a memory less ephemeral

I remember three things from my first visit to Canada, back in 1990, attending a conference in Ottawa.

I arrived yesterday in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, for the annual Artificial Life conference.

I'm one of two Editors-in-Chief of an academic journal.

We debated whther to go to Spain or Iceland to see today's total eclipse of the sun, but in the end remained at home, to see the 96% eclipse visible from here.

Today my poster for an up-coming conference arrived through the post.

The latest batch, comprising his'n'hers reciprocal birthday presents.

There are so many things wrong with this picture (phone screenshot): It is a quarter to 9 at night, and yet it's still 30°C It's going to be max 26°C tomorrow (so still heatwave temperatures) It was max 33°C today (deduced, because 26+7 = 33; it got to 35…

Christmas 2025 is finally over.

Bonnie Tyler, 1951–2026.

Late March, we decided to experiment with a new solar PV usage strategy due to the relative rates of chear rate grid power overnight (costing us 6.4p/kWh) and the amount we are paid for exporting during the day (15p/kWh).

While I was away in Trieste, some bananas back home went too black to eat.

After a long day of great talks and discussions, a small group of us went out to dinner.

I've just flown in to Trieste, for the Unconventional Computation and Natural Computation conference.

The latest batch.

I thought yesterday's SeeStar shot of the moon was good.

Another day, and the moon and Venus are even further apart.

Yesterday, the moon and Venus were close in the sky.

The moon and Venus were close in the sky this evening.

I'm an AI skeptic, gleefully saving stories of AI deleting a company's entire database, or diagnosing faked diseases, or just frankly turning evil.

The latest batch: The photography book is in response to the recent attempts to capture images of insects in the garden.

Six weeks ago I discovered I was vitamin D deficient.

I've blogged before about offers journal editors get to be unethical.

Two pictures of a spotty sun, taken roughly 24 hours apart. 2026-05-29 16:48 GMT 2026-05-30 15:10 GMT Look closely, and you can see that the spots have the same pattern, but have moved.

Photos from the garden.

This popped up in my feed today.

… that my first fully dated item appeared on my website: a review of Clannad’s 1996 tour at the Cambridge Corn Exchange, attended a week earlier.

The latest batch: A friend was having a clearout, so we got a few old classic computer books.

I've had my reMarkable Paper Pro Move for just over 6 weeks now, so how's it going?

The weather has been glorious here at the workshop in Bad Honnef, so I went for a short walk this lunchtime, down to the Rhine. close to the Rhine As you can see in the above photo on the right, there is a spit poking out into nearly the middle of the riv…

I arrived in Bad Honnef, near Bonn in Germany, yesterday evening, after a flight to Cologne airport followed by a 30 minute local train ride.