My son is nearing his second birthday, which makes him nearly two years old. When he was only four months old I decided that I would make him something with buttons. I didn’t have much more of an idea than that, but I ordered one hundred illuminated buttons and started mulling what to do with them. Nothing much happened for a few months; I knew this was a long term plan. But every so often my subconscious would come up for breath, and I would open the drawer and get them out. Just to see how they felt.

 

This was a micro-slot talk at Oxford Geek Nights #51.

As my son found his feet and began to walk, he found his hands at perfect height to reach the piano. Music is very important to us, and I could not have been more delighted to see him walk over to the piano and press the keys with the tips of his fingers.

This year has happened all at once, and hasn’t stopped once all year. It’s been one thing after another, but somehow all got on top of itself. Nonetheless, here’s my attempt to flatten it out into an annual retrospective. It’s a little less procedural than previous years. If you don’t wish to spectate I suggest you scroll to the bottom and read the last sentence. There’s nothing particular there, at least not yet, but you can at pretend to have read everything in between.

They say the skies are bigger Up North. I’ve recently witnessed this natural phenomenon first-hand. It’s true. The best theory I have so far is that the sky expands, inching out and pressing down toward the horizon. Meeting abrupt and solid bedrock, it flexes and springs up, vault-like, forming a dome. As any structural engineer will tell you, this paraboloid is capable of supporting and holding back crushing weights. The arch transfers the load deep into its footing, pushing downward and outward. The earth supports it, gentle and sufficient. As long as the horizon remains firm, anchored, the cosmos remains supported and the world still turns.

This piece was originally published in the Crossref Staff Newsletter. I’m reasonably confident that you won’t have read it.

People ask me “how’s the boat?”. There are two easy answers to that, neither of them particularly satisfactory. The long answer, which involves sacrificial anodes and hinges, topcoats and oil changes, weeds and invasive species, though it answers the question, leaves the listener considerably dislocated from its starting point. The short answer, that it’s fine thank you, seems churlish and falls short of the spirit of the question. The trick is to find the middle ground: a short anecdote which illustrates the idiosyncrasies of living aboard, but which doesn’t descend into the weeds, or worse yet the bilges.