As part of my continuing effort to make myself, rather than advertisers who covet my eyeballs and purchasing power, the customer, I took out a premium subscription to Newsblur. It's an RSS reader that claims to offer "Visual feed reading with intelligence" and I want it to replace Google Reader. Not that there's anything wrong with GReader, apart from the fact that it is from the Don't Be Evil boys themselves. I just like the idea of paying for service, which then gives me a full-on right to demand more of it. That's why I use Pinboard and Instapaper rather than alternatives.

In my yoof, I do believe I was the only person I knew who knew and liked both Harry Nilsson and Randy Newman. Not merely liked, but was extremely fond of. So I read this young man's take on what he (or a sub) called L.A. Weirdos with great pleasure, and not a little envy at his perspicaciousness....

Ever a sucker for new productivity porn that will make me effective, successful and attractive to small animals, I'm kicking the tyres of The Pomodoro Technique. In a nutshell: work at something for 25 minutes, resisting all distractions; take a 3-5 minute break; repeat. Every four sessions, take a long break.

The abundant wisteria in the neighbourhood looks much better to the eye than to the camera. No matter.

I had hoped to be able to solve a mystery for this post; why do Italians call wisteria glicine? To me, the Greek root for glycine is associated with sweetness, although the plant that springs...

Everything that I wanted to come through the winter has, some of it in rare good form.

The bonsai wisteria, one of seven that I grew from seed I collected in 2007, is still bonsai and flowering for all it is worth. The flower colours and other aspects differ among the seven; I wonder whether I mig...