________  ________  ________
   2019-04-06                                   /        \/        \/    /   \
                                               /       __/         /_       _/
   What  up  y'all?  Let  me  get  a  little  /        _/         /         /
housekeeping    out   of   the   way:   Soft  \_______/_\___/____/\___/____/_
Ash/Kingdom of  Soft Ash/Whatever  I'm Going    /        \/        \/    /   \
to Call it in the Future is on hiatus  until   /        _/         /_       _/
at   least  May  17.   I   enjoy  doing  it,  /-        /        _/         /
especially this last month, but  the wedding  \________/\________/\___/____/
is  stressing  me out more than I'd  like to
admit and  that, piled on to my usual clown car brain of stresses, depressions
and anxieties  had  me shaking  myself  apart so I'm shedding little stressors
where I can, even fun ones.

   I'll be back with something new and interesting  for sure but for  now I'll
just do lazy  impromptu streams as I feel rather than trying to plan  around a
schedule. I'd hoped  to do  one last  show,  a Kingdom of  Soft  Ash offshoot,
yesterday because  it's  the last chance I get before daylight  saving reverts
and my shows are back to 7am my time but it didn't eventuate.

   In baby news, if you missed the exodus to  Teletext April Fool's joke, I've
thrown it up in the  files directory for ya. I love Teletext  and hope to find
more time to explore  it, it's  fascinating and  simultaneously  primitive and
futuristic. Very baudpunk.

   ~tel plods on at a snail's pace. I've got TLS on my to-do list but the more
I  think  about  the less  I  care,  and  C*NET  connectivity  which  is  more
complicated  than I'd expected but it's  coming  together pretty well. I'm not
sure where ~tel will go from there. I  have a clumsy gateway to the SDF's VoIP
system but I'd really like to see if the two of us can get something going the
other way but I'm fairly sure I've burned my bridges  there.  Maybe if smj was
still in  the  captain's  chair I'd  feel  more comfortable  approaching  them
because he  seems like the kind of guy who would be more intreated in building
things  than holding  grudges.  Maybe.  I don't  know anyone there  really,  I
suppose, only from small interactions so what do I know.

   I think once the C*NET stuff is squared away that's it for "big" ~tel stuff
for a while, I've got a laundry  list of little tweaks and fixes that  need to
happen; URI dialing, tunas's phonebook extension, confbridge  menus,  etc. And
I'd really like to put some muscle into aesthetics because currently it's very
"Asterisk defaults". I think once I've got that nailed down then I'll be happy
to shelve the big picture of ~tel for a while and just  hack on the 1900s  for
fun.  I've also really  got to take a minute  to get my personal PBX and phone
stuff squared away, I had big dreams but they just got lost in the mix hahaha.

   In  other life news a website I  used to go to reasonably regularly for  my
mental health has shut  down,  that was compounded  by another issue affecting
someone else on the site that collaterally affected  me and the whole mess has
left me feeling like I'm made  of broken glass. Disproportionately fragile and
sharp to anyone who approaches from the wrong angle. I've kinda mitigated that
now but not in  an ideal  way, and  at first in an embarrassingly juvenile way
haha. I'll probably write about that separately though.

   Let me leave you with answers to tomasino's three Fun Questions[1]!

      1. Name one film that everyone should see at least once.

         Beyond the Black Rainbow. I'll admit it's not for everyone but you
         won't  know if  you don't  watch  it.  It  just hooks  right  into
         everything I love, visually, thematically, musically.

      2. Name one book everyone should read at least TWICE.

         I'm honestly  surprised  tomasino didn't make  the  obvious Choose
         Your Own  Adventure  joke  here haha.  This  one is tricky  for me
         because  I haven't read  much in a  long while so instead,  let me
         list a few books I've read  once  and  remember  loving but really
         need  to re-read  myself. Iain Banks' Wasp Factory, Shadowland  by
         Peter Straub, Lumley's Necroscope and Vampire World books, Charles
         de  Lint's  Newford  series  and  Michael  Marshall  Smith's  Only
         Forward.

      3. Name one song everyone should listen to at least once a year.

         The Cure's "Disintegration". In fact,  you should  listen to it at
         least once a week.

   And here, for bonus Fun, I asked Dani the same questions:

      1. Name one film that everyone should see at least once.

         Daisies (1966)

      2. Name one book everyone should read at least TWICE.

         Lolita

      3. Name one song everyone should listen to at least once a year.

         "Chloroform" by Phoenix


[1] gopher://gopher.black/1/phlog/20190330-fun-questions



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