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News and notes
Friday, 21 March 2025 21:07I've done quite a few things since the last time I posted anything here. Most, I don't have a confirmation or a response to yet, but it still counts as trying to do new things.
* My hometown will be one of the cities to host the Tall Ships Races this Summer. I've now applied to be one of the volunteers for the event, which most likely means being on the info stand, pointing out where things are in town, handing out info materials and such. It's just for three days, but it sounds very exciting, and also a great chance to practice my foreign languages, as there will be a lot of people from other countries there.
* Remember the Summer Camp I went on last year? I've applied for that again this year. There are more groups/activities to choose from this time around, but my first choice was to be on the group that will be learning Norwegian Sign Language for a week. I'm a complete beginner at it, but it sounds exciting to learn more about how sign language works, and how it differs from spoken language.
* The Manchester trip for the Tour Championship snooker is only nine days away. I'm very excited about it, but also starting to feel a little nervous. My nerves are mostly about the travelling, and managing to do everything I need to do prior to leaving. Once I'm actually there, and everything has gone according to plan with getting there, I'm sure it's going to be magical.
Snooker-wise, this event has only the 12 best players of the current season competing. That means I was nervous about Mark even qualifying for it for a while, but his qualification has looked safe since he won the Welsh Open in February. The last three qualifiers for the event were confirmed earlier this week.
Speaking of that... this week's snooker - the Players Championship in Telford - isn't much fun from my point of view. Mark lost vs Neil Robertson yesterday. I can't even be angry, because Neil was playing really well, and Mark wasn't taking his chances. But still, there's the fact that I'm annoyed with Neil this season, for winning against Mark twice, and for winning the English Open when Wu Yize almost managed an insane fightback, and I was very much rooting for Wu that day. So, I'm not really as happy about Neil doing well this season as I would have been in the past, when I used to like him more. As if it wasn't bad enough that Mark lost, a few other matches have also gone in the opposite way of what I had preferred, so this tournament is very welcome to just end now. The fallback joy for me would be if Judd Trump wins it, but really - it's a minor thing compared to many others.
I'm hoping for more joy for those I love in Manchester, when I'm going to be there in person!
* This is an election year here, and they're looking for people to be on the organisational team on election day. I've actually put in an application for that, but I have no expectations whatsoever about being picked for that. They said in the info about the position that they wanted people from all sorts of backgrounds, wanted to focus on diversity on the organisational team etc, but I think you have a higher chance of being picked if you're actually involved in politics locally, which I'm definitely not.
* Finally, something about my computer: I've set up the I3 window manager, which now works kind of how I want it to work. Of course there are always things to tweak, but most of the commonly used shortcuts now make sense to me, and I can use it without getting massively annoyed constantly.
There are still a couple of things I haven't managed to figure out, though. Like, why does the cursor suddenly go tiny in some apps? Unsure, but it seems to be specific to flatpak apps. Also, how do you set scaling in i3? None of the workarounds I've seen for this seem to do anything, and i3 just seems to inherit the 200% scaling that is set in the gnome desktop that I hardly ever use. In KDE, I've set the scale to 185%, which makes things work sensibly for my screen. But there's no setting like that in I3.
That's all for today!
* My hometown will be one of the cities to host the Tall Ships Races this Summer. I've now applied to be one of the volunteers for the event, which most likely means being on the info stand, pointing out where things are in town, handing out info materials and such. It's just for three days, but it sounds very exciting, and also a great chance to practice my foreign languages, as there will be a lot of people from other countries there.
* Remember the Summer Camp I went on last year? I've applied for that again this year. There are more groups/activities to choose from this time around, but my first choice was to be on the group that will be learning Norwegian Sign Language for a week. I'm a complete beginner at it, but it sounds exciting to learn more about how sign language works, and how it differs from spoken language.
* The Manchester trip for the Tour Championship snooker is only nine days away. I'm very excited about it, but also starting to feel a little nervous. My nerves are mostly about the travelling, and managing to do everything I need to do prior to leaving. Once I'm actually there, and everything has gone according to plan with getting there, I'm sure it's going to be magical.
Snooker-wise, this event has only the 12 best players of the current season competing. That means I was nervous about Mark even qualifying for it for a while, but his qualification has looked safe since he won the Welsh Open in February. The last three qualifiers for the event were confirmed earlier this week.
Speaking of that... this week's snooker - the Players Championship in Telford - isn't much fun from my point of view. Mark lost vs Neil Robertson yesterday. I can't even be angry, because Neil was playing really well, and Mark wasn't taking his chances. But still, there's the fact that I'm annoyed with Neil this season, for winning against Mark twice, and for winning the English Open when Wu Yize almost managed an insane fightback, and I was very much rooting for Wu that day. So, I'm not really as happy about Neil doing well this season as I would have been in the past, when I used to like him more. As if it wasn't bad enough that Mark lost, a few other matches have also gone in the opposite way of what I had preferred, so this tournament is very welcome to just end now. The fallback joy for me would be if Judd Trump wins it, but really - it's a minor thing compared to many others.
I'm hoping for more joy for those I love in Manchester, when I'm going to be there in person!
* This is an election year here, and they're looking for people to be on the organisational team on election day. I've actually put in an application for that, but I have no expectations whatsoever about being picked for that. They said in the info about the position that they wanted people from all sorts of backgrounds, wanted to focus on diversity on the organisational team etc, but I think you have a higher chance of being picked if you're actually involved in politics locally, which I'm definitely not.
* Finally, something about my computer: I've set up the I3 window manager, which now works kind of how I want it to work. Of course there are always things to tweak, but most of the commonly used shortcuts now make sense to me, and I can use it without getting massively annoyed constantly.
There are still a couple of things I haven't managed to figure out, though. Like, why does the cursor suddenly go tiny in some apps? Unsure, but it seems to be specific to flatpak apps. Also, how do you set scaling in i3? None of the workarounds I've seen for this seem to do anything, and i3 just seems to inherit the 200% scaling that is set in the gnome desktop that I hardly ever use. In KDE, I've set the scale to 185%, which makes things work sensibly for my screen. But there's no setting like that in I3.
That's all for today!