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I never thought that the law applied equally to rich people and poor people. I never considered myself that naive. I had always understood that rich people could break the law in ways that poor people simply couldn't.

But I had always assumed that the way this worked in practice was that being rich just came with a heightened ability to cover your tracks. I had always assumed that, rich or poor, it was of supreme importance not to get caught, and that being rich simply bought you more options in that regard. Maybe you could bribe a police officer, or a judge, and make the charges go away. Maybe you could afford to hire someone to do the dirty work for you, or take the fall for you if it came to that.

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I've actually been toying with the idea of switching to Hugo to learn some Go and also because the org mode integration is a bit better.

I've been using Eleventy for my blog for the last 3 years or so, and I'm finding the experience...okay? It's more complicated to set up than Pelican, which I was using before, but also a lot more amenable to programming yourself out of problems.

Annual Christmas tree snap

4 photos

This is the year for tech upgrades, I guess. New tiny computer, new customizable keyboard and new smaller external storage.

My blog is based around Eleventy, which means I write my entries in plain text, using Markdown and YAML front matter, a combo which I'm sure is familiar to most users of static site generators.

I also participate in the IndieWeb, which means I post many different kinds of content other than your standard blog posts - notes, likes, photos, etc.

I find it useful to divide my content in two main types: original content, where the focus is on my own published material, and derivative content, which only makes sense in the context of another, external URL.

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First real snow fall of the year. Boot weather is here!

I can't be the only one who often catches himself saying "When I graduate" when I mean to say "When I retire", right?

Madrid marked the end of our trip to Spain. Our plane home flew out of there and so we decided to spend the evening before exploring what we could of the city. We boarded a train from Seville and arrived at our hotel around 4pm that day.

I would argue Madrid is the Toronto of Spain from the point of view of visiting Canadians because, like Toronto, it's the largest city in the country as well as its economic hub and also the city that everyone loves to hate.

I've said this before but I'll say it again - everyone loves Barcelona. No one loves Madrid. Madrid, by all popular accounts, is mediocre at best.

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I'm 47 years old, and most of the people I work with are much younger than I am - often in their 20's and 30's. Cultural references that I think are universal sometimes turn out to be pretty specific to my age group in ways that surprise me.

Take something like Bugs Bunny. Most people, young and old, have of course heard of Bugs Bunny but it turns out that not a lot of young people grew up watching it. I have, and it is because of this cartoon that I happen to vaguely know some of the music to The Barber of Seville.

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The COVID-19 pandemic put a cramp in my travel habits, as it did with everyone. The last overseas trip that Evelyn and I went on was to Poland in 2016 for a wedding and the last one that we actually planned was to Greece in 2015 (and, my God, it's hard for me to accept that Greece 9 years ago). We've been to a handful of relatively local destinations in the interim (Vancouver, New York, PEI) but nothing particularly foreign.

And while I do remain part of an increasingly small minority of people who still thinks about the pandemic in the present tense, I also wanted to finally visit someplace a bit more exotic.

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I recently saw this up close!

https://desmondrivet.com/2024/10/05/alcazar/19c08a7be5b784

11 albums

Evelyn and I took a 10 day trip to Spain in September 2024.

Barcelona: Noisy, gritty, vibrant. Surprisingly many vermouterias. Seville: Beautiful, charming, fun. Surprisingly few barbers.

There is a glut of vermouterias in Barcelona, many of them with their own house blends and...I kind of love it?

Yes, I know that the word "chai" literally just means "tea" in Hindi (and other languages) and that the term "chai tea" is therefore technically redundant. I don't care. I will still occasionally say "chai tea" and I don't feel like I'm committing some kind of linguistic sin by doing so.

The English translation of "chai" is, of course, "tea" and it refers to a very generic category of usually hot and often caffeinated beverages made from steeping various kinds of leaves. On the other hand, the word "chai" in English usually refers to a very specific kind of spiced tea, often taken with milk, that Westerners typically associate with the culinary tradition of South Asia. One would not normally use the word "chai" in English to refer to the bog standard Orange Pekoe that one might drink for a caffeine fix in the morning before work.

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I mean...not quite everyone is welcome, right? Man, solicitors get no respect!

My homepage is pretty much just a personal introduction and a jumping off point to the rest of my site:

https://desmondrivet.com