What do you mean it's September?

I did it again. I zoned out for a second and I completely missed August. Bugger.

This summer sucked. Like clockwork we hit a new record for the hottest summer. After the fourth or so heatwave it got to the point where 27C felt cool, and general drought conditions brought the danger of wildfires – and as usual, we got off easy compared to mainland Europe.

Even though it breezed past me and I didn’t appreciate it – like usual – August was alright. It started hot, and then past the halfway point it cooled right down. Then towards the end we caught up on a 2-month backlog of rain. Crazy stuff.

A photo of a double rainbow in front of some dark clouds. Across the bottom of the image is a green treeline.
It’s so beautiful… The clouds of course, after all the sun & heat. But the rainbow is neat too.

Oh, how could I forget the eclipse? That was on the 12th, and was only ~90% coverage for us – which for someone without eclipse glasses is the same as no eclipse. But still it was neat to see how quickly it got cooler and darker for a few minutes.

A photo of crescent shaped shadows on a piece of paper. It's the shadow of a colander during an eclipse, where all the holes appear as crescents.
I think this is the most novel use I’ll find for a colander in my entire life.

All in all, August was alright. I might’ve paid more attention to it if I wasn’t so preoccupied with an assessment, but whatever. Maybe next year I’ll be fully present when August rolls around. Right now I’m amazed at how quickly we’re back to overcast weather and dark nights. Roll on Autumn.

While I’m here…

  • The autism diagnosis is still kicking in. Feels weird. Currently I’m waiting on a report that’ll include recommendations on where to go next.
  • After a lot of procrastination, I finished Final Fantasy X. Beautiful game. I wanted to do a big writeup about it, but I don’t think I could do that game justice.
  • Fabien Sanglard wrote about Quake’s shareware CD, and how crackers quickly managed to bypass its lock and access the full game!
  • Sean Byrne has a problem with Sean Byrne. Life can get annoying when you share the name & location of someone (or no-one!) on a criminal watchlist.
  • In response [to the response] to the wildfire government alert, Terence Eden wrote about the awkward nature of phone alert infrastructure and the ethics surrounding it.