Miraz Jordan

The positive about taking Sasha out for a pee at 2 am was the gorgeous bright stars. Mars was prominent by Taurus. Orion and Sirius were ahead of us, the Pleiades low near the horizon. Just beautiful.

Christmas lunch with friends: tiger prawns and chicken on the barbie; a bowl of fresh raspberries and blueberries. Plus lots of other delicious dishes, not shown. 😆

memento mori [is] remembering death so you don’t waste the time you have in life. Memento vivere, remember to live … is making the details of the moments of your life matter, the thrilling ones and the mundane ones.

Via: Remember To Live - It’s All In The Details - What Is Stoicism?

Superb article: Inside Wikipedia’s great macron war:

In 2007, New Zealand got … its first street name with a macron: Kōkiri Place … the mayor of Taupō … got sick of waiting for new road signs with macrons over the “o” so started changing them himself, using reflective tape.

Today I updated an old post which also meant I ended up finding, re-editing and re-exporting photos from my collection. It made me realise how much more I know about photography now than 5 years ago. 😀 Those old photos almost make me cringe.

Update: thanks to @artkavanagh for pointing out that I'm just shy of 5 years, not 4!

Hah, on 13 January 2018 I wrote on my new Micro.Blog with a link to my now removed and archived KnowIt blog:

A fresh start in 2018. In which I stop posting on my nearly 20 year old WordPress blog and take up at Micro.blog.

Over on KnowIt on 12 April 2018 I wrote (emphasis added to the quoted text):

I started blogging in 1999 — nearly 20 years ago — on a DIY HTML page. At times since then I've written on several blogs, quite regularly — even several times per week. These days it seems most of my writing goes on Twitter.

Meanwhile, this blog has accumulated some 3,255 published posts and 2,677 media items.

As we launch into 2018 the site feels heavy. It's a bit of a psychic weight and I feel keenly aware that I hardly ever write here any more.

It's a responsibility writing a blog post: finding and preparing one or more images, choosing topics, words and phrasing carefully, researching things, attributing sources and so on. In 2017 I wrote 25 posts, and published 23. The other two were never finished.

I've been considering what to do with this site. It has around 1,000 page views per month — well down on earlier times, and not surprising since I don't update very often and have switched to random posts rather than topic-based information.

There are 1,669 email subscribers, which sounds good but when I view the list of email addresses I'm confident in saying 99% are spammers rather than actual readers.

I don't want to delete the site — there's still some good info here, though some of the old stuff is truly archaic and occasionally embarrassing.

What I've decided to do is to make a fresh start. I'm unlikely to add anything new here, but will be making brief updates at Miraz.micro.blog. They are automatically cross-posted to Twitter [link removed].

Micro.blog is about brief writing. I'm hoping I'll actually write more words in a week by switching. It should also free me up to be more casual, more spontaneous, more willing to write. I hope it'll be lighter and quicker.

Who knows, maybe I'll switch back here at some point. Maybe I won't. It's definitely a fresh start.

Note: as at 23 December 2022 I have 4046 posts on Micro.Blog and I've written 9928 replies to posts others have made on their blogs. What's more, I know the folks reading are real people, not bots or spammers. I don't know or really care how many people are reading this blog, but I do know I love this community.

Excited to subscribe to en clair podcast:

… a casebook of forensic linguistic cases, literary detection, and language mysteries. It also looks at codes, cryptography, undeciphered languages, and linguistic myths and legends. Each episode presents a case of linguistic intrigue or controversy from ancient history to the present day.

Always a welcome web page: Winners of the 2022 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.

More good sense from @annahavron — Schedule ONE Daily Thing, That is Not Work-Related:

With a daily routine that a) incorporates at least one thing that gives life to your spirit, and that b) you are committed to CHANGING until it actually works for you, you can transform your life.

The beach was very calm this morning — almost no waves. Kāpiti Island in the background.

I made 30 Minute Easy Dinner Rolls (1/3 recipe) and Mushroom soup for dinner. Left out the cream from the soup and it was still yummy. Quick and easy meal.

Yesterday Deb brought me this wonderful and delicious treat: a yuzu tart (lemon meringue pie) from Origami in Cuba Street.

I’m really enjoying this new-to-me podcast: Subtitle:

A podcast about languages and the people who speak them.

Fascinating episodes.

Just thinking about how my ideal Christmas Day would look — in a campervan or cabin, by water — river, lake or sea — with plenty of supplies and far away from everyone else, sunny, warm, not windy.

No-one wants too much detail on this, but for the last week Sasha’s been having some 💩 problems. I think things are improving. Let’s just say the floor has never been this clean!

Yesterday afternoon. I’m choosing to believe this wasn’t commentary on the lateness of dinner. 😆 🐶

Oooh, pretty clouds. And someone up the road’s getting a good dump of rain.

@help Seems like today I can’t get more than ~30 posts on the Timeline (Safari on web). There’s no Show More button or anything… Is it just me?

Hmmm, had to dig deep in the memory for this. I’m trying Suzume Sparrow Kukicha, roasted green tea:

made entirely from stems of summer harvest leaves.

Not a favourite: the taste makes me think of the used grounds from percolator coffee.

I was already uncomfortable with Karen as a general term of abuse. Now I learn that Space Karen refers to Elon Musk, who is behaving badly.

This goes to the ancient tradition of blaming women for men’s behaviour. If Elon is being obnoxious then call him by his own name! 😤