Jeff H

@nazmazh

30-something former Grad Student. Semi-professional curly-haired doofus. Excessively verbose, perpetual student, scientist, SCIENCE!-tist. Lover of music, all things nerdy and all things strange. Dice Goblin Extraordinaire. He/Him

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Bluesky

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Jeff H@nazmazh· 2d

Was this necessarily the best city-state to absorb into my empire and then promote from a town to a city? No. Did I do it anyway to see if it would let the name get this long? To test the limits of ridiculosity? Yes. Very yes.

A screenshot from Civilization 7. A city on a largely-tundra small-ish island. The city's name is Alexandria Sanggyeong Yongcheonbu.

The colours of the civilization are grey with a yellow border - Alexander the Great's face appears in the city's nameplate.

Jeff H@nazmazh· 5d

I think this is telling me I ramble too much, at all hours :p

The "palm-reading" analysis of my bluesky posting style. The six data points form a vaguely kite-shaped radar graph: The scores are (clockwise from top):

Cadence: 80th percentile (very metronomic)
Vigil: 80th percentile (Always On)
Lexicon: 39th percentile (sprawling)
Polish: 95th percentile (very immaculate)
Drift: 50th percentile (middling)
Chorus: 94th percentile (very broadcast)

The final result is 98 - The Loom: The Wide Clean Page: A perfect surface over an enormous vocabulary.

Jeff H@nazmazh· Jun 26

I'm not entirely sure if it counts as a megastructure, but, setting aside my own nostalgia for the UofA campus, anyone not from Edmonton's probably going to look at the Butterdome and find it incredibly weird, possibly ominous, right? (Every city's got an ominous megastructure meme thing)

Photo of the Universiade Pavilion at the University of Alberta campus, taken from the website of their sports teams (bearsandpandas.ca).

Also called "The Butterdome", this arena's outer walls and roof are covered in canary-yellow panels, making the building resemble a large stack of butter.

Jeff H@nazmazh· Jun 8

"You feckless idiot! I'd brain you with an axe, but I'm afraid your thick pate'd shatter it." (I'm honestly happy finding a gif of him getting angry, but I think this isn't the animation that specifically goes with that line. Nevertheless, you get the idea)

Jeff H@nazmazh· Jan 18

When your life is just *so hard*

A shorthair brown tabby cat, laying on her cat tower.

Her front paws are tucked close to her body, down by her lower legs. One back foot is jutting out from her body in front of her. It's anglee upwards, closer to her face.

Her face is displaying a groggy, eyes-half-closed, largely-content expression.

Jeff H@nazmazh· Oct 25

And then there was this wonderful puzzle to decipher: Grandma. What on earth does "1/2 cold to milk" even begin to mean? Thankfully, my mom had a version of the recipe and her aunt (grandma's younger sister) was able to provide confirmation of certain details, so I went with that version.

A handwritten page from an old recipe book.

Entry reads: Alhambra Special

The "mother" in the top-right corner indicates that this recipe was from my grandma's mom/my great grandmother.

4 cups milk
1/2 cup sugar
Originally a 6, but overwritten with a 7 tbsp cornstarch
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

Heat
1/2 cold to milk

Beat egg ["withes"? [sic]] mix in last

Jeff H@nazmazh· Oct 11

I feel you on that. Here's what Rocky's been like for the past few days and will be for the next few (units are mbar): As I note in the alt-text, the default setting for a pressure change threshold that the app warns about is 3.0 mbar. So, yeah. Big oofs here, too.

A graph of atmospheric pressure changes from Tuesday to Saturday.

Starting at 1016 mbar then dropping to just above 1000 on Wed. Then climbing to ~1025 on Thu before nosediving below 1000 by Sat.

The default setting for a pressure change threshold that the app warns about is 3.0 mbar

A graph of atmospheric pressure changes from Saturday to Wednesday.

Finishing a downward dip to 995 mbar on Saturday, the pressure steadily climbs to ~1033 mbar by Mon, before dipping to ~1020 by Tues, followed by a sharp drop towards ~1014 over the course of that day and a climb nearly back to ~1020 by Wed.

The default setting for a pressure change threshold that the app warns about is 3.0 mbar

Jeff H@nazmazh· Sep 27

Sometimes, I can look halfway decent, instead of just looking like the haggard goblin in the basement.

A selfie of me in the hotel mirror.

I'm a portly balding white guy with dark blond hair and a short full beard. In this selfie, I'm wearing a light blue dress shirt with a dark grey vest, dark pants, dark socks, a navy blue tie, and my brushed-nickel-framed glasses.

I'm holding my teal-cased cell phone in front of me, and trying to stand up straight with a sort-of serious facial expression and my left hand behind my back.

Jeff H@nazmazh· Sep 2

Oh yes, all my rambling about my new D&D PC, I suppose I can post his Hero Forge mini (Because I am that kind of nerd). Here is Rem Atonce, Fairy Monk. Eventually, the plan is to go Way of Mercy. (We're running under 2014 rules for the time being, so it is "Way" and not "Warrior")

A Hero Forge mini, set against the standard "alleyway" backdrop from that site. The scene is in a shady ally off of a brighter medieval town thoroughfare with European medieval-style houses/shops in the background and cobblestone roadways.

The character depicted by the actual mini, Rem, is a Fairy wearing plague-doctor style charcoal/black robes, including full-arm gloves. His mask resembles a skull, with a white face plate and dark spots around his eyes, nose, and mouth. It is not elongated/bird-like, as a standard/iconic plague doctor mask would have been.

He is standing on the ground, wings folded behind him, and arms crossed. He strokes his chin contemplatively with one hand. A walking-stick/spear is sheathed on his back, above his wings.

His wings are patterned after a Luna Moth - Though folded up, the pinkish-red edges and veins, and pale green membranes are somewhat visible. Above his mask, a silver-white tuft of hair and antennae with pale-yellow bristles can be seen.

An image of a digital Hero Forge miniature, set in front of a medieval town-square style backdrop from the Hero Forge site.

The character depicted by the actual mini, Rem, is a Fairy wearing plague-doctor style charcoal/black robes, including full-arm gloves. He is not wearing his mask in this picture. He has a dagger and pouch on his belt. His walking stick/spear can be seen at his back, positioned beneath his unfurled wings.

He is a Fairy and has the appearance of a humanoid with moth-like features. His skin is a dark purplish-blue. His hair and eyebrows are silvery-white. His hair is styled into a short Mohawk. He has two antennae along with his pointed ears. The core of the antennae is the same colour as his skin tone. The bristles of the antennae are bushy (moth-like) and have a sickly pale greenish-yellow colour with pale orange lowlights.

Rem's eyes have black sclera with four-pointed starbust-shaped teal pupils, with seemingly no irises. His teeth are goblin-like: Rows of small, sharp fangs. His mouth is open as he is about to chomp down on the orange-yellow-flowered tulip he holds in his hands.

Rem's wings are patterned after a Luna Moth. They have maroon/pinkish-red edges and veins, with pale green membranes.

Jeff H@nazmazh· Jul 4

This is a great read. On this one passage, the corollary to that "never attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance" line I've always liked is: "Sufficiently advanced ignorance is indistinguishable from malice" Revelling in ignorance is *absolutely* malice, as far as I'm concerned.

A passage from A. R. Moxon's essay, "So Shines a Good Deed in a Weary World"

Text reads as follows:

"I'm also told that one should never ascribe to malice that which can also be explained by ignorance. This is meant to be a morally sophisticated position, but I don't know. It seems to me that ignorance is a core property of malice, and letting malice off the hook simply because it also happens to be ignorant is not so much a sign of moral sophistication but rather falling for a game that is pretty obviously designed to swindle rubes."

Jeff H@nazmazh· May 29

Or maybe, if I'm reading this right, most of the provincial grid is apparently down for some reason?

A cropped map of Alberta showing zones affected by power outages. The affected region seems to span from Conklin (north of Lac-La-Biche) down through Edmonton and Calgary to Lethbridge and Medicine Hat.

It covers westward to the mountains, and eastward from a branch from Edmonton, though large areas north and south of that branch are unaffected, including Lloydminster.

The northwest of the province is unaffected, and the northeast, starting by Fort McMurray appears unaffected.

Jeff H@nazmazh· May 16

Okay, so, we all know the recent word "yeet", coined ~2017 from a Vine, yes? Turns out, it may coincidentally line up with Proto-Indo-European roots for "to throw" (I was looking up eject and reject, as they relate to subject. The "-ject" part comes from a Latin verb meaning "to throw")

A clipped screenshot of etymonline.com text.

Text quoted:

"from PIE root *ye- 'to throw, impel')"

The "*ye-" is burgundy-coloured, indicating it's a link to another page.

Jeff H@nazmazh· Apr 5

Getting quite the light show out here, especially with the night mode on:

A night mode/long exposure photo of the aurora in the night sky above a row of spruce trees.

Large bands of green are accompanied by streaks of white, pink, and purple.

A glare halo, pink in colour, is visible on the left side of the photo, above the corner of the roof of a house.

Jeff H@nazmazh· Apr 3

Found one (that doesn't have faces to obscure) Man... 2007 sure was very University: Round One times. Anyway, I was lucky in that there was a separate kitchen in the basement not-technically-separate-suite-so-it's-not-illegal, where my room was.

The aftermath of a party on a variety of snacks and drinks.

A glossy wooden table laden with chip bowls, plates, cutlery, glasses, beer cans and bottles, and a half-eaten chocolate cake on a baking sheet. There is also a hat on the right side of the table. There is a red, yellow, and blue patterned serving plate with a mostly-eaten white and green spread/dip on it in the front-middle of the table.

The wall that the table is place against is a bright tomato red colour.

Jeff H@nazmazh· Apr 2

Dad was born over a decade before Jaws came out. I was born several years before Deadpool debuted (Jeff the Land Shark originated in Gwenpool comics. Gwenpool started as a silly riff on Spider-Gwen in 2015). Just all-around weird coincidences that we have the two big "Shark" character names.

A screen-cap from an episode of Phineas and Ferb, featuring Dr. Doofensmirtz looking at a sock-puppet of a dog.

It's used as a meme template/phrase framework, based on what the character said during this episode, and the caption added to the image is the generalized text for the meme:

"If I had a nickel for every time [blank, to allow the insertion of one's own situation], I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice."

Jeff H@nazmazh· Jan 14

Lilah would be a deeply cynical political treatise, told through an almost-absurd allegory. But one that could be read to actually have a very optimistic, humanistic worldview at its core - It would be very subtle at first, and much of it subtext, but can't be unseen once notices

A brown tabby shorthair cat with dark stripes is curled up on a light brown sectional couch. Her green eyes are fixed in a grumpy-looking glower at the camera as her head rests on her tail and leg. This glare's seeming-hostility is due largely to her tabby-stripe eyebrows making her look grouchier. But her expression would be grumpy even with the stripes.

Much of her torso is hidden behind a red pillow with a green Christmas tree design and dark green sparkly sequined-border in the foreground of the photo, on top of one of the sectional's armrest section. Immediately behind her is an off-white pillow, again on an armrest section. Solid black, solid green, and light-purple patterned pillows can be seen further behind her.

A green afghan blanket with pink, orange, and blue highlights sits in the corner of the sectional. Spread across the back of that section is a light blue blanket with two dark red stripes and images of snowmen. A bright yellow chip bag and white-grey binder are sitting on the armest section to the furthest back and right of the photo.

Jeff H@nazmazh· Dec 27

Okay, since I'm sitting here watching TV with my folks, I probably have proper time to write out proper alt text for these. Anyway, Before and After assembly of this year's Christmas Prize Ball (no photos of post-disassembly, but it was thoroughly unravelled in a glorious frenzy, as is proper):

A kitchen island countertop, from the other side, compared to the previous photo.

The mess of objects from the previous photo is tidied up. In its place is a blue walmart reusable shopping bag on the right, clearly containing several objects, but none visible in any identifiable way.

To its left, a large ball of plastic wrap. It is made of many layers. Various things can be seen wrapped into the different layers - Most clearly, near the surface, a packet of sour patch kids and a chocolate wrapped in green foil.

Jeff H@nazmazh· Dec 22

Turns out that book I bought on a whim at a fundraiser was very helpful for my project tonight. Probably won't make a ton of difference with the booklets being stuck with stuff and crammed into the prize ball, but it's nice to start with them pressed flat.

The corner of a wood-panel-topped desk in a room.

The back of the desk has a pc tower, a headset, a rolled-up pair of gloves, a notepad, glasses-cloth, and a cup of writing implements.

At the front corner, there is a large, broad, hardcover book, titled "The Book of Plants". The cover contains an illustration of a prickly-pear cactus.

Beside the book is a stack of home-printed paper booklets containing rules for card games. The corner of a booklet can be seen poking out from underneath the large book.

The corner of a wood-panel-topped desk in a room.

Several home-printed booklets with titles referring to dice and card games are being revealed as sitting underneath a large, broad, hardcover book, which is being lifted up from the bottom edge by an offscreen hand.

The large book is being used to press the booklets flat after folding.

The corner of a wood-panel-topped desk.

TThe back of the desk has a pc tower, a headset, a rolled-up pair of gloves, a notepad, glasses-cloth, and a cup of writing implements. An orangey-yellow wireless mouse is visible on the left side.

Seventeen home-printed booklets with rules for card and dice games have been stood upright to display the finished set.

Jeff H@nazmazh· Dec 22

What? N-no... that definitely doesn't sound like me. Definitely not.

A screenshot of a portion of a Musicolet "Most Played" list for 2024.

The top played songs are:
Ghost - The Future is a Foreign Land [Rite Here, Rite Now album] (Played 38 times)
Ghost - Dance Macabre [Prequelle album] (23)
Ghost - Mary on a Cross [reissued single] (20)
Ghost - Griftwood [IMPERA album] (17)
Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats - Heartless [South of Here album (text is obscured by "Most Played" UI elements)] (16)

Jeff H@nazmazh· Dec 19

In fairness, I'm pretty happy with how my prototype of the first game turned out. So, there's that at least

A paper booklet sitting on a wood-panel desktop, in front of a keyboard. Each page/panel of the booklet is 1/8th the size of a standard page. It has been folded and some edges have been taped to form a single cohesive booklet.

The front cover of the booklet has the title "Dice Game"
The back cover has the section title "Point Values", followed by a list of scoring information for the game.

Jeff H@nazmazh· Dec 18

Everyone in the group chat is using the new snapchat filter to create AI images of "them" in ugly sweaters, and nobody's thing looks remotely like the person who used it. Meanwhile, me:

A panel from a Batman comic, often used as a meme reaction image.

The base panel has Batman shattering a shotgun across his knee, while saying "This is the weapon of the enemy. We do not need it. We will not use it."

A white text box with black text reading "Generative AI" has been clunkily photoshopped on top of the shotgun.

Jeff H@nazmazh· Dec 2

Guess what I just pulled an all-nighter to finish? (...All-morninger? Kinda wonky when you're basically nocturnal) A second set - This one for my mom's friend/my honourary aunt.

75 jumbo popsicle sticks, with printed text on them. They are sitting on top of a table that has a dark blue tablecloth underneath a white lace-style tablecloth. Some brightly-coloured sharpies are next to some scrap paper to colour on top of, in the bottom left area of the table.

The text on the sticks is for target hands for a rummy game.

The sticks have been grouped according to similar types of hands.

Hands are a combination of sets and runs of general or specific cards.

Sets are referred to with green text.
Runs are referred to with blue text.
Specific card values are referred to in magenta bold, italic text.
Suits are referred to with red or black text and matching symbols in bold text.

Text referring to specific counts of cards has been bolded.Text referring to numbers of sets and runs is not bolded, and is made of very slim bubbles.

There are 7 special sticks:

4 Free!: Light blue glitter ink text, with pink glitter ink wavy line streamers and confetti images in red, green, purple, and light blue glitter ink (a different colour on each stick)

2 Lose a Stick: Red glitter ink text with a pictogram of something having vanished on either side of it (4 red diagonal marks in a vertical rectangle overlaying a flattened green oval)

And 2 Steal a Stick: Dark blue with domino masks on either side of it. One stick has the mask coloured in with purple sharpie, the other with black sharpie.

Jeff H@nazmazh· Nov 29

Okay, so, took me a little bit longer to finish the project up, and then I didn't feel so hot yesterday to sit down and write up a post about it (yay, migraines) But, here is my finished set of popsicle stick rummy, printed with my sister's cricut, and filled in/touched up with sharpies:

75 jumbo popsicle sticks, with printed text on them. They are sitting on top of a table that has a dark blue tablecloth underneath of a white lace-style tablecloth.

The sticks aren't really arranged other than overall in somewhat neat and even rows and columns.

The text on the sticks is for target hands for a rummy game.

Sets are referred to with green text.
Runs are referred to with blue text.
Specific card values are referred to in magenta bold, italic text.
Suits are referred to with red or black text and matching symbols.

Hands are a combination of sets and runs of general or specific cards.

Text referring to specific counts of cards has been bolded. Bold text was printed as outlines/bubbles. Text referring to numbers of sets and runs is not bolded, and is just regular 1-line width.

There are 7 special sticks:

4 Free!: Light blue glitter ink text, with pink glitter ink wavy line streamers and confetti images in red, green, purple, and light blue glitter ink (a different colour on each stick)

2 Lose a Stick: Red glitter ink text with a pictogram of something having vanished on either side of it (4 red diagonal marks in a vertical rectangle overlaying a flattened green oval)

And 2 Steal a Stick: Dark purple glitter ink text with domino masks on either side of it. One stick has the mask coloured in with purple sharpie, the other with black sharpie.

6 jumbo popsicle sticks on top of a wooden desk top.

The sticks have been printed with a cricut and the text and images have been coloured in with matching-colour sharpies.

The sticks read:

Lose a stick: Written in red glitter ink. On either end of the stick are matching pictograms of a vanished object - 4 disgonal red glitter ink dashes arranged in a vertical rectangle, overlaid on top of a green glitter ink flattened oval.

Steal a stick: Written in purple glitter ink. On either end of the stick, there are stylized drawings of domino masks, outlined with purple glitter ink, and filled in with black sharpie.

Free!: Written in light blue glitter ink and traced over with light blue sharpie. On either side of the word are two wavy lines in pink glitter ink, coloured in with pink sharpie.

1 Run of 3 & 1 Set of 3 & 1 Set of 3 Kings: Text for the run is in dark blue. Text for the sets is in dark green, having all been traced over with dark green sharpie. The numbers referring to how many cards for each set/run are in bold text, which prints as a bubble. They've been coloured in with the appropriate sharpie colours. Text for the specific card value - Kings - Is in bold, italic magenta ink, coloured in with pale magenta sharpie. The &s are in simple black ink.

9 - 10 - J of Diamonds ◇ & 9 - 10 - J of Spades ♤: Colouring as above - Dashes are filled in blue, Diamonds is printed in bolded font in red and filled in with red sharpie. Spades is printed in bold black font and filled in with black ink.

1 Run of 4 & 1 Run of 3: Coloured in dark blue (with a plain black &), as runs above.

Jeff H@nazmazh· Nov 26

Y'know, I think I might just be able to get this to work. A dry run (no pens loaded) showed me the vulnerable point in the process was when the machine scrolls the mat. So, if I stick to one row, I should be okay. The ink seems to be working and no catastrophic failures with this test print.

A jumbo popsicle stick on top of a black pencil case.

Printed on the popsicle stick is "Free!" in light blue glittery ink (in the middle); four squiggles in pink glittery ink (outward from middle): and two puffs of confetti/streamers in green glittery ink (outermost).

Jeff H@nazmazh· Nov 25

Probably worked on this longer than I should have tonight, but when the ADHD demons hyperfocus and want to work, I'd be a fool to not run with it. Anyway, my popsicle stick rummy project might actually be at a point that I'll try printing on sticks tomorrow.

Some test pages for a printing project with a cricut.

A pair of printer paper sheets are on a green cricut mat, at the foot of the cricut machine. A page sits below them on the table, which is covered by a white patterned doily-style tablecloth atop a dark blue tablecloth.

On the sheets, there are large popsicle stick-shapes drawn/printed. The older sheet has hand-drawn shapes and gridlines. The printing is smaller on that sheet.

Inside each shape, there is a set of instructions for a rummy game. The old sheet, for instance, is several instances of "9-10-J of Diamonds ◇ & 9-10-J of Spades ♤" (which happens to be the longest text of any instructions)

Near the pages in the foreground, there is a pile of popsicle sticks. One has been lined up next to a set of instructions for size comparison. Some slight compaction of the text on that one may be necessary to make sure nothing is lost over the side.

Jeff H@nazmazh· Nov 25

Suppose I should post the photo I got of the grumpy lump last night. Lilah's a good fuzzball, and actually very sweet. She just also is permanently grumpy.

A close-up of a dark-striped shorthair brown tabby cat curled up in a cat tree.

Her face is mashed into the white blanket on her right side. Her green eyes are open and fixed in a glare at the photographer. With the tabby eyebrows, she looks exceptionally grumpy at being disturbed.

Her back paw is tucked up to her nose, and a front paw is draped over it.

Jeff H@nazmazh· Nov 22

Name a TV show no one remembers but you. "Remember" is a stretch, even on my part. But every now and then, part of the theme song to this bubbles up in my brain like a deja vu from a fever dream.

A screenshot of the title card from the animated series Channel Umptee-3.

A white/blank background with a thin black frame resembling a tv screen in the middle. Inside that frame is the show's name. "CHANNEL" appears to be quickly written on a yellow post-it note, in red text. "umptee-" is typed in large, black letters over the background. "3" follows "umptee-", but in a more stylish, larger, red font.

The heads of the three protagonists poke in from off-screen inside the tv frame. On the right, a rooster-looking bird, with a yellow bill and large red comb, wearing a red sweater (supposedly, he's an ostrich). From the bottom, a pinkish snail's head with a buck tooth. From the left, a brown weasel-looking creature (possibly meant to be a mole?).

There is a teal-blue flattened circle near the snail's head. Possibly meant to be a hole of some sort?

Jeff H@nazmazh· Nov 15

And now I've got The Log-Driver's Waltz stuck in my head.

A screenshot from Merriam-Webster's "Great Big List of Beautiful Words 5".

Image of a gull perched on a mossy log in the water.

Text:

Birl

Definition: to cause (a floating log) to rotate by treading)

Degree of Usefulness: The next time you find yourself spinning on a floating log, you're going to thank us for this.

Some Trivia: This word is thought to be imitative in origin.

Jeff H@nazmazh· Nov 12

Your last saved meme is your moral philosophy

A two-panel comic:

Panel 1: A stick figure seated at a desk is looking at a computer monitor. The monitor's back is towards the audience, so we don't specifically see what they see.

Their face has a knowing smirk on it.

Panel 2: The stick figure's pupils have shifted position to indicate they are now looking through the fourth wall - towards the audience itself. Their smirk remains the same.

The caption, in blue text to the right of the figure's face, reads: "(non-judgmental, but still very aware gaze)"

Jeff H@nazmazh· Nov 5

Meanwhile, in Rocky (well, near enough) today: I guess we're officially in winter mode from here on out.