Category Archives: Musing

Serendipitous learning… about farts!

Posted on October 12, 2021 by Confanity

This afternoon I unexpectedly learned something new about Japanese language and culture. In my family we’ve been making a point of watching anime together as a family, for entertainment and for Japanese practice. This isn’t just passive consumption of media, … Continue reading →

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Child Development: Words with character(s)

Posted on December 18, 2020 by Confanity

The Tomato Princess has been expanding her vocabulary day by day, and it’s interesting watching the way she’s trying out the use of various words. When her older brother was the same age, we actually used quite a lot of … Continue reading →

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“It is useless to meet revenge with revenge; it will heal nothing.”

Posted on November 8, 2020 by Confanity

(J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King) 彼方を立てれば此方が立たず (Achira wo tatereba kochira ga tatazu; “If one raises that side, this side will not rise.”) Definition: It’s difficult, almost impossible, to get all sides of something equally accepting and happy about … Continue reading →

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Child development – an unbeatable sense of comedic timing

Posted on May 29, 2020 by Confanity

This just now happened. We were eating dinner. My wife and I were slicing the bread I’d just made and eating it topped with slices of cheese. At this point I should probably note that the Tomato Princess loves cheese … Continue reading →

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Child Development: The “Litest” RPG

Posted on May 25, 2020 by Confanity

A road to gaming As part of my nefarious secret plot to induct my kids into the joy of nerdy gaming, I’ve been introducing The Kid to various activities in that vein for a while now. This actually began when … Continue reading →

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A fabled foray into interactive fiction

Posted on January 27, 2020 by Confanity

Longtime readers will remember that I’m interested in tabletop role-playing games and have even dabbled in a bit of design and setting-creation, but it was still with some surprise that back in October, I found myself visiting the local university’s … Continue reading →

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Child development: the self-propelled tomato

Posted on August 6, 2019 by Confanity

As some readers may already know from other sources, The Kid has a little sister now. Not too long after she was born I looked at her round, red face and thought, Oh, a tomato. So now one of her … Continue reading →

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Cognitive development: pics and puns!

Posted on May 30, 2019 by Confanity

It’s been a long time since I used this blog to publicly marvel at the kid’s development, but this one’s too good to let pass unremarked-on. In his preschool they’ve been working on drawing, and on writing letters and numerals; … Continue reading →

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A Friday link: The power of (mis)translation

Posted on May 24, 2019 by Confanity

[Here’s the link] One of the blogs I follow is A Book of Creatures, which regularly introduces cryptids (animals that someone has said exist… that probably or definitely don’t in reality) from around the world. Many of these would make … Continue reading →

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Some Kind of Progress

Posted on April 16, 2019 by Confanity

It’s a small thing, in the grand scheme of… well, of things. But I can’t help but find it encouraging that over the course of approximately my lifetime, tabletop role-playing games have gone from a hyper-niche hobby for the nerdy … Continue reading →

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