Old blog: 2026 July
Originally posted on my Neocities site.
2026-07
2026-07-24 (Fri)
Finished The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith yesterday. Borrowed Of Mice and Men from the library.
I've been picking up a lot of books from yard sales and thrift stores. I figure it's a good idea to do a little bit of hoarding of physical media, since things have gotten so weird lately.
My e-reader, which I use mainly for public domain books, has developed a stuck vertical black line. Infuriating.
2026-07-25 (Sat)
Finished Of Mice and Men. Borrowed The Year of the Flood.
I installed the Neocities CLI tool, and have been looking into RSS feeds. I would have to write the news items by hand, but I should be able to throw together a script so that I can at least avoid writing raw XML. There's no sense in worrying about feeds when the site is hardly established, though.
2026-07-26 (Sun)
Got Ethan Frome, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, and Casino Royale. Starting Ethan Frome tomorrow.
Spent some time writing an article about Gravity Well; somehow ended up deleting it while messing with this site's Git repo. I guess I'll just start over.
I’m trying my hand at gardening this year. My carrots and scallions are struggling (maybe not enough direct sunlight), while my peas are thriving, despite pests feasting on the leaves. A few days ago, I harvested about 20 pods and ended up with a nice little bowl of pulses. They tasted fresh and earthy.
Anyway, I took a picture of the bowl of pulses before they were all eaten. As I look at the picture again today, I hate that my brain’s first instinct is "Hmm, this looks AI generated." Argh!
2026-07-27 (Mon)
OK, I'm back on track with the Gravity Well article. I'll let it sit until the weekend.
Neocities appears to generate an RSS feed for any and all site updates, so I guess I don't have to write one by hand. I've added it to the footer.
Ethan Frome is interesting, and not quite what I expected.
2026-07-28 (Tues)
The Neocities RSS feed works, but it's not very descriptive. Maybe what I'll do is write monthly news items with a summary of updates. Removing the RSS link for now.
2026-07-30 (Thurs)
Finished Ethan Frome, and started The Year of the Flood (Margaret Atwood).
I rearranged some things on the site, and wrote up an inventory of my physical books. I somehow own five John Grisham novels. I don't hate him or anything, but five? How did that happen?
One of my pea plants died. I already harvested most of the pods (except for one very small specimen), so I guess this is the end of the road for the other five plants as well. Circle of life and all that. The scallions have grown a bit, and my carrots seem to be faring better.
2026-07-31 (Fri)
I stopped by the local thrift store. Besides a CD, the only thing I ended up buying was a reference of English (British) window curtains. Some books that caught my eye: multiple entries in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series; a David McCullough pop history book; and Guns, Germs, and Steel. I couldn't muster the enthusiasm to take any of them from the shelves, though.
I'm gaining weight and procrastinating and oversleeping. Not good.