Now

This is my now page. It lists, at a macro level, what I’m currently up to.

Home (Updated 2025-07-15)

Still living in the lovely greater Portland, Oregon area, still accompanied by my house panthers Osgood and Basil.

At the moment all of us are in good health, but I’m starting to deal with arthritis in the pointer fingers on each hand. It’s not bad, but is annoying.

The next big home project will probably be either refactoring the garage or the craft room, both of which need a good purge and reorg.

Work (Updated 2025-07-15)

Semios laid me off in April, along with a lot of my colleagues. As a result, I’m job hunting along with the tens of thousands of others in the tech sector who’ve been let go in the past year.

I’m still advising Open Robotics. They’re great people who are working hard to do the right things for their community. I’ve recently realised that a few months ago I dropped the ball on drafting an IP policy for them, so I’m getting back to that ASAP.

When I remember, I’m still acquiring books for the open source series at Pragmatic Bookshelf. Do you want to write a book about, say, documentation in open source projects? Contact me!.

I’m in the middle of noodling on an idea for a side project that might get me a small safety net outside of the tech sector.

Play (Updated 2025-07-15)

My favourite video game remains Stardew Valley and I don’t see that changing any time soon. I’m also very slowly working my way through Assassins Creed Shadows and Astro Bot. Some day I’ll do that final battle in Tears of the Kingdom.

I’ve been spending more time using my Squeezeboxen to listen to my onsite music collection instead of streaming from Apple Music. I’m enjoying rediscovering albums.

There’s no travel or vacation on my calendar for the rest of the year. Unemployment will do that. In October I’ll probably attend Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival and pet some sheepies and goaties.

Make (Updated 2025-07-15)

Spinning currently in progress…

I’m knitting a shawl with handspun, but at the moment I can’t recall the pattern and don’t have the yarn info handy. I do know that I’ll be playing yarn chicken on this one.

I’m gathering materials and thoughts about modding a pair of jeans that are otherwise surplus to requirements.

There are three ferments in progress, though I haven’t logged them yet:

  • Whole carrots with Indian spices
  • Green cabbage & garlic chives sauerkraut
  • Onions with sage, rosemary, and black peppercorns

Watch (Updated 2025-07-15)

Having caught up with all of Taskmaster UK, I’m working my way through the AU and NZ versions.

Our Watch Party has just finished Murderbot and started on S03 of Foundation.

Think (Updated 2025-07-15)

Losing the job has given me a lot of opportunity and headspace for high-level “what do I want to be when I grow up”-type thinking and wondering.

The current state of my country, of our climate, of our capitalistic culture, are all rather a lot to take. Figuring out how to manage «waves hands around» all this while remaining productive and (hopefully) not making the situation worse for anyone consumes a fair bit of brain time.

It’s really a shame that modern culture doesn’t appropriately value people’s time and skills. It would be lovely to make a good (let alone any) living from my spinning and other making.