I was going to write my 60-month post about Ingrid. I had even sat down at the computer and opened the file with the notes I’d taken during the month. But instead of writing I got into a discussion with Eric about what Ingrid is like, what life with Ingrid is like, how our relationships with Ingrid work and don’t work, and so on. It was a good and deep and useful discussion but it took an hour. With nothing written, and the time at eleven PM, I am going to bed and leaving the month post for tomorrow.

Today I found something I did not know I needed: SubtlePatterns.com. The moment I saw it, I realized that this is what the blog design has been missing.

Somewhat tired for no particular reason. Well, a bit of autumn darkness, the tail end of a slight cold, and a few nights of not-so-great sleep. Thus, no inspiration for blogging.

Prompted by crankymonkeys in London I have now put up an About page. What do you think?

I’ve finished putting up my backdated posts from the vacation. Here are links to all of them: Adrian six months, Ingrid fifty-three months; daily posts about the trip: day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, day 5, day 6, day 7, an observation, and some concluding remarks.

If I did movie reviews, I’d write a rave review about The Secret of Kells. But I don’t.

This blog has a whole category for books, and none for movies. That’s no accident. Books are much more important to me than movies. If I had to live without movies, I don’t think I’d miss them much. Books, on the other hand, are essential. (So is the internet, for that matter.) And I often have opinions about the books I read, whereas I don’t know enough about the art of making movies to be able to say anything particularly intelligent about them. I don’t think in images, I think in words; I don’t process images as well as I process language.

In the evenings, when both kids are asleep, Eric will often watch a movie or part of some TV series, while I’d rather spend time reading blogs or a book. But I often listen to whatever he watches with half my attention. Sometimes I decide partway through that his movie sounds so interesting that I want to see the rest. And sometimes, very occasionally, I will take the time to watch a whole movie. Even more rarely, I will ask Eric for a particular movie, rather than just “tag along” with whatever he chooses.

I can only recall three movies that I’ve watched from beginning to end during recent months. (I may have seen more but in that case they didn’t make a very strong impression. And watching Ingrid’s “Barbie Rapunzel” with her does NOT count.)

The Secret of Kells, as I said, was wonderful. This one we all watched together on New Year’s Eve, in order to stay awake until midnight, and everyone loved it. It is beautiful, magical, gripping: a fairy tale excellently told.

Babies was one I had wanted to see. Just 4 babies doing their stuff: somehow totally riveting. Perhaps because I have one at home myself? (Review at Salon.com)

How to Train Your Dragon was just plain fun.

I just discovered that the mechanism that should publish my bookmarks from delicious.com to this blog has not been working very well for a while. I have manually published the pending posts, so a bunch of new posts but with old dates are available under Favourites on the web.

I should blog about our remodelling project, but it looks unlikely that I will find the necessary time and piece of mind. We’ve had builders in the house since Monday morning, and they are noisy. Crowbars, reciprocating saws, and a screaming baby together make it hard to concentrate. So this post will have to do for now; details and photos will have to wait.

I’ve posted a selection of photos from our Beijing trip in the photo gallery.

I’m in Gothenburg for two days for ScanDevConf 2010. With a long train ride yesterday, and an evening in a hotel room today, you’d think I’d finally have time to blog… but no. I spent my hours on the train reading China Miéville’s The City and the City, and this evening at a bar/pub almost-watching football (yes, football) with some fellow developers I met at the conference.

I was also expecting to blog about the conference during the day. But access to power outlets was less than generous, so I couldn’t type my notes during the sessions themselves, meaning I’ll have to process them before they’re in a bloggable state. A real blog post will be coming soon.