Pressed life

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted a regular journal entry.

It's been a hell of a summer, and I've put aside a lot of my normal priorities to focus on other things. Work has been a large part of that, including two different security advisories. I'm still working on the Shibboleth-related vulnerabilities, although most of my work is now done. Mixed in with that was some other urgent work and a lot of things going badly for my larger organization that meant that everyone has been on edge.

I'm also probably overdue for a vacation, and my daily momentum hasn't been what I'd like it to be. That's meant lower energy, which in turn has meant not doing as much volunteer free software work as I'd like. I've spent more weekends on video games or just vegetating in front of the television instead of programming or working on other projects. Which has meant a lot of quiet here.

As you can tell from recent reviews, I'm slowly sorting out priorities again and "turning back on" parts of my life that had been on hold or at least on slow. I have a couple more reviews to write and then I'll be caught up with the little bit of reading that I've been able to do. I'm also experimenting with a different daily schedule, shifting a bit later since that seems to be working better for me at the moment. The next step is to get back into the habit of working from a to-do list now that I don't have as many top-priority things jumping the queue and requiring all of my attention.

The picture today is pressboard I found on Rathtrevor Beach in Parksville, British Columbia. Unlike my normal tendency to just post whatever I took, perhaps with a bit of cropping, this one was sharpened (possibly too much) in Gimp, since the original seemed a bit too blurred. Learning how to do that sort of thing properly is one of those things I'd like to do but don't have time for at the moment, but maybe I can learn from a bit of small experimentation.

I went through the various blog-style or periodically updating web sites that I visit regularly and added a bunch of links to the sidebar on my journal index page for those who are curious what I read regularly.