Category: Thoughts

Sue asked me what the opposite of it’s all downhill from here is. Using uphill instead of downhill doesn’t seem to improve matters, and makes it sound more like an uphill struggle. Actually I think there’s another saying like that that’s more… flat (but I can’t remember what that is).

Why would I rush out and buy an iPhone when the mobile phone I already have still works perfectly well? Granted, it’s at least eight years old — but that’s a good thing. It must be reliable! This phone has seen many of my friends’ phones come and go, often breaking down in one way…

I can’t believe how long it’s taken me to solve this Perplex City card. I’d sort of given up on it, but still had it around. Today, I picked it up while waiting for a package to build, and the answer just came to me. Duh.

Why can’t my Garmin GPS unit triangulate the position of a landmark for me? It’s got a built-in compass, and it’s got sight-markings on the casing for point-and-go navigation (you have to estimate the distance to the landmark). It would be great to be able to say ‘I can see it now if I look…

While looking up a word in the dictionary to improve my Scrabble score, I came across a word I hadn’t seen before: haecceity (hek’si:ɪtɪ). It’s the word to describe an object’s essence, or thisness, which makes it distinguishable from other similar objects. What a wonderful word! And I never would have found it if I’d…