Let's Make Some Art, Dammit

February 26, 2022. These are the birds playing in the snow as they eat the seeds that have fallen from the feeders above. We went into Rideau centre today to show our support for the downtown businesses that have been locked out for no good reason for the last three weeks. Andrea got a nice new bag and some other stuff, and I had some Chinese food (it has been so long!). We also went to the bird shop to replenish our supply of bird seed, which has been wiped out over the last month. Restored my files to the gRSShopper repository. https://flic.kr/p/2n5F1Yb

February 25, 2022. Our bird feeds have been especially active recently with all the snow, and we're getting a good variety, including various finches, sparrows, junkos, chickadees, cardinals, bluejays, and doves. It's hard to tear myself away from the window in the morning. Fixed my email service, got some background coding done, and next week it will be back to data literacy with a purpose. https://flic.kr/p/2n5KZtm

February 24, 2022. I've been getting my daily workout on the exercise bike, and this is what it looks like every morning. Except for the war, which is new. I've only ever experienced war on television, and that's as close as I ever want to be. It's hard to imagine, and I have nothing but contempt for people who think invading countries will solve their problems (and yes, I was at the anti-war demonstrations for the Iraq wars). Meanwhile, I finished most of my newsletter code today and then made a stupid error right at the end of the day that caused my account to be frozen. https://flic.kr/p/2n5Lo1h

February 23, 2022. This shows the aftermath of the freezing rain on the weeds in our back yard. It was supposed to be a picture of the birds as well, but they scattered when I went to take this shot and never returned. More long meetings today, so progress was minimal, though I'm mostly done the subscribe feature. https://flic.kr/p/2n5kZVX

February 22, 2022. Happy Twosday. Today featured a dose of freezing rain, the one sort of weather that poses a real danger here in eastern Ontario. So I was indoors all day attending meetings and working on my MailGun adaptation. Today marked the first issue of OLDaily send out using MailGun (and I admit it's nice to use the old newsletter code instead of relying on MailChimp to read and adapt an RSS feed). https://flic.kr/p/2n5mkB2

February 21, 2022. Still on the stationary bicycle every morning, and this is the view outside the window of the basement. The riding plus the walking are helping most of all with my endurance and agility (weight loss has been minimal). Today I finished off the progress report for my data literacy project and began work to replace the now-failed MailChimp system using RSS to send newsletters. https://flic.kr/p/2n5p8Sm

February 20, 2022. This is a scene of fresh snow in Warwick forest today. We went for a 4.8 km snowshoe walk through the forest (a new distance record for us snowshoeing). I reworked my home page a bit and played some No Man's Sky. Pretty nice day overall. https://flic.kr/p/2n4FP6b

February 19, 2022. It was nice and clear and then suddenly turned into this: a classic snow squall. From nice to zero visibility in an instant. Today I spent part of the day watching them remove the occupiers from downtown Ottawa streets (basically a zero-violence affair; they quite literally simply pushed them out). I also spent a full day working on my data literacy report. And that's it. https://flic.kr/p/2n4K9pe

February 18, 2022. Sometimes Casselman is pretty drab and other days it's as pretty as a picture. This is one of those days, though the blue skies mean it was quite cold. This is the view from behind the train station. I spent the full day today working on my data literacy report. More to come on that, as I'll have to spend some weekend time on it. https://flic.kr/p/2n4njSm

February 17, 2022. My daily walk takes me along Rue Principale and this is a road where people do *not* respect the speed limit. I stood by the side for a while taking pictures and glaring at drivers doing 70+ in a 50. You would think the extra attention would convince them to slow down. Not a whit. Working mostly on data literacy today, setting up the website and putting in the initial data, experimenting with using gRSShopper to organize my thoughts and creating an unmooc. https://flic.kr/p/2n4jP7z

February 16, 2022. Just part of the housing construction that's happening a few blocks from my home. But a pile of dirt reflects well my mood this week: heavy and dark. Things are piling up and of course the weather won't relent. More problems with my websites, reports are due, even dealing with a will, and I'm feeling the stress from a bunch of things. I want to be out bikepacking, away from all this, just traveling and exploring. https://flic.kr/p/2n4brZ7

February 15, 2022. Nice brilliant clear but cold day as I passed by some nearby woods on my daily walk. Frustrating day today; I tried to set up multi-sites in gRSShopper containers, but this failed utterly. Worked perfectly on my desktop containers, even with SSL, but was a failure behind the load balancers on the production machine. *sigh* https://flic.kr/p/2n4bpmr

February 14, 2022. Nothing like a late evening photo of a cat to make your photo-a-day quota. This is Charlemagne with the giant polydactyl claw. Today was a grueling day as I wrote two long pieces back to back. The first was a pleasure but the second was not. That's pretty much all I had time for all day. https://flic.kr/p/2n3NXvs

February 13, 2022. This is a view of Warwick forest on a bitterly cold day as we snowshoes along a temporary trail made by people celebrating the forest's 75th anniversary the day before. We weren't out that long, and went three kilometers or so, which was plenty given the cold. The rest of the day I spent playing No Man's Sky and completely forgot about the Super Bowl until well after it was over. Priorities. https://flic.kr/p/2n3Mc1B

February 12, 2022. This is Julia on the dryer in the downstairs bathroom making sure everything is as it should be. Today I actually took a break, doing a little work but mostly playing No Man's Sky. Yes, I'm building a new base again. https://flic.kr/p/2n3LYTW

February 11, 2022. There was a big old woodpecker up in those dead trees in the middle, but it was on the other side and would not emerge as I took this photo. It was taken in the woods just near the NRC building in Ottawa - I took my car in for servicing at St. Laurent and then walked to the office and back, a hike of about 9 kilometers. I was back home in time to finish the newsletter and to some catch-up work. https://flic.kr/p/2n3Lxap

February 10, 2022. So today we got a new microwave but as soon as we put the box on the kitchen floor Emma claimed it as her own, rolling around and actually chasing her tail. Tough slogging today, requiring a lot of focus, but I managed to finish a full run-through of my multi-site generator. I have to go into the office tomorrow (bleah) but I hope maybe to be able to make it work in production and be able to record some videos. https://flic.kr/p/2n2SKjV

February 9, 2022. We went to a Senators game just before Christmas and they were giving these out. We had tickets for a second game but it was cancelled (and since we had 2-for-one tickets, we weren't compensated at all). I felt under the weather today so I didn't do anything challenging. Time for that tomorrow. Oh yeah, and with a whimper and a smell of burning electronics, the microwave died. https://flic.kr/p/2n2XXWE

February 8, 2022. These are some weeds and a standpipe on a vacant lot I saw while walking around the neighbourhood late this afternoon. Long blue shadows and a yellow setting sun. I wrote a shell script this morning to automatically build virtual hosts, and worked on the startup and database scripts doe it this afternoon, all with the intent of making multi-site gRSShopper in containers work easily and quickly. Another day with good progress. https://flic.kr/p/2n2Dups

February 7, 2022. Up bright and early today, hit the trainer, then went to work. This is the sunrise in the back yard. I brought mooc.ca back to life, did some formatting, worked on rel2014, and began work on gRSShopper multisite. Also participated in a data equity workgroup meeting and shuttled Andrea back and forth to the dentist a couple of times. Good progress. https://flic.kr/p/2n2F8Aa

February 6, 2022. We went snowshoeing in Larose Forest and I took this shot without looking through the viewfinder - I just pointed it at something nice and let the picture define itself. Also played some No Man's Sky and generally had a relaxing day. https://flic.kr/p/2n2hi6m

February 5, 2022. Walked to the Caisse Populaire and back today. This is the view of Casselman on the way back. It's not a pretty picture-postcard town, it's a working town. It suits me. Meanwhile, I recorded a couple of videos and set up some of my Fallacies site today. Good progress. https://flic.kr/p/2n2bTzh

February 4, 2022. These are called pineberries. Andrea got them at Costco. To me they're just tart strawberries. And I would like to add: they're new food, and the world does not need new food. It especially does not need white strawberries. I like food the way it was. Anyhow. Still fixing serious updater bugs in gRSShopper, and also added an extension to the languages function to allow user-defined dictionaries. https://flic.kr/p/2n21Bot

February 3, 2022. I see this most days on my walk. It's just a storage facility for roads crews. It's generally neat and tidy, so I like it. More issues with the updater, but I managed to get some help videos done. Painful slow progress. Febuary is the hardest month to get through. https://flic.kr/p/2n1KiFG

February 2, 2022. Not quite a palindrome day, but close. This is a snack photographed just outside the Tim Horton's near Costco, where we went for groceries. Mish-mash of a day, got some work done on the VR paper, but struggled quite a bit with the gRSShopper update function. Sometimes my eyes just get buggy and start making sill errors I can't figure out - this was one of those days. https://flic.kr/p/2n1Nc4E

February 1, 2022. This Buddha keeps me company when I'm at the kitchen table being more sociable and often eating supper. I bought it in Ottawa down by the market 10 or 15 years ago. It makes me feel happy. I finished off the last of the work involved in the automated favicon system today, which made me very happy. It's not often that my code ends up as clean and complete as this code. https://flic.kr/p/2n1KFGS

January 31, 2022. Charlemagne likes to sit behind the banister upstairs overlooking the downstairs to survey his kingdom. Finished my favicon function today; it works perfectly and it gave me a lot of joy to create it. Now, back to real work, not just fun work. https://flic.kr/p/2n1qT1N

January 30, 2022. It was quite cold today but it didn't feel that bad as we went for a 4 km snowshoe through Larose Forest. I was anxious about the cold and forgot my camera and snowshoe poles, but we carried on regardless. Also added to my favicon function and successfully sent an image through a JSON file. And of course I enjoyed watching our national soccer team taking it to the U.S., not to mention a couple entertaining NFL games. Full day. https://flic.kr/p/2n1n7uH

January 29, 2022. That's the name of my travel mug, pictured here. It's all dirty and scraped because it travels with me everywhere - on my bicycle, in the car, on trips, wherever. Saturday today and so I relaxed and had fun writing a new function to auto-generate favicons from uploaded images. Fun, but I didn't finish today. I did discover I need to learn more about base64 encodings and JSON files. There's never an end to this stuff. https://flic.kr/p/2n1og2m