I love Detectorists. The theme tune alone relaxes me. What a treat to get a feature length episode at Christmas. ☺️
I will write it up properly soon (likely after Christmas at some point) but I couldn’t resist sharing a photo of the new keyboard case I designed now.
I got the case I designed for my Nine keyboard delivered today. I had convinced myself that it was not going to fit together or that it would have some other kind of problem because of my newbie-ness with 3D printing, but to my amazement it all fits together beautifully, and looks stunning! Beginner’s luck maybe?
New post: Introducing the Nine keyboard
I designed a PCB from scratch and made a new keyboard! Still amazed that it worked…
Finished reading: Murder Before Evensong by Richard Coles 📚 This was very enjoyable, but I felt that the murder mystery element was much less interesting/prominent than the ‘learning about what the life of a rural priest is like’ element.
New post: Happy 20 Year Blogiversary to me
In which I marvel about how many words I have written over 20 years of blogging (plus a couple of months, but who is counting 😉).
That glorious moment when you get to turn off the 6am weekday alarm for a couple of weeks.
Rainbow! 🌈
New post (first in a very long time…): Hold me closer, tiny keyboard
In which I talk about the newest, most ridiculous tiny keyboard I have built which has only 18 keys.
Nice sky this morning.
Someone has decided to sleep in Mr Bsag’s discarded trousers. Honestly, I sometimes think she is half cat, half ferret.
I’m reminded again what an extraordinary voice Lisa Gerrard has. I’m listening to a new album in collaboration with composer Zbigniew Preisner called ‘It’s Not Too Late’ which was recorded in a Polish synagogue in one 45 minute long improvised session. Just astounding.
I was out for a gentle walk this morning to decompress a bit after a tough week, and saw this beauty.
It’s probably because I’ve had a pretty stressful couple of months, but I’ve managed to get a really heavy cold (not covid if the tests are accurate), which is sticking around. I feel behind with everything and overwhelmed, but hopefully it will pass soon.
I just noticed that an order for keyboard components I made includes Kailh MX hotswap sockets, not the Choc version, which is fairly crucial. Good job I noticed before all the rest of the components have arrived! That would be a bit frustrating.
Ali by Vieux Farka Touré and Khruangbin
This is a fabulous album if you like desert blues. 🎵
New post: Goodbye Bella (2006-2022)
😿💙
New post: Keyboard layout updates and Meow
More fun with keyboards and Emacs.
It was annual vaccination/check-up time for our two cats today. Bella was still asleep when it was time to leave, so she hadn’t yet had her breakfast. There was also a barking dog in the waiting room. The result after vaccinating and claw-trimming two cats was: one extremely hangry, stressed, and wriggly cat and one growly/hissy one; one bsag with multiple minor lacerations to hands and arms and clothes covered in fur; one miraculously unscathed and still patient vet.
There are so many terms and sayings that come from printing: getting the wrong end of the stick, typecasting, stereotyping, cliché, mind your p’s and q’s, etc…
Yesterday I learned that uppercase and lowercase comes from the practice of typesetters keeping their type in cases (shallow drawers in a vertical cabinet), with the capital letters kept in a separate case above the lowercase ones.
I’m staying in a beautiful place in Sussex for a few days. It has such a lovely feel and is deep in the countryside ❤️. Aaannddd relax…
New post: Work Clean
My review of Dan Charnas’ book ‘Work Clean’ on adapting the working practices of professional chefs to other kinds of work.
Ooof. I just got the ‘Barbecue Meatbag’ achievement on Carrot weather with the current 36C temperature. Do not want. 🫠
New post: Sprucing up the design again
I’ve had a tidy up on the blog, added dark mode and search!
New post: Setting up a development environment with Nix and Home Manager
Paging @NatHarari and @patbak who expressed an interest in this 🤓
I somehow persuaded myself to try using Nix to to manage my dotfiles and command line environment again. Things have changed since I last tried it, and so far I am finding it magical. Two different Macs (with different architectures) set up identically just like that!
Day 31: Despite the smiley clippy, marking exam scripts is a bit of an endurance test. 📷 #mbmay
Day 30: fish 📷 #mbmay
I’ve currently got zsh set as my login shell, but when I start a fish shell using an iTerm profile, I obviously don’t inherit $PATH etc. as I would if calling fish from a zsh shell. But I don’t want to duplicate that stuff if possible. I’m not sure of the best way to handle it.
I have a question for fish shell users: do you use fish as your login shell, and have you encountered any problems with that if you do a lot of scripting with external tools?
Day 29: Thankfully only one of those stripes! 📷 #mbmay
Day 28: The weather was very fair that day. 📷 #mbmay
Day 27: written. One of Eric Ravilious’ lovely dust jackets. 📷 #mbmay
Day 26: May’s schedule has been very busy. 📷#mbmay
Day 25: Not quite a mountain, but the closest we’ve got in the Midlands - British Camp on the Malverns. 📷 #mbmay
Day 24: This nerve plant has an intricate pattern of veins. 📷 #mbmay
Day 23: Today the rain in Spain Birmingham has been falling mainly on the plain. 📷 #mbmay
Day 22: textile. This linen blend textile is one of the nicest I have bought for making clothes. It just gets softer as you wash it and I have worn and washed this shirt many times. 📷 #mbmay
Has anyone else had this warning pop up constantly after the latest Apple Watch update? The watch seems to work fine. When Mr B got it and tapped continue his watch got permanently stuck pairing 😔
New post: Gravitas Picket Pen
In which I review my lovely new copper pocket fountain pen 🖋
Day 21: symmetry. This finger post marks the line of the Greenwich Meridian dividing the Earth symmetrically into Eastern and Western hemispheres, so you can have one foot in each! 📷 #mbmay
Day 20: My beverage of choice (water) during the work day today. 📷 #mbmay
Day 19: indulgence. If you live with cats you have to indulge their world view that any receptacle is potentially (and actually) a cat bed. 📷 #mbmay
Day 18: I would have loved it if the random sample came out as 42, but sadly that was not to be. 📷 #mbmay
Day 17: I can’t tell you how nice this beach pebble is to hold. It fits so perfectly in my hand. 📷 #mbmay
Day 16: what’s the time according to the dandelion clock? (This may be one of those odd UK customs) 📷 #mbmay
Day 15: clouds 📷 #mbmay
Day 14: we have been trying to hide our fence with clematis 📷 #mbmay
Day 13: The best kind of community 📷 #mbmay
Day 12: tranquility - no-one is as tranquil as a sleeping cat 😻📷 #mbmay
Day 11: You don’t want to maroon yourself in the gap! #mbmay
Day 10: pot - lots of pots in fact. 📷 #mbmay
Day 9 (late!): The bloom of an orchid which is one of the few house plants I can grow successfully. #mbmay
Day 8: union 📷 #mbmay
Day 7: The park looked very fresh from the dew this morning. 📷 #mbmay
Day 6: Not quite a silhouette but almost 📷 #mbmay
Day 5: earth, specifically the bit of Earth that is the Sahara. #mbmay 📷
Day 4: thorny, or at least hawthorny (I was desperate! 😂) #mbmay 📷
I’m trying an experiment with a new keyboard layout. Day 3 #mbmay
A photo of all the cats #mbmay 📷
New post: Larks to nightingales in one day
I’m which I try (maybe unsuccessfully) to convey how amazing my most recent Singing with Nightingales experience was.
May Photoblogging Challenge - Day 1: switch (or switches, mechanical ones) 🤓
🖋New pen day! This is the Gravitas Pocket Pen in copper, with a 1.1 stub nib (my first stub). Just gorgeous. Lovely birthday present from my brother and sister-in-law.
New post: Rest
In which I get a bit philosophical about mistle thrushes and the past two years.
Finished reading: The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman 📚. In another author’s hands, a detective series set in a retirement village could be patronising, but his cast of characters are brilliantly complex and surprising.
Finished reading: Atomic Habits by James Clear 📚 I don’t often read what you might call ‘self-help’ books, but this was superb. It made me rethink how I think about time.
New post: Back to BEAKL
In which I explain some recent changes to my keyboard layout, including switching (again!) from QWERTY to BEAKL.
Idly perusing ‘Coming Soon’ on Apple TV+, I was really excited that they are doing an adaptation of ‘Slow Horses’, Mick Herron’s series of darkly comedic thrillers about the MI5 rejects in Slough House. The trailer looks good, so I’m hopeful it will do the books justice 🤞
Sometimes I underestimate how stupid I can be when tired and stressed. Yesterday (when in both those states), I tried to replace the plastic cable cover on my monitor arm, and couldn’t get it to stay on at all. Today I tried again and realised I had it upside down yesterday 🤦♀️
Finished reading: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke 📚
This is my second reading of this book. I loved it even more the second time around, as I found that I could focus more on the journey of the main character, knowing where he would end up. I also felt very tender and protective of him. This one of those books with an ‘aftertaste’ - a good one! The world that Piranesi inhabits sticks with you a long time after you finish the book.
It’s quite some time since I last used the BEAKL 15 layout, so I’m surprised to find that I still have some muscle memory remaining for it. This is probably a really bad idea, but sometimes it’s fun to play around with your brain a bit!
Ferris Sweep number 2 finished yesterday. Now I’m fooling around with the BEAKL 15 keyboard layout. Again. 🙄
Perfectly amusing and entertaining at the time, but also instantly forgettable.
On the plus side, I felt that Week 1 was easier this time than the first time around, so I must be getting stronger…
I recently skipped my Sweat HIIT workout programme for nearly 3 weeks because I was exhausted and busy. I resumed the programme today and felt like Superwoman. Then I realised that I had been bumped back down to Week 1. 😭
New post: Ferris Sweep keyboard and layout
In which I talk about my latest keyboard build (which is tiiinyyy), and the layout I chose.
Finished reading: Record Of A Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers 📚I absolutely love the ‘Wafarers’ series. Becky Chambers writes such hopeful, humane, immersive sci-fi. It’s not utopian, but it does give me hope that we sentient species might be kind of ok if you get to know us.
The keyboards I can’t seem to stop making are getting smaller! This is a Ferris Sweep.
New post: Weekend sounds on BBC Radio 3.
In which I talk about the weekend breakfast shows’ Found Sounds and Sounds of the Earth segments.
I was so in the mood for this. Awkwafina and Morris were the icing on the cake for me, though Tony Leung and Michelle Yeoh were pretty good too.
New post: Hi Ho Hi Ho, it’s back to Doom I go
I probably need a sign like one of those ‘X days without a Health and Safety Incident’ to record the number of days without switching Emacs configs :-P
You know that idea that people had biphasic sleep periods in Medieval times? I reckon that — like me — they just had cats that got a bad case of the zoomies at 2am.
Wild rose hips from a walk this morning. Great walk but my boots may take some time to dry out!
