Hi there. There’s been a lengthier-than-usual gap between Maurilia Station posts, since by mid-year, my creative activity and much else if my life had been purposefully dialled back. The plan has mostly held, but inevitably I find myself doing things. So, I’m back with an update of what I’ve been up to lately. I thought I’d change up the structure of these posts a little too, so I’ve put the shorter updates at the start, before plunging you – quite literally – into my compost bin. I figured it…

I've seen on youtube for a while these videos about reducing screen time. The thumbnail always has some ludicrously low screen time count sub-30 minutes. Which I feel already sets people with a certain expectation of how they themselves should have screen time. It seems to lead some to micromanaging their screen time data like a middle manager with nothing better to do. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't guilty of this. I would try my damnedest to get even below an hour. Then something dawned on…

I need to publish 26 more blog posts before November 11th to reach my goal of 100 posts in one year. This is my second time doing the 100 Days To Offload challenge. I've had some long dry spells in writing over the past year, but it the challenge has definitely helped motivate me to write more than I probably would have. A few people have even reached out to me via email about various posts and I've had some good conversations. I'll do a full recap in November. Here's hoping I can be consistent…

Well not really. It’s going on fall really so right now Siem Reap has beautiful cool mornings. Went out last night for beers. Met with bill. I had my fill. Done with barangs for a time. Now though let’s talk spring. Spring Coffee that is. Really nice and comfortable place not that far from the house. I can sit and write. Which means you will be able to read more blathering. Like usual the WiFi is stellar here. I have run into only a few places that have issues here. One of them is the house…

I know that this sounds so passe, but I honestly feel that the action of boycotting is never an old news. We boycott certain products/brands in different ways, times, and reasons. Also, since we are now rampant with the news of Indonesia getting burned (not “burning”. “Being/getting burned”. There’s a difference), there have been some discussions among Indonesians themselves on boycotting palm oil-derivatives products. One of them was an IG Reels by Nadya Hutagalung. Nadya was an MTV VJ for MTV…

Thanks to Claude I spent half an hour playing a game from my childhood that I had not seen running in more than 25 years.

Don’t you have time to read books? Leave a book in your kitchen table. This way, when you’re done eating, you can steal a few minutes from your routine to pick and read a book. That’s the perfect excuse to reduce your scrolling and pause to ease your digestion. Win-win for your body, mind, and spirit. That’s the strategy I’ve followed to read about 10 books so far. You can leave my books in your kitchen table. Available on paperback and Kindle too.

🌳 I have been spending more time offline this month... ...And part of that was a trip to Parc Montagne du Diable in Quebec. This park has all sorts of different options for camping, and me and partner rented a tiny house to spend a long weekend. It was very nice, we just needed to bring drinkable water, food and blanket. The house was equipped with fridge, an induction cooktop, microwave, towels, pillows and all basic kitchen utensils. It is very nice! I loved the minimalist vibe. There was no…

R&R: Rest and Repairs.After a 63-day hiatus, we're trying out camping again on a short trip beginning with camping at the Mueller State Park campground. After almost getting rid of the RV due to repair estimates, now that we have decided to keep her, might as well get some more use out of her. At least that's the plan for now, I'm not sure when and if I will head south and west into Arizona if at all this year. Mueller SP is a nice park, with 132 spaces for camping in high season. The weather…

It’s been another good recovery day, and I’m feeling better than I have in a very long time. It does mean keeping to restrictions is not easy! Still, I did manage to get a few useful things done. I’ve been able to make my own meals, even if it’s just reheating leftovers or making a … Continue reading A quiet day, saving seeds and garden progress

serve a sentence, asks the weary pointer and i just think: "save our souls?" "like that's not the natural condition?" "like how many rocks do you need for a typeface you'd see?" i asked you before: how do you grieve? and i still don't know - and to be honest, for once, i don't think i've ever really let anything go now, i'm asking: when were you last reduced to a desperate prayer? i will give you my answer, now oh, whoever, whichever, whatever, the name: take me, take me, and viva travesti, you…

Today was probably the first day in five years that I’ve done a proper day’s work. During COVID, they forgot about me in Scotland. The US office assumed I was reporting there, and the Scottish office decided I was America’s problem. That led to years of collecting a paycheck while I took long walks around Edinburgh and had brunch. The gravy train is over, it seems. I’m in the thick of it again, LARPing as a project manager. Dealing with consultants and corporate employees seconded to this…

⌾ : Fujifilm XT5.⚲ : Sydney Harbour. Nodding thoughtfully, I bluffed my way. I met these two young men on the ferry into the city today. They were carrying a couple of fishing rods, an overstuffed Transformers backpack and a large white plastic bucket of expectations. Although we stood next to each other on the back deck for the entire trip, I didn’t much speak to them. On my trip back, there were there again. This time I asked them if they had an luck. One of the boys pulled out his iPhone and…

I live in Ireland, and avoiding rain is a national pastime. Sadly the best data we have, which comes from Met Eireann the national meteorological service, is delivered in a pretty low quality app that makes it hard to use and understand. To fix this I built the app Rainy.ie It’s a simple but powerful web app that let’s you easily see where rain has recently been and the forecasts ahead, all by just moving the button at the bottom. That’s all it does, and it does it really well! The code is all…

Last week I was in the Public Records of Victoria (PROV) looking at records of the Melbourne mint. My substack about the Sydney mint by rights should come first, but I’m fresh-ish off the plane so I’m doing this one first. It was a bit extravagant building two mints in Australia. As I flicked through the massive file of equipment to order and repair I wondered why they built another one. I’d assumed it was just that Melbourne was much closer to where most of the gold turned out to be. Image…

Weekly cleaning and home improvement series, with some thoughts in between. Since I barely slept on Sunday and had a rigorous day, I let myself sleep in and turned off all alarms. It's now 13:12 and I'm eating my breakfast as a type this. No matter how late I wake up, I still eat breakfast. The term comes from "breaking fast," so semantically it still applies. Life feels like a jumbled mess these days. There are so many moving parts: relax, find job, pay bills, how to earn money?, sit up…

🏃 We had Field day over the weekend at Leo's school. Thankfully, the weather cooperated. The skies were blue, it wasn't too hot, and there was a cool breeze. Leo was very excited and did well. He placed second in his race (and only then because he looked to the side at the last seconds) Well done!👏. Just as important as placing well is he was positive about his placement and his effort. Nothing like his original races in pre-school where he just nonchalantly walked once it became clear he…

This post (give or take a day or two) will be one full year of me doing weeknotes! Crazy! I'll put my thoughts about weeknotes at the end of this post because I want to write about the fun stuff I did last week first. Two of my good friends Dan and Tayla got married in Newport this past weekend!! I was one of Dan's groomsmen and my friend Tim was his best man. Picked up my tux on Thursday and drove down to Newport the next morning for the rehearsal and the friends and family dinner. Hadn't been…

Stellantis, the company behind car brands like Fiat, Dodge, and Jeep, has a rocky history of releasing plugin hybrids that burst into flames as well as EVs that are consistently reviewed poorly and sell in ridiculously low quantities.Let's recap their EV journey so far.The Wagoneer SIn 2024, Jeep released the Jeep Wagoneer S, a pure EV luxury SUV that was a little odd. For one thing, the Wagoneer badge had come from a classic off-road ready family hauler, but this is a 600hp pavement monster…

1 day late, but it's my bearvesary! I was thinkin about this post like 2-3 weeks ago, but I really lost the habit of writing. May I pick it up again by writing this post. A lot has happened in these last two months that I didn't post, specially this last month. Somehow everything always happens around my birthday, in a good way. I got a new job at the start of this month, same position as before (full-stack dev), I was excruciatingly nervous for my first day, but all went well. I also had to…

Stepping off the train at Faversham station last Friday, a minute or two after midday, brought back quite a few memories. The four-platform station is more extensive than I remember but not untypical of other stations further along the line, at places such as Margate and Ramsgate. I ascended the steps, crossed the road and right in front of me was the Railway Hotel, an imposing and attractive red brick late, Victorian public house. Like many pubs in this pleasant north Kent town, the Railway is…

Last week I watched a really really really l o n g form YT video about productivity. Apparently this is better for increasing attention span and productivity than short form... I watched to the end because I thought the content might expand the way life lives me. [Generally, here, trusting life to unroll itself, including some loose priorities for the period between each new and full moon seems to create an enriching mix of scheduled stuff and surprise.] I also found the interviewee vivacious,…

Two Jack LakeSummaryIn which our intrepid travelers leave the United States and depart for our neighbor to the north, experiencing the joys (ha!) of modern air travel and the wonders of the Canadian Rockies.Day OneThe first of many selfies on this trip.Our two hour flight from Nashville to Toronto was relatively uneventful - and featured an empty seat beside us! Upon landing in Toronto, I had my first experience with Canadian border customs which was uniformly pleasant. (Key note: this is my…

September 2026 I had a good night sleep at the hotel and after breakfast, it was time to head back to Kunigiškiai so I could continue south from there. This is because this was the name of the village I got to yesterday when I walked from the airport. The quickest way to get there from where I was staying seemed to be to take the Airport Bus (route 31) to Palanga and then another bus from there. This is because the bus only continues from Palanga itself to the airport further north to connect…

Penny, the juvenile pigeon, came to us last week after being found in the city centre sitting on a windowsill all day, making no attempt to fly away when approached. At first, she wasn’t eating independently and I had to force-feed her by putting some defrosted peas in her mouth – she didn’t like this much and was definitely old enough to be feeding herself. So I gave her an iPad and played a pigeon loft YouTube video showing pigeons pecking at seeds. This did the trick! She immediately tried…

Late night prototyping a front panel with a daisy chain for a (hopefully) soon-to-be-made bag. There was a casualty of a broken needle, which was supposedly a more durable one for thicker and backed fabrics, but it didn't survive multiple passes through the webbing and fabric. Filed under scraps with tags: Sewing Reply by email or on the Fediverse Add an emoji reaction: 🥕 🚲 🐾 💜

two trembling bodies tangled together arranging limbs in a way that the greatest amount of skin is touching skin sticky with a taste of salt bodies melting together into a bundle of pulse and breath I am open and raw and yours and with the sharpest inhale I swallow all the air in the room but you still have some left to exhale burning hot air onto me as I squeeze my eyes shut and fail to trap the weight of the waterfalls washing away the fantasy a wish, a dream, a drop of fragile hope

These are some good resources that I’ve found over time. All links tested and working as of October 18 2026.Easier food for folks who are sick or disabledLow Spoons RecipesThe Sad Bastard Cookbook: Food You Can Make So You Don’t Die, a free ebook written by Zilla Novikov & Rachel A. Rosen, illustrated by Marten Norr. For people who have no energy to make food. Real about the struggle of taking care of yourself when sick or depressed. Nearly all vegan or offer vegan options.No More Ramen “a blog…

First fire!