Let's Make Some Art, Dammit

February 28, 2021. This was taken from my walk today, looking across the tracks at the new subdivision. When we moved here this was all forest. Obviously I preferred the forest, but we still live in a rural area just a short walk from other forests and farmland and everything else that isn't city. I started my day by writing a blog post, then I worked on making cron work (maybe successfully?) and also preparing for two talks I'm giving back-to-back first thing tomorrow morning. https://flic.kr/p/2kFR5vo

February 27, 2021. I went out snowshoeing again today, paused to take a photo, and pitched forward as the snow gave out. I found myself trapped and unable to get up, my legs pinned by the snowshoes wedged in cement-like snow. "I've fallen and I can't get up," I said to myself. It took about 15 minutes in a cold rain, but I worked my way free and finally recovered. https://flic.kr/p/2kFyXy7

February 26, 2021. If you're going to stack bread trays, why not stack them all fit together squarely? Anyhow, this was the view behind the A&W near the Costco on Ogilvie Road. After a couple of days off, I got my regular walk in today. I also made quite a bit of coding progress and have maybe turned a corner. https://flic.kr/p/2kFhoEi

February 25, 2021. This is Emma on the upper landing preening for the camera. It was another indoor day today because I was expecting a package that never came (new shoes for biking season, so there's no rush). I recorded a couple of videos today, one of which had a horrible screeching sound for the first 24 minutes, and the second of which was a 10-minute successful install of gRSShopper using Docker Compose. Fixed a few bugs after that on a generally successful day. https://flic.kr/p/2kF1rqF

February 24, 2021. We had a third straight day of snow and I made it an indoor day today, taking a photo of these two spruce in our front yard after supper in the evening. I cleared up some remaining issues with my gRSShopper configuration but mostly spent my time reading for newsletter links and filling out an employee profile. https://flic.kr/p/2kEF4ip

February 22, 2021. It snowed pretty much all day today. This is a shot of some neighbourhood cedars in the snowfall, taken on my daily walk. Today was reasonably productive: I did a video session, wrong a blog post, and read a bunch of things/ But my early afternoon I had run out of energy - the only thing that kept me awake was my walk. I have to accept that I'm going to have days like that. Always have, always will. https://flic.kr/p/2kEaQz5

February 21, 2021. We went snowshoeing in Larose Forest this afternoon, our longest of the season at 4.5 km on a beautiful sunny and not-too-cold day. This looks as if it would be a one-in-a million catch of a pine cone, but I looked around and saw two others just like it, so I guess it happens a lot. https://flic.kr/p/2kDRApw

February 20, 2021. No need for any photos today beyond this one I took in the first 30 seconds of the day. This is what it looked like outside when I woke up this morning. I did not sleep at all well last night, as a result of taking the wrong pill. So today was a rest-easy stay-inside day all day, mostly playing No Man's Sky, and a little bit working with Docker. https://flic.kr/p/2kDxyrA

February 19, 2021. This train, which proved to be much shorter than I thought it would be, passed by in the snowstorm just as I was heading out for my walk. I spent the entire day today attending the Canada School of Public Services data Conference, attended online by some 6,000 public servants. I also spent the same time working on my gRSShopper Docker images. The conference was OK, and I made slow painstaking progress on the image. https://flic.kr/p/2kDfqsJ

February 18, 2021. It's hard when the tree in your front yard dies but this household made the best of it. I spent part of today walking around the Gloucester area listening to a government data conference and taking this photo. It was that kind of day - I actually attended two separate conferences, drove to Costco and back, did my newsletter, and recorded a two-hour video. https://flic.kr/p/2kCU9Zk

February 17, 2021. I revisited our local construction site. The mystery deepens. That's a lot of pipes for a few houses. Anyhow, work continues despite the cold and snow. For me, it was a full day focused on Research Ethics Board duties. It makes for a long day, but it gives me a fascinating glimpse into all sorts of advanced research. https://flic.kr/p/2kCGh3b

February 16, 2021. Today was a grey day in all respects with a winter snowfall and dull light washing out all colour. This photo from my walk is of the railway bridge leading into town, just barely visible behind the trees. It wasn't an especially productive day, not for lack of effort, as I tried to tweak the various errors out of my gRSShopper Docker container. https://flic.kr/p/2kCkKX2

February 15, 2021. The big storm so far exists more in theory than reality, but the signs of it were in the sky as I took my daily walk today. It was a good day today, I got three major tasks off my desk, which qualifies it already as a successful week! Still more tasks ahead, but nowhere near the urgency. So I can cocoon tomorrow, watching the snow, and get a few more things off the table. https://flic.kr/p/2kC7Bpe

February 14, 2021. This was spotted along the trail to the Old Homestead, a bit of a clearing in the south part of Warwick forest, where we went snowshoeing today. We were out about two hours and did 3.8 kilometers, which Strava assures us is our longest snowshoe effort of the year. Sadly I forgot my camera battery so we're making do with photos from my Pixel 4. https://flic.kr/p/2kBHNsQ

February 13, 2021. This guy sits on my desk and reminds me to keep working. He wasn't very effective today as I took a rest day for the most part, doing a few posts but mostly playing video games. Another very cold day, too cold really to enjoy a walk. https://flic.kr/p/2kBtdeA

February 12, 2021. The stairs leading down into the basement have a ledge along one side. It's easy for Charlemagne to walk onto it, but then he gets stuck. He can't turn around, and he can't jump down, so he stands there and wails. I had a meeting today and was otherwise engaged in learning how environment variables are used to configure database access in containers. Yee haw. https://flic.kr/p/2kBapw6

February 11, 2021. This is a Presse Café at the base of four office buildings at Commerce Place, right next to the Costco. When I look at a place like this I can imagine that there's a whole world inside - the people who work there, the regulars who are in for a coffee every day, the occasional drop-ins. I haven't been in yet, because of the pandemic. One day, though. Aside from Costco and a meeting, I spent the day writing an article - 'On the Indieweb' - which has drawn the same response as my articles usually draw (ie., no response). https://flic.kr/p/2kAPWpF

February 10, 2021. This is an oak tree in Optimist Park, exactly one block from our house, and a frequent point on my daily walks. I wish it had a different name; I'm not a fan of service clubs naming parks after themselves. Today was unexpectedly fun as I received a last-minute webinar hosted by CSPS and NRC on the changing nature of the internet. Other than that, I made some edits to gRSShopper and looked at translating a document for one of our projects. https://flic.kr/p/2kAxuK6

February 9, 2021. These three trees have looked perfectly ordinary every other day but today they contrasted perfectly with the sky as I went by on my daily walk. A better day today, even though I still felt off-kilter from yesterday. But I figured out the cause of my problems with cron in my containers (need to run systemctl enable cron) and also how to run nano so it works properly (need to set -e TERM=xterm). https://flic.kr/p/2kAiPCy

February 8, 2021. Not such a good day and I didn't go out so we have a photo of me playing with Emma in the evening. The day began with back-to-back meetings, each of which required a presentation with slides, and while one went fine the other did not. This made it very hard to be productive the rest of the day; I took a nap, did my newsletter, and that's about it. https://flic.kr/p/2kAh17U

February 7, 2021. We went snowshoeing in Warwick Forest (north side) this afternoon, about 15 km south of Casselman. There's a nice stretch of the trail that ruins through a thick stand of cedar, something you don't see that often any more. It was only about 2 km but we're gradually getting better. https://flic.kr/p/2kzBHm6

February 6, 2021. I drove down to Embrun to spend the afternoon visiting family today and all seems well at the Gregoire homestead. On the way back I took a detour looking for photos and stepped out for a bit in St-Albert. It was miserably cold and windy so I kept my walk to a minimum and photographed this bridge over the (currently frozen) Nation river. https://flic.kr/p/2kzy3HK

February 5, 2021. This is a wagon at the side of a local antique store about a kilometer away form our house. Today I had the whole day to work on coding, and it's a good thing, because it's really hard to debug data returned from an API with fetch. I eventually got it all worked out, but it's slow going. https://flic.kr/p/2kz2wTy

February 4, 2021. A typical black Ottawa squirrel hides in the tree as I walked past getting some exercise while Andrea did the rounds at the Costco over lunch. It was a nice day today, not too cold, and while I wasn't overly productive I got in some meetings and some work on the PLE platform. Once the harvester is working right I can use it to put content into my home page, which makes it better for sharing. https://flic.kr/p/2kyLdHB

February 3, 2021. I was back out snowshoeing today. These are grapes (maybe) growing on the fence along the railway tracks, well and truly frozen. With cron working properly I turned my attention to the harvester again, cleaned up logging and error notification, and prepared for feed management and link handling. Maybe another day and I'll push to GitHub and then test in all in containers. https://flic.kr/p/2kyB7n2

February 2, 2021. This is Emma seen from the self-portrait mode on my phone, looking toward our kitchen ceiling. She's almost totally black, except for that distinctive chin patch and collar. I wasn't able to get out today but in addition to a couple of meetings may have finally worked through my cron issues. I know I have other priorities but I feel I'm making real progress here so I'm not willing to let go of it just yet, https://flic.kr/p/2kyAZUH

February 1, 2021. This is the 'tiffany lamp' (it's nothing of the sort, of course) in my office. You never see it on camera because it's directly behind my webcam. I like it because it's touch-sensitive - there's no switch to turn it on, I just tap it (up to three times, to make it brighter). I've had it for some 30 years or more and it still works perfectly. Today I did an online webinar of dubious quality and spent a lot of time teasing out all the bugs in my cron system. It seems to work on my system, but I still have testing to do in the containers. But I ever so much closer now. https://flic.kr/p/2kxNg1a