Recent content on Tomasino Blog
Today in the United States many people are partaking in a boycott of major businesses as a protest against the policies of the current administration and the preemptive acquiescence of these mega-corporations. With that in mind, and Ash Wednesday just around the corner, I’d like to give the religious folks out there an idea. The Lenten boycott. Why Participating in a boycott of this nature…
Plex Media Library Plex is a home media platform which lets you catalog and manage your media. That is, your TV and movies, music, and some other stuff. It’s pretty smart. It knows about show seasons, airdates, organizes everything for you into your own personal Netflix-style environment. You can then watch that stuff on your computer, or with their apps available on smart TVs and game…
I recently learned about the Criterion Challenge. TL;DR - Watch 52 movies in the year according to a bunch of category themes. See the original challenge post. The Rules There are 52 categories. The goal is to watch any Criterion released film based on the categories below between 1/1/25-12/31/25. Your choices can be any films released by Criterion on 4K, Blu-ray, DVD, VHS, Laserdisc, or ones that…
Photo by Diane Helentjaris (https://unsplash.com/@dhelentjaris) In the late 90s I had a website called “A Film A Day” where I tried to review 365 films in a year. It ran for two full years and I achieved my goal both times. Sadly, it expired and it was not indexed by the Wayback Machine so it’s lost to time. It is one of my two great data losses and I’m still sad about it.
It’s Christmas time again and with that comes so many wonderful cozy traditions. Here in the Tomasino house we have built a number of our own special family moments from setting up the tree to our Christmas buffet dinner. Several of these traditions are things we’ve adopted from the locals since moving to Iceland. One of the most famous of these is called Jólabókaflóð…
It’s time to clean the keyboard. It’s gotten really gross. I begin by removing all the keycaps and revealing the switches. This is a mechanical keyboard. The Das Keyboard 4C, technically. I’ve got blank keycaps on it. That’s why you can’t see any of the letters. I do have a pretty little white rabbit on my escape key, though. It’s cute. You’ll see it down…
Comic book superheros are modern myths. They are the epic hero turned into an accessible pulp story, borrowing genre elements from science fiction or fantasy as culture passes through new fads. Comic books have evolved through ages of their own. Beginning with the Golden Age, when heroes were good and they triumphed over evil in uncomplicated narratives. The characters had little in the way of…
REGOs and Greenwashing I recently had a nice discussion with my hackerspace about Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin (REGO) and Iceland’s role in the scheme. For those of you unfamiliar, REGOs are certificates that prove that a certain amount of electricity has been generated from renewable sources. They are issued by regulatory bodies and can be traded between energy suppliers and…
I’m so bad at blogging. Last year I made slátur with a friend and his family. is an Icelandic food made from the innards of sheep. There are two types of Slátur is made up of two parts: blóðmör (“blood pudding”) and lifrarpylsa (“liver sausage”). These are the pictures. Yes, it’s quite yummy. The blóðmör especially is tasty the next day when reheated with a bit…
The critic speaks The Rings of Power has wrapped up its first season and my friends are sharing their joy with one another. They’ve longed to return to Middle Earth for years, and the show’s aesthetic and simple good vs evil are a welcome change from the grimdark that pervades fantasy in the twenty-first century. So it came as a shock when a review in the Guardian dropped with the…
What is happening? A lot of information is being spread around about the dangers of period tracker data in the wake of Roe v Wade being overturned, and with good reason. Some state legislatures are investigating a troublesome and vaguely defined area of law: whether you can be charged with a crime in one state for activity that takes place in another. For example, if Texas criminalizes activity…
In the wake of the news that the archbishop of San Francisco will bar Nancy Pelosi from receiving communion in his archdiocese I’ve been thinking about canon law, the catechism of the Catholic church, St. Paul, and what Jesus’ take on the issue might be. What follows here is not a response to the church’s stance on abortion but rather a reflection upon the idea of withholding…
Tomorrow is the first of three wonderful holidays in Iceland that make up Fastelavn, a carnival leading up to Lent. This first day is Bolludagur, or “Bun Day”. As the name suggests there’s a lot of sweet pastry action at the focus of the holiday. By old tradition, kids used to make colorful sticks with colored paper called bolludagsvöndur (bun day wands) and then wack their…
Today is the Icelandic holiday Bóndadagur, or “Husband’s Day”. It marks the first day of the month of Þorri in the old Icelandic calendar. Etymologically speaking the holiday comes from the word Bondi which could mean man of the house or even farmer, so the translation takes a few different forms. Since this is a holiday geared toward the special “men of the house”,…
Here we are in mid-August and the world is still crippled by the global pandemic. I spoke at length about Iceland’s steps to combat COVID-19 in my last blog post. Since there have been a few developments. Domestic Infection Incident Rate Iceland “beat” the first wave quickly. People were respectful of the instructions coming from the leaders here and the distancing rules worked.…
COVID-19 (The Coronavirus) has been in Iceland now for a few weeks. It began slowly, with a few Icelanders returning from holiday in Verona, Italy. When a few of those showed symptoms, the rest of those traveling and those who were in close contact with the travelers immediately went into quarantine. Things were held tight. Sadly, there were a few people who broke quarantine and spread the…
This winter has been quite a ride. Iceland has been hit by several impressive storms since Decemeber that’s kept us mostly bottled up inside the apartment. Storms here usually consist of extremely strong winds and on occasion snow. The country has a color-coded warning system to advise on travel conditions. Yellow alerts have been fairly common, but orange is where things start getting…
Iceland has so many wonderful things to offer, from an amazing public education system to lush natural beauty. It also has quite a few unique delicacies that you absolutely must try if you visit. Being the two staple products, the seafood is naturally excellent and you can find a number of tasty lamb dishes all around the country. But that’s not all there is… Let’s look at some of our…
Click to see the 3D Panorama Today I needed to peel the boy away from his tablet and Minecraft, so I tossed on some boots and a light jacket and we went to explore the mountain behind our apartment, Helgafell. Helgafell means “Holy Mountain” and is pronounced like Helga-Fel-tlch, where that last sound happens in the back corner of your mouth. His school is named after the mountain:…
The previous two weekends in Icelands have been full of parties. First we celebrated Pride Day with an epic turnout. Over 100,000 people descended upon Reykjavík on that Saturday for rainbows, unicorns, and fabulous music. For those of you counting on your fingers, yes, that’s about 1/3rd of the entire country present at a party. This past weekend was Culture Day, an affair more spread out…
Today was Wit’s first day of school. In actuality it was a bit of an orientation day when the kids and parents went to the school for an hour to meet the teachers and get some basic information. That works for us because we have absolutely no idea what we’re doing. When we first got the approval on our rental in Mosfellsbær, I rushed into the municipality website to get him registered…
Today we got our keys! Wit, Leah and I hopped on a bus this afternoon and traveled out to Mosfellsbær. We stopped in town and hit up the grocery store to grab a few essentials (toilet paper, soap, a little towel) so that we could function. We’re not moving in properly until Monday, but we got the keys from the landlord and took a tour of the place all put together.
On Friday I took off from work and we went whale watching from the Reykjavík harbor. It’s not the best area to see whales, but it’s extremely convenient for us. Leah also found a company with a fantastic policy: if you don’t see a whale, you get a free comp-ticket to come back and try again. Spoilers! We didn’t see a whale. That’s okay, though. We will have plenty of…
Wit made a friend! To be more precise he has made several friends recently at the playground. Some of the children know some English from TV and are excited to talk and play using it. Others, like the boy who lives upstairs, speak no English at all. That hasn’t stopped him from becoming a fast friend of our boy. As soon as Wit gets up in the morning he is in a blur of excitement to eat…
We have an apartment! After a whirlwind weekend of apartment hunting we somehow managed to get extremely lucky. We traveled to pretty much every corner of Reykjavík and its neighboring municipalities and saw so many places my head is a blur. By far the most impressive unit was in Mosfellsbær, one of the furthest areas from downtown and one of our top picks. It’s the garden town of the…
We’re wrapping up our second week in Iceland. Spoiler-alert, we still like it here. There’s a list of things we need to do still before we’re officially settled in: Find an apartment for long-term rent Register Leah with immigration Register Wit in school Join some community stuff (pool, etc) The first thing on the list is the most important one, and the biggest source of stress…
There’s one aspect of the journey to Iceland that I haven’t mentioned much and that’s money. I’m going to estimate the entire process, inclusive of hotels, rentals, shipping, packing, and all the rest has cost us somewhere in the area of $20,000. What’s most remarkable about that is the fees paid to Italy and Iceland. During the process of applying for citizenship…
I’m sitting at a beautiful airbnb in Reykjavík across from my fabulous wife while my son flips through some activity books on the couch. We’re all tired, sweaty, hungry, and did I mention tired? Above all, though, we’re Icelandic residents. (Well, 2/3) Two weeks ago things really hit their stride. As I talked about in my last post, we had the apartment packed up and coordinated a…
With one month to go before we hop on the plane to Iceland our days seem mostly filled with nervous anxiety and panic over how much stuff we still need to purge. The move dates are all set and we’ve got our hotel stays lined up. My lawyer seems confident we have everything to satisfy Iceland’s residency requirement, and yet I still worry about what we’ll do if we get there and…
We’re just under 2 months away from the big move to Iceland. The last five have gone by so quickly, but we’ve also managed to do a lot of planning in that time. We hired a lawyer in Iceland to help make sure we’re doing everything properly. That’s been quite a stress relief. We also have contracted with an international shipping company to handle getting a container of our…
Tonight is my last night in this house. We move into the apartment tomorrow and close on the sale on Monday. These seven years have been the longest I’ve ever lived in one place. It’s always a little sad closing one chapter, but the joy and excitement of starting the next is a natural counterbalance. I took a picture of my son lying in bed dreaming his last dreams here. He’s only…
There is so much data in the world that’s now available to all of us. Just considering what is shared by the United States government in its open data initiative there is an inconceivable plethora of information waiting to be explored, processed, and researched. The challenge facing modern data science is less about access and more about human resources and the ingenuity to ask great…
FADE IN: INT. DENNY'S RESTAURANT - NIGHT In the bowels of suburban Indianapolis, coffee percolates and kitchen staff shout at each other in the distance. JOSH, international man-of-pancakes, 25 and poised to quit Radio Shack, nods sagely. JAMES, Italian-American blogging genius extraordinaire, 24 and nearing grad school, grunts with decision. JAMES Are you part of an evil conspiracy to take over…
Yes! We’ve done it. Earlier this month my letter came from the Italian consulate officially congratulating me on my citizenship (and my son’s). It was such an amazing feeling to finally complete the process. It’s been so long in the making I’m not really sure how to celebrate. Nothing seems sufficient. I took pictures and shared them on social media, texted my mom and my…
TL;DR Amazon Fulfillment does not offer a vacation hold for package delivery. The Full Story We recently took a two week vacation to see family. Like any responsible adult I made sure to put a vacation hold on my mail delivery with USPS. I also went ahead and did the same with UPS and FedEx knowing that it is the holiday season and people would be shipping presents to us. In fact, I knew we had a…
I’ve been interested in obtaining Italian citizenship since my time in the Navy, about 17 years ago. I started the formal process for dual citizenship in earnest in 2004. I have been applying through a process called jure sanguinis, or “by law of the bloodline”. In short it states that my ancestor who immigrated to the United States had Italian children on US soil before giving…
I weighed myself today. I’m nearly as heavy today as I have ever been and I’m not happy about it at all. I’ve struggled with my weight since late high school, basically ever since I stopped playing sports regularly. Over the years the scale has crept up and up with only a brief interlude while I served in the Navy. It’s frustrating because I know what I need to do in order…
We’ve been planning the move to Iceland for a few years now, but there’s not much we can do until Italy processes my application for citizenship. We need passports that are part of the Shengin Treaty to make relocation without a work visa a reality. While it’s theoretically possible to move as a US citizen and find a sponsor, the reality is the job market in Iceland isn’t…
In the last year I’ve become increasingly interested in the ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism. As a quick Googling will show: Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early 3rd century BC. The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, of the active relationship between cosmic determinism and human freedom,…
A cord-cutter’s life The cord-cutter movement is growing quickly and with good reason. Cable TV is an outdated model that forces an obnoxious number of interruptions into your entertainment. It serves content on its schedule, not yours. It’s expensive. The vast majority of what is offered to you isn’t something you want at all. Cord-cutting is a term usually reserved for…
I have a problem. Nobody will play Clue with me. Yes, I’m talking about the Hasbro board game that you probably haven’t played in 15 years. It’s one of my childhood favorites, but none of my friends will touch it with a ten foot pole. It’s not their fault, though. You see, while I was growing up we would play Clue as a family. It was usually just me, my sister and my mom.
I just looked to the side and noticed the pile of stuff building up on the corner of my desk. What an interesting collection it was. Through no particular effort on my part, I’d put together a little collage of myself. I thought it was pretty neat, anyway. I wonder if other people have similar things creeping up around them. Maybe not on the desk, but on a nightstand or counter corner.
I haven’t written in a little while, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to give some background on things that have happened, and where I would like to see life going for a while ahead. First of all, I met a wonderful woman shortly after leaving the Jesuits, and we’ve had a really amazing adventure in the short time we’ve been together. We got engaged in Florence in the…
My rating: 1 of 5 stars Xanth was the first series of books that caught my attention as a child, and I have Piers Anthony to thank for my love of reading today. I read nearly twenty of the books before moving on to more advanced fantasy series. What is most remarkable about all of that to me, however, is that I don’t remember once thinking how horrifically sexist the books are!
My rating: 5 of 5 stars This was hands down one of the very best technical books I’ve ever had the pleasure to read. Drew Neil has found a way to organize the book into a tip format without making it lose focus or seem endlessly unimaginative. Rather, by organizing the tips into themes, he gives the editor itself structure where before there was only the grey void of endless features.
My rating: 2 of 5 stars I had to take a few days to think about how I should review this book. I received it in a Goodreads Giveaway, which I entered based almost entirely on the cover design and title. I knew nothing of the subject matter or format and that would have greatly affected my desire to pick it up in the first place. Next, I should be clear that my rating is, and must be, true to my…
It’s become somewhat of the popular joke to have a post about Zombie Survival these days, so I guess I’ll toss my two-cents into the fray. Personally, I’ve never been much concerned with the Zombie menace, but there many other possible scenarios out there that call for readiness in the face of limited resources, disrupted public services, and downright chaos. With that (and an…
My rating: 2 of 5 stars This book started out very strong for me. I loved the author’s voice and his subject matter. I read the first half of the book in one sitting, but then upon taking it up again, I faltered. I didn’t feel a strong appeal in going back, and I really didn’t feel like it was important to finish. There is a bit of a parallel there between my reading and…
Last night at exactly 5:14:39 UTC, the latest NASA project touched down on the surface of Mars. The Curiosity rover is a mobile science lab that will travel the planet looking for signs of previous life. It’s a big mission and has already begun to capture the imagination of the world. If we (notice how I include myself in this effort) manage to find evidence of extraterrestrial life, it will…
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Short review: I loved it. Long review: Gaiman’s skill at storytelling, the piece that makes his comics and books such a success, is his voice. I mentioned before that his book, “American Gods” was one I didn’t like, but I respected him a lot as a writer. Stardust shows why. His tone and voice as a writer walk a very specific and wonderful line…