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…
Our youngest daughter and I are headed out on our drive cross country to California. Today we go from Charlottesville, Virginia to Forest City, Arkansas. Total estimated time: 12h 2m
Years ago, when landlines were still common and Internet shopping was not, I got a phone call from a policeman, who said he was in Selfridges and did I know where my credit card was? Suppressing the triggered memories of It’s 10 PM. Do you know where your children are?, I said, yes, yes, I did. He pressed on. Was I sure? Because someone in Selfridges was trying to use it. Could I go look? Laziness and certainty led me to balk. I also puzzled over this unlikelihood: a policeman in central London…
I went back to visit the group show some time after the opening. I took away one of the foam kickboards, which now seemed extraneous. The little constructions on the long plastic folding table had more room. Some olive oil from the little circle on the table had, over the intervening days, dripped and pooled neatly onto the polished concrete floor. Would it stain? It still looked right. While installing, I’d had the idea—unheard of—to pour this olive oil, almost hi-viz green, onto one of the…
“You’ve got Mail!”Sometimes I find it difficult to become inspired to go out to photograph. I just don’t feel like it. I’m sure many of you have experienced the same feeling. It is especially hard when the summer temperatures are above 90º F (32º C) and the humidity is up around 75% (on July 4th my backyard weather station recorded a high temperature of 102º F and a Heat Index of 130º F! In my 53 years in Virginia I cannot remember reaching that temperature nor Heat Index). However, being…
Two weeks ago, Aqueduct Racetrack closed permanently. If you are not interested in horse racing – and the sport has declined precipitously from its peak before World War II – it was possible to live in New York and not know that Aqueduct existed. Its location in southern Queens is out of the way unless you’re heading to JFK airport, the disappearance of Off-Track Betting parlors killed TV coverage of its races, and whatever attention non-fans pay to horse racing here tends to go to the track at…
You go down empty-handed or the telling is a lie. That was the first thing Weha put in me, before the breath work, before the shelves, before she ever let me past the first drop. A teller carries nothing up. Not one shell, not one fish, not the smallest bright thing you fall in love with at nine fathoms and want to keep. You take a reef by leaving it exactly as full as you found it, and you bring the whole of it up in your chest instead, where it can’t weigh anything or be spent. I go down at…
Well, if I was in the Bay Area, I would go
So I’m in a dental chair, and it’s not going well.This is not the fault of my dentist. His name is Brian, and he’s excellent. He’s also 14 years old. Not in real years, but in Dental Relativity Years, by which I mean relative to my previous dentist, a man named Stanley who worked on my teeth for decades until he retired at age 90.I loved Stanley, although when I say that he worked “on” my teeth, what I actually mean is that he worked “in the vicinity of” my teeth. He couldn’t physically engage…
Earlier this week, I went to the studio of a neighborhood friend. She wanted to make cards out of cut paper, and I was happy to try my hand. She had the supplies, including papers we painted earlier in the year for a retreat. If you look closely, you can see the hymnbook print behind the paint.One approach is to look for words that match the picture or mood. I rarely did that. I was primarily looking for the colors that I needed. But when I returned to the picture below to add some additional…
Today I went for what felt like a much longer bike ride than it was. I did a 32km round trip to the next town over, unfourtunately it was rolling hills the entire way which I'm not sure yet if I like less than a straight incline, because in the latter the way back would be entirely downhill which is awesome. I also found a leak in the massive pipeline that brings water from the river into adelaide. I called the water company about it and on my way back I saw people from the water company drive…
two of threeForgot that I had these. Made 3 jigs for holding stock to plane the end grain flat and square. The 3rd one I tossed because the stop had warped and flattening it would not have been worth the effort and calories.hmm.....Almost clear and empty. It had been a long time since so much real estate had been laid bare on my workbench. At the far end I had to glue my sandpaper tearing thing back together.wowNo before pic but this corner is finally cleared out. I've been dumping all kinds of…
Listening to two acquaintances argue about if AI art is "art" is not a new experience for me, the now eternal debate between Doomer and Boomer. In this particular context, I'm listening to it as I wait for my surprisingly expensive iced latte in downtown Copenhagen. This coffee shop is one of my favorites, a small hole in the wall where the shop starts on the second floor. Everything is hand painted in a way I associate with the hippie roots of Copenhagen. They have an older golden retriever…
EMF started yesterday, and last week I wanted to do something nerdy to justify my attendance. To quote the website: Electromagnetic Field is a non-profit camping festival for those with an inquisitive mind or an interest in making things: hackers, artists, geeks, crafters, scientists, and engineers So, as conversation of attendance, and the site began to be set up, the nerdy bug caught me and I decided to build a thing. Last time I went to EMF, I found that I kept losing people on site (because…
It has long been a tradition that ahead of the summer period a batch of brewers from the US crosses the Atlantic and brings with some interesting beers to share with thirsty beer writers as part of the work undertaken by the Brewers Association. It’s been a pleasure to attend a number of lunches the…
As a weird kid of the ’70s, I advise the weird kids of today not to trust any of your secrets to any adult who is an “authority” of any kind: not teachers, not clergy, not doctors or therapists. If you want adult guidance, you need to find a cool, wise adult who cannot be compelled by law to tattle. When I was a teen this was an easier decision to make, in a way; most adult authority-figures just spouted the party line, and very few pretended to be trustworthy people a troubled teen could…
It seems like there's less smoke in the air this morning. I can't smell it, but I still can't see the west side of Seneca Lake. We're hoping to pour concrete on Tuesday, weather permitting. Backup is Thursday. Meetings on Tuesday about lighting and the deck and porch. Making some progress on the HVAC design. Hope to have something soon to shop around to some plumbing and heating contractors in the area. I received the demo kit for the CleanLife LED low-voltage DC lighting the other day. I put…
8630/21549Maybe because my bad immune system meant I avoided the damp Hell of the swimming changing rooms, but I really enjoyed this trip to Center Parcs and feel sad it's over so soon. Occasionally badmington based tantrums aside, the kids are now old enough for more fun possibilities to open up. We still have to deal with sibling rivalries and frustrations, but the balance is shifting to a place where there's more fun than annoyance. 85% of the badmington match was really good fun, though the…
It seems like it wasn’t that long ago that the fifth edition of the Music City Grand Prix (MCGP) last ran. If you look at the calendar, you realize that it has not yet been a year. For the past two seasons, the MCGP served as the season finale. In 2024, it was run in […]
"Hmmm, probably an 8. On the other hand, why wouldn't I give it a 9? It's among the top 3 movies I've watched this year." -- Robert, struggling to rate. Robert wrote a post about rating movies and how hard it is to rate a movie on a scale, so much he's been avoiding it completely. I have a suggestion to ease this terrible burden. First off, what happens when a new movie wins the spot in your heart for best movie of the year? Will you downgrade the others? And the best movie of your life, the…
Last week Andrew gave some great recommendations for summer reading. At the risk of self-promotion let me add another recommendation. Sometimes it’s good to get away from it all. Life gets busy and it feels like everything is crowding in. It can be hard to think straight, to see straight. Sometimes it’s good to get a completely different view. During a time of sabbatical leave I spent two weeks hiking a section of the GR10 path in the French Pyrenees. This is a famous long-distance route that…
The best thing that happened this week I haven't had the best week since I fell sick with the flu which prevented me from getting any kind of quality sleep in for the past six days in a row now. It's been a struggle to get anything done at all. What we did do though is we finally went to a place to look at new doors for our house. The current ones are cheap and bending because of humidity from when the house was built. Next week someone will come to our house to measure the doors and then…
Nathaniel has been sent home from daycare again, with suspected hand foot and mouth disease (aka coxsackie). As you may recall, he had this back in January. As you may also recall, I also had this back in January, with much more severe symptoms.The timing is ... interesting. My parents were here to visit and literally left this morning. In fact, they were still at PDX airport when we got the call. I admit, my first thought was "great -- Nathaniel's sent home right when we lose extra…
Hey, if your reading this I hope you are well. Wherever you are in the world and whatever device you are reading this on right this second, I hope you are doing OK fellow internet person. I mean it. I'm tired. This week has been a lot of work, and never feeling like there is enough time in the week to do things. I miss the weird hours I used to work. This Mon-Fri thing, with normal office hours might not be all that it's cracked up to be. One of my team I am in charge of handed her notice in…
You know what, I was kind of busy last week with my OCC project, and I was also building a website for a friend who is opening her own doctor's office, and so I completely forgot that my blog turned three years old last Thursday! Well I actually didn't completely forget, but I was convinced that the date of my first post was July 19th, while it was actually July 9th. Whoops. The human brain is weird, I still remember the birthdays of people I haven't seen or spoken to in 25 years. But then…
Today we have a rather strongly themed monthly round-up for June’s models. Yep! Every one of June’s completed models are from a single faction in a single game. Not that I didn’t also work on a bunch of other random things, but the completed stuff did manage to be tightly focused. Not that I didn’t also work on a bunch of other random models over the course of the month as the most common way I paint models isn’t actually painting a few from start to finish, but chipping away at often up to a…
