Unsolicited advice can be good advice

A post by Kevin Kelly reminded me of some advice from University. I was in the Commerce faculty taking an Accounting major, but we had to take courses in the other disciplines. The second year marketing course that was mandatory was taught by a Professor with a remarkable resemblance to Alfred Hitchcock. The only thing I remember from that course is a quote from some ancient educational video we had to sit through, featuring a strange looking man with a preposterously bad toupee.

The quote was, “we must learn to make our mistakes faster.”

At any rate, the Kevin Kelly post is titled “68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice” and is chock full of goodness.

His site “Cool Tools” is also worth checking out occasionally.

Hubble Gaze

This is pretty fun. A Nasa page where you enter in your birth date and then you get to see what the Hubble telescope was peering at on one of your birthdays.

Select Your Birth Date

It’s alive. It’s like a pet.

Meet the man behind the world’s only sourdough library.

The Anatomy of Nightfall

I happen to own an  Watch, so this article bubbled up for me in my RSS reader. I learned all sorts of things, such as the various phases of twilight and the meaning of the word “crepuscular”.

Particularly in the days before ubiquitous nocturnal electrical lights, experiencing the fall of night must have been a source of anxiety – you can only light so many candles, and the fading of light from the sky must have always had a faint miasma of death about it. The civilized person in us is sure the Sun will come up again, but in our animal hearts, we are perhaps less certain. Shakespeare captured the irrational mood of the hours of darkness well in that darkest of plays, Hamlet, with the titular character's soliloquy: 

"Tis now the very witching time of night, 
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on."

Twilight has its own rich vocabulary, including the word crepuscular; "that which is related to twilight." Animals that are chiefly active during the twilight of dawn or nightfall are called crepuscular animals; my favorite of these, and maybe yours too, is the firefly. 

https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/the-eerie-beauty-of-the-apple-watch-solar-face-and-the-anatomy-of-nightfall

An interesting journey through recent tech history

And a prescription for the future.

Freeride Skiing in the time of COVID19

Skating on thin ice

Meanwhile in France

The other Tour de France…

Sometimes to understand technology, you need to go back to basics.

Seems like this is the Cookie Monster's green cousin?

Ahhh, Got it!

Sometimes you just need things explained to you, in simple and concise english.

Easter ride in Richmond

Started out a bit cool and cloudy, as a smaller than normal group left Lucky's Doughnuts at Main and 13th. The sun started to come out when we got out to the jetty.

I lurves me a good murmuration video

Make sure you turn up the sound a bit on this.

Sometimes it is the simple things in life.

Remember - never cease to be amazed.

What says Christmas more than a video on Diffie-Hellman crypto key exchanges?

Also some bonus NORAD footage. Remember, NORAD tracks Santa (see what I did there?).

Where are you going? For a drink.

It all seems so familiar, somehow.

I would watch this movie for sure.  Best trailer I have seen in a while!

An ephemeral sack of particles that thinks itself eternal.

It can't all be fun and games.

Get busy indeed - time is running out.

Surfs up! Keep the rubber side down!

Really weird. Part of me can't believe this is a thing and part of me is enthralled. Gorgeous footage.

Mow the lawn. Build a bridge.

OK, maybe don't mow the lawn. You need that stuff to grow high.