February 16, 2021. Today was a grey day in all respects with a winter snowfall and dull light washing out all colour. This photo from my walk is of the railway bridge leading into town, just barely visible behind the trees. It wasn’t an especially productive day, not for lack…

February 15, 2021. The big storm so far exists more in theory than reality, but the signs of it were in the sky as I took my daily walk today. It was a good day today, I got three major tasks off my desk, which qualifies it already as a…

February 14, 2021. This was spotted along the trail to the Old Homestead, a bit of a clearing in the south part of Warwick forest, where we went snowshoeing today. We were out about two hours and did 3.8 kilometers, which Strava assures us is our longest snowshoe effort of…

February 13, 2021. This guy sits on my desk and reminds me to keep working. He wasn’t very effective today as I took a rest day for the most part, doing a few posts but mostly playing video games. Another very cold day, too cold really to enjoy a walk.…

February 12, 2021. The stairs leading down into the basement have a ledge along one side. It’s easy for Charlemagne to walk onto it, but then he gets stuck. He can’t turn around, and he can’t jump down, so he stands there and wails. I had a meeting today and…

February 11, 2021. This is a Presse Café at the base of four office buildings at Commerce Place, right next to the Costco. When I look at a place like this I can imagine that there’s a whole world inside – the people who work there, the regulars who are…

February 10, 2021. This is an oak tree in Optimist Park, exactly one block from our house, and a frequent point on my daily walks. I wish it had a different name; I’m not a fan of service clubs naming parks after themselves. Today was unexpectedly fun as I received…

February 9, 2021. These three trees have looked perfectly ordinary every other day but today they contrasted perfectly with the sky as I went by on my daily walk. A better day today, even though I still felt off-kilter from yesterday. But I figured out the cause of my problems…

February 8, 2021. Not such a good day and I didn’t go out so we have a photo of me playing with Emma in the evening. The day began with back-to-back meetings, each of which required a presentation with slides, and while one went fine the other did not. This…

February 7, 2021. We went snowshoeing in Warwick Forest (north side) this afternoon, about 15 km south of Casselman. There’s a nice stretch of the trail that ruins through a thick stand of cedar, something you don’t see that often any more. It was only about 2 km but we’re…

February 6, 2021. I drove down to Embrun to spend the afternoon visiting family today and all seems well at the Gregoire homestead. On the way back I took a detour looking for photos and stepped out for a bit in St-Albert. It was miserably cold and windy so I…

February 5, 2021. This is a wagon at the side of a local antique store about a kilometer away form our house. Today I had the whole day to work on coding, and it’s a good thing, because it’s really hard to debug data returned from an API with fetch.…

February 4, 2021. A typical black Ottawa squirrel hides in the tree as I walked past getting some exercise while Andrea did the rounds at the Costco over lunch. It was a nice day today, not too cold, and while I wasn’t overly productive I got in some meetings and…

February 3, 2021. I was back out snowshoeing today. These are grapes (maybe) growing on the fence along the railway tracks, well and truly frozen. With cron working properly I turned my attention to the harvester again, cleaned up logging and error notification, and prepared for feed management and link…

February 2, 2021. This is Emma seen from the self-portrait mode on my phone, looking toward our kitchen ceiling. She’s almost totally black, except for that distinctive chin patch and collar. I wasn’t able to get out today but in addition to a couple of meetings may have finally worked…

February 1, 2021. This is the ‘tiffany lamp’ (it’s nothing of the sort, of course) in my office. You never see it on camera because it’s directly behind my webcam. I like it because it’s touch-sensitive – there’s no switch to turn it on, I just tap it (up to…

January 31, 2021. It was very cold today so we went snowshoeing only for about a mile alongside the tracks. We extended our range a bit over a bit of a brook, where I captured an image of these cattails. Otherwise it was a quiet day; no coding today, just…

January 30, 2021. I woke up this morning with an idea that wouldn’t let go and except for a short walk to this park mid-afternoon I spent the whole day working on it. The result: an implementation and blog post about Remote Comments, a way to create a distributed social…

January 28, 2021. There should be a rule that construction sites should have a big sign telling people what’s going on, since in the absenbce of any news media there’s no way to know any more. Anyhow I see lots of cement pipes, but it still could be anything. Today…

January 27, 2020. We’re just a block or so from home snowshoeing through a little wooded area alongside the railroad tracks. More meetings today, plus I managed to send a newsletter to a test mailing list from gRSShopper using the MailChimp API. I also fixed a bug in cron which…

January 26, 2021. This is inside the Tim Hortons just near the Costco. Though you can buy coffee inside (which I did) the seating area is closed due to the pandemic. I felt a bit under the weather today but I think it was less about Covid and more about…

January 25, 2021. Today’s walk took me along the Nation River again, under a canopy of snow-covered trees. I published my MailChimp Perl module to GitHub and progressed well in testing; soon I can get back to fixing gRSShopper proper. https://flic.kr/p/2kvKipA…

January 24, 2021. It was too cold to go out today, and in any case I’ve been caught up in a coding project, so it was indoors all day today. So today’s photo of the day is a cat photo, specifically, Charlemagne as he prowls around looking for Lexi. https://flic.kr/p/2kvDP9N…

January 23, 2021. I doubt newspapers are even being delivered to these paper boxes any more, but there was a time not so long ago they lined the roads in the countryside. I used to deliver the Ottawa Citizen (yellow box) as a kid and I’ve thought of myself as…

January 22, 2021. This stately building is right next to the church in the middle of Casselman. It was the objective of my walk today when I thought it would make a nice photo all decked out in snow. I also had a data literacy meeting, caught up on my…

January 21, 2021. I tried out the new snowshoes today, walking about along the tracks for a little over a kilometer round trip. The snow was fresh, soft and powdery, so it was difficult as it’s ever going to be. I didn’t move quickly through the snow, but it was…

January 20, 2021. This is the plant from my office. Not my Ottawa office – I assume those are all dead by now. No, this is from my Moncton office, and so is maybe 10 years old. Now it’s in my hbome office, and since I cut back all its…

January 19, 2020. We picked up our new snowshoes today and on the way I stopped into timmies for a couple of apple fritters and a coffee. It was a good day today as I managed to get an SSL site to load automatically in a Docker container. https://flic.kr/p/2ktQwKa…

January 18, 2021. Today was clear and blue and cold. The snow the fell over the weekend lies heavy on the trees, bending them double or twisting them into contorted shapes, like these just past the park along the tracks. I did a presentation on OBS today and had a…