New Year, new Drop, new DEM...and (in a matter of days) new data-transfer drive

Joaldeyanovaubrat, bíentés. (Stands for "Happy New Decade, folks" in my conlang of Relformaide, now renamed Tovasala. About time I turned the lights back on at its official Referata wiki soon, slow speed or not...)

21 days into 2020, and now that a ton of mapwork and MP3 cleanup is in the past (for now), business will spike back up soon enough. Without further ado, on to our first bulletin this new era.

• First up, the rehab of Rogatia's national DEM was officially a wrap last Tuesday; all provinces (Shropshire, Elmshire, and Yorkshire) and the Atlantic Ocean seamount below them, plus rivers/lakes/ponds, are accounted for. (Need I mention I sounded clearly defeatist with my intentions for a new layout?) As before, Mount Barome remains the highest point (in southeastern Shropshire; 681.58 m); meanwhile, Elmshire's Our Lady of Salvation is slightly higher than before (at 215 m--previously 204.6 m), and Yorkshire's Reda Hill is officially 439.55 m AMSL (above mean sea level). Next on the agenda, the road network (complete with Yorkshire Causeway) and city/town names, plus a highly extensive nomenclature campaign for the nearly 1,500 strands of river still to be named. Until then, your first look at the new Drop (at 1:1,000,000 scale):
• 
• • In other Rogatian news: As their attention turned to a recent string of earthquakes in Puerto Rico (already in an infrastructure quagmire after Hurricane Maria) and the eruption of Taal volcano in the Philippines, national broadcaster HCP decided to end their "Happy New Decade" special a day and a half early (on Saturday, January 11 at 7:00 p.m. AST/6:00 Eastern). Nonetheless, they did set a record for airing the longest television special in existence--running 271 hours (16,260 minutes) nonstop with commercials since December 31, 2019 at 12:00 p.m. AST/11:00 a.m. Eastern--en route to a citation in Guinness 2021. If nothing else, this is destined to be an audiovisual Domesday of life in the West Indies during the final moments of the New Tens--and the first of the succeeding era.
• Meanwhile, in the real world: The long, long wait for the new USB is almost over--although I only wish it were yesterday. The one I'd wanted since my birthday last July--a 256 GB model from HP (same brand as my current laptop)--was sold out at Best Buy by the time I went for it at Brandon's Walmart with a superior. Not even the latter had it in store (only online), so a third option--a gift card--is practically the only one left. But the trip wasn't a completely wasted one--as long as almost $7.00 worth of stationery replacements made up for it. (Two exercise books--one for Swagbucks, the other for Adanson/Autrison's latest; a 500-pack of liner paper; a box of pencils; and a plastic oversize sharpener.) A day after this writing, purchasing said USB with that new card, plus a new affordable set of headphones--both from Amazon. (Because my own pair has been busted up, and what I've recently used for stockpile playback has been actually semi-borrowed from the superior.)
• Speaking of Autrison/Adanson: As this post goes to press, most in the Giraudel specialty label and what's left of the Marigot facility's old team have booked tickets to reunite and regroup with the rest of the re.BUILD gang, still stationed for post-Michael cleanup in the Florida Panhandle. (Plans for a transfer to the Bahamian Abacos went nowhere last northern fall; the country's own issues with Haitian immigrants post-Dorian were partly to blame, and the charity critters more or less sat it out in protest. After all, Maurice the solenodon--Alfred Dixwell's sidekick, whom you'll meet in Unspooled #1--can relate to their plight.) Owing to their commitments with re.BUILD's comeback concert this Saturday, Autrison's Nature Island base will be left in the hands of three engineers, two curators, an acetate archivist, and a security guard for the next couple of months. Details as the Marigot Notebook reopens (and the Adanson Jukebox resumes), next we meet.
• As for Unspooled itself: My comeback intro at the official NaNoWriMo forums languished away in the Coffeehouse, so I decided to sign up at Writer Sanctum (a reboot of the old KBoards) last week and try my luck there. Haven't posted my introduction there yet, but after I do, stay tuned for a new pitch for Prequel #1 + the perfect first line to the entire series. (En route to a New Year's resolution--as long as scrobbling commitments and other factors don't militate against it.
• Closing with our first "404 Files" this decade: This month, Google has agreed to pay US$7.5 million in a class-action settlement over the security lapses that became the death knell of this feed's former host, Google+; approval in the coming weeks is pending. Once again, the end of an era. Meanwhile, Shoelace (their latest social experiment) remains test-run in the New York market; if expansion's a go, I'll report back. (Also, stay tuned for a rerun of my VCL outage report from last January.)
• • As an addendum, I can really relate when the title of this Keith Wilson write-up from January 9 soundly declares, "I Really Miss Google+". In which he expounds on the narrative that outsiders tried to spin up for years on end; lots of Plus devotees had to put up with that.

• • "In all my time on Google+ I wondered why it was constantly being described as a 'ghost town' by the tech press. I often checked out the profiles of the tech writers who described it as such and never found a single tech writer with more than 300 followers or who followed more than 50 people. With those kinds of numbers it was no wonder they thought it was a 'ghost town.' They hadn’t tried to interact on the platform. They didn’t bother to learn its culture. They didn’t bother to meet with the people who had made it a home. They just based their opinion on the fact that their friends weren’t there, so it had to be a dead platform."

• • And more importantly, as he states right afterward: "G+ was never Facebook."

Serté joalausmat kuam naulwobe (or in Tovasala/RFM, "Better late than never")--but given a DEM job took up the first two weeks of my year, this comes as no surprise. See you back soon--along with a couple of resteems. Take care, stay connected, keep exploring, see you in the bestsellers, watch your tails...and God bless.

Onward and upward...

From the all-new #WhatLiesAground