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My wife went out of town Thursday so the back half of the week was devoted to Me Time stuff: video games podcasting building the LEGO DeLorean Reading Biking Baseball game Watched Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (it's the 40th anniversary this year!) Probably other things I'm not thinking of. The weather has turned out a lot nicer this week, although we are dealing with smoke—wildfires from both Northern Quebec & Northwestern Ontario. Most exciting this week was finding an Akaso Brave 7 LE on…
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
Yesterday the idea popped into my head to buy a cheap GoPro knock-off for recording video of my bike rides. That idea grew from reading Terence Eden's post, I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C. There are good enough smart watches and good enough wireless earbuds—surely the same can be true for action cams! I found some options on Amazon, several for $80 or less. The ones I had my eye on were around $50, and the reviews were mixed. Either people loved it for the price they paid,…
This is one of those weeks where a LOT happened, but I didn't really record it (outside my journal). There are some things I don't really want to share, or that I've shared already. My Obsidian "week in review" file for this week is entirely blank except for the day of the week that is added by my BASH script automatically. What else can I talk about? My sleep was generally okay last week. Not a surprise that it's because I was working remotely and didn't have to set an early alarm and rush…
I'm with my in-laws this week, and they like their classic television. One of the shows they've added to their "rotation"1 is MacGyver, the classic 1985 TV series2 starring Richard Dean Anderson, created by Lee David Zlotoff and Henry Winkler3. You might be familiar with the term "MacGyvering something" but maybe you didn't know it came from this TV show. The premise: Angus MacGyver's main asset is his practical application of scientific knowledge and inventive use of common items—along with…
My company laid off 230 people and closed 6 radio stations Tuesday morning. Tuesday and Wednesday were understandably frustrating days; first was shock (Tuesday) then frustration came (Wednesday). But I'm not here to talk about that. I've been trying to find ways to keep calm amidst the chaos and rapid change in my day-to-day work duties, and I found a couple of things. They're mostly distractions but as other people who've been in similar situations might attest, they're necessary. It might…
I've been pretty lucky with my epilepsy diagnosis; it was rough at the beginning with many seizures until my medication helped balance things but other than when I forget to take my meds, my seizures are under control. I subscribe to the /r/Epilepsy subreddit and every now and then I chime in on people's questions, or offer support. More often than not the posts are negative in nature, usually in the form of frustration with the diagnosis. But this morning, I found this post: Epilepsy Has Been…
I'm trying to balance distraction and getting work done today, so I have ideas for things to write but they're not getting the chance to finish percolating. So...thoughts. ¶ Actually I'm struggling now to figure out what even to write out in separate thoughts! I know that there are a few topics tumbling around in my head that I want to tackle: A photo blog post about the Pentax Espio 738G (I just got the first roll back at the end of last week) A write-up of my trip to Prince Edward Island—all…
I used to use my #echo tag for these posts, which triggers Robb's EchoFeed to automatically post to my Mastodon account. I decided this week I wouldn't bother—people will read these (or not) if they follow my RSS feed, or click through at random on Bubbles. I feel as though posting these notes to Mastodon is just cluttering up my own feed, and doesn't offer much of value1 to other people. Meta blogging out of the way, here are my notes for the week. Canada Day happened this week! As is…
An idea popped into my head this afternoon: create postcards from the pictures I took on vacation. I know that it's possible to do this with professional printers (Staples, independant shops, Canva, VistaPrint, w/e) but I wanted to figure out if I could do it at home rather than need to print in bulk. Turns out—it's possible, but it's not perfect. I've copied my rabbit hole search below, but the conclusion I've come to is that the "DIY cardboard backing" method might be more worth my time (and…
This morning I finally emptied the ink from my BIC Crystal. I was writing in my journal and just as I started writing about how surprised I was that the pen hadn't died yet, it died! For reference, check out my original post. ¶ I found a couple of new applications lately, both serving a different purpose. FastStone Image Viewer: I took a lot of pictures1 during my recent trip to Prince Edward Island and I wanted to tag photos for printing (and editing, if necessary2). There's no easy way to do…
While walking my dog the other day, I heard a cardinal singing nearby. I couldn't spot it right away, so I stopped to look up in the trees to find it. The trees weren't very dense so it took less than 30 seconds to find the small, bright-red male. After spotting him, I waited again until he whistled his tune; this time I could see him move his head and open and close his beak. This allowed my thoughts to stray to the idea of observing, and the different levels of observation we come across in…
Could I have had a more relaxing week & a half? Probably not. Wednesday June 17th (Week 25) my wife and I left for a wonderful vacation to Prince Edward Island, getting there via Maine on the way there and then New Brunswick on the way back (we arrived back Wednesday afternoon this week). I fully intend to write about the vacation but for now I'll leave it at: perfection. It was a great trip and I tacked on an extra two days off (Thursday+Friday) from work to just relax and ease back into…
It's a race to see which day is next to 10 thoughts! Currently Wednesdays are leading at 15, with Tuesdays and Fridays now at 09. Saturday and Sunday are the stragglers, not even at 5. ¶ I hit a grand slam last night at softball! It was pretty sweet. I came up to the plate, bases loaded, 2 outs; the catcher from the other team was lightheartedly razzing me ("no pressure!" etc.), but I stayed stoic at the plate. It's not that she was bothering me or getting to my head, it's more that I'm…
Original post: Bloggers, can we make better titles for our posts? | Michael Harley Overall I agree with Michael's premise: blogs need better titles. I agree; I think I browse Bubbles and Bear's discovery page in much the same way. You can't read everything, and titles are a good shorthand way to guess if it's something you'd be into1. Where I disagree: I think this one might be a bit unpopular but I do not like the round-up posts. You know the ones. They're titled Week Notes, Week in Review,…
This was a good week but honestly thinking back this morning, I can't tell you everything that happened. It was a whirlwind. But we did buy a new air conditioner for our bedroom! And we're trying this neat trick using a metal rod to hold the unit in the window rather than a bracket - it works well! Unfortunately we need something to seal the window, and apparently a sheet of plexiglass costs $100 and nope we don't want to deal with that. So it's not installed yet. 2026 projects and goalsLast…
Over the last 2 and a half weeks I've made notes about my sleep in an attempt to...actually I don't know what I can do with the data. It's not like I can "work out" to sleep better or fix my calorie intake like when I'm losing weight. But I wanted to be better informed about how I feel in the morning vs what my sleep stats tell me. In most cases the stats lined up with the feels (as the kids say). Here's the data I recorded up to today, I'll share some thoughts after. The numbers are total…
Convinced myself to take part in Junited 2026; I'm not sharing a link every day, necessarily, but will be updating my page as the month goes along. Finally pulled photos from last weekend (May 29-31) from my camera and drone; I've got some good shots from the classic car show but will have to wait to finish my roll of film before I can see the shots from that one. The drone footage was just playing around in the yard, got fun photos and videos of bugging my dog (I don't think she enjoys the…
I just read this piece written in early December 2025: About writing and audience : Juha-Matti Santala Juha-Matti writes this post mostly from the POV of career building (at least, that's how I interpreted it) but the principle is the same: don't worry about an audience. I've written about this before (as has pretty much...everyone on Bear) but sometimes it's nice to get the reminder. Reply by email Share this post Mastodon Bluesky
Having a hard time focusing today. Last night's not-great sleep has caught up with me quickly this morning. It started with almost forgetting my epilepsy medication, and continued with almost forgetting my work pass. I didn't leave the house without my meds, but did close & lock the door before I forgot my work pass. I wouldn't have been able to enter the parking lot, let alone the building, without it. "Lack of coffee" is the easy excuse to tell other people, but it's not my crutch - I drink…
Took my father-in-law to a cruise-in - classic car show. Saw tons of awesome old cars, including a Ford Model T. Took pictures with 3 different cameras Teased my dog with a drone; she doesn't like it Still dealing with remnants of the cold. Overall I feel okay but - TMI - too much mucus hanging around Turned off most notifications on my watch except for messaging apps. Now I know when my watch buzzes, it's something I should look at Trying a shorter form week note to avoid burnout on them 2026…
I have a few things on my mind that I need to unload, so it's time for a 6th edition of Thursday Thoughts. ¶ Last night's sleep was rough. One of my goals this week is to get better sleep, but also to review the previous night's sleep to get some meaningful data to back up how I feel when I wake up. I think I would have been okay, except that after 4am I woke up feeling hot all over and with a massive headache. I couldn't get comfortable for a long time, and briefly felt that I was going to…
I'm trying to curb my habit of jumping to look at my watch every time a notification comes through, especially now that I changed my watch behaviour to turn off "rise to wake" and only activate when I touch one of the side buttons. This also coincides with me trying to leave my phone off except for more important messages and phone calls. Here are the apps that currently send notifications to my watch: BenchApp (the app one of our softball teams uses for scheduling etc.) Calendar Clock…
I used to bike to work a lot. My ride to the office was a breezy 15 minutes (max 20, usually because it was hot). But then my workplace moved. All last summer I was determined to bike to work at least once a week but I never made it. The ride is a little daunting: just under an hour1, most likely at moderate speeds (20-25 km/h), which means I would need to bring a change of clothes with me. I still did that when I had the short bike ride, but in theory if I took a more leisurely pace I could…
My mind is everywhere but at work today. I hit my "afternoon wall" just after 1pm; so I started writing in my journal and then eventually got up and walked around a bit. I think I must have splashed some water in my face without realizing it and shook myself out of my sluggishness. I did some research for excursions for an upcoming vacation - but that came too easily. I found options within minutes and didn't have to do a lot of searching around. So I started reading... ¶ I found this blog:…
My interest in writing these week notes is wanting, but I'm going to keep going for now. Bummer: my wife and I both came down with a cold near the end of the week. All day Wednesday my throat felt scratchy, and I thought maybe it was because of the AC we turned on the night before. I didn't want to say anything lest speaking it would make it true, but when I mentioned it to my wife she said the same thing. Next day my voice and throat were rough and I ended up working from home Friday because…
About a week ago my wife and I were browsing Staples - for perhaps the first time in months. Neither of us can remember the last time we were there for more than a few minutes. As we are wont to do, we went down the pen aisle to see if there was anything new and exciting. Or rather, more specifically, my wife was trying to find a pen that she used during a softball game two nights prior after she was told it the person got it from Staples. We didn't find that pen, but we came away instead with…
It's Sunday morning as I type this, with a fresh cup of coffee and my daily glass of Emergen-C in front of me. I got some good news last night (that I can't share yet, hopefully soon) so I feel good. I've got music on, the local radio station's chill sunday morning show is playing through my iPod on a Bose speaker1. A very nice morning; at some point I have to break it up and get things done. The start of this week was hard to get going. Monday morning I had a lot of trouble staying awake at…
Tonight I was planning on being at the gym for 6pm; but I have things to do at work supposedly at 3:30pm, but will likely stretch past 4pm. My trainer moved out time to 8:30am Saturday - serendipitous. Spotify is sometimes my radio. I listened to their Release Radar playlist for the first time in a while this morning and as I started adding some songs to my "To Listen" playlist, I realized I was adding almost everything. Started listening to the playlist instead. Good stuff there for me this…
The last couple of days at work I've felt extremely tired and unable to focus. Yesterday I put the call out for some ambient music to help; Spotify really wasn't cutting it. Hyde came through with a helpful recommendation. The only thing about it is that there's no local info saved so whenever you open the page it starts the playlist back at the beginning. I suppose that shouldn't matter because it's background and you're not meant to pay attention, but at this point it's the principle for me.…
