The season’s second mosquito, already. I guess this is in line with birds not eating at the feeder any more – there are juicier meals out there.

AI is invading every space and it’s annoying the heck out of me.

Google gives me AI-generated slop instead of search results. Recipe searches result in AI-generated nonsense. Discussion threads get AI-generated replies. Customer support queries get useless AI-generated replies.

The administrator at my knitting club uses AI-generated banner images for the group’s Facebook events. Workshop participants turn to ChatGPT for generating creative ideas.

The other day I was co-interviewing a candidate for a role as a software developer in our team. Part of the interview was a pair coding exercise. We had turned off AI assistance in the code editor, and the candidate was completely helpless without it. Before diving into live coding, he had told us about all the problems he had solved and projects he had architected and completed. And yet, when given a keyboard and a text editor, he couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t initialize an array. Couldn’t loop through one, either. Couldn’t explain any of the choices he had made in past projects – everything ended in “I’d have to ask Google or ChatGPT about that”. We concluded that we need to update the job requirements to clearly specify that candidates are expected to be able to code without AI assistance.

Some people are literally losing their ability for thinking. They’re outsourcing not just the boring tasks, but even the fun and creative stuff. And they even seem proud of it.

Third attempt. The second one came out too small. I’m not entirely sure about this one either. Should I make them looser? Well-fitting socks need to be tight but not too tight.

It’s a good thing that socks are small; I have time for a fourth attempt if needed. Maybe I’ll put this one to the side and start a slightly larger version in parallel and then see which one I believe more in.

There are two birthdays coming up in April, for people who deserve hand-knitted socks.

I’ve knit so many everyday socks for myself that it takes no effort. Knitting socks for someone else – whose foot I don’t have access to, for trying them on for size – is a whole other matter. I’m also using a thicker yarn than usual, so the numbers I’ve learned by heart don’t work at all.

This is my second attempt of the first sock. The label on the yarn suggested using 3 mm needles. The fabric came out way too drapey and floppy with those. Could have worked for a cardigan or something, I guess, but it was absolutely not right for socks. This is a sock yarn, both by fibre content and by name. Why would they suggest a needle size that won’t work for knitting actual socks? Argh.

The worst of it was that I discovered this at the knitting meet-up. And, trusting the label, had only brought my 3 mm needles. Luckily another knitter had extra 2.5 mm needles that they could lend me for the evening. I brought the sock home with the stitches on a piece of scrap yarn.

Disassembled the bird feeders, scraped out the birdseed still stuck in the corners, and scrubbed them clean. Time to pack them away for the summer.

Sometimes people say that feeding birds makes them too dependent on humans for food. I guess it could possibly do that during winter. But the moment the ground thawed – not even down deep, just the top finger’s width or so – the birds here lost absolutely all interest in the sunflower seeds in the feeder. I left it up for another while, hoping that they’d keep eating and I’d have less to clean and throw away, but they really did not. Whatever bugs they find in the ground and the trees are much tastier.

Both feeders are a bit banged up. Just this weekend something (or more likely someone) knocked over the tripod the feeders hang on. The wooden one might need some glue. The metal one I mostly bent back into shape. The sheet metal parts were thinner than I had thought.

The pansies are a lost cause. There is almost nothing to bite off of them any more, and still they get yanked out.

The piano recital series at Konserthuset. Pierre-Laurent Aimard with Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, Part 2. Lovely, but also rather intense, with 140 minutes of focused listening. I was running out of energy towards the end and maybe a little bit less enraptured with the last four pairs or so.

Several parties in the rows in front of me left in the interval. I absolutely support walking out of a concert that isn’t doing it for you (if you can do it without interrupting). Still, it surprised me, that someone would choose to do so with this particular work. To me, this was – well, not quite the easiest music to listen and enjoy, but definitely not one that takes a real effort (like John Cage). You get a theme nicely and clearly presented at the beginning of every fugue and then you can follow it around all its twists and turns, like a guided tour.

Things I bought in Japan: beautiful bowls.

I have a bit of a weakness for beautiful bowls. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I collect them, but I occasionally buy some. Especially if they are green. (One of my favourites is the one that broke and managed to mend so well that I’m still using it a decade later.) Whenever I randomly browse the shelves at a thrift shop, I look for (i) wool clothes, (ii) cool fabric scraps, and (iii) interesting small bowls before anything else. I have a tiny souvenir bowl from Venice (from my first visit there in the early 2000s) and an olive wood bowl that I know I also got on a trip but now can’t remember which one.

Ceramics were on my shopping list for the Japan trip, and Ingrid and I visited several ceramics shops.

The ones that kept catching my eye were the simplest, cheapest, most rustic ones. Very convenient to have a cheap taste! I came home with one platter and three small bowls, about the size of my palm. The platter matches one of the bowls, and although the three bowls don’t match each other, they have some kind of kinship, still. Maybe they were made at the same workshop? I didn’t check.

The platter will mostly come out as a serving dish for fancier meals, but the bowls are perfect for everyday use: for storing half a lemon, or serving a handful of cherry tomatoes.

The temperatures seem to be staying solidly above freezing even at night. Time for spring flowers.

Ranunculus in a hanging basket in the front porch, so we can see it whenever we come and go. And a fluffy heather in the large pot at the bottom of the stairs.

I’m not sure what those steel-wire baskets are supposed to be lined with. I’m guessing the producers had something more aesthetically pleasing in mind than cut-up paper bags. But… the bag kind of doesn’t look too bad.

I put pansies around both of those “centerpieces” just to fill out the pots. Not the ideal plant for this neighbourhood – the deer will come and nibble at the flowers, I’m sure – but the plant nursery didn’t have anything else to choose from, this early in the season.

Oh. That went faster than expected. Eight hours later, the deer have already been at them. Not just nibbled at the flowers but yanked out the entire plants. Couldn’t they just bite off the bits they want and leave the rest? And what did the poor heather bush do, why did it deserve to be thrown to the side?

The tulips at least are well protected from the deer, up at the top of the porch. I was worried about them during the coldest days of February, but the green shoots all survived.

I have finally made my way through all the one thousand photos I took in Japan.

With both me and Ingrid interested in taking a lot of pictures, it was a very photo-heavy trip. I think I spent more time photographing than I’ve ever had the chance to do while travelling together with other people. Which felt like a true luxury – it’s so nice that mine and Ingrid’s priorities meshed so well.

On the downside, as I said, a tonne of photos to process afterwards.

One month – to the day – after we came home, I’ve processed them all. Culled and cropped and fixed and sorted and uploaded. There are now a whole lot of posts in the Japan category here on the blog.

It was more work than I had foreseen; this was a whole project. In order to keep it manageable without me buckling under the workload and giving up, I focused on just the photos for now, so there’s no commentary. Yet. I am firmly determined to write about everything as well. I’ll let you know when I’ve done that and then you can scroll through them all again if you want. As usual, my own future self is an important member of the audience here, and even if you all have gone on and lost interest in the Japan posts, I will want to write down my thoughts and memories for her.