Diary on hhhmmm

avoiding crowds

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 10:13:44 -0700

I hate crowds. It’s not like I fear them, I would just rather not be around them if I can help it. On the bus now, making my way home from work. Reminds me of going to college, taking the bus everywhere, never in a hurry. I would take the light rail, but there is a game today and there will be crowds.

train thoughts

Sat, 06 Jun 2026 08:47:45 -0700

my socks are falling down. a disconcerting feeling. here I am sitting on the new light rail train all the way to Redmond. so I sit feeling bored wearing my worn out jacket trying to think of something to pass the time. not as exciting as you might think.

out of energy

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 20:00:08 -0700

sometimes often perhaps I run out of energy to type away on my phone. as in the limiting factor is physical. a way to condense my thoughts.

On Adverbs

Thu, 13 Nov 2025 21:11:43 -0800

An aversion to adverbs is nothing new. I don’t think there is much point to writing about them. It’s not difficult to form a more powerful sentence by leaving them out. This quote from Ann Patchett reminds me how adverbs can get in the way of what you want to say.

If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish, but because you long to learn how to write well, because there is something that you alone can say.

Dominiqué Aury Writing Quote

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 13:52:13 -0700

Imagine this as text. Not the words on a page but the manner in how they were composed. Dominiqué Aury wrote:

lying on her side with her feet tucked up under her, a soft black pencil in her right hand… the girl was writing the way you speak in the dark when you’ve held back the words of love too long and they flow out at last. For the first time in her life, she was writing without hesitation, without stopping, rewriting or discarding; she was writing the way one breathes, or dreams… she was still writing when the street cleaners came by at the first touch of dawn.

stick with it

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 08:51:27 -0700

ava wrote a post, you can stick with it a rant about people struggling to find the right tools for blogging. I too have a similarly complicated setup for blogging. But if it were easier then more people would be blogging. There’s always a tradeoff between simple and complex. It’s taken me a number of tries to blog on a regular basis. Part of that is what software you choose. It’s OK to experiment.

Perfect Days review

Wed, 26 Mar 2025 16:46:35 -0700

Every so often a movie comes along and I sit down and find a way to watch it. This was the case for Perfect Days (trailer). For a variety of reasons I have a hard time sitting down and picking out a movie to watch. Likewise I don’t enjoy writing movie reviews, it reminds me too much of writing book reports in school. But I found this movie not by stumbling upon it randomly but recommended to me by a blog post on TYWKIWDBI.

Writing a link blog

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 08:50:07 -0800

Writing a link blog is not a new concept. I think of Tumblr when I think of link blogs. But sharing links on social media could also be a form of link blogging. Even Pinterest.

Unlike using those platforms, a link blog is different because you are maintaining your own copy of what you find interesting. You are not relying on someone else to keep track of the fact you liked something and also host whatever it is you liked.

Violence never solves anything

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 16:27:48 -0800

Posted by Cory Doctorow a few days after the murder of Brian Thompson:

As a character in “Radicalized” says, “They say violence never solves anything, but to quote The Onion: that’s only true so long as you ignore all of human history”.

Ordinary Paris and the Art of Noticing

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 21:40:02 +0000

(via Ratika Deshpande). In this article by Lauren Elkin, she discusses Georges Perec’s book, An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, published in 1975.

… in which he records spending three days sitting in the Place Saint Sulpice trying to write down everything he sees around him—which buses go by, what kinds of cars, what the people and birds are doing, what the cafes are serving, who’s drinking which wine with lunch, what the street signs say, if there are nuns, who’s carrying a shopping bag, a plank, a crate, etc.

Thoughts on switching away from Tumblr

Fri, 30 Aug 2024 18:11:11 -0700

I’m going to try to keep this short because it’s so overstated but I feel like I need to be clear.

Visibility: Tumblr blocks AI robots from crawling your site. This means your content is less discoverable.
Censorship: Tumblr could choose to flag my site as mature. I have no recourse to correct this and no right to speak with a human to fix the issue.
Control: It’s often said, “if you’re not paying for something, you are the product.” Tumblr’s business model requires showing ads to other people. I do not have real autonomy over my site since I am a free user.

The downside is creating your own website is not as easy as clicking a few buttons. But the cost of hosting something on NearlyFreeSpeech is rather minimal. For just pennies per day. Also the idea of learning Hugo as a static site framework is exciting to me.

Ratika Deshpande on the subject of windows

Thu, 08 Aug 2024 10:47:25 -0700

Short quote of a quote from Ratika Deshpande on the subject of windows, “How beautiful to have a window that offers such a view! Ruskin Bond, one of my all-time favorite authors, has a lot to say about windows. My copy of his Notes from a Small Room has three essays on windows. Here’s an excerpt (from an essay that’s not about windows)”:

“I have lived with these two windows for twenty-five years, and I haven’t tired of them. The view hasn’t changed, but the cloud patterns are never the same, the bird-song varies, so does the blue dome of the sky, which at night is like a tent of deep purple spangled all over. Some nights are dark, lit up only by glow-worms or fireflies. Other nights are bright, with the full moon coming up over the crest of the mountain and sending a moonbeam in at my window, over my bed and then across my desk to light up the face of the little laughing Buddha who reposes there.”

sitting on the grass

Sun, 27 Aug 2023 01:19:32 +0000

I like sitting here on the grass on a late summer day next to the water with a cool breeze blowing by. Living in the city is great, but it’s good to stay in tune with nature.

It's Not a Run Lane

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 02:58:02 +0000

It’s Not a Run Lane - The Stranger

People in Seattle love to complain about petty stuff.

for the moment, I am here.

Fri, 14 Jul 2023 21:47:55 +0000

😶‍🌫️