I’ve been sick with a bad flu since Christmas Day. 🤒
I went and got a COVID test first thing yesterday morning, and by last night I got notice that I tested negative.
A relief, but a pretty sucky way to spend Christmas downtime. Stay safe and be well!
I just finished N. K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy. Conveniently, it’s on sale right now.
Roland is working remotely with shifted hours, so he often bikes down to Revolver in the afternoons, Vancouver-time. I bumped into him in the rain.
Riad and I walked around in the rain, and then retreated for a green tea & a whiskey to catch up. Tech Nomads of the Universe is Riad’s book, which includes an interview with me. Predictably, I talk about community :)
I ended up buying an Arturia Keystep MIDI keyboard recommended by bgins. So cool to use this in a web browser with WebMIDI + Moon Forge. I really have no idea what I’m doing, but making sounds is fun.
And so it begins. Bought the sous vide machine that Jae told me I should get.
First time recipe: Pork Steak.
The websites must work without JavaScript debate makes total sense for the document web (see recent post by Remy Sharp).
It doesn’t make sense for the app web. Great JS (and WebAssembly!) powered apps are a good thing.
I added the latest post from my blog to my home page using Micro.blog’s sidebar.js.
@manton, can we get permalinks in sidebar.js?
Actually figured Apple Family Sharing with Rachael today.
But, since iTunes Match is essentially deprecated, I can’t share (for example) my Bandcamp tracks. So complicated!
“Facebook’s argument is along the lines of arguing that the police shouldn’t crack down on burglaries because it might hurt pawn shops.”
Gruber in Daring Fireball on Facebook ads against Apple’s anti-tracking
One of the new accounts I’m following: @ColorOfBerlin. Tweets Berlin sky colours.
I think about Berlin a lot.
It has recent memories of good times & great people, but it’s also where my family is from.
A walk around our East Van neighbourhood looking at Christmas lights. Ferndale was the most magnificent.
Made sourdough focaccia today.
I’m getting the “sour” flavour, but only my first bread that I added commercial yeast to really worked.
I’ll toast it in the morning and see how I like it.
Rui on the CentOS news:
“I always wondered if IBM would just sit there and continue to allow people to effectively run RHEL (under the guise of CentOS) without licensing fees, and now we know the answer.”
Here’s a really great people-centric view thinking about open source maintainers by Evan You, founder of VueJS.
The context is a thought experiment: what if only sponsors could file issues?
SearchMySite.net, a search engine for personal websites.
Found via jlelse’s blog which links to some other examples.
an online magazine written by and for people who dream of a sustainable and just internet for all.
Sustainable Internet + Climate Justice magazine. Cover illustration Hélène Baum.
I’m thinking about what other feeds I want to post to Micro.blog.
I used Zapier to create a feed of the Github repos I star.
This is the feed link you can subscribe to directly, also cross-posting to Mastodon social.coop/@bmann.
It’s Bandcamp Friday!
Purple Penguin’s De-Tuned was released 24 years ago. I was into UK imports of house / electronica during university.
Here’s the Passion track:
If I have mate for lunch, apparently I stay up super late. Lesson learned, I guess?
(still miss pomegranate club mate from my Berlin times)
Picked up these “Heritage” beans from Pilot Coffee House at Propaganda.
I like this Classic <—> Adventurous scale. I am definitely on the more dark, rich “coffee” flavours rather than light and floral mango or whatever :)
It’s @duchesscosmo o’clock. Locally made, refreshingly tangy & not too sweet, and available for delivery in Vancouver.
Went out for a bike ride along Arbutus Greenway. Beautiful sun and a stop at Beacoup Bakery on the way back, plus all the cyclists waiting for the train at Union.
I got sent this Azerbaijani Country Life Vlog video blog by @florence_ann and ended up watching the entire 45 minute video.
Yesterday’s lunch at Laksa King was a bowl of laksa, a bowl of mohinga (Fernando got a picture of it), and an order of roti canai
I made a chocolate cake to use up sourdough starter discard.
It’s not a pretty cake, and making an entire sheet cake to use up a little sourdough is perhaps overkill, but I’m happy with how it turned out.
One of the few times I’ve stayed somewhere else on #bowenisland. Up on Eagle Cliff, looking out to Strait of Georgia and across to UBC. Wind and whitecaps.
My parents are moving today. Third move in 47 years they’ve been in Canada.
Dude Chilling Park in the fall
I should log my epic sandwich from yesterday’s lunch. Sourdough from Tall Shadow breads, polish mayo, pickle slice, Roma tomato, havarti, and salami.
Spicy udon bowl for lunch today. Onions, ginger, garlic, some diced red peppers & carrots I had laying around. Diced Roma tomatoes. Miso. Soy Sauce. Samba Oelek. Rice vinegar.
Managed to stop in at the new Radpower Bikes Vancouver showroom right before closing. Snagged a rear rack & basket for Rachael’s new bike.
When we went for brunch at Forage yesterday, I also bought some of their sourdough starter. Looking forward to waking it up!
Rachael won an overnight stay prize pack from VanMuralFest and the Robson BIA. Finishing our downtown adventure with a nice breakfast at Forage.
I’ve been stuck not really reading much. Gave up on the book I was on, and bought Sue Burke’s Interference.
I loved the first one, and have been happily reading this before bed.
#book #scifi
Ride out to our usual bench at Burnaby Lake was pretty cold. Got to get gloves and other gear sorted to keep #biking.
The new Rad Mini in white has slightly smaller wheels, and of course no extended rear rack.
Pulled out some old achiote and made a turkey thigh stew plus did a trial run of savoury waffles I’m going to serve tomorrow.
Had these “screw buns” from Dinesty Dumpling House last night, which came with sweetened condensed milk for dipping. So pretty, so tasty!
I wrote a blog post about joining Social.Coop. It’s a co-op that runs “user-controlled social media” in the form of a Mastodon server. If you’re on Mastodon, please let me know, I’d like to follow you there!
Check out @rachaelashe’s work at The Art Shop upcoming pop up “Wood Paper Scissors: Raw Materials in Art”. Opening is Oct 23rd, runs until Nov 3rd. The space is on East Hastings, next to Strathcona Brewing and Prototype Coffee.
Our new Rad Mini got delivered today! It looks cute and small compared to my Rad Runner, plus a few upgrades: it has gears and a bike computer screen, and an improved front light vs the Run
This will primarily be Rachael’s bike, but I’ll borrow it on occasion ;)
I have a cute little like green Bodum charcoal BBQ that we can take to the park at the end of the street. But charcoal is a bit of an ordeal so doesn’t get used often. What about a Scottish made gas pizza oven???
The Ooni: youtu.be/7kzenzsML…
#cooking
I just found out the mystery cheese we bought the other day is Braided Armenian String Cheese. Tomorrow is going to be a good day!
Today was actually a pretty good day. Except! I got another flat in my back tire!
The funky liquid leftover from lemony pickled cabbage with some dried chilies added 🌶 I don’t have room to keep it around. Slices of lemon zest made it more magical over time.
“[Vancouver has] the lowest property taxes on the continent and most of the people who complain don’t even pay these taxes, but rather pass them on to renters.”
I figured out how to properly setup the VSCode Markdown Notes extension for how I’m making my public #secondbrain notes.
Co-op and B-Corps structures are supposed to prevent this sort of thing. @jonrshell posts a thread covering the background of people soon to be in charge of MEC.
I just “finished” revamping my website, and then @bopuc left a link to Simply Jekyll by Raghu.
Pretty sure I’m going to replace what I’ve done with this template. It’s great when the data of your site is just Markdown files.
For people who like that sort of thing, I have a couple of RSS feeds on my site again.
Have a blog? Shill me your feed, I’ve got room for more reading
I wrote up some research on a System76 desktop and new Mac Minis with eGPU.
Anyone want to shill me on a desktop PC setup and/or recommend a Canadian supplier?
Sunset at Burnaby Lake. Was lovely to ride out at end of day with a few warm patches of sun left. @rachaelashe takes my picture as I get hers on the bench with the ebike.
Chilaquiles? Migas? Some sort of Mexican creation for breakfast — tortilla strips, diced onion, fresh jalapeño, eggs, fresh tomatoes. Cumin and salt, and finished under the broiler with some cheese.
I need rain gear! Where’s the best place to buy in #Vancouver? What should I get for biking? Bonus points if anything is made in Canada.
Reply here or comment with tips here.
On the Sunshine Coast near Roberts Creek for a short bit of downtime. This was public beach access down a steep set of stairs by Marlene Road.
My bmannconsulting site is now a Jekyll-with-backlinks public notes garden #secondbrain, and it’s running on @FissionCodes.
🚧 I’m doing some funky DNS things so likely a little slow. 🚧
I just backed @doctorow’s Kickstarter for an audio book version of Attack Surface, the third Little Brother book.
DRM-free to fight Audible, which has 90% of the market.
Had a great get-to-know-you call with @JacobSayles, intro’d by @LeeLefever.
Jacob has a long history with coworking, and we ended up jamming on Community Land Trusts and related models for #Vancouver.
If you’re interested in creating new shared housing models — get in touch!
Picnic in the park yesterday. Smashed cucumber & pasta salad recipes on @ATBRecipes.
Hello #pickling friends! A quick stovetop pickle with golden beets.
Went for a tour of the in-progress @vanmuralfest murals and met animalitoland at 7th and Ontario.
Sean @coates wrote up how he checked Canada’s COVID Alert app and submitted a fix.
Thanks Sean, & thanks to the Canadian Digital Service for source code availability & responsiveness!
Montecristo Magazine talks about East Van alleys filled with oregano and other Mediterranean herbs. And yes, 6ft tall rosemary bushes are definitely common too.
The Tyee’s story of how the Himalayan blackberry came to North America is really interesting. Attached are pictures of three different kinds I took on Bowen.
I’m a fan of the Ghost blog in part because you can easily run it with one-click “Deploy to Heroku”.
Mike Haynes documented how to set Ghost up to support microblogging with title-less asides.
Made my first salt-baked salmon tonight. Full step-by-step photos on @ATBRecipes. Definitely want to try more salt-baked things ;)
Zettlr, an #opensource desktop markdown editor. Zettelkasten support, tags, and more.
Made it into Columbus Meats for the first time in a long time. Their prepared roasts and other items are SO GOOD — although I didn’t buy any this time.
Biked around Stanley Park, using the new bike lanes on the road. Relaxing and an awesome ride.
Photos are bike & chestnut tree at Brockton Point, and view to North Shore.
Success with the lactic fermented tomato 🍅 #pickling experiment! Less garlic next time.
I found @hecker’s “thoughts on Mozilla for people who don’t know Mozilla” to be a good read.
If you’re not in the tech industry, this adds lots of background.
At the Riley Park Farmers Market. Stopped in at Farmhouse Cheese for quark and curds, and big line for Scavenger Coffee.
“Lost in this billionaire slapfight…is the salient point that Epic is not actually wrong here.“
— @imranzomg, writing for IGN on Epic vs Apple and Google’s app store policies.
“If we want to maximize opportunities for safe social interaction, and build up physical and mental health, we need to socialize in parks”
— Parks and Bars: Socializing with Lower Risk, SFU MAGPIE Group
“no amount of extra vitamins makes sugary vegetable oil healthy for you.” — Oatly: The New Coke
The article is likely a bit of an outrage generator itself. What about other oat milks? Nut milks also have high environmental impact, what else is out there?
Went for an afternoon bike ride and ended up at Banana Grove Market on 22nd for the first time.
A mashup of an Italian deli and an Asian grocery in a really excellent way.
Checked in at Resurrection Distillery.
Catch Weight fish & chips plus distillery cocktails.
Ok shiny happy #pickling people, here’s some fermented rhubarb getting started, with orange peels and cardamom.
Back to important #pickling content. Lacto fermenting some tomatoes with garlic and some fresh green peppercorns.
I like this future where I can be emailing my local grocer and they’re asking if I want 6lbs of heirloom plum tomatoes delivered. Yes, obviously!
The Changli is a $1200USD electric car that you can order from Alibaba. Jalopnik bought it and road tested it in the US.
I kind of want to do a bulk order to Vancouver…
Checked in at Tell Your Friends Cafe.
Another #bowenisland happening spot, my first time visiting in person.
Brought the charcoal BBQ over to Bowen. Beets, zucchini rounds, pork, Orbaek bratwurst, and some beef.
Checked in at Orbaek
New food option on #bowenisland. Rice bowls with great pickled veggies, plus house made meats.
Checked in at Skipper Otto.
A #biking pickup of #SkipperOtto fresh mussels.
Checking in at Jericho Beach.
#biking to Jericho. A beautiful evening in the sun.
Went for a walk after dinner. The blackberries are starting to ripen!
This is basically a pickle / fermentation appreciation account now. Bought this kit at Welk’s today, plus two more lids & springs.
New podcast: Value in Open, about doing #opensource for a living:
Any open source value creator is deserving of a fair share of the profits that their work generates for others. But figuring out reasonable ways to “collect” without running afoul of deeply rooted open source principles is an incredible challenge. – @erlend_sh
Checked in at Best Food’s Grocery.
Corner store popsicles while #biking — and a really great #mural by Jenn Brisson.
At the #Fission office
Checked in at Hime.
Take out from the #sushi #restaurant that’s close to the office.
Checked in at Kissa Tanto. Always order the pickle plate. Look how perfect this is, and so tasty.
I’ve really enjoyed Martha Wells’ MURDERBOT books. On special today.
Checked in at 1931 Gallery Bistro. Halloumi galette for her, Peking duck eggs benny for me. Also first time at a #restaurant in 4 months.
Checked in at Vancouver Art Gallery. Starting Rachael’s birthday with this exhibit about #BC craft and design. “Shadow Wood” is a type of plywood that was produced locally.
Barbados is offering a 12 month “remote work” visa
I don’t think this is the only one of these we’ll see. As remote employment becomes normalized, cities & countries will compete for workers.
That last post was testing OwnYourSwarm, to use MicroPub to send FourSquare Swarm check-ins here. Worked!
Checked in at Dude Chilling Park. Cuban Taxi Guava Gose #beer from Callister Brewing. Remember: #gose is basically German gatorade.
Treats from Pacific Bread Company for Rachael’s birthday girlfriends gathering. PBC has excellent pastries.
The Impact of the Coronavirus on Software Valuation Multiples, Tomasz Tunguz
“The bigger question is whether software purchasing habits change because of reduced travel and networking. We will see that in the earnings reports coming out over the next month, and startups may begin to observe it in longer sales cycles.”
What’s that vague unease about Fava beans? Oh yeah, you need to take them out of their pods and shell them before cooking.
“we’re not replacing front-end devs with attention-layer-stacks anytime soon.”
Agustin Lebron in Marginal Revolution, The case against the import of GPT-3, referencing this React layout generator.
DaveO has just posted two kitchen posts. One on salt fermented pickles, the other on preparing two food gifts, tai snapper fish and wagyu beef.
Yum! Clearly I need to go visit DaveO in Japan so we can cook epic feasts together.
Eggplant and okra in a peanut coconut sauce. I felt good about the flavour balance in this.
Did I really need to cook two dishes tonight and make the house hot??? 👨🍳
A variation on my last brown butter and fresh peas pasta. No scapes, 3 minced bacon slices, minced onion & lemon juice & zest, served over macaroni.
Lovely animations illustrating Ralph Ammer’s Make me think!: rather than using design to shield people from complexity, use it to empower people. “Should the technology grow — or the person using it?”
(via @baldur)
On the fifth anniversary of Ben Thompson’s Aggregation Theory, @PackyM posts his Entropy Theory: “most successful businesses are those that use the latest technology to wrangle that chaos”
If you need to delete a known host in Blink.sh, you’ll need to use this sed hack:
sed -i.bak '5d' known_hosts
Where 5 is the host line number. Although apparently Blink will ship with a full editor soon.
Step two of kimuchi and pickled cabbage. The kimuchi will sour for 3 days in a corner, the cabbage goes to the back of the fridge for 3 weeks.
Turning a giant head of green cabbage into Kimuchi and some pickled cabbage & jalapeños, from The Joy of Pickling
Currently reading: The Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich 📚
I’ve written up a bit of a “best of” of a bunch of mainly food / grocery places for North Commercial Drive / Grandview-Woodland. My neighbourhood is a really nice place to live, shop, and eat ;)
Pineapple 🍍 Mango 🥭 #tepache with a knob of ginger. Back to basics!
Straight & Marrow is going into the old Bistro Wagon Rouge space, Scout Magazine
Looking forward to trying this new place. Bistro was pretty classic French bistro, the updated room looks spectacular.
“We want our house to be made from sustainable materials that last multiple decades, are resistant to rot, and require very low maintenance.”
@LeeLefever has a different definition of smart home, and a great write up of choosing yakisugi siding.
Om asks whether to pay for Pocket or Instapaper. I think a lot of people don’t know that Mozilla acquired Pocket back in 2017. Support Mozilla!
My bike against the textured wall across from @DLChicken1
Lunch with Brey at the Capitol Hill Reservoir Park. He made a gin lemonade, salad, and mashed potatoes to go with Downlow Chicken I brought.
Lovely pale pink rhubarb lime ginger tepache. As I suspected, the pith from the limes is a bit bitter. Doesn’t feel like it will ferment? We’ll see in 3 days.
So proud of @rachaelashe’s work. Check out her work featured for #FacesOfCraftFriday by @CraftCouncilBC
Do you know the story of Sleeping Giants?
Hear about it from co-founder @nandoodles as she embarks on her next big thing, CheckMyAds.
I’m on a buying-and-downloading-actual-music-files roll! Listening to Perturbator’s “I ran to the Arcade”, from Night Driving Avenger EP bought on Bandcamp.
I think I got here through Randall’s Gunship Music reco.
This is a screenshot of Obsidian @obsdmd making a link graph of the Markdown source files of my bmann wiki and archive. After discussing with Ton, “just files” is a powerful means of ownership.
Next batch of #tepache, first time without pineapple: rhubarb, ginger, lime.
I’m testing @hopinofficial for my @drupalconNA #DrupalConGlobal presentation. Next week! On Tuesday July 14th! Drupal and the Decentralized Web
duckduckgo()
{
lynx "[lite.duckduckgo.com/lite/](https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite/?q=$(urlencode) "$@")"
}
Via DevTO @ThePracticalDev “What are your preferred bash aliases?"
It’s Ottawa-era Boris music this evening 🎵 Andrew Vincent and the Pirates, I Love the Modern Way
This video of the beta preview of mmhmm has been making the rounds. It’s a new video overlay / remix app, MacOS only for now, by @PLibin, who you may remember as the founder of Evernote. It looks lovely and I can’t wait to try it.
My friend @LeeLefever writes about his business @commoncraft and their start making explainer videos like “RSS in Plain English”. If you look closely, you can see my B. Mann Consulting blog there.
Via David Crow, The Difference Between Budgets, Targets, and Forecasts.
I see many startup founders afraid to really engage with their finances, from planning to maintenance. You can’t just outsource this to a bookkeeper, it’s an essential core skill.
Love your spreadsheets :)
What year is this? I just refreshed my LastFM user account. Bought a couple of @flor digital downloads. cc @walkah
digital spaces generally have no equivalent of a disapproving glare
— “The silence is Deafening”, by @devonzuegel, on how to improve digital discourse.
What Devon describes would be called “tummling” by @kevinmarks
A test ride to Capitol Hill Reservoir Park in Burnaby. Straight shot along the Adanac bike route. Was surprisingly fast, the ebike really helps on the hills!
Kyle writes about the evolution of @LicenseZero as an Indie Code Catalog. The tag line is “gainful open software development” — for developers looking to thrive.
Currently reading: Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat 📚
Buttondown Email is a simple email newsletter tool.
The owner also funds open source that the business relies on.
My friend Lee LeFever is building a new home on Orcas Island. He’s looking at options for whole home batteries if you have experience with them. I learned a bit about the electricity co-op on the San Juans & am inspired by co-op businesses.
Biked east into Burnaby. Some of the usual trails are under construction, which lead to some steep hills.
An old photo from my Flickr backup, taken with some sort of digital camera, not just a smartphone! A snail and an ant together, on one of the fruit trees in the back yard of my parents' place on Bowen Island.
A picture of my RadRunner 1 Ebike from the Radpower website. It also happens to be for testing what photos look like in different microblog themes.
I think I’m going to make the move to the hosted version of Micro.blog for my microblogging. I’ll keep long form posting at blog.bmannconsulting.com.
“I value allyship more than anything. Home is people. Safe spaces are people, too. Not all people. But the right ones”.
Happy 41, @benwerd. Whatever version of the web we’re on, we’re all in this together.