baffled's blog

Yesterday turned out to be a day of many tasks? As I mentioned a few days ago I started rereading Ben Graham's book The Intelligent Investor. I have read up to chapter 16 in his original 1972 version and have somewhat secondarily been reading sections in an updated version from 2003 which intersperses commentary that is supposed to justify putting out another version, which mostly just muddies up what Graham said in his last rendition. The commentary states things in a much more confusing and convoluted manner that's disappointing. I'm glad I didn't pay for it because it isn't worth whatever they charged for the work.

We started rereading Diviner's Bow last evening and got through about an hour and a half in and around mac's choir practice session. It is always nice to hear audio versions of what one has read in a text version. My synth says Tekelia's name completely different than the audio rendering of her name. You also tend to hear the book differently in audio rather than text.

I also spent a chunk of time listening to my YouTube subscriptions of Chinese-Pod and guitar folks I follow like David Hamburger etc. It all combines to eat up a day quicker than one would think. The Graham book eats a lot of time checking references and looking up stock analysis I follow with Simply Wall street.

So I almost made myself just another April fool but was saved by checking.

It's a beautiful sunny day today other than the fact that it's pretty cold. I went out on the deck to bask in the sun but didn't last long. It was to cool to stay and enjoy it for very long.

I have managed twelve minutes for the third day in a row on my elliptical machine. It still isn't easy but the first two days I thought I was going to die. Today I just wished I would! 'grin' It's hard to believe that just five years ago I daily walked a bit over an hour and only felt sweaty. I don't think I'll push to get back to that but at least a half hour would be nice.

So, I lived through exercise and I now have a new book to reread because I've already read it, just not in audio.

Oh, I'll go back to complaint mode, orca in 'X' was misbehaving big time on the audible site. It kept getting stuck at book headings and would let me review past them I had to reload orca repeatedly to get past each new entry. It was frustrating enough that I didn't bother trying to go through all Lee and Miller's books to see if we have them all in audio. I know we don't have Ribbon Dance in audio but although it was listed I couldn't find an add to cart button. Oh well, maybe next time it'll work better.

So I sit here listening to the crows generating a ruckus outside my office window and the traffic on the streets of London Ontario heading off to who knows where but probably their jobs or school. It's funny to me how much more traffic there is on our street then there used to be. There was a time when a few vehicles a day was a lot and now it's almost constant sounds of cars and trucks going past. What a difference almost 40 years makes! 'snort'

The whole nature of the neighbourhood has changed since we first moved in. There used to be an island just next to the house where Fox av. ended into Trott Dr. Then in '94 the city determined to replace the sewage lines and put in curbs and they removed our traffic circle. Quite the joke considering there was no traffic. Anyway, they extended our frontage and our driveway and took away the island. It's hard to believe that was over 30 years ago. So, I guess the old adage, "if you remove it, they will come," 'smirk' turned out to be true!

Well hell, there I've gone and written nothing and look what turned up. I suppose I'll continue the story or meanderings anon.

Now that I built it, can I, should I, continuously blog? Even when I don't really have anything to say? Or maybe, I have things to say but I'm not sure anyone other than myself want to read them? At las, I'l probably never know the answers to those thoughts.

I am reading a few books currently, Murray Sinclair's autobiography "Who We Are - Four Questions For a Life and a Nation?" with my wife. The emacs basic lisp tutorial, which I've read before. And, Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch) by Sebastian Raschka., which I'm really enjoying. Now, I am thinking of starting yet another, or maybe I should say, restart, The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. I was thinking about it last night while laying in bed waiting to sleep that I'd started it but never really finished it and certainly not studdied it. I have a couple of versions of the book in text and audio and even one on my e-reader from NLS to choose between.

Reading is one of those things that I just do all the time. I often just sit and read, and other times I just sample things between other activities I have on the go. It always seems that there are more interesting books to read than there is time to do them.

Looking back on this list I realized there are no fiction titles in there. Let me assure everyone I read a lot of fiction, but mostly sci-fi and fantasy. I just don't have anything on the go currently. I note that Sharon Lee posts her read-books list everytime she finishes a book, I wonder if I should do that?

Studdying Mandarin or Chinese is an activity I have been practicing for a few years. I am nowhere near being able to understand basic conversations but I do work on it daily. I use materials from a load of different sources. Chinesepod seems to be the most regular, Chill Chat is another podcast as well as You Can Learn Chinese. I've gone through the Paul Noble basic and advanced course a couple times each as well as the Michel Thomas courses. I enjoy doing them but I'm missing something because so far I have not managed simple conversational proficiency. I want to find someone to practice with but haven't found anybody yet.

Another vague thought is whether or not I should post my excersizing activities or regime? It might help me be more consistent doing those exercises. I'm not sure why anybody else would be interested in them but then why would anybody be interested in any of my activities. So, either I do them for myself or I don't do them at all, but then why bother getting a blogging and commenting system up and running at all? Boy, talk about insecurities.

That person or those people made major changes to the mps-youtube code base and renamed it yewtube. It is still kept under the github tree as mps-youtube however.

I have been happily using it for a year or so until an upgrade of software on my system broke it big time. I have spent the past few days debugging the program with very little progress. I noticed however that when leaving the program it told me a newer version was available, 2.12.1. The problem was that just using pipx wasn't grabbing the latest greatest version. Sifting through documentation however gave me some options which finally worked to get the newest version which also happily fixed my blowing up package problem.

If you like text console mode in linux and also like to watch/listen to youtube videos this is a great package. You can install the most current version with:

pipx install --force git+https://github.com/mps-youtube/yewtube.git

The --force flag isn't required unless you already have it's predecessor installed. There are other dependencies it relies on but I think those will get installed auto-magically.

This package is written in python3 and modern python likes to squirrel away packages and programs into virtual environments. Thus pipx will install packages into your own code tree allowing them to not only be isolated but run as your user id.

What they ended up coming home with was simple fare, hamburgers and fries. They also brought me a drink which turned out to be root beer. Now I very rarely drink soft drinks and when I do it is almost always root beer. I hadn't had it for quite a long time though so it was a refreshing surprise. Well, that was until I'm about halfway through it, and by then I'm wishing I hadn't had it because it's filling and too sweet. I pretty much only drink water and in the morning black coffee. So I was reflecting on my childhood when we drank root beer and something called birch beer. Then I wondered what they were made of, because it never occurred to me before.

After dinner I decided to ask deepseek-r1 what root beer was made of and had a frustrating conversation where it told me root beer is made from solid carbon dioxide dissolved in water with carbonation added. That sounded really weird to me because I couldn't figure out where the taste would come from. It insisted it was correct and knew where-of it spoke.

I decided to look further afield and found that root beer is made mostly from sassafras root and other herbs and spices added. The articles I read talked about many different types and recipes for making it. Many of them sounded quite intriguing. I believe I may go down the root beer rabbit hole in the future to try various brands and recipes to see how they differ.

Needless to say, deepseek-r1 was totally out to lunch and maybe even further.

It turned out I had two cavities, one on the bottom of each side of my mouth. The wisdom tooth on the right was the one I underestimated! Anyway, I did survive but it's still sensitive the following morning.

Today is guitar day as I think of it. My buddies are coming over to jam for a few hours. We mostly do old pop and folk songs like Mr. Bojangles, The Piano Man, Wagon Wheel and the like. We also throw in a few self written pieces written by one or of another of us.

There are typically four or five of us and we don't all play guitar. One of us plays fiddle although he grew up thinking of it as a violin. We are all north of fifty and most of us north of 70 so our voices aren't the strongest. Well mine certainly isn't! 'snort'

It's my favourite day of the week.

Today is sort the end of an era with her though. She is retiring in a few months so hopefully today will be the last day of our relationship! Professional anyway. She is also the mother of a couple of blind children so I do know her as a friend and parent as well. The children are all grown and we spend time with them separately also because they were my wifes students. We get together a couple times a year to have fun and visit.

What I will do for a dentist in the future is unclear. I hate to go to someone new that I don't know but I guess it's inevitable. Maybe my teeth will quit needing care! Not likely.

Cavities are very anxiety producing!

Yesterday was my daughter-in-law's birthday, so we all gather at their place for a nice nacho dinner with family and friends. They even managed to provide a vegan option for me. It is weird being the only vegan in the family but often others also like the veggie option so they tolerate me.

My daughter-in-law, Terri's son plays in a native drum band and it was the first time I've really listened to one closely. I've known many folks over the years that play in drum circles and the like but that was the first time I actually heard a specific band. It was quite interesting. The songs take some getting used to because they don't have the same kind of melodies as I think of in songs. They do have melodies just not western music styles. I could get quite used to hearing and even liking them with repetition. The bands can be anywhere from four to 15 people which is weird when the only instrumentation is drum and shakers.

He was in a nursing home, a place they place people that are just waiting to pass away. His ordeal had started five months earlier as a result of bad doctoring and decisions incorrectly taken. It was just one occurrence out of a long line of situations that has led me to my mistrust in the medical community. Of course, there have been many good results from them as well but somehow it's the bad ones that form my overall concept of the profession.

It's a day which reminds me of all the many friends and lovers which I have lost over the years. So I guess it's my day of rememberance. So thanks dad and mom and bro! I miss you and still love you all very much.

I set the path to the blosxom directory tree to be common/docs/blosxom in some places and common/blosxom in others. I did a lot of poking and proding and looking at code before I finally figured it out.

Comments appear to be working. Double newlines in these txt files are not getting automagically converted to new paragraphs. I think I may look into that next.

I think I'll see how this works for a while first though.