It has been a hard week in the Adey-Shaw home. Meg lost the job she got recently, as described in Week Notes 46. She was caught in a huge round of lay-offs. We’re trying to stay positive but it is hard not knowing how things will shake out next year. Meg is pretty sure that she will have a job as a supply teacher next year because she was on a half-time contract and still active on the supply list at the time of the lay-off. It will all work out fine in the long run but the current situation sucks.
Everything is new to Mabel. She got startled by a toad in the wood pile and, later, a butterfly. And then, in the same day, she learned to pedal a bike with training wheels. This development startled us.
A couple times Mabel and I got in to a “shrugging game” where we shrugged at each other and said “MAYBE?!” louder and louder it became hilarious. Crazy fun.
Chan Karim, Violet. La Colo Des Vampires. Hachette, 2025.
Mira is absolutely loving this graphic novel. She carries it with her everywhere and studies every page1. I’ve been reading it aloud to her in French and English. I read a couple panels out loud in French (for my own sake) and then live-translate it to English.
Singmaster, David. “Moral and Mathematical Lessons from a Rubik Cube.” New Scientist 96.1337 (1982): 786-791.
I put out a reference request for this on /r/Rubiks_Cubes. No one was able to find a copy online but a librarian was able to get me a copy. It is an awesome read. A sort of meditation on problem solving with Rubik’s Cubes as a case study. It led to me writing: Commutator Intuition.
I fiddled around with this site a bunch.
A reader requested that I add search
and so I added a PageFind search to the Archive.
Of course, Jack Baty beat me to it.
After adding the search functionality, I added a keyboard navigation feature.
Now one can open various pages using vim style combinations.
For example, \a opens the Archive2.
Documenting those changes in the colophon led me to write up a bunch of other things.
A friend gave me a Singer 514 sewing machine. Amazingly, Singer itself posted the manual on the Internet Archive. I got up and running with a few videos by Cornelius Quiring.
I asked on /r/knots for suggestions of what knots to learn next. Lots of good suggestions in the Links below. Immediately added the trucker’s hitch to my repertoire. The rope acts a sort of block and tackle for itself.
The girls enjoy visiting the garden with us. We brought down a small Fisher-Price table and chairs for them. I think that having a space to do their own thing in the garden is really helping. They feel more welcome now that they have their own space to make mud pies and pot things.
Things are definitely happening in the garden. Last week, I planted an absurd number of beets in a 5x10ft patch. Unfortunately, over zealous watering of the uneven ground has caused all the seed to gather in a few small puddles. Thinning them is going to be an adventure.
A few weeks ago, I pulled out most of the ugly orange snow fencing that formed most of the walls of our plot. It turns out that removing the fencing was much easier than replacing it. I spent a couple hours in the garden just setting up new posts for fencing. Later in the week, I spent a whole morning putting in the new fence. I wrote about that experience here: Re-Fencing the Garden and General Handiness.
Sewing Resources
The Eyeball Game: How well can you eyeball a few common constructions in geometry such as bisecting angles?
Ascetic Computing: Dave write about the sense in which his computer usage is a form of asceticism. This got me thinking a lot about asceticism.
On Becoming a Magician: mastering something incredible (in this case body painting).
maybe maybe maybe : r/maybemaybemaybe: A minute-and-a-half of pure driving insanity.
Knots
toki pona
Published: Jun 9, 2026 @ 19:00.
Last Modified: Jun 9, 2026 @ 16:55.
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