@sod So cute!
(I was briefly confused about why you had a picture of my dog Tuck, but Ture’s ears are floppy.)
@moonmehta Gotcha, thanks very much.
@moonmehta Can you say more (or have you written) about how this works? Do you have a “separate” Pika domain that publishes an RSS feed that gets picked up by Micro.blog? I would love a better iOS editor than the default Micro.blog one.
@danielpunkass This is great advice if you arrive in the morning, but for long flights I usually prefer saving the clean clothes for the trip home. I’m already tired and not looking forward to it; fresh clothes make me feel better going in (or during a layover for spectacularly long routes).
Took a little longer than I expected, but Meera now has a proper website with a nice headshot (photo by yours truly), a professional timeline, and contact info.
Based on Kirby Turner’s timeline-jekyll-theme with a new color scheme, a little more space, and deployment tooling.
Next!
Feeling dangerously productive today. Let’s see how long I can get it to last.
I have three targets for the afternoon: two quick ones and one big thorny one. So naturally my brain wants to focus on the thorny one instead of letting me get the quick wins out of the way.
“What is a TikTok dance mash up if not a digital Dorito?”
The hierarchy Newport builds up here seems to make sense, but I’m reminded of this Dilbert strip, which makes the point that the medium may encourage certain content, but doesn’t necessarily determine it.
The previous post courtesy of Alamo Drafthouse’s season pass, which we just signed up for yesterday because for the next couple of weeks the second month is free.
Gonna try to get out of the house a bit more this summer, and into somewhere else with AC.
And it’ll be nice to see more movies. 🎥
By far my favorite part of Flighty is the Home Screen widget that tells you when your next flight is.
We just got home yesterday from a week in Europe, and it tells me I only have to wait thirteen days until I’m back on the road.
Finished reading: Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree.
Fun prequel to Legends and Lattes, but missing some of the magic of the original. Still worth reading. Would be a great children’s/YA book with some light inessential cleaning up. 📚
The food and beer selection at CDG past immigration is criminally weak for a city that prides itself on food.
Maybe they’re just upset I’m leaving?
Finished reading: Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
Awesome investigation of evolution from a totally different (sci-fi) perspective. Made me think fun thoughts. Excellent up until the last couple of pages, which were totally disappointing, like the author didn’t know how to finish it.
📚
Vianden Castle is a short but steep hike from the bus stop, but the views are excellent even before you get to tour the inside.
@V_ I agree, but then I’m from the US where we’re lucky if the trains exist, much less run on time. So in a land of castles 🏰, I stare at the trains 🚊
The reason I’m not there yet, to be fair, is that the timing isn’t literally flawless, so when my train to Ettelbruck was two or three minutes late leaving, my four-minute connection became a one-minute connection and I didn’t quite make it.
I have apparently arrived in Luxembourg 🇱🇺 on the Grand Duke’s official birthday. Unfortunately, all that was left when I arrived on the TGV from Paris was the aftermath.
Finished reading: The Olympian Affair by Jim Butcher.
More swashbuckling! And spies! And a very weird planet. And cats. A good follow-up.
Now, Mr. Butcher, please get back to writing Twelve Months…📚
Today, I’m headed back to Japan 🇯🇵 for the first time since October 2022! Nineteen months is too long between visits.
I’m looking forward to sushi 🍣 and trains 🚅 and lots and lots of robots 🤖.
A first for me: a plane at a nearby gate is having a part flown in for maintenance. (Fortunately the origin city is very close, so that flight isn’t delayed by too much.)
Third Space Coffee in Colorado Springs serves artisanal coffeeee flights. We had to get one… okay, we got three. ☕️
Today was the last day of the ski season for us. We didn’t track every day, but we tracked most of them, and for a pair of engineers who live in Texas, we had a pretty good year. 🎿
I think we found our wall photo for this trip! 🎿
Sometimes the naming of ski runs is a delicate matter, full of nuance and wordplay and even history.
And sometimes a black diamond from the top of the mountain is just called KABOOM. 🎿
Meera skis like a girl. By which I mean, she had 2,000 feet more vert than we did today.🎿
Our first day this trip at Copper was exactly as beautiful as expected, if a bit warm. We spent all day on the eastern side of the mountain, taking the Super Bee lift over and over.
We even did a couple of double blacks off the back side of the mountain. I love being able to tackle harder slopes.
Today’s the first day of the last (planned) ski trip of the season. The sun is bright, although the sky is partially clouded, and it snowed last night.
It’s going to be a good week. 🎿
Expanded the photo wall today to include our trips to Munich, Zermatt, Big Sky (Montana), and Solitude (Utah). I love seeing all our big trips together at a glance.
@RLK That's exactly how I use my microblog: a cross between a personal website with a permanent feeling and a Twitter-like environment that doesn't expect long perfect Blog Posts. Welcome!
@dfr Oh, sorry for my mistake; I shouldn’t have assumed.
I was in Queenstown in January for a conference. Got to see Milford Sound and drink some Central Otago wines. But I think skiing will be better this time around! 🎿
@V_ Oh it was a doozy. I’m sure I’ll write it up here eventually.
I also wouldn’t have had the awareness and will to turn around, but there were three other, smarter, people with me.
@pratik Such a positive perspective!
Most trail days are good days. This day, we just couldn’t handle it. 😃
@dwalbert Indeed! I have since learned that Lincoln National Forest has many, many miles of awesome hikes that are entirely shaded, and we’ve walked many of them.
But the path around that lake has no shade at all.
@dfr Thanks! I was surprisingly challenged, when I wrote that title, to rank the hikes we’ve taken that were, in retrospect, ridiculous.
By the way, I see you’re Auckland-based; we’ll be in Queenstown next week! Sadly not doing the Milford Track. 🇳🇿
@ChrisHannah I love this perspective, and I share your feeling of "an allocated amount of time to do whatever I want," but this whole article I kept thinking, "How is this different from a plane flight?"—and you answered right before the end. I guess I fly enough that the chaos and stress of airports no longer affect me (and my being American means long train journeys are far, far more rare).
@peroty Second @jean with Good Sudoku; the same developer makes Knotwords, which is just as fun and playful (and infinitely more forgiving of breaking a streak).
My wife loves Mini Motorways, which is on Apple Arcade. 🎮
@manton Strong addition to helping people understand what you’re ~~trying to do~~doing here. I love that you followed up on values/guidelines with the names and photos of individual humans, so it’s clear that you really mean it.
@TheMacPsych Didn’t know any of those existed; I’ll put them all on the list. Cheers!
@jean We’ve tried a few of those, but wow, you’re not kidding about variety! Have you tried the Brooklyn Special Effects IPAs? I like them pretty well, so I’ll have to compare.
@Jean @TheMacPsych We’ve been enjoying the Deschutes non-alcoholic Black Butte Porter on the darker side. What else have you enjoyed beside Asahi?
@mroutley Maybe one of my all-time favorite opening lines: “I am, unfortunately, the Hero of Ages.”
@monday Where I have been, which is a surprisingly short list considering how much I've traveled.
Japan is high on my list to return to (and I've been back a bunch).
Next up is Chile, then Australia and New Zealand, for my first snow skiing adventure during northern-hemisphere summer.
@jean Like many, I've bounced around a lot and landed on Obsidian because it's just plain-text Markdown with some chrome on top, which is effectively future-proof. Works for notes, blog posts, newsletters, lots more. Terrible iOS apps, though, so text starts in Drafts there. Text that needs to get shared, or anything that isn't text at all, goes in Apple Notes.