It’s been a pretty scorching Summer in the UK. And as someone who doesn’t like heat, I’ve been looking forward to Autumn and Winter. And those were now in Autumn (and close to my birthday!).#

But I feel I was so focused on the downsides of Summer I ignored the positives.#

Such as those early sunrises. I forgot how miserable it can be waking up to darkness – which I am this morning.#

I now cycle from the train station to the office. When the clocks go back an hour on October 24th I’m probably going to have to stop cycling the way back, from office to the station. As it will be dark. And cycling around London is dangerous enough in beaming sunshine.#

I still love Autumn and Winter11 Though as I’ve gotten older I’ve grown less attached to the tail end of Winter, in January and February. By then Christmas is over and I just want Spring to begin. But next Summer, even if it’s super hot again, I’m going to try and appreciate it more.#

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I always enjoy seeing a bug out in the wild.#

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I always love finding instances in history books of people moaning and worrying about new technologies or the decline of the next generation.#

Here’s one of a man moaning that the steel nibbed pen isn’t as good as the quill and that it’s worsening children’s handwriting:#

But not everyone approved [of steel nibs being used to write over the quill], no matter its quality or place of origin. In 1862, an unnamed correspondent for Scientific American found that all pens with a steel tip were barbaric, and all who used them hoodwinked. The greatest casualty was handwriting. 'Do not ninety-nine persons in a hundred use steel pens,' the magazine writer complained, 'and has more than one out of the ninety-nine the effrontery to say he can write with them? Lord Palmerston was quite right: the handwriting of this generation is abominable; and as new improvements in steel pens go that of the next will be worse. There is neither grace nor legibility in the angular scrawl that prevails now.' (p49)#

A fountain pen is called that because you no longer had to dip your nib into the ink. Instead there was a reservoir for holding several days worth of ink. The ink just kept on flowing out – like a fountain.#

Last year I finally got a 4K monitor. I still have two 13-year-old 27" Apple Thunderbolt displays to the left and right. But my main monitor is a 32" Samsung 4K monitor11 SAMSUNG ViewFinity S7 LS32D700EAUXXU 4K Ultra HD 32" VA LED Monitor - Black. So when I'm building/designing things like this blog I'm looking at a 4K monitor. And the first thing I realised when I started using 4K is just how tiny things like text look. But plenty of people are still on HD monitors. So it's always a bit of a shock how big this blog looks when I view it on my office’s HD monitor. It's tough – what do you design for? The new (4K)? Or the old (HD)?#

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Feeling rough today for some reason. Good nights sleep and no sugar last night. I woke up a little groggy as always, but felt fine. But now? Pretty rough. Oh well.#

I'm writing this with that little fancy German pen with BulletJournal branding. I still don't get the hype. £28 and the ink is cutting out as I write! Let's switch to my £3-5 Uni-ball Jetstream 101. See, this is so much nicer. Sure, the ink isn't as thick or as black and sharp. But the ink doesn't cut out. And it's so much more comfortable to write with.#

I've put a cheap £25 fountain pen on my birthday list (and some cheap ink). I'm very curious what it's going to be like. I'm sure it will take some getting used to. But hopefully it will improve the look of my writing in my notebooks. I'm slightly concerned about comfort and ink smudging (with me being left handed). But hopeful it will [be] better than my beloved Uni-ball Jetstream 101, which is proving harder than you might think.#

Sometimes I count myself a very lucky beneficiary of the factory age.#

Just exploring a random blog I stumbled upon an obituary for this Dad. And there's this rather nice bit:#

He chose Pearl Harbor Day in 1963 to propose to my mom so he could remember the date, and he did it at Washington Rock to remember the place.#

I think that's sweet and a good way to remember an anniversary.#

I'm trying to think what public holiday I'd choose, as outside of Christmas I tend to forget them. Guy Fawkes Night I reckon. I'll always remember the 5th of November.#

Walden.blog now gets a 100 PageSpeed Insights score.#

I found it interesting that Google (who runs the tool) punishes you for lazy loading images where in the past it used to punish you for not doing it. I wonder why. For A.I. crawlers perhaps?#

A conniption is an informal, mostly American term for a sudden fit of rage, hysteria, or a temper tantrum.#

I heard an American woman say this in a TikTok and it’s a word I’ve never heard before. Interesting.#

Every year or two I go to Daring Fireball's sponsorship page to check out how much John Gruber is charging companies to sponsor his blog for a week. The figure always astounds me.#

I remember a few years ago it was around $300,000 a year.11 Assuming he sells every sponsorship slot (which he seems to).#

Now he's charging $12,000 a week – $624,000 a year!#

Fair play to him – he's been consistently posting for years.#

But with the death of the web and the rise of social media I'm suprised that he can still make so much from an independent tech blog.#

Talking of John Gruber. I stopped following his blog (Daring Fireball) and listening to his podcast when he said he didn't like the the Lord of the Rings.11 He didn't just say he was "more of a Star Wars guy – he really said the Lord of the Rings was kinda crap."#

It's a bit of a petty reason, I know. And it's not the best trait to be done with someone just because they don't like something you like. But there's certain things that are just too sacred. The Lord of the Rings being one of them.#

After a few years I started following his blog again. Before quickly stopping as he was one of those American's who got obsessed with Donald Trump. I hate Trump and think he's the biggest threat to American democracy and world wide stability.22 I put him ahead of Putin even. Because at least Putin isn't in the house house (officially anyway – I think he has dirt on Trump). Whereas Trump is very much the fox in the hen house. And I admire Gruber for speaking out about him. But I follow his blog for tech news, not politics.#

New feature added to the blog:#

• Wide images the go outside the bounds of the main body#
• Little images that can go to the left/right and the posts text wraps around#

Below is just a test of these features, so please ignore 🙂#

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut scelerisque nisl nec velit pulvinar tempor. Nullam congue facilisis ligula id hendrerit. Suspendisse ut neque leo. Nunc consequat efficitur dui. Vivamus scelerisque turpis placerat, sodales mi ac, rutrum nisi. Proin eleifend interdum magna in gravida. Donec ante sapien, efficitur accumsan elit ut, gravida consectetur est. In ornare interdum risus, at dignissim erat dictum sit amet. Orci varius natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. In fermentum orci eu faucibus tempus. Curabitur nec porttitor nisl. Vivamus sodales nibh turpis, vitae tincidunt dolor condimentum vitae. Nam eget ex vel felis tincidunt sodales vulputate ac est. Etiam felis erat, cursus sit amet interdum a, faucibus et augue.#

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Integer eget velit laoreet, maximus leo ut, cursus metus. Pellentesque quis mi ut nibh interdum pellentesque. Ut volutpat orci ex. Pellentesque bibendum tincidunt lacus, vel suscipit lacus ullamcorper fringilla. Vestibulum eget consectetur ante. Fusce viverra sed lacus vel posuere. Cras ut eros efficitur, ultricies sem eu, accumsan arcu. Etiam sodales tempor elit, nec sagittis enim tincidunt at. Etiam ultricies hendrerit libero a ultrices. Sed pulvinar, eros sit amet consequat sagittis, ex turpis faucibus libero, at aliquam orci ante a risus. Mauris in egestas ligula. Etiam scelerisque sapien lobortis eleifend efficitur. Integer ornare vestibulum vulputate. Nullam faucibus odio eget urna fermentum, ac finibus dolor ultricies.#

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Quisque suscipit est vulputate neque lacinia dignissim. Vivamus tincidunt metus purus, vel scelerisque mi accumsan sit amet. Suspendisse ex arcu, sollicitudin nec viverra et, pellentesque ut dui. Etiam tincidunt sed dui non tempus. Donec risus magna, luctus in pretium in, aliquam eu purus. Quisque pretium nulla sit amet nunc vestibulum, a tempor turpis vehicula. Praesent a sodales odio, ullamcorper volutpat libero. Etiam mattis condimentum sem sed dictum. Nam sit amet blandit turpis. Proin rutrum, erat facilisis vehicula scelerisque, dolor metus interdum dui, vitae posuere magna metus quis lorem. Nullam interdum felis nec sem hendrerit, sed tempor nunc varius. Nunc cursus odio non laoreet ultrices. Morbi odio purus, aliquet quis pulvinar eu, euismod nec elit. Fusce ut lectus vel nibh tincidunt lacinia. Curabitur ut ullamcorper dui.#

There needs to be a name for the disappointment of someone showing you something at work that's clearly AI generated.#

Especially when it has been done last minute and not even humanised a bit.#

They're trying to run you through it. But they know about as much of the contents as you do.#

And it's always so long. And lacking basic, but important context/knowledge that a human would know.#

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I think often about Robert Shields, the man who logged every five minutes of his life.#

I ponder him mainly because I'm a bit of a "logger" myself, so I'm amazed how he managed it.11 Spoiler: autism, I'm sure#

Not only did he write often, but he wrote a lot. He tallied up 37.5 million words from 1972 until 1997 when a stroke disabled him. For reference, Samuel Pepys wrote 1.25 million words in his diary.#

But most of his entries were short. Here's some examples:#

April 18, 1994
6:30–6:35: I put in the oven two Stouffer's macaroni and cheese at 350°.
6:35–6:50: I was at the keyboard of the IBM Wheelwriter making entries for the diary.
6.50–7.30: I ate the Stouffer's macaroni and cheese and Cornelia ate the other one. Grace decided she didn't want one.
7.30–7.35: We changed the light over the back stoop since the bulb had burnt out.#

(You can see lots more examples here)#

I now log via my notebook, but I've mostly done it digitally using an app on my phone called Funnel (App Store link) which would send it to my daily note in Obsidian. But despite having a quick add app on a phone that's nearly always on my person, I'd still struggle to log every five minutes!#

However Robert wouldn't actually create a log every five minutes – that's impossible.22 Especially when you're using a IBM Wheelwriter. He would take handwritten notes throughout the day using a pen and paper and then in the evening he'd type up each five minute log at once on a typewriter. Which would be a lot of work and time. In one entry he said he'd been up since 03:00 writing them. As a result he avoided leaving town and disliked overnight trips because they put him behind.#

For a moment I considered logging just one day of my life every five minutes in honour of Robert. But that frequency is just insane. Fifteen minutes is more doable. Perhaps I’ll try. He died on an October 15th, which is ten days away. Maybe I’ll give every fifteen a go.#

His story is a curious one. You wonder if he had OCD or autism and these logs ruled his life and negatively effected those around him. Or, who knows, perhaps it was his driving purpose in life. And logging down everything was a way of living life more purposefully and ensuring his life would be remembered.#

Walden.blog still isn’t beautiful, but I’m trying to focus on features and functionality over beauty right now.#

Every site I have make I fiddle endlessly with the look. I’m trying to keep Walden light and clean.#

I’ll add some niceness at some point I’m sure. But I’m actually getting used to its bareness. I’m even growing to like its serif font.#

And now that things like little side images and footnotes are supported, its starting to look like a proper blog.#

And I’m very proud to say that it’s still just two files11 If there’s no images on the page anyway. – the HTML page itself and the CSS stylesheet. I’m especially pleased I’ve managed to not add any JavaScript yet.#

Either way, I’m determined to keep this site under 100 KB (it’s currently 5-30 KB depending on page size).#

How Walden.blog looks on mobile with night mode turned on: #

Just had a weird head rush. Powerful. A minuscule bit of dizziness. If I die tonight, that’s why.#

Yesterday I suddenly wondered: what do spiders think about? They’re in their web, dead still, all day long. Do they think? Or do they not experience consciousness like humans and are just responding to stimuli?#

Either way, I felt oddly sorry for them. For their boring life. But who knows, maybe they’re happy enough.#

Like books, you can never have too many notebooks. Though maybe I have too many. But they give me great pleasure, so I don’t mind.#

Just like with books, the anticipation is wonderful – thinking of the day I get to crack it open.11 Which is why, in my opinion a notebook should never have too many pages. Because you eventually get bored of it and become desperate to start a new, fresh one.#

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The Moscow Times:#

Health authorities in Siberia’s Irkutsk region have placed nearly 200 people under medical observation after a laboratory worker died from plague.

At least 197 people who may have had contact with her were reportedly placed under medical isolation, including more than 100 in hospital wards.#

According to someone on Xwitter (totally unverified) she worked in a lab. There’s some random interesting stuff in the thread:#

… what worries me the most because Russia has designed to kill. In short, they took the bacteria and made changes to it to make it worse. For example, it's known that they designed one where taking antibiotics (the cure) triggers a toxin to kill you from something else.#

I really hope this story doesn’t become a bigger story, it fizzles out, and we don’t hear about it again. It does sound like Russia is actually taking steps to contain it. But I never really thought about Russia having bio-weapons (but it makes sense).#

Goodness. A lot of my Xwitter feed is about this outbreak in Russia. It seems that it might not be bubonic plague. But either way, it’s a serious virus. It’s become aerious enough in my mind11 Not that I know anything. that I’ve created the "2026 Russian Outbreak" tag on the blog.#

Again, I hope this turns into nothing.#

But pretty much every outbreak in the history of the world has spread far and wide and humbled humans ability to contain and control it.#

I don’t know much about the science of outbreaks and plagues. All I know is that outbreaks are very common – as we learnt with COVID-19. Throughout history there’s plagues roughly every fifty years I think. And now that humans have the toxic combo (literally) of being able to design these viruses ourselves and the hubris to think we can control it, it wouldn’t surprise me if outbreaks happen more often than every fifty years.#

I’m always baffled that there’s labs playing with this stuff. I hope it’s for ethical reasons – such as helping cure diseases. But you feel that we’ve got to put together some sort of treaty, like we have with nuclear bombs, around these viruses.22 Though don’t expect Russia to play ball.#

I’ve been microdosing Haribo this evening. Eating two or three sweets every thirty minutes.#

I’m trying to avoid that sugar crash, you see.#

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