Wind Sculpture – Nighttime
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Preparing a home for the pickup
Once I decided against keeping the pickup in a storage unit across town, it was time to think about where to park her. I still need to cut some grooves and seat the logs. After that, spread some gravel and throw a tarp over her.
For some reason, the photos I take of this spot do not convey how steep the grade is. I’m guessing it’s 20 degrees which you can certainly feel carrying logs.
Morning Light
Spotted this on the kitchen floor this morning. The prism effect was created by a beveled glass window. The pattern is the result of the light passing through one of those plastic crates. Didn’t last long.
Max defrost
Everybody jokes about the heaters in old Land Rovers. Mr. Wolf told me to expect the amount of warmth one feels holding a hand over a toaster. It was cold and rainy today but once the the motor got warmed up I had just enough warm air to give me a little visibility. Don’t know how this is gonna work come January and February.
Black Friday
Where are they now?
You know how some insanely popular rock group has a bunch of hits and then… just disappears. At least from the media mainstream. They didn’t get less talented overnight and, sure, tastes change but this always seemed odd to me. In reviewing blog posts from the early days of the web, I see something similar. Here are some of the people most influential (for me) from that era (in no particular order): Bruce Sterling, Chris Pirillo, Clay Shirky, David Weinberger, Doc Searls, Kevin Kelley, Jeff Jarvis, Seth Goden.
On second thought, I’ll bet the folks are still around but — like everyone else — have migrated to social media, abandoning their blogs. Perhaps the web they wrote about and — in some cases — predicted, disappeared/never happened.
Steve Cutts: Happiness
Wind Sculpture
For our 40th wedding anniversary Barb wanted a wind sculpture by a local artist, Michael Mistler. Today Michael — with help from our friend Adam — installed the piece. Afterwards I chatted with Michael for a few minutes about his art.
You can see more of his work here.
What is time to the brain?
David Eagleman at the FQXi SETTING TIME ARIGHT conference (2011), an interdisciplinary meeting investigating the nature of time.
My favorite line from his talk: “We are moving creatures that run on batteries.”
In praise of Google Calendar
It is fashionable of late to bash Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon et al. There’s plenty to complain about I suppose (and I’ve done my share) but after the fire has been peed on and the dogs have been summoned, I really like Apple, Google and Amazon (I’ve never used Facebook). I like them a lot. Do I like everything they do? Of course not.
But this post is about Google Calendar. I’ve been using it for years. Anything of importance, anything I want to find later… goes into Google Calendar. Case in point: I’m in the process of switching health insurance companies and today I got a call from a representative of the new company, checking on one of the drugs I take. He also asked about a drug I didn’t recognize and said it was a one-time script on February 4, 2014. I had Google Calendar open so I hit the “G” key and typed in that date.
That was the day I hit some black ice and slid off the highway, getting just banged up enough that Barb insisted I get checked out at the ER. They gave me a muscle relaxant as I recall. Here’s a screenshot of that entry.
Note the link to my blog post on the event as well as links to PDF scans of the towing receipt; a summary from the ER visit; and a couple of insurance documents. Four years ago and I had it all from a 5 second search.
Is Google doing something with all of my data? I assume so. But I never see ads an they don’t charge me a dime. I call that a good deal.