Getting ready for a trip, and enjoying the luxury of making sure some things, at least, work.

Over the past few days I gave myself the luxury of a few unbroken half days to try and get to grips with the machinery underneath this website and to try and revive the Vaviblog. In the process, I've learned a bit about Grav and a lot about me and how I tackle this sort of thing.

The biggest single problem is how easy it is to simply suck it and see. Try something; save it; refresh the browser. Rinse and repeat. I've made a lot of progress that way, but I wouldn't say I have really deepened my understanding too much. I get some of the principles of programming; after all, I started been doing it around 45 years ago, with FORTRAN on an IBM370. The rot set in with my first personal computer, an Apple ][e, a dozen or so years later. Working in BASIC, it just became easier to try things rather than go through all the stages.

Yesterday I was walking down the street and I almost swooned under the influence of a tree full of orange blossoms. Today, I continue repopulating this website and discover that at around this time of the year, 14 years ago, I almost swooned for the very same reason. In fact, that day was very muc...

I've had a little problem here, mostly the result of biting off more than I can chew, technology-wise. I've sorted it out now, I'm pleased to say, more or less all by myself. "More or less" because the very act of asking others for help seems to be necessary to get me to think logically about things and try to solve them in a systematic manner.

My latest piece for NPR's The Salt went up yesterday: Your Quinoa Habit Really Did Help Peru's Poor. But There's Trouble Ahead. The nice part about it, quite apart from the work I reported and the researchers who gave freely of their time and expertise, is in that one word: but.

The quinoa story is complicated, with lots of twists and turns, and I am really grateful to have been given enough space to explore some of the complications in some depth.