NYE Party

We had our annual New Year’s Eve party last night. I bartend and it was a great time. I started when I still drank as a way to drink less and prevent a hangover. But now that I’ve been sober for over 6 years I just enjoy the process.

We had new friends, old friends, and I had several really meaningful conversations.

I played with generative AI (specificly Google Gemini) to try to generate a drink menu for NYE. It was an interesting experience. It was very good at coming up with drinks based upon the alcohol I had on hand. It was amazing at drink names. It was very bad at making up drink recipes. And I have no idea why it felt it needed to come up with its own recipes. It was weird. It was also great at garnishes. I tried to create a menu image, and Google’s Nano Banana just will not put the text you want in the image. It was a good exercise for seeing what the state of the art is right now. And I’ll go back to not asking AI questions for a while.

But through all these iterations/failures I came up with this drink based upon an Elderflower Collins. The drink is great spirited or spirit-free:

Midnight Garden

• 2oz Gin
• 1 oz Elderflower Liqueur
• 1/4oz Creme de Violet
• 1oz lemon
• 1/2 oz hibiscus simple syrup (steep dried hibiscus blossoms for 3 minutes in 1 cup water, strain, add the liquid + 1 cup sugar and stir over high heat until fully disolved, let cool)
• Soda water
• Garnish with a sprig of fresh thyme

For the spirit-free I used Belvoir Farm Elderflower Syrup Mixer for the NA elderflower. I used Monin Violet for the Creme de Violet, and Free Spirits Non-Alchoholic Gin for the Gin.

The Year Ahead

In 2002 I wrote a play called Scaping the Goat The play was about the way that cable news had taken the events of 9/11 that had terrorized one city, and repeated the imagery from it over and over until it terrorized the entire world.

Despite having written the play I seemed to have lost the message in my own life. I got sucked into the daily terrorizing by both parties to raise money and hurt people’s health. I got off Twitter, but got on Bluesky. The effect persisted. At some point this year I just got off the train. I’m still aware of what’s going on, but I don’t exist in a state of permanent fight or flight. I’m not terrorized by every single thing Trump says. This is not to downplay the damage he has done, but he has been even more effective at terrorizing us than breaking things.

I wrote a post because despite this administration explicitly targeting me and my family; we had a great year. And I need to celebrate that.

Around this time I started building Fun Old Times as a way to really understand how to effectively use generative AI in programming and to create the social network I always wanted. Through the process I have become more and more worried that we’re going to see an end of affordability for AI tools for home and open-source projects in the coming year and I wanted to get a head start before the tools become much more expensive.

I released new code today that was all built by hand, so I haven’t lost my brain yet.

I built Fun Old Time because I wanted a way to have smaller communities. I wanted something that wasn’t gamified. I had all these ideas for what I wanted social media to become and it never happened. Fun Old Times will import this blog post into my small community automatically via RSS. But it will also exist on the Internet. So I can have my internal conversations inside Fun Old Times and keep a blog running that can have more public reach.

My goal for this year is to continue what I started last year, and that I think was best summed up by Jenn Schiffer. I’m done with:

hating the internet instead of making the internet

This year I want to get back to writing. I want to get back to building. I want my community back. I don’t want to watch 10 second clips of “Community”. I want back-to-school pictures of my friends’ kids, dammit.

My goals for this year:

• I want to create and write again
• I want to spend more time with you
• I want to build new things together
• I want to repair and resuscitate relationships
• I want to make useless art and useful art
• I will not be terrorized
• I will add comments back to this blog so it’s not a weird one-way street.
• I will build community with Fun Old Times and not just build features.

I’ve never really done a year in review post. I have PTSD from my family writing up newsletters and mailing them out. But I’m working on remembering better. So here we go.

January

The year started off with our family going on new year’s day hike with our Nimble Nomads. We walked Horsnby Bend and I fell in love with Hog Plum, ultimately order some seeds from the Internet, growing them from seed and planting the seedlings this fall.

The next night we checked out Luminations at the wildflower center, ending up in our hot tub.

Julie and I made it out for Free Week and checked out Night Drive at the Mohawk then we saw Nosferatu on the last day of Christmas break.

We went to Houston and had Christmas with the fam. We even saw Xtine’s family!

We got some snow on January 21st. We saw the band Travis on January 25th at ACL Live. Julie and I finished out the month with a date at the Cidercade.

We had a craft night - Commicraft Commicraft - it was a round-robinned comic book with Tom and Mark.

February

We took our first rides in a Waymo. “Look ma no driver!”

We had the Larsons and Kievlans over to dinner. This is something we need to do again in the new year!

I worked for a week in Montreal. We got there in a snowstorm and we got into this weird people mover bus instead of going to a gate, and then the peoplemover lowered and drove us to the gate. It was weird! I went cross-country skiing and loved it.

Rhett got his head stuck in a trash can.

I made our traditional valentines pizza and we took Stella back to campus in a Waymo, picking up Callum at Tribe on the way. It was a weird date with robots.

We went on a date to the Well.

We went on the modern home tour with our second daughter Savannah and Callum. Super fun.

Julie had a girl guitar showcase.

March

We had dinner with Brennan and Kristen and Lucy and Brandon. It was super fun. We need to do it more often!

Then we had the oscar party. There were a lot of monkeys this year.

At SXSW we got to stand in line for the Criterion Closet (it was in a truck). We didn’t make it in, but Callum and Julie got super cool swag bags.

We had a craft day. It was MarchCraft FeltCraft. We made little felted animals.

We saw Santigold at Radio East. It was cold and very fun.

Callum and I “toured the University of New Mexico”.

Athena the owl returned to the wildflower center.

We went to houston for spring break and hung around like tourists. We toured the downtown tunnels. We went to Meow Wolf (the radio station). We dined at Crawfish and Noodles with plastic bibs.

We went into the cistern and heard the tour guide sing. We walked the bayou a little. We toured the Menil. We toured the HMPA.

We hosted a birthday party for Lucy at our house with Karaoke.

Julie, Callum and I did a trash cleanup in the Country Club Creek trail greenbelt near our house.

Stella joined us for her birthday and we went for indian food at Nasha.

Callum had a choir concert in Crockette’s cafitorium.

April

Somehow convinced the family to try Din Ho. We went to the Sherwood Forest Faire.

Stella and I ran the Longhorn Race 5k. And I did not forget the bibs.

Callum had a birthday party with X-Men challenges. One was to eat weird looking foods. The kids did suprising well.

Went to see Kylie Minogue! So very, very good.

Rented CapMetro e-bikes and rode around the lake.

Walked down the new pedestrian part of Congress Avenue north of the Capitol and toured the Blanton.

Had our Easter party with the whole fam and friends.

Went to the all-city tenor bass concert.

We saw LCD Soundsystem at Emos. It was fun, but also a bit weird since it’s just an endless greatest hits tour.

Julie got convinced to buy personalized tequila at Total Wine. Hijinks ensued.

We got new gutters!

Julie had a girl guitar showcase at Lustre Pearl South.

May

We went on Modern Austin’s outdoor garden tour.

Stella moved out of Jester.

I had a birthday and got a musical keyboard.

Callum did his solo at the theater/choir combined cabaret.

We hiked the trails behind Aquarina Springs in San Marcos.

Julie and I went out for our anniversary.

We also went on a trip to Seminole Canyon State Park, Kickapoo State Park. We toured antique stores in Del Rio. I saw many plants!

Callum got some Cougar awards. He’s a very good student.

I wired up a steamdeck mini to control the lights and blinds.

We visited the family in Houston and went swimming in Grandaddy’s pool.

We finished the month with a memorial day swim party.

June

June began with a graduation party for one of my Becker Botcats.

Dinner at the Texican for Julie’s birthday with a Mexican Margarita.

Julie got a USB coffee warmer which was probably her favorite present. And inflatable chickens to ride in the pool, which I believe was the friend group’s favorite gift. It saw a lot of use in the summer.

We saw our good friend Karen in Different Stages’ production of “For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again”.

We saw Death from Above 1979 at Empire Garage playing the entirety of “You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine”. It was amazing. And also made us feel old. But I got the t-shirt that would make me many friends throughout the year.

We took our new express bus to the lake to ride e-bikes again. I put my bike on the bus this time. Julie and Callum biked off without us and saw Jenni rehearsing with the Minor Mishap marching band.

There were life changing snocones, much swimming, and another Girl Guitar showcase with Julie performing at Antone’s.

July

More swimming!

Some thieves suspended one of my neighbors chairs on the fence, broke into our shed with a fence post, and made off with our gorilla cart. I ended up fixing my neighbors fence because she was out of town and I was worried about the thieves returning and breaking into her house. I think this officially makes me old.

We went to the HRC and saw exhibits of goth childrens books and one about PEN which is a dinng club that eventually became on the forfront of protecting free speech. We had coffee after at Cafe Medici on the drag, which used to be Insomnia/Metro. It is a way more comfortable space now.

Junie had a growth that was bleeding so we took her to Ace of Spays in North Austin for surgery. They took the growth off of her face as well. But sometime shortly after recovering from surgery she ended up with Horner’s syndrome. It was not a great month for Junie. She had to wear a pink union suit for much of the month, but she came out of it ok.

Rhett got his head stuck in a trash can.

We went to a BBQ popup at Meanwhile sponsored by Uptown Sports Club with lots of Asian BBQ. Then we watched synthpop on the stage.

We went to see Callum as a company member in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. His costume vibe was very Dark City. Meme and Pappy even came.

As part of her surgery recovery Junie started demanding walks. We complied for a time. Even though it was very hot.

August

We road tripped to Dollywood. We had Bahn Mi’s outside Dallas. We checked out the Royse City Futuro house outside of Dallas. It looked like a UFO and was in disrepair.

We had Bratwurst in Little Rock, and made it to Memphis where we went to Graceland. Graceland had expanded mightly since the last time we went. When Julie and I were last there it was mostly just the house and the planes. The number of museums now is out of control and was far too much to see all of.

In Memphis we also went to the Peabody hotel and watched the ducks march from the elevator into the fountain. We went to the Bass Pro Shop in the pyramid. Which was weird and fun. You don’t expect a fake bayou inside a pyramid next to a river.

We ate dinner in Nashville and made it to the Great Smokey Mountains late at night. Which was terrifying. Google Maps lead us astray and we ended up backing up in pitch black mountain roads with Julie leading us on foot.

But then we went on hikes in the Great Smokey Mountains. We saw a baby bear close to our car. We encountered many families attempting hikes they were in no way prepared for (one family asked if we were professional hikers because we had hiking boots on and hiking poles). We saw so many waterfalls. We woke up and had coffee on a massive porch overlooking the mountains, or on our back porch overlooking the woods.

We played mini-golf at a dinosaur themed park. But then it also had some mythology and dragons left over from its previous incarnation. We went on the Great Smokey Mountain Railway which was amazing, although the road to get there was terrifying hairpin turns. And apparently it’s popular with drivers so we were constantly getting passed by sports cars and motorcycles driving really fast.

The route involved watching lots of white water rafters. Next day was Dollywood. The roller coasters were amazing. We saw the bird of prey show, and checked out some Dolly Parton outfits. We went on the steam train at Dollywood which was a horrible experience. It started with a warning that they would not be stopping the train because of cinders in your eyes, and well… the train was basically getting bathed in smoke and cinders — including in my eyes. 0/10 stars do not recommend. Although we did encounter some folks from our trip on the Great Smokey Mountain Railway the day before. We have accepted we are train people.

Heading back we went to Tiny Town in Hot Springs, which was a cute train diorama built over many years.

We saw Doctah Mistah’s production of “Toxic Avenger” with the family when we got back.

We had some fun family time. We started watching Project Runway and doing sketches for the challenges along with the contestents.

More swimming, more snocones, and then back to school for Stella and Callum. Stella going back to school was a little easier this year, but only a little. I miss my kiddo. Stella going back to school has reaquainted us with the restaraunts on Duval, and we ended up taking her to Curra’s after move in.

August was Austin pride. This year it was nice to see all the corporate sponsors who had not abandoned the queer community. It was a very different vibe. A woman came up to me and told me her life story. Going to the pride parade was tied into her journey to have kids. Life is weird, but I like people.

August was another Girl Guitar showcase at Antone’s. We saw Callum’s lighting design in Spark’s production of “Pillar of Fire” at the Vortex.

I ended the month extracting more of our pre-pool backyard and building berms.

September

We went to Haunt Happy Books in Lockhart and had some BBQ at Kreuz Market. Julie did not like the smokiness of the dining area, so we will go to another bbq place when when we go back. I got a collection of train horror stories.

We saw Spoon and the Pixies at the Moody outdoor stage. It reminded me that I don’t love the Pixies as a live band. I’ve seen them twice now and their setlist just somehow doesn’t work well. But Spoon was amazing.

We went to Mr. Sean’s birthday at Austin Beerworks Sprinkle Valley location. A great day of sitting outside at a beer garden. Something we don’t do enough now that the kids are grown.

Stella, Julie, and I got our COVID and Flu vaccines. Callum had to wait for his annual pediatrician visit.

Callum made his homecoming mum and Julie and I went to the game taking Jasper and Callum with us. Callum went to the homecoming dance with friends.

September also saw Callum get his driver’s license and a bookreading at Book People for Mo Deviau’s “Epic and Lovely”.

I started an herb garden this month, and it has actually been coming along.

I went to Copenhagen for work and stayed in an amazing hotel. On our last night we went out to a circus themed tapas bar. It was a bit stunt foody, but the drinks were silly and it was a great time.

Running on fumes I got off the plane from Copenhagen after something like 12 hours flying, and went to see Kuhla Shaker and The Dandy Warhols at the Mohawk as part of Levitation Fest. Kuhla Shaker was great. We knew way more songs than we thought and they were a band that had obviously gotten very, very good over the years. The Dandy’s on the other hand. They were so quiet that you could barely hear them. Low energy, just generally sad and bad. But I made a friend from South Africa thanks to my DFA 1979 shirt.

George and Kathy had us over for an oyster dinner party and epic game of “SuperJasonPassword”.

October

We had a game night. We decorated for Halloween. We sang Karoake at the Barrel of Fun for Ashley’s 1 year anniversary of the Mueller group.

ACLFest was this month. Highlights for me were The Dare, Panda Bear, Carseat Headrest (I’m apparently in my psych-rock era), Riloy Kiley, Wet Leg, and of course The Killers show which was worthy of Vegas. I made a friend because of my DFA 1979 shirt.

We toured Texas State with Callum and some of the least interested parents and kids we’ve been on a college tour with. We explained to our tour guide why San Marcos has a mermaid parade. Because we’re nerds.

Bill and Andrea came to town and we had a party and drank at the Draft House.

We saw Callum at the Region UIL performance at the Performing Arts Center, and his cool water runoff demonstration with Roots and Wings.

Then to a Girl Guitar showcase at Girl Guitar’s new space. It was too loud and tight, but Mercury Daze’s performance of “Dragula” slayed.

We managed to catch most of the Wombats at Scoot Inn. It was a dinner time show which was… odd. We were home around 8.

Callum went as Seymour for Halloween and made an amazing Audrey II puppet.

November

November started with Travis’ Halloween party. More Halloween is great. Julie and I were Mulder and Scully.

We went to the Texas book festival. We saw the authors of “After the Spike” and preventing depopulation is my new advocacy focus.

We saw Callum and the River Watchers in Forklift Dancework’s collaboration with Austin Water for “The Way of Water” at Hornsby Bend. Zell Miller was the narrator and we learned the kids today are not into spoken word the way us 90s kids are.

I felled a Red Bud that had been in our yard since we moved in. It was the end of an era, but the right call. It was super-disased and infested with ants.

We saw Cargill (one of the writers of Black Phone, Dr. Strange, Sinister, etc) at ACC talking about writing. Cargill was a person who helped me learn to be less critical and just enjoy art, and it was great to see him in person.

We went to Leona in South Austin for Anna’s birthday. The lighting made us all think we were going to fall off a path and die. We did not fall off a path and die.

We went to Houston and saw the fam and then had Friendsgiving. Standing up at a birthday party for Crystal in East Austin made me realize that I did indeed need bunion surgery.

December

That surgery happened on my left foot at the beginning of December, and I’ve been one legged on a scooter since.

That did not stop us from having cheese at Antonelli’s and karaoke at the high ball for Ashley’s birthday. The High Ball did not have an elevator so I ended up bouncing up and down a lot of stairs.

We went to a Christmas concert at Crockett with the elementary and middle schools that feed into the school. It was super-cute. Then I got yakamein at Cyprus Grill.

Callum had a Christmas party with friends, locking Julie and I in our bedroom.

Then a Girl Guitar Christmas concert at Stubb’s for Julie. I got to take the elevator which was fun.

Julie and I had a date night at Koko’s Bavarian and then on to present shopping. This year had fewer suprises because I had to be escorted everywhere. Callum and Stella took me to Blue Genie to shop for Julie.

We went to Fort Worth and stayed overnight at my Mom’s house. We took her out for a birthday dinner at Cheddars. The next day we toured the new house they’re building - it seems almost done. Then on to a tour of UNT and Christmas shopping on the Square. We all love Denton. It’s unfortunate its promxity to DFW, but I guess the weirdos there need somewhere to go.

Instead of continually adding to our Lego town the kids and I added lights from “Light My Bricks”. It was very fussy, but worth the effort. I can see this becoming a yearly thing.

We watched some Stranger Things. We made gingerbread houses. We had fake turkey loaf for Christmas dinner. I spent a lot of time lying on the floor with my foot up. The swelling from this surgery is no joke.

Post Christmas there were puzzles and Lego. There was a yearly white elephant cookie party.

Then we went to the SNL exhibit at the HRC.

Daniel and Jeff came to town and we went to Bamboo House for Peking Duck.

Tonight is NYC and it’s time for our annual New Year’s party. What a year.

Last night my son was reading a Marvel comic based upon the Knights of the Round Table, which reminded me of a Sega Arcade game from the 90s. I decided to look it up:

My search text was “knights sega arcade game”

Google gives me back “Nights into Dreams” which is a Sega Saturn game. The correct game “Knights of the Round” is the second or third result, but note also the text at the top of the search:

Did you mean nights sega arcade game

Well, no. I didn’t. I put in the word “knights”. Also it’s not an arcade game.

I’ve been seeing this again and again when searching technical articles, but it’s harder to explain why the results are wrong. This particular search made it easy to demonstrate how much Google Search has been hit by enshitification. This is what Bing returns which is exactly what I expected:

If I put “knights” in double quotes on Google I get the correct results, but I’m not going to put everything in my search in double quotes, so I get the results I expect.

So, I’m switching to Bing by way of DuckDuckGo. It’s frustrating it’s come to this, but Google Search is fundamentally broken.

Our house came with a laundry room. It was a really nice space, but it was un-airconditioned and in our garage. As part of a remodel we were able to enclose that space and add heating and air. But it was always colder than the rest of the house. Like 20 degrees colder at times. We ended up blocking it off a lot of the time.

When they enclosed the space they put in the rolled pink fiberglass insulation. It was better than nothing, but we had done the Austin Energy audit about a decade ago and they had blow in insulation over the rest of our house. Last year when it went into the 20s we had our pipes freeze and I got to spend a lot of time thawing them out in the attic in freezing temperatures.

So I wanted to do some weatherization and they said blowing cellulose insulation into your attic is an easy DIY project. I got some extra insulating tape and taped up all the gaps in the insulation around our pipes and then last Saturday we bought 11 bags of cellulose insulation and rented a blower from Home Depot.

They say you need 2 people to lift the blower, and it was really heavy. We got it out of our car easily enough, but had to get Callum to help us when it was time to get it back in. The hoses we got did not have clamps and they suggested we use duct tape to connect them. So we spent a good hour of our 4 hour rental just fighting hoses. I had to go back to home depot and get an o-ring clamp, but once we had the hose secured everything was exactly as trivial as they suggested. It’s a 2 person project. One person is at ground level feeding insulation into the hopper, and the other has a hose in the attic blowing the insulation in. Julie said feeding in the insulation was dusty and tiring. Holding the hose to blow in the insulation was pretty boring and dusty, but otherwise not much work. Even with wasting about 2 hours with hoses and a trip back to Home Depot, we still completed it in time to get our rental back before the 4 hour mark. So this really was a realistic afternoon project - including the trips to the store.

Some questions people have asked me:

1. Do you need special protective equipment? Nope. Cellulose insulation is just like paper and wool. That also makes it carbon negative, since you’re basically storing carbon in your attic. It’s dusty, but the kind of mask you have left over from COVID will work just fine. Any sort of gloves work, and I wore a baseball cap that got really dusty. But I didn’t have any lung or skin irritation. It’s nothing like working with fiberglass insulation.

2. Do you have to remove the old insulation? Nope. This is additive. Your old insulation keeps working and you just add to it. Apparently, insulation is basically measured by the depth so the more you add on top, the better your insulation.

3. Do you have to do any prep? If you have can lighting that isn’t made to be covered in insulation (these are generally the old kind that had halogen bulbs), or soffits there are extra steps to keep them exposed. We did not have those, so mostly I just had to move things around in our attic to get them out of the way. The videos about using the machine explain this stuff pretty thoroughly.

4. How much did it cost? We were doing a 10’x12’ space. I was shooting for something like R60. That’s like 15-20 inches covering the space. That took 11 bags of insulation. With the 4 hour rental it cost less than $400.

5. Are you happy with it? Yes. It used to take your breath away a little bit to walk into those areas. Now it feels like the rest of the house. It used to always be within about 5-10 degrees of our attic. Now it’s generally within 5 degrees of the rest of the house, which is a dramatic difference.

I wanted to do a manual Tidal Rewind. Tidal gives you stats every month. This isn’t completely right as it doesn’t seem to properly collate all of my music (from phone and desktop). Especially when I compare it to Last.FM. I listen to way more music than this, but, whatever, it’s fun!

I want to do a some up of what I think you should check out (these links work even if you don’t have Tidal)

The Chill

Beverly Glenn-Copeland

Eddie Chacon

Coco

The Dance Rock

Hinds

Freak Slug

We Are Wolves

Chinese American Bear

I believe Julie has approved of all of these as “Not Awful”TM

I feel like I’ve rediscovered some favorites here.

There are a lot of people in my life who are e-bike curious. I’m one of those people with imposter syndrome about being a cyclist. I don’t own any spandex. Bikes are just something that have been in my life on and off since I was a kid and I use them to get around. So here’s just some random stuff I have from biking around Austin.

Before my e-bike I had been commuting to work on two different manual bikes. I got my most recent one from Austin Bike Garage and highly recommend them. I do a LOT more trips on my e-bike. We were at a point with 3 drivers that buying a third car would be “the American way”. But transportation in Texas is one of our biggest climate drivers and is so bad that it registers as one of the top sources of greenhouse gases worldwide. I struggle to keep contributing to that, so more cycling and not buying a third car seemed like a way to help.

Plus it saved a ton of money. Do you know how much cars cost now? Do you know how much car maintenance and repairs cost? I mean e-bikes sound expensive, but they’re only about 10% of the price of an economy car. And that’s before you factor in the cost of heating the planet.

What is your bike?

I have a Rad City 4. It was on sale because it was an old model. I got it because it was a good price since it was being replaced with a newer model. With all the stuff listed below I’m probably all in at around $2,000 for my bike. Maintenance has been like $250 per year to have someone else do it for me.

I didn’t go with Austin Energy’s e-bike rebate because most of the eligible bikes at the time were more expensive even with the rebate. But now that I’ve been riding a while and know how I ride, I might use it for my next bike.

How do you feel about it?

I really like having an e-bike. But this e-bike? It’s just ok. I wish I had step-through, but Rad didn’t offer that for my height. It has a very heavy frame which makes cycling without assist very difficult. I tend to ride with assist level 1 turned on, and use the throttle to get me started at a stop sign or going up a hill. More and more I use the throttle pretty much all the time. I really like all the compatible accessories from Rad Power.

One thing I hadn’t thought about, and a lot of people don’t in Texas is you need a detachable battery if you won’t store your bike in A/C. If you’re planning on storing in a garage or shed you need to bring your battery in to charge or the heat will destroy it. I learned this the hard way with some yard appliance batteries. Built-in batteries look super-cool, and I wish this wasn’t the reality of living in Texas.

What have you added to your bike?

Light

I have added the upgraded light. The stock light was not bright enough. I literally passed by a man with dark skin at night and didn’t notice him until I was right next to him. That’s not really good enough. I like riding at night even though it’s not recommended because it’s cooler.

Storage

The Rad City comes with a back rack which is a necessity. You want one on any bike. I originally bought the large platform, front basket, and large insulated delivery bag for groceries. Adding the front basket would have required reworking the bike’s brakes and front electrical. I didn’t feel up for that challenge. I thought adding the large platform on back would have messed with attaching panniers. I’m not entirely sure if that’s true because I was attaching my panniers incorrectly at first. There was a severe lack of instructions. So I ended up with just the stock back rack and panniers. And I’m actually very happy with that.

Panniers

Those are those saddle bags everyone has. I really like the ones from Rad Power. They have little inner bags that velcro on and have a closing zipper. I’ve had to re-tighten their attachment points due to bumpy roads and I’m very happy I could do that. I’ve logged a lot of miles in the rain with them and they keep my work clothes and computer dry. That said, they’re pricy and not compatible with other systems. That’s one of my biggest issues with Rad Power’s accessories.

Locks

I added an ABUS wheel lock that is attached to the frame and locks the back wheel in place. I also added the companion chain which attaches to the wheel lock. When I’m just running into a place and can see my bike I’ll just use the wheel lock since it prevents being able to just wheel the bike off. And the bike weighs a ton so you can’t just carry it away. I keep the chain in a top tube bag. The tube bag complains. I’m not sure it was designed for that much weight, but so far so good.

Repair Tools

I got the Roadside Repair Kit and some extra tubes. I tend not to ride with the repair kit because I worry about it getting stolen. Which I realize is super-silly. I keep the extra tubes in my panniers. Thankfully the fat tires have gotten me 750 miles so far. I’ve got a slow leak in one, but I’ll probably pay to have it fixed. I don’t feel like I have enough experience with these yet to recommend them or not.

Water Bottles

This is one of those things that’s a bit obvious in retrospect, but I was shocked by at first. A lot of e-bikes don’t come with standard water bottle mounting screws - because of the battery. The battery tends to be where a water bottle goes. And a lot of the other mounting points are used by things like lights or have cables in the way. My kid got me a handlebar mount. I’ve used it once. It works ok, but it can roll around the handelbars. It’s ok for transporting liquid, but if you’re the kind of person who wants to actively drink water while rolling it’s not great.

Mirror

I added a left hand mirror. They’re really inexpensive and I think have completely changed how I feel about safety and how I ride. More about that later. My handlebars had a little plug you can pull out and shove this mirror into. It’s a super-easy installation. I have to reposition them a lot because they get bumped into, but they work well.

Cargo Straps

And my favorite thing - my cargo straps. I started researching bungees and everyone was like “NO. DO NOT - Especially with a motor”. If they fall off or fail they can hook into your tires and motors and things can go horribly wrong apparently. This sounded very bad so I researched alternatives. I ended up with ROK straps. They are great. They are affordable. They take up pretty much zero space at the bottom of a pannier. I have strapped a lot of weight with them. I regularly bring back 3 gallons of pool chlorine from Home Depot using them. I don’t know what the max is, but it’s probably more than I should put on the back of my bike.

Riding

Do you feel safe?

It’s important to know I don’t feel safe in cars which factors into how I feel on a bike. But I do feel pretty safe. When going somewhere new I tend to look at the route on Google Streetview to get comfortable with the route. I take sidewalks and will get off and walk my bike when I don’t feel safe. I have gotten over feeling like I need to be a proper “cyclist” (whatever that means) and just do what makes me feel safe. I’ve also read up on safety and do get why people say sidewalks are dangerous. I tend to ride a lot slower on sidewalks and pay attention to cars turning left.
But this is also part of where my left-hand mirror has helped me feel safer. I can see what cars are doing behind me which makes riding on neighborhood streets feel much safer. I also can see if a car is going to try to overtake me and cut me off by turning in front of me.
I didn’t realize how much people opening car doors into bikes is a source of accidents. This has changed routes I take and also makes me much more likely to “take the lane”. When I’m riding on Canterbury or 2nd Street, I ride in the middle of the street and try to keep 4-5 feet away from parked cars.
Oh, also decomposed granite trails feel very safe as a cyclist which can be something of a trap. It’s gravel. You have tires. We know in a car stopping on gravel is bad. Same thing on a bike. I tend to try to bike with only minimal assist and without using the throttle on gravel so I can hopefully stop if I need to.

What are your trips?

I used to go into the office 3 times a week. Now it’s once a week. That’s about 12 miles round trip. I have not taken a car to work since we returned to office. It’s one of my favorite things. Zipping past all the cars without a care in the world is great for letting go of a day in the office. I take Santa Monica, to the Country Club Creek Trail. Then I ride down Pleasant Valley, turning left on Canterbury. I turn right on the Pedernales bike highway and then left on 2nd street taking that over to Comal. I ride the rest of the way on Comal to work. I have a locked bike room at work where I store my bike, and there’s a shower. I shave and brush my teeth before I leave, and then shower and get dressed at work.

I go to the Desnudo Coffee Run Club at 6:20am every Thursday. That’s basically the same route as going to work, except I stay on Pedernales until Webberville.

I tend to go to Home Depot a lot. I ride through Mabel Davis Park and then take Parker to Woodward. I take a left from Woodward into the Home Depot and then reverse most of it on the way back.

I also go to the UPS store on Riverside. I take Santa Monica, to Burleson. Left on Oltorf, then right on Parker, which gets me all the way to the parking lot. The ROK straps help a lot with these trips.

I also go to Radio EAST a fair amount (used to be Ani’s Day and Night - RIP). I take Santa Monica to Burleson, then ride the North Ben White Sidewalk to Montopolis and then the sidewalk on Montopolis/Stassney to Radio. Burleson south of Ben White isn’t so horrible heading towards Radio EAST, but coming back there are way too many curb cuts, bars, and creative bike lane parking jobs.

Groceries?

I thought I was going to try to get groceries with this bike as that’s one of my weekly trips. It’s one I still make by car. For four people it’s just too much stuff. I was doing math and even using a trailer things would be a bit dicey. Once we’re empty nesters I’m pretty sure I’ll be using the bike for groceries.

I do make a fair number of small grocery trips. The Riverside H-E-B will let me do curbside pickups. Doing pickups makes it pretty easy to know if you’ll be able to get everything into your panniers and using straps. I’ve strapped on a milk crate a couple times, but honestly panniers + my ROK straps tend to be a better combo for the groceries we get.

What about cold (or even moderately cool) weather?

If you know me, you know I hate the cold. HATES IT! But with help from some friends I’ve gotten enough cold weather gear that I don’t mind it at all. Frankly riding during the Fall/Winter/Spring in Austin is awesome, and more people should do it. It’s very, very comfortable.
With a bike, nearly everything is about keeping out the wind. I have a high vis bike jacket for that. I wear it pretty much all the time at night even when it’s not cold. I have some fairly tight fitting action pants that have wind-breaking qualities. Not sure where I got those. I wear long-underwear from Costco underneath it all. I have gloves, and I wear a gaiter over my ears and head. If I was dealing with a lot of freezing temperatures, I would probably wear one over my mouth as well.

What about repairs?

So far so good. I haven’t really needed anything, but I have a slow leak to deal with. I have an electric tire compressor which everyone should have for cars and bikes. I just air it up before I go every time.

I have had my bike tuned up at around 500 miles. I went with  ATX Mobile Bike Repair. I had a great experience. They’re very upfront with their pricing and come to you. Somewhat surprisingly I don’t have a bike store that is particularly convenient to my house.

I’ll probably have them fix my tire tube as well, as it’s the back tire that has the motor on it, and I don’t really want to mess with that.

Any questions?

Feel free to ask me in the comments.

There’s a lot of discussion around changing language to be more inclusive. I just spent half of last-week on a hack week project to catch problematic language in our code and documentation at work. I get how it can feel frivolous when people are being shot. I think this work is small, but important.

When I had my first kid Julie and I tried to share childcare. I was in no way the perfect partner, but I still kept bumping up against constant re-enforcement of “traditional” patriarchal parenting. I constantly heard things like, “I never changed a diaper with my kids”. I found myself stumbling with things like calling taking care of my kids “babysitting”, despite them being - you know - my kids. The language and society keep subtly and not-so subtly trying to put me back in place.

That sort of constant subtle undermining is why I support language change. The current language is built to tell LGBTQIA+, women and people of color they’re less than. They’re being watched. Stay in your place.

I support changing these small words because they signal a bigger cultural shift. This shift flips society and says to the abusers and racist that now they’re the ones being watched. That the company culture no longer exists to exclusively protect them.

I think that’s an important change.

My neighborhood has been horrified by the murder of Mike Ramos by police. It has been with dismay that I’ve been reading the coverage of Police Chief Manley’s response on GritsForBreakfast.

With a massive dip in revenue I think it’s time to rethink our police budget and the leadership there. I sent Austin City Council a message to that point this morning and urge others to as well.

I am really dismayed to see how Police Chief Manley has been handling the murder of Mike Ramos by his police officers. I know that many Austinites stereotype East Riverside as a crime filled neighborhood. But I live about 200 yards from the area Mike Ramos was killed on the Country Club Creek trail. My work commute (before Coronavirus) was through this neighborhood. There are always neighbors hanging out in their cars and working on their cars. There are usually toddlers and kids playing. On my way home from work you’ll find families out exercising together. You’ll find groups of teenagers chilling out together. My family regularly takes walks on this part of the trail. The notion that you would need to roll in with guns drawn is absurd.

With the current budget woes and low crime in Austin I think it’s time we seriously start talking about a different sort of police department. We clearly have different needs now. We need peacekeeping officers for festivals and tourism related events. And we need a police department that can deal with property crime and not murder our citizens. Healthy Streets has really highlighted the fact that we could have beat officers without guns who interface with the neighborhood rather than rolling around spewing carbon in giant vehicles. Electric bikes could provide a much more agile response than cars and without the need to send out a costly helicopter because those cars cannot follow suspected criminals through parks, etc.

I urge you to think about a new, less expensive, less murder-y form of policing and replace Manley with someone who can make that a reality.

You can also Send Council an Email.

We recently had two packages ripped into. One they actually stole things, and the other they left (presumably because it was a giant bag of dog food that would be a pain to carry).

We were at home at the time (and are pretty much always at home these days), so it was especially irritating that thieves got to these packages before we did. We talked about getting a Ring camera, but I don’t dig helping out the police state and don’t want to buy one more tech thing if I don’t have to (or it’s not a fun tech thing).

I glanced over and noticed that we had two cameras for our Play Stations. One for the Playstation 3 that is currently doing an impressive job farming dust.

“Surely, I can use an old webcam to watch my front porch”, I thought.

And this is a happy project. Pretty much everything you need is already built and works pretty well. First up:

Home Assistant

I’d heard good things about Home Assistant, but our house was all Google devices, so I didn’t really feel motivated to install software to manage my home devices. The Google software worked ok.
But then we got a pool. And the pool came with a horrid app to control it. The app crashes all the time. But it does have integration with Home Assistant. So a few weeks ago I installed it. I already had a Mac Mini running linux, but they also make it easy to install on a Raspberry Pi which will set you back $35. Here are the installation instructions

Getting Started with Home Assistant

This has led to fun integrations. Like when the Spa is an appropriate temperature the Google Home yells “Get in the Hottub”. But back to the camera.

You’ll probably want to spend some time adding integrations for the devices in your home before continuing on.

Installing Motion

So I started with a Playstation Eye that I had around the house. Although apparently you can buy them for like $10. I propped it up in my front window on two scraps of 2x4 on the window ledge. Remember, my goal is motion detection to grab packages before thieves get them, not providing the police with pictures of people’s faces. So this angle is just fine.

Added bonus, because this webcam was made to go in people’s living rooms it has a red and blue light to let you know when it has power and when it is recording. It looks especially good in a front window at night.

Here’s my camera angle.

You’ll notice there’s reflections from blinds and a lot of foliage. I worried about this, but turned out it wasn’t a big deal since a person walking through this image is very large and easy to track for a computer.

Ok, so I plugged the camera into the usb port on my machine. If it works properly you should see a device show up as /dev/video0.

Next I installed the motion package. This is available by default in more recent versions of ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install motion

I tweaked a few settings.

videodevice /dev/video0
# I increased the size of the images to make them nicer to look at
width 640
height 480

# this makes night time monitoring work better with the PS Eye
auto_brightness on

# I upped the number of pixels needed to signal motion because I have a lot plants that move in the wind. And an actual person is a huge proportion of the image. This is what you'll probably need to tweak up and down to get rid of false positives
threshold 2000
noise_tune on

# I save movies of people approaching the porch into the www folder of my home assistant configuration. This allows them to be accessed with /local/[filename] on the home assistant server.
target_dir /usr/share/hassio/homeassistant/www

# Because I'm running homeassistant in a docker container I needed to be able to access the stream from outside the host machine. I have firewall rules to keep people from accessing it externally. This allows you to view a stream of the camera on port 8081
stream_localhost off

# And finally a script that is called when motion is detected
on_event_start /usr/share/hassio/homeassistant/frontDoorStart.sh

Next I created the script to tell Home Assistant that motion has happened.

/usr/share/hassio/homeassistant/frontDoorStart.sh

You’ll need to go into your Home Assistant UI to get an Api Key. Go to your profile:
https://[Your Home Assistant IP]/profile

Scroll down to Long Lived Access Token, and click ‘Create Token’. Then take the token you get and insert it into the script below where it says PUT_TOKEN_HERE.

!/bin/sh
BEARER_TOKEN=PUT_TOKEN_HERE

curl -X POST \
-H "Authorization: Bearer ${BEARER_TOKEN}" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d "{\"state\":\"on\"}" \
https://ha.tfamaustin.us/api/events/FRONT_DOOR

You’ll probably need to make that executable as well:

chmod +x /usr/share/hassio/homeassistant/frontDoorStart.sh

Once that’s all done go ahead and restart motion.

sudo service motion restart

OPTIONAL: While you’re here you can add your camera to be viewable in the Home Assistant UI. This isn’t necessary, but it’s nice, and easy to add.

In your Home Assistant configuration.yaml add the following:

camera:
  platform: mjpeg
  mjpeg_url: http://[IP of your server]:8081
  verify_ssl: false
  name: Front Door cam

You may need to restart Home Assistant to make this show up. You can do that under Configuration->Server Controls->Restart.

Adding the Automation

Finally you just need to decide what to do when motion is detected. I have a couple integrations, but my main one is to have it say “A Package Is On The Porch” on my Google Home. Go to Configuration->Automations. Then click the Plus in the bottom right corner to add a new Automation.

The Automation UI does not always work properly, so I’m going to post the YAML for each section. You can cut and paste by selecting Edit as YAML from the little menu on the right of each card.

My automation is called “Broadcast when there’s a package on the porch”. It has a Trigger based upon the Event that is sent from the frontDoorStart.sh script.

event_data:
  state: 'on'
event_type: FRONT_DOOR
platform: event

Then I added a Condition. I don’t want this thing waking me up so I decided to tell it to only notify between 10am and 11pm.

after: '10:00'
before: '23:00'
condition: time

Then I have two conditions. I have it broadcast on my main Google Home and on my Google ChromeCast Audio in my Office/Bedroom.

data:
  entity_id: media_player.living_room_home
  message: Package on the porch
service: tts.google_translate_say

I have a separate automation that sends notifications at any time of day to my phone. The number of things you can do is pretty limitless.

If you have any questions or run into problems, please feel free to leave a comment and I’ll try to update this.

So I support the new Land Development Code (LDC) process. This is the thing formerly known as Code NEXT. But I’ve been thinking about two problems with it:

• Deed Restrictions
• It’s not enough

Deed Restrictions

The biggest problem with the LDC is that a huge part of our housing exists in areas with HOAs and deed restrictions. These are private covenants that will keep new housing from being built, regardless of how we re-zone the city. The city cannot override them. Also most of the neighborhoods without deed restrictions tend to be poorer and/or full of people-of-color. So without tackling the deed restriction problem we will guarantee further gentrification and displacement.

If your neighborhood was built after the 90s there’s little chance that you could possibly be impacted by the new code. But of course hat housing is exactly the housing that is most in need of transformation to deal with climate change. We cannot provide transit and walkable amenities to these neighborhoods without more people. And we cannot add more people because of deed restrictions.

Not Enough

I also think part of the issue with the new LDC is that it is not transformative enough. It’s pretty clear how it will inconvenience me, but it’s very unclear if it will go far enough to make my life better. Nearly everyone I’ve ever talked to responds positively to pictures of pedestrian centered European villages, but think there’s no way to do that here.

But what if we could?

Develop the Roads

The City of Austin owns most of the roads in neighborhoods. And those roads are *not* covered by deed restrictions. It’s part of the way we build neighborhoods. Developers build the roads and then hand them over to the city to maintain. What if we turned neighborhood roads into housing?

I know this is a huge change. But as we watch Australia burn it’s also the kind of huge change that I think people could get behind. Because we can demonstrate that things really will become more pedestrian and transit friendly. It won’t be a “wait and see eventually positive change will trickle down to you”. It will say “you can have this change now!”

Right now pretty much all neighborhoods in Austin look like this:

But what if we transformed the road into a bike track, house, and sidewalk. The city can take the easement on narrow streets, but trust me when I say that most roads in Austin could easily accommodate a full-sized house (or even better row houses) in the middle of them.

• 

The bike track and sidewalk would eventually meet a corner with a major arterial where there would be a bike shed for storing your bike and a bus stop. Retractable barriers would keep cars out, but allow in police, ems, and maintenance vehicles.

Places where multiple streets meet in a neighborhood currently have even more space!

These streets (and some cul-de-sacs) would become small neighborhood parks. Think playscapes, basketball half-courts, and fenced-in dog parks.

Rather than all homes at corners we could also allow space for cafes, pubs, daycares, doctor’s offices, and small groceries. They would be only reachable by active transporation so we wouldn’t have to worry about negative issues like traffic, drunk drivers, etc.

Obviously there are a lot of specific issues related to specific places that will need to be addressed, and we’ll need a LOT more buses. But it will be very easy to justify those buses when everyone is using them.

What do you think? Would you be interested in this sort of transformative change in your life? What would hold you back?