General

A twist on the ol’ ‘getting chased by things’ dreams of my youth

When I was a wee lad, I semi-regularly had two types of bad dreams:

  • Ferry disasters (possibly because I didn’t swim well and any rocking on a ferry kind of terrified me. Because I grew up on Vancouver Island, almost all of our holiday trips required taking the ferry.)
  • Getting chased down by various things and entities, including but not restricted to:
    • Vehicles of all types. They typically were missing the front bumper, because this made them more terrifying to me.
    • Vampires
    • Robots
    • Mummies
    • Assorted monsters

The chase dreams would usually end just as the thing was catching up to me, or in the case of a vehicle, just as I was about to be run down. I’d wake up, all frazzled, then eventually fall back asleep. Good times all around.

As an adult I very rarely have bad dreams and when I do, I typically wake up, think, “That was weird” and promptly doze off again.

Last night I dreamed I was either at the UBC campus or one that was subbing for it. It was vast and sprawling, and I must have been attending classes there, because I remember marvelling over how I was enjoying the science classes more than the arts, which was the opposite of my dream self (my awake self is the same, but not as strongly as the dream version of me). As I made my way across campus, it became time for me to leave. I was walking along one of those quiet campus roads that you see an occasional service vehicle trundling down, and as I approached the edge of the campus this road widened out into the start of a (I believe four-lane) highway. This was almost certainly my subconscious drawing in the Southwest Marine Drive entrance to UBC, which is indeed very highway-like.

Because this was where the highway started (or ended), it was very quiet. I needed to cross, and rather than going back to the quiet campus road, I opted to cross the highway.

You can see where this is heading.

I began to cross and almost at the same moment noticed a car approaching from the campus side, heading toward me. It was a low, dusty gold colour. It made me think of a 70s Dodge Charger. I looked it up and if this isn’t the car I saw in the dream, it is extremely close to it:

In the dream, I did a quick mental calculation and realized that the speed of the car meant I wouldn’t have time to get out of the way. Would the driver swerve around me? Plow into me? Was there even a driver at all? (The childhood versions of these dreams almost always featured driverless vehicles).

With no other options left, I did the only thing I could think of: I jumped straight into the air as the car approached. And it zipped harmlessly under me.

I woke up shortly after that.

Maybe the takeaway is that as an adult I have more control over things that frighten me, or make me uneasy. Or maybe my subconscious finally realized that three dimensions exist in dreams, too.

What is on this man’s head?

This is from a Costco ad. I have no idea what is on this guy’s head. It tasks me.

EDIT: I checked the Costco site and found out that this is a “Theradome PRO LH80 Laser Hair Growth Device.” That doesn’t seem snake oily at all!

Also, every time I read it, I see “laser hair”.

EDIT, Part 2: I had to ask an AI image generator what laser hair would look like:

Is nostalgia good or bad?

The real answer is probably both.

I will say this, though, it seems to grow more potent as you get older. This makes sense, as you have longer to look back, and more chances to trigger that nostalgia. I find this is especially true of music, since I probably bought more music in my 20s than at any other point in my life. I was in my 20s from 1984 to 1994, so the music of that era can send me off in a reverie pretty quickly1Excluding excessively cheesy synths and that weird snap drum sound that sounds extremely 19080s now.. Also, this decade saw the rise of rap, hip hop, grunge and R.E.M. probably my favourite band.

I may have more on this later. In the meantime, have a cat:

Oh snow (again)

Although I had EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN IT, it has snowed again. It is still snowing as I type this. It’s been snowing for at least 11 hours or so.

There is a lot of snow.

I did not go out running today, as I am neither a Yeti nor a hill giant.

It is pretty, at least until it changes to rain and turns into a slushpocalypse.

But no more after this, thanks!

Compare to January 11th (six days ago, slightly different perspective):

Change is in the hair

a vintage typewriter
I like this because you can’t actually blog with a typewriter (kids, ask your parents about typewriters). Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com

I never had a lush head of fulsome hair, though when I was younger I grew it out to present the illusion that I did, most obviously during my Robert Plant hair phase, my own Stairway to Hairven1I won’t apologize for this, but I will promise never to use it again.. I first got my hair cut short for a play in 1983. It was set during WWI (“Oh What a Lovely War!”) and I had multiple small roles, most of which were soldiers or other military men. Most military men in 1918 did not have Robert Plant hair, so off it came.

I liked the look and my hair was kept shorn thereafter, until that fateful day in 2011 when I decided to remove it entirely before male pattern baldness could.

But this post isn’t actually about my hair, it’s about this blog (yes, I’m going meta yet again, maybe this will be my theme for 2024). Specifically, I think I’m going to start moving some of the stuff I post here to another site/service (to be determined).

What will move off of creolened.com:

  • Running and other fitness or health-related stuff (trips to the ER will be excepted, because that sort of thing is perfect for sharing here, as it’s always a comedy of mild horror). The running posts in particular have always been better-suited for a journal, as it’s not interesting to others. I mean, it might be interesting in some tiny way if you also run, but even then, not so much. (I think I started posting my regular runs here in part as a way to keep myself accountable, by making it public, but after 15 years of running, I should probably be OK to take this stuff offline now.)
  • Writing projects.
  • Art or other creative projects.

What would stay on creolened.com:

  • Ramblings and whatever pops into my mind.
  • Reviews.
  • Subjects that interest me, like tech, writing and so on. Opinion pieces, essentially.

What I’m, unsure about:

  • Photography. One-off photos and especially stuff I snap with my phone will still get posted here, but I am undecided where I want my birding or camera photos to live.
  • Anything else I haven’t mentioned already.

I’ll start with the running stuff first, then go from there. I’ll probably keep the running posts here, but maybe make the category non-public, so the posts aren’t visible, then find some clever (?) way to move those posts elsewhere.

Onward to a year when things are different, but hopefully better!

Oh snow

Guest parking at 1:53 p.m. Note: Ventilation shack was not pulverized by the snow, it’s been like that since August 2023.

Today we had our first real snow of the winter. Considering we’re well into January, that’s not too bad. It is still unwelcome, albeit pretty. We are expected to get a few days of below-freezing temperatures before going back to our usual mild winter. Take a look-see at tomorrow’s low temperature:

  • Normal low: 2°C
  • Record low: -9°C
  • Expected low: -13°C (!)

And just a few weeks away we set a record for the high temperature hitting +13°C. Climate change is fun!

AllerJAZZ!

person holding allergy medicine bottle
I tried using AI to generate the image, the results were…not good. Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

I think my allergies have been bonking me over the head the past few days, and this lead me to having a dream (I think it was a dream, I was in bed and all) about a new anti-allergy medicine called AllerJAZZ! The packaging had the compelling slogan: “Takes care of your allergies…and all that jazz!” Apparently, my subconscious mind is big on exclamation points. Also, jazz hands were a prominent part of the logo.

I can kind of see the packaging for this. Maybe I’ll mock up something later. That seems like a good use of my time.

A goose with a pipe (Welcome to my blog, 2024 edition)

Probably my most-used Signal sticker.
What does it say about me? Speculate!

Hello! If you are not a bot or LLM scraping this site to help churn out AI-based internet flotsam, then welcome to my blog! I don’t know how you got here, but if you stick around for a few moments, here are a few things you may find useful to know as of January 2024:

  • I like lists
  • I frequently write about my jogging (three times a week, usually). This is probably not interesting to anyone but me, but I never found another good place to write about it. I at least include a photo or two in these posts for you to enjoy as you scroll past.
  • Other popular topics include:
    • Book reviews (these have fallen off in the last few years).
    • Complaining about Apple (they’re big and carry an outsized impact on us, so I hold them to a higher standard; I am trying to reduce complaining in general, though).
    • Technology (I am not an engineer or anything fancy like that).
    • This blog (I often go meta).
    • Birding (started this back in 2021).
    • Writing prompts (both creating and using them).
    • Photography (mostly birds–see above) and drawing. I don’t get into the technical aspects of photography, I just post my photos.
  • Like a dinosaur, I use WordPress’s Categories.
  • I have plans to redesign the blog, but until I do, some things, like photo galleries, are hard or even impossible to find. This is bad and I feel bad.
  • Generally, I write about whatever I want to write about.
  • Last year, I gave myself permission to write about anything that popped into my head. I have done this multiple times since.
  • I have a Mac and a PC. I generally prefer the PC. I do my drawing on an iPad Pro.
  • My tone can be sarcastic at times. I try never to be mean. I think life, in a way, is absurd, and my writing here may reflect this at times.
  • Starting this year (2024) I am writing a monthly newsletter called Doodlings and Noodlings1We’ll see if this one comes back to haunt me.
  • I am working on my first video game. It should come out this year2We’ll see if this one also comes back to haunt me. Also, I like using footnotes..
  • I am white, male, Canadian, left-handed (but I use a mouse right-handed) and gay.

That’s about it for now. Thanks for reading. I don’t have comments turned on due to spam, but if you want to say something to me, or just send me an inscrutable emoji, I can be reached on Mastodon here: @stanjames@mstdn.social (I’m on other social media platforms, but rarely check or post to them these days. I’m a very low-key social rebel). You can also reach me using old-timey email here: ned@creolened.com

I’m kind of tired of WordPress

photo of man using laptop
Pretend it’s me blogging on WordPress. I would be wearing socks, though. God, I love stock photos. Photo by Canva Studio on Pexels.com

EDIT: Shortly after posting this, I came across a list of blogging platforms in a post on Mastodon. Coincidence or serendipity? Or both? Coincendipity?

This isn’t a complaint about WordPress! WordPress is a rich, diverse tool that can sing, dance and probably rub its belly at the same time. I’ve been using it for this blog since 2005–around 19 years! Obviously, it’s been doing a decent job of letting me get my inane thoughts online, or I would have switched to something else by now1Or become a crazed hermit living in the mountains, eschewing all technology, perhaps.

So why am I tired of it?

It’s big, bulky, and jammed full of features, many of which I don’t use. Its company, Automattic, is increasingly pushing even standalone blogs like this one toward monetization, with plugins like Jetpack having more and more paid features under the premise that if you are using WordPress, you are intending to make money from it, otherwise why aren’t you just posting your cat pictures to Facebook for the price of free2Not counting the price of YOUR ETERNAL SOUL?

What I yearn for is something that is light, clean and simple to use, yet still allows me to do the bloggy things I like:

  • Write down my inane thoughts
  • Write lists, like this one
  • Post photos and drawings
  • Present these things in some kind of organized manner

I feel that WordPress has moved away from the simplicity of humble, handcrafted artisanal blogging. I want to get back there again. I want to touch (virtual) paper.

Where to go next

(I didn’t really need a subheading here, but you see them a lot on important blog think pieces, and I’m always keen to look fancy and smart.)

My choices are roughly as follows:

  • Keep using WordPress and just shut up about it. It works, right?
  • Actually switch to a WordPress alternative.
  • Stop blogging altogether.
  • Post my cat pictures on Facebook for free3I would also need to get a cat.

I’m actually unsure which option to pursue. The last few years I’ve been, in some ways, reconstructing many aspects of my life, and I don’t always know where these things will lead. I suppose this makes it exciting. Whee!

I have perfected the non-post

This, of course, doesn’t look anything like me, and the hands are the usual nightmare stuff that screams “AI-generated”, but I still kind of like the composition.

These days I am restricting most of my social media stuff to Mastodon, and lately I’ve started doing non-posts. They go like this:

  1. See an interesting post from someone I follow, or someone whose post has been boosted by someone I follow.
  2. Start writing a reply to the post.
  3. Question whether the reply adds anything of value.
  4. Exit out of the reply, opting not to post it.
  5. Repeat Steps 1-4.

Why do I do this? I’m not entirely sure, but I think it’s related to this latent fear of saying the wrong thing, somehow, of offending or coming across as weird or odd. I am a fairly shy person in face-to-face interactions, and I think this might be the online equivalent to that. I just prefer to watch others talk. Or type, in this case.

Proving this, I was originally going to make this a post on Mastodon, then changed my mind and posted it here instead.