text/gemini
# November 2023
Not a whole lot happened this month either, but I do have a lot of things that I /want/ to do, so let's talk about these prospective things and basically what they spring off from.
# Four Random Questions
One thing that I have managed to do over this month is to create another batch of physical instances of my octagonal flags. If you are aware of it, one of the things that I do when I make the flags is that I write a small profile for each thing I make. But I draw flags for a lot of things. While about half of them are vtubers, the other half can be as varied as my special interests could take me. So far I have had:-
* fairy chess pieces,
* meteorological phenomena,
* random concepts from my conworld,
* tuning systems,
* numbers,
and as I continue to find things that I like and can turn into flags, that list would only get more and more varied and (as the cool kids say) chaotic. That's great – so the wise ones say, diversity is strength – but writing a profile that can apply to all of these things is… hard. That's why I eventually settled on a pseudo-horoscope type thing which are Four Random Questions. They are fairly simple: given that you know all I do:-
* What will you call the fairy chess piece combining the movement capability of a Rook and a Knight? (For the purposes of this question, castling is a King move)
* What is the sum of all positive integers, 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ⋯?
* What is your favourite MTR station?
* What is your favourite musical interval?
The questions have multiple correct answers – with some delicate massaging of the semantics – and also definitely incorrect answers. As mentioned it's basically a personal horoscope value: I assign an answer to these questions based on who I think you are, but I try not to be arbitrary about it. I'll try to expand on this in a separate article.
## A little extra on conlanging with fan art
Interestingly one of the fun things that have happened with this exercise is that it has genuinely developed the flag language a lot. Apparently testing the language in real-world situations can help fill in blind spots that you would miss otherwise. In any case I've already created entire aspects of the flag language that I wouldn't have made otherwise, and also clarified the design language (using a more conventional definition of the word "language" here) of how to make a flag.
And yes, I'll make this a very highly-developed language that can express many concepts, if not /arbitrary/ numbers of concepts. I've noticed this is a repeating theme in a number of concepts that I'm making, with the other notable example being music. I've written about this in one of my notebooks.
# Otherwise
The JLPT is this Sunday; I'm kind of nervous but I think I can do it.
I haven't managed any careers work at all again. I keep telling myself, "I have to do this, I have to do this," and then I don't do this. It's frustrating for me and no doubt to people around me too. I don't know how to express this.
I haven't got much programming done either. At least I have a list down, otherwise I don't know how I'd ever live.
That's about it for this month.
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