My microlog

2026

• 2026-04-24

  I wish I had an album or two from Getdown Services. Their recordings are so silly and also sound amazing!

  => Getdown Services on Bandcamp

• 2026-04-16

  Today I saw three birds nesting.

  In the morning, I read a book in my shared tenement garden. While I was reading, I caught a blackbird in the corner of my eye. He caught me in the corner of his eye. A worm wriggled in his beak. He froze for a time. Eventually – hop! He watched me suspiciously. Was he really that pea-brained to think I could catch him even if I tried? A long pause. Hop! He was now at the edge of the border, inches away from diving into the bushes. Here, he waited, and seemed ready to wait forever. The worm wriggled in his beak. I realised what was going on. I turned my back to him. When I looked back, he was gone.

  Over lunch, I went for a walk on the Union Canal. Yards past Boroughmuir High School, a huge nest of heavy sticks sat implausibly erected on top of a bank of reeds, like a house on stilts, with a huge swan heaved on top of it. A second swan, presumably its mate, sailed up and down the canal some way further along. But this one was stock still, perhaps sleeping, its whole head nestled in the folds of its own body. Whether it brooded over eggs or chicks, I couldn't tell.

  A little further down, after I passed the second swan, I came to a bridge. When I turned the corner round the abutment of the bridge, I found the towpath strewn with pigeons. As I passed, they whisked up into the iron spars under the bridge. Many of them ended up on a small protruding course along the brickwork on the far side, and I could see why: the iron spars was bristling with anti-bird spikes. Still, more than half the pigeons had seemingly made do with a prickly perch. There must have been at least a dozen nests. They were built of dried plant matter, though I've no idea how they got them to stick together. Spittle? Impressive constructions: large, tall, and deep. I could hear chicks mewling. I watched for a minute. The young ones were pretty much completely obscured in their deep nests. But sure enough, after a couple of minutes, I caught a glimpse of one sticking a head out above the parapet.

• 2026-04-14.1

  ‘Losing Eden’ by Lucy Jones left me feeling hopeful, inspired. But I can’t imagine what I shall do, and it’s driving me nuts. What I really want is to form a joy brigade at Bruntsfield Evangelical that goes outside regularly, to ‘touch nature from the inside.’ But I tried that before, and no one signed up, and I have no idea how to persuade people to sign up to things, or what sort of thing I could run instead that people would sign up to. And now I feel depressed. I feel I want to do something, and I can do something, but no one will back me up, presumably because there’s something wrong with me.

  That’s how I felt about noon. To burn some energy, I went to walk to the shops and back, and long before I knew what I was doing, I found my toes dangling in the Braid Burn. It was a very particular spot. Last time I came here, I pretty much wrote a sonnet in my head, and came back and wrote it down. Today I did not have many words in my head, but I was astonished at how delicious the light looked through the leaves and the warm bed of wildflowers I couldn’t name.

  When I came back, I was still fizzing with frustrated energy. I didn’t realise hope could be such a terrible emotion. On a whim, I got Edward Thomas off the shelf, and browsed through his poems, including ‘Lob’ and my favourite, ‘Adlestrop.’

  By that point, I’d calmed down enough to get back to my work. I read ‘Wilding’ by Isabella Tree, with illustrations by Angela Harding. It also made me feel hopeful. They have a story about a diamond in the rough, a shining city on a hill in a land still cloaked in darkness, a suggestion that homo sapiens could be a keystone species. I was close to tears three times while reading it.

  After I finished, I went outside in the rain into my tenement’s shared garden. I’ve been there exactly once before: in January last year, when I was viewing the flat. I looked once, and decided it was dark, lifeless and dull: not worth going back to. I was so wrong! I’m plotting to try taking my morning pot of tea in the garden some day when it’s dry. I don’t feel angry any more.

• 2026-04-14

  Why do I feel like I wrote this? Or like this person stole my opinions somehow?

  => eph – A Book Of Proverbs

• 2026-04-13

  I wish I had a few more fountain pens. Dreadfully useful things.

• 2026-04-11.1

  I went through my work diary from semester 1, and remembered that I came up with a few fun and productive ways of digesting what I'd learned! I wrote a very personal and temporary catechism, summarising important opinions that I had formed, I wrote down a list of quality questions I'd encountered, and I wrote a couple of stories/essays for my longlog. I should totally do all these things again: Semester 2 Edition.

• 2026-04-11

  I should make sure that folk on my Website know how to subscribe to my logs, and how to get to my Gemini capsule. That is, I should write a guide to RSS and a guide to Gemini, and make them accessible from my homepage.

• 2026-04-09

  I loved this silly post by ew0k.

  => Married! Was I Scammed?

• 2026-04-07

  I should write a post based on my dissertation proposal. Someone else might find my reflections on green apocalypse interesting. And it would be cool for me to look back at the end of the project.

• 2026-04-06.1

  I'd love to get to know more myths and fairy tales. I'd love a good translation of the Odyssey, or a good telling of other Greek myths, or Neil Gaiman's Norse myths, or some sagas, or…

• 2026-04-06

  I should get a bunch of my pals together and go poetry busking. If we make any money we can go to the pub afterwards.

• 2026-04-05.1

  I had an unexpected craving to go back to The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, a computer game I was obsessed with between the ages of about 16 and 18. I actually got as far as looking at prices for GPUs. I don't currently have a GPU in my computer, since I haven't played computer games for years. Playing Morrowind with enough mods to make it fun would require a GPU of some kind, though I find it really hard to judge what card would be appropriate. In the end, I remembered that I actually quite like not being addicted to computer games, and the sudden craving gradually faded.

• 2026-04-05

  I loved the Easter homily at Sacred Heart of Jesus on Lauriston Street, Edinburgh. I loved it because I couldn't predict where it was going, which meant I had to listen and think. It got me thinking about scapegoating. I agree that there's something a bit morally gross about scapegoating, and I see the connection he made with the theory of penal substitution. I think the priest missed the Lev 16 connection, though, which I think is pretty important.

• 2026-04-04.1

  I should write a post based on the essay I'm writing for my course, Science and Religion in Literature. I could try to explain to a general audience what's going on in the academic science and religion discourse right now, and my argument as to how Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy could address this.

• 2026-04-04

  I wish I had a copy of Shakespeare's sonnets. I'd love to memorise Sonnet 18.

• 2026-04-03

  I wish I was better at languages.

• 2026-04-02

  I wish there was a version of the Bible that was like the Authorised Version but with fewer errors.

• 2026-04-01.1

  I should write a post about self-hosting a Gemini capsule.

• 2026-04-01

  I wish I set aside time to read the Bible and read literature and sometimes write sonnets.

• 2026-03-30

  I loved 'Batter my heart' by John Donne. I was surprised that I loved it more than 'Death be not proud' when I bought a collection of his poems today and read through the Divine Meditations. 'Death be not proud' may yet grow on me. I'd love to memorise a few of his Divine Meditations.

• 2026-03-28

  I loved the art exhibition today at my church, Bruntsfield Evangelical. I was blown away by the hidden talents in the congregation – sorry for the cliché. I kept coming back to a few works in particular: Brooke's painting of the Samaritan woman at the well, Irena's multi-media interpretation of Ps 139 'you knit me together in my mother's womb,' Sam's prose-poem 'On Words,' and Maggie Shearer's landscapes. And this only scratches the surface. Today ignited my love for this congregation, made me passionately desire to have more art in my life, and inspired me to take up an interest in poetry again.

• 2026-02-26

  I loved Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. If you ever intend on doing science, having sex or being human, you should read this book.

• 2026-02-01

  My current diary is hand-made using a blank notebook and a bunch of felt-tip pens. It was fun to do, but also really time-consuming, and error-prone. Maybe I could write a script to produce the design in PDF? It'd probably go via HTML just because I know how to do things in HTML.

• 2026-01-01

  I should stop listening to radio and recorded music in my house. Music is played by people, not machines. So-called 'recorded music' is fake.

2025

• 2025-12-10

  I should write a post about biblical inerrancy.

• 2025-11-01

  I should write a post about owning a homelab.

• 2025-01-01

  I should write a post about self-hosting a Website.