Projects, Pursuits and Pastimes

January, 2011: Two Presentations

February 8, 2011 | 1 comment { Geek, Life, Photography }

Each evening as the pets wax needy, the caffeine wears off, and the house creaks as it cools, I think: I should blog. A pin-snip tightening in the solar plexus; I clamp down and I panic lightly and I know, for one, that I don’t have the margins of energy to tell the whole story of what January is or has been. For two, guilt. The longer I go blogless, the heavier the onus. Even this paragraph has made me lose a kilogram or two of psychic weight. So, in compromise, let’s slide narrower the window of recap to encompass only one subject: two presentations I gave this month.

Hey, remember when we all lived in New Albion, just south of New Georgia?

January 10, 2011 { Books & Learning, David, Hobbies and Projects }
B.F. Lloyd & Co Map of Canada and Arctic Regions of North America

Mr. Pencil and I finally got around to framing some things—Pencilhaven has an epic backlog of framing—and I’d like to share it with you. Mr. P went through a self-professed eBay-cartography binge a few months ago, and, as a result, we have some nifty new specimens. This “Map of Canada and the Arctic Regions of North America” has something new to tell us about the weird history of our own neck of the woods.

Reading: 2010 in Review; 2011 Goals

January 9, 2011 { Books & Learning, Hobbies and Projects }
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, A Novel

A quick look back at how I fared, book-wise, in 2010 before I lose my breath again in the rapid onslaught of 2011. Did I read what I said I was going to read in 2010? Also, what’s in store for this year?

2010 in a nutshell: an emphasis on quality and specific areas over quantity. More longer books, fewer total books overall.

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Welcome to Pencilhaven!

Pencilhaven is what we call our house--but when we say "Pencilhaven" we mean more than the structure. We mean the myriad hobbies, experiments and projects we're always working on here.

Analysis, meet Synthesis

There’s a problem. Or perhaps not a problem so much as an absence of anything actively useful. I read a lot. I pursue a lot of interests. I see a lot, I go to a lot of places (more now than before). So much that I have become overawed, and, in turn, passive where I should really be active. I’ve transformed into an absorptive entity. This cannot stand.

What good is pummeling my way through Plato, learning the art of frankincense distillation, taking weak little steps towards astrophotography, sampling weird Austrian wines made from the Zweigelt grape or solving confounding problems in the world of mobile Web development if I keep everything entirely to myself?


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