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Earth Day eve star trails

Posted on by Patrick
Star Trails

The Space Weath­er fore­cast called for a slight chance of auro­ra and the peak of the Lyrid mete­or show­er, so I packed up my cam­era gear and went out west of town. I let the cam­era snap away for about half an hour before I decid­ed I was tired and came home. I mean, it was a school night, after all.

I got one very faint mete­or and no auro­ra to speak of, but that’s OK, I got some star trails out of it, too. And a truck passed by me on the grav­el road, illu­mi­nat­ing the field for me, so there’s that too.

Nerdy details: 113 images, 15 sec­onds each, 11mm, f/2.8, ISO 1600, stacked in GIMP (no dark frames).

An epiphany

Posted on by Patrick
Photo of standing stones (Photo by Simon Hattinga Verschure on Unsplash)

I had an epiphany, at lunch time, about my cur­rent short sto­ry project. I have an end­ing, now, a nasty bul­l’s-eye to aim my nar­ra­tive at.

What’s more, a lot of things I’d already sprin­kled into the sto­ry have come into focus, espe­cial­ly the doc­trine of true names. The pro­tag­o­nist has a solu­tion to his prob­lem, but he’s so des­per­ate to avoid it that he’s unwill­ing to admit it to any­one, even himself.

I won­der if I knew the end­ing all along, too, and did­n’t want to admit it to myself.

Pho­to by Simon Hat­tin­ga Ver­schure on Unsplash.

Breathing Underwater

Posted on by Patrick

Lis­ten­ing to Met­ric’s “Breath­ing Under­wa­ter”, I sud­den­ly real­ized that one of the lines — “I can see the end / But it has­n’t hap­pened yet” — res­onates pret­ty hard with my cur­rent work-in-progress. Like that’s a pret­ty pithy encap­su­la­tion of the entire theme of the story.

Also, if you haven’t encoun­tered Met­ric before, you should real­ly check them out. I haven’t heard a song from them I haven’t loved.

I’m a trend-setter

Posted on by Patrick
Sign reading HAPPER YEAST

My sis­ter in Win­nipeg texted me yes­ter­day, on East­er Sun­day, to show me what I’ve wrought in her house­hold. My nephew C. took inspi­ra­tion from my habit of mess­ing with their text sign, and wants to wish one and all a HAPPER YEAST.

Below are some exam­ples of my work over the last cou­ple years. So… am I a bad influ­ence, or the best influence?

  • Sign reading SPRONG BREAK
  • Sign reading MELCOME PAT AND KATHLEEN
  • Sign reading HOPPY MATHAR'S DEY

Workin’ from home

Posted on by Patrick
My work-from-home setup

For a while now I’ve won­dered just how nec­es­sary it is for me to be on cam­pus. I live about five min­utes’ walk­ing dis­tance away; when I bike to work, it takes about as long to lock up my bike and walk to my office as it does for me to get to the University.

Now that the offi­cial word is “work from home if you can”, I’ve got my lap­top at home. Today I grabbed one of my two exter­nal mon­i­tors, too, so that I can code on one screen and view the results on another.

(Lap­top wall­pa­per: The Foun­tain of Indo­lence by J. M. W. Turn­er; exter­nal mon­i­tor wall­pa­per: my pho­to of the Milky Way from sum­mer 2019.)

Also, it turns out that a book on mythol­o­gy is inte­gral to my set­up; with­out it, the exter­nal mon­i­tor isn’t up high enough.

Monitor, back view

(My ISP’s upload speed is pret­ty abom­inable, but that’s a prob­lem for anoth­er day, I think.)

Two years

Posted on by Patrick
Eye (photo by Vanessa Bumbeers)

…and I real­ly don’t miss wear­ing glass­es all day every day.

(On St. Patrick­’s Day, 2018, I got my eyes lasered into prop­er shape by these fine peo­ple, and went from a 20/400 pre­scrip­tion in my good eye to a 20/16 in both.)

Some­times, when I’m feel­ing a lit­tle dopey in the morn­ing, I’ll still reach for them. (And find the read­ers on the night­stand, and put them on, and won­der why every­thing’s a lit­tle blurred…)

That reminds me, though, it’s prob­a­bly time to sched­ule an eye appointment…

(That’s still not my eye­ball. Pho­to by Vanes­sa Bum­beers on Unsplash)