I grew lilies. I have a whole new, and hopefully long-term, plan for the garden, and am looking at an autumn/winter of being outside with implements of destruction. The raspberries have been great, I have some blueberries coming, and it looks like I may get figs this year. I decided I couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to go and see THE ODYSSEY. That last trailer removed any wish I had to go and spend three hours of my life in front of it without access to cigarettes and alcohol. I’m sure it’s the…
Inspired by a video by Sarah Davis Baker talking about how the internet used to be a place I had an idea. What would happen if I put the internet back in its place? I’m not shy about the fact that my internet use is a little higher than I would like, but curing it sounds like an interesting challenge. The idea The basic idea behind this is that back in the dial-up days, the internet lived wherever the phone line came into the house. Laptops were still massive; we still paid by the minute to…
July 6 - July 19 cold rainy winter is here... Running Still could not keep up with running, mainly I blame the rain, the coldness and early sunset. I did run at the gym and outdoors several times in the past two weeks. Week of 13 July I ran three times. I can see airplanes landing on my way, it lifts up the mood a lot. Always someone there at the viewing spot so never lonely! Reading Listening to Brandon Sanderson's The Well of Ascension, but only during commute. The plot is going super slowly…
We come to it at last. Today is the day of the greatest sporting event of the year, the day we have been waiting for, the event that the eyes of the world will be trained upon. I refer of course to the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship Final which takes place this afternoon at Croke Park in Dublin. Throw-in is at 3.30pm. I’d love to experience the atmosphere of an All-Ireland final in person but it’s an impossible task to get tickets so I’ll be watching the match on TV. Here in Maynooth…
Sunday Asides #104 Last week, I signed to one of the biggest talent agencies in the Southeast. I got representation, y'all. I got an agent. Oh, you need some voiceover work? Call my AGENT. The death of Nolan Wells is the latest in a string of suspicious homicides of young Black people this year. Kayla Huff. Juliana Nzita. Zekevian James and Jo'Quavious Jones. I didn't find out about most of these until I heard about them on TikTok (of all places) because so much of the news cycle, including the…
I'm now back from 9 day in Italy and had a lovely time 1. I now can't decide whether it's good to be home or whether I have the holiday blues already. We already have our next holiday sorted in November and while that's exciting, I'm beginning to think travelling might be a lot of fun. Perhaps that's something to aim for in the future. In the meantime, I'm back to writing, learning and seeing what comes from that. I have a few more posts that I want to write so hopefully that should keep me…
After seemingly endless teasing, we finally got a bit of welcome rain Personal I had my passport application appointment this week, which got denied due to my landlord leaving the rent agreement incomplete 🙃. Will have to get that fixed then go back mid-August to get it reviewed again, and hopefully not run into any more problems. Reading I’ve continued blazing through the Mother of Learning series, finishing ARC 2 on Saturday and immediately picking up ARC 3. These books are too good! I’m…
I’ve been relatively silent over the past few months. This has mostly been for personal reasons, but the overall anxiety in both society and in the field of tech, specifically, has been a part of it. Despite people’s common superstitions about the creative process, the tortured artist isn’t very productive and even a mild anxiety or burnout can throw much of your process into a tailspin. But I have been thinking. I’ve regularly noted that writing and text has lost its primacy as an information…
It’s a Sunday. It’s a Sunday when I can say I’ve hung around for seven decades as the clock ticked past 70 yesterday. Spending the weekend celebrating with the grandkids, dodging in an out of pockets of time when the air is breathable, so there’s only a few links to share in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading. Hope you enjoy them as much as I have spending it with two innocents watching them approach the world from that perspective. When they look to you for answers, it’s awesomely terrifying.…
I did not stay up for the 3rd place match between ENG v FRA, but when I caught up on the news, I got a shock. 10 goals in 1 game? I mean I can understand if that was the score in a match between a football powerhouse and a minnow. But between the 3rd and 4th best teams in the world? Crazy. But it was entertaining to watch the highlights nonetheless. Goal after goal after goal. It's almost as though both teams forgot about defence and just went on the attack. If only this can be the score for…
Hello. Sorry it's been a while. Nothing is interesting still. Coding/Tech After all the shit that's happened recently, I wanted to get a Thinkpad and put a BSD on it. However they aren't actually cheap (there's this weird thing where people say that "oh old Thinkpad's and Raspberry Pis and SBCs are cheap", but they never have been). So I dug around my parts shelf and found my old 2017 Dell XPS something. I had thought that it was borked because it would shutdown after about 5 minutes. Turns out…
The forecast for today was partly sunny and cloudy with thunder boomers possible in the PM. The morning was overcast giving way to some sun with no rain before lunch. I could have made a run to Gurneys Sawmill. This is one time when have a cargo van would have been worth its weight in gold. Fingers crossed that next saturday will be sunny - I need project wood.my A2 iron set upI've had this red bin for over 40 years. It was one of the first things I bought from Lee Valley. The water stone…
I continued the pending repair work in the new apartment. Last week’s focus was mostly electrical infrastructure which by the way is something I understand but find horrifying, compared to water infrastructure which I don’t understand and find boring. I’ve finished 2/3 of Erich Fromm’s To Have or to Be? but recently I started to worry that I won’t finish this book in time to write a review for Indieweb Book Club. I hope I’ll finish it this week and at least wrap up the first draft of my review.…
Day two in the books. We arrived in Elk City, Oklahoma at 5PM local time, Saturday. It was a much shorter drive, we only covered 532 miles or 856 kilometers. Being tired is kind of the norm on roadtrips for us but it feels really great to have a shorter day.
It was the best of times, it was the wurst of times. The first two days of the week were being spend in Munich, a friend of mine had a stopover there and we planned to have dinner for a few months already. The time I wasn’t eating wurst with her, her friend and her brother, I spent at the amazing Deutsches Museum, marveling at all the old planes, trains and automobiles.After a short work week, there was more wurst last night – my uncle invited friends and family to his hut in the middle of the…
Walking the path to excellence takes years and years. You become satisfactory, then good, then very good, and then eventually excellent. But you think you shouldn’t be excellent. You think you should be extraordinary, and right now. Well, it’s not going to happen. Infekta
Very hot and humid here these days so spent yesterday inside packing for the Maine cruise. Above, the sleeping gear.Those are breakfast and lunches. In the grey tubs are 16 gallon bags, each with breakfast/lunches for one day. Below that are two one gallons bags, each with canned tuna, RxBars, meat sticks and bags to build six daily breakfast/lunch kits. So all together, 28 days worth of breakfast and lunch. Above are 30 freeze dried dinners. I won't take all of those, will leave a few behind.…
Last fish before heading off to the Ionian Sea. Couple of tench on the waggler and a pond pig to finish off a lightly fished July.Toodle pip.
I was really looking forward to "The Hawk". I usually get a kick out of Will Ferrell. Not this time, I'm afraid. I don't mind if a show is silly, but it also needs to be funny. This is not funny. The problem is that the actors, especially Ferrell and Molly Shannon, seem to be playing themselves, not the actual characters. I gave it two episodes, but that's all I could handle. ✍️ Reply by email
I’ve lived here a while now and this bank of light switches remains a guessing game every time.
It’s my fourth day straight in the park. Marshmallow ice cream, then Solero, I couldn’t finish the new marshmallow-flavoured Twister, and today, one scoop banoffee, second of marshmallow but the banoffee is way too sweet. Peeling off the grass stuck to the back of my legs. It’s like hay. Spiders make new freckles across the backs of my hands and then the freckles move. I’m not trying to make this text any good. It’s just a sign of life. I live in the shade now. Sometimes lie on my side, the…
I think if I had been less drunk I would have just started speaking in Esperanto. I remember him saying something vaguely about him trying to be open-minded or something. (The irony!) I told him that I was uninterested in being exoticized. I probably should have just been like I'm gonna do Esperanto because like if we're not going to speak the language of the land when we're both fully capable of doing it and just do what we want, it's Esperanto for me bitch, buckle up.
This is a new post. Unlike my last few posts, which were not entirely new. They were old posts I had already published here a year ago, but edited and then re-published during the last two weeks, as if they were new ones. Except the haiku one (575 verse - syllables). That was new, but it was a mental retreading of posts I had done versions of before on previous blogs. It was me, flailing around to try re-introducing things I had done – and enjoyed doing – on previous blogs, in order to jolt my…
So many tricks and tips for dovetailing your corner joints, but seldom do you hear, "Get it straight off the saw," as it was said to me. This has been my way for six decades to date, ever since I heard George, my apprenticing mentor, say the same words. This mantra stayed with me, and the only time a pare cut action from a chisel edge comes is when I did indeed miscut slightly with the saw; a very great rarity and not normal at all. And as it was with George, don't put off establishing skill…
From time to time, I have to admit that I just have too many tabs open. Which means I am not likely to get back to them any time soon. When that happens, I make a post like this and just link out to all the pages I’ve been holding open. That way, I can come back to them if I really want to, and they are no longer using system resources waiting for me to get back to them for whatever idea I had in my head when I left them. There’s a bunch of videos in this one. I’ve not watched them all. Like…
Cab-a-Rette is a taxi tour of Edinburgh that’s like no other, featuring driver and performer Sylvia who dons several personalities including Geraldine the Nun to show us the sights and puts on a show herself along the way. We’d seen this tour out in the wild when we were here three years ago and made sure to book a trip during our recent stay. Just in time too, since it seems Sylvia is retiring from this job and moving on to other things – so if you’re in town soon see if you can still schedule…
Waking up with a mini hangover. Have the vague memory of being direct with a guy about being 100% not interested in speaking English with him. Asked if he would do the same thing with any other French person, he said no, and I told him (slightly lying for those following my naturalisation adventures) that I'm French so that's kind of fucked. "But you have an accent!" Yeah well you have the face of an absolute dumbass but here I am trying to give you a minimum amount of respect nonetheless
We’re officially over the hump: less of 2026 is left than has already passed. And for those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere, summer is definitely in full swing. So, by now, I would expect we’ve all figured out our summer wardrobes, both clothes- and perfume-wise. Sunday Question #302: What’s in […]
Personal notes for week 29 of 2026
Life Me Σσ and Αα went to watch Ηη’s sports day where he retained his title as undisputed king of the sack race. The highlight of the day though was when he didn’t bother holding the egg or spoon for the egg and spoon race and just sprinted as fast as he could. The morning ended without any real drama which was a sign of how much all the year 1s have grown up. And Ηη seemed happy with how everything went, so why would I bother pointing out to him that you don’t necessarily ‘win’ the egg and…
