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diff --git a/economics.txt b/economics.txt deleted file mode 100644 index e69de29..0000000 --- a/economics.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -121,3 +121,59 @@ When you have things set up that way hit... wait for it... escape to save your c ### Example Edits (Video) {: #example } Okay, you now have Darktable set up just like I do. This may or may not end up suiting you, but for now it gives you place to start. To show you how I work within this setup, check out the video below and then you can jump to the next article in this series, which covers what each module does and how I use them. + + +## Make Better Pictures. + +A few things to note: + +* I am not a professional photographer. I have been making photographs for 35 years now, but I've never tried to make a living at it, nor do I have any interest in nor any clue how you do that. I am just having fun. + +* I am not trying to make fine art prints. Photography to me has always been in service of or to illustrate a story. Occasionally I manage a photograph that tells a story on its own, but that's rarely a goal. Usually I am shooting with the idea that the image will supplement words, not stand on its own. + +* There is no single "correct" way to make a photograph. Most of my favorite photographs—both my own and those of others—have technical flaws. I am not interested in whether an image is tack sharp, has a perfect histogram, or is even in focus. I am interested in whether or not it tells a story. Which might seem ironic considering point two there, but it's not because for me a photograph doesn't have to tell the whole story, it has to tell *a* story. + +### Take Control of Your Camera + +Today's cameras want to do everything for you. I don't think that's any way to live or photograph. You'll never get any better if you leave your camera on full auto and mash the shutter. + +If you want to make better photos you're going to have to turn off the automatic features and figure it out for yourself. Sorry. There is no easy way to learn things, you have to struggle, otherwise you don't learn. + +Tough love people, but there it is. And there's going to be a learning curve to taking pictures using manual settings. At first you're going to suck at it. Your images are going to look even worse than when you were using full auto. That's okay, this won't last long. + +The first thing you need to do is turn on RAW image capture in your camera. Head to your camera's settings page and look for something that says "format" or "file format" or something where the setting is currently "JPG". Now look for the option that says RAW. Select that and you've just unlocked a tremendous amount of control over your images. + +### What is Camera RAW? + +I recommend shooting RAW format images over JPEGs because RAW stores far more information about the scene you're shooting. + +Everything your camera's sensor is capable of recording is stored in that RAW file. JPEG on the other hand has already made some decisions about the scene. As with anything automated, sometimes your JPEGs will look great (especially Fujifilm cameras), but I prefer to record the scene in RAW and make the decisions about how things should look afterward in software. + +To understand the difference between JPEG and RAW consider the color data your sensor is recording. The RAW file can hold billions of colors, every bit of color data your sensor saw is stored in the RAW file. To create a JPEG your camera squashes those billions of color down to 16 million (roughly the max the JPEG file format can store) and throws the rest away. The same is true of the luminosity. A RAW image will store the entire dynamic range of the scene, while a JPEG cannot. + +Simply put: Camera RAW images store the scene as it was recorded for you to play with later in software. JPEG images store the scene the way your camera's algorithms think it should look. If you're happy with that, awesome. Why are you reading this? If you're not happy with that, read on. + +### How to Get the Most out of Camera RAW + +The advantage of JPEG images is that you press the shutter and you're done. Well, you transfer the image to your computer or phone and then you're done. With RAW images you need to process them. Think of raw images as a film negative, you need to develop them into prints. + +First though, a few notes on the quirks of shooting RAW. + +To get the most out of shooting RAW images you need to understand how camera sensors record data, especially how *your* camera's sensor records data. There's considerable variation in the dynamic range that sensors are capable of, but in general it is easier to recover dark parts of an image than highlights. + +In digital photography you can think of pure white as no information at all. Since information is what we're after, overexposure, where your image is overly bright, is bad. + +The opposite of one bad idea is usually another bad idea though, and that's the case here as well. While you *can* recover quite a bit of color information from very dark regions of your RAW image, there is a cost: noise. Noise is the little colored dots you see when you zoom in on your image. From a distance they make your image look muddy, blurry, and washed out. + +The ideal is get the majority of tones in your image between those extremes. There is a theory, which I do not subscribe too, called "exposing to the left", which says you should deliberately, slightly, overexpose your image to get more data in the RAW file. Then you can darken when you develop it in Darktable. I think the risk of botching this, and seriously overexposing your image, outweighs the nominal benefit it confers. That said, sometimes, especially when shooting portraits that I plan to convert to black and white and use a "high key" tone mapping, I do overexpose on purpose to make sure skin tones render with as little noise as possible. + +Most of the time though, I do what you should do: I underexpose to protect the lighter areas of the image from overexposure and then lighten the shadows as needed when processing. + +### Settings for RAW Photography + +If you're just getting started, and you've just turned on RAW in your camera. I suggest you concentrate on learning to use the aperture to your advantage. The mode for this is called aperture priority and is usually on a dial marked with an A, or maybe AP. Putting you camera in this mode lets you set the aperture, or f-stop + + + + +[^1]: *Dynamic Range* refers to the range of tones between the lightest and darkest tones in an image. Often the start and stop is pure white to pure black, but it doesn't have to be. It's just the range between the darkest and lightest pixels. diff --git a/pages.txt b/pages.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c41a985 --- /dev/null +++ b/pages.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2968 @@ +# Homepage + +<p>We’re a family of five who live full time in a vintage 1969 Dodge Travco RV. We’ve been at it for three years now. People want to know <a href="https://luxagraf.net/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome">what it’s like for five people to live in a 26ft RV</a> and <a href="https://luxagraf.net/essay/why-a-vintage-rv">why we live this way</a>.</p> +<p>The short answer is simple: because we like it and we can. If you want more than a soundbite, <a href="/jrnl/">read through the journal</a>. If you like it, sign up for <a href="/newsletter/">the email list</a>, or <a href="/jrnl/feed.xml">subscribe to the RSS feed</a>.</p> +<p>We love the way we live and wouldn’t want to live any other way. But we’re not you and this isn’t for everyone. It just works for us. If you’re interested there’s a guide section with some <a href="/guides/">advice, tips and tricks for those who’d aspire to live full time in a van or RV</a> and there’s more about me on the <a href="/about">about page</a></p> + +# Dear Internet Commenter + +url: /dear-internet-commenter +status: True + +We are fellow denizens of an especially lovely planet full of wonder and beauty. Okay, it's true. It's also full of ugliness and horror. But let's focus on the positive for a minute. + +That the good news. The bad news is that even in the best case scenarios we only get to ride this lovely planet around our sun some seventy-five or so times. That's assuming we're well fed, clothed, sheltered and in good health. Most people of the world are none of those things. Some of us are, which is incredibly fortunate for us. + +I say this mainly to offer some perspective on why I have elected not to engage in a conversation with you. It's nothing against you specifically, but here's the thing: most likely you disagreed with something I wrote and want to express that. I understand that desire. But remember, my thoughts and opinions don't have to match yours. Yours are equally valid. And not only do these topics not really matter in the grand scheme of things, I don't matter in the grand scheme of your existence and there's nothing to gain by pretending otherwise. + +This doesn't mean we shouldn't care about each others' opinions, it just means that, given the constraints of our existence here on earth (it's very time limited), we probably both have better things we could be doing -- walking in the sunshine, playing with our kids, watching the sunset from a mountain top, making coffee by a fire just before sunrise, eating tacos, or what have you. There are a lot of amazing things to do out there. Arguing on the internet is not one them. + +# README + +url: /readme +status: True + +##Overview + +Luxagraf.net is built using the [GeoDjango framework](http://geodjango.org/). I don't serve up the pages directly with django though, instead the Django app spits out static html page -- pretty much like Moveable Type did back in the day. + +The static pages are then served up by Nginx. There's a couple exceptions where Nginx hands things off to [uwsgi](https://uwsgi-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/). + +Everything is served over https for your browsing privacy. Haha, just kidding, it's served over HTTPS because Google rammed that shit sandwich down the internet's throat as a way to raise the barrier for entry and keep the riffraff out. Fuck you Google. + +I wrote most of the Django apps that I use, but I do use a few reusable apps written by others, namely: + +* [django-contrib-comments](https://github.com/django/django-contrib-comments) +* [django-extensions](https://github.com/django-extensions/django-extensions) +* [django-gravatar2](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-gravatar2/1.1.4) +* [django-taggit](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-taggit/0.12.2) +* [django-typogrify](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-typogrify/1.3.1) +* [django-bleach](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-bleach/0.3.0) + +I also rely on quite a few Python modules , some of which have their own dependencies (not listed): + +* [Markdown](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Markdown/2.5.2) +* [Pillow](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Pillow/2.7.0) +* [bleach](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/bleach/1.4.1) +* [html5lib](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/html5lib/1.0b3) +* [psycopg2](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/psycopg2/2.5.4) +* [python-dateutil](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/python-dateutil/2.4.0) +* [smartypants](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/smartypants/1.8.6) + +I'm also deeply indebted to a vast array of geodata that I've downloaded over the years, including the world borders data set, a U.S state borders dataset (whose origin I've now forgotten), U.S. national park borders (thanks to Obama adding several new parks, mine are now out of date, but the latest versions are now available from [data.gov](https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/national-park-boundariesf0a4c)). I'm also currently building some new apps with BLM GIS shapefiles, but so far that's not public yet. + +# Offline + +url: /offline +status: True + +Sorry. It looks like the network connection isn’t working right now. + +But you still have something to read: + +<div id="history"> +</div> + +Here’s <a href="/">a snapshot of the homepage</a>. + +<script> +const browsingHistory = []; +caches.open('pages') +.then( cache => { + cache.keys() + .then(keys => { + keys.forEach( request => { + let data = JSON.parse(localStorage.getItem(request.url)); + if (data) { + data['url'] = request.url; + browsingHistory.push(data); + } + }); + browsingHistory.sort( (a,b) => { + return b.timestamp - a.timestamp; + }); + let markup = ''; + browsingHistory.forEach( data => { + markup += ` +<h2><a href="${ data.url }">${ data.title }</a></h2> +<p>${ data.description }</p> +<p class="meta">${ data.published }</p> +`; + }); + let container = document.getElementById('history'); + container.insertAdjacentHTML('beforeend', markup); + }) +}); +</script> + +# Technology + +url: /technology +status: True + +The less technology your life requires the better your life will be. + +That's not to say technology is bad, but I encourage you to spend some time considering the technologies you use and making sure you *choose* the things you use rather than accepting everything marketed at you. Also remember that every technology has trade offs and unintended consequences. There is no win-win, it's always a trade off at best. + +This is not my idea. I stole it from the Amish. The Amish have a reputation for being anti-technology, but they're not. Try searching for "Amish compressed air tool conversion" if you don't believe me. The Amish don't rush out and get the latest thing, that much is true. They take their time adopting any new technology. They step back, detach, and evaluate new technology -- *what benefits does it have? What drawbacks does it have?* They are actually more engaged with technology than you and I, and this allows them to make better-informed decisions about which technologies to use and which to avoid. + +That's what I try to do. I take my time. If a technology is good today, it'll be good five years from today. And I am always trying to get by with less, if for no other reason than this stuff costs money. Still, for better or worse. Here are the main tools I use in building this site and living on the road. + +## Writing + +### Notebook and Pen, Pencil and Paper + +My primary "device" is my notebook. I have two notebooks. One is called a Traveller's notebook. It's refillable. The other is smaller and it lives in my pocket at all times and is filled with illegible scribbles that I attempt to decipher later. This one I mainly write in pencil, and I stick post-it notes into the actual notebook so that I can then move the post-it notes to the larger notebook where I write them again. This larger notebook is a mix of notes and sketches, as well as a sort of captain's log, though I don't write in with the kind regularity real captains do. Or that I imagine captains do. + +I used to be picky about pens, I had a couple of fancy ones, but I lost them and learned my lesson. I sat down and forced myself to use basic cheap, black ink, Bic-style ballpoint pens until they no longer irritated me. And you know what? Now I love them, and that's all I use -- any ballpoint pen. Ballpoint because it runs less when it gets wet, which, given how I live, tends to happen. The truth though is that I usually write with a pencils because I like to erase things. I use a Pentel P209 with .9mm lead because the heavier lead doesn't break. These are easy to find at any office supply store. + +### Laptop + +I love Thinkpads and have used a few. Currently I have a Lenovo T14 gen 1, which I got off eBay for $455. It runs Linux because everything else sucks a lot more than Linux. Which isn't too say that I love Linux. It could use some work too. But it sucks a whole lot less than the rest. I run Arch Linux, which I have [written about elsewhere](/src/why-i-switched-arch-linux). I was also interviewed on the site [Linux Rig](https://linuxrig.com/2018/11/28/the-linux-setup-scott-gilbertson-writer/), which has some more details on how and why I use Linux. + +## Photos + +### Camera + +I use a Sony A7Rii. It's a full frame mirrorless camera. The main appeal for me was that you can adapt legacy lenses -- AKA, manual focus lenses from back in the day -- and use them at the their proper focal length. Without the old lenses I find the Sony's output to be a little digital for my tastes. If I wasn't using old lenses I'd get the Fujifilm X-Pro 2 and the first gen 23mm f/1.4 lens. + +I also have a Nikon FE2 film camera with either Tri-X or T-Max 3200 in it, and a Zeiss Ikon Nettar 518/16, a 6x6 medium format camera from the 1950s (also usually loaded with Tri-X). + +### Lenses + +All of my lenses are old and manual focus, which I prefer to autofocus lenses. I am not a sports or wildlife photographer so I have no real need for autofocus. Neither autofocus nor perfect edge to edge sharpness are things I want in a lens. I want a lens that reliable produces what I see in my mind. + +One fringe benefit of honing your manual focus skills[^1] is that you open a door to world filled with amazing cheap lenses. I have shot Canon, Minolta, Olympus, Nikon, Zeiss, Hexanon, Tokina, and several weird Russian Zeiss clones. + +These days I have whittled my collection down to these lenses: + +* Nikon 50mm f/1.4 +* Nikon 28mm f/2.8 +* Nikon 20mm f/4 + +I keep the 50mm on there about 80 percent of the time, with the 28mm for wide scenes, and the 20mm for inside [the bus](https://luxagraf.net/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome). I also have a Fujifilm X70 camera for times when the DSLR is too much. + +## Video + +In addition to the photo gear above, which I also use for video, I have GoPro Hero 12. I mostly use it while driving the bus to make movies like this: *[Notes From the Road](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2023/05/notes-from-the-road)*. + +## Audio + +I like to record ambient sound. I use an Olympus LS-10 recorder, which has the lowest noise floor I can afford (it was $100 on eBay). I use a couple of microphones I made myself and occasionally a wireless Rode mic. + +--- + +And there you have it. I am always looking for ways to get by with less, but after years of getting rid of stuff, I think I have reached something close to ideal. + +[^1]: If you've never shot without autofocus don't try it on a modern lens. Most modern focusing rings are garbage because they're not meant to be used. Some Fujifilm lenses are an exception to that rule, but by and large don't do it. Get an old lens, something under $50, and teach yourself [zone focusing](https://www.ilfordphoto.com/zone-focusing/), learn how to expose, and just practice, practice, practice. Practice relentlessly and eventually you'll get there. + +# About Luxagraf + +url: /about +status: True + +<img src="/media/img/bio.jpg" alt="Scott Gilbertson" class="circle-pic" /> + +*Être fort pour être utile* + +Luxagraf is [written and published](/technology) by Scott Nathan Gilbertson. + +I write about <a href="/jrnl/" title="the travel jrnl">our travels</a>, along with thoughts on <a href="https://luxagraf.net/range">life and how we live it</a>. + +Since 2017, my wife, our 3 children, and I +have lived mostly outdoors, in a 26-ft long [1969 Dodge Travco motorhome](https://luxagraf.net/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome). We call it <em>the big blue bus</em>, or home, for short.<br /> + +<hr /> + +<img src="images/2019/2017-06-16_094935_trinidad-and-around.jpg" id="image-1840" class="picfull" /> + +### Follow Along + +I have two newsletters: + +[***Friends of a Long Year***](https://luxagraf.net/friends/): travel // bird watching // slow life (biweekly)<br> +[***Range***](https://luxagraf.net/range/): tools // craft // spirit (weekly) + +There's also an [RSS feed](https://luxagraf.net/feed.xml) if you prefer. + +<hr /> + +### Particulars + +#### About The Big Blue Bus + +The big blue bus gets its [own about page](https://luxagraf.net/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome), but what a lot of people want to know is, what engine does it have? So I'll save you a click: it's a Chrysler 318 LA. Yes, it's a little slow on hills. + +#### About me. + +I'm a freelance writer. I like writing about life on the road, engines, cooking, birds, and my personal, somewhat eccentric, ideas about life and how to live it. Unfortunately I have thus far not figured out how to pay the bills writing about just those topics. + +To pay the bills I mostly end up writing about technology. Over the years I've written extensively for *Wired* (where I've even been on staff for some years), *Budget Travel*, *Consumer Digest*, *Ars Technica*, *GQ*, *Epicurious*, *Longshot Magazine*, and other magazines, newspapers, and websites. + +I used to have a section in here about editors because I would not be nearly as good a writer if it weren't for the editors I've worked with. To keep things shorter, I'm reducing it to just say thanks to my wife Corrinne, who gets first pass at everything I do (whether she wants it or not), William Brandon, Laura Solomon, Michael Calore, Jeffery Van Camp, Nathan Mattisse, Leander Kahney, Alexis Madrigal, Evan Hansen, Gavin Clarke, Ashley Vance, Jason Kehe, John Gravois. + +And extra special thanks to Maria Streshinsky, Executive Editor at Wired Magazine, and Adam Davies, my one and only formal writing teacher. + +#### About Stuff + +I get emails about stuff. What _____ do you use to ______. A lot of this is my fault, I have written a lot of product reviews for *Wired*. People believe I am a stuff expert. Here's a secret about product reviewers: we hate stuff. There's nothing we love more than sending stuff back to the people who made it. And thankfully everything I've ever tested went either to back to the company that made it or to Wired's end of the year charity auction. Still, because people email me to find out which stuff I actually buy, I wrote a [whole page about the stuff I use](/technology). + +The essential stuff I use every day to create luxagraf include, a mechanical pencil (a Pentel P209, .9mm lead), notebook, [Sony A7RII](https://electronics.sony.com/imaging/interchangeable-lens-cameras/full-frame/p/ilce7rm2-b) camera, andi a Nikon 50mm f/1.4 lens. I use [Darktable](http://www.darktable.org/) to [edit digital images](/essay/craft/darktable-getting-started) and [Vim](http://www.vim.org/) for writing. + +The Luxagraf website is created by hand, with a lot of tools loosely joined. Most of these tools are free software that you too can use and modify as you see fit. Without these amazing tools I wouldn't be able to do this -- many thanks to the people who created and maintain them. + +* [GeoDjango framework](http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/contrib/gis/) -- Behind the scenes this handles a few things, like geographic queries and putting everything on a map. If you have any interest in working with geographic data, this is by far the best tool I've used. +* [Python](https://www.python.org/) -- GeoDjango is written in Python (a full list of modules used is the [README](/readme), which I in turn run on a [Linux server](http://www.debian.org/). [Nginx](http://nginx.org/) serves the HTML files you're looking at here. +* [OpenStreetMap]( http://www.openstreetmap.org/) -- I use OpenStreetMap data for all the maps on this site. OpenStreetMap is like the Wikipedia of maps, except that it isn't wrong half the time. Whenever I feel skeptical about the so-called collective power of people on the internet, I remember OpenStreetMap and feel a little better. + +#### Design Principles + +Être fort pour être utile<br /> + +Beautiful is better than ugly.<br /> +Explicit is better than implicit.<br /> +Simple is better than complex<br /> +Complex is better than complicated<br /> + +Design with failure in mind<br /> +Avoid single points of failure<br /> +Fail gracefully when possible (e.g. broken escalator is still stairs)<br /> + +### Extended about (updated 2022) + +Lordy, you're still here? Okay, well, then you're either past the whole *why should I care who the fuck you are* thing or you're frothing at the mouth with hatred, but for some reason loving that hatred, which is odd. If that's you, here's a simple solution: [stop visiting](/dear-internet-commenter). You’ll feel better, and I won’t miss you because I never knew you existed. Good? Good. Let's get to the interesting things. Why write all this? I dunno, I guess it's the kind of stuff I enjoy reading about other people. I thought I'd return the favor for someone else. + +#### Purpose + +Why make this site? Why write things down at all? I think about this all the time and honestly, I'm not sure. It takes a tremendous amount of time to write, edit photos and think about what we've experienced and then put it up here -- I must get something out of it, I'm just not sure what. I think maybe I do it to find out what I think about things. I rarely know what I'm going to say about anything until I start look at photos and thinking about experiences, organizing them in my head into stories. I could do all that without posting it here I guess though, so I'm back at I don't know... the people I get to interact with? + +Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the web as we know it, once said, "for me the fundamental Web is the Web of people. It’s not the Web of machines talking to each other... [the] machines are talking on behalf of two people." + +Unless you're reading this from the same town I wrote it in, for most of history, up until the mid 20th century, it would have been impossible for you and I to connect in any way. Until the 21st century the best I could have hoped for was to reach you via a magazine, newspaper, etc, or you to reach me the same way, but there would be no way for us to reach each other in return (maybe via a letter to editor?). I suspect in the future this will be true again. But right now we have this moment, with these tools we can reach each other and I think that's pretty wonderful. How could you not want to participate in that? So I do. + +#### What to Write + +For the most part I write about what interests me, but I've noticed over the years that I am drawn to the people I meet, and the parts of a place that don't make sense at first or even repeated glances. The details that feel out of place are usually the interesting things. Why does this bird only come to *this* place? Why are there petroglyphs in this canyon and not this one? Why does this trail cross this ridge? What are those boulders doing up there? Why are there paintings of bunnies in a museum? Why does Wall Drug have 5 cent coffee? What is this island of rock and tree doing in a sea corn? + +Those are the more creative posts, but I aim for at least one post a week so sometimes I just write about whatever we've been doing. I think of those posts as posts for the grandparents and friends, but everyone gets to read them. + +#### How We Explore + +The word *travel* has a lot of baggage, I avoid it. I think of what we do as more like itinerant living. I suppose you could call it nomadic living, but nomadic people typically live within a fixed area and move around in it seasonally. We don't say in a fixed area. We do move seasonally though. + +Because so much of our lives are spent outdoors, we necessarily follow the seasons. To some degree anyway. As I write this we're sitting out an [ice storm in South Carolina](/jrnl/2022/02/ice-storm) so it's not like we avoid winter, but at the same time we head to [the UP in summer](/jrnl/2023/09/copper-harbor), not winter, and Florida or the deserts for winter, not summer. When you spend as much time off-grid as we do you have no climate control. That means you sweat (and shiver), but it also means you pay attention to the weather and try to find places where the weather suits your clothes. + +#### Home, Everywhere + +We've traveled several different ways and eventually settled on what I call the turtle method of travel: slow, and carrying our home with us. This way of living allows us to avoid hotels, AirBnBs, restaurants and other places that exist primarily to extract money from tourists. Not that there's anything wrong with tourists. We're tourists too. I try not to turn up my nose at tourists, but I don't want to spend all my time with fellow tourists and I don't want to participate in the tourist industry when there's real people out there I could be paying instead. + +Having our house parked nearby allows us to spend more time in places we wouldn't otherwise get to see, and in some cases to get closer to the local people. Not only does it keep you out of the tourist traps like hotels, it gives you a place to invite people into. You aren't just invading people's place in the world, you have a way to let them invade yours. It's been my experience that this creates an entirely different dynamic and relationship (not universally for the better, but often enough). + +Having your home with you gives other people a reason to approach you, which gets conversations started and has led up to many, many friendships along the way. + +# Contact Information + +url: /contact +status: True + +I'd love to hear what you think about luxagraf, traveling, life, whatever. You can email me at: <a href="mailto:sng@luxagraf.net">sng@luxagraf.net</a>. + +If you're looking to get in touch regarding something I do at WIRED, preface your email with "For Wired" or something of that nature. + +# Privacy + +url: /privacy +status: True + +The best thing I can say about your privacy in relation to luxagraf.net is that the site is completely self-contained. I load no code from outside services, use nothing to track you that I myself do not control. And since I don't have any desire to track you, I do not. + +That said, be aware that every server on the internet has certain information about you the minute you connect to it. Servers, being what they are, record that you were here and some basic info about you, the operating system you use, the web browser, screen size, geographic location and so on. Again every server on the internet records the same information. That's worth pondering, though there's nothing you or I can really do about it. + +####Tracking +I endeavor to use no cookies, though I think Django may set one if you comment or sign up for the newsletter. + +This site will never show ads. + +If you chose to sign up for the newsletter I do store your email address in my database. I do not share this address with anyone else under any circumstances. + +Part of the reason I wrote my own software to run the mailing list -- which was a huge pain the ass I might add -- was to make sure no one, including me, was tracking what happens after that email is sent. + +The links in my newsletter are just links, I don't track whether you click them. Perhaps you did not know this, but most links in email newsletters go first to whatever hosting service the person is using, where a unique identifier is used to record that you specifically (identifiable by id and email) have clicked that link. Then, and only then, are you redirected to the page you wanted to see. I think that's creepy. That's surveillance. It's become so common and so casual most of us don't even think about it anymore. + +I'm not sure, but I think that the authors of these newsletters do this to try to figure out what you like. + +Don't take this the wrong way, but what you like doesn't influence what I write. I write what *I* like. I don't want or need to spy on *you* to figure out what *I* want to say, I already know what I want to say. If you like it, presumably you stay subscribed. If you don't you unsubscribe and go on your merry way. But the whole track who reads what, which links they click and so on? I don't need to know that. And I can't sleep well at night knowing I'm letting someone else have that information about you (which I would be if I used one of the many services on the web). + +Even if you don't care about your privacy, I do. So I wrote my own software, which does not track you. I have no idea if you even open my newsletter, let alone what you do with it. I treat it as an email I send to you, as if we were friends, nothing more. + +####SSL +You may notice that luxagraf uses SSL through out the site. This is supposedly more secure, though I happen to think it's mostly theatre. There are some edge cases where SSL is genuinely helpful to people, but those are edge cases. For most of us it's pointless complexity. SSL took over the web because Google pushed it as a way to raise the barrier of entry and complexity of the web so that fewer people can create their own place on the web and seek instead a place Google or Facebook or whatever company has created for them. SSL is a tool designed (innocently I believe) to drive people to the corporate web. + +####Hosting Server +I've hosted this site on half a dozen servers, currently it's hosted on [BuyVM](https://buyvm.net) because I wanted to support small businesses on the web. I've been entirely satisfied with BuyVM. + +# An Approximate History of Discursive Meditation + +url: /discursive-meditation-history +status: True + +*This is a fairly deep dive into the history of discursive meditation. If you'd like to skip the history and get started, see the how-to page for complete instructions on the [posture and breathing of discursive meditation](/discursive-meditation-how-to) so you can get started in your own practice.* + +There's a common misconception in the United States these days that meditation is something from another culture, something *exotic*. The exact meaning of "exotic" depends on speaker and listener, but the images conjured usually include dark robes, incense, and possibly some secret knowledge. + +The premise is that meditation is something that arrived here recently, from non-Western cultures who had been doing it for centuries[^1]. This is patently false. And it's sad that we've completely lost our own wonderfully rich tradition of meditation to the point we think we never had it. + +From what I can tell, nearly every culture on earth has something akin to discursive meditation. + +There's a rich history of meditation running throughout western culture. It was once so common it was taught to school children, and clear up until WWI book stores would nearly always have meditation theme books available. These consisted of a quick intro to meditation and then some themes or topics to meditate on. They are the inspiration for this website. + +Much of the rich history of meditation in the west takes place within a religious context, particularly Christian contemplation, which was a very common practice from medieval Europe onward. Given that the word "meditation" comes from Latin it seems safe to assume the history stretches back further than that. The Greeks did it. And there are more than a few Egyptian statues that depict a pose identical to what has been commonly used in discursive meditation more or less throughout its recorded history. Did the Pharoahs practice discursive meditation? Possibly? Probably? + +I think part of the reason discursive meditation has been swept under the rug of history has to do with the religious context, which, as we pass through our culture's dogmatic materialist phase, is something that gets lumped under the heading "false ideas of the past." + +That's too bad because first of all religion is a thing of tremendous value to most people (whatever their religion may be), and because discursive meditation need not be religious if you don't want it to be, particularly it need not be Christian. + +Of course you needn't dive deep into the history of discursive meditation to practice it, but I think it's worth putting another definition of meditation out into the world. Not all meditation tries to empty the mind[^2]. + +The word meditation used to mean something roughly like "thinking deeply." In fact my favorite dictionary, the 1913 Webster's unabridged, almost defines the practice of discursive meditation in its definition of meditation: + +> Meditation \Med`i*ta"tion\, n. [OE. meditacioun, F. +> m['e]ditation, fr. L. meditatio.] + +> 1. The act of meditating; close or continued thought; the +> turning or revolving of a subject in the mind; serious +> contemplation; reflection; musing. + +> 2. Thought; -- without regard to kind. [Obs.] + + +This describes almost precisely what the practice of discursive meditation entails, though in the opposite order. First you have "thoughts without regard to kind" (drawn from a pre-selected theme), then when one of those thoughts grabs you, you start on the "close or contined thought", turning a subject in the mind, reflecting, musing, studying it. + +### Where Did It Go? + +If discursive meditation used to be such a common part of western culture, and a central practice in the spiritual and philosophical lives of all kinds of people until the early part of the 20th century, what happened to it? + +Well, on one hand, it is still around. I first came across it reading writer and Trappist Monk Thomas Merton. It's also a major part of several religions, as well as modern esotericism and occultism. + +That said, those little pamphlets full of discursive meditation topics and courses aren't in every bookstore any more. In my experience they aren't even in the very fringe religious bookstores most of the time. So what did happen? + +According to Druid and occultist John Michael Greer, most [Christian traditions abandoned their discursive meditation](https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/65232.html) "very early [in the] 20th century, when most denominations discarded their remaining methods of personal spiritual practice and embraced notions of spirituality that focused on collective salvation, either by sheer faith and nothing else (the fundamentalist approach) or by charitable works (the social gospel approach)." + +This strikes me as highly likely, since if you aren't interested in personal growth, spiritual or otherwise, there's no reason to practice discursive meditation. And if no one is passing the tradition down to the next generation, it dies. + +I also wonder how much the shift to consumptive entertainment was a factor here. While I can't really line up the history exactly, it strikes me as interesting at least that, as personal spiritual practice, and the notion of personal growth fade out of culture, it just so happens that entertainment explodes. Would we have had one without the other? It's impossible to say, but I would encourage you to meditate on it. + +### Bring Back Discursive Meditation + +I don't know if discursive meditation will catch on again, but I do know you can get all the benefits of it today whether anyone else does it or not. If you're curious, head on over the [discursive meditation instructions page](/discursive-meditation-how-to) and get started today. + +[^1]: Like all good myths this has a kernel of truth -- so-called *mindfulness* meditation did arrive relatively recently, having been purloined from cultures that have been doing it (and other forms of meditation) for centuries. +[^2]: I'm not trying to imply there's one right form of meditation. There's anything wrong with other forms of meditation. That said, I would be cautious taking religious and cultural practices and stripping them of their (potentially very important) cultural and religious context. Kundalini Yoga is a good cautionary tale in what happens to eager westerners who play with things they don't (and can't) fully understand. + +# Discursive Meditation is Simple + +url: /homepage +status: True + +All you need to do is sit down in a chair, legs parallel, knees bent at a right angle, hands on your thighs. Scoot forward a bit so your back is not touching the back of the chair. Remain upright, but not tense. + +Now breathe. + +Breath in for a count of four, hold for a count of four. + +Breath out for a count for four, hold for a count of four. + +Repeat this pattern, four in, hold for four, four out, hold for four. + +Don't force the breath, keep it gentle and find your own timing. There is no right or wrong, just what feels comfortable to you. + +Close your eyes and continue this breath for a couple of minutes. Bring your attention to your breath. Your mind will naturally wander. That's okay, just gently direct it back to your breath. You should gradually feel your body start to relax. You may also notice considerable tension in some places. + +Congratulations, you're meditating. + +Do this every day at the same time of day for the next week and you'll be well on your way to starting a habit. You'll also be ready to move on to the next stage of discursive meditation. + +# Discursive Meditation How To + +url: /discursive-meditation-how +status: True + +## Stage One - Learning to Sit Still + +Discursive meditation requires nothing special, save a chair. Just about any chair will work, I use a chair from the dining room table. I know people who use folding chairs. I have even used a turned over five gallon bucket when I was too lazy to drag a chair outside. + +So get your chair and put it somewhere reasonably quiet where you won't be disturbed for 5-10 minutes. Sit in the chair, but a little bit forward so you back is straight and not touching the back of the chair. Keep yourself sitting up straight, but don't force it. Keep your back straight, without being too rigid. The best word I have heard to describe this pose is poise, that is a kind of equilibrium. I imagine a thread at the base of my spine stretching up in to the heavens, gently keeping my upright. + +Keep your legs parallel, knees bent at 45 degree angles. Rest your hands on your thighs, wherever is comfortable, for me this is a little back from my knees. Now bend your head down at about a 45 degree angle and close your eyes. + +Pay attention to your breathing for a little while. If you're anything like me after about 15 seconds your body will start to pitch a fit. You will itch, strange micro sensations will assail you. You will want to fidget. Resist doing anything. Remain motionless and breath. + +Continue to do this for as long as you can, but no more than five minutes. + +If you can't manage five minutes at first, that's okay, work up to it. + +Do this for one week and then you'll be ready to move on to stage two. + + +## Stage Two - Learning to Breath + +# 1969 Dodge Travco Motorhome + +url: /1969-dodge-travco-motorhome +status: True + +We found this 1969 Dodge Travco Motorhome on Craigslist in June of 2015. We drove up to Asheville North Carolina, gave it a quick, in hindsight rather ignorant, once over, handed the owner some money, and promptly [drove it](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2015/06/big-blue-bus) 200 miles back to our then home in Athens GA. Two years later we hit the road and never looked back. + +<img src="images/2019/2017-06-16_094935_trinidad-and-around.jpg" id="image-1840" class="picwide" /> + +### What's it like to live in a 1969 Dodge Travco Motorhome? + +Lots of people ask some variation of this question -- they want to know what it's like for two adults and three kids to squeeze into 90 square feet for years on end. Some people seem predisposed to think it's all an endless epic adventure. Other people clearly have images of us living in the proverbial van down by the river. + +Neither of those are entirely accurate. If you really want to know what our life is like, [read the site](/jrnl/). Sign up for [the email list](/newsletter/) or [subscribe to the RSS feed](/jrnl/feed.xml) to get notified when I post something. What I try to record here is what our life is like. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-11_171018_garden-gods.jpg" id="image-1433" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-03_153115_trail-of-tears-sp.jpg" id="image-1402" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2017/2017-08-01_152017_canyon-of-the-ancients.jpg" id="image-718" class="picwide" /> + +We love the way we live and wouldn't want to live any other way. But we're not you and this isn't for everyone. It just works for us. + +To answer a few random questions that pop up regularly in conversations with curious people: Yes it's crowded. No we don't mind that. Yes, we are close. No, our kids aren't perfect. Yes, there are days when I wish I lived some other way. Being sick in the bus is awful. + +Most of the time though, we're not in the bus. + +When you live in a small space you invert your spacial relationship with the world. You spend your time outside rather than in, and that was one of the main reasons we did this, to be outside more. To be part of the larger world. I wrote about this at some length for a travel magazine, in piece about [why we live in a vintage RV](/essay/why-a-vintage-rv). + +<img src="images/2018/2018-08-25_181026_pawnee-grassland.jpg" id="image-1668" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2017/2017-10-25_190827_trinity-alps.jpg" id="image-933" class="picwide" /> + +The best part of the way we live is waking up in the morning and stepping outside. I'm outside from the minute I wake up until I go to bed. We cook outside, we work outside, we eat outside, we learn outside, we play outside. Only the weather drives us inside. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-08-08_065835_snake-river-rec.jpg" id="image-1623" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-08-18_173401_badlands.jpg" id="image-1653" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-08-26_190122_pawnee-grassland.jpg" id="image-1673" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2017/2017-05-12_200059_new-orleans.jpg" id="image-454" class="picwide caption" /> + +I think it's worth pointing out that everything is not always sunsets and adventures. We struggle the same as anyone living in a house. Our challenges and struggles are just different. For example, when we owned a house I had to mow the lawn and clean the gutters. Now I have to change the oil and maintain an engine, not nearly as much work as it is to maintain a house, but still something I have to regularly attend to. + +For me, maintaining the Travco is more challenging, and therefore more fun and rewarding, than mowing the lawn. I'm not an engine expert. I can't listen to a knock or ping and figure out what's going on right away. I have to spend more time thinking it through, asking people more knowledgeable than me. But I'm learning, and that's what I enjoy in life, being challenged, learning, solving problems, getting outside my comfort zone so I can expand it. + +Still, the bus is our home and when it breaks down, well, sometimes we camp on a mechanic's driveway. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-21_062821-1_new-orleans.jpg" id="image-1192" class="picwide" /> + +Or I spend hours at the side of the road listening to the radiator boil over or getting covered in power steering fluid, transmission fluid, brake fluid. To live this way you have to be able to let go of the idea that there is anywhere else you need to be, anywhere else you *can* be. More than anything else, a vintage vehicle will teach you patience. Or you will lose your mind and sell it. + +<img src="images/2017/20170928_121417.jpg" id="image-894" class="picwide caption" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-05-29_113845_mousetail-landing.jpg" id="image-1381" class="picwide caption" /> + +### You don't have to be rich. + +The other question everyone asks is *how can you travel all the time*? What am I some kind of rich asshole? Trust fund kid? Thankfully I'm neither. Most of the trust fund kids I've known have been pretty screwed up people. We're not rich, we're comfortably lower-middle class I guess. But as noted rock climber Eric Beck once quipped, "there's a leisure class at both ends of the economic spectrum." + +Which is to say that if you discard the value system of upper middle class America, you can find an amazing amount of time and money that you can use to do more interesting things than buying stuff. Yes, you need some money to live the way we do, but not much really. We live on about $36k a year. That's not much within the spectrum of US earning possibilities. + +I do recognize that the ability to make that kind of money while traveling is not available to everyone. There are more opportunities to do it today than at any point in human history, but that doesn't mean it's possible for everyone. I happen to be a writer and computer programmer, both which can be done from just about anywhere, so that's how I do it. And no, we don't have much in the way of insurance. We have some money set aside to cover the basics, but if something catastrophic happened, we, like many of you I'm sure, would be in trouble. These days I'm not sure that would be any different even if I had an office job. Either way, like I said earlier, living this way is not for everyone. + +For most people the difficult part of living this way is letting go of that value system that says you need to own a house, have amazing health insurance, a nice car, a bunch of stuff, and a huge savings for some perfect future when you can stop working. For me that ideology never really took hold for whatever reason, so I never had to escape it, but I watched others escape it and it did not look easy or fun. + +I've spent a good bit of time trying to figure out why I never cared about that stuff. Maybe I read Thoreau too young. Maybe I listed to too much punk rock. Maybe it was that I took those people at their word, that I accepted their values at face value: that complaining does no good, you do what you need to do, and you do it yourself. You do it yourself so you can do it exactly the way you want, the way that works best for you, not the way someone else thinks you should do it, and in the end it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks so long as you're able to look yourself in the eye at three AM and know that all is well. + +It's hard to write about these things without coming off like a jerk to some people, but I suppose that's okay. You can't please everyone. I'll assume since you've made it this far that you're good with it. + +The problem is a lot of people see other values as a comment on their own. Like I am somehow sneering down at people from the top of the #vanlife heights here. Again maybe this doesn't come off right, but really: I don't care how you live. If you love living in a house, that's awesome. I am glad you have found what makes you happy. If you hate living in a house and want to escape it, well, I guess to some extent I'm here to say it can be done. Maybe. + +### Why live this way? Because the worst part is going home. + +The why part two: I wanted to give my kids something close to the childhood I wish I'd had. + +Which is not to imply I didn't have a good childhood. I've had an incredible life. I have to pinch myself sometimes to make sure this isn't a dream (which now maybe you're thinking oh god, what an asshole. And I know, I know it sounds cliche, but really I have nothing to complain about. My life has been grand. If I die tomorrow, I will miss my family, but I would at least feel like I had lived deliciously well). + +I grew up traveling a lot, something I'm very grateful to have experienced because those were always my favorite moments. Mostly I remember camping and hiking. The mountains, the beaches, the deserts. I remember being outside, the smell of pine needles, the dust in your nose as you step out of the tent to see what was for breakfast. I remember living outside for a week, sometimes two, and then going home. It was always such a drag to go home. + +I wanted my own kids to have that life. I wanted them to live outside, but I didn't want them to have to go home. I wanted to spare them the pain of watching the real world fade in the rear windows as they headed back to suburbia. I wanted to go out into the wilds and never come home. I wanted that to *be* home. + +The Travco was a way to give my kids that. + +### The 1969 Dodge Travco Motorhome + +Really, do you care that much about me? Probably not. + +Let's talk about the bus. It's way cooler than I am. Let's face it, we live this way because of the bus. + +<img src="images/2017/2017-09-22_082038_valley-of-fire.jpg" id="image-839" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2017/2017-06-27_140005_chaco-canyon.jpg" id="image-648" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2017/2017-06-17_122600_trinidad-and-around.jpg" id="image-592" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2017/2017-05-23_125431-1_buscher-state-park.jpg" id="image-530" class="picwide" /> + +They do not make vehicles like this anymore. I never even liked motorhomes until I saw a Dodge Travco. The sweeping curves, the 1960s electric blue, no other vehicle ever made was quite like this. Even the Travco is really only the Travco from 1966 to 1970. I'm not sure how it happened, but somehow this thing got made and a few survived. + +I spend just about two years gutting and refinishing ours. You can can checkout an older post on [how it looked when we got it](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2016/12/1969-dodge-travco) (complete with Velvet Elvis). In the end we had something vintage on the outside and livable on the inside. All the wood paneling inside and vinyl seats coverings are new, but the layout, shape, design and cabinets are original. + +<img src="images/2017/2017-10-23_165008_shasta-forest.jpg" id="image-931" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2017/2017-10-25_122148-1_shasta-forest.jpg" id="image-920" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2019/2017-04-01_163448_raysville.jpg" id="image-2032" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2019/2017-04-01_163510_raysville.jpg" id="image-2033" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2019/2017-04-23_071030_st-george-island.jpg" id="image-2034" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2019/2017-04-23_071407_st-george-island.jpg" id="image-2035" class="picwide" /> + +To say the Big Blue Bus, as our children named it, stands out is an understatement. There is nothing else on the road that even remotely compares. + +Ours is not pristine. I hit a tree stump in northern California and did some damage to the fiberglass on one side. Fortunately it's low enough that you don't notice it unless you're really looking. The paint is faded in places, but it has that nice, vintage patina that things get after 50 years in the sun. We've talked about repainting it, but so far that's not made it to the top of our list. + +As cool as the outside is, the inside is my favorite part. The way the sunlight streams in the windows in the mornings, there's a warmth to the wood and the curve of the window and the pine trees on the other side of the window, it gives you a kind of joy I've never had from any other home I've lived in. We live in a magical blue and white tube basically. I mean, who doesn't want that? + +#### The 318 LA Engine + +I would call the Chrysler 318 the best engine ever made. But then, I'm biased. Still, almost every person who asks, the conversation goes like this: + +*What's that got in it? 440?* + +*Nope, 318.* + +*318?! Damn. That's a great engine. Bet it's slow up hills though...* + +*It is.* + +And it is, but it's a nearly bullet proof engine. I've dragged its 50-year-old self over 16,000 miles across the United States and all the way to 10,000 feet. We did blow a head gasket once, which destroyed a cylinder and required quite a bit of work. Otherwise though we've replaced the things you'd expect to replace driving an older engine around for years. + +One of my favorite parts about the 318 is that you can walk into just about any auto parts shop in the western hemisphere and find nearly every part you're going to need. The only thing I've ever had the hunt down in a wrecking yard was an exhaust manifold. + +### Conclusion + +I'd be lying if I said I loved every day in the bus. I love almost every day though, and as long as the view from the front door looks like this: + +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-03_111150_rutherford-beach.jpg" id="image-1120" class="picwide" /> + +Or this: + +<img src="images/2017/2017-06-27_140005_chaco-canyon.jpg" id="image-648" class="picwide" /> + +And as long as my kids continue to love calling it home, home it will be. + +[^1]: For the record, [this](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uZPXfg8VAxM/TgVMHIlVNKI/AAAAAAAAAok/rvpcY_OCqzA/s1600/caravan%2Bside%2Bdoors.jpg) is the first image I ever saw of Travco. Yes, I remember it. + +# Currently Working On + +url: /now +status: True + +<time class="dt-published published dt-updated post--date" datetime="2024-04-29T09:12:48" itemprop="datePublished">April <span>29, 2024</span></time> + +We are currently in the northwoods of Wisconsin on the shores of Lake Superior. Working on cooking over an open fire, jui jitsu, building out a school bus as a home, and hiking around the woods. + +This page is inspired by Derek Siver’s [now page](http://sivers.org/nowff) idea. + +# Le Blog Roll + +url: /blogroll +status: True + +Remember when everyone had a 'blogroll' and that was how your discovered other cool sites? It's a shame that got lost somewhere along the way. I think it's still an awesome way to discover cool sites and meet new people. + +Maybe it's the nature of today's internet. Time was people wrote about how they looked at life. I liked that time. Now it's all about how your life looks, and I'll be honest, I don't give a shit what your life looks like. Luckily there are still some wonderful people out there recording their journeys and sharing how they see them in creative ways. Here's my reading/watching list: + +--- + +* [Bumfuzzle](http://www.bumfuzzle.com/) -- Discovered this by chance when researching Travcos and it's become my favorite travel blog -- sailing, racing, driving, you name it, they've done it. + +* [Vagabond Journey](http://www.vagabondjourney.com/) -- I first started [following Wade Shepard's site](http://www.vagablogging.net/the-future-of-vagabonding-and-long-term-travel.html) back when I was [editing Rolf Potts' Vagablogging.net](http://www.vagablogging.net/vagablogging-alumni.html). If my math is right, Wade has been traveling continuously for over 15 years now. There is not much about travel that he has not figured out. + +* [Inhab.it](http://inhab.it/) -- I can't remember how I found inhab.it (I think we have a mutual friend maybe?) but I'm glad I did. Click this one too. + +* [PMags](https://pmags.com) -- I believe Paul Magnanti is a kind of thru-hiking folk hero, but I just like hearing about his weekend trips around the southwest. + +* [Erik Normark](https://www.youtube.com/@erik_normark/videos) -- Erik Normark makes the best hiking/outdoor videos I've ever seen. Better than the "professionals" in my opinion. All my videos owe a heavy debt to him. + +* [Sam Holmes Sailing](https://www.youtube.com/@samholmessailing/videos) -- Most of YouTube irritates me, but Sam Holmes somehow manages to be endearing. Probably helps that he's a great sailor. + +* [Holly Martin (WindHippy Sailing](https://www.youtube.com/@WindHippieSailing/videos) -- Like Sam Holmes, Holly Martin is one of those rare people who is able to tell their story in video without being annoying. + +* [Sailorama](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCirYAT7CafNatSyJH3-O4pQ) -- if you like repair and boats, this is a good channel to follow. It's always entertaining. + +* [Beau Miles](https://beaumiles.com) -- Beau Miles makes these gorgeous films about his adventures in [getting to work](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysgH_rkfGSE), [sleeping in trees](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysgH_rkfGSE), and [eating beans](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYsTlfhDSDY). I know that *sounds* boring, but trust me. + +* [Shifter, Dan Milner](http://shifter.media) -- I discovered Dan Milner from Charlene Winfred's site (which is no longer here because she doesn't use it anymore). There's a lot here to love, even if you aren't a photographer. + +* [Alex Soth](https://www.alecsoth.com/photography/) -- If you want to learn more about photography, especially photography of America, Alex Soth is one of the best resources out there. + +* [Early Retirement Extreme](http://earlyretirementextreme.com/) -- Jacob Fisker stopped blogging a while ago, but everything he wrote remains good advice for anyone looking to extract themselves from the consumer mindset. + +* [Expeditionary Art](http://expeditionaryart.com/) -- I love this site and am wildly jealous of the amazing artistic talent on display here. + +* [Low Tech Magazine](https://www.lowtechmagazine.com) -- Kris de Decker's solar powered website on forgotten and overlooked tech. I mean, look at the name, of course I read this. + +* [Ben Falk](https://www.youtube.com/@wholesystems) -- If we ever end up on a piece of property it will because I finally watched too many of Ben Falk's videos and went out and bought my own land. + +* [Slowdown Farmstead](https://www.slowdownfarmstead.com) -- Another farmer whose writing I enjoy. + +# Buying Used + +url: /buying-used +status: True + +I very rarely buy new electronics. I can't recall the last time I bought something new. We almost always buy electronics used, mostly off eBay. We also rarely buy new books. We generally pick up books at used bookstores around the country, but when we can't find what we want we use Thriftbooks. + +Buying used has several advantages over buying new. The obvious one is that it's almost always cheaper. But beyond that there are other appealing aspects. Buying used means you're not contributing as much to the waste stream of modern economies, and you're (potentially) removing things from that waste stream by finding a use for them. Used items, especially electronics, tend to be functionally superior to new ones[^1] both because they are farther back on the curve of [diminishing returns](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/law%20of%20diminishing%20returns) and because they have stood the test of time. There are exceptions of course, but buy and large last year's model is as good, and sometimes better, than this year's model. + +Buying used also enables you to take advantage of little curiosities of time. For example all the really good low-noise sound recording devices seem to have been made between 2007-2016. Why? No idea. But everyone who needs low noise recording seems to agree, and high end recorders from that era sell for more than they did when they were new. Which is to say that buying used isn't always cheaper, but when it's not it generally means you're getting something superior. And not something that the manufacturer thinks is superior, but something the people using it the most think is superior. + +This is why the only affiliate links on luxagraf.net lead to either eBay or Thriftbooks, my two preferred marketplaces for buying used stuff. + +Anyone using affiliate links is trying to sell you something -- that includes me -- and you should always be suspicious about that. I know my motives are simple, to make some money to pay for this website and maybe some tea for myself, but you have every right to skeptical. Really though, I don't want you to buy anything you don't need. But if you do need something, please buy it used. And if you're going to buy something I've recommended based on my experiences with it, then the affiliate links will help support this website. + +[^1]: The odd mixture of capitalism and our culture's worship of "progress" means that new things must constantly be released, but the law of diminishing returns suggests that newer/bigger/better/faster eventually fails to deliver any meaningfully improvement. This is most obvious in software, where the most feared phrase in any software user's heart is "please restart to update", but this lack of improvement over previous versions is increasingly painfully obvious in hardware as well. + +# Code + +url: /code +status: True + +Driving gives you plenty of time to think. Somewhere in that thinking I decided I needed to clarify my basic approach to life. To know what I was doing and why. I hesitate to call these rules because it's not like I know what I'm doing and I modify these all the time as I learn and adapt. Anyway, this is mostly for me, but I mentioned them in a post once and someone asked me to write them down. So here they are. + +###1. Everything is a Practice + +There is no finish line. There's no winning, no losing. Not in human terms anyway. Individual projects may come to an end, but the practices that made them possible do not. Most things worth doing do not have a stopping point. There is no point where you've written enough, you've worked out enough. Everything is a practice. Embrace it. The practice is never done, which means you get to keep improving. [Full essay, *Everything is a Practice*](https://luxagraf.net/essay/everything-is-a-practice) + +###2. Safety Third + +We saw sticker on the sign to the Henry Miller library that said, "Safety Third". This became our antidote to the endless rules of public spaces. It was a good family joke. Whenever we do something other people might frown on, one of us will invariably shout, "safety third!" before plunging ahead. But safetyism is a real problem that we all struggle with. I think you beat the safety game by playing a different one. You play the personal responsibility and risk management game. You go slow, you learn your limits, but then you keep playing. You push your limits. You do things that scare you because they also call to you. You keep expanding and growing. You can read more in the essay [*Safety Third*](https://luxagraf.net/essay/safety-third). + +###3. Do It Yourself + +It's probably cheaper and easier to buy most things, but when I can I'd rather make things myself. What else are you going to do with your life if you aren't making stuff? Watch TV? Stop buying stuff and hiring people for everything. Give yourself a chance to solve the problem first. Contrary to what it says on the label, professionals and experts aren't necessary. They'll do it faster and better than you will, but you'll learn and improve every time you do it yourself. + +###4. Adapt to Your Surroundings + +No matter where you go you will not fit in when you get there. The climate will be different, the people will be different, the food will be different. Don't expect the place to adapt to you and don't get bent out of shape when it doesn't. + +One great way to do this is to simplify your life. Depending on a lot of stuff makes it hard to adapt. My favorite practical example is air conditioning. If you depend on air conditioning you aren't able to adapt to climate changes as well as someone who doesn't. As Jakob Lund Fisker [succinctly puts it](https://earlyretirementextreme.com/manifesto.html) "Comfort is having the sweat glands and metabolic tolerance to deal with heat and cold. It is not central heating or air conditioning which may fail or be unavailable." + +###5. Make Something You Like Everyday + +In the world as it once was I think this need to create was fulfilled by hunting and to some extent farming. With those gone we're left with kind of a void[^1]. I have found that filling that void with creative endeavors is very satisfying. Other people find that studying something in detail fills that void. For me it's making stuff. + +Digital stuff (like this site) is okay, but I prefer to make tangible stuff most of the time. Could be a delicious meal, could be some little thing around the bus, could be a paper airplane for the kids. *What* doesn't matter so much as the practice of making things. See also, rule 1. + +###6. Retain Agency + +Retaining agency means rejecting the passive. In some ways this is what you get when you practice rules 2, 3, and 4. You are the driving force behind your thoughts and actions, do not outsource them to others without carefully considering what you're giving up. + +Agency is not control though, it is not bending the world to your will (see rule 3), it is merely ensuring that one's ideas and tools are one's own[^2]. + +###7. Avoid Waste + +The only thing in short supply on this planet is time, do not waste it. Fuck entertainment, it is a waste of time. You are not on earth to be entertained. + +Similarly, fuck stuff. Make good financial decisions and get by with as little stuff as you can because money takes time to earn, and that is time you will never get back. + +Waste is not natural (read up on ecology if this idea is new to you), avoid it in all things. + + +###8. Prefer the Analog + +I find that the digital world isn't very satisfying. I have a rather outlandish theory about why. I think it lacks the rhythm of the natural world. I believe your body and spirit know the difference between the rhythms of the world they evolved in and the more recent additions. Don't get me wrong, I love the rhythm of a piston-driven engine, but I also think that the truly great engines are the ones that manage to mimic natural rhythms. + +###9. Don't Report Stories, Live Them + +I have no training as a journalist. I studied religion, photography, and literature, but somehow I ended up writing for journalism outlets. I have no real problem with journalists -- the few left who actually do journalism, almost none of whom are published by major publishers -- but I also have no desire to be one. + +The stories I tell are ultimately about me because that is what I know. The idea that you can tell other people's stories seems fundamentally wrong to me. They are not your stories, let other people tell their own stories. + +###10. Novelty Wears Off, Routines Carry You Through + +The novelty of new places, new people, new food, new whatever doesn't last long and ultimately isn't that exciting. It has an addictive nature too. If you always need the new something has gone astray I think. I think the novelty of travel lasts about two years, and then you look around and start thinking, well, now what? + +My experience has been that the answer to *now what* means reaching back to your old life and finding the things that made you happiest there and bringing them on the road with you. Doing your thing becomes your routine that you bring to a new place, and now you have something to offer that place: you. You're no longer just traveling to see the sights, you become, in a small way, for a short time, a part of that place. + +###11. Live Small, Venture Wide + +I stole this line from Pat Schulte of [Bumfuzzle](https://www.bumfuzzle.com/). The basic idea is that I am happiest owning very little and living in small spaces, which makes it easier to move through the world. + + +###12. Try Everything Twice.### {: #twice } + +As the Aussies would say, "have a crack at it." There are two parts here though. The first is a call to experience. Try it. But recognize that some things suck the first time you try them, so you might want to have a second crack at it. + +[^1]: To borrow some ideas from Jacques Ellul et al, humans need goals, they need to put forth some effort in pursuit of those goals and they need to at least occasionally attain them. Ellul, and later Ted Kaczynski, have fun splitting hairs about what should fulfill these needs. I don't see much point in that, but I am going off personal experience here and, again, you might find otherwise. + +[^2]: Matthew Crawford's *[Shop Class as Soul Craft](https://bookshop.org/books/shop-class-as-soulcraft-an-inquiry-into-the-value-of-work/9780143117469)* very much influenced my thinking on this subject. Crawford digs into why people like to repair things and concludes that this need to be capable of repair is part of a desire to escape the feeling of dependence, to reassert their agency over their stuff. He calls the individual who prizes his own agency the Spirited Man. This becomes a kind of archetype of the antidote to passive consumption. Passive consumption displaces agency, argues Crawford. One is no longer master of one's stuff because one does not truly understand how stuff works. "Spiritedness, then," writes Crawford, "may be allied with a spirit of inquiry, through a desire to be master of one’s own stuff. It is the prideful basis of self-reliance." Exactly. + +# Get a Postcard From Us + +url: /cards +status: True + +It's true, we'll send you a postcard. How many? How often? I don't actually know. This is just something I thought sounded fun so one night I built a little form to hold addresses and here we are. If you're interested, write your name and street address in the box below, press send, and wait. And wait. And probably keep waiting, But we'll send you something eventually.* + +[**Update 12/2023**: this has proved more popular than I ever imagined, which makes me very happy, but has put me bit behind. Also, quite a few international requests, which is fine, just make sure you put the full address as your postal service uses it.] + +# Easy35 Film Scanner Reference Images + +url: /easy-35-film-scanner-test +status: True + +Example files related to a review of Valoi's Easy35 film "scanner". You can [read the review](https://www.wired.com/review/valoi-easy35-film-scanning-kit) on Wired. + +Image was shot on Tri-X 400. A stormy early morning in the Outer Banks, NC (that's the moon in the clouds). + +<img src="images/2024/Richards-photo-lab-pro_JiVcleC.jpg" id="image-3940" class="picwide caption" /> + +<img src="images/2024/Easy35-scan-nikon-60mm.jpg" id="image-3941" class="picwide caption" /> + +[Download the RAW file (43MB)](https://luxagraf.net/images/samples/Easy35-scan-nikon-60mm.ARW)/[Download XMP](https://luxagraf.net/images/samples/Easy35-scan-nikon-60mm.ARW.xmp) + +<img src="images/2024/Easy35-scan-sigma-70mm.jpg" id="image-3942" class="picwide caption" /> + +[Download the RAW file (43MB)](https://luxagraf.net/images/samples/Easy35-scan-sigma-70mm.ARW)/[Download XMP](https://luxagraf.net/images/samples/Easy35-scan-sigma-70mm.ARW.xmp) + +Both Easy35 images were shot at the same light temp and brightness, with just about the same settings applied in Darktable. I did have to up the contrast a bit on the image from the Nikon compared to the Sigma (not surprising, the Sigma is a sharper lens), but overall I don't see much difference between the end results. The Sigma just makes the whole process easier and faster, with less work in your RAW editor. + +--- + +# 1989 Jeep Grand Wagoneer + +url: /1989-jeep-grand-wagoneer +status: True + +The Jeep is not a showroom piece. It's a daily driver type of car, not a perfect time capsule from its birth. That's what we wanted, but it's not what everyone wants so know that up front. The wood paneling is long gone, someone repainted it white and didn't do a great job, but I thought/think it looks great, much older than it is since the previous owner put on the "rhino chaser" front end. The original front end and square headlights are in the back of the Jeep as well if you prefer the 1989 look. + +It has a brand-new-to-it transmission that had 50k miles on it. We pulled it from a pick a part, had it rebuilt and installed in late summer of 2023. I put new brakes on the front (disk) in spring of 2023 and changed the oil every 3,000 miles. + +The engine needs a rebuild. I haven't spoke to the mechanic yet to get the details, but definitely a new cam (flat tappet or convert to the rolling), probably a new oil pump. The valves seemed in good shape. New pistons wouldn't hurt. The water pump, power steering pump and alternator are all new within the past two years and could be re-used. Or you could swap something else in. People do diesel conversions, I've heard of people putting in hemis and all sorts of things. + +These are the only photos I have, though I am working on getting some more. + +<img src="images/2023/IMG_20230129_144610_9FvxkJL.jpg" id="image-3877" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/IMG_20230129_153023.jpg" id="image-3878" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/IMG_20230129_153103.jpg" id="image-3879" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-03-12_100452_fort-pickens_xdLg6xT.jpg" id="image-3876" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-02-17_133153_fort-pickens.jpg" id="image-3873" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-02-17_133235_fort-pickens_eLgm85N.jpg" id="image-3874" class="picfull" /> +<img src="images/2023/jeep.jpg" id="image-3871" class="picwide" /> + +She's an incredibly fun car to drive. The best I've ever driven. I love almost everything about it, but it just isn't the right thing for life on the road. + +# Financial Self-Dependence for Travel + +url: /travel-through-financial-self-dependence +status: False + +Once people get over the big blue bus, two questions inevitably follow. + +The first is, *so, what do you do,?* This is the polite American way of saying, *how the hell do you afford to do this?* + +The second thing people ask is what the kids do for school. That requires a much more complex answer. Let's stick to money. Money is simple. Well, compared to education. + +### Set a Goal + +Before you figure out how you can afford to travel you need a goal. What is your goal? Is it to travel somewhere specific? Some specific means of traveling (e.g. RV, boat, AirBnB, etc)?Is it some specific amount of time (e.g. a few months between jobs, during a summer break, etc)? + +It's important to have a concrete goal in mind before you start trying to arrange your life in a way that carries you to that goal. I hate to sound like a life coach, but if you don't have a goal you'll never find your path. Without a clear path you won't go anywhere. + +For example, the first time I went on a long term trip I had general destination in mind (India and Southeast Asia). That allowed me to research to costs of getting to those places, the likely costs of life there, and then I could work backwards to figure out how much I need to save. I had a concrete number in mind ($10k, which I expected to last me 6 months), and I started saving until I had enough and I then I left. When it ran out I came home. I was young enough then that I just crashed on friends couches until I landed a new job, if that's not an option be sure to set aside a fund to re-enter normal life. + +This isn't the only way to do it though. I met several people on that trip who went the opposite direction, they saved up a chunk of money and then figured out where they could make it last the longest. That's another way to do it. + +And finally there is what I do now, which is working on the road. I only recommend this if your goal is to travel indefinitely. And for the record, neither I nor anyone I've ever met traveling left home planning to travel indefinitely. That tends to be something you decide when it comes time to end a long trip. You start thinking, *I want to keep doing this forever*, and that sudden pressure (the thought of going back) tends to lead to the creative thinking you need to develop if you do indeed want to live on the road. + +### Get Rid of Everything + +The first step to affording to travel is to get rid of everything you don't absolutely need. I actually think it would be easier to get rid of literally everything, head out the door and just buy things as you need them, but no one has ever taken this suggestion seriously so the best I can say is: if everything you doesn't fit in two bags, you're going to run into problems. + +Get down to two bags. If you need to add things down the road, that's fine. For example, if you end up traveling with your home, like a van, RV, boat, or whatever, you're going to need tools, you can add those in later. But for the most part get rid of everything. + +This is important literally, as an act, but also as a process. It will teach you things. It will teach you how remote your wants are from your needs. Get rid of your wants along with all the debris those wants have brought into your life. Focus on what you absolutely need. If you want nothing you will not need as much money. Needs turn out to be pretty cheaply met. Find a dumpster and throw your TV in it. That alone will do more to get you on your way to having enough money to travel than anything else on this page. + +Don't worry if this is really hard or insanely time consuming. It's that way for everyone. I've written about this elsewhere, but it is astronomically easier to let stuff into your life than it is to get it out. + +Stuff costs money and takes up space, neither of which you have future traveler. Life on the road is one of necessities (food and shelter) and great views, not endless wants fulfilled and Amazon deliveries. The less you want the better off you will be financially. Yes, you can take this too far, but very few people do so don't worry about that. + +One trap to beware of, having less doesn't mean you have to have the best. I see things on the internet from people who profess to be minimalists because they have only one fork, spoon, and knife, but those utensils are $40. That's not what you're after. Let go of the need to impress if you can, it will save you a ton of money. And none of us out here traveling will be impressed anyway. + +### Become Financially Self-Dependant + +I stole the phrase Financially Self-Dependant from the good people at Wanderer Financial because it captures something key that no other way of putting it does: you're in control. There are myriad ways this can be achieved depending on your skill set, but one thing I can absolutely promise you is that it won't mean having a traditional job. Can you travel with a full time job? Sure. I have several times. It sucks. It doesn't suck because you have set hours, though that's part of it, but mostly it sucks because you are not in direct control of your income. Worse, you only have one source of income. + +Lose your job at home and it's a big deal. + +I hate to tell you this, but the truth is we saved up for a long time before we went traveling so that we would have a good cushion of money should anything go wrong. + +Speaking of which, if you're like me you got no financial education. You're going to need to fix + +# Resume + +url: /work/resume +status: False + +content is in template file cv.html + +# 1969 Yellowstone Trailer + +url: /1969-yellowstone-trailer +status: False + +Travel trailer fans, "glampers" and classic rv lovers, this is the deal you've been waiting for. + +We're selling our vintage 1969 Yellowstone Trailer. It's a one of a kind sure to turn heads in the campground, though it does need a full restoration. + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/yellowstone/1969-yellowstone-01.jpg" alt="For Sale: Vintage 1969 Travel Trailer" class="picwide" /> + +I've done quite a bit of research on the web and I've never seen another Yellowstone in this configuration with the bump up front, which makes it possible for a nice bunk bed on the inside (see pics below) and the rear door. So far as I can tell from using <a href="searchtempest.com">Search Tempest</a>, there has not been another one like this for sale in the U.S. in over a year (probably a lot longer than that actually). + +####The Good + +Seriously, look at that thing. It's amazing. + +It'll sleep six if you put in a folding couch across from the kitchen. + +The frame is solid, the axels are good. I recently towed it 30 miles without a problem though one of the tires has some dryrot and should be replaced (I replaced one already, but I could not get the other one off without an impact wrench. Buy it and plan on towing it to a tire shop post haste). + +Everything on the outside is sealed and there are no leaks that I know of. + +####The Bad + +There's a good bit of water damage in the interior panels, though in the six months I've had it it hasn't leaked so while there is damage, things aren't getting any worse. The exterior is in good shape, but the interior needs some love. + +My plan was to strip it back to the frame, repair things a bit, then redo the insulattion, plumbing and wiring and then put some nice 1/8 wood paneling back on. + +#### The Sale +So why am I selling it? We decided to get a vintage RV instead. + +Our loss is your gain. + +We're pricing it to move quickly because we need the driveway space so it's yours for <strike>$2700</strike>$1600 + +Here's some pictures to get your restoration imagination flowing: + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/yellowstone/1969-yellowstone-01.jpg" alt="For Sale: Vintage 1969 Travel Trailer" class="picwide" /> + +It came off the line Dec 18 1969: + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/yellowstone/1969-yellowstone-02.jpg" alt="For Sale: Vintage 1969 Travel Trailer" class="picwide" /> + +View from just inside the door (the curtains are included :-) ) + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/yellowstone/1969-yellowstone-03.jpg" alt="For Sale: Vintage 1969 Travel Trailer" class="picwide" /> + +The bunk area folds up into those gold l-brackets on the right side of the wall above it: + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/yellowstone/1969-yellowstone-04.jpg" alt="For Sale: Vintage 1969 Travel Trailer" class="picwide" /> + +Some of the water damage around the kitchen window. Note vintage light fixtures and large, single bowl sink: + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/yellowstone/1969-yellowstone-05.jpg" alt="For Sale: Vintage 1969 Travel Trailer" class="picwide" /> +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/yellowstone/1969-yellowstone-05a.jpg" alt="For Sale: Vintage 1969 Travel Trailer" class="picwide" /> + +Light fixture in the corner below the bunk to light the table/bed area + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/yellowstone/1969-yellowstone-06.jpg" alt="For Sale: Vintage 1969 Travel Trailer" class="" /> + +The water tank is under the bed/table area: + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/yellowstone/1969-yellowstone-07.jpg" alt="For Sale: Vintage 1969 Travel Trailer" class="picwide" /> + +Bathroom area includes sink, toilet and shower: + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/yellowstone/1969-yellowstone-08.jpg" alt="For Sale: Vintage 1969 Travel Trailer" class="picwide" /> + +Sink detail: + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/yellowstone/1969-yellowstone-09.jpg" alt="For Sale: Vintage 1969 Travel Trailer" class="" /> + +Shower: + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/yellowstone/1969-yellowstone-10.jpg" alt="For Sale: Vintage 1969 Travel Trailer" class="" /> + +It could just be me, but I love all the little details in this thing, like these old butane lamps. Spent many a night reading by one of these in a 1969 travel queen camper. Anyway, cool details: + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/yellowstone/1969-yellowstone-11.jpg" alt="For Sale: Vintage 1969 Travel Trailer" class="picwide" /> + +Okay, one last exterior shot: + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/yellowstone/1969-yellowstone-12.jpg" alt="For Sale: Vintage 1969 Travel Trailer" class="picwide" /> + +# For Sale: 412 Holman Ave, Athens, GA + +url: /for-sale-412-holman-ave +status: False + +Welcome. Take a tour of your new home. + +412 Holman is 1434 sq ft of bright and cheery Normaltown charm. The house is move in ready with the option to convey washer, dryer and refrigerator. List price: $232,000. + +Shown by appointment only, please contact Scott: <a style="" href="mailto:sng@luxagraf.net">sng@luxagraf.net</a> or call <b>(706) 438-4297</b> + +##There will be an open house Sunday 11-20-2016. + +<div class="image-cluster"> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-20_175109_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-178" class="picwide" /> + +<div class="map" style="overflow:hidden;"> + <div id="gmap_canvas"> + </div> +</div> +<div class="row-right"> + +<img src="images/2016/__2016-03-19_094406_01.jpg" id="image-185" class="cluster pic25" /> +<img src="images/2016/DJI_0013.jpg" id="image-187" class="cluster pic5" /> +</div></div> + + +<ul class="flist"> +<li><span class="outer"><span class="inner"></span></span><h3>Normaltown Style</h3>Nestled in the heart of Normaltown, 412 Holman puts you within easy walking distance of all that the neighborhood has to offer -- coffee shops, bakeries, restaurants, groceries, pubs, pizza, and more. You're also only three blocks from the UGA bus line and four from the city bus.</li> +<li><span class="outer"><span class="inner"></span></span><h3>Chase St School</h3>412 Holman Ave is zoned for Chase St. Elementary school, one of the best in the district, Clarke Middle school, and Clarke Central High School.</li> +<li><span class="outer"><span class="inner"></span></span><h3>Bishop Park</h3>Just two blocks down the street is Bishop Park with everything from a pool to soccer fields to tennis courts to gymnastics classes for kids. There's also a nice track for running and every Saturday it hosts the largest Farmers Market in Athens.</li> +</ul> + +<div class="image-cluster"> +<div> +<img src="images/2016/P1010005.jpg" id="image-184" class="cluster pic5" /> +<img src="images/2016/P1010002.jpg" id="image-183" class="cluster pic5" /> +</div> +</div> + +<div class="fsubhed"> +<h2>Video Tour</h2> +<p>Please enjoy this short video tour of the house. For more details, there are additional images below (click or tap for larger images).</p> +<div class='embed-container' style="clear: both;"><iframe src='https://player.vimeo.com/video/191278657' frameborder='0' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div> +</div> + + +<div class="fsubhed one"> +<h2>Front Living Room</h2> +<p>The front door opens into the front living room, a bright spacious area perfect for relaxing or entertaining. There's wonderful natural light here throughout the day.</p> +</div> + +<div class="image-cluster"> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-19_140326_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-148" class="cluster picwide" /> +<div class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-19_140224_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-147" class="cluster pic5" /> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-19_135944_412-Holman-Ave_ylB8blc.jpg" id="image-146" class="cluster pic5" /> +</div> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-19_135813_412-Holman-Ave_lG1uNIs.jpg" id="image-145" class="picwide" /></div> + +<div class="fsubhed two"> +<h2>Kitchen/Dining Nook</h2> +<p>The kitchen features all electric appliances, ample cabinet space and a central counter area that's perfect for bar stools and conversation.</p> +</div> + +<div class="image-cluster"> +<div class="row-3"> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-19_151027_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-159" class="cluster pic33" /> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-19_151228_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-160" class="cluster pic33" /> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-19_152516_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-162" class="cluster pic33" /> +</div> +<div class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-19_152907_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-164" class="cluster pic5" /> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-19_151909_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-161" class="cluster pic5" /> +</div> +</div> + +<div class="fsubhed three"> +<h2>Back Living Room</h2> +<p>The back living area has large french doors and numerous windows looking out over the deck and back yard. It's a versatile space that can be used as a second sitting room, dining area, playroom , and more. There's also a large closet for additional storage or keeping a media entertainment center out of the way when you aren't using it.</p> +</div> + +<div class="image-cluster"> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-19_160304_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-165" class="cluster picwide" /> +<div class="row-3"> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-19_160625_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-167" class="cluster pic33" /> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-19_161139_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-168" class="cluster pic33" /> + +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-19_160415_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-166" class="cluster pic33" /> +</div> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-19_161326_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-169" class="picwide" /> +</div> + + +<div class="fsubhed four"> +<h2>Bedrooms</h2> +<p>Both bedrooms are large enough to comfortably fit a king size bed (for size reference, the large mattress in the images below is a king) and both have ample closet space. </p> +</div> + +<div class="image-cluster"> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-19_140555_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-150" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-19_140909_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-151" class="picwide" /> +<div class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-19_162723_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-170" class="cluster pic5" /> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-19_162945_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-173" class="cluster pic5" /> +</div> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-19_162841_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-171" class="picwide" /> +</div> + +<div class="fsubhed five"> +<h2>Office/3rd Bedroom</h2> +<p>The office sits on the east side of the house and is nearly as large as the bedrooms. It could in fact easily become a third bedroom with the addition of some closet space.</p> +</div> + +<div class="image-cluster"> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-21_122613_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-180" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-21_122721_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-182" class="picwide" /> +</div> + +<div class="fsubhed six"> +<h2>Laundry/Craft Room</h2> +<p>The laundry room has washer and dryer hooks ups (the current washer and dryer can convey if you'd like them) and still has plenty of space for folding laundry or creating a sewing/craft workspace.</p> +</div> + +<div class="image-cluster"> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-20_163911_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-175" class="picwide" /> +<div class="row-3"> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-20_163832_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-174" class="cluster pic33" /> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-20_163929_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-176" class="cluster pic33" /> +<img src="images/2016/2016-10-20_163942_412-Holman-Ave.jpg" id="image-177" class="cluster pic33" /> +</div> +</div> + +<div class="fsubhed seven"> +<h2>Storage/Other</h2> +<p>There's a basement with 6ft of clearance that offers plenty of storage space (there's also probably enough room to move the washer and dryer down there). Access is via stairway that opens into the central hall across from the kitchen. </p> +<p>There's also a large attic storage space above the office area, as well as three extra closets in the main living area, one between the bedrooms, one in the front living room and a very large one in the back living room.</p> +</div> + +<div class="fsubhed eight"> +<h2>Yard</h2> +<p>Sitting on a fully fenced .26 acre lot, 412 Holman features large front and back yards, with ample shade provided by pine and oak trees. The back deck adds about 240 sq ft of outdoor living space and built in benches around the whole thing make it perfect for entertaining a crowd. It's our favorite place to watch the sunrise.</p> + +<p>There's also a garden on the south (sunny) side of the house that has rough 250 sq ft of developed beds. We've grown everything from heirloom tomatoes to okra using the permaculture gardening method known as <a href="https://richsoil.com/hugelkultur/">hugelkultur</a> (a way to garden without watering, see link for more info). The garden also has two mature blueberry bushes and countless red and golden raspberry canes</p> +</div> + +<div class="image-cluster"> +<div> +<img src="images/2016/DJI_0017.jpg" id="image-177" class="cluster pic5" /> +<img src="images/2016/DJI_0013.jpg" id="image-187" class="cluster pic5" /> +</div> +<div> +<img src="images/2016/sunrise_2015-02-21_070431.jpg" id="image-186" class="cluster pic5" /> +<img src="images/2016/bees-garden_2015-04-01_140147.jpg" id="image-188" class="cluster pic5" /> +</div> +</div> + +# Videos of Lilah and Olivia + +url: /babyvideos +status: False + +<div class="vidwrap"><video controls> + <source src="http://images.luxagraf.net/videos/oliviawalking.mp4" type='video/mp4; codecs="avc1.42E01E, mp4a.40.2"'> + <source src="http://images.luxagraf.net/videos/oliviawalking.webm" type='video/webm; codecs="vp8, vorbis"' /> +</video></div> + +<div class="vidwrap"><video controls> + <source src="http://images.luxagraf.net/videos/lilah1.mp4" type='video/mp4; codecs="avc1.42E01E, mp4a.40.2"'> + <source src="http://images.luxagraf.net/videos/lilah1.webm" type='video/webm; codecs="vp8, vorbis"' /> +</video></div> + +<div class="vidwrap"><video controls> + <source src="http://images.luxagraf.net/videos/oliviaplayinginsand.mp4" type='video/mp4; codecs="avc1.42E01E, mp4a.40.2"'> + <source src="http://images.luxagraf.net/videos/oliviaplayinginsand.webm" type='video/webm; codecs="vp8, vorbis"' /> +</video></div> + +<div class="vidwrap"><video controls> + <source src="http://images.luxagraf.net/videos/lilahtastingsand.mp4" type='video/mp4; codecs="avc1.42E01E, mp4a.40.2"'> + <source src="http://images.luxagraf.net/videos/lilahtastingsand.webm" type='video/webm; codecs="vp8, vorbis"' /> +</video></div> + +# Work Profile + +url: /work/profile +status: False + +Hello. + +This is the website of Scott Gilbertson. I am a freelance writer, editor, and publisher, currently living in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. + +I write about travel, adventure, getting off the beaten path, ecology, and, occasionally, what's like to traveling with family in a 1969 RV. My writing has appeared in magazines like Wired, Budget Travel and Consumer Digest, and I have been a guest on [National Public Radio](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13966270) a few times. + +I also write about technology, primarily Linux, free software, the open web, and related topics for publications like [Wired](http://www.wired.com/reviews/author/scott-gilbertson/) ([more](http://www.wired.com/author/luxagraf/)), [Ars Technica](http://arstechnica.com/), [The Register](http://theregister.co.uk/Author/1785) and elsewhere. + +I maintain an easy to browse list of my most [recent publications](/work/pubs/). + +In the past I worked full time for Wired.com, where I wrote for and later edited/produced [Webmonkey](http://www.webmonkey.com/) among other contributions. I also served as managing editor of Rolf Potts' award-winning travel blog, [Vagablogging.net](http://www.vagablogging.net/) for a couple of years. + +I have a [more traditional resume](/work/resume) available if you'd like to learn more. + +If you'd like me to write or edit something for, please contact me at sng @ luxagraf.net. + +Thank you for visiting luxagraf.net. + +# 1969 Ford F250 + +url: /1969-ford-f250 +status: False + +Classic truck collectors, this is the once in a lifetime deal you've been waiting for. + +I have a 1969 Ford F250 Truck. It's a V8 (obviously) automatic transmission with the 392 engine (I think, it's the middle size from that era) with less than 192,000 miles on it (the odometer has turned over once, currently shows 91,668). And I know this because my father bought this truck in 1969 and it has not been out of my sight since I was born in '74. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but it's pretty close. Single family owner you might say. + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_01.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +It's been meticulously cared for, regularly serviced and recently had the points reset and a new compressor installed so it's purring like a kitten right now. + +I also just put two brand new tires on the back. + +Almost everything in it is original as far as I remember. At some point in the '90s the stock carburator was replaced. I then had that one completely rebuilt in 2011. + +There's very little body rust, but there is some (see pics). Nothing that can't be filed/sanded out and filled with bondo. The power steering gearbox leaks a bit. It can be rebuilt by a handful of places in the U.S., the closest of which is in Michigan. I've never bothered. I just dump one, maybe two bottle of power steering fluid in it a month and live with it. If you'd like to fix it the fine folks at Whelchel Alignment & Brakes here in Athens are familiar with the problem and the solution, you can take it down to them, they do great work. + +It has dual tanks for a total of 45 gallons (it gets about 9-16 mpg, depending on the circumstances) but the auxillary tank isn't working at the moment. Pretty sure you just need to replace the switch and it'll be fine. + +This thing is one of kind and it's in phenomenal shape for its age. I've been driving it for 25 years now and it's never left me stranded anywhere, ever. My family is too big for it though so it's time to say goodbye. + +Here's a few images: + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_01.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_02.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_03.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_04.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_05.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_06.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_07.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_08.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_09.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_10.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_11.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_12.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_13.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_14.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_15.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_16.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_17.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_18.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_19.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_20.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_21.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_22.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_23.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +<img src="https://images.luxagraf.net/truck/1969-ford_24.jpg" alt="For Sale: 1969 Ford F250" class="picwide" /> + +# Exposure + +url: /exposure +status: False + +<table> +<tbody> + <tr> + <td> + Exposure Value + </td> + <td> + Lighting + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + -6 + </td> + <td> + Night, away from city lights, subject under starlight only. + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + -5 + </td> + <td> + Night, away from city lights, subject under crescent moon. + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + -4 + </td> + <td> + Night, away from city lights, subject under half moon. Meteors (during showers, with time exposure). + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + -3 + </td> + <td> + Night, away from city lights, subject under full moon. + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + -2 + </td> + <td> + Night, away from city lights, snowscape under full moon. + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + -1 + </td> + <td> + Subjects lit by dim ambient artificial light. + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + 0 + </td> + <td> + Subjects lit by dim ambient artificial light. + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + 1 + </td> + <td> + Distant view of lighted skyline. + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + 2 + </td> + <td> + Lightning (with time exposure). Total eclipse of moon. + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + 3 + </td> + <td> + Fireworks (with time exposure). + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + 4 + </td> + <td> + Candle lit close-ups. Christmas lights, floodlit buildings, fountains, and monuments. Subjects under bright street lamps. + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + 5 + </td> + <td> + Night home interiors, average light. School or church auditoriums. Subjects lit by campfires or bonfires. + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + 6 + </td> + <td> + Brightly lit home interiors at night. Fairs, amusement parks. + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + 7 + </td> + <td> + Bottom of rainforest canopy. Brightly lighted nighttime streets. Indoor sports. Stage shows, circuses. + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + 8 + </td> + <td> + Las Vegas or Times Square at night. Store windows. Campfires, bonfires, burning buildings. Ice shows, football, baseball etc. at night. Interiors with bright florescent lights. + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + 9 + </td> + <td> + Landscapes, city skylines 10 minutes after sunset. Neon lights, spotlighted subjects. + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + 10 + </td> + <td> + Landscapes and skylines immediately after sunset. Crescent moon (long lens). + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + 11 + </td> + <td> + Sunsets. Subjects in deep shade. + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + 12 + </td> + <td> + Half moon (long lens). Subject in open shade or heavy overcast. + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + 13 + </td> + <td> + Gibbous moon (long lens). Subjects in cloudy-bright light (no shadows). + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + 14 + </td> + <td> + Full moon (long lens). Subjects in weak, hazy sun. + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + 15 + </td> + <td> + Subjects in bright or hazy sun (Sunny f/16 rule). + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + 16 + </td> + <td> + Subjects in bright daylight on sand or snow. + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + 17 + </td> + <td> + Rarely encountered in nature. Some man made lighting. + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + etc + </td> + <td> + Goes up to 23 but you'll hardly ever encounter that in the real world. + </td> +</tr> +</tbody></table> + +<table> +<tbody> +<tr> + <td> + + </td> + <td> + + </td> + <td> + + </td> + <td> + + </td> + <td> + FILM SPEED (ISO/ASA NUMBER) + </td> + <td> + + </td> + <td> + + </td> + <td> + + </td> + <td> + + </td> + <td> + + </td> + <td> + APERTURE OF LENS (f/STOP) + </td> + <td> + + </td> + <td> + + </td> + <td> + + </td> + <td> + + </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> + + </td> + <td> + ISO 25 + </td> + <td> + ISO 50 + </td> + <td> + ISO 100 + </td> + <td> + ISO 200 + </td> + <td> + ISO 400 + </td> + <td> + ISO 800 + </td> + <td> + ISO 1600 + </td> + <td> + ISO 3200 + </td> + <td> + + </td> + <td> + f/1.4 + </td> + <td> + f/2.0 + </td> + <td> + f/2.8 + </td> + <td> + f/4 + </td> + <td> + f/5.6 + </td> + <td> + f/8 + </td> + <td> + f/11 + </td> + <td> + f/16 + </td> + <td> + f/22 + </td> + <td> + f/32 + </td> + <td> + + </td> 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+1/60000 sec </td> +<td> + +1/30000 sec </td> +<td> + +1/15000sec </td> +<td> + +1/8000 sec </td> +<td> + +1/4000 sec </td> +<td> + +1/2000 sec </td> +<td> + </td> +</tr> +</tbody></table> + +# Long Live Castagraf Magazine + +url: /castagraf +status: True + +Castagraf was an online poetry magazine published by me, Scott Gilbertson, and Laura Solomon, who was its editor and all around brilliant leader. I just wrote the code. + +Castagraf put out six issues (maybe seven?) between roughly 2000-2002. At some point between then and 2009 I forgot to renew the domain name and some domain squatter swiped it. I managed to get .net back and continued to host the old issues there for a while longer. + +Unfortunately Castagraf was published using Flash, which no longer works in any web browser. + +Castagraf took shape back in the days when CSS was just getting off the ground. Web browser support for CSS was hit or miss. I was a perfectionist about layout and typography so I used Flash for pixel-perfect results. It's easy to see how that was a bad decision now, but at the time it made sense. + +Castagraf magazine, like Flash itself, is lost to time at this point. Still it deserves some placeholder for its existence. Life moves on, this page is all that remains. + +Laura Solomon is now co-executive director of Wisconsin's [Woodland Pattern](https://www.woodlandpattern.org/). I currently (2020) write for Wired Magazine and my own website, the one you're on right now. + +# map-better + +url: /map-better +status: False + +<div><div id="mapper"><div></div></div></div> +<style> +#mapper { + width: 100%; + height: 1000px; + margin: 0 auto; +} +</style> +<script src="/media/js/leaflet-master/leaflet-mod.js"></script> +<script src="/media/js/detail.min.js"></script> +<script type="text/javascript"> +window.onload = function() { + var article = document.getElementById("mapper"); + var parentDiv = article.parentNode; + + //create three nested divs map, which contains detail-map-canvas which contains detail-map-inner-canvas + var map = document.createElement("div"); + map.className += "map"; + var detail_map_canvas = document.createElement("div"); + detail_map_canvas.id = "detail-map-canvas"; + var detail_map_inner_canvas = document.createElement("div"); + detail_map_canvas.style.height = "1000px"; + detail_map_inner_canvas.id = "detail-map-inner-canvas"; + detail_map_inner_canvas.style.width = "100%"; + detail_map_inner_canvas.style.height = "100%"; + detail_map_inner_canvas.style.border = "none !important"; + detail_map_canvas.appendChild(detail_map_inner_canvas); + map.appendChild(detail_map_canvas); + + //load all that into the dom + article.parentNode.insertBefore(map, article); + var map = document.getElementById("detail-map-canvas"); + var centerCoord = new L.LatLng(36.973295,-99.667969); + var zoom = 8; + var themap = L.map('detail-map-inner-canvas', { scrollWheelZoom: "onFocus" }).setView(centerCoord, zoom); + L.tileLayer.provider('Esri.WorldTopoMap', {maxZoom: 18,attribution: 'Map data © <a href="http://openstreetmap.org">OpenStreetMap</a>'}).addTo(themap); + +} +</script> + diff --git a/pages/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome.txt b/pages/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 4ebae98..0000000 --- a/pages/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,130 +0,0 @@ -We found this 1969 Dodge Travco Motorhome on Craigslist in June of 2015. We drove up to Asheville North Carolina, gave it a quick, in hindsight rather ignorant, once over, handed the owner some money, and promptly [drove it](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2015/06/big-blue-bus) 200 miles back to our then home in Athens GA. Two years later we hit the road and never looked back. - -<img src="images/2019/2017-06-16_094935_trinidad-and-around.jpg" id="image-1840" class="picwide" /> - -### What's it like to live in a 1969 Dodge Travco Motorhome? - -Lots of people ask some variation of this question -- they want to know what it's like for two adults and three kids to squeeze into 90 square feet for years on end. Some people seem predisposed to think it's all an endless epic adventure. Other people clearly have images of us living in the proverbial van down by the river. - -Neither of those are entirely accurate. If you really want to know what our life is like, [read the site](/jrnl/). Sign up for [the email list](/newsletter/) or [subscribe to the RSS feed](/jrnl/feed.xml) to get notified when I post something. What I try to record here is what our life is like. - -<img src="images/2018/2018-06-11_171018_garden-gods.jpg" id="image-1433" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2018/2018-06-03_153115_trail-of-tears-sp.jpg" id="image-1402" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2017/2017-08-01_152017_canyon-of-the-ancients.jpg" id="image-718" class="picwide" /> - -We love the way we live and wouldn't want to live any other way. But we're not you and this isn't for everyone. It just works for us. - -To answer a few random questions that pop up regularly in conversations curious people: Yes it's crowded. No we don't mind that. Yes, we are close. No, our kids aren't perfect. Yes, there are days when I wish I lived some other way. Being sick in the bus is awful. - -Most of the time though, we're not in the bus. - -When you live in a small space you invert your spacial relationship with the world. You spend your time outside rather than in, and that was one of the main reasons we did this, to be outside more. To be part of the larger world. I wrote about this at some length for a travel magazine, in piece about [why we live in a vintage RV](/essay/why-a-vintage-rv). - -<img src="images/2018/2018-08-25_181026_pawnee-grassland.jpg" id="image-1668" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2017/2017-10-25_190827_trinity-alps.jpg" id="image-933" class="picwide" /> - -The best part of the way we live is waking up in the morning and stepping outside. I'm outside from the minute I wake up until I go to bed. We cook outside, we work outside, we eat outside, we learn outside, we play outside. Only the weather drives us inside. - -<img src="images/2018/2018-08-08_065835_snake-river-rec.jpg" id="image-1623" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2018/2018-08-18_173401_badlands.jpg" id="image-1653" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2018/2018-08-26_190122_pawnee-grassland.jpg" id="image-1673" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2017/2017-05-12_200059_new-orleans.jpg" id="image-454" class="picwide caption" /> - -I think it's worth pointing out that everything is not always sunsets and adventures. We struggle the same as anyone living in a house. Our challenges and struggles are just different. For example, when we owned a house I had to mow the lawn and clean the gutters. Now I have to change the oil and maintain an engine instead. In the end, it's <span class="strike">probably about the same amount of work in either case</span>. Just kidding, it's way more work to maintain a house. I had forgotten. So yeah, we have challenges, but not nearly as much maintenance as a house. - -Besides, for me, maintaining the Travco is more challenging, and therefore more fun and rewarding than mowing the lawn. Again. I'm still not an engine expert. I can't listen to a knock or ping and figure out what's going on right away. I have to spend more time thinking it through, asking people more knowledgeable than me. And I end up turning to mechanics more than I'd like. But I'm learning, and that's what I enjoy in life, being challenged, solving problems, getting outside my comfort zone so I can expand it. - -Still, the bus is our home and when it breaks down, well, sometimes we camp on a mechanic's driveway. - -<img src="images/2018/2018-02-21_062821-1_new-orleans.jpg" id="image-1192" class="picwide" /> - -Or I spend hours at the side of the road listening to the radiator boil over or getting covered in power steering fluid, transmission fluid, brake fluid. To live this way you have to be able to let go of the idea that there is anywhere else you need to be, anywhere else you *can* be. More than anything else, a vintage vehicle will teach you patience. Or you will lose your mind and sell it. - -<img src="images/2017/20170928_121417.jpg" id="image-894" class="picwide caption" /> -<img src="images/2018/2018-05-29_113845_mousetail-landing.jpg" id="image-1381" class="picwide caption" /> - -### You don't have to be rich. - -The other question everyone asks is *how can you travel all the time*? What am I some kind of rich asshole? Trust fund kid? Thankfully I'm neither. Most of the trust fund kids I've known have been pretty screwed up people. We're not rich, we're comfortably lower-middle class I guess. But as noted rock climber Eric Beck once quipped, "there's a leisure class at both ends of the economic spectrum." - -Which is to say that if you discard the value system of upper middle class America, you can find an amazing amount of time and money that you can use to do more interesting things than buying stuff. Yes, you need some money to live the way we do, but not much really. We live on about $36k a year. That's not much within the spectrum of US earning possibilities. - -I do recognize that the ability to make that kind of money while traveling is not available to everyone. There are more opportunities to do it today than at any point in human history, but that doesn't mean it's possible for everyone. I happen to be a writer and computer programmer, both which can be done from just about anywhere, so that's how I do it. And no, we don't have much in the way of insurance. We have some money set aside to cover the basics, but if something catastrophic happened, we, like many of you I'm sure, would be in trouble. These days I'm not sure that would be any different even if I had an office job. Either way, like I said earlier, living this way is not for everyone. - -For most people the difficult part of living this way is letting go of that value system that says you need to own a house, have amazing health insurance, a nice car, a bunch of stuff, and a huge savings for some perfect future when you can stop working. For me that ideology never really took hold for whatever reason, so I never had to escape it, but I watched others escape it and it did not look easy or fun. - -I've spent a good bit of time trying to figure out why I never cared about that stuff. Maybe I read Thoreau too young. Maybe I listed to too much punk rock. Maybe it was that I took those people at their word, that I accepted their values at face value: that complaining does no good, you do what you need to do, and you do it yourself. You do it yourself so you can do it exactly the way you want, the way that works best for you, not the way someone else thinks you should do it, and in the end it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks so long as you're able to look yourself in the eye at three AM and know that all is well. - -It's hard to write about these things without coming off like a jerk to some people, but I suppose that's okay. You can't please everyone. I'll assume since you've made it this far that you're good with it. - -The problem is a lot of people see other values as a comment on their own. Like I am somehow sneering down at people from the top of the #vanlife heights here. Again maybe this doesn't come off right, but really: I don't care how you live. If you love living in a house, that's awesome. I am glad you have found what makes you happy. If you hate living in a house and want to escape it, well, I guess to some extent I'm here to say it can be done. Maybe. - -### Why live this way? Because the worst part is going home. - -The why part two: I wanted to give my kids something close to the childhood I wish I'd had. - -Which is not to imply I didn't have a good childhood. I've had an incredible life. I have to pinch myself sometimes to make sure this isn't a dream (which now maybe you're thinking oh god, what an asshole. And I know, I know it sounds cliche, but really I have nothing to complain about. My life has been grand. If I die tomorrow, I will miss my family, but I would at least feel like I had lived deliciously well). - -I grew up traveling a lot, something I'm very grateful to have experienced because those were always my favorite moments. Mostly I remember camping and hiking. The mountains, the beaches, the deserts. I remember being outside, the smell of pine needles, the dust in your nose as you step out of the tent to see what was for breakfast. I remember living outside for a week, sometimes two, and then going home. It was always such a drag to go home. - -I wanted my own kids to have that life. I wanted them to live outside, but I didn't want them to have to go home. I wanted to spare them the pain of watching the real world fade in the rear windows as they headed back to suburbia. I wanted to go out into the wilds and never come home. I wanted that to *be* home. - -The Travco was a way to give my kids that. - -### The 1969 Dodge Travco Motorhome - -Really, do you care that much about me? Probably not. - -Let's talk about the bus. It's way cooler than I am. Let's face it, we live this way because of the bus. - -<img src="images/2017/2017-09-22_082038_valley-of-fire.jpg" id="image-839" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2017/2017-06-27_140005_chaco-canyon.jpg" id="image-648" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2017/2017-06-17_122600_trinidad-and-around.jpg" id="image-592" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2017/2017-05-23_125431-1_buscher-state-park.jpg" id="image-530" class="picwide" /> - -They do not make vehicles like this anymore. I never even liked motorhomes until I saw a Dodge Travco. The sweeping curves, the 1960s electric blue, no other vehicle ever made was quite like this. Even the Travco is really only the Travco from 1966 to 1970. I'm not sure how it happened, but somehow this thing got made and a few survived. - -I spend just about two years gutting and refinishing ours. You can can checkout an older post on [how it looked when we got it](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2016/12/1969-dodge-travco) (complete with Velvet Elvis). In the end we had something vintage on the outside and livable on the inside. All the wood paneling inside and vinyl seats coverings are new, but the layout, shape, design and cabinets are original. - -<img src="images/2017/2017-10-23_165008_shasta-forest.jpg" id="image-931" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2017/2017-10-25_122148-1_shasta-forest.jpg" id="image-920" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2019/2017-04-01_163448_raysville.jpg" id="image-2032" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2019/2017-04-01_163510_raysville.jpg" id="image-2033" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2019/2017-04-23_071030_st-george-island.jpg" id="image-2034" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2019/2017-04-23_071407_st-george-island.jpg" id="image-2035" class="picwide" /> - -To say the Big Blue Bus, as our children named it, stands out is an understatement. There is nothing else on the road that even remotely compares. - -Ours is not pristine. I hit a tree stump in northern California and did some damage to the fiberglass on one side. Fortunately it's low enough that you don't notice it unless you're really looking. The paint is faded in places, but it has that nice, vintage patina that things get after 50 years in the sun. We've talked about repainting it, but so far that's not made it to the top of our list. - -As cool as the outside is, the inside is my favorite part. The way the sunlight streams in the windows in the mornings, there's a warmth to the wood and the curve of the window and the pine trees on the other side of the window, it gives you a kind of joy I've never had from any other home I've lived in. We live in a magical blue and white tube basically. I mean, who doesn't want that? - -#### The 318 LA Engine - -I would call the Chrysler 318 the best engine ever made. But then, I'm biased. Still, almost every person who asks, the conversation goes like this: - -*What's that got in it? 440?* - -*Nope, 318.* - -*318?! Damn. That's a great engine. Bet it's slow up hills though...* - -*It is.* - -And it is, but it's a nearly bullet proof engine. I've dragged its 50-year-old self over 16,000 miles across the United States and all the way to 10,000 feet. We did blow a head gasket once, which destroyed a cylinder and required quite a bit of work. Otherwise though we've replaced the things you'd expect to replace driving an older engine around for years. - -One of my favorite parts about the 318 is that you can walk into just about any auto parts shop in the western hemisphere and find nearly every part you're going to need. The only thing I've ever had the hunt down in a wrecking yard was an exhaust manifold. - -### Conclusion - -I'd be lying if I said I loved every day in the bus. I love almost every day though, and as long as the view from the front door looks like this: - -<img src="images/2018/2018-02-03_111150_rutherford-beach.jpg" id="image-1120" class="picwide" /> - -Or this: - -<img src="images/2017/2017-06-27_140005_chaco-canyon.jpg" id="image-648" class="picwide" /> - -And as long as my kids continue to love calling it home, home it will be. - -[^1]: For the record, [this](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uZPXfg8VAxM/TgVMHIlVNKI/AAAAAAAAAok/rvpcY_OCqzA/s1600/caravan%2Bside%2Bdoors.jpg) is the first image I ever saw of Travco. Yes, I remember it. diff --git a/pages/about.txt b/pages/about.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 91265cd..0000000 --- a/pages/about.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,85 +0,0 @@ -<img src="/media/img/bio.jpg" alt="Scott Gilbertson" class="circle-pic" /> - -Luxagraf is [written and published](/technology) by Scott Nathan Gilbertson. - -I am a <a href="/jrnl/" title="the travel jrnl">writer</a>, <a href="/jrnl/" title="the travel jrnl">photographer</a>, <a href="dialogues/">birder</a>, and would-be mechanic. <br /> - -For the past five years my wife, our 3 children, and I -have lived mostly outdoors, in a 26-ft long [1969 Dodge Travco motorhome](https://luxagraf.net/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome). We call it <em>the big blue bus</em>, or home, for short.<br /> - -<hr /> - -<img src="images/2019/2017-06-16_094935_trinidad-and-around.jpg" id="image-1840" class="picfull" /> -If you'd like to follow along, sign up for the newsletter [*Friends of a Long Year*](https://luxagraf.net/friends/) (explained [here](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2020/11/invitation)). There's also an [RSS feed](https://luxagraf.net/feed.xml) if you prefer. - -<hr /> - -### Particulars - -#### About The Big Blue Bus - -The big blue bus gets its [own about page](https://luxagraf.net/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome), but what a lot of people want to know is, what engine does it have? So I'll save you a click: it's a Chrysler 318 LA. Yes, it's a little slow on hills. - -#### About me. - -I'm a freelance writer. I like writing about life on the road, engines, cooking, birds, and my personal, somewhat eccentric, ideas about life and how to live it. Unfortunately I have thus far not figured out how to pay the bills writing about just those topics. - -To pay the bills I mostly end up writing about technology. Over the years I've written extensively for *Wired* (where I've even been on staff for some years), *Budget Travel*, *Consumer Digest*, *Ars Technica*, *GQ*, *Epicurious*, *Longshot Magazine*, and other magazines, newspapers, and websites. - -I used to have a section in here about editors because I would not be nearly as good a writer if it weren't for the editors I've worked with. To keep things shorter, I'm reducing it to just say thanks to my wife Corrinne, who gets first pass at everything I do (whether she wants it or not), William Brandon, Laura Solomon, Michael Calore, Jeffery Van Camp, Nathan Mattisse, Leander Kahney, Alexis Madrigal, Evan Hansen, Gavin Clarke, Ashley Vance, and Paul Kunert. - -And extra special thanks to Maria Streshinsky, Executive Editor at Wired Magazine, and Adam Davies, my one and only formal writing teacher. - -If you're thinking there's no way freelance writing pays the bills, you're right. My wife also works. She's a reading specialist, teaching structured word inquiry to children age 6-15. You can visit her website, [Cumulus Learning]() for more details. - -#### About Stuff - -I get emails about stuff. What _____ do you use to ______. A lot of this is my fault, I have written a lot of product reviews for *Wired*. People believe I am a stuff expert. Here's a secret about product reviewers: we hate stuff. Stuff gets in our way and there's nothing we love more than we get to send the stuff back to the people who made it. And thankfully everything I've ever tested went either to back to the company that made it or to Wired's end of the year charity auction. Still, because people email me about what stuff I actually buy, I wrote a [whole page about the stuff I use](/technology). The essential stuff I use every day is: - -##### Photography -* **[Sony A7RII](https://electronics.sony.com/imaging/interchangeable-lens-cameras/full-frame/p/ilce7rm2-b)** - It takes pictures. -* **[Minolta 50mm f/2](https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=minolta+50+2+md+-1.2+-mc+-1.7+-58mm&_sacat=0)** - A 40-year-old lens you can buy for $25. Over half of the photos on this site were taken with this lens. For $25, and another $20 for an adapter to fit the Sony, you have a spectacular setup. No autofocus, but you don't need autofocus. -* **[Darktable](http://www.darktable.org/)** - My favorite app for developing digital images. The initial learning curve is steep, but hang in there it's worth it. It's so much more powerful than Adobe Lightroom. - -##### Writing -* **Pen and paper** - The nice thing about writing is it requires almost no gear, all you need is a pen and paper. I go for ball point pens because they're waterproof (relatively), usually a cheapo Bic of the sort you find for free in hotel rooms. I write in notebooks of all shapes and sizes and have no real preference. Except no spirals. I hate spiral binding. -* **[Vim](http://www.vim.org/)** - This is the text editor I used to type things up, including these words right now. It's very powerful, but it does take some practice before that power becomes apparent. - -##### Publishing -Luxagraf is created by hand, with a lot of tools loosely joined. Most of these tools are free software that you too can use and modify as you see fit. Without these amazing tools I wouldn't be able to do this -- many thanks to the people who created and maintain them. - -* [GeoDjango framework](http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/contrib/gis/) -- Behind the scenes this handles a few things, like geographic queries and putting everything on a map. If you have any interest in working with geographic data, this is by far the best tool I've used. -* [Python](https://www.python.org/) -- GeoDjango is written in Python (a full list of modules used is the [README](/readme), which I in turn run on a [Linux server](http://www.debian.org/). [Nginx](http://nginx.org/) serves the HTML files you're looking at here. -* [OpenStreetMap]( http://www.openstreetmap.org/) -- I use OpenStreetMap data for all the maps on this site. OpenStreetMap is like the Wikipedia of maps, except that it isn't wrong half the time. Whenever I feel skeptical about the so-called collective power of people on the internet, I remember OpenStreetMap and feel a little better. - -### Extended about (updated 2022) - -Lordy, you're still here? Okay, well, then you're either past the whole *why should I care who the fuck you are* thing or you're frothing at the mouth with hatred, but for some reason loving that hatred, which is odd. If that's you, here's a simple solution: [stop visiting](/dear-internet-commenter). You’ll feel better, and I won’t miss you because I never knew you existed. Good? Good. Let's get to the interesting things. Why write all this? I dunno, I guess it's the kind of stuff I enjoy reading about other people. I thought I'd return the favor for someone else. - -#### Purpose - -Why make this site? Why write things down at all? I think about this all the time and honestly, I'm not sure. It takes a tremendous amount of time to write, edit photos and think about what we've experienced and then put it up here -- I must get something out of it, I'm just not sure what. I think maybe I do it to find out what I think about things. I rarely know what I'm going to say about anything until I start look at photos and thinking about experiences, organizing them in my head into stories. I could do all that without posting it here I guess though, so I'm back at I don't know... the people I get to interact with? - -Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the web as we know it, once said, "for me the fundamental Web is the Web of people. It’s not the Web of machines talking to each other... [the] machines are talking on behalf of two people." - -Unless you're reading this from the same town I wrote it in, for most of history, up until the mid 20th century, it would have been impossible for you and I to connect in any way. Until the 21st century the best I could have hoped for was to reach you via a magazine, newspaper, etc, or you to reach me the same way, but there would be no way for us to reach each other in return (maybe via a letter to editor?). I suspect in the future this will be true again. But right now we have this moment, with these tools we can reach each other and I think that's pretty wonderful. How could you not want to participate in that? So I do. - -#### What to Write - -For the most part I write about what interests me, but I've noticed over the years that I am drawn to the people I meet, and the parts of a place that don't make sense at first or even repeated glances. The details that feel out of place are usually the interesting things. Why does this bird only come to *this* place? Why are there petroglyphs in this canyon and not this one? Why does this trail cross this ridge? What are those boulders doing up there? Why are there paintings of bunnies in a museum? Why does Wall Drug have 5 cent coffee? What is this island of rock and tree doing in a sea corn? - -Those are the more creative posts, but I aim for at least one post a week so sometimes I just write about whatever we've been doing. I think of those posts as posts for the grandparents and friends, but everyone gets to read them. - -#### How We Explore - -The word *travel* has a lot of baggage, I avoid it. I think of what we do as more like itinerant living. I suppose you could call it nomadic living, but nomadic people typically live within a fixed area and move around in it seasonally. We don't say in a fixed area. We do move seasonally though. - -Because so much of our lives are spent outdoors, we necessarily follow the seasons. To some degree anyway. As I write this we're sitting out an ice storm in South Carolina so it's not like we avoid winter, but at the same time we head of the UP in summer, not winter, and we're looking at the coast of Mexico for the winter, not the summer. When you spend as much time off-grid as we do you have no climate control. That means you sweat (and shiver), but it also means you pay attention to the weather and try to find places where the weather suits your clothes. - -#### Home, Everywhere - -We've travels several different ways and eventually settle on what I call the turtle method of travel: slow, and carrying our home with us. This way of living allows us to avoid hotels, AirBnBs, restaurants and other places that exist primarily to extract money from tourists. Not that there's anything wrong with tourists. We're tourists too. I try not to turn up my nose at tourists, but I don't want to spend all my time with fellow tourists and I don't want to participate in the tourist industry when there's real people out there I could be paying instead. - -Having your house parked nearby allows us to spend more time in places we wouldn't otherwise get to see, and in some cases to get closer to the local people. Not only does it keep you out of the tourist traps like hotels, it gives you a place to invite people into. You aren't just invading people's place in the world, you have a way to let them invade yours. It's been my experience that this creates an entirely different dynamic and relationship (not universally for the better, but often enough). - -Having your home with you gives other people a reason to approach you, especially if your home happens to be, say, a [bright blue 1969 Dodge Travco](/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome), which it seems to afford a certain amount of unearned goodwill no matter where we park it. So there's that too. diff --git a/pages/blogroll.txt b/pages/blogroll.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 6ac5f2e..0000000 --- a/pages/blogroll.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,30 +0,0 @@ -Remember when everyone had a 'blogroll' and that was how your discovered other cool sites? It's a shame that got lost somewhere along the way. I think it's still an awesome way to discover cool sites and meet new people. Here are some of the people that enrich my world. - -### Travel Writing - -I don't follow many travel blogs. Time was people wrote about how they looked at life. I liked that time. Now it's all about how your life looks, and I'll be honest, I don't give a shit what your life looks like. Luckily there are still some wonderful travel websites that don't suck. Here's my reading list: - -* [Notes From the Road](http://www.notesfromtheroad.com/) -- If you only click one link in this list, make it this one. - -* [Beau Miles](https://beaumiles.com) -- Beau Miles makes these gorgeous films about his adventures in [getting to work](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysgH_rkfGSE), [sleeping in trees](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysgH_rkfGSE), and [eating beans](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYsTlfhDSDY). I know that *sounds* boring, but that's only because you haven't seen them. Check out his [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm325cMiw9B15xl22_gr6Dw) for more. - -* [Sailorama](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCirYAT7CafNatSyJH3-O4pQ) -- okay this one is videos, not text, which means I only "read" it when we have access to reasonable bandwidth, but it's always entertaining. I've also learned a lot about video storytelling from the <strike>Maiweh</strike> <strike>Rosa</strike> Inesperado crew. If you only click two links in the this list, make this the second. - -* [Bumfuzzle](http://www.bumfuzzle.com/) -- Discovered this by chance when researching Travcos and it's become my favorite travel blog -- sailing, racing, driving, you name it, they've done it. - -* [Vagabond Journey](http://www.vagabondjourney.com/) -- I first started [following Wade Shepard's site](http://www.vagablogging.net/the-future-of-vagabonding-and-long-term-travel.html) back when I was [editing Rolf Potts' Vagablogging.net](http://www.vagablogging.net/vagablogging-alumni.html). If my math is right, Wade has been traveling continuously for over 15 years now. There is not much about travel that he has not figured out. - -* [Dinghy Dreams](http://dinghydreams.com) -- Another sailor. I follow a lot of sailors/boats. Love the writing on this site. - -* [Inhab.it](http://inhab.it/) -- I can't remember how I found inhab.it (I think we have a mutual friend maybe?) but I'm glad I did. Click this one too. - - -* [PMags](https://pmags.com) -- I believe Paul Magnanti is a kind of thru-hiking folk hero, but I just like hearing about his weekend trips around the southwest. - -* [Early Retirement Extreme](http://earlyretirementextreme.com/) -- Jacob Fisker stopped blogging a while ago, but everything he wrote remains good advice for anyone looking to extract themselves from the consumer mindset. - -* [Charlene Winfred](http://charlenewinfred.com/) -- I found Charlene Winfred's blog while researching the Fuji X Pro 2 for a Wired review and was blown away by the amazing mix of beautiful landscapes and street images, a combo that you don't find much. Turns out she's a nomad too. - -* [Expeditionary Art](http://expeditionaryart.com/) -- I love this site and am wildly jealous of the amazing artistic talent on display here. - -* [Shifter, Dan Milner](http://shifter.media) -- I discovered Dan Milner from Charlene Winfred's site. There's a lot here to love, even if you aren't a photographer. diff --git a/pages/castagraf.txt b/pages/castagraf.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 770a0ae..0000000 --- a/pages/castagraf.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,9 +0,0 @@ -Castagraf was an online poetry magazine published by me, Scott Gilbertson, and Laura Solomon who was its editor and all around brilliant leader. I just wrote the code. Castagraf put out six issues back in roughly 2000-2002. At some point between then and 2009 I forgot to renew the domain name and some domain squatter swiped it. I managed to get .net back and continued to host the old issues for a while longer. - -Unfortunately Castagraf was published using Flash, which no longer works. - -Castagraf took shape back in days when CSS 2 was just getting off the ground. Web browsers sucked at CSS. I was a perfectionist about layout and typography so I used Flash for pixel-perfect results. In the process of watching Flash fail, I became, and continue to be, a strong advocate for open standards on the web. I have lost data to proprietary formats. You will too. Trust me. - -Castagraf, like Flash itself, is basically lost to time at this point, still it deserves some placeholder for its existence. Life moves on, this page is all that remains. - -Laura Solomon is now co-executive director of Wisconsin's [Woodland Pattern](https://www.woodlandpattern.org/). I currently (2020) write for Wired Magazine and my own website, the one you're on right now. diff --git a/pages/dear-internet-commenter.txt b/pages/dear-internet-commenter.txt deleted file mode 100644 index a2e2ca2..0000000 --- a/pages/dear-internet-commenter.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7 +0,0 @@ -We are fellow denizens of an especially lovely planet full of wonder and beauty. Okay, it's true. It's also full of ugliness and horror. But let's focus on the positive for a minute. - -That the good news. The bad news is that even in the best case scenarios we only get to ride this lovely planet around our sun some seventy-five or so times. That's assuming we're well fed, clothed, sheltered and in good health. Most people of the world are none of those things. Some of us are, which is incredibly fortunate for us. - -I say this mainly to offer some perspective on why I have elected not to engage in a conversation with you. It's nothing against you specifically, but here's the thing: most likely you disagreed with something I wrote and want to express that. I understand that desire. But remember, my thoughts and opinions don't have to match yours. Yours are equally valid. And not only do these topics not really matter in the grand scheme of things, I don't matter in the grand scheme of your existence and there's nothing to gain by pretending otherwise. - -This doesn't mean we shouldn't care about each others' opinions, it just means that, given the constraints of our existence here on earth (it's very time limited), we probably both have better things we could be doing -- walking in the sunshine, playing with our kids, watching the sunset from a mountain top, making coffee by a fire just before sunrise, eating tacos, or what have you. There are a lot of amazing things to do out there. Arguing on the internet is not one them. diff --git a/pages/homepage.html b/pages/homepage.html deleted file mode 100644 index 8a97512..0000000 --- a/pages/homepage.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3 +0,0 @@ -<p>We’re a family of five who live full time in a vintage 1969 Dodge Travco RV. We’ve been at it for three years now. People want to know <a href="https://luxagraf.net/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome">what it’s like for five people to live in a 26ft RV</a> and <a href="https://luxagraf.net/essay/why-a-vintage-rv">why we live this way</a>.</p> -<p>The short answer is simple: because we like it and we can. If you want more than a soundbite, <a href="/jrnl/">read through the journal</a>. If you like it, sign up for <a href="/newsletter/">the email list</a>, or <a href="/jrnl/feed.xml">subscribe to the RSS feed</a>.</p> -<p>We love the way we live and wouldn’t want to live any other way. But we’re not you and this isn’t for everyone. It just works for us. If you’re interested there’s a guide section with some <a href="/guides/">advice, tips and tricks for those who’d aspire to live full time in a van or RV</a> and there’s more about me on the <a href="/about">about page</a></p> diff --git a/pages/homepage.txt b/pages/homepage.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 594c530..0000000 --- a/pages/homepage.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5 +0,0 @@ -We're a family of five who live full time in a vintage 1969 Dodge Travco RV. We've been at it for three years now. People want to know [what it's like for five people to live in a 26ft RV](https://luxagraf.net/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome) and [why we live this way](). - -The short answer is simple: because we like it and we can. If you want more than a soundbite, [read through the journal](/jrnl/). If you like it, sign up for [the email list](/newsletter/), or [subscribe to the RSS feed](/jrnl/feed.xml). - -We love the way we live and wouldn’t want to live any other way. But we’re not you and this isn’t for everyone. It just works for us. If you're interested there's a guide section with some [advice, tips and tricks for those who'd aspire to live full time in a van or RV](/guides/) and there's more about me on the <a href="/about">about page</a> diff --git a/pages/technology.txt b/pages/technology.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 4c4bae0..0000000 --- a/pages/technology.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,50 +0,0 @@ -*Updated 02/21: I had to take out the part about not have a phone or a drone because I have those now. Does that make my a hypocrite? Maybe? Probably? Anyway, times change, etc.* - -Sometimes people email me to ask how I make luxagraf. Here's how I do it: I write, take pictures and combine them into stories. - -I recognize that this is not particularly helpful. Or it is, I think, but it's not why people email me. They want to know about at the tools I use. Which is fine. I guess. Consumerism! Yay! - -Anyway, I decided to make a page I can just point people to. There's no affiliate links and I'd really prefer it if you didn't buy any of this stuff because you don't need it. I don't need it. I could get by with less. I should get by with less. I am in fact always striving to need less and be less particular. - -Still, for better or worse. Here are the tools I use. - -## Writing -### Notebook and Pen - -My primary "device" is my notebook. I don't have a fancy notebook. I do have several notebooks though. One is in my pocket at all times and is filled with illegible scribbles that I attempt to decipher later. The other is larger and it's my sort of captain's log, though I don't write in with the kind regularity captains do. Or that I imagine captains do. Then I have other notebooks for specific purposes, meditation journal, commonplace book, and so on. - -I'm not all that picky about notebooks, if they have paper in them I'm happy enough. I used to be very picky about pens, but then I sat down and forced myself to use basic cheap, clear black ink, Bic-style ballpoint pens until they no longer irritated me. And you know what? Now I love them, and that's all I use -- any ballpoint pen. Ballpoint because it runs less when it gets wet, which, given how I live, tends to happen. - -### Laptop - -My laptop is a Lenovo x270 I bought off eBay for $384. I upgraded the hard drives and RAM, which brought the total outlay to $489, which is really way too much to spend on a computer these days, but my excuse is that I make money using it. - -Why this particular laptop? It's small and the battery lasts quite a while (like 15 hrs when I'm writing, more like 12 when editing photos, 15 minutes when editing video). It also has a removable battery and can be upgraded by the user. I packed in almost 3TB of disk storage, which is nice. Still, like I said, I could get by with less. I should get by with less. - -The laptop runs Linux because everything else sucks a lot more than Linux. Which isn't too say that I love Linux, it could use some work too. But it sucks a whole lot less than the rest. I run Arch Linux, which I have [written about elsewhere](/src/why-i-switched-arch-linux). I was also interviewed on the site [Linux Rig](https://linuxrig.com/2018/11/28/the-linux-setup-scott-gilbertson-writer/), which has some more details on how and why I use Linux. - -## Photos - -### Camera - -I use a Sony A7ii. It's a full frame mirrorless camera that happens to make it easy to use legacy lenses. I bought it specifically because it was the only full frame digital camera available that let me use the old lenses that I love. Without the old lenses I find the Sony's output to be a little digital for my tastes, though the RAW files from the A7ii have wonderful dynamic range, which was the other selling point for me. One day when the A7Rii gets cheap enough I may pick one up because the dynamic range is even better. - -That said, none of the A7 series are cheap cameras. If you want to travel you'd be better off getting something cheaper and using your money to travel. The Sony a6000 is very nearly as good and costs much less. In fact, having tested dozens of cameras for Wired over the years I can say with some authority that the a6000 is the best value for money on the market period, but doubly so if you want at cheap way to test out some older lenses. - -### Lenses - -All of my lenses are old and manual focus, which I prefer to autofocus lenses. I am not a sports or wildlife photographer so I have no real need for autofocus. Neither autofocus nor perfect edge to edge sharpness are things I want in a lens. I want, for lack of a better word, *character*. I want a lens that reliable produces what I see in my mind. - -One fringe benefit of honing your manual focus skills[^1] is that you open a door to world filled with amazing cheap lenses. I have shot Canon, Minolta, Olympus, Nikon, Zeiss, Hexanon, Tokina, and several weird Russian Zeiss clones. In the end I sold almost everything but my Minoltas. Minolta Rokkor lenses tend to reliably produce results closest to what I imagine when I look at the scene. - -Roughly 95 percent of the time I have one of two lenses on my A7II: a Minolta 50 f/2 or a Minolta 55 f/1.7. I bought the first for $20, the second for $60. About 90 percent of the images on this site were taken with one of those lenses. I prefer the 50mm for non-people images and the 55mm for portraits. - -I also have a Canon FD 20mm f/2.8, and a Minolta 28 f/2.8 that I use in cities. For portraits I use the Minolta MD 100 f/2. For animals and birds I have a Tokina 100-300mm f/4 which happens to be Minolta mount so I use a Minolta 2X teleconverter with it to make it a 200-600mm lens. It's pretty soft at the edges, but since I mostly use if for wildlife, which I tend to crop anyway, I get by. I also have a crazy Russian fisheye thing I bought one night on eBay after I'd been drinking. It's pretty hilarious bad at anything less than f/11, but it's useful for shooting in small spaces, like the inside of the bus. - -I also recently reverted to film by buying an old Minolta 35mm rangerfinder, the AL-S. I primarily shoot Tri-X 400 and develop it myself using Ilford chemicals. - ---- - -And there you have it, the technology stack. I am always looking for ways to get by with less, but after years of getting rid of stuff, I think I have reached something close to ideal. - -[^1]: If you've never shot without autofocus don't try it on a modern lens. Most modern focusing rings are garbage because they're not meant to be used. Some Fujifilm lenses are an exception to that rule, but by and large don't do it. Get an old lens, something under $50, and teach yourself [zone focusing](https://www.ilfordphoto.com/zone-focusing/), use the [Ultimate Exposure Computer](http://www.fredparker.com/ultexp1.htm) to learn exposure, and just practice, practice, practice. Practice relentlessly and eventually you'll get there. diff --git a/range.txt b/range.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 3746841..0000000 --- a/range.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,81 +0,0 @@ -# Scratch - -## 013 Bird, Sky - -My friend Mike and I took a quad ride through the country one weekend in San Miguel. It was a good trip, I wrote about it [here](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/11/lets-go-ride), but at one point we stopped for water and a huge flock of either ravens or crows came circling overhead. I like to think they were crows, since that would make them a murder of crows, but I couldn’t say for sure, I had no binoculars on me. I thought I'd maybe take a picture and see if I could zoom in later and figure out what they were. That idea failed, but I ended up with this picture which I really like. - -On a whim I decided to see if I could figure out how to get dramatically black skies in Darktable using the newer workflow tools, and I thought of this image. I think it works better as black and white anyway. - -## 011 Pawnee Grasslands - -Colorado conjures images of mountains and pine forests, but that's actually only the Rocky Mountains. Most of the state is grassland and plains, wide open country with huge skies, dramatic storms, and nowhere to hide from them. It can be exciting. - -Most of it is farmland, but there are a few National Grasslands that have been set aside to preserve things as they were about 100 years ago. We camped here in the Pawnee Grasslands for about a week. I wrote about it in a post called, appropriately, [Grassland](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/08/grassland), which also has some more images if you want to see some of the storms. But I like the simplicity of this one, it captures how very small even a 26ft RV feels out here. - -In developing this all I really wanted to do was up the contrast a bit and correct the color balance, which was tending toward the green side with all that grass. That and a little sharpening is all I did. - -You can download the Darktable Color Balance RGB preset I used in this video [here](https://luxagraf.net/darktable/colorbalancergb_colorcontrastboost.dtpreset). - -# Published - -## 007 Dragoon Mountains - -Southeastern Arizona is one of my favorite places in the desert southwest. The nearest big city is Tucson, but even that's a couple hours away. It's a lonely area, I love it. The Dragoons Mountains are among my favorite spots in the area. I've spent a few weeks in and around them over the years, entering from both the east and west sides, as well as from the south on foot. The west entrance is my favorite, but that road is too rough for [the big blue bus](https://luxagraf.net/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome) so on this trip we came in from the east. - -The east is home to Cochise Stronghold, the place where Chihuicahui leader Cochise lived, later hid, and eventually died and was buried. As I've written elsewhere, [Cochise's presence is still easy to feel](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/01/ghost-cochise) in the Dragoons. - -On this trip we spent most of our time hiking and hanging around the campground. During the week we had the place to ourselves. There was a dry creek bed a few yards beyond our campsite and for the kids it was like having a giant sandbox to play in. - -It was down in the creek bed, where I sat watching the kids, the birds, the world, when I noticed the way the sunbeams were coming through this yucca tree. I knew when I was taking it that the lens was going to flare, that's just what older lenses do, so I was thinking black and white from the moment I took it. - -In redeveloping it using 2021 darktable, I ended up with almost exactly the same look at the original, which you can see [here](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/01/ghost-cochise). The difference is that this version, which uses the Color Calibration module, took about half the time as the original. It's slightly ironic perhaps but my favorite feature of the Color Calibration module is how easy it is to get the black and white look I want. - -For this one I wanted to replicate the look of my favorite black and white film, Tmax 3200. Alas, the magic of Tmax 3200 is about more than grain and when I made this image grainy the result looked terrible to me. So if you're reading this on luxagraf.net and you notice the large image above doesn't have the grain that's in the video it's because I decided it didn't work. Tmax 3200 has something about it (softness perhaps?) that I just can't get out of Sony's sensors. That's okay though, I'm happy enough with this image. As with the rest, it's not a work of art, but it reminds me of the experience of making it, and it illustrated a part of the story I wanted to tell about the Dragoons. - - -## 008 Rutherford Beach - -Coastal Louisiana doesn't have many beaches. It's mostly marsh, cat tails and reeds populated primarily by herons, spoonbills, coots, and other water birds. It's a flat, almost featureless, world when you drive through it sitting high up in an RV. - -There are no houses on the ground. There's very little ground and almost all of it will be inundated with water several times a year at a minimum. Maybe that's why everything out here is called a "camp", it's a way of acknowledging the temporary, precarious nature of the structures. - -Nearly every house has a sign out front with a name. Camp Canal, Camp Dr. Herbert, Camp David, Camp Southern Leisure, Camp 12 Oaks, and my personal favorite, Camp Plan B. I even saw a single wide mobile home on 12 foot high stilts with a sign on it that read: Cajun High-Rise. - -We spent five days camping on the only beach around, Rutherford Beach. It's free and you can pull right up on the sand. It stormed a good bit and fog would roll in pretty much every night, hiding the lights both onshore and off, making it feel like we were all alone in the world. - -That's what I like about this photo and why I went black and white with it, it feels more stark, more isolating, more raw, which is exactly how the Louisiana coast felt to me. And unlike the last image, I felt like the grain worked in this one. I shot it while driving, so it had a bit more softness to it that lent itself to adding grain. It looks more like film with that little bit of softness. - -## 009 Black and White Badlands -Late in the summer of 2018 we spent [two weeks camping in Buffalo National Grassland](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/08/range-life), on the edge of Badlands National Park. We only went into the park itself a couple of times, but this day rain was in the forecast and I already knew that without some clouds, the Badlands made for boring images (standing there looking at it was breathtaking, but sometimes that feeling doesn't translate into the image, and for me, in this case, it did not). I figured the storm would add some drama to the sky and make for better pictures. - -Most of the black and white images I've done so far for *Range* were composed knowing I would develop them to be black and white. This one is different. I had in mind color. But then the other day I was searching through my Darktable library for an image that would lend itself to making the sky black (in black and white). I know how to get a black sky using Darktable's old channel mixer, but I haven't done it in the new color calibration module (which replaces the channel mixer). Anyway, this image isn't great for that, but when I saw it something said, *you should make that black and white*. So I did, and I like it much better than the color version. - -<div class="self-embed-container"> - <video poster="https://luxagraf.net/media/images/videos/2021/range-009-poster.jpg" controls="true" loop="false" preload="auto" id="15" class="vidautovid"> - <source src="https://luxagraf.net/media/images/videos/2021/range-009-compressed.webm" type="video/webm"> - <source src="https://luxagraf.net/media/images/videos/2021/range-009-compressed.mp4" type="video/mp4"> - Your browser does not support video playback via HTML5. - </video> - <a class="figcaption" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AviWkfPT8Yg">Watch on YouTube</a> -</div> - -I think this image is a good example of how a mundane image can be made much more striking in black and white. It's important to note this is not a great image even in black and white, but it serves my purpose here. Which is to illustrate that sometimes thinking in texture rather than color yields a more interesting image. -## 010 Alborada Festival - -San Miguel de Allende's [Alborada Festival](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/10/alborada) starts at 4 AM. Actually it was closer to 2 AM. The main Jardin gets packed way before that, but 4 is when it kicks off. Mexicans are serious about their parties. I’ve been in quite a few large scale parties — Songkran, Chinese New Year, New Year’s Eve in New York. San Miguel’s Alborada deserves a spot among those, it’s a hell of a party and it lasts for four or five days. - -I won't pretend to understand all of it, but the highlight for me was a particular group of dancers, La Sagrada Familia. I ended up photographing them many times over the months. I am actually not 100 percent sure that this gentleman was part of that group, but his dress and face paint fits. This was a random shot grabbed in the blink of an eye and then he was gone. - -<div class="self-embed-container"> - <video poster="https://luxagraf.net/media/images/videos/2021/range-10-screen.jpg" controls="true" loop="false" preload="auto" id="16" class="vidautovid"> - <source src="https://luxagraf.net/media/images/videos/2021/range-010-compressed.webm" type="video/webm"> - <source src="https://luxagraf.net/media/images/videos/2021/range-010-compressed.mp4" type="video/mp4"> - Your browser does not support video playback via HTML5. - </video> - <a class="figcaption" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxXHn_sQeNE">Watch on YouTube</a> -</div> - -I would like to have made a head-on shot, but I never did see him again during the festival or in the next nine months we called San Miguel home. Sometimes all you get is an instant. - -You can download the Darktable preset I used in this video [here](https://luxagraf.net/darktable/colorbalancergb_colorcontrastboost.dtpreset). - diff --git a/raw-workflow.txt b/raw-workflow.txt deleted file mode 100644 index a0e0f8d..0000000 --- a/raw-workflow.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,54 +0,0 @@ -Make Better Pictures. - -A few things to note: - -* I am not a professional photographer. I have been making photographs for 35 years now, but I've never tried to make a living at it, nor do I have any interest in nor any clue how you do that. I am just having fun. - -* I am not trying to make fine art prints. Photography to me has always been in service of or to illustrate a story. Occasionally I manage a photograph that tells a story on its own, but that's rarely a goal. Usually I am shooting with the idea that the image will supplement words, not stand on its own. - -* There is no single "correct" way to make a photograph. Most of my favorite photographs—both my own and those of others—have technical flaws. I am not interested in whether an image is tack sharp, has a perfect histogram, or is even in focus. I am interested in whether or not it tells a story. Which might seem ironic considering point two there, but it's not because for me a photograph doesn't have to tell the whole story, it has to tell *a* story. - -### Take Control of Your Camera - -Today's cameras want to do everything for you. I don't think that's any way to live or photograph. You'll never get any better if you leave your camera on full auto and mash the shutter. - -If you want to make better photos you're going to have to turn off the automatic features and figure it out for yourself. Sorry. There is no easy way to learn things, you have to struggle, otherwise you don't learn. - -Tough love people, but there it is. And there's going to be a learning curve to taking pictures using manual settings. At first you're going to suck at it. Your images are going to look even worse than when you were using full auto. That's okay, this won't last long. - -The first thing you need to do is turn on RAW image capture in your camera. Head to your camera's settings page and look for something that says "format" or "file format" or something where the setting is currently "JPG". Now look for the option that says RAW. Select that and you've just unlocked a tremendous amount of control over your images. - -### What is Camera RAW? - -I recommend shooting RAW format images over JPEGs because RAW stores far more information about the scene you're shooting. - -Everything your camera's sensor is capable of recording is stored in that RAW file. JPEG on the other hand has already made some decisions about the scene. As with anything automated, sometimes your JPEGs will look great (especially Fujifilm cameras), but I prefer to record the scene in RAW and make the decisions about how things should look afterward in software. - -To understand the difference between JPEG and RAW consider the color data your sensor is recording. The RAW file can hold billions of colors, every bit of color data your sensor saw is stored in the RAW file. To create a JPEG your camera squashes those billions of color down to 16 million (roughly the max the JPEG file format can store) and throws the rest away. The same is true of the luminosity. A RAW image will store the entire dynamic range of the scene, while a JPEG cannot. - -Simply put: Camera RAW images store the scene as it was recorded for you to play with later in software. JPEG images store the scene the way your camera's algorithms think it should look. If you're happy with that, awesome. Why are you reading this? If you're not happy with that, read on. - -### How to Get the Most out of Camera RAW - -The advantage of JPEG images is that you press the shutter and you're done. Well, you transfer the image to your computer or phone and then you're done. With RAW images you need to process them. Think of raw images as a film negative, you need to develop them into prints. - -First though, a few notes on the quirks of shooting RAW. - -To get the most out of shooting RAW images you need to understand how camera sensors record data, especially how *your* camera's sensor records data. There's considerable variation in the dynamic range that sensors are capable of, but in general it is easier to recover dark parts of an image than highlights. - -In digital photography you can think of pure white as no information at all. Since information is what we're after, overexposure, where your image is overly bright, is bad. - -The opposite of one bad idea is usually another bad idea though, and that's the case here as well. While you *can* recover quite a bit of color information from very dark regions of your RAW image, there is a cost: noise. Noise is the little colored dots you see when you zoom in on your image. From a distance they make your image look muddy, blurry, and washed out. - -The ideal is get the majority of tones in your image between those extremes. There is a theory, which I do not subscribe too, called "exposing to the left", which says you should deliberately, slightly, overexpose your image to get more data in the RAW file. Then you can darken when you develop it in Darktable. I think the risk of botching this, and seriously overexposing your image, outweighs the nominal benefit it confers. That said, sometimes, especially when shooting portraits that I plan to convert to black and white and use a "high key" tone mapping, I do overexpose on purpose to make sure skin tones render with as little noise as possible. - -Most of the time though, I do what you should do: I underexpose to protect the lighter areas of the image from overexposure and then lighten the shadows as needed when processing. - -### Settings for RAW Photography - -If you're just getting started, and you've just turned on RAW in your camera. I suggest you concentrate on learning to use the aperture to your advantage. The mode for this is called aperture priority and is usually on a dial marked with an A, or maybe AP. Putting you camera in this mode lets you set the aperture, or f-stop - - - - -[^1]: *Dynamic Range* refers to the range of tones between the lightest and darkest tones in an image. Often the start and stop is pure white to pure black, but it doesn't have to be. It's just the range between the darkest and lightest pixels. diff --git a/scratch.txt b/scratch.txt index 3cd1af1..bc9fd32 100644 --- a/scratch.txt +++ b/scratch.txt @@ -8,8 +8,11 @@ Nothing can be more useful to a man than a determination not to be hurried. "The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution." Igor Stravinsky -“Be cheerful, do good, and let the sparrows chirp.” - john bosco +Almost every article you'll ever find on attention will at some point repeat Simone Weil's statement that "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. +"It seems to me that we all look at nature too much, and live with her too little." -Oscar Wilde, De Profundis + +The average person spends 87% of their time indoors and another 6% in enclosed vehicles https://indoor.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/lbnl-47713.pdf # Scratch @@ -995,7 +998,10 @@ https://amazingribs.com/more-technique-and-science/grill-and-smoker-setup-and-fi https://www.vagabondjourney.com/you-cant-get-lost-anymore/ -# Birds + + +## Programming for Intrinsic Value Vs Extrinsic +Or the difference between Linux culture and startup culture -- giving vs getting and how it shapes the final product. ## Carolina Wren I have so many Carolina wren stories it's hard to know where to start. @@ -1029,14 +1035,6 @@ It wasn't until they started flying in the bus that I really started pay attenti -## Quotes - -Almost every article you'll ever find on attention will at some point repeat Simone Weil's statement that "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. - -"It seems to me that we all look at nature too much, and live with her too little." -Oscar Wilde, De Profundis - -The average person spends 87% of their time indoors and another 6% in enclosed vehicles https://indoor.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/lbnl-47713.pdf - # Notes @@ -1612,495 +1610,3 @@ I wouldn't want to be faster or greener than now if you were with me O you were the best of all my days -# Pages -## Technology - -The less technology your life requires the better your life will be. - -That's not to say technology is bad, but I encourage you to spend some time considering your technology use and making sure you *choose* the things you use rather than accepting everything marketed at you. - -This is not my idea. I stole it from the Amish. The Amish have a reputation for being anti-technology, but they're not. Try searching for "Amish compressed air tool conversion" if you don't believe me. The Amish don't rush out and get the latest and greatest, that much is true. They take their time adopting any new technology. They step back, detach, and evaluate new technology in a way the rest of us seldom do—they're arguably more engaged with technology than you and I—and this allows them to make better informed decisions. - -That's what I try to do. I take my time. There's very little latest and greatest on this page. And I am always trying to get by with less, if for no other reason than this stuff costs money. There's no affiliate links here, no links at all actually. I'd really prefer it if you didn't buy any of this stuff, you probably don't need it. Again, I could get by with less. I should get by with less. I am in fact always striving to need less and be less particular about what I do need. - -Still, for better or worse. Here are the main tools I use in building this site and living on the road. - -## Writing - -### Notebook and Pen, Pencil and Paper - -My primary "device" is my notebook. I don't have a fancy notebook. I do have several notebooks though. One is in my pocket at all times and is filled with illegible scribbles that I attempt to decipher later. This one I mainly write in pencil, and I stick post-it notes into the actual notebook so that I can then move the post-it notes to the larger notebook where I write them in pen. This larger notebook is a mix of notes, as well as a sort of captain's log, though I don't write in with the kind regularity real captains do. Or that I imagine captains do. Then I have other notebooks for specific purposes, meditation journal, fiction notebook, and so on. - -I'm not all that picky about notebooks, if they have paper in them I'm happy enough. I used to be very picky about pens, but then I sat down and forced myself to use basic cheap, black ink, Bic-style ballpoint pens until they no longer irritated me. And you know what? Now I love them, and that's all I use—any ballpoint pen. Ballpoint because it runs less when it gets wet, which, given how I live, tends to happen. Pencils are a more recent development for me. I adopted the Pentel P209 with .9mm lead because someone on the internet said the led didn't break. This has proved true, so I've stick with it. - -### Laptop - -I recently retired my trusty Lenovo x270. I still love it, but it just wasn't up to editing video. I ended up getting an HP Dev One, which I generally like, though the screen is a little glare-prone. This computer is probably overkill for me, and it costs $1,000, but I use it for work so it ends up paying for itself that way. - -The laptop runs Linux because everything else sucks a lot more than Linux. Which isn't too say that I love Linux, it could use some work too. But it sucks a whole lot less than the rest. I run Arch Linux, which I have [written about elsewhere](/src/why-i-switched-arch-linux). I was also interviewed on the site [Linux Rig](https://linuxrig.com/2018/11/28/the-linux-setup-scott-gilbertson-writer/), which has some more details on how and why I use Linux. - -## Photos - -### Camera - -I use a Sony A7Rii. It's a full frame mirrorless camera which makes it easy to use the legacy lenses I love. I bought the A7Rii specifically because it was well suited to using with the old lenses that I love. Without the old lenses I find the Sony's output to be a little digital for my tastes, - -The A7 series are not cheap cameras. If you want to travel you'd be better off getting something cheaper and using your money to travel. The Sony a6000 is very nearly as good and costs much less. In fact, having tested dozens of cameras for Wired over the years I can say with some authority that the a6000 is the best value for money on the market period, but doubly so if you want at cheap way to test out some older lenses. - -### Lenses - -All of my lenses are old and manual focus, which I prefer to autofocus lenses. I am not a sports or wildlife photographer so I have no real need for autofocus. Neither autofocus nor perfect edge to edge sharpness are things I want in a lens. I want, for lack of a better word, *character*. I want a lens that reliable produces what I see in my mind. - -One fringe benefit of honing your manual focus skills[^1] is that you open a door to world filled with amazing cheap lenses. I have shot Canon, Minolta, Olympus, Nikon, Zeiss, Hexanon, Tokina, and several weird Russian Zeiss clones. - -These days I have whittled my collection down to these lenses: - -* Minolta 50mm f/2 -* Minolta 55mm f/1.7 -* Minolta 100mm f/1.7 -* Olympus 50mm f/1.8 -* Olympus 100mm f/2.8 -* Pentax 35 f/3.5 -* Pentax 20 f/4 - -Yes, that's a lot of lenses. I used to keep the Minolta 50 f/2 on there about 90 percent of the time, but these days I actually shoot with all of these pretty regularly. None of these lenses are over $200. - -I also have a Tokina 100-300mm f/4 which happens to be Minolta mount so I use a Minolta 2X teleconverter with it to make it a 200-600mm lens. It's pretty soft at the edges. That's a nice way of saying it's utter garbage at the corners, but since I mostly use if for wildlife, which I tend to crop anyway, I get by. I also have a crazy Russian fisheye thing that's hilarious bad at anything less than f/11, but it's useful for shooting in small spaces, like the inside of the bus. - -## Video - -In addition to the photo gear above, which I also use for video, I have GoPro Hero 10. I mostly use it while driving the bus and have yet to actually make a movie out of any of the footage I shoot. But it piles up on my hard drive and I keep telling myself, one of these days. - -## Audio - -I like to record ambient sound. I use an Olympus LS-10 recorder, which has the lowest noise floor I can afford (it was $100 on eBay). I use a couple of microphones I made myself and occasionally a wireless Rode mic. - ---- - -And there you have it. I am always looking for ways to get by with less, but after years of getting rid of stuff, I think I have reached something close to ideal. - -[^1]: If you've never shot without autofocus don't try it on a modern lens. Most modern focusing rings are garbage because they're not meant to be used. Some Fujifilm lenses are an exception to that rule, but by and large don't do it. Get an old lens, something under $50, and teach yourself [zone focusing](https://www.ilfordphoto.com/zone-focusing/), use the [Ultimate Exposure Computer](http://www.fredparker.com/ultexp1.htm) to learn exposure, and just practice, practice, practice. Practice relentlessly and eventually you'll get there. - -## Code - -Driving gives you plenty of time to think. Somewhere in that thinking I decided I needed to clarify my basic approach to life. To know what I was doing and why. I hesitate to call these rules because it's not like I know what I'm doing and I modify these all the time as I learn and adapt. Anyway, this is mostly for me, but I mentioned them in a post once and someone asked me to write them down. So here they are. - -###1. Everything is a Practice - -There is no finish line. There's no winning, no losing. Not in human terms anyway. Individual projects may come to an end, but the practices that made them possible do not. Most things worth doing do not have a stopping point. There is no point where you've written enough, you've worked out enough. Everything is a practice. Embrace it. The practice is never done, which means you get to keep improving. - -###2. Do It Yourself - -It's probably cheaper and easier to buy most things, but when I can I'd rather make things myself. What else are you going to do with your life if you aren't making stuff? Watch TV? Stop buying stuff and hiring people for everything. Give yourself a chance to solve the problem first. Contrary to what it says on the label, professionals and experts aren't necessary. They'll do it faster and better than you will, but you'll learn and improve every time you do it yourself. - -###3. Adapt to Your Surroundings - -No matter where you go you will not fit in when you get there. The climate will be different, the people will be different, the food will be different. Don't expect the place to adapt to you and don't get bent out of shape when it doesn't. - -One great way to do this is to simplify your life. Depending on a lot of stuff makes it hard to adapt. My favorite practical example is air conditioning. If you depend on air conditioning you aren't able to adapt to climate changes as well as someone who doesn't. As Jakob Lund Fisker [succinctly puts it](https://earlyretirementextreme.com/manifesto.html) "Comfort is having the sweat glands and metabolic tolerance to deal with heat and cold. It is not central heating or air conditioning which may fail or be unavailable." - -###4. Make Something You Like Everyday - -In the world as it once was I think this need to create was fulfilled by hunting and to some extent farming. With those gone we're left with kind of a void[^1]. I have found that filling that void with creative endeavors is very satisfying. Other people find that studying something in detail fills that void. For me it's making stuff. - -Digital stuff (like this site) is okay, but I prefer to make tangible stuff most of the time. Could be a delicious meal, could be some little thing around the bus, could be a paper airplane for the kids. *What* doesn't matter so much as the practice of making things. See also, rule 1. - -###5. Retain Agency - -Retaining agency means rejecting the passive. In some ways this is what you get when you practice rules 2, 3, and 4. You are the driving force behind your thoughts and actions, do not outsource them to others without carefully considering what you're giving up. - -Agency is not control though, it is not bending the world to your will (see rule 3), it is merely ensuring that one's ideas and tools are one's own[^2]. - -###6. Avoid Waste - -The only thing in short supply on this planet is time, do not waste it. Fuck entertainment, it is a waste of time. You are not on earth to be entertained. - -Similarly, fuck stuff. Make good financial decisions and get by with as little stuff as you can because money takes time to earn, and that is time you will never get back. - -Waste is not natural (read up on ecology if this idea is new to you), avoid it in all things. - - -###7. Prefer the Analog - -I find that the digital world isn't very satisfying. I have a rather outlandish theory about why. I think it lacks the rhythm of the natural world. I believe your body and spirit know the difference between the rhythms of the world they evolved in and the more recent additions. Don't get me wrong, I love the rhythm of a piston-driven engine, but I also think that the truly great engines are the ones that manage to mimic natural rhythms. - -###8. Don't Report Stories, Live Them - -I have no training as a journalist. I studied philosophy, religion, and literature, but somehow I ended up writing for journalism outlets. I have no real problem with journalists—the few left who actually do journalism, almost none of whom are published by major publishers -- but I also have no desire to be one. - -The stories I tell are ultimately about me because that is what I know. The idea that you can tell other people's stories seems fundamentally wrong to me. They are not your stories, let other people tell their own stories. - -###9. Novelty Wears Off, Routines Carry You Through - -The novelty of new places, new people, new food, new whatever doesn't last long and ultimately isn't that exciting. It has an addictive nature too. If you always need the new something has gone astray I think. I think the novelty of travel lasts about two years, and then you look around and start thinking, well, now what? - -My experience has been that the answer to *now what* means reaching back to your old life and finding the things that made you happiest there and bringing them on the road with you. Doing your thing becomes your routine that you bring to a new place, and now you have something to offer that place: you. You're no longer just traveling to see the sights, you become, in a small way, for a short time, a part of that place. - -###10. Live Small, Venture Wide - -I stole this line from Pat Schulte of [Bumfuzzle](https://www.bumfuzzle.com/). The basic idea is that I am happiest owning very little and living in small spaces, which makes it easier to move through the world. - - -###11. Try Everything Twice.### {: #twice } - -As the Aussies would say, "have a crack at it." There are two parts here though. The first is a call to experience. Try it. But recognize that some things suck the first time you try them, so you might want to have a second crack at it. - -[^1]: To borrow some ideas from Jacques Ellul et al, humans need goals, they need to put forth some effort in pursuit of those goals and they need to at least occasionally attain them. Ellul, and later Ted Kaczynski, have fun splitting hairs about what should fulfill these needs. I don't see much point in that, but I am going off personal experience here and, again, you might find otherwise. - - -[^2]: Matthew Crawford's *[Shop Class as Soul Craft](https://bookshop.org/books/shop-class-as-soulcraft-an-inquiry-into-the-value-of-work/9780143117469)* very much influenced my thinking on this subject. Crawford digs into why people like to repair things and concludes that this need to be capable of repair is part of a desire to escape the feeling of dependence, to reassert their agency over their stuff. He calls the individual who prizes his own agency the Spirited Man. This becomes a kind of archetype of the antidote to passive consumption. Passive consumption displaces agency, argues Crawford. One is no longer master of one's stuff because one does not truly understand how stuff works. "Spiritedness, then," writes Crawford, "may be allied with a spirit of inquiry, through a desire to be master of one’s own stuff. It is the prideful basis of self-reliance." Exactly. -# SRC - -## Finding Django - -I was still running a restaurant kitchen the first time someone told me I should learn Python. It was 2004 when my best dishwasher, Aaron, a young man who enjoyed solving unsolved math theorems in his spare time (yes it was a lot like working with Good Will Hunting) said, Learn Python. That was all he said. Learn Python. I'd been complaining about PHP, which was at the time the language I understood well enough to build things with, but I hated it. It's highly functional, but messy, inelegant language. His solution was Python. He was smarter than me, so I wrote it down. Learn Python. - -The problem with learning in any programming language is that there's a sharp learning curve that involves a lot of drudgery and bashing your forehead into the keyboard when things don't work. There was no Stack Overflow in 2004. We bought books from the likes of O'Reilly and tk. I bought Learning Python and a skimmed the first few chapters. I had no project though. Without a project that obsesses you, you'll never learn to program. - -I also didn't learn Python just then because running restaurant is an all-consuming, life-sucking thing to to do. There is no spare time in which you are not thinking about food. After another year I was burned out. I scraped together what money I had, bought a couple of plane tickets and headed off to lose myself in Asia. Hey, it worked for the Beatles. Sort of. - -At some point in my travels I fell in with a couple of English travelers who were not familiar with the great Jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. For shame. Back then we all traveled with iPods, there was a limited amount of music anyone would carry at any one time. I did not have any Django Reinhardt myself. For shame. - -This was also the heyday of sites like Limewire though, so I went down to the internet cafe below our guesthouse in Bangkok to search for some Django Reinhardt. The problem was that the keyboard, naturally enough, was Thai. I could change the layout in Windows settings, but the symbols on the keys were still Thai, which made it hard to type. I figured Django was a distinctive enough name that that was all I needed (this was back when Google's index held useful information rather than content farm spam). I typed in Django and sure enough, Reinhardt was right there in the first couple of results. - -Oddly enough, that's not what caught my eye. What caught my eye was a website for something called Django, "the web framework for perfectionists with deadlines." (here's the [early 2006 version of the site](https://web.archive.org/web/20060410074810/https://www.djangoproject.com/) as I discovered it) I didn't have any deadlines just then, but perfectionist? I can't tell you how many times I messed with tabs and spaces to make sure my hand written HTML was properly indented when you viewed source, something no one was ever going to see except my fellow perfectionists. God bless you if you ever viewed source and were appalled by the sloppy unindented source code that confronted you. Was there, possibly, a web framework for people like us? For people like me? Tell me more. - -It was the subhead that got me: Django is a high-level Python Web framework. Learn Python. If this were a movie there would have been a bad flashback here where Aaron's face cuts through a cloud of Southeast Asian traveler haze saying, *Learn Python*, *Learn Python*. - -But I didn't learn Python just then because I was busy building Flash websites (I know, I know) so I could afford to keep traveling. Sometimes you have to stick with what you know to get on down the road. Not very perfectionist of me. - -Six months later, back in Los Angeles, trying to figure out what in the world I was going to do with myself, a friend asked me to build a website for a bike charity, Wheels4Life. I agreed to do it, on the condition that I build it using Django. I had a project. - -That website turned out well. I built another. And another. I ended up at the first Django conference ostensibly covering it for WIRED, but I was mainly there to meet the founders and learn from the community. - -## Origins and Power of Markdown - -I would call markdown one of the most widespread and influential "apps" of the last couple of decades and it's pretty much just a Perl script that's not in version control, was mostly written by one person, and hasn't seen a meaningful update in 20 years. It just works despite ignoring every supposed rule of what makes good programming. Which drives programmers crazy. So much so that they've tried to take over Markdown (which, full disclosure, I've written about before) But I thought it might be interesting to talk to John Gruber about his little script and its impact. - -## Text Editors - -You want controversy in programming, just say "text editors" to a couple programmers. For this though I was thinking of a slightly different angle -- that text editors remain more or less unchanged over 4 decades. - -## Programming for Intrinsic Value Vs Extrinsic -Or the difference between Linux culture and startup culture -- giving vs getting and how it shapes the final product. - - -## Scratch - -I know several people who take tech holidays. I understand this urge, probably it's the only solution to what I think is the central problem of modern times—distraction and the inability to do deep work. That said, I am going to try other things to tame the beast. - -I don't think this is an entirely new problem, I'm not even sure it's any worse than it ever was, it's just that anyone in any age facing this problem is daunted and it somehow makes one feel better I think to fall back on the belief that it's worse than ever, even if perhaps it is not. - -Whatever the case, whatever the diagnosis may be doesn't really interest me. I am most interested in a cure that works for me. That's not to be overly selfish, but to recognize that what works for me isn't going to work for everyone. I am writing it down mainly in case it does prove helpful to you. - -The first step is to eliminate your ability to multitask. - -I used to be a fan of browser tabs, but lately I have come to think that the tab model, the conception of their being other stuff right there on the screen next to what you're trying to focus on is actually a huge distraction. I stumbled on this idea quite by accident. I was on Ocracoke Island for a while and the cell reception was awful[^1]. I struggled to load page. Like type in a URL, go boil water for tea, make tea, come back and the page still hasn't loaded. - -At some point I thought I wonder if I could at least get the text gist of what I'm after by loading the page in w3m, the text-only cli-based web browser Linux users like us install out of habit but rarely use. At least I rarely used it. But I opened it up and low and behold, it worked. It rendered the text I needed, and it didn't take long using the exact same connection that wouldn't load in a graphical browser. - -That's not surprising I know, but yet it *was* surprising. - -The downside to w3m was that I didn't have a clue how to use it. In particular I didn't know how to open links in the background, something I've relied on in the browser for who know how many years? I typed man w3m and started reading. I quickly discovered that like Vim, w3m uses the concept of the buffer. While it does support tabs, I've never felt the need for tabs in Vim so I thought maybe I don't need them in w3m either. I like the buffer concept. It's like a stack of things, where only the top thing is visible. To find the other things you have to call up a list and read through it. As far as I know while typing this, this document is the only one open in this application. That's a powerful way to focus. There is nothing else on the screen to distract me. - -Here's a screenshot of what my desktop looks like when working this way with Vim: - -This way of working helps my focus on the task as hand. There is nothing else anywhere on the screen and that's how I find I do my best work. I can quickly and easily call up a list of all the other files I've edited recently and see something like this: - - -But all that information is not visible to me the rest of the time. - - -[^1]: With the 3G spectrum shutdown this is increasingly the case in remote locations like Ocracoke. - -I still use them. I keep open some tabs for the stock market because those are really applications running the browser. - -## Intentional computing. - - -"We want to complexify our lives. We don’t have to, we want to. We wanted to be harried and hassled and busy. Unconsciously, we want the very things we complain about. For if we had leisure, we would look at ourselves and listen to our hearts and see the great gaping hold in our hearts and be terrified, because that hole is so big that nothing but God can fill it. - -"Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our author and our end. Now what does the world think about? Never about that, but about dancing, playing the lute, singing, writing verse, tilting at the ring, etc., and fighting, becoming king, without thinking what it means to be a king or to be a man. - -"I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room." - Blaise Pascal - -############# - -I believe that screens are a distraction from life. - -There is no life in a screen. Life is what happens when we look away from this screen at the actual world around us. Perhaps it is strange to say this on a screen. Still, it feels like a truth we all know. We all used to know. At least, anyone over 35 knows. It is our task to carry this memory through. I am writing this for other people who want to spend less time staring at screens and more time not. - -## Rules for Screens, Level Two - -### Rule One: Prefer the Analog. - -Here's the basic idea: only use a computer when you absolutely have to. Every time I reach for my laptop or phone I force myself pause and think—do I need to do this right now? Yes? Okay, but could I do whatever it is I am about to do *without* a screen? Quite often the answer is yes. So that's what I do. I use some analog tool instead. - -I write for a living, so when I am going to open my laptop chances are, I am about to write. For work, I do write on the laptop. There's too much to reference and link to not use a laptop. When I'm writing for myself though, I prefer to write things like this in a notebook with a pen. - -### Rule Two: Batch Your Queries - -Writing is as least as much research as it is actual typing, and this tends to be where I really get sucked in to the endlessness of the network. In an effort to cut down on the amount of time I spend "researching" stuff that I probably don't really need to research, I now write down questions on paper instead of immediately typing them in duckduckgo. Only later do I set aside some time to go back to this list and actually look things up. - -From this I have learned something important: I am not a very good judge of what is important to me. - -A lot of the things, *a lot*—like almost all—of the things I go to look up on the internet are utterly trivial things I don't really care about once the two seconds where I did care have passed. I am forced to confront this every time I go over my day's list of stuff to look up later. Of all the things I write down in my notebook to look up later, I actually end up looking up maybe one in twenty. Probably less. I have no real way to catalog how much screen time this has saved me, but it feels like it must be ages. - -Once I've exhausted all avenues of analog deferment I still give myself one more ultimatium that I call the Outkast ultimatum: forever ever? Is it really really that important? Right now? Really, really? It might pass. It will probably pass. No? Okay then. - -## Rule Three: Single-Task Computing - -At the end of the day.What greets me when I open my laptop is an entirely blank screen. Well, actually it's a gloomy, slightly blurry picture I took a long time ago somewhere deep in the lagoons of the Florida panhandle. The point though is that I don't leave any applications open, ever. This encourages what I call single task computing: open an application, complete a task, close the application and then the laptop. The task is done, the last page has been reached so you shut the book, so to speak. - -This is the opposite of how we approach computers much of the time, but I find that trying to multitask on a computer ends up with me distracted by all things shiny and next thing I know an hour has gone by. Single task computing prevents this, but you have to be vigilante. Applications encourage the opposite—especially web browsers, where the tab essentially functions as an ever expanding task list. - -Here's where I will suggest something heretical: hide your tab bar. Go into the browser's View menu and disable the tab bar. One tab, one task. - -To understand how this can be powerful I have to take a technical detour. The application I do my writing in is called Vim. It is very old. Old enough that it predates the idea of a tab. Instead it has something it calls buffers. They're similar to the tabs in modern applications, but with one important difference: a buffer is a stack of pages with *only the top one visible*. - -Tabs are always visible. Tabs are a todo list you don't need. Tabs will will steal your attention. Buffers will not. To change buffers requires a conscious decision and effort on your part. You have to call up a list of buffers and then switch to one. You will never accidentally switch to another buffer. I have used this to my advantage as a way to focus when writing for years. - -You know that expression out of sight out of mind? That's buffers. For example I am typing this right now on a screen that looks like this: - -That is about as uni-tasky as I've been able to make a screen. - -What I've really done here is recreate the typewriter, and no one has ever accuse a typewriter of stealing their attention. - -**Rule four: Use The Machine Lest It Use You** - -The reason for single task computing is to make sure you always have a task when you sit down to your laptop. Do not use the machine if you don't need to. When you do that the machine is using you. There is no such thing as entertainment. Entertainment is a word designed to hide the truth: you are poring precisions hours of your life into the machine. Why does the machine want your life? I have no idea, but observation suggests it does. Don't give your life away. - -**Rule 5: Balance the digital with the Analog** - -This started as a throwaway ending, but in the months since I started experimenting with this I've come to believe that this is the most important rule: every time you interact with the digital, make a point to spend the same amount of time not interacting with the digital. If I edit photos for this site for 30 minutes, then I go and either make something tangible, write in a notebook, draw a postcard, whatever it may be for 30 minutes. If you don't feel like making something than go for a walk or play with your kid, or lie down in your yard if you have one. Read a book in a hammock. Just do something that does not involve a screen. And do it for the same amount of time you spent on the screen. - -When I started doing this I found myself at a loss for what to do with myself, which was kind of terrifying. Was I really that used to mindlessly staring at a screen that I had nothing else to do? What did we use to do before we had screens? This is the advantage of being part of an analog generation—the last of those for a while—you can think back to the pre-digital era, retrace your steps as it were. This ended up unlocking a whole flood of memories that I walked through in great detail in meditation, most of that is not relevant here, but one thing that came back to me was that we used to publish zines. Now that's one of the things I've been doing with what I think of as "my analog time". Another things I did was type, on a typewriter. I'm on the hunt for a good super compact model. Yeah, I know it's like the worst hipster cliche. I don't care. I'm craving that analog pounding of the keys. The sound of something happening in the world. - - - -In order to tell you how I have managed to reduce my screen time it helps to look at the bigger picture. Let's start with the book. - -If the screen is a distraction from life than so is a book. A good book is every bit as hard to put down and distracting from the shared human existence we call life as a screen. And yet the book feels less problematic. I think this is because a book has borders. I has hard limits. - -A book is a single world. The boundary of its world is well-defined. A book ends on the final page. Its depth is limited. We known our way in, we find our way out just as easily. - -The story on the screen offers unlimited depth. A world without beginning or end. There is no final webpage. This is why we fret over the distractions of screens and never worry about books. - -Two things started me on a path to less screen time. One was the birth of my children, which were a kind of sledge hammer reminder that nothing on a screen matters. None of it actually exists and none of it matters. The people in front of you, they matter. Not just the people though, the tangible world, the world of artifacts you can hold in your hand. This is what matters. I have not watched a television show or movie since they were born. That screen was easy to stop. - -The other thing that really changed my relationship to the screen world was moving into the bus. This was another sledge hammer reminder that the physical world is what matters. Given a choice between staring at a computer screen at night and sitting around a fire, staring up at the night sky, is, well, not even a choice. - -These two things greatly reduced how much time I spent using a screen. But then we left the road and rented a house for a year and something happened. I went back to staring at the screen way too much. All that distance I thought I had created? Gone with single change of behavior. I slid right back into those old habits of tucking the kids in and sitting down at my desk to stare at a screen. - -I could defend myself and say that I wrote a novel in that time, but that only really accounts for maybe half the time I spent staring at that screen. And now that we're back in the road, I've once again had to wean myself off. I still pick campfires over screens, but like most of us I imagine, I still spend way to much time on a screen. - -So how do you stop yourself from getting sucked into a world without end? -I want to spend less though, and so I've been working at this for some time, finding ways to not just get off the screen, but handle the things that I used to do on a screen, without needing a screen. This time I don't want to relapse should I be away from life on the road for some reason. - -To lessen the time I spend using a screen I realized I needed to turn it into a book. I needed to put boarders on it and make sure it has a last page. In order to defeat that time sucking endless form of the network we're going to have to put some endings in place. - -What I've done is to create many endings. Endings for every beginning. The best ending in this case is the beginning that never begins. Here are my five rules for avoiding the digital. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -I have no way to measure how much time browsing in a single window with buffers bidden away until I need them has saved me, but again I believe it is significant. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Now I do leave some background tabs open, mostly investing related tabs because I am a fairly active trader and I like to run through my charts every morning. But the rest of the day, I don't see those tabs. - -I got to thinking about this recently because I was out on Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks for a while where the cell reception was awful[^1]. It was a struggle to load a webpage. I would type in a URL, go boil water for tea, make the tea, come back and the page still hasn't loaded. It was bad enough that I pulled out w3m, the text based browser that started life in 1995 and hasn't changed much since. I opened it up and low and behold, it worked. It rendered the text I needed, I got the info I wanted, and it didn't take long using the exact same connection that wouldn't load in a graphical browser. - -Enthused I set out to figure out how to use w3m. How, for example, did I open a link in a tab? Well, you can do that, but before I figured out how I learned that w3m uses the concept of buffers, much like Vim. Because I am lazy and familiar with buffers from Vim, I just configured a shortcut to show the w3m buffer list and I was on my way. I never open links in a new tab anymore, I know that all the previous tabs I've visited are there in the buffer list. - -Now buffers might seem like tabs in some since, and perhaps like browsing history in another sense. They're actually neither for a variety of reasons, but the most important difference is that a buffer is a stack of pages with *only the top one visible*. Tabs are always visible. Tabs will steal your attention, buffers will not unless you choose to view the list of them. You know that expression out of sight out of mind? That's buffers. I have no way to measure how much time browsing in a single window with buffers bidden away until I need them has saved me, but again I believe it is significant. - - -prefer analog over digital -batch your queries before going digital -single task computing - buffers are better than tabs - get in and get out. - - - -single task computing. open an application, do a task and then close it. I think this is ostly a web browser problem for most people, bug for me it's a terminal problem as well, there is always something I could be doing in a terminal, there is always one open. Just like there is always a browser windows open. But what if I worked differently, what if I close out that windows when the task was done? What if I put an edge on it? Gave it a shape that also meant an end to it? Would that just be more beginnings and endings, or would that maybe mean a greater space between myself and the machine? - - - -Fail gracefully when possible (an elevator is still stairs even when broken mitch hedburg joke) - -Complex systems are inherently fragile. The optimization that makes the system "easy" to use, also generally eliminates the redundancies and graceful degadation that makes a system resilient. - - -Much ink was spilled, many hands wrung, many complaints lodged about our addiction to screens. All this worry though, about what? I think the answer is distraction. This is what western philosophers—and ordinary people like you and I—have worried about for centuries. The only difference to day is the degree for distraction. Why distraction? I think distraction bothers us because it keeps us from attending to the adventure of human existence. - -At least I for one, want to spend more time attending to the adventure of shared human existence than I do screens. Screens are ultimately both addictive and boring. - -Interestingly though, what's true of a screen is also true of a book. After all a good book is every bit as hard to put down and as distracting from shared human existence as a screen. And yet the book feels less problematic. I think this is because a book has borders, has hard limits, has edges. - -A book's distraction from life is much less consuming than a computer screen. It is a single story. Its depth is limited. A book ends on the final page. The boundary of its world is well-defined. We known our way in, we find our way out just as easily. - -## Back to X11 - -Earlier this year I upgraded my Lenovo laptop with a new, larger SSD. Video takes a staggering amount of disk space. In the process I decided to completely re-install everything. It had probably been at least five years since I've done that. - -Normally I would never say anything about this because really, the software you run is just a tool. If it works for you then that's all that matters. However, since I once disregarded this otherwise excellent advice and wrote about how [I use Arch Linux](https://luxagraf.net/src/why-i-switched-arch-linux) and [Sway](https://luxagraf.net/src/guide-to-switching-i3-to-sway), I feel somewhat obligated to follow up and report that I still love Arch, but I no longer run Sway or Wayland. - -I went back to X.org. Sorry Wayland, but much as I love Sway, I did not love wrestling with MIDI controller drivers, JACK, video codecs and hardware acceleration and all the other elements of an audio/video workflow in Wayland. It can be done, but it's more work. I don't want to work at getting software to work. I'm too old for that shit. - -I want to open a video and edit. I want to plug in a microphone and record. If it's any more complicated than that—and it was for me in Wayland with the mics I own -- I will find something else. Again, I really don't care what my software stack is, so long as I can create what I want to create with it. - -So I went back to running Openbox with a Tint2 status bar. And you know what... I really like it. - -Wayland was smoother, less graphically glitchy, but meh, whatever. Ninety-five percent of the time I'm writing in Vim in a Urxvt window. I even started [browsing the web in the terminal](https://luxagraf.net/src/console-based-web-browsing-w3m) half the time. I need smooth scrolling and transitions like I need a hole in my head. - -That said, I did take all of Sway's good ideas and try as best I could to replicate them in Openbox. So I still have the same keyboard shortcuts and honestly, aside from the fact that Tint2 has more icons than Waybar, and creating "desktops" isn't dynamic, I can't tell much difference. Even my battery life seems to have improved in X11, and that's why I switched to Wayland in the first place, was the better battery life I was getting. Apparently that's not true with this laptop (a Lenovo Flex 5, as opposed to the X270, which does get better battery life under Wayland). - -pnyway, there you have it. X11 for the win. At least for me. For now. - -## How to Get Work Done on a $75 Tablet - -Turning a Fire 10 Tablet Into Something Useful - -Fresh out of the box Amazon's Fire tablets are useless. They're just firehoses designed to shove Amazon content down your throat. That's why Amazon sells them for as little as $55 for the 10-inch model. Technically it's $150, but it frequently goes on sale for around, and sometimes under, $75. The time to buy is major shopping holidays, Prime Day and Black Friday/Cyber Monday are your best bet. - -To do any work you'll also want the Finite keyboard. The tablet-keyboard bundle typically runs about $75-$120 depending on the sale. It's $200 not on sale. Don't do that, it's not worth $200. - -For $75 though, I think it's worth it. Once I strip the Amazon crap out and install a few useful apps, I have a workable device. The price is key for me. This is what I take when I head out to the beach or into the woods or up some dusty canyon for the day. It don't want to take my $600 laptop to those places. $75 tablet? Sure. Why not get it a little sandy here and there? So far (going on a year now), it's actually survived. Mostly. I did crack the screen, but it's not too bad yet. - -It lets me work in places like this, which happens to be where I am typing right now (picnic tables in the middle of nowhere are rare, but I'll take it). - -<img src="images/2023/2023-04-11_152857_st-george.jpg" id="image-3587" class="picwide" /> - -A Fire HD 10 is not the most pleasant thing to type on. The keyboard is cramped and there's no way to map caps lock to control, which trips me up multiple times a day. Still. After a year. But hey, it enables me to get outside and play and still get a little work done when I need to. - -For anyone else who might be interested, here's what I do. - -First you need to disable all of Amazon's crap apps. Before you so that though, you need to make sure you have a new launcher and a new web browser installed, because if you turn off Amazon's defaults before you have new ones you will have nothing and you'll be stuck. There are millions of browsers and launchers for Android. I happen to like Vivaldi as a web browser, which you can download from UptoDown.com (which is officially supported by Vivaldi). For a launcher I like [Nova Launcher](https://nova-launcher.en.uptodown.com/android). - -Once you have those it's time to start shutting off all the Amazon apps and services. To do that I use [these instructions](https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/guide-no-root-remove-amazon-apps-on-fire-10-hd-2019.4009547/) from the XDA forums. You need to install the adb developer tool, connect that to your fire, and then run a series of commands. The commands themselves are a touch of of date in the XDA article, so to disable some apps on newer tablets you may have to search for the new app names. - -Once you've eliminated Amazon from the Fire HD 10, you have a base on which to build. Over the years I've purposefully built a workflow based around very simple tools that are available everywhere. If it can run a terminal emulator, I can probably work on it. On Android devices, the app I need is Termux. That and a web browser and I can get by. All of those work fine without the Google Play Store installed. If you do need apps from the Play Store I wrote a tutorial on [how to install the Google Play Store](https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-install-google-play-store-on-amazon-fire-tablet/) for Wired that you can use. - -For writing and accessing my documents and other files I use Termux, which is available via F-Droid. I write prose and code the same way, using Vim and Git. I track changes using Git and push them to a remote repo I host on a server. When I get back to my laptop, I can pull the work from the tablet and pickup where I left off. To make everything work you also need the Termux:API, which for some reason is a separate app. - -To set things up the way I like them I install Termux and then configure ssh access to my server. Once that's setup I can clone my dotfiles and setup Termux to mirror the way my laptop is setup. I can also [install git annex]() and clone my documents and notes folders. I don't often access these from the tablet, but I like to have them just in case. The last thing I do is clone my writing repository. That gets me a basic setup, but there are some things I do to make life on Android smoother. - -First install the termux-api package with: - -~~~ -pkg install termux-api -~~~ - -This gives you access to a shell command `termux-clipboard-set` and `-get` so you can copy and past from vim. I added this to my Termux .vimrc and use control copy in visual mode to send that text to the system clipboard: - -~~~ -vnoremap <C-x> :!termux-clipboard-set<CR> -vnoremap <C-c> :w !termux-clipboard-set<CR><CR> -inoremap <C-v> <ESC>:read !termux-clipboard-get<CR>i -~~~ - -That works for updating this site, but some sites I write for want rich text, which I generate using [Pandoc](https://pandoc.org) and then open in the browser using this script: - -~~~ -#!/data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/sh -cat $1 \ - | pandoc -t html --ascii > /storage/emulated/0/Download/output.html \ - && darkhttpd /storage/emulated/0/Download --daemon --addr 127.0.0.1 \ - && termux-open http://localhost:8080/output.html -~~~ - -I saved that as rtf.sh, made it executable with `chmod +x`, and put it on my path (which in my setup, includes `~/bin`). Then I run it with whatever file I am working on. - -~~~ -~/./bin/rtf.sh mymarkdown.txt -~~~ - -That'll open a new window in my browser with the formatted text and then I can copy and paste to where it needs to go. Note that you'll need to install [darkhttpd](https://github.com/emikulic/darkhttpd) (a very simple web server) with `pkg install darkhttpd`. - -####Issues and Some Solutions - -There's no `esc` key on the Finite keyboard, which is a problem for Vim users. I get around it by mapping `jj` to escape in my .vimrc. - -The one thing I have not solved is the capslock key. I am so used to having that set as both Control and Esc that I hit it several times a day and end up not only not running whatever keycombo shortcut I thought I was about to run, but also activating caps lock and thus messing up the next commands as well because they're now capital letter commands not lowercase. I've considered just prying off the key so it'd be harder to hit, but so far I haven't resorted to that. - -I've tried quite a few key remapping apps but none of them have worked consistently enough to rely on them. Such is life. It's $75, what do want really? I get by. I write and edit in vim, copy/paste things to the browser. That's all I need. Again, part of the reason I can work on a tiny $75 computer is that I have chosen to learn and rely on simple tools that work just about anywhere. - -That said, this thing is not perfect. The keyboard is prone to double typing letters and also not registering a space bar press. I end up spending more time editing when I write with it. I also constantly reach for the trackpad that isn't there. Also, sometimes I get to the middle of the woods and realize I don't have the latest version of the document I want to edit. Git comes to the rescue then though, I just create a new branch, work, push the branch to the remote repo, and then merge it to master by hand when I get back to my laptop. - -If you don't do everything in a terminal you might be able to still get something similar set up using other offline-friendly tools. I'm sure it's possible I just have no need so I haven't explored it. Anyway, if there's something you want to know, or you want me to try to see if it might work for you, feel free to email me, or leave a comment. - - -## Running Arch on Server - -The big tricky part for me is Postgresql, the database that powers this site behind the scenes. Major updates, e.g. postgres-15 -> postgres-16 require manual intervention. For this reason it's essential to make sure pacman doesn't automatically update postgres. I open `/etc/pacman.conf` and set it to ignore postgres: - -~~~ -IgnorePkg=postgresql -~~~ - -Then I periodically check to see if there's a major update available for postgres by looking at the Arch package: - -Then I use the [instructions from the arch wiki](https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PostgreSQL#Upgrading_PostgreSQL) to upgrade postgres: - -> 1) While the old database cluster is still online, collect the initdb arguments used to create it. Refer to #Initial configuration for more information. -> -> 2) Stop postgresql.service. (Check the unit status to be sure that PostgresSQL was stopped correctly. If it failed, pg_upgrade will fail too.) -> -> 3) Upgrade postgresql, postgresql-libs, and postgresql-old-upgrade. -> Rename the old cluster directory, then create a new cluster and temporary working directory: -> -> **Note: If you had not emptied /var/lib/postgres/olddata from a previous upgrade, do it before moving the content of the latest /var/lib/postgres/data there.** -> -> # mv /var/lib/postgres/data /var/lib/postgres/olddata -> # mkdir /var/lib/postgres/data /var/lib/postgres/tmp -> # chown postgres:postgres /var/lib/postgres/data /var/lib/postgres/tmp -> [postgres]$ cd /var/lib/postgres/tmp - -> Initialize the new cluster using the same initdb arguments as were used for the old cluster: -> [postgres]$ initdb -D /var/lib/postgres/data --locale=C.UTF-8 --encoding=UTF8 --data-checksums - -> Upgrade the cluster, replacing PG_VERSION below, with the old PostgreSQL version number (e.g. 15): -> [postgres]$ pg_upgrade -b /opt/pgsql-PG_VERSION/bin -B /usr/bin -d /var/lib/postgres/olddata -D /var/lib/postgres/data - - -Note that, if you use the postgis extention like I do, in addition to postgresql-old-upgrade, you also need postgis-old-upgrade installed. That package is rarely updated so I end up editing the package file by hand most of the time and re-installing it. -> -https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/postgis-old-upgrade - - - diff --git a/scratchold.txt b/scratchold.txt deleted file mode 100644 index aefff2f..0000000 --- a/scratchold.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2078 +0,0 @@ -The energy of chaos is required to change the existing order. - -# Scratch - - - ---- - -There is an underground movement of people united around a common goal of relocalizing life. Many, probably not all, but the examples I know of anyway, of the people driving this movement have embraced what is sometimes called a front porch culture. That is, a culture of staying in one place all your life, of being a part of your community, and so on. I completely support this, which might seem odd for someone who lives in an RV, but I see what we do as a similar kind of localization. Localization need not be literal, at least not for everyone. Every culture everywhere - ---- - -And stupidity combined with greed and arrogance is frankly more dangerous than deliberate evil. Someone who's evil and smart usually has the common sense to know when the risk of blowback is getting too high, and backs down fast when that happens in order to save his own skin so he can enjoy his nasty pleasures and ill-gotten gains. Somebody who's arrogant, greedy, and stupid doesn't do that, and such people go charging ahead and create major disasters that cause much more suffering and misery, and get dragged down with their victims. - ---- - -Art is the transmission of a feeling across time. The artist feels something that drives him or her to make something and then the viewer experiences a feeling when they see or read or otherwise interact with that thing that the artist made. Those may be very different feelings, the feeling in the artist and in the viewer, but that thing that is making that connection is, I think, art as we define it in western culture. There are different conceptions of art. Even our culture at earlier periods had different definitions. And there are still artists who would probably disagree with this and say that the purpose of art is actually the expression of the divine, but I would still argue that it's the feeling of the divine that drives the artist to create. So it may not be that they're trying to communicate their own feeling, but that feeling is still the driving impulse behind the creation of the thing. And then, like I think of cooking, and I think well, at it's best cooking is exactly what I just described, but then also other times I am just scrambling these eggs so the kids can eat before Corrinne starts work at the table. - ---- - -Working in Crawford quote: - -Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soul Craft captures this feeling in a way that no other books I've read manages. Crawford defines this desire, this need to be capable of repair as a desire to escape the feeling of dependence. What he called the Spirited Man, becomes a kind of archetype of the antidote to passive consumption. Passive consumption displaces agency, argues Crawford. One is no longer master of one's stuff because one does not truly understand how stuff works. "Spiritedness, then," writes Crawford, "may be allied with a spirit of inquiry, through a desire to be master of one’s own stuff. It is the prideful basis of self-reliance." - -In the years since Shop Class was published I have witnessed a convergence of two worlds, the collision of the spirit of inquire that looks to books and the spirit of inquiry that wants to works in the real world, to fix things, to get one's self moving down the road again. I see this in the work of Van Neistat, who explicitly took the Spirited Man mantle and ran with it. But also in the thousand people without filmmaking skills who are quietly working in their yards, in their garages, at the side of the road. Shade tree mechanics. Tinkerers. Spirited men and women who want first and foremost to understand, to expand their understanding of the world around them, to know how to use the tools we toolmakers have created for ourselves. - -I think this goes the heart of the question of existence... why are we here? Are we here to optimize our days in service to some unknown thing are we here to be entertained? Or are we here to understand the world around us, to take part in the co-creation of our world? Are we along for the ride or are we standing at the helm, trimming the sails and pointing the bow into uncharted territory? - -Crawford writes that the spirited man "hates the feeling of dependence, especially when it is a direct result of his not understanding something. So he goes home and starts taking the valve covers off his engine to investigate for himself. Maybe he has no idea what he is doing, but he trusts that whatever the problem is, he ought to be able to figure it out by his own efforts. Then again, maybe not—he may never get his valve train back together again. But he intends to go down swinging." - -This was the spirit in which I set off in the bus. I had no idea how the engine worked or if I would be able to keep it running, but I intended to go down swinging. - - - - -Passive consumptions displaces agency. One is no longer masters of one's stuff but a servant of its makers. - ---- - -I don't want to report stories, I want to live them. - -Have your own code. Not a contractors code. Not any organizations code. Your own code that means something to you, that makes you take pride in your work. - -When you live in a small space you have to be organized. Everything needs a place. Even if that place is to just shove it in a messy cabinet and close the door quickly. Otherwise you space will be unbearable. - -I think after a while the novelty of anythin wears off. even living on the road. or perhaps its that I felt the need to dial back the novelty a little. first we returned to places we'd already been, but that wasn't the answer. Then we went to new places, but moved much slower. settled in a bit. but that wasn't entirely the answer either. it wasn't until we enrolled the kids in juijitsu that i realized, oh, this is what i am supposed to do. i am supposed to look more closely at these places. to befriend the people within in them, to understand them to a greater degree. I do not know why, I just know that this is part of it. i still do not have all of it, it is still not perfected, but every day that passes i get new ideas and things fit more. - -as a spin off of the moving slower idea i came to realize that okay, i have achieved the thing I set out to do. we live on the road. now what? it wasn't until i sat twith this question for a long time in meditation that something like an answer began to form. and a big part of the answer was, now you make stuff. now you write, now you build, now you create, now you fix. now you do all the things you have always done, but you find a way to do them on them within the constraints of how you life now. Fewer tools, less space, in some cases i've added some ttools that seem strange at first glance. - -the answer is to put the art back in. to blend the books and the life and use them to make some kind of art. mechanical, analog art. and digital recordings to supplement it. but that mechnaical stuff needs to happen. it has been missing too long. - ---- -Safety mania and death phobia are signs of a disconnection from purpose and passion. If you have nothing more important than your own life, then preserving life is left as the only purpose. Because our civilizational answer to “Why are we here?” has unraveled, many of us individually have trouble answering that question too, for the individual story draws from the collective. - -OK, I realize I may have risen to too high an altitude for the practical purpose of preventing the next bout of pandemania. So I will end with this: We can reduce our general susceptibility to fear-mongering by reducing the levels of fear current in society. A society ridden with fear will acquiesce to any policy that promises them safety. How do we reduce ambient levels of fear? There is no single answer. Besides, each one of us already knows how. - -https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/pandemania-part-5 - ---- - -For Midgley, the post-Enlightenment myths that orient us in the modern world are so potent because they base their authority, paradoxically, on the myth of mythlessness. That is, the Enlightenment project was, among other things, committed to overcoming the restrictive chains of religious dogma, inherited belief systems, and, yes, grand narratives of mythology. But this was only to change one set of answers to our biggest questions for a host of others. We can’t escape myths; we only exchange them. And some of the post-Enlightenment myths by which we continue to live tell a tale of humans as autonomous and atomized beings, of an inert world of knowable laws scrutinized by the detached and disinterested rational gaze, of an environment whose value is reduced to commodification and utility, and of a human species that is on some ineluctable frog-march of progress. - -But myths are not just intellectual abstractions. They manifest in the real. The industrial—and arguably now digital—revolutions and the built world of mass manufacturing, global trade networks of shipping lanes and rail lines and interstate highways, and the ever-increasing consumption of fossil fuels and the mining of scarce and precious resources in whose name we will even wage international war are, in part, the physical embodiment of this deeply ingrained post-Enlightenment mythology. What we make reveals to us what we love and believe. And over centuries, these lived, incarnated mythologies shape our posture and stance to the world. - -https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2022/08/what-in-the-world-is-the-world-a-review-of-this-sacred-life-humanitys-place-in-a-wounded-world/ - ---- - -Early in my blogging days, I reflected a bit on the nature of technology criticism. In my view, the technology critic was not necessarily motivated by a love of their object in the same way that a food critic or film critic might be. “The critic of technology is a critic of artifacts and systems that are always for the sake of something else,” I observed. To put it another way, we run into problems precisely when we start treating technology as an end rather than a means to an end. This is not to say that we can’t be legitimately impressed with technical achievements on their own terms, of course, or admire the skill that makes them possible. But we do well to also judge technologies according to the greater ends they help us realize and critique them to the degree that they undermine the achievement of such ends. - -https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/what-is-to-be-done-fragments - ---- - -Paul Kingsnorth on solutions: - -Climate change is a great example of that. It’s really interesting to me that we talk about climate change as if it were somehow disconnected from all the other things that are happening to the planet. The industrial economy’s assault on the earth, which has been going on for a couple hundred years, has basically wrecked the health of the planet in all sorts of different ways. And there are a lot of things happening — large rates of extinction, soil erosion, ocean pollution, a changing climate, all sorts of smaller, subtler things as well — but it’s climate change that’s just a one-off, almost self-contained phenomenon that has somehow grabbed the headlines and has become this enormous thing that we somehow have to stop. That’s the problem, so what’s the solution? And the solution inevitably is always technological, because nobody can think about anything else. That’s the way we think in our culture: we’ve created the problem with technology, so we must have to solve it with technology. So the issue has boiled down to, the wrong kind of gas is going up into the atmosphere, so we need a fuel technology that doesn’t put it up there, as if that were the problem, rather than the way we’re living our lives, the entirety of the economy, the value system that it’s based on. It’s the kind of notion that we’re extractive individuals and we just live in a market system. All of these complex things have happened over the last hundred years where we’ve completely retooled the way we live — we’ve disconnected ourselves from nature and culture and community, and we’ve made ourselves consumer individuals living in a machine. And the problem then is seen as, the Machine is using the wrong fuel, so let’s do something else. It’s not going to work, anyway, but even if it did work, what would the solution look like? Is that the world we want to be living in? Are the values correct? Is our disconnection okay as long as it doesn’t pollute the atmosphere? Is it okay to live in this kind of radical individualistic machine world as long as we’re not putting carbon up into the air? - -It’s very difficult to ask the bigger questions because, as you say, relentlessly, as soon as you do, there’s an immediate backlash, which usually comes in completely familiar clichéd language —“So you’re saying we should go back and live in caves?” etc. And there’s not really much you can do with that. - -it’s not neutral technology, it’s only designed for one thing. A gun only does one thing. But a smartphone is not neutral technology. If you use that thing, you are going to get addicted to that thing, you’re going to be taken into a certain way of life, you’re going to be acting in a certain way, you’re undoubtedly going to have your brain rewired by your use of it. Yeah, sure, you could be using it to promote organic farming rather than pornography, but you’re still on your phone all day, and so is everybody else who has to do that, and you’re still pumping carbon into the atmosphere — but more to the point, you rewire your whole life. Nobody has time to go folk dancing when they’re on their phone all the time. It doesn’t matter how well-intentioned you are. - -I perpetually would like to get the internet out of my house, but then I wouldn’t be able to earn a penny, so I can’t. So there it is! So we have to make these choices. I would genuinely like to live without the internet, but I have no idea how I would feed my children, so I can’t at the moment. So there it is. But you know, maybe it’s just the process of drawing lines, like it is with anything else. You just say, okay, I’m not going over this line. It’s just a thing I’m not going to do. So I’ve said for a long time I’m not having a smartphone. I’m just not going to have one. And I don’t care what that means. It’s inconvenient for me in all sorts of ways, but I’m just not going to do it, so that’s that. I don’t have to think about it. And that’s one of my lines. There are things I’m just not going to do, that I’m not going to compromise on, and then there are other things I go, Well, okay, I have to do that because we’re all living in the world. So I think that’s probably the way to think about it. - -https://mereorthodoxy.com/following-christ-in-the-machine-age-a-conversation-with-paul-kingsnorth/ - ---- - - - - -# Stories to Tell - -## What Happened to 'How Are You'? - -One used to meet up with an old friend and ask, “How are you?” And get a little recap of how that person has actually been. Today, when we ask how someone is, it’s quite common to get back a “BUSY!” Yes, of course. Busy. - -I’m not asking about the tempo of your life, I’m asking about you. I’m interested in you. Tell me about you. - -We’ve come to somehow equate worth with how harried we are. We are the VIPs of our own little worlds, engrossed in the importance of our serious affairs. Busy! So busy! To me, this busyness is evidence of a mismanaged life. If all I can say to someone when they ask me what’s happening in my life is, “BUSY!” I’m doing a poor job of it. It’s like a thermometer with the temperature climbing, a little tell of something going askew. - -We can have much to do, deadlines and meals and kiddos and never ending tasks, but that doesn’t mean we need to feed the busy monster. We don’t have to allow frenetic energy to drive us into that whirlwind of tasks. It’s not helpful. I’ve learned that my perspective truly does determine how I show up in my life. Who I am to my people. How I experience my time here. By a shift in that perception - say from focusing on the overwhelm to one of gratitude, everything changes. - -## Fire Notes: Seeking the Sun - -People have forgotten how important the sun is. You can die from lack of sun. - -## Gurdjieff Do It By Hand - - -Gurdjieff notion that you should do a task by hand. if you have to dig a ditch you should do it and dig it by hand because there's an opportunity there for spiritual growth. if you're offloading it to a machine you're losing that opportunity for spiritual growth. if we offload tasks to machines we lose the opportunities that they have for spiritual growth and we may not fully understand the consequences of offloading things to technology because we'll never go through it to see what Spiritual Development we might have had if we had done it ourselves - -## Collapse notes ---- -Other Owen, and for good reason! But that’s an important part of what I was talking about. A market economy depends on the fundamental agreement that the seller will provide the buyer with a product worth buying. Now that corporations by and large no longer do this, the market is collapsing, and they have no idea what to do about it — since listening to consumers and providing them with what they need and want is nowhere in the modern corporate vocabulary. --JMG - - -Making sense of the ideas of one great culture from within another great culture is notoriously hard. (It’s an interesting detail of history, for example, that the first two European scholars to study the I Ching both went incurably insane.) Thus I don’t claim to be able to sound the depths of either of the two future cultures I’ve sketched out here; I was raised in a culture weighed down by the Faustian veneer, and I live in a region that mediates between western Europe and the North American heartland. (The ground under my feet is part of the same long-vanished continent as the western half of Britain.) Being who, when, and where I am, I’m poised unsteadily between two great cultures, the fading Faustian culture and the future American culture. That’s part of the hand I was dealt when I was born. - -That awkward position, between the dissolving forms of the Faustian vision and the first stirrings of tamanous culture, seems to be becoming common among my American and Canadian readers, for what it’s worth. (I haven’t yet seen it among my European readers, which comes as no surprise—again, each great culture is rooted in its own land.) Here in North America, the Faustian veneer seems to be cracking very rapidly just now, outside those classes that have adopted Faustian thoughtways as the basis for their identity and their power. The widening gap between the Faustian managerial caste and the post-Faustian masses is among the major facts in American public life today, and it accounts for a great deal of the total incomprehension with which each side regards the other. - -One of the chief questions in my mind right now is how that gap will evolve in the years ahead. Most great cultures, once they leave their ages of reason, wind up their creative eras, and settle into stasis, can expect a long slow decline—in cases such as ancient Egypt and traditional China, this lasted for many centuries. The surge toward infinity is so central to the Faustian ethos, however, that the total failure of the will to power that drives it may send the nations of the West down another, harsher route. We’ll talk about that in two weeks. --JMG - ---- - -## November Sun - -We had an uneventful drive down from Dallas. We took it easy, making leisurely lunch stops in small towns along way. In the end it took two days, we stopping off in the middle at a place called Lake Somerville State Park. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-11-05_133349_goose-island-sp.jpg" id="image-3195" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-11-06_090224_goose-island-sp.jpg" id="image-3196" class="picwide" /> - -It was somewhat warmer that first night out of Dallas, but the real heat started the next day. By the time we rolled into the low country around Corpus Christi it was hot and humid. I was ready to dive into the ocean and cool off. - -We rolled into Goose Island State Park in the midst of a November heat wave. Goose Island is actually on the bay side of Port Aransas, which dashed my hopes of a quick dip, but it was the only place we could get a campsite on short notice. The actual Gulf beaches were a 20 minute drive, with a quick ferry ride, away. There's nothing quite like a warm November day at the beach to make you feel like you're doing something right. Even the water temps were still in the 70s. - -<img src="images/2022/DSC08506.jpg" id="image-3197" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/DSC08507.jpg" id="image-3198" class="picwide" /> - -Unfortunately, shortly after we arrived the girls came down with a bit of a cold, and then Corrinne got sick too. To get the kids out of the bus a little (being sick in the bus is a crowded, unhappy experience), in the evenings I'd take them over to a place near the campground called The Big Tree. - -It was a bit like [the octopus tree in Huntington Beach](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/01/huntington-beach-birds), but the kids said the trees here were even better for climbing. The namesake tree was fenced off, but there were several others around that were fair game. We'd go over in the evenings for an hour or so, watch the sunset through the trees, and then walk over to watch the moon rise over the bay, before heading home to make dinner. - -<img src="images/2022/B0222465.jpg" id="image-3201" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/B0222468.jpg" id="image-3202" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/B0222475.jpg" id="image-3203" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-11-07_181356_goose-island-sp.jpg" id="image-3204" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-11-07_183606_goose-island-sp.jpg" id="image-3200" class="picwide" /> - -It's always funny to me how we fall into these little routines even on the road. Do the same thing three or four days in a row and it starts to feel like what you've always done. But weather like this, and sunsets like that, are a routine I'd never argue against. - - -## Halloween in the Big City - -After a few days relaxing, and catching our breath, so to speak, out at Lake Arrowhead, we headed into Dallas to visit family. Seems like a simple thing, drive 100 miles or so. I'm at the dump station adjusting the idle on the carburetor because it was running a little high. I do this in drive because if I pull the idle screw out too much I stall at lights. I get it where I want it, then I reach over and move the shifter into park. The shifter goes into park, but the transmission definitely does not. Sigh. - -I shut it off, chock the wheels so it won't go anywhere and finish dumping. I need to get out of the dump station in case someone else comes along to use it, but I'm in gear, so I can't just start the engine. I jump the relay with a screwdriver to get it going and limp over to an empty campsite. Take a deep breath, get to work. Everyone stood around and watched as I unscrewed the shifter from the dash. - -Once I got it off the dash I could see what had happened. The cable runs from the sifter to the transmission inside a sleeve, the sleeve clamps into the back of the shifter. A piece of metal had broken and the sleeve had slipped out so that when you moved the shifter, everything moved. All we needed to do was get the sleeve to stay in place again. The kids started offering ideas on how to hack it back together to get to Dallas. It was Halloween and they wanted to trick or treat with their Aunt and Uncle. If they had to figure out how to get the bus running again, then so be it. - -After playing around with it for a bit, I found that if I held it in place with one hand, I could shift with other. Not ideal, but it would get us down the road to Halloween so that's what we did. It's an automatic, so it's not like I shift much. We made it into town without incident. I shut off the engine and we got down to the important stuff, visiting with family, and of course, carving pumpkins. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-31_141334_halloween-plano.jpg" id="image-3183" class="picwide" /> - -This wasn't arbitrary carving either, there was a plan and then they went out and executed that plan. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-31_142848_halloween-plano.jpg" id="image-3185" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-31_142728_halloween-plano.jpg" id="image-3184" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-31_182601_halloween-plano.jpg" id="image-3187" class="picwide" /> - -The area Corrinne's sister lives in does Halloween at a level we had never really experienced before. Decorations all over the place, crowded streets. I went in the house below and can honestly say it was better decorated than any amusement park I have ever been in. At one point later in the night it was so crowded the kids had to get in line at each house just to get to the door to say tick or treat. It was fun, but that was about when we called it a night. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-31_185309_halloween-plano.jpg" id="image-3186" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-31_183857_halloween-plano.jpg" id="image-3188" class="picwide" /> - -"Can we do one with less drama?" - -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-31_183859_halloween-plano.jpg" id="image-3189" class="picwide" /> - -After Halloween I got busy figuring out how to fix the shift cable. It had obviously been welded once already. What broke was a piece of metal someone else had bent over and drilled out many years before. Redoing that would have been the way to go, but I didn't have access to a welder. I ended up cutting a piece of aluminum and screwing it in on both sides. So far, so good. When we stop later this year to pull out and rebuild the engine and transmission I'll probably weld up something more secure. - -We spent the week hanging out with family and visiting, lots of swimming, somehow there always seemed to be a dog or cat around for the kids to play with. I think this is the hardest trade off for them about living the way we do, they'd really like to have a dog. At least they get to visit with plenty dogs. - - - -## Going Down Swinging - -When we broke down in Lamar I kept thinking about a book I read almost a decade ago: *Shop Class as Soul Craft* by Matthew Crawford. The gist of the book is that the only way to escape a dependency on stuff is to be able to take it apart and repair it. There is empowerment in knowing how things work -- your stuff will never fail you because if it does break, you can repair it. - -Crawford calls this person who wants to fix their own stuff, The Spirited Man. Crawford writes: - ->[The Spirited Man] hates the feeling of dependence, especially when it is a direct result of his not understanding something. So he goes home and starts taking the valve covers off his engine to investigate for himself. Maybe he has no idea what he is doing, but he trusts that whatever the problem is, he ought to be able to figure it out by his own efforts. Then again, maybe not—he may never get his valve train back together again. But he intends to go down swinging. - -I kept staring at the bus's valve covers thinking about that line. Could I get my valve train back together again? There was only one way to find out. Still, I don't think I would have done it if Corrinne hadn't insisted that I could do it. The kids also seemed to think I could do it. You can do a lot more when people believe in you. So I decided I had to try, to go down swinging at least. - -After a week of thinking it over, weighing other options, and realizing no one else was going to do it for me, I dove in. The valve covers came off. - -Well, first I messaged my Uncle Ron and asked for advice before I dug in. He gave me some helpful pointers -- take lots of photos, label everything, keep track of where each rod came from, clean it all up with soap and water, coat it with a light coat of oil. Check. The best mechanics he told me are the ones that were patient and methodical -- take your time. Patient. Methodical. Check. - -I grabbed the four wrenches I'd need and started taking things apart. I pulled off the electrical components first. That's when I remembered the alternator problems I'd yet to deal with. Since I had to drain the radiator anyway, I decided to pull it out completely which would give me easier access to the alternator. I removed the alternator (the most difficult, stubborn bolt in the whole job) and had the local Napa bench test it. Dead. I ordered a new alternator. If you're going to go all the way, you better go all the way. - -Then I pulled off the carburetor and then the valve covers. I took a lot of photos, I cleaned and labeled everything. I pulled off the intake manifold (which was so much heavier than I expected), and then I took out the valve trains (the bus's are all on a long rod, which I took out as a single piece, so they stayed together nicely). Finally, the only thing left was the head. Ten more bolts and then I'd know. I won't lie, I was a little scared that I'd find a blown cylinder in there, but I didn't. The head came off and there was the gasket burnt through in pretty much the exact same place it blew last time. - -That told me something was wrong with more than the gasket. - -At Ron's suggestion I tested it with a feeler gauge, which is just a bunch of strips of metal of precise thicknesses, and discovered that the head and the block are each slightly warped in that spot. That's why we blew the gasket again, and it's why we'll blow the new one I installed eventually too. If there'd been a machine shop around I might have pulled the other head and had them both ground down, but there wasn't. Machine shops that were over 200 miles away in big cities told me it would be at least two weeks before they could get to it. - -All I wanted to do was get us back on the road and keep us there for a few more months. I *do* plan to rebuild or replace the engine next year, but now that I've done the head gasket, I feel like I want to do a rebuild myself too. But I want to do it where I can work on it without being stuck somewhere we don't really want do be. In the mean time we just need to squeeze a few thousand more miles out of it. In the end I put some copper coat on the block, the gasket, and the head to help seal it a little better and hoped for the best. - -Once I had everything I needed, I reversed everything I'd done, working from my notes, photos, and some videos, to get it all back together. It took me three days to get everything back in, though I imagine I could do it in two now that I have a better idea of how it all works. - -Then came the evening when I first fired it up. Deep down I knew it was going to work, but it was still a stressful moment. Especially with the amount of oil that had to burn off... so much oil... for a moment I thought we'd failed. It was too windy that day to go for a drive, but the next day after work I drove into town and filled up the tank before going down the highway for about 20 minutes. Amazingly, everything seemed to work. Well, almost everything. I must have bumped a wire somewhere because the headlights don't come on anymore, but if that's the only thing I screwed up... I can live with (and fix) that. - -Two days later we hit the road south. Unfortunately we had to abandon our plans to go to Tucson. There are too many hills between here and there. We didn't want to push it. If we're going to squeeze more life out this engine as it is, we're going to have to stick to the flat areas. So we pointed south, to Texas. It was a long drive to Amarillo, probably the longest, most nerve-wracking drive I've ever done in the bus. Dead into a 20-30 mile per hour headwind the whole way, with me obsessively opening the doghouse hatch, sure I would see the telltale smoke blowing out again... but I never did. We made it to Amarillo. We checked into The Big Texan RV park and took the kids to swim at the indoor pool. It was almost like a normal day on the road for us. - -With more wind in the forecast the following day we got a very early start, hitting the road when the light was just enough to not need headlights anymore. We got three hours of driving in before the wind came up hard again, but by then we were only an hour from Lake Arrowhead State Park, where we planned to spend the weekend. I managed to relax a little, I only lifted the doghouse half a dozen times on the drive. There was never any smoke coming out. So far so good. A few thousand more miles and I'll start to trust myself. - -We set up camp at Lake Arrowhead State Park, which was deserted, and settled into something we haven't had in a long time: silence. There was just the wind in the trees and the sounds of the kids playing. I forgot how peaceful it could be out here. It's good to be back. - - - -## Rodeos and Forts - -Three weeks flew by in Lamar, Colorado. It took a week just to figure out what we wanted to do about the engine and find someone willing to do it. Every mechanic was booked at least two weeks out, so we had plenty of time on our hands. I got caught up on work (and this site), but we also got out to see some of the local sights, like the local end-of-the-season rodeo. - -The community college in town has a rodeo team (natch) and hosts this rodeo, which pulled in competitors from all over the place -- Wyoming, South Dakota, there was even a contestant from Australia. We missed the first day, but Saturday I took the kids over to watch their first rodeo. - -We saw everything from goat tying and barrel racing to bull wrestling and riding, but I think the favorite was the bronco and bull riding. There's something about watching someone try to stay on a bucking animal that I think everyone can relate to, at least metaphorically. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-09_111708_lamar-rodeo.jpg" id="image-3153" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-09_113624_lamar-rodeo.jpg" id="image-3155" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-09_112450-1_lamar-rodeo.jpg" id="image-3154" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-09_120545_lamar-rodeo.jpg" id="image-3156" class="picwide" /> - - -It had been a long time since I'd been to a rodeo and forgot how physically brutal it is -- by the end of the day my spine was hurting from just watching those guys get thrown around like rag dolls. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-09_121155_lamar-rodeo.jpg" id="image-3157" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-09_131358_lamar-rodeo.jpg" id="image-3158" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-09_131633_lamar-rodeo.jpg" id="image-3159" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-09_132136_lamar-rodeo.jpg" id="image-3160" class="picwide" /> - -The first day we went no one managed to stay on a bull for the full 8 seconds. We had so much fun the kids insisted we go back Sunday morning to watch the final rounds of all the events, where the top three finishers from Fri and Sat squared off. This time one young man -- and only one -- managed to stay on for the full 8 seconds and went home with a trophy. - -The next weekend we headed about an hour west of Lamar to see something called Bent's Old Fort. Fort is a bit of a misnomer though, it was really a trading post, the largest on the mountain branch of the Santa Fe Trail. The only really. From the last signs of city in Missouri, to well into Mexico, Bent's Fort was the only permanent settlement. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_133823_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3165" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_134203_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3166" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_134406_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3167" class="picwide" /> - -The fort was abandoned in 1849, primarily due to a bad cholera outbreak. The original adobe structure long ago crumbled to dust, but at one point it housed a young man who recorded all the dimensions and architectural details in a journal. That was used as the basis for rebuilding the structure for Colorado’s centennial in 1976. There were only two when we were there, but much of the year it's well-staffed with historical re-enactors as well. - -I am going to sound like a broken record here, but once again what made Bent's Old Fort such a great experience was the fact that it isn't all roped off. The kids could touch things, feel the furs, try on a hat, pick up the super-sharp two-tined fork, walk up to the stove, work the blacksmith's bellows and loads more. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_125924_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3161" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_134702_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3169" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_130137_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3163" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_130109_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3162" class="picwide" /> -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_135840_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3170" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_130835_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3164" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -</div> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_140106_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3171" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_141930_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3174" class="picwide" /> - -It was quite a contrast to our other recent historical building visit, which was in Theodore Roosevelt National Park where you can walk in Teddy's original cabin and... look at all the stuff behind the plexiglas walls. That was so uninspiring I didn't even mention it. Apparently it pays to come to out of the way places if you want to interact with them. - -I particularly enjoyed the kitchen, the blacksmith's shop, and the carpenter's shop for this reason. All the tools were there, or in the case of the blacksmith, the tools to make the tools. The kitchen actually incorporated the original limestone fireplace stones into the floor, which were worn smooth from years of cooks working over them. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_141242_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3173" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-10-15_140241_lamar-bents-fort.jpg" id="image-3172" class="picwide" /> - -The spider pans and cast iron pots were mostly period correct, though I did notice a couple of Lodge brand skillets. Cast iron hasn't changed much over the years though so there isn't much difference between what they had in the 1840s and what I have in the bus right now. - -The other room I found fascinating was the council room, the room you would have been taken to when you first arrived at the fort, especially if you were from a local tribe or up from Mexico. The purpose was to sit down and present gifts to the visiting traders. This was expected, though where that expectation comes from I'm not quite sure. I assume it was just how the tribes had always done business. The purpose was to establish at least a business relationship, but often, from what I have read, friendships. - -It reminded me of some of my experiences in [India](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/india/) and [Nepal](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/nepal/), and for that matter much of the world. Commerce is not just an exchange of currency for goods, but a kind of relationship. You go in a shop in India or Nepal and you will have to bargain to establish a price, and you usually bargain over tea. If the shopkeeper thinks you might spend a lot of money you might also get some bread and chutney. - -These days it's very fashionable to hates capitalism, and I am not here to defend the current brand of capitalism, especially in the form of online commerce, but I do think it's worth remembering that where we are isn't the only place we could be. The free market was absolutely the driving force behind any frontier trade (the nearest regulatory body being thousands of miles away), and yet somehow what seems to have emerged is a system of exchange that had elements of a gift economy and elements of more traditional barter. Personally it sounds a lot nicer than what we have. I'd rather sit around a fire on bear skins talking than stare at a screen, clicking buttons until a bunch of plastic crap is delivered to my home. - -My contention would be that we will get back to Bent's Old Fort style trading sooner or later. The totally lack of humanity in today's commerce makes it deadening to our souls. That's usually a sign of something that's not long for the world. In some ways there are aspects of the old ways lingering in our current system. A lot of the hardware stores and auto parts stores I end up at have a bunch of older men sitting around on stools, talking. I've always preferred Napa auto parts for exactly this reason, you come in and pull up a stool. That's inviting. Except in smaller communities most of the stools are taken. There's a gathering of some kind in progress whenever I come in. Perhaps those men came in to buy some little thing, but I think mostly they're there to talk. I imagine those relationships may have started a little like the old council room gatherings at Bent's Old Fort, where there may have been a commercial origin to the relationship, but it didn't have to end there. - -Of course while musing on all this I ordered a bunch of engine gaskets from Rock Auto rather than going to the Napa just down the road. In my defense, Napa wanted almost double what I paid, and for inferior gaskets. I'm sure some traders never made it past the council room, after all. Not every deal is a good one. Still, after our trip out to the trading post, and thinking about these things, I started buying what I could locally here in Lamar, sitting on a stool in Napa. Sometimes I know I did pay more, but it was more enjoyable and if we want to find our way back to commerce with a bit of humanity, we might have to pay a little extra. I mean, who really wants to win a race to the bottom anyway? - - - - -## Broken Down In Lamar - -From Bear's Lodge we continued south, bound eventually for Tucson though we had a few weeks to get there. Unfortunately there isn't much between northern Wyoming and New Mexico. Or, let me rephrase that. Taking into account that the bus doesn't climb into the mountains, and Colorado is ridiculously expensive and crowded, there isn't much between northern Wyoming and New Mexico. - -The first night out we spent at a random fairground in southern Wyoming. The next day we drove onto to Brush, CO were we camped in a city park for the night. At that point we had originally planned to head to Trinidad to camp and then maybe take a day trip into the Rockies. As we talked about it though we realized our heart really wasn't in it. We decided to cut east and down into New Mexico that way instead. - -We were just outside of Lamar CO when the bus suddenly lurched and hesitated. At this point that's happened enough that I immediately knew the fuel pump was shot. Again. I pulled over and confirmed that there was air spitting into the fuel filter. I don't know if it's poor manufacturing, the amount of ethanol in gasoline or what, but I've been through three fuel pumps in five years. These days I carry a spare. I got under the bus and half and hour later the fuel system was back to normal. - -When I was changing the fuel pump I noticed the wind was blowing much harder than I thought and we were headed straight into it. According to the local weather it was blow 25 miles and hour. Still, there wasn't much we could do about that. We hit the road again. - -About ten minutes later I smelled smoke, specifically the smell of burning oil. I lifted up the doghouse and sure enough there was smoke coming out the value cover vent. I pulled over again. When I opened up the air filter I found a good bit of oil, along with an oil soaked filter. I try not to jump to catastrophic conclusions, but at this point I know this engine pretty well, and this had happened once before, when we blew our head gasket. - -We were about 20 miles outside of Lamar CO, but the next town was a good 60 miles away and it was already 3:30 in the afternoon. I hated to do it, but we had to turn around. We found an RV park in Lamar and pulled in for the night. - -The next morning I got up and started troubleshooting. I like to be optimistic so I started by replacing the PCV valve, but unfortunately, that did nothing. At least I have a spare PCV valve now. I moved on to a dry compression test. The results were... not good. Not only did I have two adjacent cylinders with compression at 65 PSI, which is a pretty good sign of a blown head gasket, not a single cylinder was actually at the compression it should be. As my uncle put it when I texted him the results, "your cylinders are rattling around in there like a bunch of old coffee cans." - -The fact of the matter is this engine is worn down and need to either be rebuilt or replaced. - -It's been nearly two weeks now and I still can't tell you which of those things we're going to end up doing, but whichever it is we're looking at a minimum of six weeks. We couldn't even get a mechanic to look at it for two weeks. And that mechanic is in Amarillo. Currently our plan is to—if it's possible -- just fix the head gasket and keep going for a couple of months. Then this spring we can either rebuild or replace the engine. - -Either way, we're stuck in Lamar Colorado for the next two weeks. Worse, when that two weeks is up we're looking at spending over a month without our home. That's stressful, expensive, and not at all what we want to be doing. This is the part of travel that your favorite YouTube stars don't tell you about (actually, the good ones do, see our blogroll for some of those), but it's part of travel. - -There are always challenges that make you think, oh god, how are we going to handle this? How are we going to get out of this? What are we going to do? Those are good questions you're going to have to answer if you want to keep going. I like to write them down and then write down answers. And then change the answers when my first ideas don't work out. And keep updating my answers until something finally works. That's all there is to it really, you put your head down and you get to work fixing things. - -This particular time is proving mostly to be a test of patience. I'm not sure if it's a parts shortage, staff shortages, or what, but mechanics are slammed with business. Could I pull the heads here and put in a new gasket? Yes, I could. Maybe I should, but so far I haven't. Work has been consuming most of my time and so here we sit. - - - - -The other temptation I am prone to in these situations is to stick my head in the sand and try to pretend it hasn't happened. I'll just take the kids to the park, make dinner, read a book, go to bed and pretend everything is normal. This is also not the way out. You have to do all that, but you also have to keep throwing solutions at the wall until you find the one that sticks. - -That time out in Colorado we threw a whole bunch of shit at the wall before we even had a hint that anything was going to stick. But it did. Wasn't the things I thought would stick, but we got out. you always do. Until you don't. and then it doesn't matter anyway. there you are. - - -An alternative to the front porch culture. it think we went wrong when we became to sedentary, it made us see the world as fixed, unchanging, things as they are become things as they have always been. I think the connectedness and community that you find in people who want to create a front porch culture is the right way forward, but I don't think that a rootedness to place is what drive that. I think that's a conscious human decision. I don't think it organically springs into a being. I think people have to want it, and I think so long as there is television, the internet, screens, that will not happen. the culture from afar is too strong, to universal and too enslaving to overcome. it's not until that culture has run its course that something new will arise. that doesn't mean of course that you can't free yourself from screens, from the culture of afar. That's not too difficult. But you aren't going to free the whole of culture. - - -1) find out if we can stay here without an engine, if not where? -2) find out when the mechanic can pull the engine, -3) We have to find someone to rebuilt the engine, can they do a rush job? -4) somehow get it a crate and send it to the rebuilder or drive it to dallas -5) get towed back here into a site. -6) wait -7) get towed back to the shop to put the new engine in. -8) leave - - -## Under The Bear’s Lodge - - -From Theodore Roosevelt National Park we headed south. Originally we'd planned to go through South Dakota and then down into Colorado, but the day before we left we noticed that if you west around the Black Hills, instead of east like we'd planned, you pass right by a place none of us had every been—Devil's Tower. - -I'll confess that my chief association with Devil's Tower is *Close Encounters*. And yes, we made mashed potatoes the night we arrived. I mean, you have to right? - -Devil's Tower is either a poor translation or a deliberately wrong translation of the local name, Bear's Lodge Butte. That name comes from the fact that it really does look like a tree that bear has gone to town on, and the constellation of the bear is always nearby, above the Butte. I don't see a bear when I stare up in the sky, but then I don't think I'd see a dipper either (the big dipper is part of the bear) if people hadn't been pointing it out all my life. Constellations aren't my strong suit. Whatever the case I think Bear's Lodge is a better name for this place. It stops me from confusing it with [Devil's Postpile](https://www.nps.gov/depo/index.htm). - -We'd planned to just stay a night, maybe two, but then we ended up staying a week because we liked it. It's always interesting to stop for a while in places that most people come, see the thing, and then leave. Every morning the campground would empty out, but then every night it was full again. When that happens you notice the people who don't leave, and those often turn out to be people in the same situation—people who aren't seeing the sights, but are moseying their way around the world like we do. We met a few of those and enjoyed our extra time in Bear's Lodge. - -One of the great things about living this way is the fluidity you can bring to plans. That cuts both ways. Sometimes you *have* to be flexible. Sometimes you *get* to be flexible. The flexible part is the constant. Fortunately in Bear's Lodge we got to be flexible. Though we also got a little hint of how we might have to flexible soon. - -The day we pulled in I ran over to the only store around and bought some ice. I noticed the check engine light in our Volvo was on. I didn't think too much of it, it happens when you don't properly tighten the gas cap. Usually it goes away when you re-tighten the gas cap. I did that and forgot about it for a few days. - -But a few days later I went to get some groceries in a town down the road and the light was still on. Damn. Well then. I stopped for gas and opened the hood to see if anything was amiss. It took me a minute, but then, next the oil filler cap I noticed a plastic hose that had broken. I wasn't sure what it did, but I assumed it was probably involved in the vacuum system somehow. - -I took a closer look when I got back to camp the plastic hose promptly disintegrated. So much for patching a crack. Now I needed to rig up some kind of temporary hose or we were stuck. I dug through my considerable collection of hoses and came up with some fuel line that fit at both ends, and then I telescoped that up to some extra PCV valve hose I had lying around. I anchored it all together with hose clamps and wedged it in place with a hose clamp at the bottom and some blue RTV gasket maker at the top. Then I waited 24 hours. - -The next morning it started up fine and seemed to run, so we hit road with it, figuring I'd pick up a replacement hose at the next Napa. About 3 hours into the drive, the check engine light went off. - - -## Ease Down the Road - -We set out from Washburn, bound for Arizona via North Dakota. We wanted to see Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and then we figured we'd head south and maybe catch some of the fall colors in the Rockies on our way. - -It's pretty rare for us to drive more than 200 miles a day. We're not in any rush and that's about how far you can go in the bus before it starts to feel like a chore. That said, we decided to blast our way across Minnesota and North Dakota doing back-to-back 300 mile days. We spent the night at a city park in Fargo the first day and then pushed on for Theodore Roosevelt National Park. It was a lot of driving, but there just weren't many places to stop in between. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-16_141824_drive-to-dakotas.jpg" id="image-3115" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-16_134205_drive-to-dakotas.jpg" id="image-3114" class="picwide" /> - -Theodore Roosevelt has a fairly nice campground, but we opted to stay at a more remote boondocking spot in the Little Missouri Grasslands. Although it was well outside the park, and off by itself, it was actually closer to town and made a good base for exploring the area. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-16_151155_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3116" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-16_162322_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3117" class="picwide" /> - -The Grasslands themselves were in some ways more interesting than the national park, though if you want to see bison you have to go into the park since a fence keeps them in. The kids loved having some badlands for a backyard. They'd disappear up into the hills in the mornings while Corrinne and I worked, returning only for food. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-16_163516_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3118" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-16_155612_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3132" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-19_194953_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3125" class="picwide" /> - -The kids and I hiked a ways out on a trail that runs through a petrified forest. We were mostly looking for birds since the petrified forest was farther than anyone wanted to walk. The kids had been looking over the bird list we picked up at the visitor center, deciding ahead of time what they wanted to see—the Sharp-tailed Grouse was their top pick. I gave them the usual caution that one doesn't really pick which birds they're going to see, to have patience, and so on. - -Naturally, the first thing we see, after less than 10 minutes of walking, was a Sharp-tailed Grouse. It reminded me of the time I explained to them that fishing requires patience and then less than two minutes after casting [Lilah was reeling in a fish](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/01/almost-warm). Maybe it's just me. Maybe everyone else is always seeing birds and catching fish. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-17_002345_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3121" class="picwide" /> - -We're not just bird and fish people these days, we also go in for rocks. Some of us anyway. Whatever the case there's a river just over the Montana border that is the place to find eponymous agates. We made the hour long drive and came back with more Montana agates than anyone living in a 26-foot bus should really have. - -It was nice to spend a day beside the river though. The current was pretty strong, but we managed to get a little swimming in. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-18_115628-1_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3123" class="picwide" /> - -And yes, we did drive into Theodore Roosevelt National Park one day. The kids like to get junior ranger badges whenever we're anywhere national, so they did that while I wandered around the visitor center. Men like Theodore Roosevelt aren't very popular these days, but it seems to me that might actually be most of our problem. We could use some leadership just now and boy it's been a while since politicians were leaders. Try to imagine one of our current "leaders" taking a bullet and then refusing to stop his speech just because he'd been shot. - -We also wanted to see the bison herd that lives in the park. Our best view though turned out to be this one, which was off by himself, standing right beside the road. Maybe, I thought while I was taking the picture, if you can't be a leader, at least don't be a follower. Maybe just stand off by yourself, mind your own business, eat grass, and stare at the tourists. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-17_155530_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3122" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-20_163735_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3129" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-20_164453_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3130" class="picwide" /> - -We also made a stop at the cowboy museum in the nearby town of Medora, where the kids learned a little about rodeo culture. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-20_104432_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3126" class="picwide" /> -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-20_110610_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3128" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-20_110315_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3127" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -</div> - -Mostly though we spent a lot of time just hanging out at the campsite. The landscape here is such a stark contrast to the last few months that we were all happy to just wander around under that vast, seemingly endless western sky. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-16_163650_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3119" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-18_185406_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3124" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-16_201159_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3120" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-20_215737_missouri-grassland.jpg" id="image-3131" class="picwide" /> - -Part of what made our campsite nice and our time in the grasslands so enjoyable was that we happened to hit a gap between storms. For five days we had virtually no wind. On the sixth day though we got a taste of what this place is like most of the time. With a 20 MPH wind blowing dust around all day, and a storm bearing down on us that promised a 40 MPH headwind for our next drive, we decided to it was time to hit the road again. - -## Goodbye Big Waters - -Leaving is always a bustle of activity. We go from spending our days relaxing in the sun to frantically making lists and scrambling to get everything done before we hit the road. You'd think by now we'd plan ahead and know how to do it well, but not really. I always end up wit a task list that's far more than I can possibly do in however long we have left. I think this is my way of dealing with pain of leaving somewhere—overwhelming myself with tasks so there's no time to feel. - -Because yes, there is always a pain in leaving. Heading toward new possibilities, while exciting, still means closing off old ones. This isn't something that's unique to travel, all of us are always changing, always leaving things behind. New jobs, new homes, new grades in school, something is always left behind as we move down the river of time. - -For reasons I have not completely figured out, we seemed to have sunk deeper into the life of this place than anywhere else we've stopped in our travels. In all we were here nine weeks, which is actually less time than we spent in the Outer Banks, but I felt more a part of this place. Perhaps it is the open and welcoming people of the area, the [giddiness of summer](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/07/washburn) up here, or maybe we're getting better at settling in. Perhaps some combination of these things and more. - -We are making a bigger change than we have yet on this leg of our journey (which I count as starting when we left the [100 acre woods]()). For ten months now we have lived by the water—[coastal South Carolina](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/02/ice-storm), [the Outer Banks](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/05/ocracoke-beaches), and now [the shores of Lake Superior](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/08/superior) -- and now we're headed west to the plains, mountains, and deserts. - -After [our backpacking trip in the Porcupine Mountains](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/09/porcupine-mountains-backpacking) we had two more weeks in Washburn, which we spent visiting with friends we've made, hiking up to a waterfall in the hills, re-visiting Little Girl Point, stocking up on local favorite foods, and readying the bus for the next leg of our journey. - - - -Leaving is always bittersweet. The kids will miss their new friends, and so will we. Up here the pain of leaving is eased by the fact that few of the people we met spend the winters here anyway, so everyone is leaving soon. We will also very likely be back next summer, so this time around while we did say out long midwestern goodbyes, they were really see you next years. - - - -## Porcupine Mountains Backpacking - -There are only a few small stands of old growth forests left on this continent. I have been to couple of smaller old growth stands—one in the west, one in the south -- but I've never really spent much time in them. When I found out that the Porcupine Mountains were the second largest old growth Hemlock forest left in the U.S., I knew we had to go. - -This time I wanted to spend some time, so I put together a another family backpacking trip. We left the bus in its site in Washburn and headed up into the mountains of Michigan[^1]. Well, elsewhere they might be called hills, but up here they're mountains. - -We drove a couple of hours around Superior to the Porcupine Mountains, picked up our permit, and hit the trail. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-30_125052_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3086" class="picwide" /> - -The kids were able (and wanted) to carry more weight compared to [our last trip in North Carolina](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2020/10/walking-north-carolina-woods), but of course what they think they can carry and what they can actually carry depends on the distance. - -We wanted a destination to hang out at, so we opted for the trail to Mirror Lake—three miles in from the east, three miles back out to the west. We started with the eastern portion of trail, which went over Summit Peak. We wanted to get the hard stuff over with at the start. For about a half a mile it was straight up -- about half of that was stairs -- to a tower that brought you above the tree tops for a view of Lake Superior. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-30_130152_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3087" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-30_120356-1_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3085" class="picwide" /> -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-30_130547_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3088" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-30_130559_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3089" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -</div> - -It wasn't until we were almost to the lake that we finally stepped into the old growth Hemlock. Much of the old growth forest in the Mirror Lake area was knocked down in a storm in 1953 when 5,000 acres of old growth forest—thousands upon thousands of trees -- came down in a matter of hours. Two high school kids out fishing near Mirror Lake got caught in the storm (and lived), which must have made for an exciting morning. Wind shear like that is not unheard of up here, but that's a pretty extreme example (that is weirdly undocumented online, you can read about it at the visitor center though). - -It was dark and cool in the old growth, little sun made it down to the forest floor, which was a deep bed of needles. The thing that really jumped out about the old growth though was how quiet it was in those portions of the forest. I noticed the silence before I really registered anything else. I'm not sure why, but I have never been anywhere so utterly silent. The birds were mostly gone, headed south for the winter, that was definitely part of the silence, but it was also just quieter among the hemlocks than in the younger stretches of forest we passed through. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-09-01_094641_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3104" class="picwide" /> - -We made it to camp by mid afternoon. I will confess I am fascinated by the modern hiking crowd who seem to love nothing better than 20 mile days. If the people I see on YouTube and Instagram are in fact representative of modern hikers. I am just about the opposite. Even if I didn't have kids... I like three mile days and lounging around camp, swimming, fishing, birding, cooking. The walking part? Meh, it's fine, but it's not why I am here. Walking is just the necessary ingredient to reach the last few spots on earth with some solitude. - -Whatever the case, we set up camp, and spent the afternoon lounging around. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-30_153953_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3090" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-31_093826_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3095" class="picwide" /> - - -I have two regrets from this trip. The first is that we did not bring the hammock. Always bring the hammock. Well, if there are trees around. - -My second regret is that we did not bring more real food. Five steaks really would not have added that much weight to our pack and would have 100 percent been worth that added weight. I am done with the whole dehydrated food thing. Some is fine when you're doing longer walks, but there's nothing like a steak in the backcountry. At least in my imagination there is nothing like a steak in the backcountry. Which isn't to say that we ate poorly, just that, well, steaks and bacon and eggs would have been better. Next time. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-30_174525_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3092" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-30_173223_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3091" class="picwide" /> - -At least we got to have fires, something that's increasingly rare, not just in the backcountry, but everywhere. Long periods of poor forest management, combined with dry weather, have left much of the west forced to ban open fires. I am working on a longer piece about the importance of the fire, especially the outdoor fire, but suffice to say that it was very nice to have one in the backcountry. We even almost got something like a decent family photo. Almost. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-30_184129_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3093" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-31_065645_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3094" class="picwide" /> - -The next day we did a little day hiking around the lake and little swimming when we got back to camp. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-31_115020_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3096" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-31_125719_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3099" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-31_115414_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3097" class="picwide" /> -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-31_132928_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3101" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-31_125223_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3098" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -</div> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-31_130033_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3100" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-31_134317_porcupine-mountains.jpg" id="image-3102" class="picwide" /> - - - -[^1]: We originally intended to go canoeing in the Boundary Waters, but couldn't get the permits for the areas that were doable with kids (everything was booked). In hindsight, I am glad we didn't. - - -## Grandparents - -My parents flew out to visit us in Washburn. Somehow they managed to find a rental house outside of town (there isn't much besides hotels and camping in the these parts) with a spectacular garden. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-23_141236_parents.jpg" id="image-3076" class="picwide" /> - -We took them out to Madeline Island for the day, which meant the kids got a second trip on the ferry, always a popular way to spend the day. We'd do it more regularly if it wasn't so ridiculously expensive. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-19_153339_madeline-island-parents.jpg" id="image-3075" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-19_123846_madeline-island-parents.jpg" id="image-3071" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-19_123343_madeline-island-parents.jpg" id="image-3070" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-19_124138-1_madeline-island-parents.jpg" id="image-3072" class="picwide" /> - -Mostly we had nice weather while they were here, but one day while we were parking in Bayfield it started to rain, so we ducked into the nearby Bayfield Heritage Museum. If we hadn't recently been the Milwaukee Public Museum, I'd say the Bayfield Heritage Museum is the best museum we've been to. As it is, it's pretty close, for one simple reason—the kids could touch everything. - -The woman working even came over and told the kids to open the turn of the century oven, the dresser drawers, the kitchen cabinets and the rest. That's really all it takes to make children totally enthralled by anything, just let them do what they want. - -Down in the basement there was a very detailed model of Bayfield at the height of the timber industry. There was a scavenger hunt that involved finding ten little scenes in the model. We found everything but the happy hobo, the host had to help us with the happy hobo. - -<img src="images/2022/IMG_20220818_131559.jpg" id="image-3077" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/IMG_20220818_132312.jpg" id="image-3079" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/IMG_20220818_131627.jpg" id="image-3078" class="picwide" /> - -One of the great things about having visitors come is it gives you a reason to do some of the things you just never seem to get around to otherwise. The Houghton Falls is less than two miles from the campground, but for whatever reason—maybe because it was too close by -- we never made it until my parents came. - -It turned out to be a great little trail. Judging by the wood planks on the trail, it is probably boggy and miserably buggy in the early season—maybe it's a good thing we waited until August -- but it was dry and nice when we went. After wandering through the forest for a quarter mile, the trail drops down to the river bed which has cut a deep gorge through pre-Cambrian sandstone. The result is a wonderland of caves and pools with plenty of climbing to keep the kids busy. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-21_112147_washburn.jpg" id="image-3081" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-21_113404_washburn.jpg" id="image-3082" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-21_113840_washburn.jpg" id="image-3083" class="picwide" /> - -The namesake falls are a bit back from the lake, but there was no water anyway. The trail ends at Lake Superior, just beyond a shallow bay where the river finally empties into the lake. There's a little rock outcropping about 10 feet off the water that looked pretty good for jumping. I actually would not have gone if the kids hadn't been gung ho about it. But then they were less so after I jumped and they saw how far down it was. I ended up being the only one to jump. Next time I'll talk them into it. - -## August Jottings - -***August 2*:** Already I feel the end of summer heading toward us. There's a fleetingness to the warm days now, an inevitability to the cold that comes in the evenings and is slower to go again in mornings. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-12_054139_washburn.jpg" id="image-3052" class="picwide" /> - -I miss the merlins. Every morning since we arrived the first thing I heard in the morning was five or six merlin chicks shrieking and playing in the pines around our campsite. Today I heard nothing. They've gone. Or they all died. Either way the bird life here as changed. The small birds are back. Nuthatches and chickadees are the morning sounds now, with occasional crows and blue jays. - -The pileated woodpeckers were through again this morning, you can never fail to notice that flaming-red crest streaking through the trees. It sounds like a jackhammer when they beat on the bark. Such a massive bird for something that spends most of it's time clinging to the side of a tree. This morning there were three. One stayed on the ground, which I had never seen a pileated do before. At first I thought it might be injured, but eventually it took off to join its fellows in the trees. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-27_084517_washburn.jpg" id="image-3051" class="picwide" /> - -***August 6*:** Strange mayfly hatch this morning. The bathroom building is completely covered in mayflies. Thousands of them, inside and out. Camp host tried blowing them with a leaf blower but it didn't work, they hung on. Reminded me of [the night in New Orleans when the termites hatched](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/05/new-orleans-instrumental-number-2), (which I didn't actually write about in that post, not everything makes out of the journal). Fortunately we were far enough away this time that nothing ended up swarming in the bus. - -***August 8*:** The kids started sailing camp this morning. I picked them up at lunch time and managed to see the girls sailing, Elliott was already in. Their first day on the water and it was probably the windiest we've had in quite a while. Can't reef an [Optimist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimist_(dinghy)). I guess you just go fast. They spent most of the day practicing knots and righting flipped boats so they knew what to do, but according to them no one flipped in the stiff breezes. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-09_112805_sailing-camp.jpg" id="image-3053" class="picwide" /> - -I've been challenged to many a knot tying contest this afternoon. I have lost almost all of them. I used to be able to tie a bowline one-handed without thinking about it. Now I have to sit there and tell myself the rabbit story to get it right. - -***August 12*:** Final day of sailing camp featured a sail by for the parents followed by a potluck lunch. Unfortunately there was very little wind so it was more a drift, crank-the-tiller-back-and-forth by. Still, it was good to see them out on the water, having fun and making new friends. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-12_111237_sailing-camp.jpg" id="image-3054" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-12_111629_sailing-camp.jpg" id="image-3055" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-12_111643_sailing-camp.jpg" id="image-3056" class="picwide" /> -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-12_112257_sailing-camp.jpg" id="image-3057" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-12_112622_sailing-camp.jpg" id="image-3058" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -</div> - -***August 13*:** Heading to the country fair later today. We're suckers for a local fair, but we're used to fairs in October. Yet another reminder that cold comes early up here. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-13_140027_county-fair.jpg" id="image-3059" class="picwide" /> -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-13_145435_county-fair.jpg" id="image-3061" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-13_145423_county-fair.jpg" id="image-3060" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -</div> -<img src="images/2022/2022-08-13_152157_county-fair.jpg" id="image-3062" class="picwide" /> - -Years ago at the [Elberton Fair](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2019/10/elberton-county-fair) Elliott was too short to ride some of the rides with his sisters. This year Olivia was too tall to ride some of the rides with her siblings. We can't seem to completely win. At least there was a lumberjack show, complete with crosscut saws and log rolling exhibitions. - -***August 13*:** Cooler this morning. 54 on the gauge. Blue-gray fog bank on the far show enshrouding the hills. Crows are unhappy about something this morning. Red-breasted nuthatches seem unconcerned. - -Signs of winter are increasing. The weather has shifted, more birds are passing through. Cape may warblers are already headed south from wherever they've been north of here. On the way to the store today I saw the city had pulled out it's snow plows and was giving them a wash. Seasons remain a strange thing to this Los Angeles native. I like the idea of them, I like the transitions between them, but we are not sticking around to live in them. - -## Around Washburn -One weekend I took the kids over to Madeline Island again. The museum was have a trading post-style reenactment., and we are suckers for a good reenactment festival. - - - -We got to see some real birch bark canoes, and some artifacts like trade blankets, early compasses and navigation tools, even early pharmacy tools, including a pill-making board the kids got to try out, making some playdough pills. - -Most of the reenactment stuff was things Voyageurs would have used in the fur trade, though there were a couple of people there representing local tribes. One man in particular was really great at show the kids various tools and demonstrating how they worked. He was so good I forgot to take any pictures, which I realized later is kind of the highest praise I can (accidentally) give. - - - -## Ten - -I was thinking the other day about some friends I haven't talked to since I left Los Angeles for good in 1999. I was thinking how astounded they would probably be to know that I had managed to keep two children alive and well for ten years now. What they would probably say is, *I think you mean your wife has managed to keep two children alive and well for ten years*. And of course they'd be right. - -Whatever the case, somehow, our twins are ten. Double digits. Decades old. And all that. - - - -## Midsummer -We pulled into Memorial Park Campground in Washburn, Wisconsin just before lunch on a Thursday and grabbed one of the few spots left in the campground. It was just a few sites down from where we [stayed four years ago](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/08/island-golden-breasted-woodpecker). We love a good first-come, first-serve campground, especially one with no stay limits. We unfurled the awning and settled in for the summer. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-08_200436_washburn.jpg" id="image-3017" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-08_174443_washburn.jpg" id="image-3016" class="picwide" /> - -For us, these days, settling in means signing the kids up for Jui Jitsu, getting library cards, and figuring out the best places to get in whatever body of water is nearby. Washburn, and nearby Ashland, provide all that and more, perhaps most importantly, reasonable temperatures all summer, little in the way of crowds, and the kind of hospitality you really only find in small towns anymore. - -At their first Jui Jitsu class one of their classmate's mother invited us to a midsummer party. Summer is bigger deal up here than it is in say Florida. When something is so fleeting you appreciate it more I think. Whatever the case, we showed up and had a great time. There was music, flower wreaths, comedy, even sack races. The kids danced late into the night. It was a good way to celebrate midsummer, something I've never celebrated before. - -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> - <img src="images/2022/2022-07-16_165753_washburn.jpg" id="image-3019" class="cluster pic66" /> - <img src="images/2022/2022-07-16_171809_washburn.jpg" id="image-3020" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> - <img src="images/2022/2022-07-16_175425_washburn.jpg" id="image-3021" class="cluster picwide" /> - <img src="images/2022/2022-07-16_190818_washburn.jpg" id="image-3022" class="cluster picwide" /> -</div> - -While Jui Jitsu, libraries, and swimming holes are all we really need, we do appreciate there being good Mexican food, and as of this summer, Washburn has that. All this corner of the world needs now is for the shifting climate to mellow out the winters a bit. - -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-24_124345_washburn.jpg" id="image-3023" class="cluster pic66 caption" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-25_153047_washburn.jpg" id="image-3024" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-26_072037_washburn.jpg" id="image-3025" class="cluster picwide" /> -</div> - -I think if we'd been closer to Washburn in 2020 when the U.S. shut everything down, we'd have rented a place around here. But of course that's not where we were so we'll likely never know how we'd handle a winter up here. For now though, it's a pretty great place to spend your summer. - - - -## Away From the Crowds - -We would have stayed longer at Harrington Beach State Park, and we would have loved to head up into the Door Peninsula, but we were facing every full time RVer's least favorite holiday: Fourth of July weekend. Everything was booked. So, we loaded up our still-not-installed awning and headed north, where the crowds are fewer and we knew of at least one first come first served campground. - -You can't just show up at a first come first serve campground on the Friday of fourth of July weekend though. Corrinne does 90 percent of the camp planning and she, marvel that she is, found a campground somewhere in the middle of Wisconsin that was somehow not already booked for the fourth and was on our way. We had reservations the day before and hit the road Friday. - -Now, you might be asking yourself, what sort of campground *isn't* full on America's most popular camping weekend? How awful is it that no one wants to go there? Actually it was quite nice. I think no one wants to go there in part because it's in a very rural area and when you have wild acreage, camping isn't really something you care about as much. At least that was our experience living in a 300-acre pine forest. Whatever the case Governor Thompson State Park was nice and we were happy to have a spot to park for the holiday weekend. - -Admittedly, there wasn't much to do at Governor Thompson if you don't have a boat (it's on a lake). One fellow vintage camper owner we met ventured over to the swim beach one day and called it the saddest little thing he'd ever seen. We never went to find out for ourselves. We just relaxed, did a lot of reading, and finally had the space to get our new awning installed. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-02_153235_gov-thompson-sp.jpg" id="image-2999" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-02_180645_gov-thompson-sp.jpg" id="image-3000" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-02_182710_gov-thompson-sp.jpg" id="image-3001" class="picwide" /> - -After putting on the window awning on the other side I was dreading the full size patio awning. Fortunately for me, the installation process was different, so my fears proved unfounded. In some ways I think it was easier to install the patio than the window awning, though there were a couple of awkward moments. But now have plenty of shade to sit around and relax (and work, and play) in. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-03_120708_gov-thompson-sp.jpg" id="image-3004" class="picwide" /> - -I'd forgotten how nice it is to have that under the awning space. We used to live in that shade, but we stopped using our old awning because it was so beat up and gross. Sitting under it was not a pleasant experience the last few months. With the Zipdee we've reclaimed that space. We have a wonderfully warm yellow light bathing the bus from all angles, and we've been spending a lot more time outside. Zipdee awnings aren't cheap, but well worth the money in my opinion. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-03_115523_gov-thompson-sp.jpg" id="image-3002" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-03_115524_gov-thompson-sp.jpg" id="image-3003" class="picwide" /> - -With the holiday weekend behind us we continued north, bound for the shores of Lake Superior. We stopped off at a place called Copper Falls for a couple of nights. It's supposedly one of the highlights of the area, but our experience was that it's buggy and there's not much to do other than hike to see the falls. They are nice waterfalls, but you can't get near them and the mosquitoes and black flies were bad enough that it would have made Yosemite miserable. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-04_182326_copper-falls.jpg" id="image-3007" class="picwide" /> -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-04_152815_copper-falls.jpg" id="image-3008" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-04_154726_copper-falls.jpg" id="image-3006" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -</div> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-04_154339_copper-falls.jpg" id="image-3005" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-04_182533_copper-falls.jpg" id="image-3009" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-04_191019_copper-falls.jpg" id="image-3010" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-07-04_191036_copper-falls.jpg" id="image-3011" class="picwide" /> - -I never like to complain too much about anywhere because it's an incredible experience to be able to live the way we do and a few bad nights for us is a tiny price to pay (and Copper Falls wasn't even that bad), but I was glad to hit the road again. - -And our plan worked. We pulled into the first-come first-serve campground in Washburn WI on a Thursday morning, snagged the best site, and settled in for the summer. - - -## Hello Milwaukee - -The drive up to Harrington Beach State Park wasn't far, about 50 miles, but somehow that 50 miles changed everything. Once we were past Milwaukee (Harrington Beach is about 30 minutes north of Milwaukee) the last traces of heat disappeared. There were cheese curds at every gas station—a sure sign you're in Wisconsin -- and the world felt quieter, more relaxed, more natural. Even the lake seemed somehow wilder. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-27_151631_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2974" class="picwide" /> - -Last time we were here I [wrote about the yellow warblers](https://luxagraf.net/dialogues/yellow-warbler) that were everywhere in our campsite. This time was no different, one even came in the bus to check it out. - -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-28_110935_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2977" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-28_110933_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2995" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -</div> - -We came back to Harrington because it's a good place to camp and access Milwaukee. We don't spend much time in cities anymore. We avoid them actually, especially large cities. Driving into the Chicago to get the awning was a nightmare I'd just as soon never repeat. Smaller cities like Milwaukee are more tolerable, though still not our thing anymore. - -That said, we made an exception here because we actually like Milwaukee and we have some friends living here that we wanted to catch up with, however briefly. We had also promised the girls we'd get some sushi and cupcakes, and then go to a museum for their birthday since we'd be spending their actual birthday somewhere without sushi. - -We started with cupcakes of course. - -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_103614_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2979" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_103541_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2978" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -</div> - -Then we had a sushi lunch and popped into a bookstore that was pretty amazing, but, despite having a seemingly endless number of books, did not have the one that the girls wanted. - -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_123150_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2980" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_123221_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2981" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_131256_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2982" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_131312_harrington-milwaukee_bzc4u7m.jpg" id="image-2983" class="cluster pic66" /></span> -</div> - -The next stop was the Milwaukee Public Museum, which is such a vague name we didn't really know what to expect except that it had some dinosaur exhibit of some kind. I think that was a good way to go in, not knowing anything (the opportunity for you to go not knowing anything is about to be ruined) because now that I've been, I am still not totally sure what the Milwaukee Public Museum is, beyond, the very generic: really fun. - -The specimen collection in the lobby area reminded me of [La Specula in Florence](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2011/06/natural-science), and set the tone of the place. It's a throw back the museums of old: big dioramas, lots of signs and welcome absence of any screens, or QR codes, or any of the ridiculous digital gimmicks that pass for content in modern museums. Instead it was interactive in the original sense—the kids could touch the buffalo fur and ride a penny farthing and even let butterflies land on them. - -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_135459_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2984" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_135612_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2985" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_182409_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2990" class="cluster picwide caption" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-29_141216_harrington-milwaukee.jpg" id="image-2986" class="cluster picwide caption" /> -</div> - -The natural history portion of the Milwaukee Public Museum was extensive and full of great dioramas, though I have to take some exception the tiny little section devoted to the south. The south is apparently little more than a footnote here and can be adequately represented by a banjo, a musket, a few ears of corn, and a flag none of us recognized. - -What the Public Museum does a far, far better job with is the history of Milwaukee, which is set up in a lifesize replica of Milwaukee through the ages, though most of it is done up like the late 19th century. This was by far the most fun to walk around. It was lit with the equivalent of old gas lamps so it's a very dark exhibit that you can get lost in. - - - --- roughly the technological level I suspect my grandkids will live in. - - - -## Illinois Beach - -I think it's important to remember that it's fun to do something for no reason at all. That is, not everything needs a reason beyond simply the freedom to do it. - -This is what Sir Edmund Hilery was hinting at when he was asked, *why do you want to climb Mount Everest,* and he answered, *because it's there*. Because the freedom of the will to choose and act and do, the freedom for you to do something for no other reason than you happen to want to do it, is irreducible, unassailable base on which all human delight is built. - -That has nothing to do with how we came to be at Illinois Beach State Park, on the far northern reaches of Chicago, or what we did there, but I think it's worth saying things from time to time about the meta-journey if you will and one of the key things I've learned from this adventure is that life isn't so serious as it seems, perhaps especially when it seems most serious. The universe is a whimsical place after all, how else do you explain the giraffe? Or this strange, abandoned concession center in the middle of Illinois Beach State Park looking for all the world like it was plucked out of a 1950s Soviet seaside resort and plopped here in Illinois? - -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-21_065427_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2970" class="picwide" /> - -One of the things I was most looking forward to about coming back to the Great Lakes area was replicating the day we [drove out of the heat and into the wonderfully cool summer of Wisconsin](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/06/wisconsin). Alas, that did not happen this time (you can [never go back](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2008/06/you-cant-go-home-again)). - -The heat wave followed us up through Chicago, where I stopped off at the Zipdee factory to pick up two awnings we'd ordered several months ago. With the giant, fifteen foot tubes on the floor of the bus, I hit the road again bound for Illinois State Beach, on the shores of Lake Michigan. - -Thankfully the heat wave only lasted two more days, and we had the nice clear, cool waters of Lake Michigan to keep us cool in the mean time. Almost any day spent on the water is a good day in my book, though the temperature extremes were more than we're used to—100 in the air, 53 in the water. Stay in for more than a few minutes and you're shivering, but by the time you're out two minutes you're ready to cool back down again. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-20_174403_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2972" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-20_174406_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2971" class="picwide" /> - -Fortunately after the weekend the air temp settled back down to a nice 80 degrees, making it a bit for fun to sit (and play) on the beach. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-21_103522_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2968" class="picwide" /> -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-21_105102_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2967" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-21_105937_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2966" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -</div> - -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-21_173023_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2965" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-22_190901_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2964" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-22_194625_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2963" class="picwide" /> - -The abandoned concession stand wasn't the only odd thing in Illinois State Beach, in fact there were quiet a few oddities. My favorite was the pair of Sandhill Cranes that strolled through the campground every day utterly unconcerned with any humans that might be around. In fact they would march right up to people looking for food, I saw one sneak a hot dog off a picnic table and proceed to eat it before any of the people around noticed. - -<img src="images/2022/2022-06-21_102538_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2969" class="picwide" /> - -However odd it might have been, Illinois State Park was perfectly suited to the real reason we came—to install our new Zipdee awnings and get rid of our old. No one complained about the sawing and the remains of the old one fit nicely in the dumpster. In the end rain stopped me from getting the big awning installed here, but I got our new side awning on at least. - - - -It keeps the afternoon sun out of the window and allows us to have the window open even if it's raining, but really we just like it... because it's there. It makes the bus a little more fun, a little more delightful if I do say so myself. - -"" - -## Birding - -I spent most of the afternoon today watchng a least tern fish in the waters of Hatteras island in the outer banks of North Carolina. The tern hovered, fluttering like a sheet of white paper in the wind, ducking and diving in the currents until it tucked in its wings and dropped like a rock into a wave. It was too far away to see if it got anything. - -An osprey I watched was heavier, weightier in the air, purposeful until it too tucked its wings and dove. In that moment of freefall both seemed no longer in control. Only gravity was in charge at the moment. The osprey came up empty, but did something I've never noticed a bird doing before, it shook itself as it hovered over the waves, skaing and ruffling its features to shed the water it had picked up when it dove. And then with a few quick strong wingbeats it roase up, gaught and updraft and drifted down the shoreline, scan the waves for fish. - -Bird watching isn't really anything more than deciding to pay great attention to birds. Bird watching is really a never ending process of turning something that is always happening in the background to something you're focused solely on. It's the process of learning that that brown and white bird likes to sit on the top of the myrtle in the morning and sing, but spends its afternoons rather silently, scratching at the ground in search of grubs and seeds. These days birdwatchers call it a brown thrasher, or Toxostoma rufum, but that there are many other names for it, the rusty mockingbird, the brown thrush. The Ojibwe call it apagaande-ikwewinini. - - - - -This process of turning your full attention to something not only outside yourself, but not even human is I think a large part of what makes bird watching so popular. I don't think we were made to live in a wholly human world, and I think much of what ails us these days has roots back in this entirely self-reflexive world we've trapped ourselves in. Birds offer a way outside of ourselves, our culture, our species. - - -To pay attention to anything in great detail is a rewarding thing. This is why I like make this site, I like to pay attention to things and then I like to do something with the results of that attention. Sometimes I write things only for myself in my journal, sometimes I take photographes, sometimes I sketch something in pencil or pen, sometimes I write things and put them up here. All of these are outlets for the accumulated results of paying attention to something, be it birds, the shape and rythem of waves, the wind in the leaves, the movement of clouds or what my kids are doing around me. - ---- - -I know there's other reasons for the popularity of birdwatching. I'd be lying if I said there wasn't some competitive aspect to it to for me. Would I like to have a life list in the 1000s? Sure, but not because I want to have seen more than you or anyone else, but because that would mean that I'd have paid attention to over 1000 birds. - - - - -Cameras are increasingly designed to remove the human factor from the act of taking a picture. With the addition over the last several decades of features like autofocus, auto white balance, and auto light metering, the engineering effort of most camera manufacturers has gone into replacing the learned choices of the individual photographer with algorithms. These algorithms turn the act of producing a great image into something that’s no longer a challenge you must rise to or adapt to, but a series of options you can choose between. - -To repair is to join a community. - -The right to repair the need to repair the desire to repair is fundamentally a communal desire it's a hierarchical desire hierarchical community of experience being handed down but it's fundamentally communal you can't get this knowledge without it being handed down to you whether that is through books through more experienced people through YouTube through any number of other means of disseminating information it has to come down 3 time from someone hierarchical a above you with more skills than you and it takes humility to become part of that system so you have humility and community and these are two things that are fundamentally opposed pictures of dominant worldview of the modern world - - -## Possible use for about Atlanta -One of the interesting things about living the way we do is that we're subjected to very little advertising. We don't have a television, we don't go out to eat (and see TVs there), and we seldom drive on interstate highways, subject to billboards. There are some billboards on the backroads we favor—I don't think it's possible to escape billboards completely, save in Vermont, Maine, Alaska and Hawaii, all of which have outlawed them -- but not that many. I think the main place we encounter advertising is at the gas pump and that's pretty easy to ignore because I don't think I've ever put gas in the bus without having a conversation with someone passing by. - -Despite the gas pumps, it seems safe to say that, living as we do in the bus, we are subjected to very little advertising. This is something I generally spend absolutely zero time thinking about until we come into major American city—something we try to avoid doing -- and I am awestruck by how much advertising there is -- it absolutely saturates the environment. - - -# Birds - -## Carolina Wren -I have so many Carolina wren stories it's hard to know where to start. - -If you're ever in the eastern woods and you hear a bird singing and you think *that's beautiful, what bird is that?* there's a good chance it's a Carolina wren. - -These little gregarious, brown, slightly hook-billed birds are champion singers and, insatiably curious. According to my kids we've had about ten birds come in the bus in five years of traveling. Nine of them have been Carolina wrens[^1]. Several of them have ended up having to be rescued by hand. - -<img src="images/2022/wreninhand.jpg" id="image-2792" class="picwide" /> - -Before that they used to come in our house in Athens from time to time. This one would sit on the corner of the roof singing every morning for years. - -<img src="images/2022/bird-feeder_2015-01-10_112302_01.jpg" id="image-2774" class="picwide" /> - -Well, it seemed like the same bird, but who knows. Birds do have individual songs, especially Carolina wrens, so if I had been paying attention I might know if it really was the same bird, but I didn't pay that much attention back then. Life before the road tended to run together, I lacked focus and attention. Which isn't to say the days don't sometimes run together on the road, or that I live in a state of constantly heightened awareness, just that there are more markers by which to measure on the timeline of our travels. - -To tell the truth I didn't pay much attention to Carolina wrens until we started to travel. They were so ubiquitous I found them overwhelming. I've always thought of wrens as the more solitary creatures of the desert southwest, where canyon wrens are a familiar sound in the red rock country of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado. But they're a familiar sound you usually hear by itself, not a chorus like you get with the Carolina wrens. - -It wasn't until they started flying in the bus that I really started pay attention to the Carolina wren. - -[^1]: Regardless of the actual number, only one has not been a wren, that much I know. It was a chickadee. For whatever reason, all these happened on the east coast. Perhaps western birds are more wild? - -- tree swallow -- black capped chickadee -- cedar waxwing -- kingbird -- that hawk on the ground -- willet -- gold crowned kinglet -- blackthroated green warbler - - - -## Quotes - -Almost every article you'll ever find on attention will at some point repeat Simone Weil's statement that "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. - -"It seems to me that we all look at nature too much, and live with her too little." -Oscar Wilde, De Profundis - -The average person spends 87% of their time indoors and another 6% in enclosed vehicles https://indoor.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/lbnl-47713.pdf - - - -# Notes - -## No Risk -Whatever one’s opinion of the response to the disease, what is undeniable is that so many people of influence took for granted that safety must always trump social relations and that the human being is not the center of a web of loyalties and commitments but is rather a physical fact needing technical management. Nothing, it was revealed to us, is worth risking life for—nothing. If other occasions for risk remain, this is evidently only because administration has not yet found the means to quash them. It was revealed that no danger is greater than death. It was revealed that life is sheer matter and not something else, for example, the capacity for love. -https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2022/06/atoms-and-the-void-review-of-interventions-2020/ - -## Travel Cheaper - -Ways to reduce travel spending: - * better planning means more boondocking and less money on camping - * change of diet from mexico means less on food - - no more sausage for breakfast - - more tortillas, less bread for lunches - + bread is special occassions - - use oat/rice flour from bulk bins for pancakes - - shop mexican markets, asian markets - - go meatless twice a week - - drop organic/grass fed, eat less of it - * having propane fridge would mean less trips for ice, longer away from money spending opportunities - * doing bucket laundry to get by, with full laundry once a month would do the same (again, fewer money spending opportunities) - * no more lenses, amazon orders, ever. - * use local libraries - * have corrinne get meds down here. - * start with forays into mexico, but gradually reverse—here becomes our home base with forays into the states - - * how much less? Don't know but I think we could do - - $1200/month groceries - - $500/month camping (if we go over, better hole up and boondock) - - $400/month gas (if we're headed over, better hole up) - - $500/month repairs and incidentals - * So at reliable $3000 a month we can get by pretty much anywhere - - Need the ability to take a serious breakdown and keep going, what does that look like? - - maybe $5000- $8000 savings for repairs - -## Systems - -Complex systems are inherently fragile. The optimization that makes the system "easy" to use, also generally eliminates the redundancies and graceful degadation that makes a system resilient. -## Midlife - -I think there are two major tasks to be undertaken in the middle of your life, one is coming to terms with the reduced possibilities of the future, letting go of the ones you are sure aren't happening to focus on the one's that could still happen. I will never make the U.S Olympic rowing team and rather than have that missed goal rattling around somewhere in the back of my mind going, I have to address it. Rather than sitting around mumbling about how I could have been a contender I have to accept that no I could not, I tried and literally could not, and let that go so that other goals become more feasible. - -The other major task in midlife is to recognize the ciclical nature of, well, nature. - - - -## No Reason At All - -"It's fun to do something for no reason at all because freedom is the foundation of all human delight... freedom of the will, the capacity to choose and act and attend for no other reason than that we happen to want to." - -## Margins - -You learn to live your life on the margin, that strange zone between what is known and what is not. There are some answers here, but not many, and you have to make that place your home. - -The margins are where you want to be though, this is where everything happens, it's where life is, where growth is. Go deep in the forest and everything gets soft and quiet, but come out to the edge and you'll find the berries and the birds and the deer and all the rest of life—inhabiting the margins. In ecology this is sometimes called a liminal zone. It's where life is in transition and biodiversity is greatest. It's where the action is and it's where you want to be. - -I've learned that the future will get here at the same steady pace as it always does whether you worry about it or not. - -There's a third principle I'm still meditating on, but my suspicion is that the first principle of not changing the environment around you, extends well beyond you and your immediate environment to encompass, well, everything. The ripple effects of any action are significant and we spend very little time considering them, and this is troubling. - -The less you alter the environment of you, the less you need to alter the environment of your home. The less you need alter the environment of your home, the less you need to alter your neighborhood, and so on. I suspect that this cascades in positive ways far beyond just turning off the air conditioning. At the same times, I suspect it cascades in negative ways as well, which is why I am still thinking on it. - -I saw, and still see, living in the bus as a first step in a transition away from life as a "consumer". In the bus we consumed much less, that's good, but I've come to think that it's not good enough. I think I can (and should) go much farther than that. What that looks like is still taking shape, but one thing we all have right now is plenty of time to sit and think. - - -## Sustainable vs regenerative - - - -sustainability is about keeping things as the are, regeneration is about making things better than they are. - - - - - - - -## Close - -Y'all are going to be very close. - -That's what an inspector said to me once when we were selling our house and I told him what we were doing after it sold. That comment stuck in my head the whole time we traveled because he was right. Spend twenty-four hours a day every day with someone and you will be close. And we are. - - - - -I want to be tested in ways I can't imagine and try to be ok no matter what happens. - -I looked forward to disasters, I looked forward to having to get out of tough situations. - -Now, mind you, "ok" doesn't mean happy as a clam, totally unaffected, no bad feelings ever. On the contrary, it means letting go of the reigns, opening myself up to the unknown and trusting that I had the ability to see myself through it. That's basically welcoming a whole heap of tough stuff to happen to ya. And it has. And I'm ok. Heck, I'm more than ok. I'm better than before. This whole endeavor, from the word go, has done nothing but affirmed my suspicions that we are stronger and more malleable than we ever give ourselves credit for. And no matter what, we will adjust and find a way to be ok. - -Cycles. Loops. Close them where you find them. For example, heres an energy loop: sun, plants, animals, waste, plants animals, waste. Find yourself in that. For example, the sun helps plants grow, hogs eat some of those plants, hog get slaughtered and made into bacon, I eat the bacon, I crap out the bacon into a composting toilet that eventually becomes soil for the plants that grow so the hogs can eat them... this is a minimally wasteful loop. I don't want to call it closed because there are variables (water, sunlight, not having a plague of locusts decend on your plants, etc), but it is robust on scale that swings from robust to totally batshit crazy, which would be the cycle that puts bacon in a package you buy from the store. - -## Alt Medicine - -A while back someone at work mentioned wanting to write about how there is little to no regulation in the realm of "alternative" medicine and its rife with scams. I volunteered to write a rebuttal, because I'm glad alternative medicine is not regulated. I did not elaborate and I forgot all about it until someone brought it up again, this time specifically asking why I was glad there were no regulations. - -I will likely never write a rebuttal because for one thing it would be publishable as anything other than Op/Ed. I am not scientist by training and, lack credentials, not allowed into the debate on equal footing. - -I don't hold this against science as a method of inquire, but I do very much hold it against scientists, who have become a modern priesthood controlling public discourse, just as the Catholic church did through the middle ages, the high priests of Set did in ancient Egypt, and so on through any other culture you want to cite. - -There is always a priesthood setting the limits of acceptable discourse, what matters is how that priesthood (and the culture more broadly) handles dissent. How much room is there for discourse outside the acceptable? We're very fortunate to live in a culture where for the most part there are no limits placed on dissenters. I can write this, publish it where anyone can read it, and there are (currently) no consequences. I will not be burned at the stake, exiled or any number of horrible things visited on those with "unacceptable" ideas in various cultures throughout the ages. There is some risk of publishing these opinions and having them come back to haunt me at some point in the future of course, but ultimately all I am advocating for is that we continue to not punish, or censor people who hold opinions, beliefs, customs, what have you, that are considered unacceptable to the current priesthood. - -## Present - -How do I make this while still being present. Here. Right now. In this bus, on this night, feeling this feeling? - -This turns out to be a very difficult problem to solve. - -Writing inherently pulls you out of the moment. It has to all reflective thinking is, well reflecting on something rather than something. So there's that. But I accept that. I've been writing for so long now I've long ago forgotten what it would be like not to always be compising things in my head. There may be some negative consequences to this habit, but for me, it was what it is and I am okay with it. - -I am less okay with the performative aspects of creating things based your experiences. This enters a peculiar gray zone in which one must be very careful. For me, it is fine if the desire to write about something drives me to go to a place that I might not otherwise have gone to. For example I doubt I would ever have gone to tk, except I wanted to write about it. But wanting to write about it is a kind of wanting to go. - -The danger lies in pulling yourself out of the experience of being there by performing for the imagined audience. I try to avoid this. It works for some people. Some people are able to think about getting a great image while still enjoying themselves. I am not. I have to lose myself in those moments or whatever I try to produce from them suffers. - -Which is to say I almost universally miss the great shot because I am too busy watching whatever it might be unfold. - - -Things need edges, edges are a kind of contract with things. The book ends when you close it. Begins when you open it. In between there is no contract. Or not much of one? - -I think we have our edges wrong. Things that should have softer, indistinct edges, like our homes, have hard edges that divide us from the world. Things that should have hard, distinct edges, like tools for communicating, have no edge at all, the loops are always running, never closing off. - -Adding edges to the loops closes them. - ----- - -Solutions I have seen work, and that I am experiementing with: - -All communication happens in loops, you say something, there is a response, you respond to that response and so on. This is the communication loop. How long is the loop? I find that the longer the loop is, the better the thing I am able to produce. So where instagram has loops measured in minutes, maybe hours, maybe at the most days, I find that loop overwhelming and short. The most I can do there is put something out, I can't and don't partake in the loops there. - -A website I control is an infinite loop potentially. Or rather I have to create the loops, I have to set the pace. And I generally do not do well at that. - - - -Consolidate data on a schedule, publish one thing on a schedule. - - -## Step Back, Detach, Ask Better Questions -The consumer education system has conditioned you to think in terms of products, you need to step back in ask bigger questions to find more interesting and sustainable answers. For example, the question, *should I buy this camera?* has no good answer without first asking *how to I create photos that make me happy?* It may be that some particular camera really does help in that quest, but more likely, it doesn't. More likely what you need to learn is technique and acquire skills like composition and reading light. - - -##From Ben Falk's book: - -• 104 nuclear reactors in 31 states, operated by 30 different companies. Every single one “temporarily” storing high-level waste that will be lethal for 10,000 to 24,000 years - -• 40,000 to 80,000 (exact number unknown) chemical factories producing or processing materials with multiple “compounds known to be carcinogenic and/or mutagenic” - -• More than 40 weapons-testing facilities and 70,000 nuclear bombs and missiles - -• 104,000,000 cubic meters of high-level radioactive waste from weapons-testing activities alone - -• 925 operating uranium mines - -• 20 to 30 times the average historical background rates of mercury in rain - -• 2,200 square miles of excavated valleys and leveled mountains in Appalachia alone - -• 478,562 active natural gas mines in the United States in 2008, with 1,800 expected to be drilled in the Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania alone in 2010 - -• 18,433,779,281 cubic feet of trash per year, or 100,000 acres of trash one-foot deep per year, or about 250 square miles, with trash 400 feet deep - - - -## Novelty and place - -It's one Barry Lopez spends some time on in *Artic Dreams*, noting that for natives of the Arctic Circle, "land does... what architecture sometimes does for us. It provides a sense of place, of scale, of history." Architecture has never done much for me, but I've been known to try constructing a cathedral of words to describe simple things, the way a blade of grass bends in the wind. - -Lopez's thought jumped out at me because I catch myself telling stories the wrong way these days. More and more I notice how much of the stories I tell are not what happened, but where it happened. I have developed a need to locate the past in space as well as time. I have to watch out for this because I've noticed many people find it annoying. I can watch their minds wander as I talk. I lose them. - -You gain a sense of place by merging into it, however briefly, in way that can only be done by giving up familiarity. Novelty sharpens the experience of place. Perhaps because we evolved to be wary of the novel, to be on edge in experiencing the unfamiliar. All that grass doesn't matter, that one part where it's novel, that one part where there are no shadows when there should be shadows. That's a lion. Novelty is bad in that sense. - -Now the evolutionary threat is largely gone though novelty becomes useful. It a grindstone sharpening your experience of place until it comes to the foreground. You notice what was not there yesterday. It's not a lion anymore, but still you notice. - -## Maps - -“Some for one purpose and some for another liketh, loveth, getteth, and useth Mappes, Chartes, & Geographicall Globes.”—John Dee, - -source: https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2019/oct/20/the-perfect-combination-of-art-and-science-mourning-the-end-of-paper-maps - - -## Immersing yourself - -In his book, <cite>Written in the West</cite> Wim Wenders talks about improving photography by completely immersing yourself in what you see, "no longer needing to interpret, just looking." I find that it's not just photography that can be enhanced this way, but all of life. All you need to do is let go and look. Let go of any agenda and just walk (or sit) and watch the world around you. The world is endlessly fascinating. Even the parts you don't like, like Texas. Step back from the things you want, the things you think you need, the things you think you should do, and a new range of possibilities opens up. - -## travel with kids - -"As with any thing, the needs of small people are different, and the same, as big people. They thrive on novelty, on the right amount of ease and challenge, and struggle with boredom. They find it hard to regulate when hungry or tired. These needs are simply scaled down. Adults, especially adults who have been around a bit, like to see what is between two mountains by viewing it from all sides. Little people and their minds are content with seeing the two mountains via their emissaries, the little rocks which have fallen off into the valley in between. Little people almost do well getting outside and having an adventure, again, today, but once things proceed much beyond a few miles the wants of the little become subservient to those of the big. - -Which reminds us that adventure, especially in the internet age, is always found in the mind anyway. There is nothing more adventurous than trying, really trying, the impossible task of understanding another person. Is this task more weighty with progeny than with a spouse? Your answer tells everything. - -Understanding the two of them at home is simply easier, if by easier I mostly mean more predictable. With answers readily accessible. Beyond that, after deciding have we the adults sufficient energy, sufficient motivation, sufficient bravery to take everyone and everything important out into the woods this weekend, it becomes a question of matching big person ambition and rules to little person energy. " - https://bedrockandparadox.com/2019/08/31/the-veneration-of-lameness/ - -## Universal Druid Prayer - -It appears in several forms; the one most often used in AODA runs like this: - -Grant, O Holy Ones, thy protection -And in protection, strength; -And in strength, understanding; -And in understanding, knowledge; -And in knowledge, the knowledge of justice: -And in the knowledge of justice, the love of it; -And in that love, the love of all existences; -And in the love of all existences, the love of Earth our mother and all goodness. - -And yes, it's a good intro to any sort of communion with the deities. - -## difference between in the streets and closed door cultures - -> Go to Africa, Latin America, the backwoods of China, SE Asia … it’s easy to make friends: all you need to do is walk down the street with your head up. These are “in the streets” cultures. Europe, on the other hand, is a “closed door” culture. That doesn’t mean that people are not nice. It’s just that they don’t have the social avenues that allow for on the fly engagements with people they don’t know. Talk with someone there and they ask the question, “What does this guy want? Why is he talking to me?” Start talking with someone you don’t know in Haiti and it’s just something normal and ordinary — everybody is talking with everybody anyway. -Wade Shepard - - -## Octavio Paz quote - -> Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the maze of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason. When we emerge, perhaps we will realize that we have been dreaming with our eyes open, and that the dreams of reason are intolerable. And then, perhaps, we will begin to dream once more with our eyes closed. <cite>–Octavio Paz</cite> - -## Stopping travel - -Full time travelers who stop traveling, regardless of how long or why, tend to feel like we've failed somehow. Which is silly, but I'm no exception. I feel it anyway. I have been feeling it lately. - -I like living on the road for two main reasons. One, we spend more time outside. There is nothing so valuable as spending all day outside. Two, it satisfies a pretty basic curiosity: what does it look like around that bend? What is the view like from the other side of the hill? What does the river sound like down in that valley? What is like to wake up in middle of the desert? How does it feel to fall asleep in the sand listening to the sea? How does it feel sitting in the shade of a sandstone overhang where someone else sat thousands of years ago? What's the scent of an aspen forest in a downpour? How does the sandstone feel on your fingertips after the thunderstorms pass? - -So to answer that question everyone keeps asking me: yes I miss living in the bus. And to answer the follow up question, yes, we're going to get back to that eventually. At the moment we're in San Miguel. - - -We were going to spend the winter down here, stay warm, improve our Spanish a bit and go back to the bus when it warmed up a little. Then we were going to spend spring traveling the southwest desert, see some areas of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah that we hadn't seen yet, and then head up to Wyoming, Idaho and Montana when it got hot, and spend summer at higher, cooler elevations. Good plan right? Well. - -When we parked the bus last year we knew that before it went much further it was going to need some work. Significant, time and money-eating work. To get to the places we want to get, we need more power and less worry. The only way I've come up with to get to that point is to either drop in a bigger engine, a 440 or the like, or rebuild the 318 to get better compression, which means boring out the engine, new pistons, maybe new manifolds, probably a new transmission and quite a few other things that are not cheap. It's all doable, but it takes time and money. There's also the possibility we could move to a different rig[^1], but that again is time and money. - -Time and money we don't have right now. - -I think now that true sweetness can only happen in limbo. I don't know why. Is it because we are so unsure, so tantative and waiting? Like it needs that much room, that much space to expand. The not knowing anything really, the hoping, the aching transience. This is not real, not really, and so we let it alone, let it unfold lightely. Those times that can fly. That's the way it seems now looking back. - -[^1]: I have never liked driving with a trailer, but it probably makes more sense for the way we travel. We like to set up camp and then spend a few weeks roaming an area. Certain things about trailers make them better for this, like the ability to haul out your black water and go fetch fresh water without breaking camp. The other marked advantage of the trailer and tow vehicle is that when you do need a mechanic's help, you don't lose your house. But pretty sure my family would abandon me if I tried to sell the bus. - - -## Bird watching as a way to get out - - -"Looking for birds, in this case, means seeing the private gardens of the brightly-colored houses in a small mountain town, with their fiery pink and orange blossoms, their mango and papaya trees, and their tangled blooming vines. Birding gets you to places you can’t otherwise go, or never thought to see. It gives you access to new foods and flavors. For example, birding gives you unparalleled access to taste rare fruits and other micro-local foods." - https://www.notesfromtheroad.com/neotropics/tapir-valley.html - - - -I don't want you to be like me. I want you to figure out who you are, how to think your own thoughts and maybe, if you're lucky, figure out what you're supposed to be doing. One of the easiest ways to get the kind of perspective you need to figure these things out is to travel, particularly outside your own culture - -## Failure of materialism - -I have become increasingly dissastified with the scientific materialist view of the world. I don't disagree with it, I just don't think it's the whole story. Which is to say that science provides a wonderful toolkit for exploring one of the worlds we live in, but it's a terrible toolkit for exploring the other worlds we live in. Now you could say, but we don't live in other worlds. But you're wrong. Imagine for a moment your favorite place, the warm sand of a beach, the wind through the pines on a ridge of mountains, the still heat of an afternoon in the desert, what have you. See it clearly in your mind. Hear it, the waves crashing the shore, the wind in the pines, the crunch of shoes as you walk through the gravel of the desert. Smell the salt, the pines, the sagebrush. Make it real in your mind. - -What world is that? It's not the world scientific materialism describes. Add a unicorn to your favorite place. See, easy. Easy because it's a different world. It's the world of imagination. There are other worlds too. Depending on which tradition of thought you find best describes your experience there might be three worlds, or five, for ten. The model that's always made the most sense to me happens to have five world, but it's just a model. - -Borges said the map is not the territory, and, while that's true, it should bear some scaled down resemblance to the territory otherwise it's not going to make a very helpful guide to the territory. - - - -## On Writing - -What I love most about writing is the thinking that happens first, it frees your mind from itself, it gives your mind something to turn over and over, it becomes like an old friends. You look at it this way, you look at it that way, you try to figure out why it's there. For a long time it's just there. It's there when I'm putting the coffee in the moka, it's there when I stand in the shower, feeling the water on my back, it's there when I walk up the hill, threading my way around concrete telephone polls and women selling nopales and tortillas. - -And then some part of it, suddenly you know why it's there, you know where it leads, you know what that bit is going to do and you move on to the next part. - -Some times unfortunately it can take years to figure things out, which makes it hard to feed a family writing. I have done it, but I have done it by writing terrible, terrible things. Book summaries for something like Cliff's Notes, which would have been a find job if it had paid more than $.03 a word, to blog posts for people trying to get people sliding down some slimy mailing list funnel. It was all unpleasant work, but in some ways it made me a better writer. Not at craft, but at volume. If you want to feed your family using words, plan to use a lot of them. One month I wrote 80,000 words. I averaged 60,000 for an entire year and nearly starved to death. - -You have to love to write, and you have to have the disciple to write even what you don't love. If I were you, I would get a job. If anyone had hired me, I would taken a job, but no one ever did. So I kept writing. - -## Work - -"Well, it depends on how much you love your work. - -After all, we’re really dealing with two separate things: - -The purpose of work is to create. It is to fuel your soul. - -Whereas the purpose of earning money is to have enough of the stuff. How much is enough? Whatever you need to max out your happiness potential. After that, more money will not make you any happier."—MMM - - -Greek Proverb which says, “A society grows great when the old people plant trees, even when they know they will never get to enjoy their shade.” - - -## An Invitation - - -In 1993 I headed off to college to a quiet little town called Redlands, CA, which had a college of the same name. It was at the base of the mountains and edge of the desert. At the time all I wanted to do was spend as much time hiking, climbing and skiing as I could. Redlands was a good base camp for all that. It was also one of a handful of colleges around the country that allowed you to write your own major. I originally went because I planned to write a major that was half studying photography and half writing about nature. Basically this was when I concieved luxagraf, I just had to wait ten years for the technology that would make it possible to become widespread. - -Before I dropped out of Redlands, which I did after two semesters, my advisor mentored my first class in my self- written major, which was a kind of Nature Writing 101, reading and reacting to authors I'd mostly already read and reacted to, all the usual American suspects, Thoreau, Abbey, Dillard, Lopez, Stegner, and so on. My professor was more knowledgable about this area than me though and he threw a few authors I did not know on the list. The one that's relevant now is one that remains largely overlooked by the canon of American nature writing, Mary Hunter Austin. - -Austin traveled and lived in the Mojave desert for 17 years, studying native life, as well as spanish-american immigrant life in the region and writing defenses of both long before anyone else. But she is probably best known for a book called <cite>The Land of Little Rain</cite>, her <cite>Walden<cite> with the Mojave desert playing the role of Thoreau's pond. - -It's a good book, one that made me appreciate the Mojave much more than I did at the time. Since I lived in Redlands, not far from the Mojave, I was able to go out and explore quite a bit of what she wrote about. Recently, in searching for new books for the kids I discovered that Austin also wrote a children's book, called simply <cite>The Trail Book</cite>. Imagine Night in the Museum, but with Native American tales and you've got the idea. Finding this sent me off searching for more Austin, and somewhere in the early hours of the morning, bleery-eyed and half asleep at the keyboard, I ran across a digital copy of a collection of Austin's short stories called <cite> Lost Borders</cite>. What caught my eye was the dedication, "to Marion Burke and the Friends of a Long Year." - -Who were the friends of a long year? What were the friends of a long year? When were the friends of a long year? It's hard to tell from the typesetting if Austin capitalized Friends of a Long Year or not, but I like to think she did, I like to think it was some kind of club. I did a little research before I dragged myself to bed and dreamed of a the friends of a long year. - - - -## Hard Times - - -It was a hard time. My wife took a job teaching English to Chinese five year old. It was a degrading business for someone with a master's in education, dancing like a monkey (I mean that literally) for tech companies whose "training materials" had more typos than a teenager's messaging logs. It was a dark time, but one you have to put somewhere else so your children don't realize how thin the line between having food and not can be because that's stress you try to keep your children from, even if you ultimately can't. Better your child be hungry than be hungry and have to wrestle with why. There's a surface level of why, the obvious, the because we have no job, that's easy enough to explain and we did, what's harder is to look the whole system in the eye and consider it, this thing humans have built where in fact there needs be nothing of the sort. Why force people to earn paper tickets, really electronic tickets these days, not even real tickets, that can be exchanged for food, shelter, etc. Why allow such a small number of humans to own all the land? Why allow anyone to own the land at all? These are much harder questions for children to face, for anyone to face. The rest of us have time and effort already invested in ignoring these questions, in pretending that the way things are is the only way they could be, that we don't have to face them the way children do, we simply look the other way and hang our heads and dance like monkeys for the foriegn kids and collect our digital tickets and buy food for our children, or try anyway. - -The stupid thing is we know this isn't the only way. The status quo only seems inevitable if it's all you know and we, creators of a culture that is obsessed with past cultures, know for absolute surety that there are other ways. Pretty much any tribal society for instance—which is a huge negative value judgment in that phrase that I'll be coming back to -- - - - - -## Meditation - -Like many people who practice meditation, it has been transformative for me. I don't talk about it much because who the hell wants to hear their friends talk about how meditation has been transformative? Even I don't want to hear that. But I'll put it here for total strangers on the internet. Weird. But anyway. - -I have experimented with many different forms of meditation, Vipassanna, mindfulness, zazen, transcendental, and others, but the one that actually did something for me, and which I continue to practice today, is discursive meditation. This is different than the mind-emptying meditation popular in the west just now. It's not mind-emptying, but rather focused, purposeful thinking (usually the full systems of thought from which the mind-emptying meditation techniques have been lifted have this sort of meditation as well, often under the name "contemplation" or similar). - -Discursive meditation does not require anything, but a comfortable place to sit, which might be part of the reason it's not very popular in this gear-obsessed age. A nice wooden chair works well for sitting, but anywhere you can get comfortable and relaxed works. I live in RV and don't have a nice wooden chair, so I can tell you with some authority that you need nothing more than a comfortable place to sit. No expensive retreats, no fancy buckwheat-filled pillow cushions, no special pants. Just sit down, breathe and call up whatever image or theme you're meditating on. - -What you meditate on varies by tradition and person. I recommend using some form of established tradition in the beginning, this will give you a place to turn when unexpected things happen. And they will. Eventually. The tradition I follow is that of hermeticism, which includes spiritual, ritual and other components as well, but discursive meditation was once [a big part of Catholicism](), and [druids](http://aoda.org/publications/articles-on-druidry/discursivemeditation/) practice it as well, which should give some idea of the range of appeal. - -The ability to think deeply and purposefully is one of those skills that, once you have it, you'll wonder how you ever got by without it. - - -## family in mexico - - -I've never lived in a culture that was so hard working an so devoted to family. These are things that I grew up hearing people talk about—hard work and family—but I've never actually seen it like I see it here. Which is not meant to denigrate people in other places, hard work is not a zero sum game, but here work and life flow together with no real strong boundaries like you'd find in the States, for example. - -My favorite example of this is bus drivers. In the United States if you drive a bus, you wear a uniform and, aside from your face and body shape, you are largely indistinguishable from whomever is driving the next bus. Chances are, when you get off you park the bus and go home. It's not in any meaningful way, your bus or even your work, you are by design an meaningless cog in a profit wheel where most of the profits go to someone other than you. I could make a good case that this is an awful way to live, severely limits your humanity, leads to depression and dissatisfaction with your work and life, and is one of the more profound and overwhelming problems in American culture, but we won't get into that here. - -Instead consider the Mexican bus driver. His bus is his bus. Her bus is her bus. The dashboard is given over to shrines of La Virgen de Guadalupe, or whomever their patron saint might be, along with photos of family, friends, wives, children, what have you. Usually there's a crucifix and some pithy quotes about god, country and most importantly, family. Mi familia, Mi Trabajo, Mi Vida, was one I saw. I don't know where the buses get parked at night, but I do know that the next day the same person is driving the same bus. Mi familia, Mi Trabajo, Mi Vida. - -For me this helps to make sense of - - - - - -## doing nothing - -I'm not going to pretend to know what Wallace Stevens was referring to by the Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is, but it has always reminded me of the fact that there are myriad complex worlds around us to which we are wholly ignorant. Not because we don't pay attention, though that may be part of it, but because we can't pay attention. There are vast existences too small to see with the naked eye. Ponds full of pond scum that have their own version of stressful jobs, political and social situations, and whatnot just as we do. They're just having it all on a very different scale, from us and happen to use chemicals instead of words to communicate. - -For all you know that puddle you didn't even notice on your way into work this morning is home to a population of microbes undergoing an extremely stressful existence which they would desperately like to escape just as much as you would desperately like to escape your cubicle. - -By the same token, the nothing that is has also always reminded me that it's entirely possible, likely even I would argue, that there are some beings out there to which our existence is about the same as the pond scum. Not insignificant or unimportant, just too small to really pay any kind of meaningful attention to. After all, pretty much everyone and everything has its own set of problems to worry about. - - -Staring at nothing isn't doing nothing. It so happens that watching the world in silence isn't something our culture considers valuable and so you and I have been trained to casually dismiss it as "doing nothing". But the more I've done it, the more I realized that sitting, "doing nothing" is actually, possibly, the secret of the world so to speak. Whatever it may be, I can say from experience that it's incredibly valuable to me now and has helped me grow by leaps and bounds as a person. - -I also think it offers a practical, easy way out of many of the social messes we've created for ourselves. - -There's a lot of windbags out there criticizing the internet, especially social media, for fostering narcissism, consumer culture, intellectual bullying, and whatever other social ill gets their particular goat as it were. But it's rare that said windbags have any good ideas on how we can counteracting these forces beyond turning off the TV and internet. - -To be fair, that does work. Especially turning off the TV. Few things will improve your life so dramatically as throwing your TV out the highest window you can find (making sure there's no one below). - -The internet though is more neutral in my view. It can be good, it can be bad, it all depends on you and how you use it. In my case I have to use it, it's how I make money to live this way. And sure I can say oh I'm only going to look up whatever technical thing I need to look up to solve a particular problem, but that ideal is very different from the messy relaity that the internet is full of interesting stuff to stare at. - -\l - -Observing nature is not nothing. - -Which is to say all the things we as a culture don't want to talk about right now. - -You and I find ourselves born into a declining culture. A culture that is what Spengler would call the end of an abstraction phase that will soon start swinging toward - - -is a bit more complex than that. If you want to still use social media, try first developing humility. One easy way to do that is to create an active practice cultivating humility, for example, pending time in quiet observance of nature. Spend some time realizing that most of life care not at all what humans think, say or do, is helpful in - -seems like it would require an active practice. - -## quotes borrowed - - -But as we struggle through this crisis of legitimacy, what is left over when the abstractions start to wear thin? When I decide I don’t want to become an opiate addict and need to find something else? What about when it’s more serious than just a headache – what if it turns out to be cancer, and I don’t want to follow the standard ‘cut, poison, burn’ protocol? For me, it sometimes feels like there’s only a smoking crater where my brain should be. My mind often feels like it’s just a collection of Other People’s opinions and regurgitated sound bites. Even if I do try to pay attention to my own experiences, what I am able to perceive is limited by my analysis of the information coming in to my brain, which is itself conditioned by the habits of thought I learned from other people and my society. I filter out the information to which I am exposed. So there really is no objective truth out there! -https://www.ecosophia.net/the-truths-we-have-in-common/#comment-17128 - -It’s when you realize that most of your opinions and ideas belong to other people that you can begin the central work of an age of reflection — the work of learning how to think your own thoughts, and assess other people’s opinions and ideas and your own with a set of critical tools that don’t depend on checking their fit to some collectively approved set of abstract generalizations. JMG - -ipalm fronds, whirls, fans, crisp browned tips, peeling trunks as if the whole tree were some giant alien flower, other with trunks smooth and stalk straight leading up to bunches of fronds that look like pineapples on stilts. The can be so absolutely still when the ind doesn't blow.. The slash pine mixed in, it too has a very stright trunk, shedding its lower branches as it grows so that the long, delicate needles grow in tuffs and clumps of needle fans near the top of the tree. Here and there an oak, never a big one in the palm-dominated areas, but vaguely sickly looking oaks scratching out an existence in this sandy soil. - -Twilight is soft yellow that gradually fades up to a cool white that gets cooler and cooler blow as it climbs up the sky until it reachs the rich coblant I see up through the faint waiving of pine tops in the wind, the deep rich blue of twilight, the spirit who guides the stars into the night. The sand looks gray and soft when the sun is gone, the coean grows dark and seems to settle it's restlessness a bit as the light disappears. - - -Moo Krob Nam Ma Prow - -having grown up in mid-twentieth century suburbia — and then escaped! — I have a very low tolerance for the kind of boring world that comes from excess conformity and obedience to authorities. As for ways to sort through the abstractions — ah, we’ll be getting to those. - ecosophia, greer - - -> In a home I need walls, roof, windows, and a door that can be opened and closed. I also need a place to cook, a place to eat, a place to sleep, a place for a guest, and a place to write. More space is not better... more space attracts more stuff which eventually means less space. - -> Some things make life easier, but more things do not make life more easy. More things mean more things that can break down and more time spent fixing or replacing them. - -> Comfort is freedom and independence. Comfort is having the sweat glands and metabolic tolerance to deal with heat and cold. It is not central heating or air conditioning which may fail or be unavailable. It is not plushy seats but a healthy back. Luxury is not expensive things. It is a healthy and capable body that moves with ease with no restraints because something is too heavy, too far, too hard, or too much. It is a content and capable mind that can think critically, solve problems, and form opinions of its own. - -> Success is having everything you need and doing everything you want. It is not doing everything you need to have everything you want. If so then you do not own your things, instead your things own you. I do not need to own a particular kind of vehicle. I need to go from A to B. I do not need fancy steak dinners, rare ingredients, or someone else to prepare my meals whether it is a pizza parlor, a chef, or an industrial food preprocessor. I need food to live. Food to fuel my body and brain. Luxury is not eating at 5 five star restaurants. Luxury is being able to appreciate any food. Comfort is eating the right kind and the right amount of food. Not whatever I want. Eating and moving right prevents diseases, pains, and lack of functionality. I am what I eat and I look what I do. Everybody is. It is the physiological equivalent of integrity. To say what I mean and mean what I say. This too makes life more comfortable. Money is opportunity. Opportunity is power. Power is freedom. And freedom means responsibility. Without responsibility, eventually there is no freedom, no power, no opportunities, and no money. More importantly, freedom is more than power. Power is more than opportunity. Opportunity is more than money. And money is more than something that just buys stuff. It is simple to understand but hard to remember, but do remember this if nothing else. - -http://earlyretirementextreme.com/manifesto.html - -The Labyrinth of Solitude -Juana Inés de la Cruz. Her superb book "Poems, Protest, and a Dream" -Mariano Azuela's "The Underdogs" -## Podcasts - -podcasts are great because you can do other things while you listen right? Like you can be doing the dishes or gardening or working on your car and listening to a podcast and that's like giving you that time that you would have spent in a book or video and now you can spend it doing two things. Now is that divided attention as good as the focused attention? probably not. so for me, I tend to combine two low lift things. I listen to a podcast on tk when I'm doing the dishes but something that requires a good bit of focus I might save for a drive. But either way this opens up a way to kind of double time your life. You want to learn about something new, but you need to weed the garden right? Well, now you can. - -## Monohull must haves -Here are *my* must haves for a monohul, if you want to live aboard for extended stays: - -Head and galley right down at the companionway. -You don’t want to go halfway through the boat, let alone pass through cabins to reach their ensuite head, with dripping wet oilies in a heavy seaway. It has to be right at the bottom of the stairs. - -If you like to eat in the cockpit, it’s very nice to be able to pass food directly from the galley without walking around with it. -Also, the area in front of the companionway is usually the most stable one of the boat. Best for cooking at sea. - -A separate shower stall. -Usually we like to wash from the stern but when anchorages are crowded or the weather is a little cooler it’s very nice to be able to wash inside without splashing all over the head and the sink. - -Seats 4 at the indoor table without having to unfold table leaves or hampering mobility inside. - -All lines, especially reefing, lead aft to the cockpit so you can do the heavy weather sailing without ever leaving the cockpit. - -Walk through transom to facilitate boarding from the dinghy with your hands full of groceries. Also the nicest way to take a swim, or for washing yourself as mentioned above. - -One of the smallest boats corresponding to the above whilst sporting 3 cabins, is the Beneteau Oceanis 361 that I’ve owned and loved very much. Crossed the Atlantic twice with it. You may want a Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 40 from around 1999 (the 3 cabin - 1 head layout) for a bit more payload and space in the forward cabin and twin cockpit wheels that facilitate mobility to and from the walk through transom. Otherwise a very similar boat. These are two ‘budget’ options, which seem to be the prudent choice given the description of your means. Better spend far less on the initial acquisition cost than you think you can afford. - -### Forward Wind Scoop - -Forward wind scoop: a bit of triangular canvas strung over a forward hatch between two scasions, sloping down to the deck as you move aft with a tension line to the rigging above to keep it taunt. Doubles as forward windshade and forces air down into the hatch to keep below decks cool. Keeps the air moving through. Saw this on Allied Seawind 30 on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRHskbdRFFs -## CC - -When I first saw you I was just trying to get a cup of coffee. But then I decided I'd rather have you. -That proved more difficult that I thought. Once You sat in my lap once at Jason and Christy's house -but I was pretty sure you were dating someone else and I was positive I was so that didn't go far -but I found I rather enjoyed you in my lap. Another time we went to prom and you made out with me -I know I was dating someone else then too but I didn't care. For years I made you many a spinach salad with salmon on it, -even when you were eating with someone else. Then you became a picture on my refrigerator for 3 years. - -Once when I try to meet up with you you ditched me. Then you decided to marry someone else I went traveling the world for years -I didn't think about you very much for a while, but when I got back I met you again at Nancy's house -I spilled Sangria on your dog but still you said it could be okay for me -to visit you in Charleston. We ate lots of seafood without going far -We went skinny dipping in your pool, in hindsight I'm surprised you did it. -the first night was a little rough, I had to fight the dog, she didn't want me, she wanted you. - -And then I considered once what I would do without and found I could not imagine life without you. -As Donne wrote, "All joys are thanks to you" and somehow I convinced you of it -I might redo them now, those standard vows we read, or listen to out back of our house -If I could do it over I'd tell you I'll love you forever, forever ever, years, -even beyond death, for I've walked many of the happy roads that take you round the world and far -away and have found them good, so long as you are with me. - - ---- - - -From "Valentine" by John Fuller - -The things about you I appreciate -May seem indelicate: -I'd like to find you in the shower -And chase the soap for half an hour. -I'd like to have you in my power -And see your eyes dilate. -I'd like to have your back to scour -And other parts to lubricate. - -I'd like to find a good excuse -To call on you and find you in. -I'd like to put my hand beneath your chin, -And see you grin. -I'd like to taste your Charlotte Russe, -I'd like to feel my lips upon your skin -I'd like to make you reproduce. - -I'd like you in my confidence. -I'd like to be your second look. -I'd like to let you try the French Defence -And mate you with my rook. -I'd like to be your preference -And hence -I'd like to be around when you unhook. -I'd like to be your only audience, -The final name in your appointment book, -Your future tense. - ---- - - -Have you forgotten what we were like then -when we were still first rate -and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth - -it's no use worrying about Time -but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves -and turned some sharp corners - -the whole pasture looked like our meal -we didn't need speedometers -we could manage cocktails out of ice and water - -I wouldn't want to be faster -or greener than now if you were with me O you -were the best of all my days - -# Essays - -## tk - - - - -Once you accept that there is no cavalry coming, or perhaps more conservatively, that you don't need a cavalry to come, or, at the very least make the decision that you want to life your life in such a way that you don't *want* to need a cavalry, the question arises: what then do I do? How do I get from where I am, to that state of mental, physical, and spiritual security? - -Another way to put this would be: How do I begin to take responsibility for and become accountable for myself, my family, my world? - -I have no idea. Which is to say that I know what I am doing for those things, but I don't know what you should do -- that's for you to figure out. If I told you what to do you'd just be dependant on me, no better off than being dependant on the cavalry. - -No one can tell you how to get on the path to self-dependency because no one other than you knows what your path to self-dependency looks like. You have to find it. And you'll know when you have. Find it is the fun part. Don't worry if it takes a while. It took me the better part of two decades. But I know people who figured it out much quicker. - -So I am not going to prescribe some recipe for how you can take responsibility for your world, but I am going to tell you something that might help you figure out your own path: you first have to reclaim your time. One of the things that keeps us dependant on the cavalry is our perceived lack of time to do anything about it. How are you going to learn how to rebuild your leaf blower motor when you work 9-5 and spend an hour on each side of that commuting? From 8-6 you have no time for leaf blowers. Throw in breakfast and dinner and suddenly from 7-7 you have no time for anything else. - - - -How do you find time to build relationships with your neighbors when you spend 12 hours (or more) of your waking day working? - - -In the first essay on this subject I suggested that you stop using money to meet all your needs. That is, begin to build relationships with people such that you can begin to meet some of your needs by offering something of yourself to others. I don't know what that might look like for you, but here's a quick example: when we lived out in woods in South Carolina much of the land surrounding our house was leased to a hunt club. In exchange for keeping an eye on the area, we were free to hunt. Actually we were offered other people's deer, though we had to decline for lack of freezer space. - -If you live in Manhattan this scenario isn't going to come up. But if you start trying to meet people, to listen to them, you will build relationships that lead to things like this. Perhaps not free food, perhaps it will end up being chess lessons or tk, but it will be something and your life will be richer, and slightly, ever so slightly less dependant on the system of The Machine. - -This will also give you agency. You are the one with the connection to others, nothing is mediating that. This is agency. Agency reduces stress. It helps you to see bad things, bad situations for what they are: bad situations. When you have agency and the self-confidence that it, along with experience, give you, you begins to see that with sufficient resources -- time, effort, knowledge, money, etc -- any problem can be solved. - - - -## The Cavalry Isn't Coming - -The Cavalry isn't coming. This is the lesson 21st century America is trying to teach us. We are going to have to re-learn how to depend on ourselves and on each other. There is no one else. That's okay. We don't need anyone else. - -Self-reliance backed up by tight community bonds used to be the norm. You depended on yourself, your family, your community, because who else was there? So far as I can tell from reading history this was most people's outlook until roughly the middle of the 20th century. That's when a number of things happened that changed how people saw themselves and their communities. - -Around then things began to centralize and as they did the solutions people had always relied on weren't suddenly found wanting. Self-appointed experts stepped in to tell us how things should be done. How we should eat. How we should live. How we should love. Sometimes the experts had good ideas. But often they did not. And even when their ideas were good, there was an unintended consequence to listening to the experts: communal bonds were weakened, people were deprived of skills, people questioned their instincts. Soon people believed they needed experts for everything. - -The world according to experts is a world that depends on those experts, the cavalry. The people we mean when we say "they'll think of something." - -Except that as we've all witnessed in the last twenty years, they won't think of something. They're out of ideas. Worse, the old ideas don't work anymore. The world of the expert is collapsing all around us. The cavalry isn't coming because the cavalry doesn't know how to ride anymore. - -For four years we've been driving around the United States, passing through all its unique regions (except New England and the Pacific Northwest) and I've noticed not only the experts are failing us, but that there are some places where that has had little to no effect on life. - -It took me a long time to figure this out because this shift, from the local community as the hub of life, to there being no hub, happened long before I was born. That is to say, the disconnected lives we all lead, depending on experts to tell us everything from what to eat to how to fix our cars, was normal to me. It was the water I lived in and I never noticed it. What I did notice pretty early on was that some places were decidedly different. Northern Wisconsin. Okracoke. Parts of the Florida Panhandle. - -We were drawn to these places and continue to return to them in part I think because they resisted the shift to expert authority that happened everywhere else. Self-reliance, independent businesses, and close knit communities still thrive in these places. These places somehow escaped the chain-storification of the world. It was refreshing. It was different. These places felt like what I wanted the future to be. - -I have read enough books of the American road to know that everywhere used to be like this, but I never gave much thought to how or why that changed. I assumed that chain stores took over. And they did. But I think there's considerably more underlying that simple observation, and I think understanding how it happened, how we got into this mess, is going to help us get out of it. - -I think it happened because not enough people resisted it. We were swept along and did not stand up to it. It's hard to avoid shopping at Walmart. So we did. And so on, until the old ways were swept aside. We prized newer bigger better because we lost sight of what life is really about. - -Singular cause and effect cannot explain how an entire culture shifts, that's a subtle and multifaceted process, but it begins and ends with the choices of individuals. Millions of individuals, all of whom have different beliefs, different desires, different wills. It's important to keep this in mind because the kind of thinking that says "here's the problem, here's how to fix it" is the kind of thinking that made the problem. - -And now here we are, waiting for the other shoe to drop. We're a bit like Wile E. Coyote when he's run off the edge of the cliff but doesn't realize it yet. Ignorance of his true situation keeps him from plunging down right away, but there's always that moment when it starts to sink in. The cartoonists let his ears droop just before he confronts his situation and falls. That's about where I see modern America just now. Our ears are drooping and we know what's coming, but no one knows how high we are or how hard we'll fall. - -That is a pretty dismal place to be. But I believe we can still exercise some control over that descent. We have to fall, but there are branches we can grab onto, things that can slow us down. Not as a culture, but as individuals. We can descent gradually and with some degree of grace perhaps. - -Everywhere will be different, and the solutions will be different for everyone. That's what five years living on the road has taught me. There is no collective anything. There is just you and me and the rain. When I say we have to figure this out without the cavalry, don't mistake me for some alternate cavalry. I don't know what you need to do. I know some of what I need to do, but you are different. You have your own path. We need to work together, help each other, but work together and help each other down our own paths. The balance between individualism and community that has been lost, we have to restore it one person at a time. The good news is that I think we still have a chance to land at the bottom of that descent without too much damage. To understand what I mean, let me tell you a little story about an engine. - ---- - -At the end of 2017, after we'd been traveling in the bus for about nine months we were [climbing up Tehachapi Pass](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2017/12/terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-week) to get out of California's central valley. About halfway up the incline there was a loud bang from the engine and the smell of burning oil. The leaking head gasket we didn't know about had leaked enough that one piston shattered and we were dead in the water. I didn't know that at the time. All I knew was that something was very, very wrong. - -I called a tow truck and we were towed over the pass down to Mojave, CA, where we spent three weeks and over $6,000 replacing that piston and head gasket. We had no choice. While I knew how to fix some things, I was a long way from knowing how to take apart an entire engine. But, when I was signing that credit card receipt for six grand, I decided, never again. Whatever happens from here on out, I am going to fix it or we're going to sell it and find some other way to travel. - -The bus has never been to a mechanic since. This is not meant as a slight of those mechanics who have worked on it over the years. Some did good work. Some did not. But none of them love this engine the way I do. Why should they? It's not their engine. If you love something you learn how to take care of it yourself. - -So I set about trying to educate myself on how to repair a Chrysler 318 LA engine. This was not easy. The aspirated 318 with LA heads hasn't been in a production vehicle since the late 1970s. Even mechanics in their mid 50s might never have actually worked on one. Slowly though I began to stumble across people working on them. The [Mopar A-body forums](https://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/) have been helpful, and several YouTube channels have taught me a ton, especially [Uncle Tony's Garage](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9SzQNYLqsPQGY_nbHogDDw). - -But while strangers could provide some framework and theory, which it comes to figuring out what's wrong I've mainly turned to my uncle Ron who has an uncanny knack for being able to diagnose problems over the phone with very little to go on. Without him I would not know half of what I know today (which is still disappointingly little, but enough to get by). - -Somewhere along the way I started to wonder what was driving me. It was partly curiosity, partly necessity, but also partly something more. Matthew Crawford's *Shop Class as Soul Craft* articulates this something more far more eloquently than I've been able to. Crawford sees the need to be capable of repair as more than just a desire to fix things. He sees it as a desire to escape the feeling of dependence on stuff. The more I began to work on the bus the more I understood what Crawford meant. There is empowerment in knowing how things work. Your stuff will never again fail you because if it does break, you can repair it. Empowerment in this case means removing the expert between you and your stuff. Your stuff is more yours, you are more in control of your stuff. - -Crawford calls the person who wants to fix their own stuff, the Spirited Man. In his book this figure becomes the antidote to passive consumption. Passive consumption displaces agency, argues Crawford. One is no longer master of one's stuff because one does not truly understand how stuff works. "Spiritedness, then," writes Crawford, "may be allied with a spirit of inquiry, through a desire to be master of one’s own stuff. It is the prideful basis of self-reliance." - -Crawford writes that the spirited man "hates the feeling of dependence, especially when it is a direct result of his not understanding something. So he goes home and starts taking the valve covers off his engine to investigate for himself. Maybe he has no idea what he is doing, but he trusts that whatever the problem is, he ought to be able to figure it out by his own efforts. Then again, maybe not—he may never get his valve train back together again. But he intends to go down swinging." - -In the time since I read that I have literally done exactly that. I have decided I'd rather go down swinging, taking apart my valve train, rather than seeking the help of a professional. It’s not just me. YouTube and other sharing sites are littered with people teaching each other how to fix stuff. Then there are the thousands people without social media who are quietly working in their yards, in their garages, at the side of the road. Shade tree mechanics. Tinkerers. Spirited men and women who want first and foremost to understand, to expand their understanding of the world around them, to know how to use the tools we toolmakers have created for ourselves. - -I think this goes to the heart of our existence... why are we here? Are we here, as the technomedia landscape would have it, to be passively entertained and coddled from birth to death? Or are we here for something more? I don't know about you, but I don't think we're just along for the ride. We’re here to stand at the helm, trim the sails and steer the ship. - -I think rejecting the world of passivity, of getting off our butts and taking matters into our own hands, of asking our neighbors and like-minded strangers how to fix things, how to build things, what's working and what isn't. All of this is on the path to rebuilding a life of value and meaning. - ---- - -We eliminate our dependence on the cavalry by becoming the cavalry for ourselves, for our families, and for our neighbors. *Être fort pour être utile* *. Be strong to be useful. - -Eliminate the central conceit of modernism—that there is a group of people you need to save you from... the world, yourself, your shortcomings, your neighbors, your neighbors' shortcomings and on down the line -- by taking responsibility for yourself and the expanding that responsibility outward to your family, to your community. - -The message of modernism is that you're helpless and you need saving. If you want to dig deep into the psychology of this I'd say it's about what you'd expect to get when a culture takes the gods out of its religion and replaces those gods with administrative systems. We're not the first. The Romans went down this path, so did the Chinese. Read Oswald Spengler or Arthur Toynbee if the history interests you. All you really need to know though is that there's a long history showing it doesn't work. Look around you, is stuff working? No, no, it is not. - -Everything requires high specialized skills and knowledge. This is a choice. Things don't have to be built this way. Culture doesn't have to be arranged this way. It didn't use to be this way. Even 100 years ago there were very few "experts" telling you how to live. Now even lightbulbs have to include instructions on how to change them. - -Once you needed to be able to do a bit of everything yourself—help your neighbors build their homes, raise and butcher animals, preserve your food, fight fires, fix stuff, pull a tooth, deliver a child. All the things Robert A. Heinlein famously suggested a human being out to be able to do: "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." - -Prior to the coming of the machine age, we were able to do this stuff. It was no factor. - -But I know, I know, industrialization relies on specialization. Specialization means highly trained workers. Professionals are better than self-taught amateurs. Their skills can develop everything to increasing levels of complexity. And look, there are aspects of this that are good. It would take me years to learn how to machine a camshaft. I'm happy to let an expert do that because their expertise has allowed them to develop better tools and using those tools requires skills that only those experts have. Not everyone had a mill at their house. Not everyone could forge a great blade. There has always been specialization. It's the degree of specialization that's the problem. Our problems are the problems of overspecialization. - -The problem with the specialization model isn't so much the specialization as the exclusion. As Christopher McDougall so eloquently puts it in *Natural Born Heros*, over time, "a subtle cancer spread: where you have more experts, you create more bystanders. Professionals did all the fighting and fixing we used to handle ourselves; they even took over our fun, playing our sports while we sat back and watched." - -When was the last time you played baseball? When was the last time you watched it? I know I listened to a game last week. The last time I played was in the previous century. That's sad really. I like playing. Life is playing. Not watching. What are we here for? To play or to watch? I think that will become central question of our age, at least for those that haven't found their gods. - -I believe the disconnection that comes from watching life instead of participating in it is responsible for just about all our problems. Our mental health problems, our physical health problems, our cultural problems. All these things stem from being disconnected from life, from each other, from ourselves. - -How did we get here? We got here because we allowed other people to tell us what was good for us. And they were wrong. From diet and health to design and visions of the future, they were wrong. - -It's time we stopped listening to them and went back to fixing stuff ourselves, taking care of each other, taking care of ourselves. - ---- - -The question becomes, how do we get back to where our grandfather's were? - -There isn't one answer to this. I am not here on high telling you how to find your path because that top-down model is what caused the problem. I'm not even going to tell you what I am doing because even in that I think there's a tendency to see it as a recipe. - -I would suggest that the first and most important thing is the realize that no one else is going to figure it out for you. The top-down, expert provides a solution system *is* the problem. - -I would suggest that reclaiming control of your life, your community, your world is actually easier than you think. You are already more skilled than you think. And you are surrounded by skilled people. Find something that interests you and get better at it. Connect with other people who share your interests. - -Early drafts of this had a few suggestions on specific things you could do, but again, I don't want to give you a recipe. That said, there is one thing that I think isn't intuitive, but will really open doors for you: **stop using money to meet all your needs**. - -Find one problem, one thing, that you pay for now that you can either make/do yourself, or, even better can be borrowed or done with help from friends and family. The goal is to find something that puts you in a debt of gratitude to someone else. This is the basis of community—gratitude. When you are grateful to the world, you become more helpful to the world. Gratitude is a powerful motivator. It subverts one of the most powerful outside, centralized structures that we're eventually going to have to do without: currency. - -Your great grandparents fixed things for people, made things for people, and were grateful to receive the same from others. This formed much of the basis of community that held life together before the coming of centralization. It isn't the only thing, but it's a place to start and that's what we need to do. Start. Remember, we don't want to change the world, that's the top down thinking that got us in the mess. The goal here is to change the only part of the world you can: you. - - -etc etc. suggestions - -Trust yourself. - -Get outside - -Talk to your neighbors - -Start walking - -Find religion - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -The solutions being proposed by the people who champion this idea are the same as they've always been: more technology, more bureaucracy, more centralized control (and not coincidentally more jobs for more experts). - -We know where these ideas get us and we're done. - -It's popular these days to say that politics is downstream from culture, which is to say we get the politics of our culture. But as John Michael Greer often says, "it needs to be remembered in turn that culture is downstream from imagination." We have the power here because we are limited only by our imaginations and our bodies' ability to make our imaginings true. - - -https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2019/11/land - - ---- - -Virtues require cultivation, but our culture has left us with somewhat untended gardens. We have undisciplined minds, undisciplined debates, and undisciplined media consumption habits. - - ---- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -I'll be honest, I don't have a lot to add that you can't find in the writings of Jacques Ellul, Ivan Illich, Lewis Mumford, Neil Postman, Wendell Berry and others who've been trying to warn us for over a century now (I also think Tolkein's Lord of the Rings is an overloked, very subtle critique of technological society that's well worth reading from that angle). If I do nothing else than inspire you to read them, I will call that success. However, I think that I'm in a somewhat unique position to observe things in a variety of places and make connections that others might not be able to see, and so here we are. - - - - - -People in the United States ignore such proposals because we tried that experiment and found out just how badly it worked. In 1961, the new presidential administration of John F. Kennedy set out to improve US foreign policy by staffing the State Department with “the best and the brightest,” which meant in the context of the time a bevy of intellectuals fresh out of Ivy League universities, full of the latest fashionable ideas in international relations. Those experts promptly led America straight into the quagmire of the Vietnam War, while loading the military with a flurry of contradictory demands that made victory impossible and withdrawal unacceptable. - -One of the precepts of the last couple of centuries is that there is one answer to every problem and it is the right answer and it is the answer you are going to choose like it or not. This is more or less the central premise of what is generally called liberalism or later, when people tried to distance themselves from the failures of liberalism, neo-liberalism. - - -I want to connect the story of taking apart the bus to the individualism and closed community of the west to the idea that we have to depend on ourselves and each other, not outside help coming from on high. The old order is collapsing and those of us farthest from its center are going to lose it first. The new world starts out here on the edges, the fringes the forgotten corners of the country where the old order has never held much sway. - -I recently told a story about my decision to replace the bus engine's head gasket. It was a small thing really, when you consider the realm of human possibilities, but for me it was a big thing. Still, I didn't really want to do it. - -In that piece I made a somewhat flippant comment about no one ever stopping to help us when we're at the side of the road out west. That's been true, but it doesn't mean no one has helped us. It helps to remember that the west was built on deceit. The original inhabitants were decieved with treats that have not been honored, the people who came after them were decieved by the government and the railroads who needed them to farm in a country both knew well would never support farming. They recruited people from all over the world, people to whome the notion of living alone in a vast landscape was appealing and then, when those people turned out to want to do their own thing, not what the government wanted them to do (shocking that these independant spirits who surviced out here didn't want to do anyone's bidding) they were deceived again. And again. Perhaps the most eloquent recounting of these desceptions is the book Bad Land. I think it is important to remember these things when you are out here. - -That is I think, why no stops to help us. First and foremost, we are outsiders and in the current west there is more distrust of outsiders than anywhere else we've been. Justifiably I'd say. - - -## Rules for Screens, Part One - -I have a strange page about [technology](/technology) buried on this site. Still, people find it. Something must link to it? I'm not sure how or why, but it seems to get a lot of traffic. Or at least it generates a fair bit of email. About a dozen people a year take the time to email me about the first line of that article: - -**The less technology your life requires the better your life will be.** - -I get a mix of responses to this ranging from the occasional "who are you to judge me, how dare you tell me not to play video games" (which I don't usually respond to), to the more frequent, and thoughtful, "hey, I feel the same way but I can't seem to get technology out of my life". - -In crafting a response to the most recent person who wrote some variation of that comment, I accidentally wrote a massively long post I am breaking into a three-part series, retracing how I came to use screens so little, despite editing photos, writing for this site, and working for an online publication, all of which do in fact require a screen. I use screens when it makes sense to do so, but the rest of the time I avoid them. - -We're going to start with the basic stuff. I did most of the steps in this part back in 2016 when we were getting ready to move into the bus. This is actually all the hardest things to do, because these will free up enough time that you'll find yourself staring into the void for the first time since you were a kid. Don't worry, it's good for you. Anyway, on with it. - -**Luxagraf's rules for screens, part one.** - ---- - -## **Rule One: Throw Your Television in the Nearest Dumpster** - -Yup, we're going to start with the hardest one. You'll notice that I am more sympathetic to not going cold turkey with other things below. Not this one. This is the absolute requirement. Kill your television. Now. Tough love people. - -But... but. Look. Here's the thing. You have this gift of life for, on average, around 73 years. 73 YEARS. You won't even last as long as the average hardwood tree. And you're going to spend that precious time watching television? No. No you're not. Not anymore. You're going to live. Find a dumpster. Put your TV in it. - -Okay, you don't want to put your $1,200 TV in the dumpster. Then find an old sheet or blanket and cover it up. Put some low-tack painters tape on there, make it hard to take off. That'll work for now. But get ready to eBay that thing. Or find a dumpster. - -Now cancel Netflix, Hulu, or whatever other subscriptions you had. If you subscribe to two streaming services, that's just under $30 a month. That's $360 a year. That's $1,800 every five years. That's crazy. But now you have about $30 a month you can either save or spend on something you want. Something tangible. I mean, reward yourself if you really do this. At least buy some ice cream. - ---- - -## **Rule Two: Make Something** - -If you watched television for 3 hours in the evenings, congrats you were already watching less than most people—and you stop doing that you have just reclaimed 15 hours a week. FIFTEEN HOURS! That's enough to get a part time job somewhere. It's enough time to do, lord, there's no limit to what you could do really. Start a business, write a book, read the entire canon of Russian literature. The paradox of choice can get you here and you'll end up watching YouTube for hours on your laptop. I know, I've done it. - -You have to start creating something. I strongly suggest you create something real and tangible. Something you can hold in your hands. Cook yourself a fancy dessert if you like. Yeah you can even look up a recipe on a screen, don't worry about it. The internet is incredibly helpful for learning things. That's another idea. Find something you really love and learn more about it. Read everything you can about agates if that's your bag (it's my wife's bag). But do it by checking books out from the library, not by reading on your phone. - -Do what you want, but do something. Deliberately carve out some time to make something. And I know everyone says, I'm not a creative person, I don't know what to make. Start small. Write a card to your closest relative. Write a postcard if a card is too much. Make dessert for your family, your significant other, yourself, whatever. Just make something. Except maybe don't make a fancy dessert every night. That won't end well. If all else fails, just go for a walk. - ---- - -## **Rule Three: Delete Social Media Apps** - -Yeah, now we're getting real. I know it's going to be hard. But you know what, take easy, start small. You probably have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, a bunch of stuff in other words, on your phone. Just pick one and delete it for one week. You can always reinstall it so it's not like there's too much to lose here. - -But we're not done. - -Get a piece of paper and a pen. Fold the paper up so it's small enough to fit in your pocket. Put it in your pocket, or otherwise keep it on you. Now, every time you feel like checking whichever social network you deleted, instead of checking it, pull out your paper and pen and write down why you wanted to check it. It doesn't need to be an essay, just write like "wanted to see what Mark was up to" or whatever the source of the urge was. - -Do that for one week. At the end of the week look back over what you wrote down and decide for yourself if those things you were planning to do are worth your time. If they are then re-install that app and be on your merry way. If they aren't, or more likely, if you aren't sure, do the experiment for another week. - -If you decide that this wasn't the best use of your limited time on earth, repeat this process with the next social app on your phone. When you've deleted all the unnecessary apps from your phone you're done with this step. - -Oh, and the ones you keep, don't feel bad about those. If you're feeling a sense of guilt about them still it might be worth repeating this experience, but if you really do enjoy them then don't feel guilty about them. - -## **Rule Four: Track What You Do When You Use a Screen** - -Far to much of our lives are lived in a kind of automated mode. Think back over everything you did in the last five minutes before you started reading this. If you're like me, you probably struggle to remember what it was you were doing or how you ended up precisely here at this moment. Some of this autopilot living is a good thing, especially, I've found, morning routines, but I do it far too much. - -So I started keeping closer track of what I was doing and why. I'm not suggesting you do that. That's actually advanced level stuff, what I am suggesting is very simple: every time you use a screen, remember to do it consciously. Don't judge yourself for it, just note that hey, I am using a screen. That's all. Now if you're somewhat obsessive like I am you might want to write down whatever notes you can, about why you're using a screen. - -Unlike the steps above, this is not really a rule. It's a process. It's an ongoing process that will probably never end, at least in my case. I like to be conscious of when I use a screen, so although I started this years ago, I still do it today. - -That brings me to the final point I will leave you with: everything is a process. To paraphrase Alan Watts, you are not a thing, you are a happening. Which is to say, all of life is a never ending process, there may be goals, there maybe markers along the way, but it's not like you get to place where you never have to do anything again. The goal, at least at this very basic level of using less screens, is to build systems and processes that will help you do things other than stare at a screen. - -Now go kill your television. - - - -## Rules for Screens, Part Two - -Last time we hurled our televisions out the window into a dumpster. If you actually did that, like I did once in college, you know that the sound of that crunch and exploding screen was awesome. Well maybe not, CRT screens aren't around anymore. Anyway, if you didn't actually hurl it out a window, well, hopefully you at least sold or gave away your TV. Remember, you can have a television or you can have a life. - -Televisions are not the screen everyone wrings their hands over these days though. That's a little odd to me because according to statistics on screen time, that's where most us spend our time. But the evil de jour is phones. You phone is doing all kinds of things to you and will probably eventually be a direct contributor to the collapse of western culture if you believe everything you read. Which is sign you're using your phone too much. - -I don't love phones, and I do think we should all use them less. If you've feel addicted to your phone, well, um, you're right. You are. Everything about the design of the apps on your phone is engineered to create dopamine pathways that make sure you experience physical withdrawal when you go without them. That's addiction pure and simple. - -But. Did you know that culturally we've been wringing our hands over the distractions in our lives for centuries? Meister Eckhart, writing around 1307, calls "distraction" the second most powerful thing preventing communion with God. In 1550s Swiss scientist Conrad Gessner worries that the printing press will worsen the problem of distraction with a "confusing and harmful" amount of data "unleashed on the unsuspecting." To pick a more recent, and revealing, example consider writer Italo Calvino's 1983 account of [his daily newspaper habit](https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2027/the-art-of-fiction-no-130-italo-calvino): - -> Each morning I already know I will be able to waste the whole day. There is always something to do: go to the bank, the post office, pay some bills... always some bureaucratic tangle I have to deal with. While I am out I also do errands such as the daily shopping: buying bread, meat, or fruit. First thing, I buy newspapers. Once one has bought them, one starts reading as soon as one is back home—or at least looking at the headlines to persuade oneself that there is nothing worth reading. Every day I tell myself that reading newspapers is a waste of time, but then... I cannot do without them. They are like a drug. - -Note the use of the phrase, "like a drug," which we're still using today to describe our latest and most powerful distraction, phones. - -I point this out not to downplay the addictive, attention-steal nature of screens, but to remind you that being distracted is not new. Think of it slightly differently, the desire for distraction is not new. All that's happened over the last century is we've created ever more engrossing mediums to distract ourselves with. This strongly suggests that if we just reduce our exposure to the current symptom without addressing the underlying desire for distraction we're just switching one thing for another, like alcoholics chugging coffee and chain smoking at AA meetings[^1]. - -And I bring up AA in part because I think that phones are a problem partly for the same reason alcohol is a problem: they're culturally acceptable. No one pulls our a syringe in the middle of four star restaurant and shoots up heroin, but no one bats an eye when someone orders a bottle of wine in the same situation. Both are addictive, destructive drugs (arguably alcohol is much worse on your body), but one is culturally acceptable and one is not. This makes a world of difference when it comes time to stop. You don't have to work hard to avoid heroin, but you'll run into alcohol, and screens, at every turn. - -Our phones aren't just addictive, they're also completely culturally acceptable in the west. No one cares if you pull one out in the middle of dinner. Well, I will. You might. But the cultural message seems to be that it's okay. In some places and some situations the cultural message might even be that you're an oddball if you're *not* staring at a screen. - -Let's assume though, that, like people who email me, you want to use your phone less. Here are some tricks to help with that, most of which I used to cut back on my own screen use. - -**Luxagraf's Rules for Screens, part deux.** - -## Rule Five: Know Yourself - -If you want to use your phone less, you need to know how much you use it. There are some tools to figure this out built-in to both iOS and Android, but I never bothered to figure those out because I had already downloaded and used Your Hour ([Android App Store](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindefy.phoneaddiction.mobilepe)). Space appears to offer similar features and [works on iOS too](https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/space-break-phone-addiction/id916126783). The app isn't really important, just get something that records how much time you spend and how often you unlock your phone. - -That will give you a baseline and let you know how much you use your phone. Personally I disabled tracking for maps and music/podcasts because although I'm using my phone, I'm not really staring at the screen. There's an element of gamification to these apps that's easy to get sucked into. I had Your Hour on my phone for about a week before I got pretty obsessed with how little I could use my phone in a day. - -## Rule Six: Adapt to Yourself - -If, like me, you discover that you use your phone to check the time throughout the day, consider getting a watch. Or, if you hate wearing a watch, and live in a small bus with your family like I do, just encourage everyone else to wear a watch and ask them what time it is. - -The point is, most likely Rule Five will reveal some habits that you can break, but are too idiosyncratic to you for me to solve for you. My general advice is, if you have some behavior that involves the phone that could involve some analog thing, like a watch for instance, replace those screen checks with a watch. Not a smart watch or fitness tracker, just a watch. - -A few things I have heard of people doing include, putting your phone in a bag to make it more of a pain to pull out and use, using it as a coaster so you can't pick it up, and using a pen and paper to make notes rather than using your phone. - -## Rule Seven: Turn Off All Notifications - -I think the reason we are bothered by how much we use our phones has to do with agency. We like to think we are the rulers of our days and are conscious of all our decisions and actions and phones are stark reminder that we are not that guy/gal. The best way to grant yourself back some agency is to get rid of all notifications. - -Notifications are really just little serotonin agitators. Check your email when you feel like it, not when a notification badge agitates your serotonin level past the point of resistance. Turn them off, all of them. - -## Rule Eight: Practice Doing Nothing - -This does not mean meditating. It means doing nothing. Or at least do nothing productive. When you were a child you were probably happy to lie in the grass all afternoon doing nothing. At most you might pick out shapes in the clouds, but you were fine doing nothing. Or at least if you're over 35 and actually had a childhood then you might remember doing nothing. If not. Well, learn. Practice. - -Of all the rules in this list, this is the hardest for me. I have this need to always be making something. I am ill at ease doing nothing. I read a good bit, I also practice discursive meditation, but neither of those qualify. The only time I really do nothing, is lying in a hammock, so I make sure to get some time in the hammock at least a couple times a week. - -It might take some time to figure out the way you do nothing the best. If you do get stuck on this one, I highly recommend a hammock. - -## Rule Nine: Record Your Practice - -Write down when you do nothing. Write down when you don't do nothing. Write down how you miss notifications if you do. Write how you overcome your strange screen habits and most of all, write down when you still use screens. Don't judge yourself for it, step back, detach and just record what happened, what you did, and for how long. Try to be a disinterested observer of yourself, this will be much more helpful than berating or congratulating. - -## Rule Ten: Get After It - - - - -[^1]: This is not meant to disparage AA or anyone struggling with alcoholism. Most AA members I know are fully aware of the irony of swapping one addiction for another, but when alcohol has taken over your life to that point, it's not a bad trade to make. - -## Rules for Screens, Part Three - -Did you know there's a Reddit for people who want quit staring at screens so much? Also a true story. - - - -## Buying Used - -I can't recall the last time I bought something new. We almost always buy electronics used, mostly off eBay. We also rarely buy new books. We generally pick up books at used bookstores around the country, but when we can't find what we want we use Thriftbooks. - -Buying used has several advantages over buying new. The obvious one is that it's almost always cheaper. But beyond that there are other appealing aspects. Buying used means you're not contributing as much to the waste stream of modern economies, and you're (potentially) removing things from that waste stream by finding a use for them. Used items, especially electronics, tend to be functionally superior to new ones[^1] both because they are farther back on the curve of [diminishing returns](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/law%20of%20diminishing%20returns) and because they have stood the test of time. There are exceptions of course, but buy and large last year's model is as good, and sometimes better, than this year's model. - -Buying used also enables you to take advantage of little curiosities of time. For example all the really good low-noise sound recording devices seem to have been made between 2007-2016. Why? No idea. But everyone who needs low noise recording seems to agree, and high end recorders from that era sell for more than they did when they were new. Which is to say that buying used isn't always cheaper, but when it's not it generally means you're getting something superior. And not something that the manufacturer thinks is superior, but something the people using it the most think is superior. - -This is why the only affiliate links on luxagraf.net lead to either eBay or Thriftbooks, my two preferred marketplaces for buying used stuff. - -Anyone using affiliate links is trying to sell you something—that includes me—and you should always be suspicious about that. I know my motives are simple, to make some money to pay for this website and maybe some tea for myself, but you have every right to skeptical. Really though, I don't want you to buy anything you don't need. But if you do need something, please buy it used. And if you're going to buy something I've recommended based on my experiences with it, then the affiliate links will help support this website. - -[^1]: The odd mixture of capitalism and our culture's worship of "progress" means that new things must constantly be released, but the law of diminishing returns suggests that newer/bigger/better/faster eventually fails to deliver any meaningfully improvement. This is most obvious in software, where the most feared phrase in any software user's heart is "please restart to update", but this lack of improvement over previous versions is increasingly painfully obvious in hardware as well. -## Essay on Will - -If you want control over what you consume, you're going to have to strengthen your will. So long as you are surrounded by signals that are trying to get you to spend money on crap, it is going to be an uphill battle. If you can I strongly suggest removing yourself from the signals—think about where your attention is going and how you can redirect it to craft rather than stuff. - -but there are things more powerful. The most important of those is your will. - - -If, like most people, you can't pick and move to foreign country for a month then you're going to have to try to change in the midst of the battle so to speak. While possible, this is much much harder. And again, while I like to think I have mastered this, my spreadsheet says otherwise, so take this advice with a grain of salt. Chances are good that this actually much harder than you or I think and you're going to need to put in more effort than I'm suggesting. - - - - - - -The most important thing is to develop your will. I am serious. Start doing exercises to develop your will. For example, force your self up out of the chair right now, turn away from the computer and walk to the nearest wall. Touch it. Come back and sit down. Repeat this at random during the day. Is it pointless? Absolutely. So is lifting weights. The principle is the same. So choose a deliberately pointless thing to do, and do it. Then do another one. Then do the same thing every morning for a week. - -One will-building exercise I do periodically is what I call, for lack of a better phrase, micro travel. It works like this: pick a place at random in the city you live, somewhere you've never been. Choose a time and make an appointment with yourself. Now go work out all the details of getting there, if possible use public transit or walk. Then meet yourself there and make sure you're there on time. Now enjoy a few minutes exploring the area and head home. - -I'll leave thinking up other exercises to you, but the point is to develop your will, to have control over your life. It takes a little time to see and feel the effects of this, it's quite subtle, but it will cascade throughout your life in a number of interesting ways, I promise. One will be better control over your impulses. When you walk into, say Target, to buy a new toothbrush your newly developed will will make it easier to walk past everything else and only buy the toothbrush. - -Eventually your will may help you recognize that stores that have everything are too much for your will. It would be cleverer to buy that toothbrush at a smaller store with fewer things, because it's easier to remove temptation than resist it. Think of it like dieting. If you're trying to eat less ice cream it's much easier to not walk down the ice cream aisle at all than it is to walk down it and without buying anything. - -This also leads into my second suggestion for buying less stuff: change your habits. It's convenient to go to Target and get everything you need in one place, but chances are you're going to spend more than you intended without realizing it. In fact the entire experience of being in Target has been engineered to increase the chance you'll spend more than you intended. Every time you enter a store you are entering a hostile environment designed to extract your life energy from you. - -Oh sure it's all abstracted so you don't have think of it that way. Still, strip the abstraction and relationship is pretty clear, you trade hours of your life for shit you buy at Target. You get up the morning and go to work. That's a day of your life you just traded for paper tickets. Why do you need those tickets? To put a roof over your head and food in your stomach. Pretty much everything after that is not strictly necessary. So once those basics are met you're in th realm of swapping your existence on earth for stuff. - -The less stuff you buy, the less you need to work. By extension, the less time you spend in places designed to extract money from you, the less of your life you'll have to trade for stuff. - -That's a habit you can break—going to all-in-one-place stores—but there are other habits you can build that will help immensely as well. - - - -One of the things I've been at pains to avoid is making it sound like we don't like the United States. In fact we do very much, it's one of the most beautiful places in the world and has some of the wildest and safest wilderness you're ever going to enter. - -Unfortunately, the United States is not the best travel value for us. Without an income we'd have to dip heavily into savings to travel the states in the bus. - - - -# Pages -## Technology - -The less technology your life requires the better your life will be. - -That's not to say technology is bad, but I encourage you to spend some time considering your technology use and making sure you *choose* the things you use rather than accepting everything marketed at you. - -This is not my idea. I stole it from the Amish. The Amish have a reputation for being anti-technology, but they're not. Try searching for "Amish compressed air tool conversion" if you don't believe me. The Amish don't rush out and get the latest and greatest, that much is true. They take their time adopting any new technology. They step back, detach, and evaluate new technology in a way the rest of us seldom do—they're arguably more engaged with technology than you and I -- and this allows them to make better informed decisions. - -That's what I try to do. I take my time. There's very little latest and greatest on this page. And I am always trying to get by with less, if for no other reason than this stuff costs money. There's no affiliate links here, no links at all actually. I'd really prefer it if you didn't buy any of this stuff, you probably don't need it. Again, I could get by with less. I should get by with less. I am in fact always striving to need less and be less particular about what I do need. - -Still, for better or worse. Here are the main tools I use in building this site and living on the road. - -## Writing - -### Notebook and Pen, Pencil and Paper - -My primary "device" is my notebook. I don't have a fancy notebook. I do have several notebooks though. One is in my pocket at all times and is filled with illegible scribbles that I attempt to decipher later. This one I mainly write in pencil, and I stick post-it notes into the actual notebook so that I can then move the post-it notes to the larger notebook where I write them in pen. This larger notebook is a mix of notes, as well as a sort of captain's log, though I don't write in with the kind regularity real captains do. Or that I imagine captains do. Then I have other notebooks for specific purposes, meditation journal, fiction notebook, and so on. - -I'm not all that picky about notebooks, if they have paper in them I'm happy enough. I used to be very picky about pens, but then I sat down and forced myself to use basic cheap, black ink, Bic-style ballpoint pens until they no longer irritated me. And you know what? Now I love them, and that's all I use—any ballpoint pen. Ballpoint because it runs less when it gets wet, which, given how I live, tends to happen. Pencils are a more recent development for me. I adopted the Pentel P209 with .9mm lead because someone on the internet said the led didn't break. This has proved true, so I've stick with it. - -### Laptop - -I recently retired my trusty Lenovo x270. I still love it, but it just wasn't up to editing video. I ended up getting an HP Dev One, which I generally like, though the screen is a little glare-prone. This computer is probably overkill for me, and it costs $1,000, but I use it for work so it ends up paying for itself that way. - -The laptop runs Linux because everything else sucks a lot more than Linux. Which isn't too say that I love Linux, it could use some work too. But it sucks a whole lot less than the rest. I run Arch Linux, which I have [written about elsewhere](/src/why-i-switched-arch-linux). I was also interviewed on the site [Linux Rig](https://linuxrig.com/2018/11/28/the-linux-setup-scott-gilbertson-writer/), which has some more details on how and why I use Linux. - -## Photos - -### Camera - -I use a Sony A7Rii. It's a full frame mirrorless camera which makes it easy to use the legacy lenses I love. I bought the A7Rii specifically because it was well suited to using with the old lenses that I love. Without the old lenses I find the Sony's output to be a little digital for my tastes, - -The A7 series are not cheap cameras. If you want to travel you'd be better off getting something cheaper and using your money to travel. The Sony a6000 is very nearly as good and costs much less. In fact, having tested dozens of cameras for Wired over the years I can say with some authority that the a6000 is the best value for money on the market period, but doubly so if you want at cheap way to test out some older lenses. - -### Lenses - -All of my lenses are old and manual focus, which I prefer to autofocus lenses. I am not a sports or wildlife photographer so I have no real need for autofocus. Neither autofocus nor perfect edge to edge sharpness are things I want in a lens. I want, for lack of a better word, *character*. I want a lens that reliable produces what I see in my mind. - -One fringe benefit of honing your manual focus skills[^1] is that you open a door to world filled with amazing cheap lenses. I have shot Canon, Minolta, Olympus, Nikon, Zeiss, Hexanon, Tokina, and several weird Russian Zeiss clones. - -These days I have whittled my collection down to these lenses: - -* Minolta 50mm f/2 -* Minolta 55mm f/1.7 -* Minolta 100mm f/1.7 -* Olympus 50mm f/1.8 -* Olympus 100mm f/2.8 -* Pentax 35 f/3.5 -* Pentax 20 f/4 - -Yes, that's a lot of lenses. I used to keep the Minolta 50 f/2 on there about 90 percent of the time, but these days I actually shoot with all of these pretty regularly. None of these lenses are over $200. - -I also have a Tokina 100-300mm f/4 which happens to be Minolta mount so I use a Minolta 2X teleconverter with it to make it a 200-600mm lens. It's pretty soft at the edges. That's a nice way of saying it's utter garbage at the corners, but since I mostly use if for wildlife, which I tend to crop anyway, I get by. I also have a crazy Russian fisheye thing that's hilarious bad at anything less than f/11, but it's useful for shooting in small spaces, like the inside of the bus. - -## Video - -In addition to the photo gear above, which I also use for video, I have GoPro Hero 10. I mostly use it while driving the bus and have yet to actually make a movie out of any of the footage I shoot. But it piles up on my hard drive and I keep telling myself, one of these days. - -## Audio - -I like to record ambient sound. I use an Olympus LS-10 recorder, which has the lowest noise floor I can afford (it was $100 on eBay). I use a couple of microphones I made myself and occasionally a wireless Rode mic. - ---- - -And there you have it. I am always looking for ways to get by with less, but after years of getting rid of stuff, I think I have reached something close to ideal. - -[^1]: If you've never shot without autofocus don't try it on a modern lens. Most modern focusing rings are garbage because they're not meant to be used. Some Fujifilm lenses are an exception to that rule, but by and large don't do it. Get an old lens, something under $50, and teach yourself [zone focusing](https://www.ilfordphoto.com/zone-focusing/), use the [Ultimate Exposure Computer](http://www.fredparker.com/ultexp1.htm) to learn exposure, and just practice, practice, practice. Practice relentlessly and eventually you'll get there. - -## Code - -Driving gives you plenty of time to think. Somewhere in that thinking I decided I needed to clarify my basic approach to life. To know what I was doing and why. I hesitate to call these rules because it's not like I know what I'm doing and I modify these all the time as I learn and adapt. Anyway, this is mostly for me, but I mentioned them in a post once and someone asked me to write them down. So here they are. - -###1. Everything is a Practice - -There is no finish line. There's no winning, no losing. Not in human terms anyway. Individual projects may come to an end, but the practices that made them possible do not. Most things worth doing do not have a stopping point. There is no point where you've written enough, you've worked out enough. Everything is a practice. Embrace it. The practice is never done, which means you get to keep improving. - -###2. Do It Yourself - -It's probably cheaper and easier to buy most things, but when I can I'd rather make things myself. What else are you going to do with your life if you aren't making stuff? Watch TV? Stop buying stuff and hiring people for everything and give yourself a chance to solve the problem first. Contrary to what it says on the label, professionals and experts aren't necessary. They'll do it faster and better than you will, but you'll learn and improve every time you do it yourself. - -###3. Adapt to Your Surroundings - -No matter where you go you will not fit in when you get there. The climate will be different, the people will be different, the food will be different. Don't expect the place to adapt to you and don't get bent out of shape when it doesn't. - -One great way to do this is to simplify your life. Depending on a lot of stuff makes it hard to adapt. My favorite practical example is air conditioning. If you depend on air conditioning you aren't able to adapt to climate changes as well as someone who doesn't. As Jakob Lund Fisker [succinctly puts it](https://earlyretirementextreme.com/manifesto.html) "Comfort is having the sweat glands and metabolic tolerance to deal with heat and cold. It is not central heating or air conditioning which may fail or be unavailable." - -###4. Make Something You Like Everyday - -In the world as it once was I think this need to create was fulfilled by hunting and to some extent farming. With those gone we're left with kind of a void[^1]. I have found that filling that void with creative endeavors is very satisfying. Other people find that studying something in detail fills that void. For me it's making stuff. - -Digital stuff (like this site) is okay, but I prefer to make tangible stuff most of the time. Could be a delicious meal, could be some little thing around the bus, could be a paper airplane for the kids. *What* doesn't matter so much as the practice of making things. See also, rule 1. - -###5. Retain Agency - -Retaining agency means rejecting the passive. In some ways this is what you get when you practice rules 2, 3, and 4. You are the driving force behind your thoughts and actions, do not outsource them to others without carefully considering what you're giving up. - -Agency is not control though, it is not bending the world to your will (see rule 3), it is merely ensuring that one's ideas and tools are one's own[^2]. - -###6. Prefer the Analog - -I find that the digital world isn't very satisfying. I have a rather outlandish theory about why. I think it lacks the rhythm of the natural world. I believe your body and spirit know the difference between the rhythms of the world they evolved in and the more recent additions. Don't get me wrong, I love the rhythm of a piston-driven engine, but I also think that the truly great engines are the ones that manage to mimic natural rhythms. - -###7. Don't Report Stories, Live Them - -I have no training as a journalist. I studied philosophy, religion, and literature, but somehow I end up writing for journalism outlets. I have no real problem with journalists—the few left who actually do journalism, almost none of whom are published by major publishers -- but I also have no desire to be one. - -The stories I tell are ultimately about me because that is what I know. The idea that you can tell other people's stories seems fundamentally wrong to me. They are not your stories, let other people tell their own stories. - -###8. Novelty Wears Off, Routines Carry You Through - -The novelty of new places, new people, new food, new whatever doesn't last long and ultimately isn't that exciting. It has an addictive nature too. If you always need the new something has gone astray I think. I think the novelty of travel lasts about two years, and then you look around and start thinking, well, now what? - -My experience has been that the answer to *now what* means reaching back to your old life and finding the things that made you happiest there and bringing them on the road with you. Doing your thing becomes your routine that you bring to a new place, and now you have something to offer that place: you. You're no longer just traveling to see the sights, you become, in a small way, for a short time, a part of that place. - -###9. Live Small, Venture Wide - -I stole this line from Pat Schulte of [Bumfuzzle](https://www.bumfuzzle.com/). The basic idea is that I am happiest owning very little and living in small spaces, which makes it easier to move through the world. - - -###10. Try Everything Twice. - -As the Aussies would say, "have a crack at it." There are two parts here though. The first is a call to experience. Try it. But recognize that some things suck the first time you try them, so you might want to have a second crack at it. - -[^1]: To borrow some ideas from Jacques Ellul et al, humans need goals, they need to put forth some effort in pursuit of those goals and they need to at least occasionally attain them. Ellul, and later Ted Kaczynski, have fun splitting hairs about what should fulfill these needs. I don't see much point in that, but I am going off personal experience here and, again, you might find otherwise. - - -[^2]: Matthew Crawford's *[Shop Class as Soul Craft](https://bookshop.org/books/shop-class-as-soulcraft-an-inquiry-into-the-value-of-work/9780143117469)* very much influenced my thinking on this subject. Crawford digs into why people like to repair things and concludes that this need to be capable of repair is part of a desire to escape the feeling of dependence, to reassert their agency over their stuff. He calls the individual who prizes his own agency the Spirited Man. This becomes a kind of archetype of the antidote to passive consumption. Passive consumption displaces agency, argues Crawford. One is no longer master of one's stuff because one does not truly understand how stuff works. "Spiritedness, then," writes Crawford, "may be allied with a spirit of inquiry, through a desire to be master of one’s own stuff. It is the prideful basis of self-reliance." Exactly. -# SRC -## Scratch - - - - -I know several people who take tech holidays. I understand this urge, probably it's the only solution to what I think is the central problem of modern times—distraction and the inability to do deep work. That said, I am going to try other things to tame the beast. - -I don't think this is an entirely new problem, I'm not even sure it's any worse than it ever was, it's just that anyone in any age facing this problem is daunted and it somehow makes one feel better I think to fall back on the belief that it's worse than ever, even if perhaps it is not. - -Whatever the case, whatever the diagnosis may be doesn't really interest me. I am most interested in a cure that works for me. That's not to be overly selfish, but to recognize that what works for me isn't going to work for everyone. I am writing it down mainly in case it does prove helpful to you. - -The first step is to eliminate your ability to multitask. - -I used to be a fan of browser tabs, but lately I have come to think that the tab model, the conception of their being other stuff right there on the screen next to what you're trying to focus on is actually a huge distraction. I stumbled on this idea quite by accident. I was on Ocracoke Island for a while and the cell reception was awful[^1]. I struggled to load page. Like type in a URL, go boil water for tea, make tea, come back and the page still hasn't loaded. - -At some point I thought I wonder if I could at least get the text gist of what I'm after by loading the page in w3m, the text-only cli-based web browser Linux users like us install out of habit but rarely use. At least I rarely used it. But I opened it up and low and behold, it worked. It rendered the text I needed, and it didn't take long using the exact same connection that wouldn't load in a graphical browser. - -That's not surprising I know, but yet it *was* surprising. - -The downside to w3m was that I didn't have a clue how to use it. In particular I didn't know how to open links in the background, something I've relied on in the browser for who know how many years? I typed man w3m and started reading. I quickly discovered that like Vim, w3m uses the concept of the buffer. While it does support tabs, I've never felt the need for tabs in Vim so I thought maybe I don't need them in w3m either. I like the buffer concept. It's like a stack of things, where only the top thing is visible. To find the other things you have to call up a list and read through it. As far as I know while typing this, this document is the only one open in this application. That's a powerful way to focus. There is nothing else on the screen to distract me. - -Here's a screenshot of what my desktop looks like when working this way with Vim: - -This way of working helps my focus on the task as hand. There is nothing else anywhere on the screen and that's how I find I do my best work. I can quickly and easily call up a list of all the other files I've edited recently and see something like this: - - -But all that information is not visible to me the rest of the time. - - -[^1]: With the 3G spectrum shutdown this is increasingly the case in remote locations like Ocracoke. - -I still use them. I keep open some tabs for the stock market because those are really applications running the browser. - -## Intentional computing. - - -"We want to complexify our lives. We don’t have to, we want to. We wanted to be harried and hassled and busy. Unconsciously, we want the very things we complain about. For if we had leisure, we would look at ourselves and listen to our hearts and see the great gaping hold in our hearts and be terrified, because that hole is so big that nothing but God can fill it. - -"Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our author and our end. Now what does the world think about? Never about that, but about dancing, playing the lute, singing, writing verse, tilting at the ring, etc., and fighting, becoming king, without thinking what it means to be a king or to be a man. - -"I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room." - Blaise Pascal - -############# - -I believe that screens are a distraction from life. - -There is no life in a screen. Life is what happens when we look away from this screen at the actual world around us. Perhaps it is strange to say this on a screen. Still, it feels like a truth we all know. We all used to know. At least, anyone over 35 knows. It is our task to carry this memory through. I am writing this for other people who want to spend less time staring at screens and more time not. - -## Rules for Screens, Level Two - -### Rule One: Prefer the Analog. - -Here's the basic idea: only use a computer when you absolutely have to. Every time I reach for my laptop or phone I force myself pause and think—do I need to do this right now? Yes? Okay, but could I do whatever it is I am about to do *without* a screen? Quite often the answer is yes. So that's what I do. I use some analog tool instead. - -I write for a living, so when I am going to open my laptop chances are, I am about to write. For work, I do write on the laptop. There's too much to reference and link to not use a laptop. When I'm writing for myself though, I prefer to write things like this in a notebook with a pen. - -### Rule Two: Batch Your Queries - -Writing is as least as much research as it is actual typing, and this tends to be where I really get sucked in to the endlessness of the network. In an effort to cut down on the amount of time I spend "researching" stuff that I probably don't really need to research, I now write down questions on paper instead of immediately typing them in duckduckgo. Only later do I set aside some time to go back to this list and actually look things up. - -From this I have learned something important: I am not a very good judge of what is important to me. - -A lot of the things, *a lot*—like almost all -- of the things I go to look up on the internet are utterly trivial things I don't really care about once the two seconds where I did care have passed. I am forced to confront this every time I go over my day's list of stuff to look up later. Of all the things I write down in my notebook to look up later, I actually end up looking up maybe one in twenty. Probably less. I have no real way to catalog how much screen time this has saved me, but it feels like it must be ages. - -Once I've exhausted all avenues of analog deferment I still give myself one more ultimatium that I call the Outkast ultimatum: forever ever? Is it really really that important? Right now? Really, really? It might pass. It will probably pass. No? Okay then. - -## Rule Three: Single-Task Computing - -At the end of the day.What greets me when I open my laptop is an entirely blank screen. Well, actually it's a gloomy, slightly blurry picture I took a long time ago somewhere deep in the lagoons of the Florida panhandle. The point though is that I don't leave any applications open, ever. This encourages what I call single task computing: open an application, complete a task, close the application and then the laptop. The task is done, the last page has been reached so you shut the book, so to speak. - -This is the opposite of how we approach computers much of the time, but I find that trying to multitask on a computer ends up with me distracted by all things shiny and next thing I know an hour has gone by. Single task computing prevents this, but you have to be vigilante. Applications encourage the opposite—especially web browsers, where the tab essentially functions as an ever expanding task list. - -Here's where I will suggest something heretical: hide your tab bar. Go into the browser's View menu and disable the tab bar. One tab, one task. - -To understand how this can be powerful I have to take a technical detour. The application I do my writing in is called Vim. It is very old. Old enough that it predates the idea of a tab. Instead it has something it calls buffers. They're similar to the tabs in modern applications, but with one important difference: a buffer is a stack of pages with *only the top one visible*. - -Tabs are always visible. Tabs are a todo list you don't need. Tabs will will steal your attention. Buffers will not. To change buffers requires a conscious decision and effort on your part. You have to call up a list of buffers and then switch to one. You will never accidentally switch to another buffer. I have used this to my advantage as a way to focus when writing for years. - -You know that expression out of sight out of mind? That's buffers. For example I am typing this right now on a screen that looks like this: - -That is about as uni-tasky as I've been able to make a screen. - -What I've really done here is recreate the typewriter, and no one has ever accuse a typewriter of stealing their attention. - -**Rule four: Use The Machine Lest It Use You** - -The reason for single task computing is to make sure you always have a task when you sit down to your laptop. Do not use the machine if you don't need to. When you do that the machine is using you. There is no such thing as entertainment. Entertainment is a word designed to hide the truth: you are poring precisions hours of your life into the machine. Why does the machine want your life? I have no idea, but observation suggests it does. Don't give your life away. - -**Rule 5: Balance the digital with the Analog** - -This started as a throwaway ending, but in the months since I started experimenting with this I've come to believe that this is the most important rule: every time you interact with the digital, make a point to spend the same amount of time not interacting with the digital. If I edit photos for this site for 30 minutes, then I go and either make something tangible, write in a notebook, draw a postcard, whatever it may be for 30 minutes. If you don't feel like making something than go for a walk or play with your kid, or lie down in your yard if you have one. Read a book in a hammock. Just do something that does not involve a screen. And do it for the same amount of time you spent on the screen. - -When I started doing this I found myself at a loss for what to do with myself, which was kind of terrifying. Was I really that used to mindlessly staring at a screen that I had nothing else to do? What did we use to do before we had screens? This is the advantage of being part of an analog generation—the last of those for a while -- you can think back to the pre-digital era, retrace your steps as it were. This ended up unlocking a whole flood of memories that I walked through in great detail in meditation, most of that is not relevant here, but one thing that came back to me was that we used to publish zines. Now that's one of the things I've been doing with what I think of as "my analog time". Another things I did was type, on a typewriter. I'm on the hunt for a good super compact model. Yeah, I know it's like the worst hipster cliche. I don't care. I'm craving that analog pounding of the keys. The sound of something happening in the world. - - - -In order to tell you how I have managed to reduce my screen time it helps to look at the bigger picture. Let's start with the book. - -If the screen is a distraction from life than so is a book. A good book is every bit as hard to put down and distracting from the shared human existence we call life as a screen. And yet the book feels less problematic. I think this is because a book has borders. I has hard limits. - -A book is a single world. The boundary of its world is well-defined. A book ends on the final page. Its depth is limited. We known our way in, we find our way out just as easily. - -The story on the screen offers unlimited depth. A world without beginning or end. There is no final webpage. This is why we fret over the distractions of screens and never worry about books. - -Two things started me on a path to less screen time. One was the birth of my children, which were a kind of sledge hammer reminder that nothing on a screen matters. None of it actually exists and none of it matters. The people in front of you, they matter. Not just the people though, the tangible world, the world of artifacts you can hold in your hand. This is what matters. I have not watched a television show or movie since they were born. That screen was easy to stop. - -The other thing that really changed my relationship to the screen world was moving into the bus. This was another sledge hammer reminder that the physical world is what matters. Given a choice between staring at a computer screen at night and sitting around a fire, staring up at the night sky, is, well, not even a choice. - -These two things greatly reduced how much time I spent using a screen. But then we left the road and rented a house for a year and something happened. I went back to staring at the screen way too much. All that distance I thought I had created? Gone with single change of behavior. I slid right back into those old habits of tucking the kids in and sitting down at my desk to stare at a screen. - -I could defend myself and say that I wrote a novel in that time, but that only really accounts for maybe half the time I spent staring at that screen. And now that we're back in the road, I've once again had to wean myself off. I still pick campfires over screens, but like most of us I imagine, I still spend way to much time on a screen. - -So how do you stop yourself from getting sucked into a world without end? -I want to spend less though, and so I've been working at this for some time, finding ways to not just get off the screen, but handle the things that I used to do on a screen, without needing a screen. This time I don't want to relapse should I be away from life on the road for some reason. - -To lessen the time I spend using a screen I realized I needed to turn it into a book. I needed to put boarders on it and make sure it has a last page. In order to defeat that time sucking endless form of the network we're going to have to put some endings in place. - -What I've done is to create many endings. Endings for every beginning. The best ending in this case is the beginning that never begins. Here are my five rules for avoiding the digital. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -I have no way to measure how much time browsing in a single window with buffers bidden away until I need them has saved me, but again I believe it is significant. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Now I do leave some background tabs open, mostly investing related tabs because I am a fairly active trader and I like to run through my charts every morning. But the rest of the day, I don't see those tabs. - -I got to thinking about this recently because I was out on Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks for a while where the cell reception was awful[^1]. It was a struggle to load a webpage. I would type in a URL, go boil water for tea, make the tea, come back and the page still hasn't loaded. It was bad enough that I pulled out w3m, the text based browser that started life in 1995 and hasn't changed much since. I opened it up and low and behold, it worked. It rendered the text I needed, I got the info I wanted, and it didn't take long using the exact same connection that wouldn't load in a graphical browser. - -Enthused I set out to figure out how to use w3m. How, for example, did I open a link in a tab? Well, you can do that, but before I figured out how I learned that w3m uses the concept of buffers, much like Vim. Because I am lazy and familiar with buffers from Vim, I just configured a shortcut to show the w3m buffer list and I was on my way. I never open links in a new tab anymore, I know that all the previous tabs I've visited are there in the buffer list. - -Now buffers might seem like tabs in some since, and perhaps like browsing history in another sense. They're actually neither for a variety of reasons, but the most important difference is that a buffer is a stack of pages with *only the top one visible*. Tabs are always visible. Tabs will steal your attention, buffers will not unless you choose to view the list of them. You know that expression out of sight out of mind? That's buffers. I have no way to measure how much time browsing in a single window with buffers bidden away until I need them has saved me, but again I believe it is significant. - - -prefer analog over digital -batch your queries before going digital -single task computing - buffers are better than tabs - get in and get out. - - - -single task computing. open an application, do a task and then close it. I think this is ostly a web browser problem for most people, bug for me it's a terminal problem as well, there is always something I could be doing in a terminal, there is always one open. Just like there is always a browser windows open. But what if I worked differently, what if I close out that windows when the task was done? What if I put an edge on it? Gave it a shape that also meant an end to it? Would that just be more beginnings and endings, or would that maybe mean a greater space between myself and the machine? - - - -Fail gracefully when possible (an elevator is still stairs even when broken mitch hedburg joke) - -Complex systems are inherently fragile. The optimization that makes the system "easy" to use, also generally eliminates the redundancies and graceful degadation that makes a system resilient. - - -Much ink was spilled, many hands wrung, many complaints lodged about our addiction to screens. All this worry though, about what? I think the answer is distraction. This is what western philosophers—and ordinary people like you and I -- have worried about for centuries. The only difference to day is the degree for distraction. Why distraction? I think distraction bothers us because it keeps us from attending to the adventure of human existence. - -At least I for one, want to spend more time attending to the adventure of shared human existence than I do screens. Screens are ultimately both addictive and boring. - -Interestingly though, what's true of a screen is also true of a book. After all a good book is every bit as hard to put down and as distracting from shared human existence as a screen. And yet the book feels less problematic. I think this is because a book has borders, has hard limits, has edges. - -A book's distraction from life is much less consuming than a computer screen. It is a single story. Its depth is limited. A book ends on the final page. The boundary of its world is well-defined. We known our way in, we find our way out just as easily. - diff --git a/cooking.txt b/unused/cooking.txt index 00fdcd5..00fdcd5 100644 --- a/cooking.txt +++ b/unused/cooking.txt |