Eddings

In my younger days, I enjoyed David Eddings' fantasy series, the Belgariad and the Mallorean. I haven't read any of it since, because I think it might be a little corny. Today, however, I discovered he and his wife, Leigh, who co-wrote his books, had a dark secret: it seems around 1970, both of them spent a year in prison (in a rural town) for the brutal child abuse of their 4 year old adopted son. They had a fenced cage in the basement, restraints, and they beat the poor kid. It was pretty awful. So switching jobs from university lecturer to working in a grocery store was less about "fixing their relationship" than being fired for being in prison. This was all covered up pretty thoroughly by the time they became well-known. The son and a younger adopted daughter were taken into care.

How does one draw the line between an artist and their work? Can you still enjoy someone's work while finding the artist despicable?

Others in that category: Marion Zimmer Bradley, Orson Scott Card (I'm actually convinced that most people named Scott are problematic), Charles Dickens (never liked his books though), H. P. Lovecraft, Jack London, Roald Dahl.

Windows 11

Yesterday I had a go at installing Windows 11. My PC is not compatible (some components, like the motherboard, are a decade old), missing Secure Boot, TPM, and a compatible CPU, but there's a fairly simple workaround to bypass those prerequisites.

Anyway, it installed in less than an hour, and had no issues at all. Everything is working and behaving as it should. 

The interface seems smarter and improved from 10 (but maybe I felt like a change), the Settings panel is much improved, and I like some of the taskbar improvements (still on the fence about it being centre-aligned though). Generally a nice experience.

I have noticed my CPU running hot in the last few months, noticeable from the noise of the CPU fan. I opened the case up, plugged in my modelling airbrush, and blew the dust our from the fins of the heatsink. That seems to have helped a lot; CPU is about 10C cooler now.