but I'm trying to keep the channel of discovery strictly one-way, so that even if Katzenfabrik leads people to Firstname Lastname, the reverse is not true. How unrealistic an expectation is that, do you think?
I've been thinking/writing—in a 90/10 ratio, to be honest—for what feels like forever on a post about fanfic, but mainly about Therapy with the Vampire, Gulfport and the works of Robyn E. Kenealy in general. It's taken a while because I have to keep taking breaks to recover from how amazing she is. Also mentioned: my friend Entomancy, who has lots of interesting thoughts about fanfic because she's been writing it for a decade or so now. It'll be posted, well, when it's posted.
My recent reading includes the first three and a half books of the Vampire Chronicles series, because after blitzing through Gulfport twice I found myself needing more Louis and Lestat. That's doing fandom backwards, isn't it? Then I lost my Kindle and gained a stack of books for researching my current writing project. My copy of the Bradt guide to Svalbard/Spitsbergen is thoroughly dog-eared by now, and I've just got to the end of Dark Matter by Michelle Paver, a fantastically atmospheric ghost story and a decided contrast with steamy Zürich in July. The writing project in question may contain vampires. It's my first attempt at a murder mystery, too.
Besides this stuff, David and I painted two chairs (I will write a longer post on this soon) and inherited some potatoes from Isobel which she went to Cambridge for the summer. Excitingly, they're a brand new variety crossed by one of her friends at SeedCity. I also got a concertina for my birthday and can now play one tune!
Travelling
In May, when the weather both here and there was steely cold and rainy, I went to Amsterdam with Hayley and Miguel for a short but very satisfying trip. We had found a very good value hotel and visited the Cat Museum, saw the Vondelpark with its bright green parakeets and sculptures everywhere, and walked for miles around the canals. I discovered that I could read (simple) Dutch, and understand enough of what was spoken to work out bus routes. It turns out that when you learn German, you get half another language for free! Hayley and I were surprised to realise that despite knowing each other for half our lives, we'd never been on holiday together before. Miguel joined me in my love for the local beer.
David and I went to England at the end of June for a short but surprisingly expensive trip. We started off in Cambridge, which was like coming home. Entomancy has accidentally grown jimson weed in her bee's paradise of a garden. The film for bad film night was Law Abiding Citizen, which I'm adding to my file of evidence for Why I Don't Date Engineers Any More, right next to Falling Down. Anna and I made a trawl of the charity shops along Mill Road and each stuck to our resolution of buying no books, for a value of 'no' that includes 'two or three'. I also bought a four-layer knock-off Rubik's cube, which gave far more than 50p's worth of entertainment after I broke it to show Jenny how the inside worked. It turns out that the workings of four-layer cubes are more complicated than those of three-layer cubes. Dave (with some help from me) fixed it in the end.
After Cambridge we went to Cressing Temple Barns for the laid-back and convivial wedding of Phil and Rose. There was a ceilidh (my first!), two mediaeval musicians who played the lute and the great pipe, and lots of very good food. The speeches were also very short. In some ways, it felt more like a mini-festival than a wedding, which I think is a very good thing.
We went on to Essex, where we caught up with Hayley, Miguel and Puck, and met my mum's new parrot, Albert, and her older parrot, Red, who hates Albert. After that, we went to a dinner in Geneva to discuss the issue of girls' education and the future of Girton College. I did networking (this is a note to myself to actually make the next step of this happen) and found myself explaining my science tattoo to a table including the British ambassador to the UN, a director of CERN and the wife of the Pakistani ambassador. Finally, we took the train home to Zürich.
At various points in all this, I lost my phone and our suitcase was stolen. I've ranted about this on Twitter and pretty much got it out of my system, but if there's ever a good time to lose your suitcase, this wasn't it. To make matters even more annoying, both sets of our house keys were in there! The consequences have been rolling on for weeks, although luckily the contents should be covered by insurance.
Most recently, we spent last weekend in Munich, which impressed me very much with its wide streets and imposing Italianate buildings. It's always fun to travel on a new foreign metro system. Otherwise, we didn't see much of the actual city, since we were staying in a village just outside it and the temperature pushed 40 °C each day we were there. Two things I did see: a hen party dressed in dirndls dancing on the tables in a Greek restaurant-cum-nightclub; a flagpole in a front garden, flying the Confederate flag beneath the Bavarian one.
The trip was a working weekend for David's brand-new startup: News Timeline. I'm happy and excited that it's taking off so well. Their introductory video is below:
We're going to the UK again in August, for another wedding, and in September I will be volunteering at OpenKnowledge Conference in Geneva. Apart from that, I hope to spend the rest of this hot and busy summer eating fruit and swimming in lakes.