alterations to blog post (and fix image aspect ratios)

blog/other-stuff.md

@@ -2,16 +2,16 @@
 title: Other things you may like
 description: A nonexhaustive list of... content/media... which I like and which you may also be interested in as a visitor of my site.
 created: 11/06/2020
-updated: 17/11/2020
+updated: 23/05/2023
 slug: otherstuff
 ---
 I'm excluding music from this because music preferences seem to be even more varied between the people I interact with than other stuff.
 Obviously this is just stuff *I* like; you might not like it, which isn't really my concern - this list is primarily made to bring to people's attention stuff they might like but have not heard of.
 
-* [SCP Foundation - Antimemetics Divison](http://www.scp-wiki.net/antimemetics-division-hub) by qntm - fiction about antimemes ("ideas with self-censoring properties") in the [SCP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCP_Foundation) universe. Cosmic horror and pretty good. Now completed except for an epilogue. You can read some other work by the author, on [their website](https://qntm.org).
+* [SCP Foundation - Antimemetics Divison](http://www.scp-wiki.net/antimemetics-division-hub) by qntm - fiction about antimemes ("ideas with self-censoring properties") in the [SCP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCP_Foundation) universe. Cosmic horror and pretty good. Now completed except for an epilogue. You can read some other work by the author, on [their website](https://qntm.org) and I would recommend this.
 * [Mother of Learning](https://www.fictionpress.com/s/2961893/1/Mother-of-Learning) by nobody103, 823k words, now completed. I'll just copy the summary from FictionPress here: "Zorian, a mage in training, only wanted to finish his education in peace. Now he struggles to find answers as he finds himself repeatedly reliving the same month. 'Groundhog Day' style setup in a fantasy world.".
-* [The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy](https://www.goodreads.com/series/40957-hitchhiker-s-guide-to-the-galaxy) by Douglas Adams (a series). It is pretty popular but quite a few people aren't aware of it, which is a shame. It's basically (very funny) scifi comedy.
-* [Sufficiently Advanced Magic](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34403860-sufficiently-advanced-magic) by Andrew Rowe. Progression fantasy with an interesting magic system. It's part of a series containing two books so far (unfinished).
+* [The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy](https://www.goodreads.com/series/40957-hitchhiker-s-guide-to-the-galaxy) by Douglas Adams (a series). It is pretty popular but quite a few people aren't aware of it, which is a shame. Regarded as some of the best science-fiction comedy ever. Very surrealist.
+* [Sufficiently Advanced Magic](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34403860-sufficiently-advanced-magic) by Andrew Rowe. Progression fantasy with an interesting magic system. It's part of a series containing <del>two</del> four books so far (unfinished).
 * [Mistborn](https://www.goodreads.com/series/40910-mistborn) by Brandon Sanderson. Initially seems like a pretty standard "chosen one must defeat the evil empire"-type story, is actually much more complex.
 * [Discworld](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld) by Terry Pratchett, a *very* long-running (41 books, but it's sort of made of various miniserieses so you don't really need to read all of them or in order) fantasy series set on the "Discworld", a flat world on the back of four elephants on a turtle. As you might expect from that description, it's somewhat comedic, but also has long-running plot arcs, great character development, and a world not stuck in medieval stasis (as new technology is introduced and drives some of the plots).
   * He has good collaboratively-written books like [The Long Earth](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13147230-the-long-earth) and Good Omens (mentioned below).
@@ -22,24 +22,34 @@ Obviously this is just stuff *I* like; you might not like it, which isn't really
 * [FTL: Faster than Light](https://subsetgames.com/ftl.html), a very replayable roguelite (with nice music, too) with tactical real-time (spaceship) combat and difficult choices. I have a page with (spoilery) tips [here](/FTL).
 * [Universe Sandbox](http://universesandbox.com/), a game/simulator in which you can meddle with the very stars (and planets) in the skies.
 * The [Edge Chronicles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Edge_Chronicles) by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddel, a "high fantasy" (in the sense that it has large-scale plots and is set in a very non-real-world-like world) book series which is... well, apparently a children's series, and it is in many ways, but it's also somewhat darker than usual for that. Has nice illustrations.
-* [Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37946419-sixteen-ways-to-defend-a-walled-city) by K. J. Parker. A funny book about an engineer leading the defense of a city against a siege.
-* [Doing God's Work](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/25442/doing-gods-work), a web serial in which "The gods are real and incorporated. Providence is a profitable global monopoly."
+* [Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37946419-sixteen-ways-to-defend-a-walled-city) by K. J. Parker. A funny book about an irreverent engineer running a city.
+* [Doing God's Work](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/25442/doing-gods-work), a web serial about a rapidly escalating plot to dethrone God (which is "based").
 * [styropyro](https://youtube.com/user/styropyro/), the top search result for "crazy laser guy". Builds interesting lasery things (also Tesla coils and whatnot). Also has a [Discord server](https://discord.gg/ckGrMDR), which hosts many interesting discussions about primarily lasers and electronics, but many other things too.
 * [Towers of Heaven](https://www.goodreads.com/series/264587-towers-of-heaven) by Cameron Milan, a [LitRPG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LitRPG) series about someone travelling back in time to save humanity from extinction because of the arrival of the towers, invulnerable extremely tall... towers... containing challenges (and which also release monsters periodically on the world around them, hence the "extinction" thing).
 * [Ender's Game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game) by Orson Scott Card, a scifi book about children being trained to be the next leaders in soldiers in humanity's war with some aliens. I am not really a fan of the sequels.
 * [Chilli and the Chocolate Factory](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13451176/1/Chili-and-the-Chocolate-Factory-Fudge-Revelation) by gaizemaize, a now-completed web serial. It is, unsurprisingly, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fanfiction which is actually pretty good. It manages to capture the bizarre surreal spirit of the original one, and is very funny. I vaguely suspect that the whole thing might just be convoluted setup for a pun.
-* [UNSONG](http://unsongbook.com/) by Scott Alexander, which is *also* a now-completed web serial. A bizarre world in which, after Apollo 8 crashes into the crystal sphere surrounding the world, the planet switches over to running on kabbalistic Judaism. It sounds very weird, and it *is*, but it's a good story.
+* [UNSONG](http://unsongbook.com/) by Scott Alexander, which is *also* a now-completed web serial. A bizarre world in which, after Apollo 8 crashes into the crystal sphere surrounding the world, the planet switches over to running on kabbalistic Judaism. It sounds very strange, and it *is*, but Scott makes it work while demonstrating the power of ridiculous pareidolia.
 * [Friendship is Optimal](http://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal) by Iceman, a cautionary tale about unfriendly AI.
+  * [Message in a Bottle](https://www.fimfiction.net/story/368986/message-in-a-bottle) - vaguely similar, I think. I forgot what actually happens in it.
 * [Good Omens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Omens) by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, a "comedy about the birth of the son of Satan and the coming of the End Times" as Wikipedia puts it. You might think it would be hard to make a comedy out of it, but they manage very well.
 * [The Expanse](https://www.goodreads.com/series/56399-the-expanse) by James S. A. Corey, a near-future-ish scifi series in space which actually bothers with some level of realism. Also a TV series now if you prefer those.
-* [Three Parts Dead](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13539191-three-parts-dead) by Max Gladstone, a very neat fantasy book (part of a series, have not yet read the others) with a well-built world where gods work somewhat like modern corporations. The basic plot: "A god has died, and it’s up to Tara, first-year associate in the international necromantic firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, to bring Him back to life before His city falls apart."
+* [Three Parts Dead](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13539191-three-parts-dead) by Max Gladstone, a very neat fantasy book (part of the "Craft Sequence"; I have also read "Two Serpents Rise" now) with a fairly modern-but-different world built on "Craft" (essentially, human emulations of the gods' powers: this caused some conflict in the backstory) and applied theology.
 * [We Are Legion (We Are Bob)](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32109569-we-are-legion-we-are-bob) by Dennis E. Taylor, a story of von Neumann probes managed by uploaded human intelligences.
-* [The Combat Codes](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27790093-the-combat-codes) by Alexander Darwin. Similar to Ender's Game, but with MMA, basically, and I am bad at describing things.
-* [Schlock Mercenary](https://www.schlockmercenary.com/), a *very* long-running space opera webcomic. It's been running for something like 20 years, and the art and such improve over time.
+* [The Combat Codes](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27790093-the-combat-codes) by Alexander Darwin. Vaguely like Ender's Game but hand-to-hand combat and an exotic-feeling sort of science fantasy world. I think they're doing a rerelease with edited versions soon.
+* [Schlock Mercenary](https://www.schlockmercenary.com/), a *very* long-running space opera webcomic. It's been running for something like 20 years, and the art and such improve over time. Now finished (for now).
 * [Freefall](http://freefall.purrsia.com/), a hard-science-fiction webcomic.
-* [Mage Errant](https://www.goodreads.com/series/252085-mage-errant) - a moderately-long-by-now fantasy series with a very vibrant world, and which actually considers the geopolitical implications of there being beings around ("Great Powers") able to act as one-man armies.
-* [Arcane Ascension](https://www.goodreads.com/series/201441-arcane-ascension) - fun progression fantasy series with (... like most of these, actually) worldbuilding I like and good characters. I have only read the first two, since I got distracted and have not read much of the third. Somewhat overly long at times.
+* [Mage Errant](https://www.goodreads.com/series/252085-mage-errant) - a moderately-long-by-now fantasy series with a very vibrant world, and which actually considers the geopolitical implications of there being beings around ("Great Powers") able to act as one-man armies. Now complete (I haven't read the last two books though).
 * [Void Star](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29939057-void-star) - somewhat weird and good. The prose is very... poetic is probably the best word (it contains phrases like "isoclines of commitment and dread", "concentric and innumerable" and "high empyrean")... which I enjoyed, but it is polarizing. The setting seems like a generally reasonable extrapolation of a bunch of ongoing trends into the future, although it's unclear exactly *when* it is (some of the book implies 2150 or so, but this seems implausible). Its most interesting characteristic is that it absolutely does not tell you what's going on ever: an interview I read said it was written out of order, and that makes sense (another fun quirk of it is that the chapters are generally very short). I think I know most of what happens now, but it has taken a while.
+* [Firefall](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22838183-firefall) (Blindsight/Echopraxia) - one of those rare books which is actually decent at portraying very alien intelligences. I preferred Blindsight to Echopraxia but both are worth reading. Some people seem to have thought that it is "cosmic horror" (particularly Blindsight) and/or had their psyche shattered by the implications of what they read within, but this didn't happen to me for whatever reason. Also, Peter Watts somehow makes vampires work well scientifically.
+* [Endeavour](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22701594-endeavour) and the sequel, Erebus, are apparently science fiction I liked. I don't actually remember much about them, but empirically my fiction preferences are pretty consistent across time.
+* [12 Miles Below](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/42367/12-miles-below/) - ongoing webserial (I am not fully caught up or close to it yet) with intelligent and well-written characters. It has more grammar/spelling errors than I would like (I would like none) but most people care about this less than me.
+* [Branches on the Tree of Time](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9658524/1/Branches-on-the-Tree-of-Time) - Terminator fanfiction which manages to make Terminator make sense (somewhat).
+* [The Daily Grind](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/15925/the-daily-grind) - ongoing (I think? I got distracted from following it at some point and it's now really very long) webserial 
+* [CORDYCEPS: Too clever for their own good](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6178036/chapters/14154868) - good short horror/mystery; I will not spoil it further.
+* [Schild's Ladder](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/156780.Schild_s_Ladder) - essentially just Greg Egan showing off cool physics ideas, but I quite like that. Egan also manages to pull off an actually-futuristic future society and world.
+* [Stories of Your Life and Others](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223380.Stories_of_Your_Life_and_Others) - just very good short stories. Chiang has written a sequel, [Exhalation](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41160292-exhalation), which I also entirely recommend.
+* [A Hero's War](https://m.fictionpress.com/s/3238329/1/A-Hero-s-War) - bootstrapping industrialization in a setting with magic. Unfortunately, unfinished and seems likely to remain that way.
+* [Snow Crash](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40651883-snow-crash) - a fun action story even though I don't take the tangents into Sumerian mythology (?) very seriously.
 
 Special mentions (i.e. "I haven't gotten around to reading these but they are well-reviewed and sound interesting") to:
 * [The Divine Cities](https://www.goodreads.com/series/159695-the-divine-cities) by Robert Jackson Bennet.
@@ -52,6 +62,7 @@ Special mentions (i.e. "I haven't gotten around to reading these but they are we
 * [The Books of Babel](https://www.goodreads.com/series/127130-the-books-of-babel) by Josiah Bancroft.
 * [House of Suns](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1126719.House_of_Suns) by Alastair Reynolds.
   * "house of suns is really very good, you should read" - baidicoot/Aidan, creator of the world-renowned [Emu War](/emu-war) game
+* [Singularity Sky](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/81992.Singularity_Sky)
 
 If you want EPUB versions of the free web serial stuff here for your e-reader, there are tools to generate those, or you can contact me for a copy.
 

blog/stack.md

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 title: Site tech stack
 description: Learn about how osmarks.net works internally! Spoiler warning if you wanted to reverse-engineer it yourself.
 created: 24/02/2022
-updated: 20/12/2022
+updated: 11/05/2023
 ---
 As you may know, osmarks.net is a website, served from computers which are believed to exist. But have you ever wondered exactly how it's all set up? If not, you may turn elsewhere and live in ignorance. Otherwise, continue reading.
 
@@ -12,8 +12,8 @@ The main site itself, which you're currently reading, is in fact just a simple s
 
 Being static files, many, many different webservers could have been used for this site. In practice, it's mostly alternated randomly between [caddy](https://caddyserver.com/) (a more recent, Go-based webserver with automatic LetsEncrypt integration) and [nginx](https://nginx.org/) (an older and more powerful but slightly quirky program) - caddy generally had easier configuration, but I arbitrarily preferred nginx in some ways. After caddy v2 suddenly required me to rewrite my configuration and introduced a bunch of weird issues, I permanently switched over to nginx and haven't changed back. The configuration file is now 600 lines or so, even with inclusion of includes to shorten things, but it... works, at least. This is mostly to accommodate the bizzarely large set of subdomains I now have for various people, and reverse proxy configuration for backend services. I also use a custom-compiled build of nginx with HTTP/3 (QUIC) support and some modules compiled in.
 
-Some of these backend things are only for personal use, but a few are related to the site itself. For example, the comment server is a standalone Python program, [isso](https://posativ.org/isso/), with corresponding JS embedded in each page. This works pretty well, but has lead to some weird quirkiness, such as each separate 404-erroring URL having its own list of comments. There's also the Random Stuff API, a custom assemblage of about 15 different Python libraries and external programs which, while technically not linked on the site, does interact with other projects like [PotatOS](https://git.osmarks.net/osmarks/potatOS/), and internal services on the same infrastructure like my [RSS reader](https://miniflux.app/). The images subdomain also uses a [PHP program](https://larsjung.de/h5ai/) to generate a nice searchable index; in fact, it is one of two PHP things I have unfortunately not yet been able to purge. There also used to be a publicly available status page using some custom code, but this doesn't work very well and has now been dropped; previously I had a Grafana (and earlier Netdata) instance there, but this has now been cancelled because it leaks a worrying amount of information.
+Some of these backend things are only for personal use, but a few are related to the site itself. For example, the comment server is a standalone Python program, [isso](https://posativ.org/isso/), with corresponding JS embedded in each page. This works pretty well, but has lead to some weird quirkiness, such as each separate 404-erroring URL having its own list of comments. There's also the Random Stuff API, a custom assemblage of about 15 different Python libraries and external programs which, while technically not linked on the site, does interact with other projects like [PotatOS](https://git.osmarks.net/osmarks/potatOS/), and internal services on the same infrastructure like my [RSS reader](https://miniflux.app/). The images subdomain also uses a [PHP program](https://larsjung.de/h5ai/) to generate a nice searchable index; in fact, it is <del>one of two</del> the only PHP thing<del>s</del> I have unfortunately not yet been able to purge. There also used to be a publicly available status page using some custom code, but this doesn't work very well and has now been dropped; previously I had a Grafana (and earlier Netdata) instance there, but this has now been cancelled because it leaks a worrying amount of information.
 
 As for the underlying OS everything runs on, I currently use [Arch Linux](https://i.osmarks.net/memes-or-something/arch-btw.png) (as well as Alpine on a few lower-resourced cloud servers). Some form of Linux is inevitable - BSDs aren't really compatible with much, and Windows is obviously unsuited for server duty - but I mostly use Arch for its stability (this sounds sarcastic, but I've actually found it to be very reliable with regular updates), wide range of packages (particularly from the AUR; as I don't really run critical production infrastructure, I can generally afford to compile stuff from source a lot), and better general ease-of-use than Alpine. As much as I vaguely resent it, this is mostly down to systemd - despite it being a horrific bloated monolith, `journalctl` is very convenient and unit files are pleasant and easy to write compared to the weird OpenRC scripts Alpine uses.
 
-I am actually considering yet another redesign, however; switching to a dynamic site implementation instead would allow me to integrate the comment system and achievement system better, make things like the "from other blogs" tiles actually update at reasonable intervals, and arbitrarily A/B test users, although it would break some nice things like this site's very aggressive caching and fast serving. Please leave your thoughts or lack of thoughts on this in the comments.
+I am actually considering yet another redesign, however; switching to a dynamic site implementation instead would allow me to integrate the comment system and achievement system better, make things like the "from other blogs" tiles actually update at reasonable intervals, and arbitrarily A/B test users, although it would break some nice things like this site's very aggressive caching and fast serving. Please leave your thoughts or lack of thoughts on this in the comments.

style.sass

@@ -115,4 +115,6 @@ button, select, input, textarea, .textarea
 .imbox
     display: flex
     img
-        padding-right: 1em
+        padding-right: 1em
+        height: 8em
+        width: 8em