Satakatraya by Bhartrhari

This is a book of classic Indian poetry from the 5th century CE. I'm reading a Swedish translation of them. This version contains 183 poems though there appears to be some discussion about which of a number of poems should be part of the collection I'll link to the Wikipedia article for those who wants to know more. 

The poems/words of wisdom are mostly about the evils of riches, luxury or women and about the inherent superiority of Asceticism. But there are several about the value of being a good person.

My thoughts

Would knowing about Indian myths, symbols and philosophy help understanding these poems? Yes.

Do I have anything more than the barest idea about those things? No but that's not going to stop me. The book do have some helpful asterisks to explain the symbolism of the various plants, animals and gods. Which is good since there are a lot of those several of the poems are of the format creating a simile between something in nature and some human behavior. 

In general I was underwhelmed sure there were some poems I enjoyed like the one that is a fair description of the Dunning-Kruger effect. But my largest take away was how similar the poems all were to each other. This might have been partially my own fault I don't think you are meant to read them all in one go. Also most show a worldview that I don't subscribe to, mainly the sexism.It does the, women's only value is in their beauty but they bring ruin to men, thing. But also the asceticism, sleeping on the ground does not automatically make you a better person.

All in all I didn't like it which isn't helped by me not really feeling like reading it in the first place. Basically I'm reading a lot for my studies right now so I don't feel like reading anything difficult to relax. So I picked this one because each page is just one poem. Forgetting that short doesn't mean easy.  

Save money #3 Cook based on what you have.

This is primarily a way to reduce food waste though it can lower the weeks expenses they will simply be moved to later. That being said things don't stay fresh for ever so it's important to prioritize eating things you have. It's also just easier you are going to cook anyway and using what you have rather than buying ingredients and then throwing out things you had because they went bad is more work. In a perfect world you would avoid this by having a meal planed that takes care of all this but lets face it no one's that organized. 

The easiest way is that before you decide what you want to cook you check your fridge and cupboards see what there is. Mostly the fridge actually since the food there has the shortest shelf-life. Also by limiting your choices it can make it easier to come up with ideas. Easiest is to just google one of two ingredients and recipe I promise you are going to find several. Even better if you find one that lets you utilize other things you have. This is also why its important to know what you have and to regularly clean out cupboard and other food storage.

I don't have that much food at home in general. But as an example I have some celery and broccoli left over since the everything can be frozen post. But also some frozen heavy cream. Googling the ingredients got me among other things broccoli pie, checking the recipe it is mostly things I already have at home. Though I might need to buy more eggs and I do have a lot of cheese that needs to be eaten.

All in all it was quite a nice pie. 

The fangs of freelance by Drew Hayes

Plot

Everyone's favorite vampire accountant is back in this fourth book in the Fred series. At the end of the last book Bloody Aquisitions Fred and friends created the new vampire house and Fred signed up as a freelance asset for The agency. Hoping to gain their protection against the encroaching house of Turva. 

Bureaucratic wheels turn slowly but now the agency is calling on Fred to fulfill his end of the deal. But before he can officially work for them he is taken to their headquarters for a skill assessment. Along with agents Arch and Krystal who decided to tag along Fred will meet not only His prospective boss Roderick but also run into September Windbrook brother of June Windbrook and Krystals ex fiancee. 

My thoughts

Did I actually manage to make guy going on a job interview sound exciting? I think so. Like the others its a collection of chronological short stories. And the first is literally just Fred going for a job interview and meeting some of Krystals coworkers. The other stories follows Fred and co going on assignments, some for The Agency others helping out friends. Of course in a world of  magic assignments for accountants can still involve lovecraftian wizard ghosts in a crumbling castles and other dangers. 

There is less of an over arching plot to this one but there is a theme though one in the background of the plots. It's about how moving forward and not stagnating becomes more of a conscious choice as an immortal or undead creature. But also what happens for those that don't make do that choice. Although sort of immortal Fred and his friends are all quite young by supernatural standards. Fred and Krystal are in their ... early thirties? Neil and Albert are nineteen. Bubba and Amy are probably older than Fred but I don't think by much. So this is all a bit new to them.

All in all it's good but it is mostly Fred doing more or less accountant things. I'm not saying this as a bad thing it's just a bit of calm and return to a new normal after the last book and before the next. 

  

Infinity-scarf with a hood

 In my ongoing quest to not freeze this winter I have been wearing a lot of hoodies inside often with the hood up. This means that I need to change into a sweater when I go outside. You just can't wear a hoodie under a wool coat at least not comfortably. Also when I get back in I don't have a hood anymore unless I change clothes again. But I have come opp-on a solution to this problem a sweater and a removable hood. Or to put it differently a circle scarf with a hood attached. 

The idea is to make it in sort of this shape (see picture) then fold in the center and sew or crochet the top together. Of course the long part being a circle but that's hard to draw and I was more interested in the measurements. I had used a scarf I have to measure out the length. Circle scarfs are annoying like that doing them too long or too short makes them hard to fit.  Since I'm doing Doing it lengthwise I need to figure this out from the beginning since I can't add anything later on.

For this project I plan on using some of my left over yarn Since I feel like I have too much of it. This isn't even all of my yarn just the ones that matched my color scheme. This is also why I decided to use needle-binding since it works well with yarn scraps. Unlike knitting where you just pull as much from the skein as you need for each stitch. In needle-binding you cut off and use a short piece at a time. 

I don't have enough of any color for the whole hood so the plan is to use alternating colors first the black then gray then blue. letting the colors overlap and creating a gradient.

A thing that annoys me when I'm googling ideas for what to do with crafting scraps is that they mostly assume that you have the same yarn or fabric in different colors. I do not. I have wool and cotton, thick and thin, elastic and non elastic and they in general do not want to work together. 

This is what I'm thinking as I'm finishing the second row of this scarf in a thicker yarn that almost completely covers the first row.

I'm on row ten when I notice that the scarf has gotten longer and by quite a bit too. I think its a result of measuring it out using a thinner yarn and then doing the same number of stitches for the thicker one. At this point I should unpick it and start over. But needle-binding takes almost as long time to unpick as it does to make. So instead I chose to keep going hoping that reducing the number of stitches would fix it. You'd think I'd have learned by now that this rarely works. This time was no exception

After making two new rows I ended up unpicking it anyway and started over this time starting with the thicker yarn. I then unpicked it again because I had figured out another way to add a new row. This would allow me to put the rows side by side rather than overlapping them. This reduces the thickness but lets me get more length which I need since I have limited yarn. Needle-binding is still rather new to me and I'm still figuring it out. 

Third time was the charm and I finished the scarf part. Starting on the hood I measured out the length for it and marked it off on the scarf. Then once I reached my marker I simply stopped going round and started going back and forth between the markers. Slowly it started going higher.

Every row I also started adding a single stitch in the center back of the hood to make a bit if room for the back of my head. Then once it got high enough I started reducing by one stitch instead. Then two and three as I started to reach the top. Until finally I could stitch the top together. Here was a bit of a problem you can sort of see it on the picture but the top is a bit concave with the front being higher than the center. I solved this by stitching the front together then doing another few rows on the inside of the hole left before binding the edges together. Then all that was left was weaving in the edges of which needle-binding has many.   

Result

Trying it on it wasn't quite as deep as I wanted so I added two rows along the front edge. This also evened it out some but really can you ever have a hood that's too large. 

Despite the hood size I still liked the shape of it. However I'm also not sure about the color. The gradient is a bit stark so the scarf is gray and the hood blue and a bit uneven. It looks like it was made from scraps more than anything deliberate. I know that's what it is but I'd still prefer it not look like that.

It is cozy and warm though so I have been using it quite a bit. It's nice to wander around the house with which was the plan all along so I'm not too disappointed.

I might redo this some day but then with a single color and type of yarn. If so I'll make the hood even deeper and have something More dramatic. 

 

How to defeat a demon king in ten easy steps by Andrew Rowe

I din't really plan to buy this book. I got it because audible was offering a discount a half price for three months or something and then the second month they had a different discount with two books for one credit. This one just happened to be the most interesting sounding. 

Plot

The planet goes through cycles. A demon king will appears, rules for a hundred years and takes over roughly half the planet. Then the hero is born and defeats them, people rebuild and then a new demon king appears.

This time however it's different. An early alliance with one of the Kingdoms means that by the time the hero is born the whole world will be under the demon kings command. 

Young protagonist Yui is not a hero but has decided that they don't have time to wait for the hero and devices a plan to defeat the demon king anyway. Step one steal the heros sword from the stone.

My thoughts

The setting is very videogameish people get sorted into classes (not in an dystopian way its based on their actions). Classes that levels up with experience points from killing monsters. though slightly arbitrary like the hero class only being for those with a tragic backstory. It's very cliche. But it makes fun of those cliches and has characters who uses them to their advantage. Like making fun of the unrealistic inventory or ken who knows all the traditions and who by making Yui a green tunic is able to trick all the NPCs. I like Yui experimenting with her magic figuring out how it works. What would make her increase her level and skill as quickly as possible. Al with comments from her long suffering parents. 

Maybe I just have a fondness for clever characters who solves problems especially by using tools in unexpected ways. 

All that being said I'm fairly certain I would have gotten more out of it if I had ever played legend of Zelda or any similar game. I haven't all I know about them I do from just cultural osmosis. But its enough to recognize NPC dialog and enjoy the book.

The book does a very modern thing where it questions who the real villain actually is. Is it the demon king or the silver goddesses that perpetuation the cycle. But it does go somewhere with it and not like how I usually see it, in commentary videos or fanfiction. Though thinking about it this whole book might be considered a fanfiction now that I think about it. 

Regardless I enjoyed it.

Nice and short. 

Making Breakfast Bars

 I started making these regularly after I moved. At work there is an early morning meeting once a week and to get there on time I would skip breakfast eating two of these on the train instead. It gave me plenty of opportunities to improve the recipe. Now I could easily buy some bars instead but they are all 1 too expensive to be a regular purchase and 2 mostly sugar. 

Ingredients

3 dl Oats

50g Coconut oil
100g Datepaste or dates

1 Banana

100g Peanut butter

50g Almonds or other nuts

50g Dried fruit(I like cranberrys)

Instructions

In general you can mix these however you want but this is how I usually do. Preheat the oven to 175 C.

Melt the coconut oil in a double boiler (basically put it in a small bowl and then put the bowl in warm water). Personally I used my small mixing bowl and put the water in my large mixing bowl to avoid unnecessary clean up. While the coconut oil is melting use a blender to turn the oats into flour. I use a immersion blender and a mason jar. This doesn't have to be perfect since some texture is nice.

Peel the banana and put it in the mixing bowl with the oil along with the date past, and mush them with a fork. A thing a bout date paste, I prefer to use it but it can be somewhat hard to find in stores. You can replace it with finely chopped or blended dates.  

Then add the peanut butter, oat flour and stir. Roughly chop the almonds and cranberrys add those as well and stir it into a even paste. If its too dry you can add up to 50g of juice. 

Spread the mixture on a parchment paper on a baking tray making it about 0,5 to 1 cm thick. I tried to make it a square since it needs to be cut up later. Then bake for 20 minutes.

Once it's baked take it out of the oven and let it cool for a little. But before it cools completely and gets hard cut it up in 2×5 cm pieces.

Results

I have done this several times before and it turned out like usual so it's hard to have any opinions since its mostly what I was expecting. In general they are good and I lake them. If you are used to the store bought kind they are less sweet and they have a milder and less immediate taste. This is mostly because there isn't as much sugar. But most store bought bars are more like candy than food.  

There is a thing with the amount. I could have made a double batch and it would have filled out the baking tray rather than just a bit in the middle. But I like to save these for the days when I don't have time to eat breakfast therefor these will last me a long time a there is a limit to how much I want to store. 

About storing I put them in a box in the freezer, I don't think they would survive that long. But they thaw very fast in a few minutes you can eat them. 

All systems red by Martha Wells

Plot

 This is the first book in the murderbot diaries. One of my favorite series.

Murder bot is a secunit a security construct rented out by the company to provide security for research expedition on an uninhabited planet. But after two of the researcher nearly got killed by dangerous fauna that wasn't in the information packet. Large parts of their map is blank and when they loose contact with the only other expedition on the planet. It becomes clear that they are not as alone as they thought.

Murderbot must reveal that they are in fact not controlled by the habitat security system and haven't been since they hacked their own governing module month ago. 

My Thoughts

It's short I think its technically a novella and I read it in two days. But though there is places that could be stretched out I don't mind that they weren't. This isn't a suspense full book, the focus is on the mystery (who is messing with them and why) and outwitting them. Even more is about Murderbot´s anxieties about their changing circumstances. 

The whole book is from Murderbot´s perspective and it has captured it well both the anxiety and the in-humanness of them. A usual flaw of first person limited stories is how to incorporate conversations and events they weren't present for. This neatly solves that, the company records everything in the habitat to data-mine for trade-secrets. Murderbot, as part of the security system, can access these when they want. Beside using nearby cameras and drones as much if not more than their eyes. 

Interesting to see the expedition members reaction to realizing that Murderbot is less like a robot and more like a person than they thought. A somewhat traumatized, introverted person who gets overwhelmed by being talked to but who is also very capable of killing them all. 

It's surprisingly relatable. Murderbot doing the bare minimum of work to keep the Company from getting suspicious and reconnecting them to the system. All the while just wanting to watch their series. About the Company it's unnamed and while not really evil they are somewhat the antagonists they are just the worst of capitalism. Greedy and cheap, cutting corners where ever it can and will do the right thing only to avoid paying damages. 

Murderbot can be bought at Amazon