In the 1940s, George Orwell, fighting a long campaign to keep the English of his contemporaries clean and honest, directed some of his fire against the word “jackboot”, denoting a type of cavalry equipment that was already mostly useful only as a symbol of totalitarianism. In his “As I Please” column (#62), he complained of being unable to determine what a jackboot was, exactly, and quipped that it must be “a kind of boot that you put on when you want to behave tyrannically”. Orwell's definition has stuck with me because it is obviously even more apt now that “jackboot” (and indeed, all the language used to condemn 20th century fascism) is even more stale and meaningless than ever, while showing absolutely no signs of being retired in favor of something fresher.

So it was a surprise to come across jackboots, as part of the ordinary equipment of some not-necessarily-authoritarian person traveling by horse, in Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities recently. It struck my 2018 ear and made me take notice, reminding me to think about the politicization of words and causing a brief moment of something like relief, because it brought me to a time before ideological warfare became quite so constant a feature of life.

As a way of extending my Winter Olympics obsession for as long as possible, I built this Winter Vacation Lego Creator kit today:

Some joker set the slalom course on the roof!

There's a sort of sweet spot of Lego creativity for me. I don't like the sets that have lots of very specific parts that aren't very generally applicable to things you might want to design yourself (tie-ins with entertainment properties seem to have a lot of those). But I'm also not very interested in the other end of the spectrum, in the kind of Lego construction that treats ordinary bricks as generic pixels (or voxels really). Building to mini-fig scale really prevents that pixel method though; the scales just won't work together. I really like the Creator series of sets for this reason—they hit that sweet spot perfectly.

Feburary 24, 2018 is the 100th anniversary of Estonian independence! As one of their many good ideas, the organizers of the centennial year celebrations have suggested that anyone might offer a birthday gift to the Estonian Republic, anything from a new symphony to baking a special cake to planting an oak tree. Here's a small gift from me.

In the upper-right corner of this site, I've added an overlay banner displaying the EV100 logo (an absolutely brilliant piece of graphic design work, by the way) and linking to the EV100 website. Fortunately the official color palette is nicely compatible with my own! I'll leave it up here for the rest of this centennial year.

As part of a personal goal to organize my work supplies a bit better, I created a sort of visual checklist of the things I carry, or would like to make sure I carry, in my everyday backpack. To organize the list according to what things go in what pockets (and to get some drawing practice), I made a sketch of my pack (EM brand, naturally) so that I could call out each compartment specifically. Click on the image to download a PDF.

If you carry a lot of stuff in a backpack, briefcase, toolbox, or whatever, try it yourself! Don't worry about your drawing skills—a more schematic or cartoon-like sketch would work just as well. Or take a photo and use that. Be sure to share your results!

Yesterday I made the three-hour pilgrimage north to Kennedy Space Center to gawk at the first test flight of the most powerful operational rocket in the world, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy. Short of buying a ticket, my position on the causeway bridge of the A. Max Brewer Parkway is probably one of the best views to be had of both Pad 39A, from which the rocket launched, and of Landing Zones 1 and 2 to the south at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, where the side boosters landed in textbook unison.

Here's the video, taken with my GoPro clamped to the bridge railing:

I took some still photos as well; the best ones are in a Flickr album. Enjoy!