It's finally summer out here in the prairies. The lilac bushes outside my townhouse are blooming with deep purples. A rich, powdery aroma comes from the plant. The softness of roses and jasmine with warm, nutty hints of almond, along with a crisp, slightly green freshness. Lilacs carry the meaning of being the harbinger of renewal. It's been fifteen months or so since I graduated university and my life has been going by so quickly. It's hard to grasp that an entire year has now passed me by.…

I depend on this daily/weekly routine to be as productive as I can be. This is an update from a previous workflow which used Trello. Now, I use Google Tasks in tandem with Gmail and Google Calendar. Tools I Use Google Calendar Gmail Google Chat Google Tasks Jira Trello (for personal tasks) Gemini and Google Workspace Studio (for AI agents) My Step-by-Step Planning Flow Preparation: Choose a single “inbox” for workPreviously, I was overwhelmed by notifications from too many sources: Jira, Google…

Welcome to the world, remote control. We’re happy to have you with us, laptop monitor. You’re free, cellphone. AWESOME! Want a new awesome thing every day? Sign-up here: Photo from: here The post #654 Peeling that thin plastic film off new electronics appeared first on 1000 Awesome Things.

In late March, I wrote that I'd acquired a tiny, nearly credit-card-sized e-reader and had been regularly using it. I still am! Several months later, it remains in the main bag I use when I leave the house, and I use it most days of the week. I've since used it to read numerous old mystery novels (as research for a project) completely comfortably. I recently kicked off reading a bunch of communist theory... also as research for a project. Much of my "job" right now is reading, so it's good to…

When I started my current job, the first couple of weeks were similar to most other places. HR induction, reams of information, sources, names, services, all thrown at me in the first few days, you know the drill. They also had set up some introductory meetings with people around the business. Not necessarily anyone I’d be working with directly, just a few people who took 30 mins out of their day to give me an overview of what they did and how they viewed the company. It was an excellent way to…

What’s your top tip to be successful in life? Okay, WordPress. Slow down. I mean, people love asking this question because they expect some profound answer. Wake up at 4:30 a.m. Manifest abundance. Drink green juice. Read seventeen books a week. Network with billionaires. Become one with your planner. My top tip is much simpler. Lower the bar just enough that you can occasionally step over it. I don’t mean abandon all ambition and spend your days becoming one with the couch cushion. Although…

When the agent does the typing, your fundamentals quietly atrophy. Why it happens now, and the habits I'm using to stay sharp.

A still from Geri’s Game (1997)Welcome! We’re back with another Sunday edition of the Animation Obsessive newsletter. This is the plan:1. The early development of Pixar’s human characters.2. Animation newsbits.3. The last word.A note before we start. Last week, we premiered the Congolese short Machini (2019) online, and the response was wonderful. Unfortunately, some readers ran into technical problems with the embedded video, so we’re sharing a fresh link (watch here) that should work for…

Yesterday, Sylvia shared a few thoughts stemming from her post shared on Mastodon: I'm building a new habit here on Mastodon: instead of liking, I try to reply to at least 3 posts, especially on those that don't have comments yet and I love it. It's so much more personal! - @sylvia@social.lol And while I strongly encourage you to read the entirety of her post, she discovered that people who engaged with her fell into two distinct groups: Those who loved the idea and planned to follow suit Those…

I eked out a little more listening time this week (but still not enough!) to Abdullah Ibrahim who passed away last week. I find his discography confusing, and I don’t know of any real guide to it. As a result, I’ve always restlessly scrolled through it listening to things that I like rather than trying to get a sense for his development as a musician. I have always had a soft spot for Ibrahim’s unusual 1977 recording The Journey which featured among others Don Cherry and Hamiet Bluiett (and Roy…

The following is a talk I gave in the spring of 2021, during COVID and when I was a (miserable) grad student working on a PhD in history. My studies focused on Black print culture, and understanding the ways in which fiction was used as a platform for Black social- and cultural criticism. While I left the program the following year, this little project was the culmination of years of trying to answer the question of how one might study a people that was brutally suppressed, without smuggling…

A couple of days ago I, like apparently the entire Indie Web, came across that "No, I Won't Buy You A Coffee" blog post, and, oh boy, did that hit me at the "right" time. In it the author complains about the "rampant capitalization and constant advertisements" they see reflected in those "if you liked this post, you can buy me a coffee" messages at the end of otherwise ad- and monetization-free blog posts. First, let me say that I actually agree with a lot of the sentiment here. I'm sick and…

I grew up in a Catholic family in Boston. As you can imagine, this was an especially Catholic upbringing. I loved being religious. For my first communion, my grandmother gave me a gold cross on a gold chain. I would kiss the cross before walking up to the plate at my little league baseball games, feeling the grooves of the gum I’d packed in my lip with my tongue to settle my nerves against a familiar texture. At night, in the room I shared with my two brothers, I’d sit crosslegged on the gray…

I’ve recently been looking around for some place that isn’t Instagram, isn’t Flickr, but is a quiet place to share some of (what I consider) my better photos. I am not a photographer but I like capturing moments… So I was delighted when Peter Gombos post I wanted Bear Blog, but for my photos bubbled up into my view. I checked it out and it is both beautiful but quietly thoughtful. Here’s my photo journal and it’s safe to say I think this is a winner. It may even prompt me to upload photos more…

In early June, while visiting my parents in a small town in the interior of Brazil, I decided to skip the gym and make a quick run to the pharmacy — the first signs of a migraine had set in, and that’s the best time to take something before it gets worse. The nearest pharmacy is about 1,5 km (a mile) away. I laced up my running shoes to make it worth the trip: a light walk to pick up the medicine. On the way back, I decided to change my route and loop through a small square where, when I used…

Rolfe Winkler, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (Apple News+): Apple plans to raise prices on its products to offset the surging costs of memory and storage chips, Chief Executive Tim Cook said in an exclusive interview with The Wall Street Journal. “Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” he said. “We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become…

Earlier this week I wrote about the newly announced under-16 social media ban for the UK. The post has so far been one of my most read on this blog so far (spotlight helps). This is unsurprisingly a hot topic, but has also got me thinking about my relationship with technology and the web around that age. Especially after speaking with a colleague who has a 16 year old son. I grew up in a rural area, so communication technology was always lagging behind the urban areas. TV signal could be spotty…

this time on stealing links from bubblesjamesg made a post on blogger archetypes (i got explorer and author)and it made me think about personality quizzesand when i start thinking oh boy do i get to ramble(sorry in advance if this is incoherent)but like as someone with a lot of anxiety and not much ability to describe myselfpersonality quizzes and the like are absolutely fascinating and stuff to meas like a way to see what my tendencies make people think of methis one was relatively good i…

Book review for Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe. I rated it 5 stars I’ll admit I had heard only vaguely of “The Troubles” of Ireland and that there was some car-bombing involved by the IRA. So this book served as a nice overview of that period (albeit a little slow to get through - it took me two weeks). As a little bit of a primer, and for my own notes since I always find the UK to be a bit hard to wrap my head around (what is a…

Inspired by my recent work on the Join the Fediverse zine, I decided to further explore the mini-zine medium, starting with a short walkthrough on how to get started with making your own website (or a blog). RE: https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/115418060743537770This took a bit longer than expected, but it's finally here: the "Join the Fediverse!" zine!https://jointhefediverse.net/zine?lang=en-us#fediverse #JoinTheFediverse #zine— Stefan Bohacek (@stefan@stefanbohacek.online)

On June 11th, PetaPixel published a post entitled Photographers Are Tired of Big Cameras by Jaron Schneider, which had an intriguing premise but fell a bit flat on delivery. This article is my attempt to fix that. This is perhaps what Jaron should have said. While sitting at a train station in Osaka, Japan, Chris Niccolls stated, “I’m thinking of buying a new camera.” This might seem extremely innocuous, a common phrase uttered by most photographers as frequently as trains depart the Osaka…

At the end of May, my husband and I took a 3-day road trip down to Izu. It’s a peninsula directly south of Mt Fuji in Shizuoka prefecture, and the main road runs right alongside the coastline, so you can enjoy some great seaside views, not to mention all the little caves and beaches you can check out along the way. To drive around the whole coastline of Izu - from Odawara to Numazu - is a little over 200km, and can technically be done in 6 hours. However realistically speaking, when you factor…

I’ve become more and more disenchanted with ebooks these days. I know, I’ve posted about this before. But bear with me because my brain has been buzzing about it lately. On the one hand, I like having a book with me wherever I go. On the other hand, I hate that I don’t actually own those books. And yeah, I know I could go through the effort of getting Calibre and removing the DRM and getting a Kobo and blah. It’s just too much effort for the 20-30 books that I already have physical copies of.…

I woke up with a migraine today. This happens sometimes. Often, paradoxically, after a night of more sleep than my typical amount of way too little. As I was slowly gaining consciousness I discovered an email from Ko-fi. Someone had sent me a tip, with a very lovely message, thanking me for the Buying Coffee post. I actually teared up a little. It also got me thinking and made me realize another aspect I hadn't thought of before: Effort. People showing their appreciation by pushing those two…

My woodworking shop is coming together nicely and one benefit of having everything in the right place is that it makes completing new projects faster and easier.Last week, I decided to tackle I project I've been thinking about since January, which was when I first watched a YouTube build video and immediately ordered a set of cushions from Wayfair. It's a riff on a high-end outdoor sofa from West Elm that goes for over $5,000, the kind you might see in a fancy hotel's pool area. The real sofas…

The sixth episode of Wonders of Web Weaving is out:In Episode 6, I chat with Cory, the author of coryd.dev. We talk about, among other things, the role of community in the indie web, a day in the life with his website, and music listening and community as it relates to personal websites.I hope you enjoy the episode!Wonders of Web Weaving has an RSS feed you can use to follow along from wherever you get your podcasts. Cory coryd.dev The sixth episode of Wonders of Web Weaving is out Wonders of…

The Frances Hodgson Burnett novel A LITTLE PRINCESS was one of my very favorite books growing up, and I reread it many times.In fact, I still vividly remember picking out the paperback copy while shopping with my parents at Pickwick Books at South Coast Plaza when I was maybe seven years old, and I own it to this day.I have to admit to avoiding the Shirley Temple film version for most of my life simply because I knew that the screenplay, by Ethel Hill and Walter Ferris, used the book as a…

I met a man today. A stranger. I spoke to him. Setting the sceneIt's a miserable day. Wet, damp, cold. It's June, and I can only assume mother nature didn't get the memo that it's summer. Anyway, it's Scotland so we're used to random seasons. I grasped the opportunity to take the dog a walk as I'd calculated (unscientifically) that there was a short recess in the wet stuff. We headed towards the nature reserve a few minutes stroll from me — an elderly gentlemen was approaching us with his dog.…

I still don’t really know who Torontonians are. But I do know what I keep seeing. The post People of Toronto, Occasionally Naked – Spring 2026 Edition first appeared on Correr Es Mi Destino.

📺 Widow’s Bay is the best thing I have seen on TV all year, with good comedy, moments that are genuinely scary, callouts to many horror classics and a stellar cast. Will watch again.