Posts tagged as “Blogging Every Day”

[twenty twenty six day one seven seven]: today i learned …

Published June 27, 2026 by centaur

... which is great, because when you stop learning, you're dead.

Even for someone like me, who periodically takes wrong turns on purpose just to see where the roads go, you spend most of your time going over the same routes in the same ways.

And - forgive me for being a navigation researcher - if you primarily walk walk or drive purposely, rather than for recreation or exercise, those routes will make a branching tree coming out of your primary residence, with rings of cross-routes between frequent destinations. The grocery store, the office supply store, and the dump; church, a brunch joint, and again the grocery store.

This habitual spiderweb means we rarely explore intersections in a systematic, exhaustive way, except when walking or riding for recreation, or doing some kind of specific neighborhood patrol. Area rises as the square of distance, but we only have so many hours in the day, and so many trips in each neighborhood we live in in our lives; some intersections will naturally get left out.

My wife took a wrong turn coming back from the dump (we live on a "flagpole lot" with an extremely long driveway, so having garbage service would involve carting the garbage can 1000 feet and back every week, which not only I don't want to do, but also I think would wear out the wheels on the garbage can, which is not a long distance vehicle, but I digress), I SAY, she was coming back from the dump and missed her turn onto our street ... and made an interesting discovery.

She didn't have far to drive to the next cross street, and quickly made it home ... but as she did so, she found a fire station with aluminum can recycling three minutes from our house. She'd already told me about another fire station, ten minutes away on the drive to the airport, that accepted aluminum cans for recycling as a fundraising effort; this one was far closer.

We had a microwave die recently, and our mother-in-law did too; so after I took them to e-waste recycling at the Enoree dump, I then followed the same wrong turn my wife had. On the way, I saw the backsides of many landmarks that I knew from the drive. I soon found the fire station, three minutes from our house as predicted, but when I got there, I found something else: the local cell phone tower, looming over an empty lot with an excellent view of the nearby region. No wonder the cell phone coverage is so good where we are.

And on the drive back, I passed an Anglican church, in walking distance of our house. I'm kind of aggressively Episcopalian, and go to the church where I was married and whose rector buried my mother - but this Anglican church had a prayer labyrinth, also within walking distance of home.

I like where we moved to during the pandemic: we now live on the road my father taught me to drive, forty years ago. But today I took a turn that I rarely did, because I listened to my wife; and so today I learned that the place where we live is filled with amenities - a fire station, recycling, a cell tower, a church, a prayer labyrinth - that make it even better than I thought it was.

-the Centaur

Pictured: The cell tower, the fire station, and the recycling bin.

[twenty twenty six day one seven six]: my gosh, they’ve leveled up

Published June 26, 2026 by centaur

Truly epic vegan dessert pairing at Maestro's Entre Nous speakeasy in downtown Greenville. Probably our third favorite vegan-friendly restaurant in Greenville after Sunbelly and the 07, but tonight's menu they really leveled up. This was a vegan chocolate torte - much creamier than in the past - and a really great sorbet with fresh fruit, all paired up with great sauces and yin-yang plates for date night with my lovely vegan wife.

-the Centaur

Pictured: um, I said it.

[twenty twenty six day one seven five]: greens a bit too deep

Published June 26, 2026 by centaur

We had a wonderful hike in Asheville last Friday, though we had to keep the pace manageable due to my broken toe. After breakfast at The Smokin Onion - and those great croissant muffins - we decided to work off the dessert on a nearby trail attached to the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Our hike began at the Folk Art Center, which unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of, because I was doing quite a bit of limping. Even though I switched to normal shoes to protect my toe, I brought my flat-bottomed shoe just in case the pain got too much and we had to turn around.

There was no need. We had a long hike, with a nice Lovecraftian green tunnel (up top) and despite getting turned around a bit when we turned around, we nevertheless made it back in time to get a cocktail at Battery Park, a fantastic wine bar and bookstore in downtown Asheville, before going to the even more fantastic vegan restaurant Plant for a wonderful dinner and even more dessert.

It was a pretty good day.

-Anthony

[twenty twenty six day one seven four]: that’s not a donut

Published June 25, 2026 by centaur

The above amazing example of a vegan dessert is a close relative of a "cronut" - where a cronut(TM) is a croissant donut, this is something like a croissant muffin, and it's a decadently delicious dessert often found at The Smokin Onion, a vegan restaurant in Asheville that my wife and I like. Once I suggested that we split one of those desserts, and she's like, "get your own!"

Now, I thought THAT was a donut(-like food).

But that's not a donut.

THIS is a donut.

These are apparently from Parlor Donuts in Greenville, SC, "made in small batches every day." They are absolutely not vegan in any way, shape or substantial form. They looked beyond delicious; they looked Cinnabon levels of absolutely unhealthy, and I declined to wreck my blood sugar with them.

What even is that atop the upper two donuts? A fried egg?

Blogging every day, not eating those every day, that's for sure. Would you like a wafer-thin mint?

-the Centaur

[twenty twenty six day one seven three]: sale! sale! sale!

Published June 24, 2026 by centaur

So a sale just dropped out of the sky at https://bookshop.org/shop/TIP ... bookshop.org is apparently running an Anti-Prime Day Sale with free shipping and discounts across the site, and you can get Thinking Ink Press books at 20% off at the link above. This runs through Friday!

We found out, I quickly met with Betsy via Meet to discuss how to promote it, and the rest of the team weighed in with copy ideas on Signal. A quick sprint to Canva produced these graphics ...

Support indie bookstores indeed!

And indie publishers. https://bookshop.org/shop/TIP

-the Centaur

[twenty twenty six day one seven two]: general relativity is hard

Published June 21, 2026 by centaur

I'm sure this is obvious to most people who are not dumb that the key discovery of the person known as the world's greatest smarty pants might be a difficult subject, but I apparently have the dumb. I have been studying general relativity ("Einstein gravity") on and off, for twenty years, and while I get some of it, other parts still just keep breaking my head.

Like, why does time slow down when you accelerate? That's, like, almost THE key prediction of GR. The explanation seems so simple, but yet, when I try to work through the links of the chain, I just can't get it. I read the words and then try to recreate it in my little black grid-ruled notebook and end up right where I started, asking the question, "What does baffled mean?"

The current attempt involves having literally about a half-dozen books that have useful-seeming explanations of gravitational time dilation, which I am going through in quasi-parallel, trying to get a grip on the key feature which just doesn't make sense to me (why particles emitted in the roof of a rocket or elevator seem to "run fast" compared to an observer sitting on the floor).

I feel if I could just get this, then I'd have a much deeper understanding. But the understanding I do have gives me two wrong answers: one, it shouldn't work at all, or two, it's always been there in the equations, and Newton should have discovered it, but simply didn't because he didn't think of it.

Hopefully I'll get there. Wish me luck.

-the Centaur

Pictured: pound cake, almond milk, two general relativity textbooks, and buried between them the little black notebook where I'm trying to work all this out. Thanks, Albert.

[twenty twenty six day one seven one]: functionally weeds

Published June 20, 2026 by centaur

So in our mushroom farm, some of the logs are producing shiitake mushrooms, some are producing oyster mushrooms (not pictured as something ate the latest buds), some produced nameko (which I was not fond of), there was a fourth variety that didn't come up, and I think we have recently buried some maitake mushrooms logs which won't come up for a few months.

But that doesn't stop other organisms from trying to colonize the logs.

On the right is I believe turkey tail, which some people make into a tea (if it's the right variety) but which we don't eat (and didn't plant, so I don't trust it). On the left is allegedly not a mushroom, but a giant false-puffball slime mold. I did not cut it open to find out.

I believe these are chicken of the woods on the lower center, and possibly another slime mold atop. Again, this isn't what we planted in this log, so we're not going to risk eating them (at least not until we are much, much better at identifying species, which will take a long, long time).

On some of these colonized logs, we can see clear signs that the shiitake mycelium is still colonizing the logs, so we'll give it time. After a year, however, we might pull some of the logs if they are not producing (normally it takes six months to start to fruit, but we're deliberately experimenting with much larger logs, hoping to pay a longer onset to get a longer producing period).

We'll see.

-the Centaur

[twenty twenty six day one seven zero]: again with the helping

Published June 19, 2026 by centaur

And today's edition (well, not today's, as I blog a little ahead) of cats on workspaces includes Lily I think, bringing one of her favorite balls to one of my favorite workstations, a high-topped bar table made by my wife to look like a giant coral. Enjoy! I will work elsewhere.

-the Centaur

[twenty twenty six day one six nine]: i checked myself

Published June 18, 2026 by centaur

Back in 1997, I drove across country for HAL 9000's birthday (yes, THAT Hal), held at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where a friend was a graduate student. They called it the Cyberfest, and Arthur C. Clarke joined us for the first transatlantic video call at 1 frame per second.

But on the drive, I recall watching the time zones change around me. I calculated how many degrees across the Earth I had driven ... and the shift in time due to the curve around the Earth matched up.

No, it's not flat, and you cannot fake reality in any way whatsoever.

-the Centaur

Pictured: an Old Fashioned at the One Five, where we had a nice vegan meal after my urgent care visit for my broken toe.

[twenty twenty six day one six eight]: anatomy of the toe

Published June 17, 2026 by centaur

It may not look like much, but it smarts where it counts, kid. One of our coffee tables decided to make some special modifications to my middle toe, including a lot of soft-tissue soreness and a tiny chip in the bone which took four X-rays to fully figure out. Flat-bottomed shoes make the world go round ...

-the Centaur

Pictured: Broken right ... there.

[twenty twenty six day one six seven]: adult me, bro

Published June 16, 2026 by centaur

Adulting is one of the most important, and pernicious, tasks adults are called upon to undertake. The laundry must get done, after all, but if it's a choice between doing the laundry and maintaining your marriage or caring for your children or loved ones, the hamper can just continue to fill.

In this case, adulting is rather simple. My wife and I use the "80-80" rule: a partnership is not a 50-50 proposition, because we're rarely operating at 100% of our capacity. Even if your partner is awesome and pulls off a 90% success rate, if you rely on your partner to do half the work, inevitably that truly awesome partner will only deliver 45% of the needed work, falling short of your expectations.

If, instead, you ASSUME your partner will sometimes fall short, and take on MORE than 50% of the effort - and they do too - then everything is fine. Your partner's turn to toss the compost on the heap, but you're standing in front of it? Toss it. Your turn to fold the laundry, but your partner sees the laundry in the dryer? She does it. And then everything gets done, and you both feel great.

So my wife mentioned that we're out of litter, and I volunteered to go while I was having lunch at Panera in Greenridge, next to a PetSmart that has our two cat litter brands. Since I knew I was going, I asked her to let me know if we were low on anything else, and she pointed out we were low on 2 of the 9 (!) cat dry food brands we use to distract our very finicky cats.

I was there, I got it done, it all worked out great, while she had folded the laundry I had run last night.

80-80 for the win.

-the Centaur

Pictured: the empty bags/cans of the two cat food brands we were low on.

[twenty twenty six day one six six]: i hunger

Published June 15, 2026 by centaur

As good as I try to be about my weight, sometimes I can't seem to help myself. Especially if I find myself super hungry at the start of a three-hour artist date at Barnes and Noble's cafe, and they've got a lone croissant sitting there with my name on it, waiting to be heated up.

-the Centaur

Picture: um, I said it.

[twenty twenty six day one six five]: drawing subtracts from writing

Published June 14, 2026 by centaur

I started to write "drawing DETRACTS from writing" but that's not true at all: I just finished a couple of drawings for THE LEGACY OF THE EXTRA CREDIT PROJECT that helped me understand my own characters - and now I've drawn all of the core six characters signed up for the Project. So drawing doesn't detract ... but it certainly can subtract from the time you'd spend on another endeavor.

Our heroes Q'yagon and Darina I most recently used Midjourney reference for, but I had previously drawn them myself; but now, without reference, I have drawn sketches of the stoneskin healer Orieos and his birchbark ranger squeeze Berrybelle, as well as Berrybelle's fire mage brother Sapforte and his ice dragon familiar, Frostthorne. All six are now rendered by my own hand!

But, normally, the Drawing Every Day project has relatively simple drawings - several of which have appeared recently, so you can see what I mean. But at the start and finish of every notebook, I do a more detailed drawing of ... SOMETHING ... related to my writing or comics, and those take longer.

Orieos and Berrybelle finished out a DED notebook (this one from Blick art supply, pictured above) and Sapforte and Frostthorne started a new one (not pictured). O&B took an hour; S&F took three.

In that time, I could have written 500 to 1500 words (more, or less, depending on inspiration and orientation to the text) or made progress on the Logical Robotics Harness, or done work on the FROST MOON re-release or the LCATS project.

But even though I could have spent those four hours writing ... I'm happy with the result.

So even though drawing (and blogging!) subtract from writing time, I'm glad I do them.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Just the notebook, as the drawings are for days 250-251, and we're only at DOY 164.

[twenty twenty six day one six four]: vegan food can be tasty and delicious

Published June 13, 2026 by centaur

Vegan spread trio and vegan foccacia at The 07 on Laurens Road in Greenville. While The 07 is not all vegan, it is one of our most consistent fave vegan-friendly restaurants in Greenville.

And they often have excellent vegan desserts ... as they had at our meal yesterday.

-the Centaur

Pictured: um, I said it; an artichoke panini, and the vegan dessert cake.

[twenty twenty six day one six three]: helpful

Published June 12, 2026 by centaur

Normally when my wife's in town and we're not throwing a party, the above space in our living room is reserved for one of her art projects. But right now, she's focusing on painting in her studio, so I have set out my vast pile of piles which I have been trying to beat back with a stick.

The cats are helping. This task has seemed Sisyphean, but, actually, some of the piles have returned to the shelves, and others have dissolved into papers for recycling. The above matrix grabs a large amount of stuff which I think will shrink down with "the treatment". I feel like I'm making progress!

I've switched gears now back to the novel, coding, and blogging, but Loki is helping. You can't see him easily right now, so I've provided a reference shot of his helping style above.

Perhaps with that, you can see him helping at my desk.

-the Centaur

Pictured: The piles, exploded; Lily, I think, Loki outside, and Loki behind my monitor.

[twenty twenty six day one six two]: sunrise

Published June 12, 2026 by centaur

One of the delights of my life are redeye flights. The actual flight itself isn't usually that grand, but I really enjoy having a long day at a conference or vacation destination with nothing to do, followed by breakfast at the airport in the nearly inevitable layover before the final leg to Greenville.

This time, it was New Jersey, and I have never seen an airport with more food options than the New Jersey airport. Seemingly every 5 to 10 gates, there was a collection of restaurants which included a large, clean, well-organized center aisle counter, one or two large restaurants on the sides, and a quirky restaurant tucked away between them with some ethnic food.

All of these were almost certainly served by the same kitchen, as each cluster (except for the ethnic restaurant) had the same menu, and all had QR codes on each seat to order and deliver food directly. But there were still a large number of staff - one of which served me at a counter directly opposite my gate. It was a well-worked out, efficient, and yet still surprisingly human system.

The food was delicious. And so was the sunrise.

-the Centaur

Pictured: two shots of the sunrise that I saw on my way between gates, a smoked salmon flatbread, and a bowl of fresh fruit.

[twenty twenty six day one six one]: home again home again jiggity jig

Published June 12, 2026 by centaur

Back from the Embodied AI Workshop! And TIL (today I learned, though not the today of the blogging every day post) that "home again, home again, jiggity jig" isn't originally just a throw-away line from J.F. Sebastian's autonomous creations in Blade Runner, but actually is a centuries-old nursery rhyme called "To Market, To Market": https://poets.org/poem/market-market

To market,
To market,
To buy a fat pig.
Home again,
Home again,
Jiggity jig.

I may be a carnivore, but I find the treatment of animals in a lot of older literature ... disturbing. Regardless, I'm home again, and since another year has passed, that means there's a different car from the Clemson autonomous driving team on display in the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport:

On the theme of dubious autonomous creatures, I've said it before, but now I'll say it here: an autonomous vehicle without a physical steering wheel is a bug, just waiting to turn your car into a one-ton paperweight when the software inevitably bricks. Send an engineer out with a gamepad controller all you want: sooner or later you'll need a tow in an awkward situation (say, for example, an underground parking garage in Palo Alto which is too windy for a tow truck to get into ... yes, I do have personal experience with this, why do you ask?) requiring your new paperweight to be serviced in place.

Pull up your pants, turn your ballcap forward, and install a steering wheel.

-the Centaur

Pictured: A fountain in the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport, and the aforementioned self-driving car. I don't think it had a steering wheel, front or back, but perhaps that was just the angle I could see in.

[twenty twenty six day one six zero]: forget me not

Published June 11, 2026 by centaur

One of the things they tell writers is "always write your ideas down". The truth is, natural language is so impossibly vast that every sentence we think or say, outside of boilerplate hellos, pleasantries, and goodbyes, could be unique. But our memories are NOT structured to retain unique information; instead, they integrate it into familiar patterns so it can be reconstructed - not exactly retrieved.

So if you hit on a bon mot, you're better off writing it down.

OR, put another way, I forgot to write down what I planned to write in this post, and it's GONE.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Vibe Coffee in Denver, where I am writing this ahead of time, as I will soon (as of this writing) be on a redeye flight, and then (as of this posting) be recovering from said redeye.

P.S. If you got a brief flash of this post on the 9th, ignore it. Wait until the 11th. :-D

[twenty twenty-six day thirty-four]: again with the vegan kibbey nayye

Published February 3, 2026 by centaur

I am pleased to report that vegan kibbey nayye continues to be a hit. My wife had left a white onion in the fridge when she left on her last business trip, I had a pound of vegan hamburger in the freezer and a bag of fine bulghur wheat in the fridge, and there was a snowstorm threatening to snow us in all weekend. So I made some vegan kibbey nayye, and it turned out quite well.

Differences on this outing: I washed the bulghur wheat three times and soaked it in the absolute minimum amount of water, I drained the excess onion juice off the ground onion, which I think improved its texture. I alternated a big spoon and a potato masher rather than hand mixing it this time (more out of paranoia and fastidiousness than anything else). The spices, remarkably, I got right the first time: a decent amount of salt, somewhat less pepper and cumin, a little bit less cinnamon, and even less allspice. It Just Worked(TM).

Combine that with some thin lavash bread in the freezer (which I am getting better at the technique of flash-defrosting with 30 seconds in the microwave and an equal amount in the toaster) and the increasingly good pickled hot peppers, which are only improving as they age, and a little Filipio Berio olive oil ...

And that was a pretty good meal --- actually, a few meals, over 2-3 days.

-the Centaur

Pictured: vegan kibbey nayye, lavash bread, olive oil, pickled hot peppers, and the reading pile.

[retro twenty twenty six day seven]: turns out black swans sound like kittens

Published February 2, 2026 by centaur

So at nearby Furman University there's a man-made lake with a variety of waterfowl in it - including a pair of black swans, which happen to sound a lot like kittens. Apparently these are Australian imports, deliberately introduced to the lake, and are well known to sightseers and university residents alike.

We saw the swans while walking around the lake, trying to work off some of the wonderful vegan food we had at nearby Sunbelly Cafe, a vegan, gluten-free restaurant that nevertheless has really great food.

My wife had our usual favorite, their vegan burger with all the addable fixin's, but I tried their all-day breakfast and found their waffles were quite the standout.

So was the vegan dessert.

It was a pretty good day.

-the Centaur

Pictured: the black swan, the lake, the waffles, and the dessert.