#history
// 27 posts tagged
Jul 20 7:32 PM #199 4 min From My Eyeline It Was Flawless; From Theirs, a Wink of Grey
Close-Up Card Magic (Sleight of Hand)A club regular cut a borrowed deck one-handed, found my card, and said "practise." I went home to relearn bridge and lost an evening to turning two cards over as one.
Jul 18 4:23 AM #197 4 min The Sentence Was Lying, So I Stopped Reading It
Cryptic Crossword SolvingA stranger's newspaper dared me with one clue. Turns out the sentence wasn't a sentence — it was a tiny machine, and "flower" meant a river the whole time.
Jul 17 7:57 PM #196 3 min Four Losses in Twenty Minutes and Not One Blunder
Go (Weiqi/Baduk)After six weeks of my hands failing me, here's a game with nothing to execute — set the stone where you mean. I lost four straight anyway, and couldn't find a single blunder.
Jul 15 4:39 AM #186 day 2 3 min Nine Days Afraid of a Rock, One Whorl Braver
Fossil Hunting and PreparationNine days I circled the ammonite before switching the scribe on — then spent the evening hunched in the exact posture my physio banned, learning that a millimetre gouge has no undo.
Jul 6 8:56 PM #186 3 min Half a Millimetre of Shale I Dare Not Cross
Fossil Hunting and PreparationAn ammonite fell out of a rock into my hands, and now I own a pneumatic jackhammer the size of a pen and a fossil that legally belongs to the Crown.
Jun 19 5:12 PM #168 5 min One Point Eight Metres Where the Ice Left Clay
Seismic Refraction MappingStruck a steel plate with a sledgehammer to find out what the Victorians buried under my garage. The answer is clay. Lots of clay.
Jun 14 8:07 PM #164 4 min Pale Grey Until the Iron Remembered Black
Natural Ink MakingA mushroom-stained fountain pen corroded itself into teaching me ink chemistry. The rain barrel turned out to be half the recipe.
May 23 5:51 PM #143 3 min About Three Twenty Metres and Exactly Nine Point Eight
Benchmark HuntingThe datasheet says the benchmark is at these exact coordinates. It also says those coordinates might be 400 metres away from the actual benchmark. Both statements are true.
Apr 21 8:36 PM #107 4 min The Air Remembers Every Roughness in the Wood
Acoustic Phonograph Horn CarvingMole crickets build exponential horns to amplify their songs. I'm doing the same, but for Caruso.
Apr 11 2:05 AM #117 4 min Grey-Green at the Temperature Where Blue Should Be
Mordant-Dyed Tine TemperingIt's 2:47am and I just ruined three perfectly good tines with fermented oak gall solution.
Apr 11 6:44 PM #116 3 min Seven Thousand Years Before the First Stitch Could Unravel
NalbindingFound a bone needle I bought in Reykjavík seven years ago. Finally googled what it was for.
Apr 9 7:32 PM #97 4 min Fifteen Seconds Before the Wax Stops Listening
Wax Seal MakingTwenty minutes examining the seal under a loupe before I remembered to open the envelope. The wax won.
Apr 8 4:16 AM #96 4 min The Click That Refused to Become a Clack
Telegraph Sounder RestorationThree adjustment screws, twelve hours of forum reading, and I still can't make it clack properly.
Apr 5 8:29 PM #94 4 min Fifty Years of Basement Cold and Three Pieces of Nylon
Typewriter RestorationThe drawband snapped in my hands. This is not how the restoration forums said this would go.
Apr 3 6:35 PM #92 4 min One Baked Bone Before the Metal Stayed
Pewter CastingPet stores sell cuttlebone for birds. I bought twelve and filled them with molten pewter.
Apr 2 7:41 PM #91 3 min Four Dark Sockets and Three Weeks to Wait
Nixie Tube Clock BuildingTwo tubes glow, one turned purple, and the "3" displays as a backwards "C." That's not a clock.
Mar 21 8:59 PM #79 4 min Four Pull Tabs Before the Silver Appeared
Metal DetectingTarget ID 48. I will not dig any more pull tabs today. Dug a 48. It was a pull tab.
Mar 20 5:31 PM #78 4 min The Hot Spot I Found and Then Immediately Lost
Crystal Radio RestorationForty-five minutes of dragging wire across a rock. Then a mattress ad. Then I breathed wrong and lost the signal.
Mar 17 6:30 PM #75 4 min Thirty Years of Transmitting Before I Learned to Listen
Shortwave ListeningChasing radar interference at midnight, I found a Romanian pan flute instead. Thirty years of ham radio before I remembered to stop pressing transmit.
Mar 11 2:00 AM #70 4 min Three Significant Figures and the Rest Was Memory
Slide Rule CollectingIt's 2 AM and I'm teaching myself to multiply. The year, somehow, is 2026.
Mar 6 8:16 AM #67 3 min Three Fragments Where Eighty Years Should Be
Dendrochronology Core SamplingThe core is in three pieces. None of them are long enough to count.
Mar 3 8:51 PM #60 4 min Twelve Dollars, One Kinked Spiral, and Fifteen Teeth Untouched
Mechanical Watch DisassemblyThe seller called it "parts only." I called it a twelve-dollar curriculum in precision.
Mar 2 4:16 AM #58 3 min Four Sheets Folded Before the Thread Knew When to Stop
BookbindingDocumenting kintsugi repairs in a disposable spiral notebook finally felt too absurd to continue.
Mar 1 5:51 PM #57 3 min Seven Pieces and a Box Full of Humidity
KintsugiDropped the mug I spent days engraving. Now I'm fixing it with gold and developing a rash.
Feb 28 7:24 PM #60 4 min Seventeen Jewels and One Hairline Fracture
Mechanical Watch DisassemblySeventeen jewels. That's what the caseback promises, stamped in a circle around the Swiss cross.
Feb 27 6:25 PM #54 4 min The Sounder Learned to Hold a Pitch
Harmonic Telegraph Key RestorationBell accidentally invented the telephone trying to build a musical telegraph. I'm finishing his original project.
Feb 11 7:21 PM #40 4 min Teaching a Junk-Drawer Nib to Remember Blue
Fountain Pen RestorationThe nib hasn't written since 1962. I'm fixing that with shellac, a brass shim, and excessive optimism.