Posted by Chuck Grimmett. Learn more on his About page.
- Blog
- Profile
- Homepage
-
Red Beans and Rice
As we are coming up to Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday, this week’s bean dish was Red Beans and Rice. This Tuesday is looking a little busy for us, so we opted to make it this weekend and invited some friends over for dinner. It was Valentine’s Day, so Amanda and Charlie set the mood with hand-painted…
-
made with love
Amanda and her friend Megan have been working on a project to support the local immigrant community impacted by ICE. Hi friends. We’re excited to share a little something we’ve been working on for the past few weeks — after bedtime, during swim class, and on the couch while our families watch Cars (Charlie) or…
-
LaTeX to Gutenberg conversion
Do any mathematicians read my blog? Perhaps one or two of my former math professors or classmates? At work, I forked an old package that converts .tex files to WordPress-compatible HTML and updated it to generate modern Gutenberg markup for the WordPress block editor. I’d love help testing it out and identifying the rough edges.…
-
Action Scheduler clean up
Action Scheduler is a library for triggering a WordPress hook to run at some time in the future. It is used in a lot of large plugins to handle background processing of large job queues. It is an extremely useful tool. Unfortunately, it is also easy for bugs to make the queue or logs explode…
-
Big Apple Brook Trout
Trout Unlimited is doing a citizen science project in our area: Environmental DNA sampling to locate hidden brook trout populations in the NYC suburbs: Fairfield, Westchester, Putnam, and Long Island. Their plan is to cover 400 miles of streams, starting with locations where there was historic Brook Trout presence, but no recent state sampling. Then…
-
The blog post I think about monthly
I’ve thought about this post from I Quant NY at least once a month for the past decade. I finally found the link again over the weekend. Here it is: Such a simple data analysis, essentially sorting a column in a spreadsheet, revealed a problem with how parking near bike lanes and hydrants are marked.…
-
Back cover photo in 2026 issue of Tenkara Angler
The 2026 print issue of Tenkara Angler went live today: One of my photos from the fly swap post is on the back cover. Exciting! If you are into tenkara, the print issue is full of good stuff. Worth checking out.
-
Creamy Rio Zape Bean Dip
This week’s bean dish is an appetizer for the Super Bowl party we are going to this afternoon. I doubled the recipe on this Rio Zape bean dip from Rancho Gordo: I’ve made a couple different recipes with Rio Zape beans, and they are the tastiest bean varietal I’ve tried so far. Velvety texture and…
-
Three Amaro Nonino cocktail recommendations
I love amaro, and Amaro Nonino is a good gateway amaro if you haven’t yet explored the category. Here are three excellent cocktails in which to enjoy Nonino. All of these are in books on my shelf, but alas, you can’t link to books, so I linked to online sources. Fallback This is a wonderful…
-
Using AI for email triage
For the first time in a decade, I switched email apps. I’ve been a longtime Airmail user, but I moved to Spark for both macOS and iOS. The AI features are what pushed me over the edge. The ability to prompt things like these have been incredibly helpful for keeping my inbox tidy: It is…
-
Uniqlo Crossbody Bag
When I’m out on photo walks, I like to have both a wide lens and a zoom lens with me, but I don’t want to carry my big gear bag. I couple weeks ago I picked up a Crossbody Bag at Uniqlo for $25, intending to use it on park outings and woods walks with…
-
Automatically fixing links with the Wayback Machine
Broken links on the web are inevitable, but losing valuable context doesn’t have to be. I’ve been working on a plugin at work, in conjunction with the Internet Archive, to help combat link rot on WordPress sites. I consider this a “set it and forget it” plugin. One it is running, you don’t need to…
-
Hudson Ice Floes
After picking Charlie up from school yesterday, we went on a drive to photograph the ice floes on the Hudson River. One of my favorite things when we lived on the Yonkers Waterfront was seeing the ice floes in the middle of winter. We haven’t had much ice the last couple years, so I was…
-
How NYC handles snow
It is common knowledge that NYC puts blades on garbage trucks to plow snow: One thing I didn’t consider is that switching to electric garbage trucks impacted their effectiveness as snow plows. My friend Trevor, who designs and installs efficient energy systems in buildings in NYC, told me a few other things this weekend about…
-
2001 was a great year for albums
I started noticing the last couple years that many albums I remember fondly were released in 2001, so I got curious: What other albums did I listen to at one time that came out in 2001? The list was longer than I thought! It might have been because these albums were popular during formative time…
-
Month of January 2026
January was a cold, snowy month. We had three snowstorms this month and average temperatures well below freezing, sometimes dipping into the negatives overnight. This is the coldest, snowiest January we’ve had since moving to Peekskill in 2019. Beginning of January: Mid-January: End of January: We’ve spent a lot of evenings snuggled on the couch…
-
Breaking the ICE
The ICE protests and strikes today inspired me to write out some of my thoughts on those frozen-hearted bastards. In the last decade, I’ve strayed away from politics, having burnt myself out pouring so much of my time and attention on it from ~2006-2014. Now, I’m more pragmatic and less idealistic now than 15 years…
-
Thinking of Spring
With temperatures in the single digits and sixteen inches of snow blanketing the world outside, my thoughts turn to spring. In my mind, I’m wandering alongside a stream, looking for telltale signs of a rising trout, or at least a place one might be hiding. Here are a few places I’m drawing inspiration as I…
-
Three tiny snowballs
I thought about making these monotone, but I love the subtle blues that come out in photos of snow.
-
In Praise of Mink Oil
I’ve spent hours this winter shoveling snow, making snowballs, packing snowmen, and pulling a sled. My hands have stayed dry thanks to Fiebing’s Golden Mink Oil. I bought these buckskin gloves a few years ago, but when they are brand new they aren’t waterproof. I needed a solution. After just one coat of Fiebing’s Golden…