"All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you." ~ Octavia E. Butler I have not written on this blog for many months now. Just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I could sit here and list off a bunch of excuses as to why, but I shan’t waste our time with that drivel. Long story short, I was feeling lost and scared to put words on paper. I was unsure if anything I had to say was worth saying, worth reading, worth the churning of little internet packets to deliver it to you, dear…
Last edited 2 minutes ago. Considering how much anything costs right now (bc of AI, blockchain, mining, or whatever the fuck is going on in tech), I have come to a point in life where I realized I can afford nothing. Add to that the fact that my main computer died and I'm struggling financially... well, what's a girl to do? Use older tech and forget about the modern world is the answer, apparently. GamingMy old ass laptop can barely handle multiple tabs open on a browser, let alone a modern…
This time it’ll be different, they say. This time it’ll be about the people, they say. This time it’ll be a change for the better, they say. This time the system won’t win, they say. Colour me apathetic. Another PM we didn’t vote for —I know, we vote for the party not the person— in a system that feels increasingly broken. But what choice do we have? It’s this or the right wing. Right? Thanks for reading and keeping RSS alive. Visit my site for more.
Camera focus adventures with a super rad insect There's this metal corrugated awning that covers a patio in my backyard right outside the living room window; birds love it because it catches a bunch of the oak tree's acorns and like, win/win - I look out a window and there's a goddamn buffet for creatures both avian and squirrel-adjacent that I can regularly photograph. Like, a year ago we had this wild wind storm while it was below freezing and our oak tree took a BIT of a beating (it was…
A retro-styled wristwatch, a Timex T-80 Digital watch, Pelikan, Waterman and Conklin Fountain Pens. I've posited elsewhere that I have become something of a “techno curmudgeon” — that is someone who has serious reservations about technology, and therefore has adopted older technology. And yes, that is one possible connection between Fountain Pens and Wristwatches, but there is something else that I feel connects them, and other things that I am interested in. So, I am not certain if this will…
After seeing Ian’s plea to Don’t Forget to Share the Posts You Love recently, I decided to get off my arse and do something I've been meaning to since I resurrected this blog back in October. I’ve had a few links I wanted to share, but not necessarily devote an entire blog post to. So here’s a little collection of them all together. I'm going to start with Terence's post This Blog is Written in en-GB because it resonated with me. I always write in my natural language and yes that means I often…
I really don’t want to become a stubborn old man. For multiple reasons! First being that I don’t want to become an annoying bummer to be around. Nobody wants to deal with a guy who thinks everything new sucks and everything was better “back in the old days.” Nobody wants to deal with someone who has to make a snarky comment every time they’re confronted with something they don’t already understand. I want to be flexible, adaptable, and always curious about new things. Truly. The other reason is…
A COUPLE OF WEEKS ago, I wrote on A Working Library about James C. Scott’s concept of anarchist calisthenics, and I want to expand on it a bit here, because I think it is a very useful—even existentially necessary—skill to be practicing in our workplaces these days. Scott describes living in Germany in 1990 and noticing that the locals seem scandalized by his casual jaywalking—even when crossing a road where there obviously aren’t any cars for miles. Perplexed by this response, he writes: As a…
I try my best to do something creative every day. Some days I get to spend hours in front of the computer working on art, other times I only have a few minutes to scribble a few sentences or to tweak a few vertices. Usually when I sit down I can get at least something done in what ever time I have available to me that day.But there are those days where nothing happens. I stare at the screen trying to force some sort of idea to appear, but there just isn’t anything there. And I know very well…
I'm just so bored of talking about AI. It's like listening to vapers tell me how delicious their flavoured poison is. Did you ever meet someone at university who'd just tried drugs for the first time? Listening to a stoner ramble on about their mystic crystal revelations is amusing for the first five minutes, but quickly gets tiresome. Wow! You got your little computer friend to automate calling your mum? Great job, mate! Can we talk about something interesting now? Just as bad are the people…
For my whole life, there was always this stigma towards online friends, honestly just people online in general. Having more friends online than real life seemed like a trait a complete loser would have. While I think that stigma still exists, it exists to a lesser extent. Especially with younger generations who spend a lot of time online. There was always this sort of side eye you'd get from "the olds" when it came to talking about friends online. Sometimes rightfully so. If you're a teenager…
A quick one today, but it’s been on my mind and I wanted to get it down on paper, so to speak. We’ve been watching The Big Bang Theory for a while. I do enjoy the story-telling and the humour, but the repeated casual misogyny, sexism, racism etc really gets on my tit. Sometimes the characters are completely insufferable - they don’t seem to have matured in any meaningful way for the entire 7 seasons so far. Quite frankly, I’m not sure I can manage another 5! I watch it with eldest who has just…
I'm ready to grudgingly accept that the absolute market saturation of mattress retailers in America over the past 10 years isn't tied to money laundering, even though it's one of the few internet conspiracies that kind of, sort of, might possibly be true. I bought a mattress yesterday. First time in my life. I've lived on this planet 61 years without having that experience. All I can say after nearly selling a kidney to buy a common household item is DAMN. The one we bought cost more than every…
Every now and then Becca will shrug her shoulders and say, “We like who we like.” It usually comes up in the middle of some completely ordinary conversation and, almost as quickly as it’s said, we move on. It’s never intended as a grand statement, but the more I’ve thought about it over the years, the more I think it perfectly sums up how I see the world. I’ve not written much about sexuality or gender here, and I am aware this is something I probably should’ve written about publicly a long…
Bring back the silly.The quick and easy.The nonsense.Make procrastination a reason. Note: this post is for me, it will bore you, it’s about this blog, which is really only of any interest to me as a whole. Perhaps you are interested in a post here and there, but it’s different for me. This is me. I overthink.I revisit and question.I write.I publish.I muse.I note. It’s all the same thing really just the intent that differs, and with that intent a level of motivation, a desire to write like this,…
Recently I had the pleasure of talking at EMF Camp about machine readable wishes. The slides are linked here. The proposal originally was a workshop but converted to a 20min talk in the main stage of EMF Camp at 10am. Death is inevitable, yet our digital infrastructure remains woefully unprepared for it. While traditional “Letters of Wishes” provide a static roadmap for executors, they lack the agency to interact with our complex, data-driven lives. This workshop introduces the concept of the…
A ghost bike is a memorial for a cyclist who has been killed in a motor vehicle accident. These bikes can be seen all over the world, painted white and located at, or near the site of the accident. As well as celebrating the life of the cyclist, ghost bikes are intended to raise public awareness of bikes on the road. A ghost bike memorial project was started in St. Louis, Missouri, in October 2003. After observing a motorist strike a bicyclist in a bike lane on Holly Hills Boulevard, Patrick…
When I was a kid, my father bought a family home computer and placed it in the living room for all to see. When guests came to our house, they would stop by the computer and admire its marvel without even turning it on. While everyone else was careful with the computer, treating it like an important investment, I quickly started inserting discs and installing games. One thing we take for granted today is how cheap and abundant storage is. Our family computer had a single hard drive with a…
5am start before work to get to the gym for a strength session (I did cardio last night). 🥲 Tired, but a good tired. I’m glad I made the effort. I’ve worked out every day since returning from holiday. It’s interesting what having two weeks off has done to my strength performance. Some workouts I’m in the exact same place, others I’ve had to drop the weight down on to try and build back up. My performance just isn’t there like it was a couple of weeks ago. Shows how routine is important to…
At this point it’s been a little over a year since we moved into our new house, and we’ve gotten settled quite nicely. All of the big things we needed to get done have been dealt with so now it’s time to starting working on all the fun stuff that we want to get done.Starting with the one big project for this summer which is upgrading our garage which right now looks something like this (minus a whole lot of junk that’s been cleared out since I took this photo):The plan is to upgrade this space…
Today was absolutely gorgeous out, and I was able to get so much done outside! I was going to share some of the photos I took, but I need to do my garden tour videos, so I’ll just save it for that. I normally would have taken the videos yesterday, on the 20th, but that … Continue reading It’s finally done!
Don’t worry, it was fully optional. I assisted to a webinar about “the potential of AI” in the workplace, and you can already guess what sort of conference I had to go through yesterday. I shared a livestream of my thoughts on my Polymaths’ profile in case you want to see my reactons to what was said there, it’s hilarious stuff. Something I didn’t mention on that thread was a little quizz at the start, where people filled out polls and the like, and one of the pages was actually a word cloud,…
What happens when you mention to your D&D group, who mostly have ADHD, that your tumble dryer is broken? Free labour! About six months ago, my tumble dryer started making a small grinding sound, as if something had been dislodged. Past Phill decided that this was very much a Future Phill problem. Two weeks ago Future Phill had to deal with Past Phill’s laziness when the dryer began vibrating itself off the shelf it was on. Our tumble dryer (a DV70F5E0HGW/EU) was manufactured in 2014 (in Korea),…
I'm not pretentious when it comes to coffee. I like it slightly weak and bitter with a ton of milk or cream in it, and that's it. Go to any cafe in America and this is the kind of coffee you find: drip coffee, bitter but weak, with a splash of milk (some people even push it further with pumps of sweeteners, but fortunately I'm not that uncultured). However, it wasn't until the first time I left the US (I went to London over a decade ago), when I ordered "just a small coffee, please" and watched…
I've been searching for a volunteer opportunity for the past year or so, trying to find something I can stick with long-term and that will help my community while also speaking to me personally. I try to contribute to clothing drives and things like that whenever possible, but I've been looking for something more permanent, where I can serve in a steady role for a long time to come. Yesterday, out of the blue, I got an email from a volunteer with the Friends of the Knox County Public Library…
I’ve had my Gravatar account for a long time —18th January 2017, something I managed to find by exporting my data and querying the JSON file included (which only gives the UNIX timestamp)— but I’m about to close it. Why? Because it serves me no purpose. At BEST it was a quick way to get my details added to a comment box on some (WordPress mostly) sites, but at some point in the last few years it changed to only populate the URL, that is normally asked for, with a link to my Gravatar profile,…
"Part two, side three/four" was the only part of Heir to the Empire in the casette basket. The phrase "church of the air" speaks to me. I would not buy this record, though.
I finished Mythos (by Stephen Fry) last week, and came away with a new found fascination for ancient gods. I started the next book from the Forgotten Realms humble bundle: The Wyvern's Spur. So far, so good. Gaming wise I had a mixed week. I can tell my attention span is shot once again since I played a little bit of no less than 5 games. I think Ni No Kuni is officially on the backlog again... I'm not really sure why I keep thinking now is a good time for such in-depth games. :( I am however…
This week note covers the week of 13th–20th July. Aliens vs. The Fish Since I’m writing this week note so late, I’ll throw in an extra day for free. Last week was the week of birthdays. Both my wife and our now 4yo A had their birthdays, and the whole week was spent in celebrations. For A’s birthday, we went to the Aquarium Paradise, probably the largest aquarium in Bengaluru. A had a lot of fun looking at all the fish and other sea creatures. The photo above is from the aquarium, which had a…
Starting tomorrow, Comic-Con International/San Diego Comic-Con will have the Preview Night. There are no big panels, but if you bought the special badge that includes it or such, you can enjoy wandering around the show floor and (generally) doing some shopping. Then, once it is Thursday, the show starts in full force with tons of attendees, panels, events, and all that good stuff. I'm sure a large amount of news will emerge from the show about upcoming comics, television shows, movies, games,…
