Chuck Grimmett

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  • Week of March 11, 2024

    The warm weather and extra daylight at the end of the day has been a welcome change. Every night this week Amanda, Charlie, and I spent some time outside after daycare/work and before dinner. We are dinner outside multiple times this week, went for walks, cooked dinner on the grill, got our outdoor seating out, rode bikes, and played in the yard and at the playground. It was good for all of us.

    Amanda found a battery-powered motorcycle for free on the Buy Nothing Facebook group, and I replaced the 6V battery and sourced a charger to get it working again. Charlie loves to cruise around on it!

    I worked from Automattic’s NoHo office on Friday. I went in for a meeting, but I like going in once a month or so for a change of pace. Los Tacos 1, right around the corner, is very good. Astor Wines is also right up the block, so I usually stop in and restock on stuff I can’t find up in Westchester. This time it was orange shrubb.

    I made more French cleat tool holders in the shop after work this week.

    • Air nailer
    • Air hose
    • Router bits
    • Axe and adze
    • Pencil sharpener
    • Clock and dust collection hose
    • Draw knife and spokeshave
    • Drills/drivers, bits, and charger/batteries (I also added a magnet bar for my most-used bits a couple days later)
    • Files and rasps

    I also made a workbench for Charlie that hangs on the French cleats so that as he grows we can just lift it up. I had my own bench in my Dad’s workshop growing up and have fond memories of the countless hours I spent out there, and I want Charlie to have the same option. I put a magnet bar up with the tools we got him for Christmas, and the old vise I had. He’s played with it a lot in the past couple days. Makes my heart happy.

    I’m trying out toe spacers and one of those magnet nose bands to improve your nose breathing at night. Slowly trying to make improvements. Following up on a previous one I mentioned, the probiotics are helping quite a bit.

    The seeds we started last weekend are doing great. 80% of them have sprouted already. Rosemary and the scotch bonnets are the holdouts.

    This was a yardwork-focused weekend. We disassembled the 4 year old garden beds that were starting to fall apart and built new ones. Instead of elevated like the previous ones, we opted for regular ground-level raised beds so that Charlie can help more easily. Also, now that we got rid of the groundhogs, we expect fewer pest issues.

    We went with 12ft beds (previously 8ft) to space things out a little more, plus and extra 4×4 box to grow some luffas in.

    Yes, we know the fence is falling apart. I’m waiting on a contractor to get back to me so I can finish filing the permits with the city. Yes, I hate that we need a permit to replace a fence. No, I’m not going to go rogue because I’m pretty sure we have a neighbor that will check because another neighbor recently got fined for something similar.

    Next steps: Lining the bottoms with cardboard and sticks, layering on compost and coconut coir, then shoveling the dirt back in.

    I also secured Charlie’s swingset with some 24″ metal spikes driven sideways at an angle and attached them with conduit straps.

    I needed to rent a UHaul to move the 2x12x12 boards and some wood lattice that I’m replacing on my deck. I originally wanted a pickup truck, van, or trailer, but neither Home Depot nor UHaul had them available. The only thing available was s 15′ box truck, so I rolled with it.

    Unfortunately I had an awful experience. Their app is terrible and errors out constantly. First it didn’t show my reservation, which I finally fixed by finding a tool that helps you associate an order with your account. Then the “mobile pickup” option did not accept upload of any the photos it required. Three phone calls and hour later I finally got the truck. Drop-off/mobile return was the same headache, but only took 30 minutes.

    Software and AI struggle the most where it has to interact with the physical world. The physical world is messy and does not follow clean, machine-readable rules like the computing world. We still need humans to help us navigate AFK.

    At least Charlie thought the truck was cool.

    That’s all I’ve got this week. See you next week 👋

    p.s. if you read this regularly, drop me a note (email). I’d love to hear from you because I have little idea who actually reads these posts. I mostly write them for my future self, but I like hearing from other readers, too. Thank you in advance!

  • Workbench build

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    Step two of the workshop upgrade. Previously: Insulating and heating my workshop with a diesel heater

    Research and design

    The workshop is a small 10×14′ space, so I needed to be very intentional about where I put this workbench to maximize work area. The previous owner had haphazardly installed a 72″x20″ particleboard desk top as a bench, which I shored up when I moved in, but it was way too small and bounced whenever I used a hammer on it.

    I considered a lot of options, and almost went with The Anarchist’s Workbench, but I didn’t have the space to walk around something like this in the middle of the floor, so I decided to go with putting a bench along the full 10′ wall.

    For the top I wanted something hefty. The Anarchist’s Workbench calls for 2x6s halved from 2x12s. I thought that was probably overkill for what I needed and more expensive. I opted for cheaper, more readily available 2x4s.

    I wanted the top to be 31″ deep so I could slide big plastic totes completely underneath for storage. I also wanted plenty of space to work. 2x4s are actually 1.5×3.5″, so that means I needed (21) 10ft long boards.

    Laminating the 2x4s and planing the sections

    When I got to the point of laminating the 2x4s, it was still below freezing at night, so I needed to laminate them in my basement so the glue would set.

    I laminated them in 3 sets of 7 boards each so they’d fit through my 12″ planer. I laid them out, rolled glue on one side of each board, and clamped them together.

    After the first one was done, I ran it through the planer. There were two issues:

    1. It took a lot of passes to get down below the rounded corners on each one
    2. The rough-ish edges didn’t stick together as well as I’d hoped. There were some gaps.

    I decided for the next two sections it would be better to pre-joint and plane the 2x4s before glueing them, and that make a big difference.

    The other thing that made a big difference is that a new set of planer blades came in right before I was ready to plane the final section. The cut was faster and cleaner with the new sharp blades, so I did one final pass on the two I had already planed to both clean them up and ensure the depth of all three matched.

    Framing

    For stability, we opted to mount the bench to the wall on three sides and support it on the fourth with legs. We used 2×4 stringers on the wall and leveled them (not relative to the floor the wall, because nothing in that shed is square.)

    It is 36″ high.

    Routing out spots for the carpenter’s vise and legs

    We wanted to route out spots to flush-mount the vise and to inset the legs, and we figured it would be easier to route the front section before joining all three sections together. Here was my plan:

    Dry fit first.

    That’s my Dad routing. We took turns.

    Biscuit joining and gluing the three sections

    After routing the front section, we used a biscuit joiner and joined the three sections together with glue and biscuits.

    A biscuit joiner is ingenious. Since it always cuts at the same depth, you don’t need to sweat minor variations in the depth of the items you are joining, as long as the top is flat.

    This was a late night. I think we finally finished around 11:30pm.

    Adding legs, shelves, drawers, outlets, and backstop

    The next morning we screwed the top in place on the stringers and set to work putting in the legs and the shelves. I varied from my above plans slightly to leave a section in the middle with no shelving for a chair, trash can, vacuum, etc. The shelves are at different heights to accommodate totes on one side and a set of drawers on the other.

    We decided to run two outlets for above the work bench, then added plywood, which French Cleats will be later mounted to.

    Adding the vises and LED bars

    Sanding the top and putting on a coat of finish

    I planed and sanded the top to even out some uneven spots, especially at the seams. Then I added a coat of a beeswax and linseed oil blend that I made for stools a couple years ago.

    I decided one coat was enough. It is a bench that is going to get dirty and beat up anyway, it isn’t a piece of furniture.

    How is it?

    Great! It is solid and does not budge or bounce. It has plenty of storage and is the right height for me to stand and work at.

    What’s next?

    • Adding dust collection (done IRL and post forthcoming)
    • Adding french cleats (in progress IRL, post when complete)
    • Adding bench dogs (not started)

  • Insulating and heating my workshop with a diesel heater

    I mentioned this in some weekly posts, but wanted to write a dedicated one so I have a place to link to in the future.

    Working out in my 10’x14′ workshop on a cold day in January and shivering, I resolved to finally put in some heat.

    My first idea was a tiny top-loading wood stove that I could burn offcut chunks in. I priced out some options, but it ultimately had three big downsides:

    1. They take a while to heat up and cool down. I can’t just go out there and work for an hour, I need to start the fire an hour before, keep an eye on it, feed it while I work, and make sure it burns out before I go back in the house.
    2. They are expensive! The cheapest one I could find new was $350, and the quality was iffy. Good ones were over $1000 and made for sailboats. Used ones are hard to come by, too.
    3. They take up valuable floor space. This matters in a tiny shed.

    When I was chatting with my Dad about it, he asked,

    “Have you considered a diesel heater?”

    I hadn’t, mostly because I had never heard of one. I knew I didn’t want a loud, smelly forced air propane heater, and that is that I thought a diesel heater was, but I was totally wrong. They are small, quiet, and fuel efficient. People often use them in RVs, ice fishing huts, hunting cabins, and garages.

    We settled on a Silvel 8KW, 12V version, which my parents gifted to me for my birthday. To power it we used a 120V -> 12V converter.

    In order to make a heater worthwhile, I needed to insulate. It had bare studs with plywood paneling on the outside.

    I went with double reflective insulation because it is cheaper and easier to install than fiberglass (less itchy too!) and less messy than spray foam. It won’t keep the space conditioned all the time (not a good choice for a house), but it will work long enough to keep the space heated while I’m working out there.

    I used the 16″ width for between the rafters and 48″ on the inside of the roof. I put up about half of it myself and Dad helped with the other half over President’s Day weekend.

    Once we got the insulation hung, we installed the heater. We opted to install it outside to reduce the noise, save space, make exhausting it easier, and not have to worry about filtering out dust from the air intake. We piped the hot air in through the wall.

    I set up a French cleat shelf outside on the back of the shed under my kayak storage overhang to keep it out of the rain. Air intake and exhaust go through a hole in the bottom of the shelf. We used a hole saw to cut a hole big enough for the pipe to go through, ran wires for power, and secured everything in place.

    The heater works great! It runs for about 14 hours on a gallon of diesel, give or take depending on which level you run it on. (It has levels 1-10).

    After running for ~3 hours on level 10, it got the cold shed up from 36F to 70F. Incredible.

    A month later I’m still very happy with it. Working in a warm workshop makes a huge difference. Even after I turn the heater off, the shed holds heat in for a while as long as the door is closed. I tried to seal as many gaps around things like the door as I could with weather strip.

    Up next: A post about building and installing the work bench, and a post about the french cleat tool storage.

  • Week of March 4, 2024

    Lots of rain this week, so we did indoor activities like going to the library, going to the grocery store, and making ambulances out of boxes.

    This box is still in our living room, though now Charlie calls it his “garage” and likes to hide underneath it while we walk around the house and call his name. Eventually he pops out and giggles hysterically.

    We also went to gymnastics and a birthday party for one of Charlie’s friends.

    Another activity was starting seeds. Charlie did the dirt scooping and watering. I’m learning from last year’s seed starting mistakes:

    • more lights (shifted four bars to one shelf instead of one per)
    • lights closer to the seeds (raised up the soil and heating pads)
    • warmer location (basement instead of my drafty office)
    • lights on a timer (sunrise to sunset)

    Workshop upgrade progress report

    I put in the dust collection system! It is a 2HP Harbor Freight dust collector that I took off the stand and mounted to the wall. Instead of the dust bag, which doesn’t collect fine dust, I used a canister filter, which does. Hoses run through the rafters over to my Shopsmith area and to the work bench.

    I got a decent amount of karma on Reddit when I posted about my realization that deli quart containers can work as adapters on 4in hoses, blast gates, and splitters.

    I also made and hung the french cleats and started building tool holders. I love how this works and am excited about it. More tool holders in progress this week.

    I spent more time than I’d like last week figuring out the permitting process for Peekskill so we can get our fence replaced.

    I’m slowly improving my Shortcuts actions. My Like shortcut and Bookmark shortcut are smoother and more flexible now. The same shortcut works across browsers and devices, and takes input either from the share sheet or the clipboard. I’m now posting bookmarks to my digital garden site, reducing my dependence on third party subscriptions. I need to clean up and rethink how they are displayed, but the data is there.

    The next step is automating importing my are.na, Twitter, Mastodon, and Instagram bookmarks. If you do this, hit me up.

    Related, it turns out consistently tagging disparate pieces of content using AI without pre-defining the tags is a non-trivial problem. Great thread from Simon Willison on this.

    I’m doing very little pleasure reading right now. I’m working a lot in the workshop after Charlie goes to bed, which is when I’d normally be reading. In general, reading less doesn’t seem great, but I’m replacing it with something fulfilling and productive, which I feel good about.

    Looking back at two years ago and one year ago. Charlie has grown so much in the past year! It is interesting to see how my week notes have evolved. Very work and life dependent. Also, I need to get a move on getting my weather station replaced.

    Amanda and I have predictions on what is going on with Kate Middleton. Amanda thinks she is having a mental breakdown, I think she served William with divorce papers over his cheating and the royal family doesn’t know what to do about it.

  • Adding a Climbing Wall to an A-frame Swing Set

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    Part one is making the basic A-frame swing set: https://cagrimmett.com/2022/08/06/building-a-swing-set-with-a-frame-brackets/

    This is part two.

    Part three is adding a slide platform: https://cagrimmett.com/2025/05/03/adding-a-slide-platform-to-an-a-frame-swing-set/

    Last year I added a climbing wall to one of the sides and my son loves it. A friend asked for the details, which made me realize I should have posted the details here a year ago.

    Charlie loves it and do his friends. It was a good addition to the swing set.

    Wood

    To cover one side, I needed 8 of the 1x6x8ft pressure treated boards, the kind used for decking. https://www.lowes.com/pd/Severe-Weather-Common-1-in-x-6-in-x-8-ft-Actual-0-75-in-x-5-5-in-x-8-ft-2-Treated-Lumber/4564826

    Here is the sheet I used to figure that out: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JE79RWOiklblWVIWV1-GkEgOdemtBh1xLphUyZDpNto/edit?usp=sharing

    I ended up placing and marking them to cut instead of the sheet, but the math was useful in figuring out the number to buy.

    If you use 8ft 4x4s for the sides and the A-frame brackets in the previous post, your math should be the same.

    Hand holds, handles, and a bell:

    • Hand holds: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005KUOY8O?th=1
      • I actually bought and used a different kind with different colors first, then needed more and got these green ones, and I like the green ones a lot better. The bolts on these are shorter and don’t stick out the back.
      • You’ll need 4-7 packs depending on the age of your child. 4-5 for the bigger kids, an additional 1-2 for younger ones with a smaller reach. Right now I have 30 hand holds on mine, which is good for Charlie (2.5 years old, 1.5 when I put this up.)
    • Side handles: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08MFHB5X6
      • I put these on the sides, with the thought that if a kid gets too close to the edge they can easily grab on to this instead of falling, and Charlie uses these a lot. I’m glad I put them on.
    • Bell: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0811BN1P1
      • I put this bell at the top and Charlie absolutely loves ringing it. Also lets me know he is climbing if I wasn’t paying attention, and I walk back over there.

    The Process

    1. Place the boards one by one against the side, mark them, and cut them to length. Make sure to cut as close to the edge as you can… you want to use the offcuts later on higher up.
    2. Screw each one on before marking the next one. I used 3in deck screws.
    3. Decide where you want the hand holds and drill holes for the bolts. I used one of the hand holds as a guide.
    4. Go around the back and hammer in the T nuts to the holes.
    5. Go back around to the front and screw on the hand holds. I used an impact driver.
    6. Add the handles on the sides. I put them 1/3 and 2/3 of the way up.
    7. Add the bell on top.
    8. Use a belt sander, small disc sander, or router to round over the sharp edges on the cut edges.

    I put a pull up bar on the back side for me. You can’t see it from the front, so it doesn’t look ugly from the house. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09PRD5GRS

  • Week of February 26, 2024

    My birthday was this week! I wrote a post about it.

    I’m continuing to work on my workshop upgrade as much as I can. This week I:

    • Added some light finish to my bench top (a blend of linseed oil and beeswax). I decided one coat is enough. It is just a workbench and as soon as I start using it the top will get dinged up anyway.
      • Using it so far has been great! It is very solid, a huge improvement over what was there before.
    • Added weather stripping inside the doors to help the heater out and keep out some dampness
    • Added some missing light switch covers
    • Added a test set of French cleats to a side wall
    • Made my first tool holder to go on the cleats: A holder for my lathe tools.
      • I used my Shopsmith in drill press mode for this for the first time in two years. I also set up the router table and got out the air brad nailer.
    • Started modifying and installing my dust collector. Post forthcoming.
    • Put an old style flexible spout and vent cap on my new diesel can because the new style “no spill” control spouts are terrible and so hard to use. Holding up the can with one hand while you squeeze the spout with your thumb instead of using your second hand to support and guide the nozzle is difficult. Full 5gal cans are heavy! After using it three times I was so frustrated that I ordered a replacement kit.

    Things are starting to come together nicely and I’m pretty happy about it! I’m getting excited about working in there more.

    Posts also forthcoming on the general upgrade project and the new workbench, and the French cleats.

    I met my coworker and friend Fernando and his girlfriend Gabriele for dinner on Friday. They live in Brazil but are visiting NYC for a week. We went to Lombardi’s, the first pizza place in the US. Afterward we had drinks and popcorn chicken at Double Chicken Please. There we lucked out and got offered a table in the Coop, which had a 5 hour wait, but someone had just canceled. I had the Waldorf Salad (scotch, walnut bitters, celery, apple, ginger ale) and the Americano Americano (Campari, vermouth, coffee liqueur, branca menta, soda). I thought the Americano Americano was clever because it combines the Americano coffee drink with the Americano cocktail. And it was tasty! On the popcorn chicken: If a place is well-known for their bar snacks, you have to get them. The chicken did not disappoint.

    Saturday was a full day. Charlie had gymnastics in the morning, then some of the gymnastics crew went to Dunkin Donuts for a snack and then Home Depot for the kids’ workshop. This month they built a butterfly house. Later that afternoon we went to a friend’s new job celebration party in Lake Peekskill. We brought esquites. There Charlie ate his first taco! Until now he would only eat the constituent parts instead of the whole thing together. I think the sour cream sold it for him… sour cream is one of his favorite foods.

    Sunday was sunny and warm, which was a nice change of pace. Charlie played outside while I did some more work on the workshop upgrade and Amanda went horseback riding. We also installed a handle on the workshop door at Charlie’s height so he can open and close the door himself.

    Challenging week at work. You might have seen various articles about Automattic from places like 404 Media this week. I won’t say anything other than the entire situation sucks. Like many other things in life, before you form your opinion you might want to consider assuming positive intent.

  • Thirty-four

    What is the difference between these birthday posts and the year-end posts? The dust has settled on the new year reflections and this is a good time to think about my past year and the coming year outside of the context of holidays and resolutions.

    This morning Amanda and Charlie put out some birthday decorations for me. While Amanda was getting some balloons out, Charlie declared that he “will get the buses!” – His birthday was Wheels on the Bus themed, so that is what birthday decorations are to him. So sweet. While eating breakfast we played with little toy busses at the table. It was the best 🚌 ♥️

    I wrote this back in October, and it is still the main theme of my past year:

    It has taken two years, but Amanda and I are starting to feel like ourselves again, with the added bonus of having a sweet kid in our lives. (Contrast that with mostly feeling like caregivers the last two years.) Our energy and sleep are improved, which helps give space for our interests, projects, and new ideas.

    The toddler stage is completely different from the infant stage. Overall, things are good and Charlie is a sweet little guy, and I feel fortunate to be his dad. He is growing and learning at a rapid pace. I love how kind, curious, and affectionate he is.

    Last year Zeldman commented,

    One thing I did early on with Ava was draw with her, from the time that she could hold a crayon. In that way, I continued to make art (even if it was mostly deliberately very silly art), but my goal was not to make art, it was to make art with my kid.

    We started doing this a lot more and it has been great. Family art time is something we all enjoy. Thank you, Jeffrey!

    Work overall is good. I have a great team and Automattic is a good place to work. Always juggling lots of projects, but there are three projects I’m proud to have worked on this past year:

    Taking stock on last year’s vectors:

    • Keep prioritizing quality, fully present time with Amanda and Charlie, and our family.
      • I can improve on this. I should put my phone down more. The days we go have breakfast together somewhere feel special and like a highlight, so we should do that more.
      • I also can do better about prioritizing time with just Amanda, such as being more proactive about finding a sitter so we can go on more dates. That has been challenging with Charlie’s recent separation anxiety, but something we should work through.
    • Keep making things.
      • Getting back out in my workshop starting in November was great, and a big highlight the last couple months. I’m also really excited about the improvements I’m making in the workshop now.
    • Keep improving our lives & surroundings.
      • This played a bigger part in the last year than I thought! The deck, my office, the attic, the basement, the shed, hiring cleaners, shutters, glass rinser, maintenance on the car and heater, and definite plans for the fence and garden in motion.
    • Keep blogging.
      • I’m sticking with it and it feels good. This is a blog post!
      • I’m glad by domain longevity post is getting some traction. This is an important issue to work on.
    • Keep fostering friendships.
      • One key mindset shift I made this year is realizing that adult friendships are different than childhood friendships. In childhood friends are brought together by circumstances mostly out of their control, you gravitate toward people similar to you, and don’t need to be intentional about them. As an adult you need to be intentional and can form friendships based on interest rather than being alike. This leads to different kinds of friendships. Friends don’t have to be all-or-nothing like when you were a child.
      • I think the investments we have made in friendships this year have been successful.

    So, what do I want my thirty-fifth year to look like?

    Take care of my health. Read more, scroll less. Prioritize family time. Make things. Keep improving our lives & surroundings.

    Previous birthday posts: 33, 32

  • Weeks of Feb 12 and 19, 2024

    The big event two weeks ago was a snow storm on Tuesday. We got 11″ of snow here in Peekskill, the most in the region. Daycare was closed, along with everything else, so Amanda and I switched off hanging out with Charlie while the other worked. No snow days is a downside of remote work! (You still won’t catch me going into an office any time soon, though.)

    Charlie woke me up that morning by saying, “Daddy, it NO-ing!”

    Charlie and I shoveled the driveway and sidewalk twice, and took the sled out in the woods. Otherwise we hunkered down and stayed warm.

    Charlie woke me up the next morning by saying, “Daddy, it Valentine’s Day!” – We’d been hyping it up all week, making cards, etc. He had a blast.

    My parents came to visit for the holiday weekend on Friday. Dad helped me a lot with the workshop upgrade project:

    • Saturday we finished putting in the rest of the insulation and installed the diesel heater (my birthday present from my parents)
      • I’ll put together a post once I finish the rest of the upgrades, but the heater is great. At one point we had it up to 70F in the minimally-insulated shed and had to turn the power down.
    • Sunday we went to pick up some items from an auction and some plywood from Home Depot with their truck, then framed in the workbench, routed out spots for the legs and vise, then biscuit joined and glued the three pieces of the top together.
    • Monday we put in the legs and shelving for the workbench, put a couple pieces of plywood up on the walls, and put in some electrical outlets above the new bench.

    It was great to have my parents here. Always nice to spend time with them. Charlie loves it, too.

    Wednesday night I hung lights above the bench and installed my vises.

    More on that auction: An old woodturner in Fishkill passed away and his family ran an estate sale. I ended up not winning any of the wood he had roughed out and stacked in his shop because the bids went higher than I was willing to pay, but when I went to pick up the ShopVac that I won, I asked if they had any wood that didn’t sell. I lucked out! They forgot to post some of it to the online auction, so I offered cash on the spot and took it off their hands. 🪵 🙌

    Thursday, Friday, and Saturday we did some clean up and gave away some stuff on Buy Nothing. For the unfamiliar, there are local Facebook groups where you can post things you want to give away and people claim them. We gave away a giant beanbag chair, our old couch, and some baby stuff. We also claimed and picked up a toy piano for Charlie.

    Friday morning we had a family breakfast date at the coffee shop.

    We did the clean up to make space for reconfiguring the finished half of the basement into a half work/half art space for Amanda. Her desk was already down there, but we put up some bookshelves and moved her workspace around a little bit. Today (Sunday) is organizing.

    Saturday afternoon and early evening Charlie and I met up with Jeremy and Miles to take the train to Cold Spring and hang out for a while. We went to the bookstore, playground, and dinner. Lots of running around outside, too. Everyone had fun.

    I finished The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler this week. Good, fun, easy read.

    One other cool thing this week: One of my posts was featured in the Stack Overflow newsletter!

    Okay, I’m off to do some more work in my warm workshop. I’m putting up more plywood today, which I’ll later hang French cleats on.

  • Week of February 5, 2024

    I decided to go forward with the workshop upgrades, so that has been taking most of my time outside of work this week.

    The current plan:

    • Insulate with radiant barrier.
    • Diesel heater for heat.
    • Put a bench along the full back wall. 31.5″ deep, set up 36″ high. Top made out of laminated 2x4s on edge. Shelf underneath high enough for bins to slide underneath for storage.
      • Mounting my carpenter’s vice flush with the front of the bench for better full-length support. Probably left site, 1/4 of the way in.
      • Standard bench vice is probably going on the right side.
      • 3 4×4 feet in the front, 2×4 nailers on the back and side walls.
    • Instead of a flip cart for the miter saw, I’ll build a platform to put the miter saw on top of my Shopsmith and use the tables on it to support the longer pieces. Saving the floor space.
    • French cleats on the walls for storage.
    • I may end up getting rid of the green cart/locker I’m currently using for storage. Every bit of floor space helps!

    I spent a lot of time this weekend glueing together 2x4s and planing them for the bench top. After not pre-planing and jointing them in the first section, I decided to do the 14 remaining boards, which led to a much better result for the second section. I guess the first one will go in the back. As I write this, the third section is still curing in the basement. (This glue needs 55F to cure and it is in the 20F range here at night.)

    I’m exhausted and sore, but I’m rushing to get the last section planed before the snow hits on Tuesday.

    I’ve put up a third of the radiant barrier so far.

    More future workshop upgrade projects in my digital garden.

    Charlie loves Home Depot. Good thing we’ve been three times this week.

    Crocuses are starting to bloom!

    Getting steadily earlier each year, according to my unscientific records:

    The weather was sunny and warm on Friday, so we picked up pizzas and met up with another family at the playground after work on Friday. The kids loved it. Nice to have the days growing long enough to do that again.

    Amanda and I started watching Griselda and we like it. So our two shows right now are True Detective and Griselda.

  • Week of January 29, 2024

    Charlie was home Monday and part of Wednesday because he was teething this week and had a cough in addition to the mouth pain. Unfortunately getting him to take any kind of medicine has been a struggle recently, so it was a tough couple of days for everyone.

    He recovered by the end of the week and had a great Saturday: Gymnastics with some daycare friends in the morning, then a kids workshop at Home Depot where he got to build and paint a Valentine’s Card Box with some of the same friends. Panera afterward, then home for a much needed nap.

    I got things started and Amanda helped Charlie finish. He loves using his tools.

    Amanda and I had our friends Jeremy and Marie over for dinner on Saturday evening. I roasted a duck and used the rendered fat for roasting potatoes and sautéing green beans with garlic and breadcrumbs. Marie made kartoshka from her grandmother’s recipe, a Ukrainian truffle-like dessert that we all enjoyed. Afterward Amanda and J played some flute duets.

    As I mentioned last week, I’m trying to improve my lathe turning skills. I realized that not using a skew is a serious skill deficiency, and in learning how to use one I found out that the 45 degree angle and straight edge make it pretty difficult to use for peeling and planing cuts. So I got a used Shopsmith-mounted grinder on eBay and reground my 1in skew to a smaller angle with a radius. It works much better now, and I used it exclusively to make this tool handle, without having a single catch. That might sound pretty normal to a seasoned turner, but it was a breakthrough for me.

    I’m also proud of myself because I haven’t done much tool grinding or shaping. I started out with the bench grinder and got the profile I wanted, but found it hard to make a consistent bevel on a 1in tool and a 3/4in grinding wheel, so I cleaned it up on the disc sander.

    Next steps:

    • I ordered some grinding wheels from McMaster Carr, which was the only place that had the combo of 5″ wheel + 5/8 arbor I could find.
    • I need to get some finer sand paper for the disc sander, or figure out another way to hone my tools.
    • Write up my sharpening techniques on my digital garden for future me
    • Perhaps I can mount the sharpening jig to the other side of the lathe for easy sharpening while I turn to keep things in top shape.
    • Figure out better storage close to the Shopsmith. I like the bottom shelf I have, but the sawdust and wood shavings are too much. Perhaps I need to enclose it.

    Charlie climbing and checking out the lathe.

    Before this he and I were looking at different kinds of maps (some local, some national parks) and drawing our own on paper. He is a lot of fun.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about building a new bench, moving things around for better layout, and insulating/heating the shed so working out there in the winter isn’t so brutal. Some things on the top of my mind:

    • Diesel heater or small wood stove?
      • Diesel heaters heat up quickly and turn off instantly, so I don’t need to start a fire and worry about it while i’m not in the shed.
      • Wood stoves are quieter and put out a nice radiant heat.
    • Foam board or fiberglass for insulation?
      • Both are kind of annoying to install, but foam board might be less itchy.
    • Can I make a flip-top cart with a router one one side and miter saw on the other? That would minimize dedicated workbench space usage and help me get things out of the way if needed.
    • I need to think about dust collection, but have no idea where to start.

    More to come on this. I’m talking to my Dad, some friends, and reading a lot online.

    I started using How to Draw Almost Every Day for some simple daily drawing prompts. I like it!

    The Roberta’s frozen pizzas are the best frozen pizzas I’ve had. I don’t know what they do differently, but they are excellent. Great crust that crisps up in the oven and great flavor.

    After not reading for most of January, I picked up The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler and am enjoying it so far.

  • Week of January 22, 2024

    So many courses and membership platforms with private log-in built on WordPress are trivially easy to circumvent because they don’t lock down access to the REST API endpoints.

    Related, Vimeo’s domain-level privacy setting is also trivially easy to circumvent as long as you know which domain it is supposed to be embedded on. It relies on the referer header, which you can specify with curl’s –referer option.

    If you make course or membership plugin, don’t forget to restrict REST API access for your post types to authenticated users!

    I started a new ferment this week after bottling my gin & tonic seltzer last weekend. I’m making an imperial hard cider, flavored with some oak and calvados. Should be ready in a couple weeks.

    I spent two days in Manhattan this week—Wednesday and Friday.

    Wednesday was a “I need a change of scenery” day. Amanda and Charlie had plans with another mom and toddler after work/daycare, so I worked from the WeWork in Union Square (terrible place to be productive, but great kombucha), got lunch at Halal Guys (chicken over rice white sauce hot sauce), dinner at Soothr (khao soi sai ua), then walked up to Kalustyan’s and explored before going home. I picked up some tasty hot sauces. Since eating that Paqui One Chip Challenge at Christmas, my heat tolerance is much higher than before. I’m now using habanero sauces like I used to use Frank’s, and when I want to heat it up I’m now reaching for ghost pepper sauces. My current rotation: Marie Sharp’s green habanero, Woodstock Ghost Pepper, Melinda’s Red Savina and Bhut Jolokia. Next time I think I’ll try Marie Sharp’s Belizean Heat and the Woodstock Scorpion.

    The next day I learned that Matt was hosting a happy hour at the Automattic office on Friday ahead of his upcoming sabbatical, so I decided to head in and work from the Automattic office in NoHo (Crosby St). I had lunch at George Motz’s Hamburger America (onion burger, coffee milk, and fries). It was excellent.

    Amanda and I went on a date on Saturday! We went to Goosefeather. The food was excellent, but the service and ambiance left a bit to be desired. I’m trying to recreate one of the cocktails I had.

    Last week I mentioned some of my current interests in the shop. Here’s how I’m moving forward:

    • I got out an old book I have on wood turning to revisit the basics. I also checked a newer one out of the library to compare.
    • Found some resources online about wood turning.
    • Watched ebay for a bent gouge and a grinder that will attach to my Shopsmith. Won both!

    I read a recent study about certain strains of probiotics reducing acid reflux, which I suffer from. It renewed my interest in probiotics, so I’m taking some again. If you have some that have been particularly effective for you, I’d love to hear about it.

    Sunday was a rare rainy weekend day where I had some gumption, so I organized the basement, replaced some pieces of the floating vinyl flooring that had cracked down there, and cleaned out the small basement fridge. Then made pork enchiladas with tomatillo salsa from our garden tomatillos for dinner.

    Charlie helped with the crow bar.

    Worked on some SQL optimization last week. It is insane how much faster integer comparisons are than string comparisons. This is where my lack of a computer science background makes me miss things other people might think is obvious.

    We went to the library! We go every other week.

    Charlie really likes Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. I love that he notices different things on the page than I notice. Reading with him is one of my favorite things.

    The new season of True Detective is good, but not for the faint of heart. IMO it is more disturbing than the previous seasons.

  • Week of January 15, 2024

    The temperature has been bitter cold here all week. I don’t think it has gotten above freezing at all in the past seven days. I’m not complaining—I wanted a nice cold spell with some snow.

    Charlie’s daycare closed on Tuesday due to the snow and ice. Amanda had to work in Manhattan that morning, so Charlie and I hung out and played until she got home around 2pm. I was chatting with one of the other daycare dads, and we might try to cowork at one of our houses during the next snow day so the kids can play together and the parents can get marginally more work done.

    Charlie likes the snow. When I go out to clean off the car, he grabs the brush from his Melissa & Doug cleaning set and helps. Meg said that Miles did the same thing, but with the broom from that set. Perhaps M&D needs to make some snow removal equipment for toddlers.

    Charlie and I decided to give the small hill in the woods a try for sledding. It is an old road that is no longer accessible to the general public and doesn’t get plowed. I was concerned that it might not be steep enough, but I was wrong! The sled glided over the hard-packed snow and we got some speed. I steered as best I could with my hands and feet and Charlie had a blast.

    Speaking of Charlie, he’s been into having all three of us play little skits recently. The current set:

    • The couch is an ambulance. Someone is the driver, someone is the doctor, and someone is the person “with an ouch” who lays down on the “stretcher”. We rotate roles. A heart monitor (RC car controller), “checko-o-scope” (stethoscope, actually a bungee ball tie down), and fictional bandaids often pla a role. Sometimes Charlie also becomes a mechanic who fixes the broken down ambulance.
    • Dobie, his toy stick horse, is sad and crying because Cowboy Charlie lost his hat. Momma or Daddy comforts Dobie while Charlie goes to find his hat to make Dobie happy again.
      • This often morphs into Charlie “changing Dobie’s diaper” and wiping the very end of the stick with a wipe “wiping Dobie’s butt”. It is kind of strange, but sweet. Charlie is gentle and caring.
    • Charlie’s loader dump truck is stuck in the mud and we need to figure out how to get it out. Sometimes a tractor pulls it, sometimes an excavator digs it out, and sometimes a helicopter airlifts it out.
      • “Oh no! My brand new truck stuck in muck! What I do?”

    We baked twice this week. Blueberry muffins on Wednesday and chocolate chip mini scones on Sunday. Amanda measures and orchestrates, Charlie dumps and mixes, and I narrate the recipe and fetch ingredients.

    Looks like the temperature will rise again this week and we’ll get some rain. With the warmer temps, perhaps I’ll get back out in the workshop this week. A couple things I want to do:

    • Sharpen my lathe tools
    • Learn how to use the round nose scraper in the set I have

    Some other things I want to do in the workshop over the next couple months:

    • Repurpose my shave horse into a bowl horse. I like David Fisher’s plans.
    • Hand carve some bowls. I ordered an old bent gouge on eBay to use. The Pfeil ones are really nice, but too expensive for figuring out what I need when starting out. So old ones from eBay will work fine until I outgrow them and need something better. (I have the same philosophy with Harbor Freight, I’ll start with the HF tool first, and if I use it a ton and finally need a new one, then I’ll upgrade. But often I don’t need to and the HF one serves me well for light use.)
    • Make a couple spurtle sticks
    • Make a couple machacadoras
    • Learn the basics of bowl turning on the lathe. I’m planning on watching some of Kent Weakley’s stuff to learn.

    I think I mentioned it in another post. but I’m a recipe tester for a forthcoming book on making hard seltzers, ciders, iced teas, and kombuchas by Emma Christiansen (I have and like one of her other books, True Brews.) It is fun and not too work intensive. I bottled my first batch, a Gin & Tonic flavored hard seltzer that includes neither gin nor tonic. It should be carbonated and ready to drink in a week or two.

    Next I’m testing an Imperial Cider.

    I made a big batch of pork carnitas in the Instant Pot and some Chipotle-style cilantro lime rice for dinner tonight, with the hope that it would make for some easy lunches this week. It was a hit with all three of us, so I’ll probably make it again in a month or so.

    The pork: Chunk up a small boneless pork shoulder and small pork loin (the idea is to mix some lean and fatty meats for variety) and marinate it with mojo. (Making your own is great, but I usually don’t have time so I grab a bottle of the Goya mojo.) Marinate for as long as you can, then drain and put the pork in the instant pot with chili powder, Mexican oregano, cumin, garlic, onion, and cinnamon for 45 minutes on high. Quick release the pressure, pull the pork out of the pot, and shred. Put 1/2 cup of the juice over the shredded pork.

    The rice: Cook 2 cups basmati rice, then after it is done and off the heat, add in a little olive oil, 1/4 cup chopped cilantro, the juice of one lime, and some salt.

    Related: My friend Erin and I share recipes regularly. She asked if there is a platform where we can share our meal plans and rate them afterward and leave notes. Probably going to set up a simple private WordPress blog unless anyone has a better idea. I like the flexibility of text with the commenting and ability to search that a blog offers. Perhaps I’ll turn on autotagging, too.

    Resolutions check: I’m doing pretty well with the stretching, which has made me pay closer attention to my hydration as well. I am not doing well with the drawing… when things get busy or stressful it is the very first thing to go. Next week I’ll try a new tactic and put dedicated time on my calendar to do it.

    I shipped a blog redesign this week and excavated old versions of my site to lay out a rough history. Check it out.

  • 2024 Redesign

    This redesign started with a simple note in Obsidian:

    Simplify. Keep the orange, but have less of it. Too much in nav. Move most of the extra info into pages linked off the About page.

    I also wanted something with a sidebar again.

    I wanted to stick with the Site Editor, so I used a child-theme of the Twenty Twenty-Four theme generated with Create Block Theme. I went with Twenty Twenty-Four because it purports to be extremely flexible and I wanted to use a theme with the most up-to-date Site Editor tooling and best practices.

    The first thing I did was set up my own template parts, overwriting the defaults. It was a bit time consuming, but TT4 doesn’t have a left sidebar or sidebar navigation template or pattern. I made as much as I could reusable as a named template part so I can easily make changes later and keep them consistent across my various templates.

    I used some very minor custom CSS (roughly 50 lines), mostly relating to my footer animation and some mobile styles for the navigation.

    I decided to go with default system fonts rather than loading a web font. Simplify.

    Everything non-essential got removed from the main navigation and either linked in the footer or somewhere more contextually appropriate on a subpage. Navigations on personal websites don’t need dropdowns.

    I removed the custom PHP template I had for my Reading page and turned it into a regular page in the editor, and pretty soon I’ll probably remove the custom post type and custom fields that it relied on, too. I don’t think I really need a separate post type, just a list will do. Simplify.

    Here is what it looks like:

    Places I took inspiration from:

    • From Manuel Moreale and Steph Ango‘s post lists on their homepages. I kind of like how both of them have their latest post at the top, which I might adopt. We’ll see.
    • From Jeremy Felt, the right aligned titles and how to handle my h-card
    • From Footer.design, a bold footer that has a surprise
    • From James G, not being afraid to highlight specific sections of my site in my footer that I want people to look at. Things like /now, /uses, /meta, /blogroll
    • From my own digital garden, the idea that having the last updated date on pages is useful to understand how fresh or stale they are.

    I’m sure there are more folks I took unconscious inspiration from, too!

    I included a Meta page in the footer that explains how this site is built and has a rough history of the changes this site has gone through since 2007. It was inspired by Anh, Shea Fitzpatrick, and Jeremy Felt. Since I’m a digital hoarder, I had backups of almost every iteration.

    I know it isn’t perfect, but I wanted to ship it and get it live.

    Where I want to go next with this:

    • Customize some category archive pages with additional info. Things like Photography and Woodworking can use helpful contextful info on the archive pages.
    • Continuing to refine pages like /now, /uses, /about, and /blogroll
    • Keep improving the mobile styling
    • Refining block styles as I use them
    • Fixing old posts that now look wonky
    • Keep figuring out what I like and what is useful on the homepage
    • Style webmentions, pingbacks, and comments better

    If you find something broken, please let me know. There are some templates I haven’t touched (though I don’t think anything actually uses them, but I should verify that.) 🚢

  • Week of January 8, 2024

    The snow melted by the end of the day Tuesday because of all the rain we had. More is forecasted for this week though!

    This has been a wild weather week around the US. On a single day, US folks on my team shared in Slack that they experienced tornados, flooding, heavy wind, and heavy snow. A couple days later there was more snow and extremely low temperatures.

    If you don’t have backup plans for heat and some emergency preparations, now is probably a good time to start thinking about that. I don’t think this extreme weather is going to improve.

    Charlie was home sick from daycare most of the week, and Amanda caught the bug as well. I was mostly spared except for some sore throat, but it did throw a wrench in the week nonetheless.

    Working from home with a sick kid is tough. I work best when it is quiet and I’m alone, which makes it impossible to an eye on Charlie and get real work done. Unfortunately, Amanda’s work tends to be call-heavy, also impossible to do and keep an eye on Charlie. We trade off, so neither of us gets enough done.

    Charlie recovered enough to daycare on Friday, but Amanda and I had dentist appointments. After mine, I took a walk down to Bruised Apple BooksArchived Link while Amanda finished her appointment. I picked up a couple Edward Abbey books and a book I’ve had my eye on there for over a year: The Internet Atlas by Richard Dinnick. Subtitle: Your indespensible guide to the best 1000 sites on the web. Published in 2000. I love flipping through the screenshots of the web 1.0 sites. I experienced them, but it is a reminder of what the web used to be like.

    I spent a couple late nights working on a blog redesign. I have a few more templates to make before I move it over to this site.

    The weekend was better. Saturday morning we took a trip up to Lagrangeville to pick up Amanda’s flute from a music shop where she had some maintenance work done on it. Saturday afternoon Charlie got a haircut (so handsome!), then he and I did some grocery shopping while Amanda got her nails done.

    Sunday we all did some yardwork together (emptied and put away some straggler terra cotta pots, filled the bird feeders), I put up a pull-up bar on the back side of the swingset (not visible from the front, which is a win), then I made a mallet in the shop, and revived some dead tool batteries while Amanda and Charlie took a nap and baked banana bread.

  • Turning a Carving Mallet

    I want to share my process more here on the blog, so here is how I made a carving mallet on Sunday.

    I made this mallet so that I can use it to strike gouges for bowl carving, which I want to experiment with. This style of mallet is easier to use for striking gouges than the larger joiner’s mallets I made. This one is pretty similar to the kitchen mallet/ice crusher I made for my friend a couple years ago.

    I started with a piece of the cherry limb that came down back in August.

    Using a large gouge, I roughed it out to make it a cylinder.

    Next, I used a bedan to remove a lot of material to rough out the handle.

    Then I used three different sized gouges and a skew to shape it the rest of the way.

    For the final step on the lathe, I sanded it. First with 80 grit on a few rough spots, then 120 grit all over and then 220 grit all over.

    Off the lathe, I applied a 2:1 mixture of jojoba oil and beeswax to the outside, first rubbing it in with my hands, then heating it up over an open flame on the stove burner and buffing it with a cloth.

    I chose to leave the tool marks on each end:

    • This is just for me and I kind of like being able to see the tool marks.
    • Making a piece without the tool marks involves a longer piece of wood and more steps.
    • If I ever mess up the mallet and need to resurface it, since the tool marks are still in place I’ll be able to throw it back on the lathe and sand it down easily.

    It is drying in the house for a couple days, then I’ll start using it for bowl carving!

  • Week of January 1, 2024

    New Year’s Day feels like the only real rest day we had during the holiday break.

    • We made peanut butter bird seed pinecones for the birds.
    • We took a walk in the woods.
    • Charlie took a long nap and Amanda and I sat on the couch together for a while. I blogged and Amanda got ready for the week.
    • I made pasta for dinner.

    This week was back-to-work. Tuesday night we made pizza and calzones from the extra NYE dough. I’m really getting the hang of shaping the dough and using the Ooni.

    My daily stretching and drawing resolution is going well. I’m staying on trackToo soon to see benefits IMO, but glad I’m sticking with it and it doesnt feel like too much of a drag.

    We went to Feed the Birds! in Croton and got a new bird feeder. Charlie likes filling it up.

    He also likes helping put out the recycling. He is generally a helpful guy.

    Not a lot else to say about the rest of the week. We went back to work and kind of eased back in while a lot of people were still out. Amanda and I had a lunch date on Friday (Benny’s sandwiches at the waterfront). We re-joined the local wine shop’s wine club.

    The east coast finally got some snow this weekend. We enjoyed playing in it. We started in the yard in the morning, then my friend Jon came over after naptime and we went for a walk in the woods. Charlie enjoyed the sled a lot more this year then he did last year.

    Some snowy scenes.

    I stumbled upon this and I absolutely love it. A cozy little place for a mouse or chipmunk to eat some nuts and seeds and keep out of the snow.

    I feel fortunate that none of us have gotten sick this winter. Big difference compared to last year when we were sick all the time.

    Taking care of an infant was physically difficult. Parenting a 2.5yo toddler is emotionally difficult. On one hand there are tons of meltdowns and independence struggles, then on the other hand they tell you they love you unprompted and very sweetly thank you for doing small everyday things for them.

    Charlie’s use of function words has ramped up in the last couple weeks. They make his speaking sound a lot more natural. But he also still says things like “unga brella” for umbrella and “Magawine” for Madeline (which we’ve been reading a lot of), and it is super cute.

    He amazes us and we are so proud of him, even if we go to bed emotionally exhausted every night. It can be, and is, both.

  • Pingbacks and Personal Connections

    Matt Mullenweg’s birthday wish is for people to blog. I thought I’d blog about how blogging has connected me with all different kinds of people, most of whom I’ve never met in person, just through the simple act of writing something on my own domain and hitting “Publish.”

    Here is a non-complete list of blog posts I’ve written over the years that complete strangers have emailed or messaged me about.

    I didn’t write these with SEO in mind. There has never been ads on this blog. I wasn’t paid to write any of these posts. I just wanted to share what I’m doing/thinking/working on in hopes that it might help someone later. They mostly help me later, but I’m delighted they’ve helped other people, too.

    I’m sure there are more I haven’t remembered.

    The emails and messages from some of these posts have turned into IRL friendships, freelance work, speaking gigs at conferences, real job offers (including two I took!), news quotes, and having my art included in shows.

    This still surprises and amazes me whenever I stop to think about it. I’ve only been blogging for ~15 years, most of that using WordPress. Starting blogging in 2008 felt like I was late to the game. Compared to Matt, I was, but doing things consistently for years adds up.

    Now, 15 years after deciding to blog, I’m proud to have a job working for Matt at Automattic where I can help other people create their place on the web.

    The internet is what you make of it. Blogging is what you make of it.

    Happy Birthday, Matt, and thanks for doing what you do.

  • Weeks of December 18 and 25, 2023 🎄

    The end of both the autumn season and the calendar year. On the shortest day of the year we celebrated our friend Meg’s birthday at The Central, where her husband set up a surprise party and urged us all to get sitters and have a night out. We are glad we did. It was fun to be out with friends, sans kids, in a place where we’ve all been many times but in a completely different context. We dressed up, too!

    We’ve been going to the library every other week or so to pick out new books with Charlie. This last time he confidently stated he wanted a book about firetrucks, so we asked the kind librarian to help us find firetruck books and they delivered. Charlie enjoyed one on the ride home.

    We went back to Ohio for Christmas and had a nice trip.

    The drive out was easy. Despite leaving late because we had a busy week and hadn’t packed much, the weather was nice and traffic light on the drive, so we made good time. Listened to Birdseye, Adventures of a Curious Man by Mark Kurlansky.

    Some highlights from the trip:

    • Making Dutch Babies on Christmas morning. We used Smitten Kitchen’s recipe and did one savory and one sweet.
    • Making Sean Brock’s rabbit stew with black pepper dumplings recipe. We brought a rabbit from Hemlock Hill.
    • Seeing Charlie play with his cousins.
    • Charlie getting time with his grandparents and feeling completely comfortable at their house, opening up and being silly like he does at home.
    • Working on a project with my Dad: Refinishing the top of an old work bench and mounting it to a cart with wheels. We took off about 1/8 of an inch of old wood with a power plane, evened it out with a belt sander, tightened the through bolts to squeeze everything back together, cut a straight edge, added a carpenter’s vice, and then put a mixture of beeswax and mineral oil on top.
    • My cousins, uncle, and I eating Paqui One Chip Challenge chips. I eat a lot of hot stuff, but this was rough. It made me hiccup involuntarily for the first five minutes while I sweat like crazy.
    • Playing the Four Letter Word Game.
    • Learning and playing Tunk.

    One of the bigger challenges this year is that Charlie got overstimulated and clingy at most of the bigger get-togethers we went to, so either Amanda or I spent a lot of 1:1 time with Charlie. It makes sense and is developmentally appropriate for 2.5 years old. We also think he is going through another leap right now because his language skills are increasing almost every day right now. His nap schedule was way off, too. Nonetheless, it is tiring for us and frustrating when we only see certain people once or twice a year and spend a huge chunk of that time not able to socialize. But we are reminding ourselves that this is a stage and we are thankful for the time we did get, and for the dedicated time with Charlie.

    My cousin Ryan filled me in on Smokin’ Ed Currie. He is the one who cultivated the Carolina Reaper pepper and now has a new world’s hottest pepper: Pepper X. It apparently takes about 10 years to make a stable cross-breed chile.

    On the way back from Ohio we stopped in Pittsburgh to visit our friends Erin and Tyler, which is becoming a tradition. Some highlights:

    • Charlie and Gus playing outside with the chickens
    • Charlie getting to pet some cats. We don’t have any pets, so he was thrilled and surprisingly gentle.
    • Tyler gave me a couple nice pieces of black cherry wood to turn on the lathe.
    • Erin shared some gardening advice and a book recommendation (The Old Way).
    • Having a fantastic meal at Nicky’s Thai in Sewickley. I had Khao Soi and loved it. I’ll probably try to make some at home.
    • Tyler played Bon Iver’s 22, A Million on the record player while the fireplace crackled and snow flurried outside.
      • I enjoy the vibes that putting on a record gives, and love when someone puts one on when we visit, but I have no interest in getting a record player or collecting records.
    • Making Black & Green Manhattans (Manhattans with Zirbenz) and tasting some double oak bourbon. Tyler recommended seeking out Old Forester 1910.
    • Playing Trivial Pursuit. The guys won.
      • One theory of Poe’s death is that he was so distressed about being forced to participate in Cooping that he had a panic attack and died
    • Playing Monopoly Deal. Amanda won.
    • Just chatting and laughing with old friends.

    Every time we visit Erin and Tyler I’m tempted to buy a Moccamaster or Bonavita coffee maker, but I’m stubbornly attached to our hand grinding and manual pour over.

    Every year I try to get Erin and Tyler to blog, to no avail. Erin is an incredible artist and I think she’d write great blog posts. We share a lot of common interests, but completely diverge on the blogging front.

    Some choice quotes from this year:

    “No, I haven’t read your blog. In fact, I’ve never read any blog.”

    “I don’t know what you internet people do.”

    “The collective has a hard time getting people to document their work because we are all too busy actually doing things to blog about it.”

    Erin

    “Your blog is about nothing… I mean, you blog about whatever is going on in your life at the time…nothing in particular.”

    Tyler

    The drive back home was decent. Lots of rain, but Charlie was in a good mood and actually napped. Listened to Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time. Had a surreal experience where I thought we were both an hour further ahead in the audiobook and an hour further in our drive than we actually were. Losing an hour while listening to a book that challenges our standard conceptions of time is weird.

    We had a NYE get together at our house with Erica, Trevor, and Zoey.

    • We made pizza in the Ooni. The dough came out great and was easy to work with. I’m getting the hang of the Ooni.
    • We made Tiki drinks. Nui Nui (rum, cinnamon, vanilla, orange, lime) and Yuletide (tequila, cranberry, lime, orange).
    • We had many appetizers and dips.
    • Amanda made a toddler charcuterie board just for the kids.
    • The kids made art and danced.
    • Zoey made herself at home and tried to sleep on the couch when her parents said it was time to go home and go to bed.

    It was a nice time. We started in the afternoon and were all in bed before midnight.

    Over the break I finally finished the eighth book of The Baroque Cycle. The series took me two years to finish. Which giant Neal Stephenson book should I read next? I’ve read over half of his fiction bibliography so far. We’ll see what strikes my fancy in a couple months when I’m ready to start another, but right now I’m leaning toward Anathem.

    I had big plans for overhauling this blog over the break, but didn’t do them. I took a break and hung out with my family instead. I’ll get to it eventually.

  • 2024 Resolutions

    I used to be against making New Year’s resolutions (2009). I’ve eased up on that in the last decade and have tried some other methods, such as listing out 20 specific things I want to do for a yearly task list or setting a yearly theme. Both of those worked pretty well.

    This year I want to keep it simple. My two 2024 resolutions are:

    1. Stretch every day
      • I’m tight, not getting any younger, and starting to get a little bit of lower back pain and a bad posture. I want to correct this and be able to keep up with Charlie as he gets faster. I don’t want to feel stiff when I get up out of a chair.
    2. Sketch every day
      • I’ve wanted to learn to draw for years. I attempted it in 2017 with Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, but it ended up being too involved/detailed for what I really want to do. I want to make quick Jason Polan-style sketches and simple line drawings. I want to doodle. I want to post stuff like that here to this blog, draw with Charlie at the coffee table, and make fun sketches on my chalkboard. I hope it helps me see the world in a different way, too.

    Why daily?

    Small daily actions add up over time. These probably won’t take more than 10-15 minutes each and I think both will have a positive impact on my life.

    Progress is radical over time yet incremental in time.

    Ronald Heifetz in The Practice of Adaptive Leadership

    Also, it is easy to know whether I’m on track or not. It is a binary “did I do this today or not?” question rather than a nebulous one. I have the Reporter app set up to ask me about this after Charlie’s bedtime each night, which gives me enough time to do it if I haven’t yet.

    So, to start it off, one of the first things I did this morning was stretch my legs in the living room with a stretching strap, then my back with a Child’s Pose and Thread the Needle pose. Charlie joined in and stretched with a resistance band. He is much more flexible than I am.

    And here is my daily sketch:

    This is from our walk in the woods today. I have a lot to learn.

  • Top 3 (2023)

    I started answering the 40 Questions this year, then realized about a quarter of the way through that I didn’t really want to answer them. Not my preferred format.

    Instead, I’m trying something else: Making a list of Top 3 things in various categories for the year.

  • 100 things that made my year (2023)

    1. Having some of my art printed on postcards and distributed to hundreds of people at WordCamp Europe.
    2. Moderating photo submissions to the WordPress Photo Directory
    3. Testing out a hard seltzer recipe for an upcoming homebrew book by Emma Christiansen
    4. Making Falernum and various syrups for tiki
    5. Driving Big Sur and 17 Mile Drive for the first time
    6. Recipe testing for a new book and learning how to make hard seltzer
    7. Charlie discovering hot chocolate
    8. Tomatoes from our garden
    9. Posting Likes and microblog notes here first instead of another social platform first.
    10. Having one of my photos hung in a gallery at WordCamp US.
    11. Pushing Charlie on the swingset
    12. Charlie pointing out trucks, animals, stars, etc. He is so observant!
    13. Getting comfortable furniture for the back deck.
    14. Rowing on the Croton River and the Hudson in all different seasons.
    15. Making some rabbit stew with black pepper dumplings with my parents
    16. Getting perspective on how well maintained our 95 year old house is
    17. Taking Charlie down to the riverfront walk to ride his bike.
    18. Playing in the sand with Charlie on the beach
    19. End of summer vacation in Cape Cod
    20. Charlie throwing rocks in the river.
    21. Working with my Dad to restore an old workbench top for his shop
    22. Walks in the woods with Charlie and Amanda
    23. Christmas lights walk at Harvest Moon Orchard
    24. Getting the desk for my Ikea Poang chair. I use it every weekday. I’m writing this at it now.
    25. Reading physical books.
    26. Attending Gwen and Jacob’s wedding in Monterey. Reading Cannery Row while there.
    27. Trick or treating with Charlie and friends in Lake Peekskill
    28. Charlie riding his bike along the riverwalk and cruising down the hill.
    29. Making pizza and tiki drinks at our house with friends on NYE
    30. Morning breakfast sandwiches with Charlie
    31. Growing more of a local community here in Peekskill
    32. Wandering around Depew Park and exploring with Charlie for almost two hours on Saturday. Making sure Charlie has space to make his own decisions and explore.
    33. Going to San Juan, PR, for a work team meetup
    34. Taking Jay on his first Hudson paddle
    35. Charlie having an excellent time whenever he got ahold of the garden hose.
    36. Burgers and french fry sauce at Meyers Old Dutch, Beacon
    37. Family walk with the sled in the snowy woods on a winter day in February
    38. Getting a pellet ice machine. We use it in cocktails, iced coffee, iced tea, etc.
    39. Putting up the climbing wall on Charlie’s swingset and watching him figure it out and master it over the next 8 months. Amazing.
    40. Cape Cod vacation. Charlie playing on the beach and exploring. Whale watching.
    41. The cardinal pairs in our backyard
    42. Snuggle time with Charlie
    43. Giving a talk on debugging with Logstash and Grafana.
    44. Wrapping up the attic insulation project
    45. Going to some art shows at the Center for Machine Arts
    46. Going to Malaga, Spain, for a work division meetup. Jumping in the cold sea at night.
    47. Listening to the windchimes
    48. Making hot sauce with my red jalapeños
    49. Alex Kirk’s Friends plugin with the Send to Kindle tool. Getting more into the indieweb in general
    50. Taking Charlie out in the guideboat on Lake Sebago
    51. Learning how to recharge the AC on my car.
    52. Night out with Amanda celebrating Meg’s birthday. It was in a location we go to at least once a week, but transformed into a party space, at a completely different time of day, and filled with people we are friends with, it felt completely different in a magical way.
    53. Taking Charlie out in the guideboat for the first time
    54. Making Shortcuts workflows to make posting here easier
    55. Having a little helper for all of our house projects
    56. Blogging more
    57. Wood fired Wednesdays at Pizzeria Baci. It was here that Charlie decided he liked pepperoni
    58. Birthday in Kingston and Woodstock. Bookstore to get copies of Sandman signed. Trying Moonburger and Dixon’s Roadside.
    59. Integrating AI tools into my daily workflow.
    60. Eating Khao Soi at Nicky’s Thai in Sewickley
    61. Charlie’s kind, sweet, and curious disposition
    62. Looking for pinecones in the woods with Charlie
    63. Charlie has grown so much this year! Photos from 1 year ago are recognizable, but feel so long ago and like a different kid.
    64. Charlie’s love of breakfast sandwiches
    65. Many, many hours at playgrounds with Charlie, running around with him, pushing him on swings, giving him high fives when he reached the bottom of a slide.
    66. Doing things I’ve been putting off, such as getting the heater maintenance done before the cold set in.
    67. Making Christmas cookies as a family.
    68. Visiting the Claytons in Walnut Creek, CA
    69. Running the Harvard Blog Archive preservation project.
    70. Observing the hockeystick growth of Charlie’s vocabulary
    71. Having a local artist design Christmas cards for us for the second year in a row
    72. Celebrating holidays and birthdays with local friends
    73. Trick or treating with our friends and their kids
    74. Getting birria tacos from food trucks
    75. Tending to the garden with Charlie
    76. Reading When an Elephant Goes Shopping with Charlie, my favorite book when I was a toddler.
    77. Building things out of blocks with Charlie. Vacuum trucks, bulldozers, semi trucks, hammers, etc.
    78. Putting in the glass rinser in the sink. We use it all the time!
    79. Taking Charlie to the playground, running, and having fun with him
    80. Making art with Charlie and Amanda at the coffee table
    81. Finishing 29 books
    82. Picking out pumpkins in the rain with Charlie and Amanda. He was happy to stomp in the mud, sit on a tractor, and ride in the pumpkin wagons.
    83. Talking to the Praxis students about using AI tools
    84. Getting out on the river and paddling/rowing
    85. Helping Jon build a woodshed
    86. Coming out of the fog and feeling more like ourselves
    87. Having lots of people over in the backyard for Charlie’s second birthday. Things like that are why we wanted a house to begin with!
    88. Friendsgiving at Jeremy and Megan’s house
    89. Putting book shelving in my office and changing the ambiance in there
    90. Visiting the Desmonds in Salinas
    91. Starting the generous coaching program that Automattic offers all employees
    92. Working with Dave Winer on FeedLand
    93. Charlie showing in interest in music and instruments. He wants to play a trumpet.
    94. Visiting Erin and Tyler in Pittsburgh
    95. Sandwich Fridays at Benny’s Brown Bag. We meet another couple for lunch each Friday at noon.
    96. Getting back out in the woodshop and making dreidels and christmas ornaments on the lathe
    97. Observing Charlie figure out the alphabet and his basic numbers this year.
    98. Mornings at Peekskill Central getting breakfast with Amanda and Charlie before one of us gets on the train
    99. Charlie playing with his cousins at Christmas
    100. Getting a new grill and cooking on it more

    Other years: 2022, 2017

  • Learning Card Games: Tunk

    Last year we started a new tradition and learned how to play Pitch the week after Christmas. This year we chose Tunk (also called Tonk in some places).

    Why Tunk? We initially thought we’d try Euchre or Cinch, but both of those needed four players for partner pairs and Amanda was engrossed in a good book, so we needed something that three people could play. My Dad mentioned that Northeast Ohio Ford workers used to play Tonk, so we looked it up in Hoyle (called Tunk there) and found it could accommodate 3-7 players, so we gave it a shot.

    Tunk is a variation of Gin Rummy. The classic version uses 7 cards, but a faster version with more people can use 5 cards. There are a lot of variations we found online with slightly different rules, so we followed the rules in our Hoyle rulebook.

    • Cards: 52, Aces are low and count as 1, King is high, and Deuces (2) are wild.
    • Deal: Each player is dealt 7 cards. Remaining cards go to the stockpile in the middle of the table and the top is flipped to start the discard pile.
    • Play: Clockwise from dealer. Each player takes a card from the top of the stockpile or discard, then discards one from their hand. The goal is to create sets of 3-4, as in Gin Rummy (same card of different suits 3♠️ 3♥️ 3♣️ or sequence of the same suit 3♠️ 4♠️ 5 ♠️). A matched set may have no more than four cards and must include two non-wild cards. When a player has deadwood (cards not in a set) that total less than 5 (Counting: Face cards count as 10, deuces not in a set count as 25, all other cards are the number value), they can Tunk (knock). The player who Tunks then lays out their sets and separates the deadwood. All other players then have one turn to lay off their unmatched cards on the Tunker’s sets if they can. If the Tunker’s hand has no deadwood, there is no lay off round.
      • If a player gets 50 points at the first deal, they shout “Tunk!” and automatically win the game.
    • Scoring: The non-Tunkers count their deadwood and tally it up. (Face cards count as 10, deuces not in a set count as 25, all other cards are the number value.) The first player to reach 100 is out, others keep going until only one player is left and they are the winner.
      • Some variations have the Tunker counting, too. In some variations, if the Tunker’s deadwood is not the lowest, it counts double. In others, if they have the lowest, it doesn’t count.

    We found this game much faster and easier to pick up than last year’s Pitch, probably because we all know how to play Gin Rummy. I bet we’ll continue to play this in the future because it is fast-paced and it is easy to teach to new players.

    We primarily played the 7-card version, but decided to try the 5-card version for a few rounds and it went very quickly and the wild deuces really came in handy. I think I prefer the 7-card version if we have only three players and Tunkers don’t count deadwood, but the 5-card version if we have more players and the Tunker counts their deadwood (and has the double penalty if it is not the lowest.)

  • How to play the Four Letter Word Game

    BJ Homer taught a bunch of us Automatticians how to play the Four Letter Word Game at a meetup. I taught my parents how to play today and I haven’t found a writeup of it that I could refer to, so I thought I’d make a quick post on how to play.

    What you need: Two people, each with a piece of paper and a pencil.

    Gameplay:

    1. Each person picks a four letter word.
    2. They take turns guessing a four letter word. After each guess, the other person tells them how many letters they guessed are in the word.
    3. When one person thinks they’ve figured out the other person’s word, they need to take a turn to explicitly ask, “Is your word….?”

    More details

    Figuring out how many letters to tell the guesser that they got right:

    You go through each letter in the guessed word and compare it to each letter in your word. If the letter you are comparing appears anywhere, even if you’ve already “used” it, that counts. Getting four letters right does not mean you’ve guessed the word… see SASS vs CATS for example:

    It doesn’t matter how many of that letter are in my word; it’s just a “yes/no” question:

    Image credits: BJ Homer

    You don’t give the other player any info about the order of the letters, or which letters they got right. That is what they need to figure out on their own.

    I played this game with my Mom yesterday and found it helpful to write the alphabet along the top of a notepad page, then draw a line down the middle. The left side I write my guesses and scores down, the right side I write my word and the other player’s guesses and scores down.

    It is helpful to keep track of all words and scores. To quote BJ, “Your partner will almost certainly lie to you at some point. They probably won’t mean to, but they’ll make a mistake.”

    Here are some example sheets from both players in two games:

    Have fun!

  • Week of December 11, 2023

    Christmas tree update: We added cranberries. We consider our tree a work in progress for all of December.

    I got out in the shop and made some more ornaments on the lathe. That might be it for this year.

    Charlie’s daycare class had a Christmas luncheon and Amanda made the menus and flowers.

    We made some more Christmas cookies. Charlie stamped them. Using a circle cutter as a guide helped tremendously.

    Charlie and I spent two hours exploring Depew park in a very open-ended way. As long as he wasn’t in danger or about to jump in the pond, I didn’t interfere with where he wanted to go. He loved it.

    Charlie and I also took a night walk in the woods with his flashlight.

    We sent out the last batch of Christmas cards today. We need to start writing them a bit earlier next year 🎄📬

    Reading

    I finished The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler this week and started Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig and Liberty’s DaughterArchived Link by Naomi Kritzer.

    I joined a local Discord group and got included in some local Twitter lists. I am starting to feel like that was a mistake. The complainers tend to congregate there and complain together because no one else will listen to them. There they feel heard. Not really my kind of place.

    To quote Frank Chodorov, “One is a crowd.”

    I’m looking forward to some time off next week. I need it this year. The last six months feel like a blur to me.

    That’s all I’ve got.

  • My WordPress Plugin List

    Just like Nick, Jan, and Tracy, I’m sharing the list of plugins I have on this site and what I use them for.

    • IndieWeb
      • ActivityPub
        • Makes your blog available in the fediverse. Made by my colleagues at Automattic, Matthias Pfefferle in particular.
        • I still mostly use the toot.cafe server, but eventually I think I might to move move of my fediverse posting, liking, and replies to my own website.
      • Add Fediverse Icons to Jetpack
        • Exactly what it says on the tin. Made by Jan Boddez.
      • Friends
        • Made by Alex Kirk. The Friends plugin allows you to follow content from other WordPress sites, and interact with them on your own site. You can follow friends and others via RSS. If you also have the ActivityPub plugin installed, you can follow people on Mastodon and other ActivityPub-compatible social networks.
        • + Friends Post Collection and Friends Send to E-Reader
          • I use these to make collections of posts that I then send to my Kindle and read offline. Very niche, but very useful.
      • IndieAuth
        • IndieAuth is a way to allow users to use their own domain to sign into other websites and services
      • IndieBlocks
        • Powers the Likes, Replies, Bookmarks, and Microblog section of my website. Made by Jan Boddez.
      • IndieWeb
        • Powers a bundle of indieweb functionality. Check it out.
      • RSS Cloud
        • Adds RSS Cloud capabilities to my RSS feed.
      • RSS to Indie Likes
        • I made this one. It takes items from an RSS feed and automatically posts Likes to them on my site, using the IndieBlocks Like functionality mentioned above.
      • Share on Mastodon
        • Auto shares microblog posts to Mastodon. Also made by Jan Boddez. I think I owe him a beer.
      • JSON Feed
        • The more syndication options the better IMO. I do wonder if anyone is actively using my JSON feed, though.
      • Micropub
      • Syndication Links
        • Shows links to syndicated copies on other platforms on my microblog posts. Made by David Shanske.
      • Webmention
        • A Webmention is a notification that one URL links to another. I send them for Likes, Replies, Bookmarks, and links in posts.
        • Made by Matthias Pfefferle
      • Wunderground PWS
        • I made this to show data from my personal weatherstation on my website. (It is currently offline and I need to fix the station.)
        • I put it in the IndieWeb section because, well, who else besides indieweb folks put the weather on their websites?
    • Layout & theme functionality
      • Advanced Custom Fields
        • If any of my coworkers are reading this, know that I cringe about having this on my site, too. I’ve removed most uses except for the Reading section of my site, which I intend to rebuilt from scratch on the next iteration of my site. Consider this my personal Data Liberation project.
      • Bookmark Card
        • This is one of my favorite blocks, and it should be in Core. Turns any URL into a beautiful preview card. Made by George Mamadashvili.
      • Breadcrumb NavXT
        • Nice breadcrumb block. This should probably be in Core, too. Made by John Havlik.
      • GenerateBlocks
        • I use this for the more advanced Query Loop block, which takes basically any wp_query argument right in the GUI.
      • Gutenberg
        • I like to run the bleeding-edge.
      • Post Modified Time Block
        • Made by Rich Tabor. I add this to some templates because I care when things like /now and /blogroll were last updated.
      • SVG Support
        • Another thing that should probably be in Core.
    • Utilities
      • Akismet
        • Spam shall not pass.
      • Confetti
        • Occasionally I add some whimsy to posts by adding a confetti cannon.
      • Jetpack
        • You already know what it is and you either use it or have a post on your site about why you don’t.
        • Yes, I work at Automattic, but I was using it even before I started working here. I love it.
        • I run the beta version.
      • Pressable Cache Management
        • I host on Pressable. This tool makes it easy to granularly manage cache on the platform from wp-admin.
        • I regularly test new versions and provide feedback to the team.
      • QuickPost
        • Adds an “Add New” button to the Block Editor toolbar, so you can easily create new posts/pages/custom post types, as well as duplicate them.
        • Made by Aurooba Ahmed.
      • Redirection
        • I’ve tested every redirects plugin out there and this one is the best. Made by John Godley.

    I’d love to see your plugin list. If you post one, send me a link!