What I do when I am not in front of a terminal: carry a camera, read, drive a very long way to somewhere empty, and keep a small model of wherever I end up.
White Sands, New Mexico.
Cameras
Two Canon bodies, three fast EF zooms, and two DJI things for the frames a tripod cannot reach. Same instinct as the research, honestly: go look at the thing directly instead of reading someone else's summary of it. The footage that moves goes up on YouTube.
Scroll the drawing sideways →
The glass all predates the R5 — it was bought for the 6D Mark II and now goes on the R5 through an EF-to-RF adapter. The 6D Mark II is still the one I hand to whoever is in the passenger seat.
Reading
Mostly Shakespeare, and mostly the plays — I have worked through most of the thirty-six collected in the First Folio. The whole shelf now travels as one front-lit slab, which is the least romantic and by some distance the most practical reading setup I have owned.
Scroll the shelf sideways →
The three sections are the First Folio’s own: the 1623 collection sorts its thirty-six plays into fourteen comedies, ten histories and twelve tragedies.
Road trips
Four cross-country runs, every one of them out of Los Angeles and back — no one-way flights, no shipped car. Same three people and the same dog each time, and not one of them came home entirely the way it went out.
Scroll the map sideways →
The lines follow the roads we actually took, not great circles, so each one closes into a loop at Los Angeles. Where a leg really was driven twice the line simply doubles over itself. Every stop is listed below.
2023
Los Angeles → SeattleToyota RAV4
Highway 1 and US-101 the whole way up, on the water for most of it — Big Sur, Monterey, San Francisco, the Oregon headlands, and a coast town west of Portland whose name I have lost. A few days in the national parks around Seattle, then home the other side of the mountains: Portland, the falls just east of it, and US-395 down through Reno and the eastern Sierra.
Los Angeles → Monterey → San Francisco → a coast town west of Portland → Seattle → the national parks around it → Portland → the falls east of it → Reno → Los Angeles
2024
Los Angeles → TexasToyota RAV4
Las Vegas and the red rock at Sedona on the way out, then I-10 east into a circuit of the Texas cities with a day in each. Home along the New Mexico line through Carlsbad and Las Cruces.
Los Angeles → Las Vegas → Sedona → Tucson → El Paso → San Antonio → Austin → Houston → Dallas → Carlsbad → Las Cruces → Phoenix → Los Angeles
2025
Los Angeles → ChicagoToyota RAV4
Up US-395 to Mammoth Lakes, then across Nevada and Idaho to the Tetons and the Black Hills, and east through Minneapolis into Chicago. Home the middle way: Lincoln, Denver, over the Rockies, and out through the Utah desert at Moab. The RAV4's last long one.
Los Angeles → Mammoth Lakes → Winnemucca → Twin Falls → Grand Teton → Gillette → Rapid City → Minneapolis → Chicago → Lincoln → Denver → Moab → St. George → Los Angeles
2026
Los Angeles → BostonTesla Model 3
The drive out to the SES AI internship: Phoenix, then straight across to Pittsburgh and Boston. Two months there, with a run down to New York in the middle, and home by Niagara Falls, St. Louis and New Mexico. FSD did most of the driving; charging stops set the rhythm of the day in a way gas stations never did.
Los Angeles → Phoenix → Pittsburgh → Boston → New York and back, mid-stay → Niagara Falls → St. Louis → New Mexico → Phoenix → Los Angeles
Places
A small clay model of somewhere I have been, built from a photo I took there. Drag one sideways to walk round it; the name opens the map.
