A handful of posts I’m fond of and think are worth a look — a mix of local history, photography from around Wisconsin and beyond, pet care, and a few odds and ends. If you’re new here, this is a good place to start. The “Fad” That Never Faded: Why AI in 2026 is 1996…
I first saw the Northern Lights when I was maybe 12 or 13 years old, camping at High Cliff State Park. I don’t remember every detail of that night anymore, but I remember enough to know I wanted to see them again. That turned into a hunt that lasted decades. Over the years I’ve gone…
Tuesday, September 29th turned out to be a crisp, partly sunny fall day here in Waupaca County. It felt like the right afternoon to head up toward Marion and visit Keller Lake County Park, catch some fresh air, and get a firsthand look at how the park is holding up five months after the brutal…
It’s late, and every porch light on the street is on. Your job is to turn them all off. The catch is that tapping a light flips it and the lights above, below, left and right of it, so every move helps one light and messes with its neighbors. It’s free, there’s nothing to install,…
Lights Out looks like it should be easy. It’s a grid of lights, you press one, it flips along with the lights above, below, left and right of it, and you’re trying to get the whole board dark. Then you press a few and the board looks worse than when you started. There’s a method…
I’ve got another daily game to share, and this one is a word game. It’s called QUINT. Every day there’s one hidden five-letter word, the same one for everybody, and you get six guesses to find it. It’s free, it runs right in your browser, there are no ads, and you don’t need an account…
Sharky’s Orchard is one of those spots I end up going back to a few times every fall. It’s at W3045 Emons Road, just south of Calumet Street. It carries an Appleton mailing address, but it sits squarely in the Town of Buchanan and Darboy area, tucked into a quiet residential pocket. If you didn’t…
Summer seems to have gone by faster than ever this year. It was a strange one, filled with storms, tree damage, more cleanup than I care to remember, and what felt like a nearly endless supply of hot, humid days. I’m not quite ready to let summer go yet, though I will happily give back…
Eight side-by-side tests from one week of real work: a stopwatch, image editing, a code audit, a plugin repair, an 18-page PDF and more. Which AI actually finished the job?
For the last several years, one of my favorite late-summer traditions was the Sunflower Festival at Bergsbaken Farms up near Cecil. Last year, 2025, was the tenth one, and it was also the last. The brothers who ran it always said the goal was to make it to ten years. They made it, and then…
Some places have a name you’ve heard so many times that you just assume you’ve already been there. Mosquito Hill Nature Center was like that for me. The name has been floating around the back of my head for years, the way local landmarks do when you live in the Fox Valley. But when I…
I have driven past Menominee Park in Oshkosh more times than I can count, usually on my way to somewhere else. Last weekend I finally pulled in and walked over to the little zoo that is tucked inside it, and I am glad I did. It is small, you can see the whole thing in…
There is a little spot on the southeast side of Neenah that I had driven past plenty of times without ever stopping. It is called Conservancy Park, and it sits right in a neighborhood off S. Park Ave. I finally pulled in on a mid-August evening, mostly out of curiosity, and I am glad I…