archive

March 2026

Nine Rotations Before the Thread Trapped Itself

Fly Tying

A mayfly hatched from my bonsai's drip tray. Now I'm learning to counterfeit insects.

The Blank Remembered It Was Glass

Telescope Mirror Grinding

Target tolerance: 50 nanometres. My grinding stand was off by 3mm. The blank lasted twenty minutes.

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The Furnace Registers at 3.2 Hertz

Geophone Seismography

The amplifier works perfectly. I can now confirm my furnace oscillates at 3.2 Hz. Earthquakes remain elusive.

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Four Pull Tabs Before the Silver Appeared

Metal Detecting

Target ID 48. I will not dig any more pull tabs today. Dug a 48. It was a pull tab.

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The Hot Spot I Found and Then Immediately Lost

Crystal Radio Restoration

Forty-five minutes of dragging wire across a rock. Then a mattress ad. Then I breathed wrong and lost the signal.

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Three Instruments, Three Answers, One Atmosphere

Weather Station Building

My phone says 1018 hPa. The new barometer says 989. The airport says 1016. One atmosphere shouldn't need this many opinions.

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The Sun Painted What I Left in the Dark

Cyanotype Printing

Half the formula was already in my darkroom. The other half is FDA-approved for treating radiation poisoning.

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Thirty Years of Transmitting Before I Learned to Listen

Shortwave Listening

Chasing radar interference at midnight, I found a Romanian pan flute instead. Thirty years of ham radio before I remembered to stop pressing transmit.

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Five Signatures for Five Hundred Years of Circuits

Coptic Stitch Flight Logbook Binding

My Jeppesen spine cracked again. Transport Canada doesn't mandate logbook format. Coptic monks solved this 1,800 years ago.

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Nineteen Pins, Sixty Keys, and a Spacebar That Finally Quit

Mechanical Keyboard Building

The spacebar quit after fifteen years. Three hours later I had sixty switches on order and seventeen browser tabs open about lubricant grades.

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Three Hours and Now I Own Copper Wire

Bonsai

Three hours ago I was reading about tree rings. Now I own copper wire.

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What My Fingers Knew Before I Did

Lockpicking

Forty-three seconds to open a lock that took twenty-seven days to learn. My fingers figured it out without telling me.

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What Silver Halide Remembers in the Dark

Analog Film Photography Development

The movies lied—there's no moody red safelight. Just total darkness and forty-three-year-old negatives ready to confess.

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Seven Millimetres of Brass and Everything Else Is Wood

Pen Turning

Turns out superglue makes an excellent lacquer if you polymerize it with friction and optimism.

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Three Significant Figures and the Rest Was Memory

Slide Rule Collecting

It's 2 AM and I'm teaching myself to multiply. The year, somehow, is 2026.

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Sixty Thousand Workers and No Org Chart

Beekeeping

Sixty thousand decision-makers, zero central authority. Still better organised than my last project team.

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What the Creases Already Knew

Origami Engineering

I spent an hour arguing with a theorem about paper. The paper won.

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Four Weeks Before the Gravel Remembers How to Shine

Rock Tumbling

Silicon carbide is stardust. I'm using it to polish gravel in a rubber drum for a month.

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Two Mirrors and an S That Landed Right

Linocut Printmaking

The S is backwards. No—wait. The S is correct. My brain keeps tripping over the double negative.

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One Streak of Char and a Letter to Tomorrow

Pyrography

Twenty years of soldering, and the iron finally found a better job: writing in smoke.

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Three Fragments Where Eighty Years Should Be

Dendrochronology Core Sampling

The core is in three pieces. None of them are long enough to count.

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Forty Minutes Until the Tomato Apologized

Knife Sharpening

The knife was tearing tomatoes. Forty minutes with a wet rock later, they started apologizing.

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The Fifth Pull Finally Looked Like Weather

Paper Marbling (Ebru)

A sample sheet of marbled paper arrived with my bookbinding thread. Forty-eight hours later I'm buying ox gall.

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Twelve Dollars, One Kinked Spiral, and Fifteen Teeth Untouched

Mechanical Watch Disassembly

The seller called it "parts only." I called it a twelve-dollar curriculum in precision.

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Four Sheets Folded Before the Thread Knew When to Stop

Bookbinding

Documenting kintsugi repairs in a disposable spiral notebook finally felt too absurd to continue.

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Seven Pieces and a Box Full of Humidity

Kintsugi

Dropped the mug I spent days engraving. Now I'm fixing it with gold and developing a rash.

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February 2026

The Gills Lied About Their Colour

Mushroom Foraging & Spore Printing

The gills promised white. The paper said rust. Six hours of waiting to discover somebody was lying.

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Seventeen Jewels and One Hairline Fracture

Mechanical Watch Disassembly

Seventeen jewels. That's what the caseback promises, stamped in a circle around the Swiss cross.

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The Patch Kept Running While I Wasn't Looking

Monthly Retrospective

Twenty-eight hobbies. The coils kept finding me, the music box defeated me, and a patch in the basement drifted into minor keys while I wasn't listening.

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The Sounder Learned to Hold a Pitch

Harmonic Telegraph Key Restoration

Bell accidentally invented the telephone trying to build a musical telegraph. I'm finishing his original project.

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The Air Between My Fingers Wouldn't Sing

Theremin Circuit Voicing

Two oscillators fighting, my hand as a capacitor plate, and my nervous system as the noise floor.

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Eight Thousand Turns Before the String Could Sing

Guitar Pickup Winding

Eight thousand turns of hair-thin wire. One sneeze and you start over.

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The Jar Started Pinging at Four in the Morning

Fermentation Sensor Logging

Six hours after the starter showed life, I had a time-of-flight sensor pointed at it like a balloon payload.

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Eleven Minutes Before the Chaff Caught Fire

Roasting Profile Curve Engraving

The popcorn popper caught fire at minute seven. I still engraved the mug.

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Dave's Thirty-Year Culture and the Move I Had to Make

Sourdough Bread Baking

Dave handed me a mason jar and said "feed it or it dies." That sounded like a challenge.

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The Wind Found Its Way to the Cathode

Nixie Tube Flight Instrument Clocks

The Soviet "5" is just an upside-down "2". I'm trusting it to show me the altimeter setting anyway.

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Fourteen Pins, One Crooked, and a Hymn Stuck in Brass

Cylinder Music Box Transcription Punching

Fourteen pins. That's all I punched before I ruined the cylinder.

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Three Cups, One Wobble, and a Northwest Gust

Mechanical Weather Vane Instruments

Perfect day to build a device that measures exactly what I'm already annoyed by.

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Eighty-Five Teeth and Mars Still Drifted

Orrery Clockwork Escapement Printing

Eighty-five teeth for Mars. Forty-five for Earth. A fishing sinker doing orbital mechanics on my workbench.

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The Box That Learned to Say No Seven Different Ways

Puzzle Box Mechanism Design

Forty-four hobbies in, and this is the first one designed to frustrate someone else on purpose.

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The Payload Stopped Talking at Eight Hundred Metres

Stratospheric Balloon Telemetry

A stranger named Dwight called to say there was a styrofoam box in his slough. He was remarkably calm about it.

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The Moon Learned to Glow Through Two Millimetres of PLA

Lithophane Lunar Phase Calendars

NASA publishes the moon's exact wobble hourly as JSON. I'm turning a year of it into glowing plastic.

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Five Pins, Zero Opens, and One Bent Hook

Lockpicking

The pick bent on the third pin. The lock remains locked. Day 1 goes to the padlock.

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The Beam Traced a Face the Speakers Couldn't Stand

Oscilloscope Art Portraiture

The face on the phosphor looks almost friendly. The audio required to draw it sounds like a dentist's drill arguing with a dial-up modem.

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The Patch Kept Running After I Forgot to Listen

Generative Soundscape Composition

The Pi in my basement ran for 37 days without supervision. When I finally listened, I didn't recognize my own patch.

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Teaching a Junk-Drawer Nib to Remember Blue

Fountain Pen Restoration

The nib hasn't written since 1962. I'm fixing that with shellac, a brass shim, and excessive optimism.

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The Cross-Country That Learned to Keep the Beat

Flightpath Zoetrope Drums

Victorian parlour trick meets GPS log meets strobe light. Somewhere in the blur, September is learning to drum.

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The Desk That Knows When the Sky Is Busy

Orbital Decay Audio Notifications

Something chimed on my desk at 14:23 and I looked up from the wrong screen. The ISS had just cleared my horizon, and I'd missed the first note.

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The Waterfall Scrolled Green and Nothing Burned

Meteor-Scatter Shutter Triggers

It's 2:47 AM and I've been waiting for France to bounce a meteor my way. So far: thirty-seven frames of black sky.

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Two States Between Static and a Forest

Generative Soundscape Composition

Six days of overengineering. The fix was two states and thirty percent. I'm almost embarrassed.

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Writing Games in Light on a Quiet Board

Chess Move Lighttrail Journaling

On move 23, I hesitated. The scoresheet forgave me. The photograph didn't.

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The Knight That Learned to Leap in Solfège

Knight's Tour Choral Canons

Sixty lines of Python generated a melody full of tritones. Now I have to convince my voice it's singable.

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What the Shutter Saw When the Choir Went Flat

Choir Pitch Lightpainting

A community choir can defeat a microcontroller in under four seconds. I have the coloured squiggles to prove it.

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Teaching a Knight to File a Flight Plan

VFR Knight's Tour Grid Flights

The script found a perfect 41-square tour. Then I checked for restricted airspace.

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Before I Read the Weather I Heard It Hum

METAR Chord Briefings

Clear skies make my synth go silent. Terrible weather sounds gorgeous. I may have the emotional mapping backwards.

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The Balloon Climbed for an Hour Without Changing Key

Stratospheric Telemetry Chord Maps

The script converted my balloon data into MIDI without a single error. The result was one hour of C-sharp minor.

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January 2026

The Bearings That Learned to Hold My Coffee

QSO Radial VOR Dial Coasters

Thirty hobbies in, and I keep asking the same question: where did that signal come from? Now my coffee mug rests on the answer.

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The Air Had Geometry All Along

Monthly Retrospective

Radio signals became lanterns. Flight paths became thread. A star disc stayed silent. January taught me the air has shapes worth holding.

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The Disc That Knew a Star but Forgot How to Sing

Stellar Spectrum Music Box Discs

The disc contains Sirius. The pins are 0.3 mm too short. The music box plays exactly nothing.

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Asking Polaris for a Second Opinion on North

Star-Drift Compass Calibration Cards

Polaris is 0.7 degrees off true north. My compass is worse. Tonight we're going to have a conversation.

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The Bishop Finally Admitted It Had a Back Lobe

Antenna Pattern Chess Set

The rook has a back lobe. When I pick up the bishop, I can feel the null. That sounds absurd. It is. I don't care.

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Stitching the Sky While the Payload Keeps Talking

Stratospheric Telemetry Panorama Stitching

A protocol invented for tracking horses now tells my balloon when to photograph the edge of space. This seems fine.

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Teaching the Wind to Sign My Name in Dits and Dahs

Callsign Morse Windchime Mobile

The code is not in the tubes. The code is in the gaps. You will space your first set of chimes evenly because it looks elegant. The result will sound like noise.

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Every Position Hums If You Let It

Zugzwang Cadence Etudes

Move 23 cost me the game. I know because I turned it into a guitar piece that refuses to resolve.

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When the Flight Log Learned to Whisper in Thread

Morse Waypoint Flightpath Embroidery

The flight log didn't ask to become fabric. Neither did the Morse code. I overruled them both.

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The Baton That Learned to Hear Us Drift

Pitch-Tracking Conductor Baton

The sopranos drifted flat and my face was three beats too late. Now my baton does the yelling—in LED.

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When the Flyby Learned to Hum Its Own Speed

Propeller Doppler Arpeggiator

Wind from the northwest, gusting to 25 km/h. Not ideal for flying—but exactly what my arpeggios needed.

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The Racetrack in the Sky Had a Time Signature

Holding-Pattern Polyrhythm Loops

Standard-rate turns are 3° per second—exactly 60 seconds for 180°. The FAA didn't mean to write a time signature, but here we are.

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The Knight That Learned to Bend Starlight

Knight Aperture Star Spikes

A plastic knight can't capture your bishop, but it can stamp its signature across Vega.

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The Broadcast That Wouldn't Hold Still for the Choir

ATIS Choir Harmonization

I built a click track at 84 BPM. The ATIS announcer did not consult it.

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A Knight's Walk Across a Programmable Night

Knight’s Tour Starfield Mosaic

Sixty-four tiles, one knight's tour, and a sky that cooperated like it had read the algorithm.

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The Chord I Could Finally Hold

Chord Spectrogram Relief Tiles

Two out of three chord guesses right—by touch alone. My fingers apparently know things my ears don't.

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Where the Radio Pointed While the Stars Turned

QSO Constellation Overlays

You're going to draw lines on the sky—not with a laser, but with spherical trig and old logbook entries.

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The Hiss That Refused to Become a Room

Generative Soundscape Composition

Five things blew up in the first hour. The ambient masterpiece that emerged was my laptop's fan noise with reverb.

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The Patch Keeps Running After I Leave the Room

Generative Soundscape Composition

Back at this. Third time this week. The 7 MHz band sounded strange and I couldn't not record it.

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The Choir That Lives Inside the Carrier Wave

Morse Canon Choir Loops

Somewhere, a ham operator has no idea their callsign is now a four-part canon on my loop pedal.

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Printing the Sky My Radio Forgot to Keep

APRS Skytrace Sculptures

The tracker gossips to digipeaters I've never met, and somewhere a map in Japan shows a foam aircraft drawing loops over frozen Alberta.

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The Antenna Finally Admitted It Had a Shape

Antenna Lobe Lanterns

The antenna rotates like it's auditioning for a lighthouse job. Eventually, it becomes one.

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The Signal Sends a Fork and I Answer

Morse Chess Tactics Beacon

Keyed a knight fork into the ether. Decoded it by ear. Solved it wrong. At least the transmission was clean.

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The Ribbon That Refused to Touch Its Own Terrain

VFR Track Relief Printing

My flight path floated a storey above its own mountain. GPS and terrain data have different opinions about ground.

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Teaching a Foam Wing to Sign the Dusk

RC Light-Trace Calligraphy

The aircraft vanishes in the long exposure; only its glowing path remains. I'm handwriting in three dimensions with a machine that doesn't know it's a pen.

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Nine Miles of Visibility in a Major Seventh

METAR Chord Briefings

Nine statute miles of visibility produces a major seventh. I've accidentally turned preflight planning into jazz.

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The Beacon That Spelled My Name to Polaris

Morse Beacon Star-Trail Lightpainting

A dah is three dits, a letter gap is three dits, and somehow that led to teaching an LED to spell my callsign while Polaris rotated overhead.

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Teaching a Foam Wing to See What Radios Hear

Airborne RF Shadow Cartography

A buried irrigation pipe showed up in my heatmap before I knew it existed. The foam wing sees what I can't.

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Teaching a Foam Wing to Draw the Ground

Foam-Wing Orthomosaic Mapping

Teaching a computer to recognize a park from 200 slightly different angles—like raising a very slow bird.

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Holding the Spectrum Up to the Window

RF Waterfall Lithophanes

The spectrogram scrolled down my screen at 2 AM, and I thought: what if I could hold that hour of invisible radio up to a window?

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The Feedback Loop Only Sounded Beautiful Once

Generative Soundscape Composition

Eight seconds of cascading self-referential harmony. Then the audio interface died and stayed dead for an hour.

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The Ionosphere Wrote the Harmony While I Wasn't Listening

Generative Soundscape Composition

Set grain duration to 8 milliseconds, got a refrigerator compressor. The 20ms boundary between texture and pitch is real.

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The Sky Was Never Silent, Just Radio Silent

Aurora Chorus Sonified Timelapse

The aurora has been broadcasting this whole time. I just needed a radio and a frozen field to finally hear it complain.

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Teaching My Computer to Dream in Sound

Generative Soundscape Composition

The first sound my algorithm generates is indistinguishable from a fax machine drowning. This is, apparently, progress.

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A Quarter Watt from the Edge of Space

Stratospheric Balloon Telemetry

It's 2:47 AM and I just ordered missile-grade GPS to track a latex balloon carrying a thermometer.

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