hiatus

We're in the unplugging season. It occurred to be briefly to just turn this off alongside a bunch of services billed monthly, but I bought a lifetime membership. I'm not so much trying to scratch my name off the obelisks as I am disconnect points of outside orientation—the things that crowd my headspace with anticipated reaction. So I just settled for turning off the analytics and posting this note. I'm posting this after I disconnected all the reposting stuff I had set up, so this will only show up for people who've subscribed in some form. It'd be lovely to hear...

Conflagrations leap out of every poor furnace

I came across someone on a site I follow who's very much just themselves in the face of a lot of potential blowback. Some people are just kind of radiant that way, and I admire them. Some of my favorite people are the difficult ones who can neither help themselves nor want to; especially the ones who are that odd combination of cussedness and prickly boundaries. They're usually originals of some kind. I remember when what was going on inside me was in pretty close sync with what was going on outside, and it has, for better or worse, had an...

Eugene Weekend

Atlas Pizza

Scribbles YT embeds?

Oh, hey. Scribbles is testing embeds, so let's test with this awesome Mutoid Man show.  [YouTube Video] Highlights:  • "Date with the Devil" at 9:00 • "Kiss of Death" at 30:26 • "Purple Rain" (!) at 38:00 ... and they tear the doors off "Bridge Burner" at 48:00 for the finale.  🤘❤️‍🔥🤘

Software suffering

I have had an Evernote account for a very long time. It was my everything box for a number of years, and even though I did a migration out of it and into Apple Notes at some point I kept the account active because sometimes I simply couldn't find a thing in Apple Notes. Last week I needed to find something from long ago in my Evernote account. Unlike the usual visits back there, which are usually akin to a trip to the attic to paw through that one box in the corner, I stuck around to see if I've missed...

Several weeks on a 6-speed Brompton C-Line

I bought a six-speed Brompton C-Line several weeks ago, replacing a Zizzo Forté. I like having a non-electric "get around" bike, and I like having a folding bike for camping trips or flexible city travel. The Zizzo was fine, but a little creaky for my tastes, with an ungainly fold. I bought the Brompton on the strength of a good test ride that told me it'd be fine for my purposes: Steel frame, interesting suspension, decent gearing, and surprisingly comfortable geometry. I was imagining round trips of six or seven miles within my part of town, and the occasional slightly longer...

The imposter director revisits the cradle

It isn't something I really emphasize on my résumé or in interviews, but for a spell (more than a year? Less than two?) I was Puppet's engineering director for the platform team — the people who made the core open source Puppet distribution. I was assigned the group in the wake of a re-org that had made a ton of theoretical sense for the many teams working on everything but the platform, but had made no sense  for the platform team itself. I wouldn't have ended up with that group, but there was a lot of disaffection over the re-org, a...

re: RMS/FSF

Regarding The Stallman Report, which I tried to discuss in a single toot but couldn't:  I owe my career and life as I know it to a chance reading of the GPL while tending an industrial photo copier on third shift.  Professionally: I have co-written a book about Linux, contributed to FOSS  projects, helped build an OSPO at a major open source company, and worked for a FOSS foundation.  If you're a GNOME user, you've possibly encountered docs I wrote. If you're a Puppet user, you've definitely encountered docs I wrote, or read docs that were part of the three-fold expansion...

Goodbye, Pranayama

I sold a few boards this week, including this Pantheon Pranayama. As much as I admired the design, with its super narrow tolerances for such giant wheels and such a low deck,  I didn't  warm up to the TKPs: I was never a traditional skater, so they didn't feel quite right. I was happy to sell it to a buyer who was plainly delighted with it. He wanted to talk boards for a while after he got back from a test spin around the block, so  I don't think he's going to flip it. So that leaves me with my other...

On Metal

Before deciding I was a punk guy in high school, I was a jazz guy. I was rescued from staying that way by the guy who sat in front of me in American History and sensed some hope for me. He made a tape with the Repo Man soundtrack on one side, and Dead Boys' Young, Loud, and Snotty on the other. On the other hand, there were all the kids on the school bus. There were a lot of metal people on that route. Ozzy Osbourne was sort of the baseline. I suppose Motley Crue was big. Also Scorpions and...

Zizzo Folder Notes

I met some friends up on Burnside last night, and planned to ride home with Al from there, so I decided to take my Zizzo Forte: We could meet up, hang out, and I could fold it up and stick it in the trunk and ride home with Al once the evening was over. The longest ride I've ever taken the Forte on happened at Diamond Lake a few years ago, when we rode our Zizzos around the lake trail, which is about 11.5 miles. It's a very different ride than the one from far SE to close SE Portland, but...

Dialing in the ADV 1.1, getting the Forte out of storage

I got a bike fitting at Pedal PT for my new Co-Op ADV 1.1 two weeks ago. We didn't end up changing much: The seat needed very small adjustments forward and up, but everything else was in a good place. The one thing I left a little uncertain about was the stem: The bike shipped with a 100mm stem, and I still felt, even with the seat moved forward a bit and the bars turned up, that I was more stretched out over the bike than I like to be. I could feel a little tightness in my shoulders and neck,...

M43 wasn't on my list of things to appreciate in 2024

I took my OM-5 (with the kit 12-45 zoom) along for our coast trip. I liked what I got from the combo, especially considering the low weight and small size. It was fine hanging over my shoulder for a hike with a 1700-foot climb, and it felt compact when I'd need to tighten my strap to clamor over rocks or in and out of a boat. A 3-lens + body kit works great in a Peak Design 6l sling.  I liked the images I got out of it, minus a few issues with dynamic range and some exaggerated reds that got...

Down the Southern Oregon Coast

We took a trip down the Southern Oregon Coast for Al's birthday this year, staying in Gold Beach but ranging as far down as Brookings on day trips. We passed through there on a Spring Break trip a few years ago, camping outside of Port Orford and Brookings, but we were headed for the Redwoods, and didn't spend long. That part of Oregon is really its own thing. It feels apart from the cultural presence of Portland in a way that the northern coast doesn't, for good, ill, and indifferent.  We rented a condo that overlooked the river on the north...