We were lucky enough to spend the weekend at a medieval castle deep in the Umbrian countryside. I look my portable Birdnet-Pi along, completely forgetting that it needed to connect to the internet to set the correct time. I remembered, however, that the analyses require no connection. So, what the h...

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I dont really need to know who is visiting my websites, although it is an undeniable pleasure to see number go up. I certainly don't want to feed the beast with any information about my visitors, which is why I long ago gave up on GAnal and adopted Bise. It all worked swimmingly with a mix of automation and manual drudgery for about six years. Then, when I started to move my hosting from Dreamhost to Hetzner, it basically went belly up.

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In the End was the Word

I was so taken with Civilisations that I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to indulge in an earlier novel by Laurent Binet. Doing it this way round made a lot of sense, because I do not think I would have persevered if I had not already had a taste of Binet’s brilliance.

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Hooded crows are common round here and very entertaining. I took to offering them bits of old cheese, apple cores and the like, eventually settling on peanuts in their shell because they are inexpensive and handy. If the birds are hanging around, they come as soon as they see me raise my arm. If they’re some place else, it may take a while for them to latch onto the treat. Over the weeks, they have definitely become more relaxed in my presence.

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It was a toss-up between working on something a little more substantive or documenting February, and the more mechanical option won.

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