Five Things

OK, I give up. If Robin can get Michelle Dennedy to dis­close things in pub­lic, I guess I should ful­fil my oblig­a­tions as well. Be a good net­izen and all that. But I’m not going to tag any­one, par­tially to be con­trary, par­tially because people deserve time off from their blogs over the winter break, and par­tially because lots of inter­est­ing people I know who have not yet been tagged don’t actu­ally blog.

• I grew up on a farm in New Zea­l­and. So I know quite a lot about farm­ing: dairy, pigs, a little about sheep. And the ubi­quit­ous ducks, chooks, cats, and dogs, of course. Pretty much every­one else who lived on a farm in the area was born there and lived there most of their lives; I was the outsider.
• I was work­ing in Ber­lin at the time the Ber­lin Wall came down; it was an amaz­ing time and I will always treas­ure the memory of what real people power can do. If you have a few spare hours some time, buy me a beer, ask about pre/­post-Wall Ber­lin and I’ll dredge up as many details as you like.
• I got into Web stuff via SGML and got into SGML via a Dutch friend who also stud­ied nuc­le­ar phys­ics; we col­lab­or­ated on a pub­lic­a­tion back in 1985. 
• I do much of the small-scale renov­a­tion work in our house and at some stage will blog about stain­ing, var­nish­ing, etc. I’ve replaced studs as well, and mud­ded dry­wall, but those are tasks I out­source if pos­sible. I’ve dis­covered that plumb­ing needs even more patience than sys­tems administration.
• When I’m tired my brain some­times switches into Ger­man and it takes quite a bit of effort to make it switch back so I can speak Eng­lish. Tim can testi­fy to this as I some­times start speak­ing Ger­man to him and don’t even real­ise I’m doing it.