Broth conspiracy

My last two web searches were:

  1. “when was the last time someone was convicted of seditious conspiracy?”
  2. “chicken bouillon vs. chicken broth”

Our brains were not made to live in so many worlds at once.

For the record, the last successful seditious conspiracy charge in the US was in 1995 and bouillon and broth are interchangeable.

 

Instant web dev classic

For many web developers, A Complete Guide to Flexbox from CSS-Tricks.com is a pillar of our web developer reference material. It’s my externalized memory on how the flex feature of CSS works. I don’t have to remember how it works because I know I can look it up there. You can even download a poster version to hang on the wall.

Cartoon image of a smiling person with the text "An Interactive Guide to Flexbox"

Now there’s another great reference An Interactive Guide to Flexbox by Joshua Comeau. An instant classic.

 

New (to me) music: Expert In A Dying Field by The Beths

Today I stumbled across (via the YouTube algorithm, I think) a song I immediately loved. The song is called Expert In A Dying Field by a band called The Beths.

My preferred musical formula: heavy + melodic. While I wouldn’t call their music ‘heavy’, they combine fuzzy guitars with sweet melodies, which does the trick.

The jumping in-and-out of falsetto reminds me of Regina Spektor, the lyrical style reminds of me Kathleen Edwards (bonus recommendation: Change The Sheets), and the fuzzy buzzing guitars remind me of, me!

 

My Fiona

Photo of large tree collapsed in front of house with branches and power-lines knocked down around it.
Across the street from my house in Charlottetown – this tree did a lot of damage, but it could have been much worse.

Having just weathered Hurricane Fiona, the strongest to hit Canada on record, I have a few notes:

  • Everyone in my circle and as far as I can see around me is safe.
  • I’ve never felt my house shake in a storm – but I did this time.
  • We had a lot of close calls, but no major damage to property.
  • There was a lot to clean up (branches, sticks, leaves, trash, etc.)
  • Our power was out for an entire week (even longer for others).
  • It gets dark early! We really rely on our artificially-extended days to keep up with life.
  • A BBQ with a burner was a life-saver. We cooked a ton of decent meals, and boiled a LOT of water.
  • There was no interruption to our municipal water supply (we could flush the toilets!).
  • It takes a LONG time to boil water.
  • Cleaning out the fridge after a week wasn’t as bad as I expected.
  • Cleaning out the freezer after a week was was much worse than I expected.
  • The mobile network was unreliable. Text messages wouldn’t go through, and then would go through 10 times repeatedly. Mobile data was like the weather, coming and going as it pleased – never there when you need it.
  • The clean-up and recovery mobilization at a large-infrastructure level has been impressive (tree removal, power line repair, etc.).
  • Solar panels are awesome, but people don’t realize that most residential solar installations can’t generate power when the grid is down. For now, the only option is a $10,000-$20,000+ battery installation.
  • A similar outage in winter would have been much more dangerous. Keeping warm and keeping pipes from freezing would be difficult and has me thinking of contingency plans.