Recent content on skippy.net
I've been shaving my head for about a dozen years. I started when our family discovered head lice living amongst us, and shaving my head was a super easy solution for me. I started at that time simply buzzing my hair down, but after several months of that I decided to actually shave my head bald. I've been bald ever since, and I love it. The first couple times I shaved my head with a razor were a…
Twelve or thirteen years ago we hosted a house party, as we like to do. My daughter was very young at the time, and wanted to do something to decorate for the party. She found a small brown paper bag and scribbled a jellyfish on it. She then asked me to "hang it up" in front of the door. I found some double-sided tape and affixed the bag to the ceiling of our living room, just inside our front…
One of the prompts for blaugust is Tell us ten random facts about the human behind the blog. So here are ten random facts about me! 1. Dinner With a King I had dinner with King Abdhullah of Saudi Arabia in 2009. I was contributing to TechCrunch at the time, and was invited to Saudi Arabia to cover the grand opening of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology . I was one of several…
Last year I won a Raspberry Pi 5 at a conference I attended. It came with a 128GB microSD card and 7" touchscreen display to which the Pi could be attached. I didn't really need a computer, but I'm a sucker for a freebie so I kept it. It sat idle on my desk for most of the last year. Sometime earlier this year, my daughter asked if we could run a Minecraft server. I had zero experience with this,…
In response to an "Ask Me Anything", Zach asked Skillset you'd like to have or job you'd like to have . I cogitated on this for a while, even though the answer came to me pretty quickly: music. I enjoy listening to music. I admire people who can create music, whether that's composition or performance. I can't do either. It's a skill I never worked on. As a kid, I played trombone for a year or two…
I watched Akira Kurisawa's "Seven Samurai" last night. I'd never seen this classic film, nor any of its Western remakes. I really enjoyed it! Film making has evolved a lot in the last 70 years, but this movie still holds up really well. The pacing is a little slow for contemporary audiences, but many of the storytelling mechanisms we expect are there. The acting is superb. There are beautiful…
At a stammtisch earlier this spring, I mentioned that I'd like to watch some samurai movies. We had previously been discussing movies, and DVD collecting in the age of streaming, and my friend Jason revealed that he had purchased more than a few Akira Kurisawa movies. I jokingly said we should have "a samurai summer", and the group enthusiastically agreed. Now, as summer comes to a close, we're…
A couple weeks ago my friend Andy shared that he and his brother Mike were going to start playing D&D together. They used to play when they were young, and got into painting minis together during Covid lockdowns. Mike had been playing a bit at a local games shop, but you never know what kind of players you'll meet at such a venue. He wanted to secure a casual group of "known quantity" players who…
One of the suggested prompts for Blaugust is Did you start preparing for Blaugust before the August 1st start date? If so, what did you do ahead of time to make sure you’d stay on track? I did not. I read about Blaugust, thought it was a good idea, and started writing. That's how most of my posts get written: I have some small amount of inspiration and energy and I write a blog post. I don't…
Chris writes, for the August Indieweb Carnival , that your purpose is to have a purpose . I don't know that I agree with that. Do whales or squirrels or spiders have a purpose to have a purpose? Maybe once your basic needs are met, you're left wondering what to do with your time. Finding a purpose may be useful. But I wonder what it would be like to have no purpose. No exist, safely and…