I’m trying to get back to posting here a bit more often. But, you should know: most of my writing about education stuff is happening over at my newsletter. You should sign up for that (if you haven’t already).
Anyway. What have I been up to?
- Selling a house. This is not a fun thing to do
- Buying a house. Also: not a fun thing. Especially under a time constraint
- Tracking my diet via my Hobonichi Techno
- Beginning a search for a new winter hat
- Merino wool (or, alternatively, cashmere…)
- Minimal labels/branding
- Long enough to roll the edge
- Packing packing packing
- Designing a new computer work station (for said new house)
- Currently, that’s looking like a quad-monitor setup with more than one computer running them. I’ve got a kickstarter Chip heading my way soon, so that might run one, and the main computer will be running at least two others… still some work to do here. Also, need figure out the storage solution for this whole rig. My data right now is spread across a pile of hard drives, and I need to consolidate.
- Trying to source an acceptable duck-cloth vest for the cooler weather we’re having. There are a number that would be acceptable, but most of them have price tags I just can’t quite stomach. So I’ll keep looking (and eventually probably just try to make one myself).
- Lusting over the new Glowforge laser cutter/engraver. It’s a totally reasonable price ($2k), though that’s more than I’d like to spend at this moment (see above: buying house). And the software is the real gem there, too. SUPER EASY. Any k-12 Makerspaces that aren’t buying one of these are missing out. Couple this with a decent 3d printer and there isn’t much you can’t make…
- I’ve planned out a roof-top solution for carrying a selection of fishing rods. I won’t source the parts until after the move to the new house, but I think it’ll be worth posting about.
- I’ve got a couple of days until I can order my new cell phone. I won’t post specs here (because I’m still not entirely sure which options I’ll go with), but I’m looking forward to it.
- I’ve been running Ghosterly on my computers for the last couple of weeks, and I really like it. Sure, it breaks some things- but it lets my old, old computer I’m using surf significantly faster when it’s not loading endless junk. I’m also using Peace on my iPhone (pulled from the app store- natch!) and I can’t tell you how much better it is browsing on my phone with that. I totally understand why Marco pulled the app- the ethics of add blocking are… murky. But still. I understand that people derive earnings from ads- but when those ads degrade the experience as much as they have? Yeah. Time for something to change.
- Also: as a result of running Ghosterly, I noticed that my site had more trackers/pings/widgets on it than I either realized or found acceptable. I’ve removed a bunch of those, and I apologize in the meantime. That said, I think there were 4 running- last time I went to a major site (cnn = 16, buzzfeed = 13, people = 19) I found the numbers egregious. So I don’t feel too bad about 4.