Steady

...orget that the other needed skills in my life need to be built slowly over time. In music, you have to set aside some time every day to practice your scales. But where to find the time? Lately I feel like I’ve been paying too much attention to the news. While I think it’s important to know something about what’s going on, I don’t think that I need to follow the day to day drama. What if I devoted the time I spend reading the newspaper to practicin...

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Installing Solid Wood Flooring

...with the results and I like the fact that sold oak flooring will last ten times as long as laminates. Over the next few weeks I’m going to replace the worn out douglas fir flooring in two other rooms with solid oak. Let me say how thankful I am for the power of compressed air. That said, some time ago I fell into a YouTube hole, watching old films of early 20th century construction. One of the clips showed flooring being installed with just a ham...

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Our Shaky Town

...timated magnitude, I knew it wasn’t going to be huge but we all had enough time to get under the table if we needed to If you haven’t downloaded @myshakeapp now would be a good time! Also the system is improving constantly so even if this one didn’t work I guarantee future you will appreciate the warning ⚠️ https://myshake.berkeley.edu This was probably the best-case scenario for people in LA to get an early warning — big enough to trigger the sys...

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A Season of Light in Darkness

...t said to me, with tears in her eyes, “Honey, I’ve been a nurse for a long time and…well, you need to call your loved ones. Now.” Okay, so imagine being in this position. Imagine having to call your mom and tell her, in roundabout terms, that you might be dying soon. You may not see her again. To be sure, many are not even granted that much grace before dying, but my point here is that there are no words. Words are simply inadequate in moments lik...

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Stellarium: A Handy Desktop Planetarium

...the Persead shower that reached its peak last week). You’ll want to pick a time when the moon is not up. Or let’s say you want to have some friends over for some planetary viewing and a glass of bourbon (as happened last night at the Root Simple compound). In that case you might want to pick a time when you can also take a look at the moon. In the pre-personal computer era I used to use a planisphere. I still have my 1980s era plastic planisphere....

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