I played around a bunch to make this not just black and white, but also a little weird and possibly spooky. This week I’m going through another black and white phase. Next week, who knows? Maybe purple!
A photo of trees in black and white
Who am I?
I’m still not sure. Some people have a passion that drives them and pushes them through their entire life. No one wonders what Picasso’s hobbies were1Apparently he liked gardening and photography, among other things. I suspect most or many people are like me–good at certain things, interested in a variety of stuff, but not especially driven by any of them. So a lot of what we do seems to be puttering around, or a bit unfocused. These are not necessarily bad things.
I like to draw and write, but I’ve left both of these interests go fallow at times, sometimes for years. I know how my mind works and constantly do battle with its weaker aspects. I am an expert at procrastination, so I’ve adopted the two-minute rule and other techniques to help. I’m lazy, so I try to motivate myself early in the day to let the momentum carry me.
I try to be funny and good to others. I try to be wise, or at least not appear to be a dummy. I consider other viewpoints. I apologize when needed. I realize I will never be perfect or everything I could be because no one can. Not even Picasso.
I’m not sure what prompted this. Sometimes I just have random deep thoughts and write them out to see what comes of them.
I conclude with a bookish cat.
Treadmill run: 10 months later
Yes, for the first time since January, I did an actual run on the treadmill.
I couldn’t recall the settings I used last time, so I just winged it. I knew to set the Incline to 1, which simulates the wind resistance you get when running outdoors. This is somewhat ironic, because the reason I’m running on the treadmill instead of outside on the trail is due to persistent high winds from the BOMB CYCLONE that came in over the area last night. The wind itself is not the issue, it’s more all the flying debris it creates, which I witnessed in one of the many recent windstorms and found somewhat terrifying.
I started the treadmill at a moderate walking pace (5), then switched to 9, which is apparently 6:40/km. At this point I had to run to avoid falling off the treadmill. As incentive, it works well. I completed 5K and curiously, the first lap nearly matched the stated pace, coming in at 6:38/km, which is really slow for me as a run pace. But every lap after that was more akin to my usual pace of late, ranging from 5:30 to 5:41. My BPM averaged 148, which is a bit lower than normal, but still close to normal.
I am satisfied with this, even though I still dislike running on a treadmill. Instead of scenery, I get this for 30 minutes:
Speed: 9.0 (8.7)
Incline: 1 (1)
Pace: 5:47/km (5:35/km)
Time: 29:08 (28:07)
Distance: 5.03 km (5.03 km)
Calories burned: 355 (348)
Parenthetical numbers are from the previous treadmill run on January 18, 2024.
If you’re going to be wrong about something, why not be super wrong?
I don’t actually have a follow-up on this, it just felt like a catchy thing to say.
But if I was trying to boil it down into something meaningful, it would be something like this: If you really believed in something and it turned out to not just be wrong, but very wrong, don’t beat yourself up over it, just acknowledge it, learn from it, and move on.
It’s kind of fortune cookie wisdom, but it’s mid-week and my watch told me I’d have a harder time thinking today, so that’s what you get.
But also this artsy black and white photo of my feet next to a pipe by the river edge as a bonus:
Why is Windows suddenly kind of slow?
I don’t know. It seems to have started in the past week and everything feels just sluggish enough to notice and, thus, be irritating.
I am typing this in Linux Mint, using Firefox, which remains snappy and responsive here in neckbeard land.
The slowness is probably some obscure bug in the major patch that came out this fall, or one of the billion processes always running in the background going wonky. You know, the kind of thing that is all but impossible to troubleshoot these days. We may be back to the days when you just reformat and start all over again.
Linux is getting closer to all I need for an operating system. Just a few more things and I can leave Windows behind after using it for the past hundred thousand years.
I just need to figure out how to play Diablo 3 in Mint. I mean, choose a good writing app. Yeah, that’s it.
But is it art? River trail edition
The answer is no.
The question comes from this pile of garbage neatly arrayed along the river trail this morning as I was heading out for my run. I have no idea why it is there or who put it there, but the neatness of the pile suggests it may have been collected in order to be picked up and disposed of later. Maybe. Also, where all this stuff came from is another good question, since I have not observed any of it along the river trail itself. The location is right below the overpass for the #1 highway, which may–or may not–be a clue.
The splayed-out doll on top is the perfect creepy pièce de résistance, though.
Run 902: The fountain of climate change
How has it been eight days since I last ran? Things have happened! But I’ve still done bits of running here and there, so it hasn’t been all lounging around and eating bacon.
The fountain by the dam is still open, which surprised me. I don’t think it’s ever been left open this late into November before, though I could be misremembering. To be fair, while it’s been cool during the day, we haven’t had temperatures drop below freezing overnight.
Today I headed out reasonably early and the temperature was a lot more brisk than the last time, sitting at 5C. Thankfully, there was little wind, so two layers were fine.
I opted to do a short CCW loop and experienced no issues. There were a surprising number of people out walking, including a walking group I thought I would cleverly avoid by taking the side trails.
They took the side trails.
But I managed to slip by everyone, including a pair of other joggers, woo (they were not jogging fast).
My pace dropped incrementally by four seconds until the fourth km, when I picked up the pace as I passed everyone. The cold didn’t seem to affect my speed, but my BPM ticked up a bit to 153, which is not unexpected.
The sun poked out a bit on the walk home. At the same time it started to sprinkle. As I neared home it changed to hail. I jogged to the building entrance to get under cover. Hail is one of my top worst running conditions.
Overall, a good start to what otherwise appears to be a cold and wet week.
Stats:
Run 902
Average pace: 5:34/km
Training status: Maintaining
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW, short loop)
Start: 10:04 a.m.
Distance: 5.04 km
Time: 28:01
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 5°C
Humidity: 86-83%
Wind: light
BPM: 153
Weight: 168.0
Total distance to date: 6,360 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: HOKA Speedgoat 6 (150/277/427)
This is just a really cool photo of clouds
I saw it today on Mastodon, posted by the user Mandu.
I re-read the prologue of an unfinished novel and want to read more
The unfinished novel is my own, Road Closed (the title will almost certainly be changed to something else, should the novel ever be finished). The prologue outlines the tragic summer and drink-to-forget beginnings of young Christian Warren, setting the stage for the five-year jump ahead as the story begins proper.
But the rest of the book–which is currently sitting at around 70,000+ words, is a bit of a mess. And it’s not the mess where you can just keep writing, then go back and fix the messy bits later. It needs serious surgery. But I kind of want to try, because that prologue still delights me today.
In order to do this, I’ve pondered ways to make it happen:
- As much of a distraction-free environment as possible. I could write it in Linux, where I am far less likely to suddenly decide I need to play Diablo 3 again RIGHT NOW.
- Choosing software. I am probably going to avoid Ulysses going forward. It’s good, but Mac-only and I’m culling pretty much anything that has a subscription attached. Other alternatives:
- Microsoft Word. Ew, no.
- Scrivener. Maybe, but I would save files locally and only work in either Linux or Windows, not both.
- noVelWriter. This is new, and is kind of a Scrivener-lite, but open source, free and a bit clunky, as one often expects of FOSS1Free Open Source Software software.
- The unnamed app the Scrivener team is releasing in 2025. It sounds like a pared-down Scrivener, which would delight me.
- Obsidian. I’m not super-keen on this, though I did write the original draft of Road Closed with WriteMonkey, which uses the same minimalist Markdown aesthetic as Obsidian.
- Something else I haven’t discovered yet.
- Writing out a revised version of the story before diving back in, so I have an actual path to follow. I can always veer from it later, but it’s still better than going into a dark room and bumping my knees on every piece of furniture.
I am in my Mulling and Pondering stage, also known as M&P. I will update if I move beyond this to Typing Actual Words.
Treadmill workout: I am the Night
Today the weather was very wet. I still went for a walk about an hour before sunset, which is to say 3:30, but by mid-evening I was still some 1500 or so steps short of my 10,000-step goal. I contemplated, not liking any of the options and kind of wishing I was on a tropical beach somewhere working on a nice tan. Since I am not magic, I went on the treadmill instead, figuring a 15-minute workout would net me the required steps.
It did! Even though I am very bad at math, it pushed me to 10,811 steps. The lateness of the workout also meant I got a new badge:
Stats:
Speed: 6.0-6.5
Incline: 1
Pace: 9:05/km (8:54/km)
Time: 15:00 (20:00)
Distance: 1.65 km (2.25 km)
Calories burned: 145 (185)
BPM: 119 (125)
Birding, November 15, 2024: Seedy business
Where: Richmond Nature House, Terra Nova (Richmond)
Weather: Mostly sunny, 8°C
The Outing
Richmond Nature House
Our usual birding day is Saturday and unlike previous years when the weather on Saturday was pretty good in the fall, this year it has been very bad, It is Saturday as I type this, and it is raining yet again.
But we were able to get out yesterday–Friday!–for a mid-November bit of birding during a rare sunny afternoon. And there were birds! And birbs.
Our first stop was the Richmond Nature House, where the renovation work is now largely complete and we were able to park, unlike the last time we tried. The feeders were full and the birds were taking advantage. At first it seemed to be primarily chickadees and juncos, and the juncos had a definite preference for the flat, open feeder styled like a house.
Eventually, other birds showed up. Towhees started appearing along the ground, a song sparrow flew in and we got to see others that don’t pop up as often, like a downy woodpecker, a red-breasted nuthatch (again!) and a mourning dove, which spent most of its time on the ground, oddly.
Speaking of on the ground, a small pond between several feeders proved an appealing place to get a rink for numerous birds, some squirrels and even a rat. It seems weird to see rats in the wild. It sat there and cupped its weirdly human-looking forepaws to sip water. They’re kind of cute when they’re not climbing through dumpsters and spreading disease.
The sun was out most of the time, but when a cloud passed over it and we were put into the shade, you could immediately feel the temperature drop. I wondered how chilly Terra Nova would be.
Terra Nova
As it turned out, Terra Nova was chilly! There was a good breeze scouring the water and making whitecaps. I’d worn my lined hoodie and brought gloves, just in case, so it was fine.
We found at least one person feeding birds, which probably explained why the chickadees were literally flying at us, probably hoping our cameras were bedecked with seed. It allowed us to get some good shots in the increasingly golden-hued light. Because yes, it seemed we’d barely gotten started and it was now barely more than an hour until sunset. We spotted an Anna’s hummingbird at the community garden, and some wigeons and green-winged teals were just offshore (a bit far, alas). While I got some good shots, today was a day when towhees, which were at both spots, proved to be my nemesis. The ones at Terra Nova were being very puffy bois, likely due to the chill.
We did not see any grebes at what I think of as The Grebe Pond, but there were mallards, lazing in the weird red much still covering much of the pond. They didn’t seem to mind.
In all, a nice outing, with some more rarely seen birds and actual sun as bonuses.
The Shots
Soon™
The Birds (and other critters). Rare, rarely-seen or recently returned birds highlighted in bold.
Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:
- Anna’s hummingbird
- Black-capped chickadee
- Dark-eyed junco
- Downy woodpecker
- Fox sparrow
- Golden-crowned sparrow
- House finch
- Mourning dove
- Red-breasted nuthatch
- Song sparrow
- Spotted towhee
Waterfowl and shorebirds:
- American wigeon
- Green-winged teal
- Mallard
Common:
- American crow
Raptors:
- None!
Non-birds:
- Douglas, black and gray squirrels
- A rat! Like, in nature!
Quotes that may not inspire you
It is always darkest before dawn. Unless you’re locked inside a broom closet.
A stitch in time will probably undo the fabric of reality
Every cloud has a tiny, angrier cloud inside it
Time heals all wounds, except shark scars because those are rad
When life gives you lemons, give life a kick in its lemon-soaked pants