In 1977, personal computers weren’t a thing yet. But I had Fred Stark. He was my high school teacher. Physics, electronics, and as it turned out, computers. His classroom (room …

It’s been about two months since Doug passed away suddenly. He was only 63, just a few months younger than me. His passing has hit me hard. He was over …

How many ways can you say 31st Avenue? Apparently a lot. On a short walk through the heart of the Sunset, you’ll find 31 ST,  31ST AVE, 31 ST AVE, …

As a kid, I watched The Dick Van Dyke Show. I was six or seven. At that age, my idea of career and work came from what I saw in …

Lego kits are made for specific models. Follow the instructions, and you get the exact design on the box. But the genius of Lego is in the parts. Interchangeable. Adaptable. …

We went shopping at Safeway yesterday for the weekend and saw something unusual. Two mallard ducks, a male and a female sitting on the asphalt on in a parking spot. …

One Christmas, a friend gave us a gift. It was large and heavy. We couldn’t guess what it might be. We opened it. A coffee table book about San Francisco. …

January hits, and I start thinking about fishing. Happens every year. Sure, there’s winter fishing in the Bay Area. Stocked trout are a thing. But I’m a spring-and-summer kind of …

In the late ’80s, I painted a series of large backdrops using Bill Alexander’s wet-on-wet oil painting technique. I’d watched his PBS show in the late ’70s and still had …

I’ve been running my creative life with a weekly sprint plan for years. It’s simple. It works. It’s built for my multipotentialite (and neurodivergent) brain that loves to explore everything …

There are a few things I wish I still had from my childhood. Or at least a picture of them. One of those is a series of drawings I did …

I’m stepping back from social media. Threads, Bluesky, Facebook—all of it. Why? The wildfires in LA brought out the worst. Vitriol. Anger. Endless outrage. Grace and empathy? Nowhere to be …

I’ve been to enough small county museums around the West to know to look for their barbed wire collection. It’s usually a small board or shadow box with a variety …

A few years ago, Joyce and I restored the house at 623 32nd Avenue in San Francisco’s Richmond District. It wasn’t the real house—just a 1/12th scale dollhouse model. Completely …

A couple of years ago I gave live streaming a try. I used Switcher Studio. It’s a solid tool for live streams, but it’s pricey. What I liked: you can …

I’m actually kidding! Until a few days ago, I had never ridden Caltrain. OK, I did ride the Penisula rails twice, but both times were behind the venerable Southern Pacific …

Back in 1996 I built the website for the Golden Gate Railroad Museum (GGRM) and I just found one of the pages on Archive.org. It’s essentially all text, no design, …

This is my mantra. A reminder to just get moving. The “Don’t Think” part comes from Ray Bradbury. He said thinking kills creativity. I’m stuck on a new project. Happens …

For as long as I can remember, we’ve had a train around the tree. Growing up, it was my dad’s Märklin set. Turnouts. Signals. Fully automated. Now I’ve got my …

I got to be tourist in my home town today. Hadn’t been to Pier 39 since before the pandemic. It’s crowded as ever. Plus I got to ride my favorite …

I never thought I’d be selling my art. But there I was in September, standing behind a table at a local community art fair. My friend, one of those amazing …

The constant pull between focus and exploration. That’s my daily dance. Like Tigger, I bounce between fascinations. Railroads one day, kinetic art the next. A perpetual motion machine of curiosity. …

I hailed a Waymo yesterday for the second time. All I can say is Wow! We had it drive us home from Molinari’s in North Beach and it took us …

I don’t like the phrase Find your tribe. I also don’t like the term like-minded. We have too much tribalism in the world today. I prefer to surround myself with …

I discovered the spark for Ask Karl The Fog buried in a book of kinetic art. There it was: an old fortune teller with pull cords that revealed answers. You …