this morning, ben and i took a walk through the park to look for bugs and found this perfect leafmine. some insects lay their eggs between the outer layers1 of leaves, giving their offspring both shelter and easy access to food. after hatching, the larva eats its way through softer middle layer2 of the leaf, creating a trail, or “leafmine”, behind it. this is a lovely example because it shows such a clear picture of this bug's journey. it started off tiny, its path constrained by the veins on the leaf. as it ate, the bug grew larger and the path it made for itself widened. at a certain point, it became strong enough to make turns across the veins and started taking a more winding path. at the end, the leaf was stretched thin, so the last part of the path has started to dry out and acquire holes. the bug is gone, but the leafmine remains. as evidence, a vignette, a little painting on the leaf.
random site portals
many people, myself included, have fond memories of finding new websites through stumbleupon, a now-defunct site which featured a “stumble” button that would redirect you to a semi-random website. stumbleupon may have died, but the random site portal format lives on because there's something compelling about being whisked away to somewhere new and interesting. here's a non-comprehensive list of site portals i've visited, with my general impressions:
this one's the most similar to stumbleupon, with user accounts and categories. i rarely visit because the percentage of uninteresting sites is uncomfortably high, and the ads in the frame escape my ad-blocker and annoy me.
these both focus on novelty or toy sites, offering a few moments of amusement at most. nothing wrong with a quick laugh, but i usually want a bit more to chew on.
there's one interesting site here for every dozen front-end developer portfolios where everything is written in the style of a linkedin post. i visit regularly to look for new sites, but i tend to leave feeling pessimistic.
wiby is a search engine for non-commercial sites made with simple HTML, made to emulate browsing the early internet. the surprise sites are usually interesting, but their nostalgic presention is often more interesting than the actual contents of the page. this one probably has the widest range of subject matter.
instead of building a list of sites through a submission form, this one scrapes are.na and hacker news for new links. this is my favorite of the random portal sites discussed here, but it suffers from an abundance of dead links. another downside is that it sometimes sends you to a pdf (not a webpage), youtube video (worse), or tweet (unacceptable).
i do find value in these sites, but ultimately, i'm dissatisfied. so, instead of submitting all my favorite pages to each site in a futile attempt to mold them into something more suited to my personal taste... i decided to make my own random site portal,
i've been adding links to the list for the past month, and it just reached 200 pages. i'm celebrating the milestone by finally giving the site a simple favicon and 88x31 button that match the background image,1 and writing this blog entry to explain why i made it. unfortunately, my biggest motivator was frustration with the above sites for sending me to boring page after boring page, but enough complaints! there are interesting websites to visit!
whenever i'm surfing the web, i keep the spore dispersal redirect script open so i can easily add new sites to the list. not every site i love feels appropriate to add, so i wrote out the following guidelines to clarify my intentions for the project:
prioritize:
databases and archives
community hubs
net art
resources, tutorials, and syllabi
sites that spark my curiousity or inspiration
avoid:
tech giants
commerce and paywalls
productivity tools
websites about making websites
blogs, portfolios, and personal sites2
maybe that last point comes as a surprise, given my involvement with communities that champion personal website buiding. personal sites are wonderful! but i don't think a random site portal is the right discovery mechanism for them, especially when so many better options exist. it's easy to find new personal sites and blogs through a thriving ecosystem of webrings and directories. most personal sites will link to other personal sites they like. blogs often have a blogroll, listing the blogs they like to read. this context matters. it feels natural to go from one person's site to their friend's site, but it feels wrong to randomly redirect someone to what often functions as someone's diary. so, instead of personal sites, i'm trying to highlight project-based sites.3
there is no “submit site” button and i don't think i'll ever add one.4 that means i'll never get to use my own page as a way to discover new sites, but that's okay. for me, it's a tool for navigating my bookmarks list5 when i'm craving inspiration but don't have a specific source in mind. for you, hopefully it's a place where you can find something new and interesting. if you're reading this, there's a decent chance we're interested in some of the same things. expect to visit a lot of biology sites.
if you find my selection of sites as boring or frustrating as i find the ones mentioned above, here's the random redirect php script i use, and here's a javascript option if that's more your style. make your own! my site doesn't replace the ones i mentioned, and yours won't replace mine. there's room for all of us.
👽
nature journaling
last month, i met someone at an arts meetup with a gorgeous sketchbook full of plants, fungi, and ecological observations. i loved it and felt inspired to do more drawings from life, so when she announced that she was starting a nature journaling club, i signed up right away.
yesterday was our first meeting! about ten of us gathered at the local park, introduced ourselves, then got an overview of nature journaling. in short, a nature journal should include drawings and writing and numbers.1 the emphasis on the last one came as a surprise to me, as i had come to this with the assumption that the drawings were the key component of the journal. i have way more experience collecting data than i do drawing, so it made me feel a bit more confident in my ability to complete an interesting journal page. i may not be able to recreate an intricate flower, but i can easily measure the diameter and count the petals.
after some quick drawing tips, we were given thirty minutes to complete our first excercise: pick one plant in the park, then fill a page with enough information that someone else in the group would be able to find that exact plant. i picked a little sapling lit by the setting sun. luckily for the person who would have to find it, the sapling was close to an easy landmark: a large tree with a bunch of unique carvings on it. luckily for me, it was also close to a bench.
after 30 minutes, we partnered up and set off through the park to find each other's plants. my partner drew some very elegant clover flowers, and while we admired many clovers on the ground, neither of us were able to find the exact subjects of the drawing. mine... was a little obvious.
when we gathered again, everyone set their sketches on a picnic table for all to see. some included detailed studies of a single leaf, others included maps of their plant's location. one was done with watercolor, another included a bug that landed on the plant during the exercise. all were lovely.
good living is coming for you
sweeping promises released their second album yesterday and i've already listened to it somewhere around six or seven times. their 2020 debut, hunger for a way out, has been one of my go-to summer albums since its release, and this one is well on its way to joining it. it's so good! i could clumsily try to describe how it sounds in words, but i think you'd be better served by listening to it yourself. the embedded bandcamp player on this post will start you at track three, but i recommend hearing it from start to finish.1
i love every track and maybe you will too.
big linen shorts
despite thinking of myself as a person who prioritizes comfort in the clothes i wear, it look me a long time to get some truly comfortable shorts. i spent too much of last summer either sweating in my regular jeans or squirming into some ill-fitting shorts. i don't really enjoy shopping, so i put off the purchase for as long as i could, but i knew i had to do something before my trip to singapore.1 a few weeks ago, i dragged myself to the local outlet, and found exactly what i needed. they're linen, high-waisted with a few little pleats, and have a zipper fly with a button closure. there's a little bit of elastic in the back of the waist, and they're loose-fitting around the hips and thighs. they're perfect. when i put them on, i feel capable of running around in the sun all day. i like shorts! they're comfy and easy to wear!2
getting words on the page
happy new year! i have a blog now.
put simply, i need to write more. my biggest challenge in 2022 was writing my first grant proposal,1 and i spent the better part of the year agonizing over it. my process is incredibly slow.2 the unending search for the most precise language leads me to edit and re-edit (and re-edit and re-edit..) the same sentence for ages before moving on. constant editing gets in the way of completing drafts that i can send to colleagues for review, and leaves me constantly rushing to meet deadlines.3 beyond academic writing, i struggle to send regular work emails. i struggle to send messages to friends. it is not so dire that i cannot function, but i have a serious need to loosen up a little.
i'm going to treat blogging like practice in the art of writing, not neccessarily to improve my prose, but to get more comfortable with the process. maybe it'll be something like exposure therapy for having my words somewhere other people can see. you could argue that this whole site is working towards that goal, but most of the pages i've made so far are pretty sparse with regards to text. on this page, i'll try not to hide behind images and lists and express myself in full sentences.4 i don't plan to stick to any particular subject matter or theme, so no guarantees about what i'll write about next.
may 2023 be the year of writing about whatever. may it be the year of rambling and letter writing and elaborating and texting and publishing and run-on sentences and blogging.
