Story of the week

We seem to live in a time when nearly all the news is bad news. America continues to 'go to the dogs', the planet is burning and no one in charge seems to care, the rich get richer while the homeless are to be "moved on" so that we are not reminded that they exist. That's a small smattering from the last few days. In the midst of such despair and gloom comes the story of "Fedora Man".

In case you were asleep while the Louvre was being robbed, "Fedora Man" was the gentleman photographed outside the museum walking past the police cordon.

"Fedora Man"

Perhaps, Fedora Man was a Parisian detective, the Internet wondered. And very quickly, his picture went viral. That, however, was not the story. According to Stuff here: https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/360880555/fedora-man-unmasked-meet-teen-behind-louvre-mystery, Fedora Man was fifteen-year-old Pedro Elias Garzon Delvaux, who has a penchant for dressing up 1940s style and who happens to like the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. He also happened to be on a trip to the Louvre with his mother the day that it was robbed.

Pedro, as most fifteen-year-olds might, could have held his hand up and said, "That's me, I'm famous!" But no, Pedro, lover of mystery stories, let it run for three weeks, until too many people were asking, "Was that you?" Then he told his story. I won't repeat it here, you can read it yourself at the link above. But, in a world infested with so much crude brutality, we need more Pedros. People unafraid to bring elegance to the ordinariness of the everyday, to inject some mystery into the banality of life and just have some simple fun. Perhaps those are 2025's crown jewels. Guard them, there are thieves about.

Getting sorted

Sold!

 

 It's now October and, by the measure of recent years, this year has been manic. Moving house is difficult at the best of times; when you are both well into your senior years, it can seem next to impossible. For a while, our only goal was to survive the next open home - there were ten in all, the last one on 27 July. Then, finally, on 18 September, moving day was upon us. Our movers were great; they came and packed, transported everything and cleaned the empty house. I must admit that paying the bill was significantly less stressful than doing all the work ourselves.

 

I'm glad that we didn't leave it any longer before selling the castle and downsizing. The last seven months have been exhausting enough, even though we had professionals doing most of the heavy lifting. At our age, taking six months out to work on moving house seems like a significant inroad to our remaining years; another few years, and it feels like the stress could have been terminal. Still, here we are, all in one piece and ready to make the most of the remaining years.

Our new 'digs'

We are now five weeks into our new home, and things are beginning to fall into place. There is still much to do to make it 'our place', but we have made a good start. As the garage slowly emptied of storage boxes, the car finally managed to get undercover last week. A dog-proof gate has been installed on the courtyard entrance, insect screens for doors and windows are being manufactured, and the landscape man is looking at repaving our courtyard out the back.

The lounge.

Our unit is nice, less than half the size of the castle, but warm and comfortable. I have a small office, and Annette has a nice workroom out in the 'Pod'. There's a 5m square living area and a wonderful-looking modern kitchen. About that kitchen … we both liked it when we viewed the unit back in March. It is a modern upmarket design with some very snazzy appliances. After working in it for the last few weeks, we can also confirm that it is an absolute triumph of form over function. I could go on for the rest of this post about the kitchen's shortcomings, but suffice it to say, it is the most inefficient kitchen I have ever tried to work in. Looks, dear reader, aren't everything.

Courtyard and 'pod'

We have a large lawn out front, which someone else takes care of, and a nice-sized private courtyard, which is a bit shabby at the moment but will be made into a nice sunny space for sitting outside when the weather permits. We still have too much stuff (little stuff, not furniture), but we'll work through that in the coming weeks. 

 

Staying in Oxford has been good. If we had to find our feet in a new community as well as a new home, it would have been too much change. Bethany is now just a few meters up the same street, while Katie and her family are just around the corner. All up, this seems to be a good choice as a place to work out our retirement. We feel quite blessed.

 

Then, on Thursday last week, we had the strongest winds that we have seen for several years. Trees down, power lines down, trucks blown over - it affected everywhere from Southland to the middle of the North Island. Some of the more remote places are probably going to be without power for a week yet. Fortunately, our power went out during breakfast, but was back on in time to cook dinner - one of the advantages of living in a small town, I guess. First power outage in our all-electric home, though!

 

All this activity has, fortunately, diverted our attention from the fact that the USA continues its seemingly relentless march from world power to bankrupt impotence. There's still a way to go yet, but the direction of travel seems set and, rather than fix the problem, those who can seem to be fleeing the sinking ship. I guess that's what you get when a country puts individuality above community, power above truth, and braggadocio above character. Whatever you think of his predecessors, Trump will at least earn his place in the history books as the president who swung the wrecking ball - both figuratively and literally (goodbye, East Wing). Oh dear, that probably means I am on some administrative blacklist now. C'est la vie.

A week with Anytype

 

Anytype looks like a local first, privacy-focused alternative to Notion. I have used Notion in the past and generally liked it, though not for its web-based philosophy and price structure. Anytype avoids those Notion disadvantages by being secure, local and free - though with paid options if needed. There are many similarities between Anytype and Notion, so from a superficial perspective, the comparison with Notion is fair. 

 

I first tried Anytype shortly after it was released as a beta product in 2021. Then, it was too early in its development to be a serious prospect, and I put it to one side. Now, four years later, that has changed, and Anytype, though still in beta (v0.47.5), is maturing and getting fairly feature-packed. Perhaps I could use it to build a PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) system that is better suited to my specific needs than Obsidian? 

 

Managing expectations: - Anytype isn't really an application; it's a tool to build an application. It's only an "everything app" because, like putty, you can shape it into whatever you can imagine. So, when you can't find an app that does exactly what you want, then you may be able to create it in Anytype

 

First impressions

First impressions are not very good. Not because Anytype is bad per se, but because it is not easy to learn.

• There is currently a lack of well-made tutorials on YouTube. Those that do exist tend to be of the 'do this, click here, do that' variety, lacking in any explanation of 'why'.
• There are examples available (in the gallery), but again, they lack any explanation for the design choices made. They may get you started, but they are not good learning tools.
• There is application documentation on the web, but it is low-level technical and lacking in any high-level "if you want to do this sort of thing, you might approach it in this way" style of information.

 

To my mind, learning Anytype is summed up best by analogy: Imagine signing up for driving lessons and when you turn up on the first day, you are shown a garage full of car parts and told, "Just assemble these and then we can go for a drive". Anytype is a bit like that, and after the first three days, I still felt as though I was learning what the parts were and how they best fit together to achieve my objective of a PKM system.

 

I guess that many potential Anytype users might give up during this 'assembly' process and that Anytype need to address this problem before adding many more 'parts' to the garage.

Second impressions

I'm a persistent old sod and won't be easily deterred, so I pressed on and continued building. By the end of the first week, I had learned what object types possessed what properties, that what I had assumed could be "collections" (thank you template) worked better as "queries", and so many other detailed things. The car still isn't built yet, but it is beginning to look more like a car, and each time I add a new part, there is a sense of achievement.

 

The issue is that I am conflicted about continuing. I really shouldn't be investing this amount of time in building a customised PKM system that exactly suits my needs. But, at the same time, it is an intellectual challenge that produces a certain sense of satisfaction when a new part of the puzzle comes together.

 

Perhaps that's the thing, To use another analogy, Anytype is like a bottomless box of Lego bricks, you can make almost anything you like. There are no plans, so there's going to be a lot of trial and error, lots of searching for a brick that's just the right shape (if it exists). The payoff at the end is that you could have something you'll be proud of creating. If that's your thing, then Anytype may be for you. But I suspect that most people should move on - nothing to see here, folks.

 

As for now, and to keep the analogy train rolling, I'm continuing to build the plane while flying it. I wrote this article in Anytype; it belongs to my "Writing & Blog" area, which is part of a modified PARA* template provided by Anytype. Maybe learning while doing is not the best approach, but for now, the plane's tank still has loads of fun-juice, so let's keep on flying and hope the fun-tank doesn't run dry before I land this thing.

 

In the future?

I've been looking (with a certain amount of amusement) at one of the latest approaches to software development - A.I. vibe-coding. You tell an AI what you want to achieve (the vibe), and the AI goes away and writes the code to make an application to do just that (sort of). 

 

It seems to me that Anytype could well benefit from such an AI front end. It would allow users to describe the application they wanted, and an AI could simply use Anytype's objects to create that application "automagically", as my developer friends used to say. I don't know what an AI-built Anytype app would be like, but it wouldn't take a week to build.

 

You can find Anytype at: https://anytype.io

*PARA - Projects, Areas, Resources, Archive. An approach to knowledge management by Tiago Forte.

Breakfast - beyond cereal and milk

 After a month of watching the USA slipping into reactionary darkness, something lighthearted ... 

Seventy years of cereal and milk ... cereal and milk ... cereal and - well you get the idea. From childhood to retirement, breakfast was nearly always cereal and milk. There were occasional exceptions - usually when travelling and staying in hotels where a "Full English" might be on the menu. But, in the normal course of events, it has been seventy years of cereal and milk.

Cereal and milk is a very practical choice. When you have woken, with just enough time to wash and dress before leaving for school or work, five minutes for cereal and milk is the ideal answer. Even the Egg Marketing Board's encouragement to "go to work on an egg" didn't dissuade. Not that cereal and milk will get you to lunchtime, but it might do until morning tea.

Retirement changes everything. When I retired at 73, one of the first things to change was my morning routine and especially, breakfast. I'm not lazy; I still get up around 6:30 am to make a large mug of tea (for me) and coffee (for Annette). We drink these while reading the day's news (phone, not newspaper) and doing Wordle. At 7:30 I feed the dog and head for the shower. By 8:30, I am dressed and in the kitchen ready to cook breakfast. By and large, this has been the routine for the last three-and-a-half years.

I realised the other morning, as I was standing at the stove, that this was probably my favourite retirement activity. Many other activities bring me pleasure, but breakfast happens Every Single Day. I look forward to feeling the knife cut the first mouthful, as my tastebuds jiggle with anticipation. They know what's coming because I cook the same breakfast every single day too - if it's not broke, don't fix it.

Before the fold.

Breakfast recipe: Two well-beaten eggs in a frying pan; five minutes. Then a slice of homemade bread is cut in two and placed in the egg. Sides folded in and the whole thing flipped. Tomato sliced and arranged on one piece of the bread; mushrooms sliced and arranged on the other. Hold the mushrooms in place with a cheese slice and fold the whole thing into a sandwich. Fry each side for five minutes. Eat.

Having the same breakfast every day may sound rather boring to some; to me, it provides a foundation of certainty from which to tackle the uncertainties of elder-life. If you like, a slice of heaven in the here and now. You might want to give it a try.

Peter, Paul and Mary

Peter, Paul and Mary

I was saddened when, in 2009, Mary Travers passed away. Now, at the beginning of 2025, Peter Yarrow has gone too. He was 86. Noel Paul Stookey is now the only remaining member of Peter, Paul and Mary, he is 87.

I feel the loss - which makes no sense as I didn't know them in person; only by their music which was part of the background to my teenage years. Two of their LPs (Long-Playing records), from 1962 and 1963, sit in my attic and the 24 tracks are on the phone in my pocket right now. So, in a real way, I still have them with me in 2025. And yet I feel the loss.

So what is this loss? I never met them and I still have their music so nothing is missing today that I had back in the 1960s and have had every year since. But, if I let my mind dwell for too long, there will be tears - I can feel them lurking even as I write this.

There is something more than the physical going on here. However tangentially, these people were part of my life. I assimilated their music because it resonated with me; the resonations were part of me then and are still part of me now. Even today (perhaps especially today) I could feel the intensity in songs like "If I Had a Hammer" - PPM sang them, but for about two minutes each time, I would be singing with them (in my head), I could share their passion. The death of Peter Yarrow and before him, Mary Travers, doesn't change any of that, except now I know that the source of the passion has gone. 

As I age, there have been several times when It dawns on me that I AM the older generation. The people I used to look up to are going. Each time it happens it's a bit sobering; I do hope that no one is looking up to me.  I'm living in a world that I helped to shape and, quite frankly, there's a lot about it that I don't like. My parents and their generation came through a World War but they handed on a world of hope, and a vision for a better future.  I'm not sure what my generation will be handing on. It looks a bit of a mess, frankly. Perhaps, If I had a hammer ...

2025: A fresh Start ...

"Ivy" - 2024
Oppo A9, developed in DxO PhotoLab

 

2024 was an odd year. I turned 76 which, given the less-than-stellar state of my kidneys, was an accomplishment in itself. But, looking back, 2024 largely seemed like a year of waiting for things to happen rather than grasping the year by its horns (as it were). Partly, this was down to a January bout of COVID which left me unable to focus on anything for more than half an hour at a time. Or that could just been an excuse for idleness. It's hard to tell.

Anyway, I am determined that 2025 should be different so, rather than wait around for things to improve on their own, I am developing new strategies to help me work in smaller, bite-sized chunks. If I can't write a blog post all in one session, then I need tools to manage all the little bits and pull them into a semi-cogent whole at the end. It's a work in progress but there are positive signs (the existence of this post being one of them).

Our family grew by one during the year when "Ivy" joined us. We have been a 'dogless' family for the last ten or more years since "Izy" (our Whippet) had a stroke and died, so there has been quite a bit of adjustment on our part. By the way, the similarity in dog names is entirely coincidental; Ivy came with her name already attached. She is, officially, a "Chinese Crested Powder-puff" and is of somewhat nervous disposition, but growing used to us as we are to her.

Photography was the one thing that didn't take too much of a hit in 2024. Perhaps because it is, quite naturally, an activity that proceeds in small related chunks. Day-long sessions at the computer were out, but this was a good thing as it made me work on one image at a time. This slower, more deliberate, approach to picture-making has meant that I have been generally much happier with the outcome. "Silver linings" and all that.

"Long Shadows on Pearson Park" - 2024
Nothing Phone 2a, developed in DxO Photolab.

At the end of 2023, I had decided to try my hand at print-making. A cyanotype kit even arrived at Christmas that year. In the event, the mental challenge of working through the intricacies of making cyanotype prints, just seemed beyond me during 2024 and the kit sat unopened all year. I now feel that 2025 is the time, though the task still seems a little daunting. Time for the "girding of loins", methinks.

 Never one for making New Year's resolutions, this post is beginning to sound remarkably like one. Perhaps it's the recognition that 2024 seemed so uneventful that's prompting a backlash of resolve? Though I keep reminding myself that, just because 2024 didn't turn out the way I had planned, it does NOT mean that it was a wasted year; far from it. Many things got done, many lessons were learned and we continued to move forward. Just not in the way I had originally planned.

 The lesson of 2024, it seems, is that plans are only good for filling in the gaps that life leaves blank. The rest of life is about learning to surf the waves that life delivers. Me, novice surfer.

"Wipe Out" - 2010
Nikon D80, developed in DxO PhotoLab.

 

So, that's the stake in the ground. Let 2025 begin.