We went shopping at Safeway yesterday and saw something unusual again - two mallard ducks, a male and a female sitting on the asphalt in one of the parking spots. I had seen this particular pair before a couple weeks ago, so they seem to...
A few months ago Eli and I went to the Exploratorium to see an exhibit on automata. I find they tickle my brain in a curious way, which I guess is what they are supposed to do. It was great to see automata from well known...
In 2014 I made a decision to fish more often. In years past, I fished maybe 4 or 5 times in the year. And it seemed to me that for as much as I really enjoy fishing, 4 to 5 times a year is not...
This morning I tried out a new toy, a Polaroid Cube+ clipped to my waders. I wasn’t sure what to expect but I’m pleased. The quality is better than I expected. And I got about 1 hour and 45 minutes of record time before the...
I get to be creative every day in both my work and play and for whatever reason I sometimes lose that creative energy and get stuck. Being creative over many hours can be difficult, so over the years I’ve learnt variety of methods to unstick myself. Imagine...
As I’ve gotten older I’ve found that I’m less and less interested in VR. Now, I must say that I haven’t experienced much VR to begin with, but I’m finding reality much more interesting each day. Sure I can play a VR fishing game and catch...
Marie Kondo suggests in her tidying book that we should look at all of our stuff all at once and only keep those things that still spark joy in our hearts. I’ve been thinking about this and I’m finding different ways to apply this, not just...
I go fishing at Crissy Field at least once a week and I often think about some of the fascinating history of the field. During WWII the Army had built a long 4 track yard to stage hospital trains. You can see pictures of the...
I recently needed to pull in a third party form into a page where I was using Vue.js. The form is displayed in an iframe and the adjacent content needed to react to submitting of the form, in this case a header needed to disappear....
I grew up as a toy train guy. My father started his first layout when I was three years old and growing up with trains meant that it was in my blood by the time of my first memories. His early layouts were not permanent until...
I have three plush toys that sit behind my keyboard, Prickles the hedgehog, Spike the stingray, and Scarlet the octopus. They are muses of sorts and help me as I work. Prickles represents persistence and helps me to stay focused even when the work gets difficult....
I’m shopping for a scroll saw. It doesn’t need to be fancy, just a basic one for cutting shapes from 1/4-inch plywood for my model railroad. I settled on a $72 model that I’ve been looking at on Amazon and I finally decided to buy...
I’ve been doing it now every day for a little over a week. Seth Godin says that after six weeks you will appreciate the benefits. It will change you because you will be thinking about the next topic to blog about. I think what he...
I’ve had a form of tinnitus for as long as I can remember. I don’t know why I have it. Genetic perhaps? Inner ear damage? Too many fevers as a kid? I don’t know. But it isn’t the type of tinnitus that is at all distracting....
A while ago I picked Marie Kondo’s book on tidying. I haven’t followed her prescriptions to the letter, but I have found her instructions to be immensely useful. The most important result that I have had is that once I tidy a room or space, it...
I have to admit that I get slightly annoyed when I hear someone say they’re taking the bus when they are talking about taking a streetcar. Don’t they know the difference between rubber tires and steel wheels? Yes, I know that when someone takes the...
The Embarcadero Freeway was truly a depressing structure and made the Embarcadero near the ferry building seem dark and foreboding. And although the 1989 earthquake was a terrible experience, one of the few good things that came out of that was the condemnation and eventual...
Vue.js promotes itself as a progressive framework, meaning that you can start small and use as little or as much as you need. I’ve been working on Vue.js projects at both ends, some full fledged projects using vuex, components, and vue-cli, and some projects which...
Facebook greeted me today with one of those auto-generated videos. "You’ve been friends with Joyce on FB for 9 years!" Which struck me kind of funny because Joyce and I married almost 3 decades ago and we met a decade before that. Normally I just...
I went fishing yesterday at Crissy Field. I had one bite on my swimbait that felt like a surf perch. This year is nothing like it was two years ago. There seem to be plenty of halibut being caught in the south bay where it...