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Things I’m working on at the moment

This is a NOW page, a neat idea cooked up by the rather clever Derek Sivers.

It’s a way to get an overview of what I’m slogging through focused on at the moment.

The 3WU (three word update)

Xercane por ritmo.

I wrote these words when I began studying a language experiment called Globasa.

Roughly translated, it means Searching For Rhythm.

It’s an apt description of how it feels to seek some equilibrium after a year of chaos.

The Clown House’s Heartbeat

An old wind-up clock now sits on a table in the Clown House’s lounge. It came from the childhood home of one of our inhabitants. It got a feature position in the room because of its reliable ability to transform them into a grinning child whenever it said, “Bong.”

I had secrety assumed that a noisy reminder of the passage of time would grind my last nerve. I was delighted to be wrong, and discovered that I think of it as the beating heart of this place.

Truthfully, this mechanical wonder and I have a lot in common. We’re both old, still trying to achieve our purpose, and require periodic adjustments to keep us on track.

Filthy Human Hands Swag!

A fediverse friend created some fantastic looking buttons and magnets which feature the project’s logo. Not long after, a box of these beautiful hand-pressed goodies appeared in our mailbox.

Inspired by that generosity, we’ve been mailing them out to folks who have used the license on their own creative projects. If you create something and release it under the Filthy Human Hands License, let me know and I’ll send you one.

Technical Jiggery Pokery

BTW, Russ, you’ve just unlocked an Achievement:

Nerdiest Clown on Planet Earth!

The Lilypad

After archiving the lifelong digital ephemera of a professional photographer, the clown house found itself with an inheritance of some old computers. This sort of luxury was new for us, and we decided to set up a small lab area. The goal is to explore some “weirder” technologies without breaking any of the critical bits of our existing infrastructure.

One of those elder machines had the ridiculous hostname “King Frog”. His majesty now acts as the router for the lab, which quickly picked up “The Lilypad” as a nickname.

Absolutely demolishing the consistency of this naming scheme are the lab inhabitants, which are all named after fictional elephants.

Currently, Horton is running NetBSD and Nellie is slowly figuring out how to run 9front.

Slash Pages

I’ve added a couple of slash pages:

zuzai

The word zuzai entered my vocabulary because thinking of things only in the negative hurt.

Just some Perl hacking clown

I’m still playing with Perl, and I’ve moved some accumulted notes to their own page.

Making

We’re slowly getting back to creative projects again after months of disruption.

Currently on the workbench:

This Old Clown House

The never-ending adventure of transforming a hundred-and-someodd year old hotel into a clown school, artists residency, and theatrical playspace.

Recent chaos put all of our renovation efforts on hold. We’re slowly getting back to them.

There’s some rewiring coming up on our to-do list. We’ll be heading back into the attic to wrestle with Wattsworth, the electric tentacle monster who lives in our walls, soon.

We’ve been talking about adding some insulation up there too.

Room Three

In an exciting bit of news, we’ve officially broken ground on one of the guest rooms in This Old Clown House!

So far, the moldering carpets and padding have been removed from the floor. Cutting and bagging these up was a filthy, disgusting job. :)

The nail boards have been pried up, creating a large pile of what a friend called ‘danger confetti’.

Once we clear the debris, we’ll scrape the old carpet glue and under layers away.

In a small bit of good news on this project, the baseboards/skirting are in decent shape in this room. Replacing them in the Delrita Reading Room was a huge ordeal, and I’m excited to skip the task this time around.

In another bit of good news, the clowns failed a test! (In this case, it was an asbestos test.) After discovering some awfulness under the rug, we stopped progress to make sure the dirt was safe. Testing showed nothing dangerous, and so we will soon return to grinding up the old underlayment in disgust, as opposed to danger.

Circus Skills / Theater Play

With many rooms in This Old Clown House still being under construction, a fair amount of our belongings are still in boxes. During some reshuffling of those piles, I stumbled across my long-misplaced juggling hat! It’s been moved to the theater, where it has been encouraging lots of play and silliness.

One of my clown partners made some breakthroughs on juggling recently. I’ve been excited to wear the coach hat and encourage them to keep throwing things at me, themselves, and the floor.

I had a personal breathrough in my handstand training!

I was interviewed about my work as a clown teacher: BoldJourney.com

I’ve updated my Recommended Reading List For Clowns.


Last Updated: 2026-09-27