Emma, John and Rowan finished school for the term which of course means we’re now in Hell. I plan to switch to working from home two days a week rather than three but I’m not sure what we’re going to do to keep them occupied. Oh, and the summer heat is oppressive enough that I think we might actually be in Hell. Rowan wanted to go out on a shinkansen and so I made a deal that if we did that, we had to go to a museum first. I thought the easiest choice (given its relative proximity to Tokyo…
When I started writing down my thoughts, I worried that someone would read them. The purpose of writing and publishing in public was that I wanted people to read them. This conflict raged constantly in my head. I wanted attention. I didn't want questions. But the two come together. If someone pays attention to what you write, they are likely to ask you questions about it. I wanted people to be curious about my life. But not too nosy. The contradiction grew unbearable, and I gave up on writing.…
We all have our reasons for blogging. It might be... ...part of a strategy to promote products or services. ...for personal pleasure with readers being a nice bonus. ...to make ourselves a name and grow the list of followers. And sometimes it’s a mix with a little bit of everything. All blogging, but with a different approach and purpose. Not good or bad, honest or false. Just different. I have a feeling that most people reading this are in the same category as myself: 2. Blogging for the joy…
Great to be back in Montreal, and not just because it is expected to be stupidly hot in Boston with unexpected apocalyptic air quality because of wildfires in Manitoba. We're looking at a nice 18 days of moves here! Getting here was a bit of a thing, though - I had a 10:40am flight that was supposed to get me here by noon, and was out the door at around 7am or so, but two Red Line
I realize as far as recipes go, suggesting one needs one for lemonade is questionable. What’s next, a set of detailed instructions for salted water, simple syrup, or buttered noodles? (Whoops!) But it turns out I have opinions on everything and there’s no time like the nth heat wave of the summer to share what I consider the correct, best formula for lemonade and it is — who could have ever seen this coming? — mine. Read more »
My son and I went to Dwellingup Tree Top Rope Climb Adventures. Huge fun. Perfect gloomy weather but without rain, kept others away. So we had plenty of space to enjoy the zip lines and climbs. I pushed myself at the end doing a hard circuit. The fatigue really kicked in the for the old man!
We drove our coach 255 miles, about five hours of driving, from Cummins Coach Care in Coburg, Oregon to our home base near Shelton, Washington. Here’s a map showing our route, heading north: An interactive map, with potential stops pinned: Our coach parked at Cummins: Helpful tip: Preparing to leave: Heading to I-5 North: Roadworks: Exit to I-205: Entering Washington: Closed rest area: Bump: Fuel stop: Soon after the fuel stop, about three hours (200 miles) after leaving Cummins, the Check…
I think sometime this week was 100 working days in this role (if you remove all of my sick days). Usually I’d try and write some kind of retrospective to mark the milestone but honestly this week I’ve been feeling pretty disappointed by the whole experience – even accounting for the health scare (and England losing). I had such high hopes and was so excited about the chance to get my hands on a big, public service data initiative a decade after the last one but it just hasn’t worked out and I’m…
An idea I had yesterday, has not been tested it but the underlying systems all have, so I'm confident it works. But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate…
There’s a huge scandal going on in Ukraine, right nowSpecific details and nature of the scandal do not concern us very much. What I find interesting, is how it highlights the super-robust, ironclad position of the Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief, Alexander Syrsky. Time after time, he triumphs over every other opponent and every competitor, relying on the ironclad support of President Zelensky. Again and again, the president chooses him over everyone else.Why?Well, I don’t have any secret inside…
There need to be more movies about rambunctious old ladies. In fact—there just need to be more rambunctious old ladies. Note, I wrote Ladies. We don’t need more rampaging elderly men; we have enough of them on our daily news scoop of insanity. No, it’s old ladies we now need; the rambunctiousier, the better. Because they get the good things done. The old ladies I’m referring to are the spirited trio in the 1958 British film Alive and Kicking. (You’ve never heard of it? Don’t worry, it’s…
We never gave our daughter chores to do around the house when she still lived with us. This runs against the current of most of the parenting counsel out there. Her school officially recommended it for all families. Even our pediatrician suggested, when she was still a baby, that we would want her to do chores. "It's good for them." "It teaches them about responsibility." "It's how they pull their weight in the family."But I couldn't assign her tasks any more than I can assign tasks to my wife.…
Boak and Bailey made a point a couple of weeks ago which struck a chord with me. They said "We’ve decided to spend a week blogging like it’s 2008 again: more posts, shorter posts, and more bouncing off other bloggers." Ah the good old days.Back then when I used to post a lot - and I've been having a look at my old stuff and you should too - it's great stuff and a lot of it short. A remark about a pub or two, or a beer, or a little industry comment. Maybe a longer piece about a more complex…
And finally, the best of the rest, as they say. I have so many photos but rather than overwhelm my blog (and you) with images, here are 4 more amazing pieces from this fantastical exhibit. ice cub man flat man emergent man Honestly, the guy encased in the “ice” box was very disturbingly real looking. While the guy coming out of the floor was 6 foot tall from the hips, a veritable giant of a man — if he were, in fact, real. And finally, floating man … floating man Like this sleeping guy was…
After (re-)discovering an old Weekly Airwaves episode I made nearly 15 years ago, I now know the format to follow to get back into music podcasting After picking up a new action camera, I'm getting all sorts of ideas for how to use it: film my bike rides; film my LEGO and puzzle sessions; get a harness to attach to my dog Reply by email Share this post Mastodon Bluesky
Wildfire smoke in Pittsburgh before sunset 16 July 2026 (photo by Kate St. John) 17 July 2026 Yesterday while I wrote about the raging wildfires in western Ontario, 1000 miles from Pittsburgh, their smoke was blowing in our direction. By 8:00am yesterday I could see it as faint haze. By sunset it had turned the sun orange. The smoke was so thick that John English did not need a filter to photograph the sun, complete with sunspot. Sun in wildfire smoke, Homestead, PA, 16 July 2026 (photo by John…
We are on the verge of a two-week trip involving time with my parents, and then a road-trip to visit Rob and to visit a bestie who lives in the town where Paul and I got married and where Rob was born. I get a little flustered packing for one/familiar journey, but this is a whole new pack of eggs. A major soothing element is that with a ROAD TRIP it is super easy to stop somewhere and buy something. It can even be FUN. For example, we are going to need a cooler, and Paul suggested we buy it at…
Dare to suck is, for all intents and purposes, my friend Pete’s motto. I’ve been playing Irish music with Pete since about 2010, and for as long as I’ve known him, he has encouraged people in his seisiúns to dare to suck. (I recently learned the phrase did not originate with Pete, I believe it came from someone else he used to play with before my time.) He says it to newcomers to encourage them to lead tunes when they’re reticent; he says it of himself and other more experienced players when a…
The remnants of last night’s weather lingered into the sunrise hours this morning. This bit of storm cell to our west continued to evolve as I embarked on my morning walk. The two photos are taken 15 minutes apart.
The Canadian wildfire smoke rolled into town yesterday. Wednesday, we went to bed with clear skies. Thursday morning, I took the dog out in the morning, and there it was: a terrible smell, a yellowish haze, and a dramatic decrease in air quality – so much so that many summer events around town are getting […]
And the music?Man . . .The music has always meant everything to me.Or if not everything, the music has always meant something to me.understand? I swear there is nothing quite like the gift of sound. And, so, should I ever lose my ability to hear, then at least I will have my memory to sing me to sleep when I need it the most. I cannot say that I have an ear like Beethoven’s. No, he is the one who lost his hearing and somehow, Beethoven was able to create symphonies from his memory.He converted…
Pevsner's PershoreThe second part of Jonathan Meades Travels with Pevsner details Pershore. A perfectly intact Georgian town.A Walk Midlands Rail Trail from WalkMidlands has been on the to-do list for a while. Time to knock this off, and investigate Toyah-town with eyes afresh.After a couple of city walks, it's good to be in the countryside again, even if this falls at the boring end of the walking scale. We have flat agricultural fields - burnt to a crisp, hard underfoot and with significant…
There's a scene early in The Name of the Rose involving barrels of pigs' blood. It was autumn, and time to slaughter the pigs, but of course you wouldn't want to waste the blood.You could not, however, just let the blood pour into a container and sit, because it coagulates quickly and becomes unusable. If you intend to try any recipes using fresh blood, remember that you must immediately stir the fresh blood constantly while it cools (if you've ever made a hollandaise, you'll know how tedious…
What I am up to now. Check out my /now page for the latest update. This is going to be a very brain-dumpy update. There’s a lot that has happened since my last update to my /now page! Two weeks ago on July 1, my son was born! He and his mom are healthy and doing well. In fact, this postpartum period has felt much easier than our first kid, which has been a huge blessing. I’ve been enjoying my 4 weeks of parental leave to spend time with him and my family. Also, I am using this time to update my…
WIet's get back to normal here and start off the week right. Since we could all use a good laugh, John at Cult TV Blog has the answer: the Monty Python Science Fiction Sketch. I think it marks the first time I ever heard the word "blancmange," and life hasn't been the same since.At Comfort TV, David continues his series on "Still Stuck in the 1970s,"which is as good a catalog as you're going to find explaining why so many of us of a certain age despair at what our culture has been. Be sure to…
Playing with braids in the summer.
Maybe I should be happy that I don't have to run AI on all my machines. I cannot afford to buy all the memory and chips at these prices in this economy. Maybe there is still joy in writing PHP codes by hand. Maybe there is still joy in figuring out things by thinking and testing and trying. Maybe there is still joy to be had in the simple things. Stop worrying about whether you can afford to get more RAM and more CPU, and try to capture joy in whatever you already have and whatever you can…
Welcome to this week's Link Dump!And greetings from the Strange Company mail room!A teenager who died in the American Revolution has finally been identified.An ancient Roman fossil collector.The strange case of the "Leavenworth Look-Alikes."The legend of what may have been the first underwater tunnel.Casual snapshots of the Romanovs.The strange case of the Beale Ciphers.A diplomat's widow with murder on her mind. Lots of murder.A tour of Icelandic turf houses.A mysterious death in a toilet.…
A lesson I keep reflecting on: given time and opportunity, people surprise you. Some unravel in unexpected ways when the going gets tough. Others come through in those same circumstances. And some have a knack of following a poor first impression with interactions that just keep getting better. It’s in our nature to form first impressions and have strong initial reactions. But those first impressions are just single data points — dots. Best to make decisions based on lines, not dots.
I miss stuff. Stuff used to be everywhere. I watched The Lost Boys recently. It occurred to me that stuff clutters every shot of 80s films, trinkets, knickknacks, gumph, it clogs up the screen to the point of distraction when compared to the barren surfaces of modern television. All my life I’ve been told that stuff is the enemy. Excess weight. A morass of barnacles clinging to the underside of our lives that must shaken off in periodical decluttering frenzies. The stuff we accumulate today is…
