We’ve been fooling around in the garden. Last weekend, we went to the local nursery and bought a bunch of vegetables. The nursery was full of people picking up plants, so I hope that spring is indeed sprung and we’re passed the last front date.
On Wednesday, I went to visit my plot (allotment) at the UTSC Garden Club this week. It is quite large about: fifteen by thirty feet. The plan is to plant all the high-maintenance stuff on the porch and the low-maintenance stuff in the allotment. (Thanks, ~zkbro and Taylor for this suggestion!)
I made a visit to the UTSC Cherry Blossoms. It was absolutely beautiful to see them out. Lots of people hanging around, taking photos, and enjoying the fine weather.
I took a friend out to Tallis Choir’s final performance of Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil. It was stunning. I love good choral music. While reading the programme, I learned that Pärt and Tavener composed in a style called “mystic minimalism” — a lovely name for a genre.
Here are my favourite parts of the concert, sung by Voces8.
A few weeks back I mentioned reading Richard Brautigan. I thought that his stuff wasn’t spectacular, but I could appreciate that it was novel and experimental at the time. This week, I shared a couple of his poems with my wife, Megan. She hated them. A lot. And, I think that’s a good thing. If the point of poetry is to evoke emotions, then a poem can succeed by evoking repulsion.
The academic summer has started, so I have a lot more head space for writing. As we’ve seen in the week notes, I’ve been bouncing a lot of ideas around about writing but not finishing anything: sundials, the fundamental theorem of calculus, integration in finite terms.
I walked in to work on Monday. I could feel myself dragging my feet: “Do I really want to walk in to today?” And then I realized that the whole point is to walk! That’s part of moving and having a good time in my body. This feeling persisted of dreading the walk on Thursday. However, once I got deep in to the woods, I really enjoyed it.
I tried out Ingrid Crickmore’s instructions for a seven loop spanish braid and produced the sample above. The little inset blue hearts were a total accident. Learning some new loop braiding moves was a delight.
A magical math friend taught me this card trick: Will The Cards Match. The perfomance in the video linked involves tearing the cards, which is very yucky to me, but the trick itself is lovely and entirely self-working. I can’t seem to find a good write-up of the effect anywhere. This post by Jack Shalom presents a general method for varying the number of cards or letters in the effect.
rsyncs and a restic call” backup infrastructure
Published: May 7, 2025 @ 16:15.
Last Modified: May 8, 2025 @ 15:52.
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