A love of files
I like the digital file, the idea of it, the amorphousness of it. A file is a blanker canvas even than the purest, plainest cotton or paper. A file is a place; a file is an (almost) unbounded permissive...
How to find your mum's keys after she's given up hope
Ma and I are alike in that we are forever misplacing things. While I may dream of a life without keys, the reality is that here in Bristol, a large-ish city in the South West of England, keys are a part of...
Out beyond the edge of the map
The map appears to us more real than the land. — D.H. Lawrence We all see the world a little differently and, in ways both large and small, who we are is reflected in everything we do. Still, much of the...
My future children and me.
In almost all that I do in my life I am thinking of my future children. My ambition in this life is to be of the greatest possible service to my children, to listen and support their understanding of the...
Dreams of a community
I don’t remember my dreams when I wake up. I know I must have them, the science is pretty clear on that, but apart from a very occasional glimpse of a seemingly meaningless moment, I remember nothing. But I...
Why I like small spaces
I’m not talking about spelunking, I mean that I live, very happily, in a cabin that is 3 metres long and 1.7 metres wide. Almost exactly 5 square metres or around 50 square feet. I’ve been in houses with...
A command by any other name: The utility of aliases and wrappers in the shell
This isn’t a manifesto about anonymity, not that kind of alias, just a simple moments appreciation for decoupling programs from their invocations. The title makes reference to the line “A rose by any other...
Writing simply
Trying to write more simply. I tend to give too much or too little context in my writing, contextualising for an audience is hard. I also tend to write in a slightly performative way which can get in the...
A place of focus
The State Library, a building that exudes focus. Beside me one very thin university student has fallen asleep, a thick book teetering on his knee but even in sleep he seems intent, his hand rests on the...
A micro exhibit of good design
I have an electric toothbrush1. For all the decline of Braun since Dieter Rams left the company in 1995, they have managed one good feature with this unit that frequently pleases me. Being a battery powered...
Six of seven
Day six in a seven part series that has stretched to 20 days already, see parts #1, #2, #3, #4, and #5. I wanted to draw something that reflected my mood following the events of last night but when I turned...
It's not enough to respond in kind
Since I left England, and even before then, I have had very little contact with my father. Twice a year, on my birthday and at Christmas, he’ll send me a text. Within a few days I’ll send him a reply,...
Ideas, braids, snakes and ladders
Part five in a series, see parts #1, #2, #3, and #4. A larger departure in style this week. Something of the forest, something of rivers and streams. Something constricting. I’ve been thinking about ideas...
Not another Eble
Part four in a series, see parts #1, #2, and #3. Bless me Eble, for I have sinned, it has been ten days since my last submission. Just two days after committing to a doodle a day for a mere seven doodles, I...
Bad Eble the third
Eble attempt #3 in this series, see attempts #1 and #2. It’s a tired refrain among amateurs in all disciplines to say that their every effort sucks, so I won’t. But please know that I want to, especially...
An Eble a day keeps the doctor away
I’m going to extend my little art thievery project. I’m going to timebox it too, let’s try a week. I started yesterday, a Tuesd’y, so we’ll go ‘til Mundy. After that, we’ll see what felt good and perhaps...
Once more into the deep
where all is futile and we can only weep I’ve been in the dark place again this last week. The weather has been appalling, keeping us mostly stuck in doors. When the clouds draw in I wither a little. But...
Planting begins anew
Seven planters, atop a hill, surveying the work to be done. And the planting season has begun in earnest. Today was the ceremonial first day of planting, and I’d say it went well. Sure the weather was...
Good jeans are nice, but joy is better
Bought another pair of second-hand blue jeans a couple of weeks back. These jeans look a lot like my preferred everyday pair of second-hand blue jeans, but differ in one important respect, they’re not my...
Dashes, firewood, and philosophy
I use dashes a lot in my writing and I’m reminded that it was Rose that introduced me to them. Thank you Rose. Heaps of firewood in the store now, probably wont use all of it, and still plenty of my...
Away for Easter, away for work
Back in the familiar fog that accompanies every drive west. I want to be instinctively kind. My instincts are greedy, I can be better though. Left a couple large feijoas on the wing mirror of Tersha and...
Chilly reminiscences and guilt
Very cold this morning. Driving to pick up Shay I caught sight of a familiar gait, the long, loping stride of Ty briefly lit by a street lamp, making his way to roll call down at the wharf. It’s been more...
Marshmallows, money, life, and logs
Been chatting to Bede a lot more on these drives in. He has a quiet, charming spirit, but he’s hinted several times that his life hasn’t been all that he once hoped. I’ll long remember what he told me about...
Big birds and battle cries
Just Bede and I in our ute today, Aiesha’s still sick, and now Shay too. In his 1938 novel Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “A man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the...
Back to the wild, nodes, Dorian Taylor
Getting in the Ute again felt like an assault, radio blaring. Been two weeks since I’ve been wilding. Does feel glorious to be back in the forest though. The skylight went in over the weekend, along with...
Data structures, late night fixes
I have quite a substantial amount of digital-grunt-work to get on with – what amounts to data-entry. Frustratingly, this grunt-work doesn’t yet feel ‘final’. By that I mean that I foresee having to do more...
Not getting what I see
I’m keen to overhaul the way that I’m authoring. Multiple experiments with workflows and formats for writing and publishing have left me with a patchwork that has started to feel brittle. I want to be...
The matter of me
Found eight cockroaches in the coffee plunger this morning, not seen them in there before. Mizuki not at all impressed. Had a wonderful, long conversation with mum this morning. I’d wanted to squeeze in an...
A day off
Nelson feels cold this morning. A day off. Woah. The last time I took a day off work was Sep 24th, 2021 when Mizuki had been down in Arthur’s Pass for some time and Benn and I drove down for the weekend, I...
I lost a thought today
9.35am As we raced through the last of the planting I remember I had a thought that I really wanted to write down and develop, but I couldn’t write it down in the pouring rain and a couple hours later it’s...
To be a child again
We drove down to the swamp last night after work to enjoy the sunset. Dean brought his gold pan, we all brought beers, skipped stones, spun yarns. Shay got excited when he found a rowing boat up the beach....
Tool sheds and mountain tarns
Isobel and I recently drummed up a cool new project proposal (because, of course, the approximately infinite list we already chip away at day by day was in need of expansion 😂). Could we turn the somewhat...
An evening of shovelling, shelving, and kimchi
Isobel had mentioned that the lean-to shed half way up the garden was a source of frustration, not very useful on account of the steep slope and a lack of any meaningful storage system. A good evening...
The new middlemen
The less you have to do, the less say you have. — Frank Chimero The internet promised to set us free, rid the world of the gatekeepers and the middlemen for good. As the barriers between artists and...
I should have kept a journal
I know, I know, I should have kept a journal. I should have saved the love letters. I should have taken a storage room somewhere in Long Island City for all the papers I thought I’d never need to look at...
Rooks all the way down
A tortured and unimaginative title given that I’ve just finished reading Turtles All the Way Down by John Green. I picked it up out of a nostalgia for the feeling of reading Looking for Alaska fourteen...
Puffer fish and buried men
Somehow the saddest part of unloading this tuna boat isn’t the thousand tonnes of tuna that have been wrenched from their watery home, suffocated, and frozen solid – it’s all the other sea creatures that...
Good at nothing
I’m good at nothing – good at doing nothing that is. I’m good at other things too, but being good at nothing sometimes feels like a superpower. I am a spectator at the unfolding of my thought; I watch it; I...
Taking pictures with words
This piece of the web is me attempting to find my voice. So far it eludes me. Like a lot of mediocre writers my writing frequently gets bogged down in things that just don’t matter. I’ll turn out paragraphs...
Write the things
Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. — Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, 1936 Write the things. That’s the shortest, punchiest...
A walk between two Wednesdays
At 6pm on the 7th of October, a Wednesday, Rose and I stood atop Cape Reinga — the northern most point of New Zealand’s north island and the most spiritually significant place in Aotearoa — looking at the...
Today I'm rich
In the last three years I have spent eleven months working, I haven’t had a job since Rose and I said goodbye to Australia almost a year ago. In three weeks we make for Cape Reinga to begin the Te Araroa...
On my way to creation
I’ve never felt creative. It used to be that I didn’t want to be or at least didn’t feel that I wanted to be. I don’t know exactly what’s changed, nor exactly when but I think the strength of the need to...
A thought for tomorrow
The fantastic thing about solitude is the reveal. To wonder head down, alone, along a path that goes you know not where, to then pause, raise your head, look back, and see how far you’ve come. There’s a...
