- Blog
-
From “A Field Guide to North American Christmas Trees”:
“Engleman Spruce (Picea Doloris Excrutiata): Similar in color to the Blue Spruce (Picea Pungens). Tall, upright appearance. Ravenously, unbelievably sharp, four-sided needles that pierce the soft, unsuspecting palms of suburban dads who work computers for a living and forget to bring gloves to the cut-your-own christmas tree farm. Trunk, especially, covered with short, needle-like barbs…
-
Wanted: Milking Trainer
On January 11th, at precisely 1:30 PM, Kate’s mom, my mother-in-law, the estimable State Representative Barbara McIlvaine Smith, will compete in the Celebrity Milking Competition at the Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg. Now, my New York City friends might be thinking of this as quaint. Which it is, in a way, but not if that…
-
It’s beginning to look a lot like… uh…
Christmas in the flower district, as I was walking across town on the way to work.
-
This is what traditional banjo-playing has been up to while I wasn’t paying attention
I mentioned a couple of years ago that I play the banjo some, but I haven’t really taken the banjo out of its case for a long time. So Laird, my chief (and, sadly, now only) banjo-playing uncle — more about that later — just sent along this video via my mom, demonstrating what traditional…
-
First Guerilla Drive-In Sticker Sighting
Lydia: “Look, Mommy, a sticker like daddy has!” Kate: !!! Kate took a picture and sent it to me: Yay, cool! I gave out vinyl GDI stickers at the showing of Local Hero in October, and we were wondering when (if ever) we’d see the first one. Hurrah!
-
Photographers: I get it now.
I always knew photography is hard, but I’m starting to have a new appreciation for it. After Lydia went to sleep, we stuck a couple of socks that Kate finished into the light tent, put the camera on a tripod, and took some pictures. What looks nice and bright to the eye, though, looks dingy…
-
Basement light tent
Kate’s at knitting tonight, so I finished the light tent in the basement, using oak dowels, a paper dropcloth, and lots of black duct tape. It turned out to be huge, much bigger than I had anticipated, and brighter, too: There’s a slit in the front of the tent for the camera’s lens to go…
-
John’s Christmas/birthday wishlist: an XO laptop (one for me, one for a kid)
Originally called the “OLPC” (One Laptop Per Child), or the “$100 laptop”, the XO laptop is designed from the bare metal up to be used by children in developing nations, to bootstrap a worldwide generation of skilled hackers, entrepreneurs, and knowledge workers. The laptops are designed to be low-power, chargeable using a yo-yo like pull…
-
NERDLE-point!
My current needlepoint project is to, you know, create a nice sofa cushion. A pillow. With a two-dimensional barcode design on it. Here’s the canvas, half-transferred from my printout using black acrylic paint: The design is in a machine-readable format called QR Code; codes like this can be found on your UPS package or pharmaceutical…
-
Practically Perfect in Every Way
It’s grand to be an Englishman in 1910! King Edward’s on the throne, it’s the age of men! I’m the lord of my castle, the sovereign, the liege! I treat my subjects, servants, children, wife with a firm but gentle hand, noblesse oblige. It’s 6:03 and the heirs to my dominion are scrubbed and tubbed,…
tikaro.com 