coraa | Reading

Well, drat, the things I wanted most to do with Python to Excel files have needed the skimming of another book: Felix Zumstein, Python for Excel, 2nd ed. preview---that is, O'Reilly will release the second edition in June 2026, but its semifinal draft is on Safari already, for community comment.

Stephens's book, in yesterday's post, is published by No Starch and thus also on Safari (to which one local public library subscribes). Its first three chapters ( in case anyone else were pondering Python x Excel--doubtful )

Once upon a time, I used an old copy of Pkzip to peek into a v2 .epub file (they are in fact .zip containers) and devise a plan to crosswalk Adobe InDesign epub-export XML to the XML grammar I needed. It was InDesign CS6, I think. Today I used a copy of 7zip to peek into an .xlsx file, then closed it without skimming the XML bits within. Python on Excel will be fine, thanks, in preference to reminding myself about the XSLT I used to know, because Python can open and close files safely as part of the scripted processing steps.

ysabetwordsmith posting in

common_nature

Earth Month -- April 2026

Earth Month takes place during April every year. It’s a time to raise environmental awareness and create consciousness around the issues that affect mother nature during this time of crisis. Every April, leaders, and environmental activists from all over the world join hands to create sustainable development and offer climate solutions, to minimize our carbon footprint and prevent further harm to our planet’s natural resources. It’s increasingly important to observe this month as Earth starts to unravel the harmful effects of climate change which not only poses a threat to our existence but is irreversibly damaging all forms of life.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

musesfool

I made my appointment to return my old modem and router for 2:15 pm today before I decided to take today off, because 2:15 put it right in the middle of my lunch hour. However, having taken the day off, 2:15 became the worst possible time to do it. But it's done! Not without a slight misadventure. I put the address in for a Lyft and doublechecked the confirmation text and was like, okay, 74-10 Austin Street. But when we arrived at 74-10 Austin Street, it was a residential building. And I'm like, I know it's just up the block there and the guy is like, but this is the address you requested. So I get out and start walking and I'm like, I know it's here, I've been here before, where the fuck is it??? So I recheck my phone and the address is...71-40. I would have sworn on a stack of bibles everything said 74-10, but it did not. Brain, why are you like this???

Anyway, the equipment return was quick and smooth, and Shake Shack was 2 doors down, so I had Shake Shack for lunch and it was all good.

Here's today's poem:

Five passages between uncertain territories

1
The wind has got trapped in the chimney;
its plaintive howls crash, slash and rumble
all the way to the backbone and back again.
Walrus angels ride their ancient motorbikes
on the Wall of Death.

2
I burrow deep into heretic soil, lie quietly
close to roots and corms, listen to the sounds
of critters in the field, beasties by the roadside:
their adventure songs of rescue, revelation,
revival and sunrise.

3
Because you travel the undiscovered country,
carrying the black flag, mallet and stake,
I offer you heartware – I stay tuned in all right;
but you know I don't trust you any farther
than to the rim of the map.

4
I lost my little mittens and my hands are cold.
All around, purple pearls and snailshells lie
scattered like random pebbles; I pick them up
gingerly, clovefully. I count them three times,
then once more for luck.

5
Cloaked in furs and feathers I shall sojourn
in abandoned observatories, hurdy-gurdy
power stations, mills by mystic lakesides,
stitching tales of hope and hardship, breaking
every bone in the book.

--Jane Røken

***

Current Mood: confused

signoftea posting in

common_nature

It's getting warmer, the days are getting longer, and the scent of spring is coming in through the open window. Bird activity is very high. Some days, my birding app detects up to 25 different species within 20 minutes. Some of them are migratory birds, on the way back to where they came from in the winter. The others, about to start breeding, make as much noise as they can.

Today, as I was watering my balcony flowers, I looked down at the lawn because I saw some movement there. Two wood pigeons were wandering around, and between them, a hedgehog! I've never seen one in the open in broad daylight before. They're mostly nocturnal, as far as I know.

I googled "hedgehog active during the day" and found out that this could be a sign that the hedgehog is injured or malnourished. It did look a bit thin, as far as I could see from two storeys above, but not weak or distressed. It was walking around purposefully and seemed to be eating something, probably earthworms. In the information I found online, it said hedgehogs are often thin in the spring, because they're recovering from hibernation. It doesn't have to be a reason for concern. So I guess it doesn't need help right now.

When I checked again a few minutes later, both the hedgehog and the pigeons had disappeared.

I'm going to keep an eye out for the little hedgehog in the coming days. If I see it again and it looks like it needs help, I might take it to the vet, or to a rescue center.

oursin

Yesterday partner and I went on an excursion to Rochester, as partner wanted to visit the cathedral and the castle, and I thought it would make a nice little trip - two trains an hour from St Pancras International. Also, it is not presently in the throes of having either of its twice-yearly Dickens Festivals, although there are quite a lot of manifestations of Charles D associations, from cafes called e.g. Tiny Tim's to plaques on buildings declaring that they are the originals of [some building in one or other of the novels].

The castle is Norman and there is quite a lot of it still standing. Realised that these days I am not so spritely about manouevring around rough-hewn spiral staircases and did not ascend all the way to the top of the tower. Apparently it is where Henry VIII met Anne of Cleves on her arrival in England (dooooomed! doooomed!). There were notices all over about the corpses of pigeons - these are preyed on by crows, the crows are a protected species, tough, pidges.

The cathedral is second oldest in England and has seen a lot of history, not to mention The Reformation, the Civil War and Commonwealth, Victorian church restoration, etc. There are some v kitsch early C19th funerary monuments. The crypt is v modernised and has a caff, a chapel to St Ithamar, first Saxon bishop of Rochester, and an exhibition of medieval manuscripts from the cathedral library (that survived the Henrician Reformation).

The high street is well worth strolling along, quite a number of picturesque ancient edifices, including Eastgate House and the Six Poor Travellers House.

conuly posting in

agonyaunt

DEAR HARRIETTE: I am an openly gay and rather feminine man from the Midwest currently enrolled at college in New York City. Over the weekend, my college friends and I went out with some guys they know from another college upstate. The entire night, the men they brought were making microaggressions and homophobic remarks that made me feel like I was back in high school in the Midwest. When talking about the night with my friends, I felt like I was sucking joy out of the room and robbing them of their experiences. I don't want my negative experiences to hinder theirs; however, I do want them to know how the men made me feel. I don't know how to navigate this situation. Harriette, what do you think I should do? -- Awkward Encounter

( Read more... )

james_davis_nicoll

Once again, the need to rescue friends distracts Murderbot from its shows.

Platform Decay (Murderbot, volume 8) by Martha Wells

falkner posting in

smallbatchicons

oursin

Happy birthday,

nnozomi!

thistleingrey

I did end up finishing Uzma Jalaluddin's Detective Aunty. It's fine---in particular, it's fair about the social roles in which it places its characters. I liked (and had totally predicted) a particular pairing revealed during a pivotal scene near the story's resolution. Would read another, if it becomes serial.

With similar slowness, I'm now about halfway through the second Thursday Murder Club title. It's also fine, a bit bumpier and more obvious than Aunty.

I think my next read, in parallel, is about to be Tracy Stephens' Python for Excel Users (2025). I might know more Python than Excel, if considering any vintage of either one, and there are other recent books that land more firmly on the Python side of the join---but spreadsheets have been my acquaintance for longer, my tasks with Excel over time have been more varied, and (honestly) I've heard more people complain at length about it.

(First spreadsheet acquaintance: AppleWorks 1.1. heh. When I had to make my father's resumes and cover letters, it was clear pretty quickly that AppleWorks could not help us; my mother brought home a copy of pfs:Write, the only word processing app that the local ComputerLand retail shop had. Soon afterwards, fortunately, my mother gained access to WordPerfect 5.0 (and Lotus 1-2-3) via her bus-ad classes, and I moved the job-app stuff into WP, which unlike pfs:Write could hold its tab stops consistently from screen display to dot-matrix printer output.)

oursin

What I read

Finished Honeycomb.

Read Jonathan Kellerman, Jigsaw (2026), for a change of pace. While the perp is, for a change, not a serial killer with intricate pattern of murders, still a psycho, though revenge in the mix. I yearn for Dr Delaware to get a locked room mystery at a country house party with a load of ye trad motives.

Then back to Barbara Hambly, Murder in the Trembling Lands (2025), which I still found fairly confusing - admittedly the plot is rooted in confused/confusing stories - on a re-read.

Something or other brought to mind a really obscure author whose 2 novels I'd managed to find (after reading the second from the library and then wanting to read it again and searching for it for years), so actually managed to retrieve these from the approximate places where they were supposed to be on actual shelves.

D. A. Nicholas Jones, Parade in Pairs (1958), first novel, some good things, thought the racial violence at the end was a bit gratuitous - chronology suggests it could not have been response to Notting Hill Race Riots. Period racial attitudes are situated in characters and there is quite a bit of ambiguity going on. Also some, fairly peripheral, characters are gay.

On the go

D. A. Nicholas Jones, Never Had It So Good (1963), which is the one I first encountered. I see I wrote about it years ago back in LJ days.

Also on the go, as I was out and about today and did not want to tote about a substantial hardback, Farah Mendlesohn, Considering The Female Man by Joanna Russ, or, As the Bear Swore, published yesterday.

Up next

No idea.

musesfool

April is National Poetry Month in the US, so as I have done for the last...TWENTY YEARS!!!! I will be posting a poem a day here (and a different poem on tumblr). They will be tagged as "poetry" and "national poetry month 2026," so if you know how to block tags on DW, have at it!

Let's start with old favorite Billy Collins:

Lines Lost Among Trees
by Billy Collins

These are not the lines that came to me
while walking in the woods
with no pen
and nothing to write on anyway.

They are gone forever,
a handful of coins
dropped through the grate of memory,
along with the ingenious mnemonic

I devised to hold them in place---
all gone and forgotten
before I had returned to the clearing of lawn
in back of our quiet house

with its jars jammed with pens,
its notebooks and reams of blank paper,
its desk and soft lamp,
its table and the light from its windows.

So this is my elegy for them,
those six or eight exhalations,
the braided rope of the syntax,
the jazz of the timing,

and the little insight at the end
wagging like the short tail
of a perfectly obedient spaniel
sitting by the door.

This is my envoy to nothing
where I say Go, little poem---
not out into the world of strangers' eyes,
but off to some airy limbo,

home to lost epics,
unremembered names,
and fugitive dreams
such as the one I had last night,

which, like a fantastic city in pencil,
erased itself
in the bright morning air
just as I was waking up.

***

Current Mood: better
Current Music: Mets vs Cardinals on tv

james_davis_nicoll

You too can help fund James Nicoll Reviews!

April 2026 Patreon Boost

pilottttt posting in

common_nature

( Read more... )

You can read more about how we visited Troy here (in Russian).

james_davis_nicoll

History can teach us the most exciting ways to destroy fictional civilizations...

Seven Plot-Friendly Ways to Spur Societal Collapse

james_davis_nicoll

Master Nankai hosts a discussion between the idealistGentleman and pragmatist Mr. Champion over the course Japan should take in the 20th century.

A Discourse by Three Drunkards on Government by Nakae Chomin (Translated by Nobuko Tsukui)

oursin

Happy birthday,

ephemera and

sidherian!

musesfool

I was going to say this week has been endless and somehow it's still only Tuesday! but that's especially hilarious because I logged off work yesterday at 3 pm to go back to bed, and I'm taking off Thursday and Friday (and Monday), so really I only have tomorrow left of the work week. But subjectively it has felt endless. I do feel better though - still congested and coughing like mad, but no more fever. So you know, marginally better. *wry*

Anyway, I've got a recs update for you:

unfitforsociety has been updated for March 2026 with 13 story recs and 2 vid recs in 5 fandoms:

* 10 Heated Rivalry
* 2 The Pitt
* 1 Batfamily
* 1 Leverage vid and 1 Star Wars vid

*

Current Mood: sick
Current Music: What Kind of Man - Florence + the Machine

jazzfish

Well, my condo is on the market. The photos and drone tour make the place look even more staged / hotel-room-like than it is in person. I'm also back to being not terribly optimistic about the prospects, though I remain hopeful. Open house this weekend, probably another one next (since this weekend is Easter), and if there are no bites by then we reevaluate.

In light of my lack of optimism, I'm also going ahead and booking flights etc for the Gathering in late April. (I have a supply of worthless Americanski dollars to use for the trip, so it's not cutting into any budgeted-for-living funds. Though I strongly suspect this will be my last Gathering for some time.) Should I need to move at the end of April and have to reschedule/cancel the trip I will look on that as a Good Problem To Have.

It's spring. Spring in Van is always an iffy prospect, but it's been gloriously sunny most of last week and this. Mr Tuppert, however, is BORED. Unfortunately I have yet to come up with any reliable methods of play for him. He's not fond of physical toys; responses range from disdain to irritation to leaving the room. Even the red dot gets old quickly. Assuming I remain unemployed I may look into getting some cat-talk buttons. Teaching him to use those will be a Challenge for us both, I expect.

oursin

I know I was born into a fortunate generation which had things like university grants and better employment opportunities and the ability to buy one's own house in one's twenties and so on -

I have also occasionally been heard to remark that, on account of the codliver oil and school milk dispensed by a caring Welfare State, Ma Generayshun probably has bones like steel girders persisting into the twilight years and that this very likely no longer pertains -

- I did not realise that life expectancy was actually going down (older article, feel I saw something much more recently but didn't keep the link).

Not to mention decline in actual expectation of healthy quality of life.

I was brought up with coal fires - the Clean Air Act was 1956 but I'm not sure how long the effects took to kick in - possibly various dietary things that might not be considered optimum these days? - various things like the foot-x-ray machines in shoe-shops that have vanished -

While maybe not the plethora of junk food there is now it was absolutely not that organic idyll that gets posited!

So there were adverse factors around, but maybe just enough counter-balancing things going on?

Profile

coraa

April 2013

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Page Summary

thistleingrey - reading wed, postscript
ysabetwordsmith in common_nature - Earth Month
musesfool - I burrow deep into heretic soil
signoftea in common_nature - Nature diary
oursin - Excursion to Rochester
conuly in agonyaunt - (no subject)
james_davis_nicoll - Platform Decay (Murderbot, volume 8) by Martha Wells
falkner in smallbatchicons - TGCF illustrations
oursin - (no subject)
thistleingrey - reading wed
oursin - Wednesday went on a jaunt to Rochester
musesfool - those six or eight exhalations
james_davis_nicoll - April 2026 Patreon Boost
pilottttt in common_nature - Persian squirrels inhabiting the ruins of the legendary Troy
james_davis_nicoll - Seven Plot-Friendly Ways to Spur Societal Collapse
james_davis_nicoll - A Discourse by Three Drunkards on Government by Nakae Chomin (Translated by Nobuko Tsukui)
oursin - (no subject)
musesfool - so i reasoned i was drunk enough to deal with it
jazzfish - marketing, etc
oursin - Falling hour by hour....

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the owl and the olive tree

books, food, writing, and more

Reading

reading wed, postscript

Earth Month

I burrow deep into heretic soil

Nature diary

Excursion to Rochester

(no subject)

Platform Decay (Murderbot, volume 8) by Martha Wells

TGCF illustrations

(no subject)

reading wed

Wednesday went on a jaunt to Rochester

those six or eight exhalations

April 2026 Patreon Boost

Persian squirrels inhabiting the ruins of the legendary Troy

Seven Plot-Friendly Ways to Spur Societal Collapse

A Discourse by Three Drunkards on Government by Nakae Chomin (Translated by Nobuko Tsukui)

(no subject)

so i reasoned i was drunk enough to deal with it

marketing, etc

Falling hour by hour....

Profile

April 2013

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