Weekly Notes 23 Feb 2025

Updated 24-Feb-2025

W08/2025: Monday 17 February - Sunday 23 February 2025

Contents

Work

Work

Still finishing up rebuilding my Debian 12 Stable desktop. In love with all the open source (and a few proprietary) apps I use.
Great article on reforming copyright law in the age of AI at Anna's Archive.
Amazon Kindle will disallow downloading of ebooks starting 26 Feb 2025. This means only the virtual ebooks are supported, which means one has to sync via Kindle (not sideload) and that means decryption either doesn't work or is a lot more difficult. For me this means buying from Amazon is a non-starter. I've purchased 251 books (a few free, but not many) since 11 May 2011, and there will be no more. This means that taking a hard look at Kindle hardware alternatives makes sense (for example, Kobo (such as the Kobo , which is easier to deal with cryptographically, than Nook, or perhaps Boox (Onyx Boox Go 6).
- Note that Bookshop.org ebooks must be read online or with their mobile apps, so same situation as Amazon (even worse, cannot be synced with any ebook readers, though they say they are working out something with Kobo sometime this year to support the Kobo ebook readers).

Decided to put a large goal for end of the year, 21 December 2025 for the Chiang Mai Marathon. Yes, a boring and at times ill-lit journey, but it begins 30 minutes away from my house, and has open registration. So, why not? Whe we get closer to the date I might drop down to a half-marathon distance. We'll see. Should be good.
My Daruma doll (image above) will be my persistance helper.

Motorcycle Modifications

Simplified drastically and got the sidebags/panniers on without any welding.
Still need to figure out a seat that will be good in all weather, including padding, cover, and attaching to frame.
- More research on this, though likely will use (@upholsterer)
Front foot pegs still needed, have to think about this, likely will need (@welder)
Give old trunk box to in-laws?

First game of Risk for the boys (got a wooden set used on Ebay, instead of the modern plastic), of course the 7-year-old wins. He is generally lucky and/or good at games. Ages 10 and up but both 7 and 10 year old could grasp it fairly quickly.
Took another look through the Murder Mindfully book and captured the core mindfulness quotes, using the excellent Kindle plugin for Obsidian, which lets one download the My Clippings.txt from the Kindle and parse it into individual text files per book of the highlights and notes.
Picked back up Peter Drucker's The Effective Executive, nearly finished, but I'll go back through and write up the notes version to refer to it this year.
Finally got tired of Is it wrong to pick up girls in a Dungeon? mid-way through volume 14.
Second, third, and fourth volume of Reborn to Master the Blade, still amusing.
Starting to read a bunch about fascism, totalitarianism, etc. Since that is where we are these days.

Caravan Palace