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It's been a roller coaster of a week at Rob's Gemini Capsule, and in my own life. Much of it involves a personal matter I won't bore my visitors with, but it has taken up much of my mental energy for the last seven days.
A friend of mine had a birthday celebration on Monday, and by pure chance, a friend he invited works at my former company, and in fact under my former boss. I decided to visit the facility Tuesday evening and catch up with the manager, whom I hadn't seen in about four years. We had a great conversation, and I'd like to visit again sometime.
Two major changes are coming to the chess backend on Rob's capsule: I am using a database instead of flat files to store game data, and I am using a proper chess engine for calculations instead of a crude shell script. I have never seriously worked with databases before, nor have I touched a chess engine or the UCI protocol, but making these changes will allow me to add more features to the frontend. I may not be able to finish by 1 July, but the project has already been quite informative, and I know visitors will have a better chess experience as a result.
My wife has become somewhat ambivalent to our Final Fantasy-themed tabletop campaign, but my character has undergone an amazing amount of growth in the last three or four sessions. I never thought I'd become this invested in a role-playing game, but I've had the most fun I've ever had playing a game like this.
We had several strong thunderstorms in the area over the last week. While I was visiting a friend's house to play board games on Saturday, a very strong cell developed to the east, producing several lightning bolts per second and tornadic atmospheric conditions. Curiously, the rain line was extremely sharp, and not a dingle drop of rain landed at their house. We stood on the back porch and watched the lightning for several minutes.
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Photo of the week:
(PNG, 450x800, 327 KiB)
I was invited to a tiny pinball bar on Thursday. I hadn't played pinball in years, and I'm no good at the game, but I always enjoy playing it. One table was themed with classic monsters such as Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, and Frankenstein's monster. I'm a sucker for that kind of horror, and the table was one of my favorites at the bar.
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[Last updated: 2025-01-27]
