Science is dynamic. It changes based on evidence. If it did not, it would be religion.

normal. command. insert. These are vim modes. I tried, I really did, to see the utility folks claim for vim over so-called modeless “graphical” editors like atom and bbedit. It’s just not there. Giving up on vim.

Ann and I walked in Frontenac State Park. This is on the northern side of Lake Pepin – a widening in the Mississippi River below Red Wing, Minnesota. It was over 70˚F today, almost unheard of in this area for November 8. It will likely be the last warm day until March and we made the most of it.

Another view of Maiden Rock.

A view of Maiden Rock from Frontenac State Park on Lake Pepin.

🎵 Someone told me it’s all happening at the zoo. I do believe it, I do believe it’s true. Paul Simon

SWANS

Ann and I took a short road trip yesterday to Brownsville and Weaver Bottoms on the Mississippi River to see migrating tundra swans. There were thousands of them in Brownsville on the river along with various ducks and a lot of Canada geese. Weaver Bottoms had several hundred. The swans will stay in these feeding areas for about 2-3 week and then all leave at once, heading to Chesapeake Bay and points south along the Atlantic seaboard.

I’m finding the Daily Notes section in Roam incredibly useful for collecting references to news articles. I tag them but I probably should be going back and directly linking them where they have a tight connection. It’s the kind of stuff I would do in Pinboard, but better.

#adayinthelife I’m going to squeak in under the wire with this pic of my office. I spend a good chunk of my time here each day. This is the neat section. 😎 In my defense, I did get outside yesterday to rake leaves. It was very likely the last nice day of the year.

Peak color today.

Nice. The Guthrie is doing a “Dicken’s Holiday Classic” streaming in December. Should be fun.

Lady Ta-Da stretching in the sun.

Saint Francis contemplating the hosta.

Computing: The Human Experience – The story of computing is the story of humanity.™

Up late to watch the Perseids. Was out for 30 minutes. Saw two bright ones and I think I saw some very dim ones but it’s hard to tell.

Today I gave my 90th blood donation. I was surprised.

Latest peeve: Seeing staunch used instead of stanch when describing something that needs to be restricted or contained. Makes my teeth hurt.

Ann and I are back to hiking in MN State Parks. Great River Bluffs was the last. We’ll revisit in autumn. The colors should be awesome!

A view of the Mississippi valley from Great River Bluffs State Park just south of Winona MN.

RIP Fran Allen. IBM Fellow Emerita.

I’m beginning to really dislike Markdown for technical doc. All of our system’s special values begin with *. Unix-style pathnames contain /. I wish I could turn off the highlighting for those characters in tools like iAWriter, Bear, and Ulysses.

History shows again and again how Nature points out the folly of men.

Listening to Stephen Fry read Mythos. Very entertaining. 📚

📚 So Far, So Good Ursula K. LeGuin’s final book of poems. Each one a gem. #mbmay

📚If you haven’t read Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac. Read it. Read it now. #mbmay