I like French, comics, books, podcasts, (board and roleplaying) games, biking, and trains. I try to stay organized and in good (physical and mental) shape.

Moi, j'aime le français, les BD, les livres, les podcasts, les jeux (de plateau et de rôle), le cyclisme, et les trains. Je fais de mon mieux de rester organisé et en forme (physiquement et mentalement).

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I know some people have strong feelings about split infinitives, but if it’s good enough for Kirk and Picard, it’s good enough for me.



I hope the Disney+ Ms. Marvel show will have an episode set in France where Kamala fights a local super who believes her burkini-based costume to be « une atteinte à la laïcité »



In the years since its release, I have begrudgingly accepted that the 2005 Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie is not that great. The hardest part of that acceptance, though, is how amazing some of its constituent parts are.



I am generally a fan of responsive design, but it’s frustrating when a website’s menu goes into mobile mode if I have my browser open on “only” half of my not-small monitor.



I cannot read the word “poignant” without remembering that it is etymologically related to the French word for “fist” and, by extension, to the French expressions for “punch” and “brass knuckles” (literally, “an American punch”).



When I taught keyboarding, students complained about HTML lessons, asking what it had to do with typing. I explained that if you mistype things, you break things… I’m sure they laugh now every time I bork my website w/ a misplaced line break.



What I love about having ~15 years of personal journals hanging around is that if I ever run out of anxiety rooted in the present, I can go back and remember all the anxiety I felt in the past.



Old favorite thing: Finding BBC Radio 4 shows on Audible; new favorite thing: Finding BBC Radio 4 shows on the Internet Archive.



The Empire Strikes Back soundtrack just came up in iTunes; it’s good to occasionally remind oneself that Star Wars owes as much (if not more) to Williams, Burtt, and McQuarrie as it does to Lucas.



Toggl has an amazing API and disappointing native apps. If it weren’t for the first, the second could be a dealbreaker.



I have now successfully migrated all of my “following” to Feedbin’s Twitter-to-RSS service. Weird way to keep up with tweets (and costs me a monthly fee), but I’m really enjoying it so far.



I am more invested in the FRA - USA match going on right now than I have been in any other sporting event this year. (Then again, that investment manifests only in occasionally checking the score, so you can see I’m not a sports guy).



I am incapable of listening to Devo without remembering that they get a shout out in Watchmen.



Sapiens is a challenging book, but that’s also why it’s a must-read. As much as its focus is on science & technology, I ultimately read it as a reminder that we need to ask ?s from the humanities to safely navigate our present and future.



In jury-rigged standing desk news, I have replaced the MacBook box my monitor was teetering on with a Yeti microphone box, and I think I’ve got the monitor at the right height now.



Bike commuting adventure of the day: Finding all the places in my office where I can discretely hang up wet clothes from a rainy commute (thank goodness for my closet full of dry work clothes).



Just finished the 2006 “Life on Mars.” Fantastic premise, and some amazing individual scenes, but not quite enough connective tissue between the two.



When Twitter first gut-punched third-party apps by limiting their API, I was afraid not being able to check “likes” through Tweetbot would make it unusable. Now, that’s actually the appeal.



Central Kentucky libraries apparently have summer reading programs for adults, and I can’t remember the last time I was this excited.



I love learning more about regular expressions except the part where it’s always in response to some mistake I’ve made.



Paying for my third year of Posteo tonight and not missing Gmail at all. (Still haven’t kicked the Drive/Docs habit, though).



Going to see Endgame tonight, and it occurred to me earlier today that the first Avengers came out when I was still in college, and this one came out at the tail end of my second semester as an assistant professor.



As a big fan of both The Good Place and the French language, I suddenly feel an urgent need to know what substitutes Chidi hears in French when Eleanor tries to swear in English.



Currently in the middle of the long process of purging old tweets from my Twitter account, so my profile page looks weird, as though I haven’t tweeted regularly since 2017.



Super excited that Alfred 4 is coming out this summer. I was just thinking yesterday how the app continues to impress even after years of using it.



YouTube is a great way to talk about personalization algorithms. On one hand, it’s quite good at what it does. On the other, that often leads to my watching more YouTube than I meant to, and I resent it for that.



Sometimes I unplug my headphones and give anyone walking by my door the gift of learning about Johnny Hallyday.



I recently finished “Weapons of Mass Diplomacy,” the English translation of a comic based on the author’s time in the French foreign ministry in the leadup to the Iraq War. Loved it, but wish my library also had it in the original French.



Just got a notification that today marks a whole year since I began journaling in Day One. I’ve really enjoyed it so far (even if I have a couple dozen incomplete entries right now that I need to go back and finish).

brief thoughts on entertainment media



I once had a neighbor who argued that because it had higher fidelity, 3-D was the future of cinema. To prove his point, he asked “who would prefer an audio adaptation to a video one?” and was surprised when I, a big radio fan, raised my hand. To be honest, I don’t know that I’d prefer radio to TV/cinema in every instance, but I believe firmly that it’s more about how you use a medium than it is about what medium you use.



Every year, I hit a point where my productivity system feels constraining, so I give it up for a few days, only to feel like I no longer have any control over my time.



Sometimes, being a bike commuter means spending the first 30 minutes of your work day fixing a spring clasp on a pannier.



I don’t really understand how fraternities and sororities work, so whenever I hear about Greek life, I half-expect someone to follow up with a discussion of “Roman life”, where all the names are different even though everything else is the same.



THERE’S NO ONE CURRENTLY NEXT TO ME FOR WHAT WILL BE A NINE HOUR FLIGHT BUT I’M NOT SURE IF BOARDING HAS CLOSED YET AND THIS IS THE MOST STRESSFUL PART OF THE WHOLE TRIP SO FAR



Highlight of Paris airport this morning is the Scottish “hey Europe, can we still be friends?” ads that I keep seeing.



What I’d really like to see added to HTML are tags.