Please enjoy some camera focus adventures (and bonus flowers) This morning, one of the cats was sunbathing in the window and what struck me was the "golden hour" light that was hitting them; usually that's rad as hell and super photogenic but as it was 11am I had a bit of concern. Going outside, I found the sky a shade of brown/orange that can only be described as "Hollywood movie set in Mexico or the Middle East". By about 7pm, we had this blood-red sun in the sky and it looked ominous as…
Well, that's done! They finished everything just before the rain arrived, so we got lucky. There was some smokiness returning as well, and the weather seems to have pushed that out too. They've got to let those walls cure a bit and then they'll take down the bracing and begin working on the slab. I have to figure out where the PEX piping will go for the radiant heat. But first they have to lay out the plumbing, interior wall footers, add stone to bring everything up to grade, compact it all,…
Recently, I was talking with an online friend that I met in the FGC community. We quickly developed a kind of gaming friendship where we discovered that we both shared the same interests and played the same games, other than fighting stuff. In our last conversation, he told me that he was basically quitting fighting games due to a lack of progression. I was a little bit confused about that since he seemed to enjoy playing fighting games together. When I asked him, he told me, "I'm not…
Heads-up: This post is a bit of a bummer so stay away if you’re looking for something positive. When I went to open the bedroom curtains this morning, I did not expect the outside to look like it was lit by a giant night lamp. This is a photo I took in the apartment at 10 a.m.: And here’s our backyard: The photos don’t do it justice, so I measured the colour temperature of the outside with a white balance card: It’s 3000K outside right now! A normal sunny day is typically around 5600K. For…
Weird technology mistakes: on Saturday I just wanted to add one of our family gatherings to my calendar on the iPhone. I typed “Family gathering” and the phone helpfully used all the information from an old family gathering, (2019!) copied them into the new entry – and then sent out an invitation everyone who was invited back then. At least it was the right side of the family and nobody was shunned since then, it would have been even more embarrassing. Change feels like a personal attack: “my”…
In 2012, the first Danish wolf in nearly two hundred years was discovered in the northwestern part of the country. Their numbers increased slowly in the years that followed, and by 2020, fewer than ten wolves were still being tracked. But then the population began to rise sharply: around 14 in 2021, 30 in 2022, as many as 80 by the end of 2024, and probably close to a hundred today.At first glance, this is a heartwarming story. The wolf, in the abstract, is a majestic creature. It's great to…
About three weeks ago, a neighbor down the street posted to a local group that she found an orange cat laying on her porch. She’d brought him in for the night, but was looking for his person. The next day, I was outside chatting with my next-door neighbor when a woman drove by asking if we’d seen two loose cats. I said, “No, but our neighbor down the block found one yesterday.” I connected them, and the woman happily took her cat back home, thanking us. She’d just gotten two cats from a friend.…
Bumped into a few people on this evening's dog walk. One of them wasn't even on land.50 words · 1 image
Backpacking is about more than gear and permits. Drawing on the Babylon Fire and the recent Bears Ears reduction, here are on some thoughts on why stewardship also means caring about the future of our public lands. Read More ... Continue reading More thoughts on the once and future Bears Ears at PMags.com.
When winter settles over your beehive home, the pace of life in the hive slows to a crawl. The surviving workers cluster together around the queen and gently buzz their muscles to maintain a safe internal temperature. The hive burns through its honey reserves and prepares for spring. Step 1: Keep the Hive FedIn order for the hive to survive the winter, the number of filled surplus honeycomb cells must equal or exceed the population of the hive. Empty one surplus honeycomb cell per adult worker…
These last couple days were alright. Yesterday I wasn't feeling great (still think it was that darn water boil advisory) but I still got some chores done, like getting my library card renewed and going to the bmv. Today I finisbed what couldn't be done yesterday, and while today was shorter it was still nice. I enjoyed making some veggie fried rice, watching a a stream of that neat train game, watching a jerma video, knocking out dishes, and prepping for work tomorrow. Now I'm just gonna chill…
I was studying, like, last night and noticed that I was tired as fuck during the process of writing a few queries while watching a video explanation on how to use the best parameters in a database. Yeah, after a day of more than 8 hours of work, 5 different meetings, more than 40 messages sent, and 1 hour of gym after work, of course I would be destroyed when I was supposed to study. Then I started to pressure myself to achieve results, like, "your time is running out. While you're playing…
I don’t like talking about Nic Cage movies, because every time I do I get this nudge-nudge-wink-wink “yeah Cage is so great right?” thing where I know my conversation partner means no he’s actually not. Or they express their dislike and think I’m doing an “I like Nic Cage” thing for the bit. But no, I actually really like Nicolas Cage as an actor. I like his bombastic style. I like his funky choices, even that he made bad ones like Ghost Rider. I like that he owned a haunted house in New…
honestly, this is a mixed bag. the last weeks are a rolercoaster of emotions. i find myself laughing to myself in the park and with tears in a museum looking at a photograph from okinawa. usually i am, it sounds harsh writing it down, ok with leaving people behind. taking “the next step”, looking for the new always was of importance. today i feel different. this also has to do with the recently bought plane ticket. i can see the end of a year in japan. with this, the temporary pause of…
Imagine if there was one thing, just-one-thing that most Americans could agree on, that most Americans actually want. Imagine this one magical something that most Americans could unite on; if only something like that actually existed- something like, something like... The Epstein Files!!! You'd think the Dems would have had their act together and hammered away at Todd Blanche at his DOJ confirmation meeting on the very biggest vulnerability that any and every semi-sane person can easily agree…
I woke up this morning with that realization, after having slept on it, to the sound of the cosmos... ...which, actually, was 'just' Ludwig Göransson's inchorprandible soundtrack to Christopher Nolan's adaptation of Homer's epic, as I walked home alone and along Bay Street to home, at almost midnight last night, after having taken in the 8 PM showing at AMC Metreon. And yes, I just made up that word to describe the soundtrack [and by the way who the heck is Göransson and why hadn't I heard any…
2026-07-09Hello! After a month, the headache of repair and replacement has concluded.This is my camera, returned to me. It hasn't been fixed. The repair costs proved to be more expensive than I could handle, and the camera could not be sold for parts or for any meaningful trade-in value.While at the camera store, it was cleaned, inspected, and deemed worthless. I got a free body cap and third-party battery out of it, though! They even returned it without charging me.I looked to used stores and…
Interesting examination of whether therapists are too quick to suggest patients cut off ties with their parents. Of 7,000 estranged parents in a recent survey, some 3,000 said they believed a therapist had played a role in the split.→ The Wall Street Journal
AOMO – Art of missing out BOMO – Beauty of missing out COMO – Chagrin of missing out DOMO – Delight of missing out EOMO – Ecstasy of missing out FOMO – Fear of missing out GOMO – Guilt of missing out HOMO – Happiness of missing out IOMO – Indignation of missing out JOMO – Joy of missing out KOMO – Knack of missing out LOMO – Love of missing out MOMO – Meal of missing out (South Asian dumpling) NOMO – Need of missing out OOMO – Obligation of missing out POMO – Pride of missing out QOMO – Quality…
What’s the point of putting things into my read-it-later app? Actually, I know the point: it gives me a false sense of accomplishment. I now have this essay in my possession. It makes me feel good about myself immediately—without doing the thing. Even though I wrote a somewhat negative review of Erich Fromm’s To Have or to Be? it made me remember a crucial insight about knowledge. If my relationship with knowledge is to hoard information, I’ve missed the whole point. I need to bend, squeeze,…
Still from "Clotheslines," directed by Roberta Cantow, 1982.*Sawyer Made split-step stool, for Walker Street Market, photographed by Winnie Yang via The Secret Strategist.*"Ideal Hollow" by Nichola Manning, via drifting lament.*Shell buttons, via slow roads.*Detail of "an exquisite, finest muslin early 1800s French hand embroidered shawl," sold by starchedandcrumpled.*Photo of H.D. and a child on a beach in California, collections of the Beinecke Library.*"The pleasure I take from these…
Status: Hot again. Not heatwave-hot but still a bit sweaty. Resigned to taking it easy this week with just one little thing happening on Thursday afternoon. Had both great-nephs over briefly this afternoon. Younger G wanted to see all the things and stroke the rabbits. Older M was a bit burned out but still chatty. We’ve agreed to do some uncle/aunting over the next few weeks so looking forward to seeing them. Have taken the first step towards a special Sunday edition of this newsletter. Will…
MEANWHILE, IN TEXAS: SCENE 13, TAKE TWO: Starship Flight Test 13 now scheduled for NET July 23, with the launch window opening at the same time as the previous attempt, 5:45 PM CT (6:45 PM ET/22:45 UTC). Hopefully she flies this time, after a pad abort kept the craft grounded moments before T-0.
It’s surprising to me how I haven’t spent a great deal of time exploring Italian coffee culture, especially given my proclivity for consuming said beverage. I’ve been reliably informed that Australia’s coffee snobbery was derived in large part by waves of Italian and Greek immigration (and German, which included my dad). It’s regularly cited as the reason why chains like Starbucks have struggled to get as much of a foothold in the country, though I’ve argued that’s but one factor. One of these…
2026-07-08Hello!This is my favorite photograph from the fireworks event on July 4. If I wasn't interested in telling a complete story of my experience at the display (and the heavy storm that followed), I would be publishing this photo by itself.I've already written about what happened that night in the previous three articles (I have a pattern of writing three photograph series). In short, I went to a firework display at night, watching from a shopping mall parking lot. Behind me, storm clouds…
Moving is not for the faint of heart! The surgeon general should issue a warning against moving houses after age 50. Coordinating our cross-country move was one of the hardest thing I had done. Selling our house in Buffalo, finding a suitable rental house in the Bay Area, figuring out the logistics of the move, getting rid of the furniture we wouldn't transport, boxing everything up, and then on the other side unboxing everything and buying new furniture... It was simply exhausting.Our move has…
Media Logs now has a table of contents allowing you to jump to any entry instantly. About a College Girl Who Gets Picked Up at a Mixer by an Older Girl entry got fucked up at some point and absorbed many other entries so it is now fixed as well.. Return of Yuri. Maybe I'll do the same update to my yaoi log someday
Read the full post at - 90% of everything is sanding e.g. laundry This is so true for all of life -> https://interconnected.org/home/2026/02/06/sanding I’d actually add a corollary – the more interesting / lucrative / impressive an activity or position is…the more “sanding” is involved. We all think that life is like TV. It’s not. At all. Everything is just like woodworking where like 10% of doing it is cool & interesting and the rest is sanding. The point is – do you like the “sanding” part of…
August is coming up, which means Blaugust, a challenge in which bloggers try to post 31 times in August, is also coming up. I participated last year and won the gold award, meaning I posted 25-30 times. I was two away from the rainbow diamond award. I also burned out hard at the end of the challenge and didn't post anything for a month and a half. I don't think doing Blaugust is fully to blame, I was having a rough month in general and overburdened myself, but it does make me wonder if trying…
I wrote up my experience building a backyard office because I wish I had come across more articles like this when planning my build. I hope this post helps you
