First Quarter – 2026

Been a bit of a slow start to the year, which is honestly fine by me. Still! Let’s see what we’ve gotten up to…

Outings & learnings

I took a course in February, “Discover the mysteries of film photography,” at Les Affûtés. As a friend kindly pointed out, I am aware of some of the mysteries, but I did think it was worthwhile reviewing the basics, and maybe being more intentional about the practice.

In this case, I came away from the lesson feeling like I want to shoot a little more at different speeds… my camera’s got a little mark at 1/250th, which felt important*, so I never really strayed from it all that much, unless by necessity. There’s a whole range of exposures out there! So, that’s more inspiration to shoot more.

[* Of course, now that I look at it, a note on p.18 of the instructions reads “The 250 engraved in red indicates the fastest sync speed for an electronic flash unit.” Interesting! Always read the manual, folks.]

The very next day, my wife & I explored Sherlock Holmes: Cracking the Case at the Pointe-à-Callière museum. First off, it’s probably our favourite museum in Montréal, so we went ahead and got ourselves yearly passes; I intend to lord it over the plebs whenever I apply my 10% discount in the museum shop.

The Holmes exhibit was definitely geared towards kids, but we had a good time. Despite all the children, and despite the dawning realization that I may not be the world’s greatest detective.

Media

I started Babylon 5! Which is about as interesting as it gets. I’ve chosen to watch everything—including the movies—in roughly their original broadcast order, though I’m aware that there are several other competing schools. I’m keeping track of my progress in a spreadsheet, naturally.

Look at them go

I carried ROUTINE over from 2025 and finished it early this year… Definitely gets an “interesting 3 out of 5” from me—I think most folks would call it “a good 7 out of 10,” but I only rate out of five, and half-stars are for cowards.

Anyway, the game has incredible visual design, obviously, though I can’t help feeling it would’ve been greatly improved by omitting the enemies. There’s still a cool video game in there! One that isn’t nearly so frustrating.

when the moon's in your lounge while you're having to scrounge, that's...

For more retro-futurism, check out PROJECT FORLORN on both itch and Bandcamp. It’s an absolute trip and it had me somehow feeling vertigo, anxiety, and elation all at once.

futureOS: It's Nodes™

Separately, I had been making a concerted effort to get through Tie Xi Qu a half-hour or so at a time (I did finally finish); and so, when I played The Century Burn around the same time, I felt some unexpected harmonies.

Actual art criticism left as an exercise to the reader

And finally, just a shout out to Xenosphere for doing something silly but also surprisingly clever.

Health

I’ve finally had a positive diagnosis for gout! It’s pretty mild, all things considered (a $600 cortisone injection notwithstanding), nothing like the gnarly images & medieval drawings you can find online. It comes and goes, and of all the things to be diagnosed with, “enjoying myself” is something I’ll cop to.

Still, one does have to adapt. Cutting back on alcohol is probably the best thing I can do for it. Updates and sober (!) reflection on that in the future, I hope.

Anecdotally, it seems like I should also be hewing closer to the DASH diet, which roughly overlaps with gout mitigation. I’m still in the habit of planning, as my wife puts it, recipes instead of meals: I can’t just put together a simple main and a simple side; I always end up over-preparing and building something for forty-five minutes at least. Most weeknights.

I’ve been meaning to work on that for… almost a decade, maybe. Maybe longer. I’d like to be better about keeping the fridge generally stocked, and just throwing something together on the spot―meals I don’t have to think about. Fry up a chicken breast, sauté some greens, throw it on a plate―that sort of thing. I’d prefer to have vegetarian versions of that too… but I haven’t been able to find reliable vegetarian mains! Still figuring this out.

Let me know if you have any favourite weeknight options!

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♥🖖