Greetings from Keuka Lake NY and Napa CA where I arrived late last night. I'm here for about a week to play some golf with son Jacob. And see Kaitlin and Rory. Picking up the young master from summer school this afternoon.

I mentioned our NYC trip last month; here's a post on our NYC Fun. Mid June I journeyed wester for some Solstice Golf in Michigan. Still taking lots of wildlife photos to get familiar with the camera setup before heading to Africa.

1. What I've Been Reading

Articles

1. How Migrating Birds Use Quantum Effects to Navigate — Re-read this after a boat ride discussion with former boss Ted Spooner as we marveled at the beautiful birds surrounding us on Spring Lake near Lake Michigan.
2. Textcasting — Dave Winer is doing some interesting work. He is an OG blogger and if you listen to podcasts you can credit him with creating the core underlying tech (RSS) that makes it all work. He posits that we can create valuable open social networks using existing tech. Also: Introducing rss.chat.
3. Halide Mark III — the iPhone camera app's latest release which I use from time to time.

Books

1. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell — listen to this on my drive to/from Canada. First read and as outstanding as I expected. Some latent AI predictions buried in the book that even 5 years ago wouldn't have resonated.
2. How to Solve Your Own Murder grabbed on Libby and listened to it - was OK.
3. Golf is Not a Game of Perfect by Bob Rotella was a gift from Uncle Don and with solid mental game advice. Suffers from too much anecdotal bragging about his entourage of pros he has coached.
4. The Elements of Scoring by Raymond Floyd has been on my want-to-read list for a long time. This one is 25 years old and holds up very well. Caused me to revisit my mental approach more than the Rotella book.
5. Cry of the Kalahari by Mark and Delia Owens — nearly 50 years old and an amazing read in prep for Ken and I venturing into the CKGR. Most excited to observe brown hyenas.

2. What I've Been Watching

TV

1. The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst (HBO) — we enjoyed it. Another example of "hard to observe something without influencing outcomes."
2. The Madison (Apple TV+, Taylor Sheridan) — I wanted to jump ship after the first 10 minutes (and we did), but revisited it and glad we stuck around for the entire season. Kurt Russell is on a roll.
3. Widow's Bay (Apple TV+) — Fun Stephen King-influenced comedy horror.

Sports

1. 2026 World Cup — lots of family viewing at the lake; fun even after USA's run ended.

3. What I've Been Listening To

Music

1. Album Club: In the Court of the Crimson King – King Crimson — an obligatory pick as we finished our prog rock journey. Wasn't our favorite but worth the time.
2. Song Exploder: Paul McCartney — his new album is very good and always fun to hear him talk about his writing and recording process.
3. Guitar lesson rotation: Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd) just joined as the new daily-focus song, with Landslide (Fleetwood Mac) — solo intact, mostly — moving into the rotation. Also in rotation this month: Fast Car (Tracy Chapman), One (U2), Something (Beatles), Yellow (Coldplay), Angela (The Lumineers), Father and Son (Cat Stevens), Fake Plastic Trees (Radiohead), Falling Slowly (Glen Hansard), Girl In The War (Josh Ritter), Wild Horses (Rolling Stones), and Harvest Moon (Neil Young). Whew. Love my teacher.

4. What I've Been Playing

Sailing

1. First Melges 15 race of the season on Keuka with brother-in-law Dave — a rigging issue cost the first race, followed by a last-place finish and a retirement when the wind died. I'm a long way from being a competent skipper, but I also haven't invested the time to get better. Focused on other things right now.

Board Games

1. Portland friend Doug and I have an ongoing weekly game of Imperial Struggle going on Rally-the-Troops. The game is fun but mostly a sideshow as we have great conversation.
2. Italy '43 — ongoing sessions with John L down in Arizona. Perfect game for playing a turn a week in less than 1 hour.
3. Julie and I played Codenames: Duet a few times and finally reclaimed a W.
4. Played Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game with Dave before pivoting to many games of Jump Drive.
5. Euchre (including a "Dirty Clubs" variant) with Jim, Jill, and Julie.
6. Slay the Spire (Apple Arcade) with the OKC kids. A tradition is for the four or five little ones to sit with me on the couch and play a deckbuilding rogue game like Monster Train or STS.
7. Flip 7 — push-your-luck card game is seeing a lot of play this summer.
8. Five Crowns — five-suited rummy with the whole family. Good for the old folks!

5. What I'm Attempting

My big win right now has been consuming a lot of attention and Fable tokens: my PhotoLoupe photo library management app. The results are astounding. I have a complete replacement for Lightroom or DigiKam at this point (including non-destructive editing), along with AI-driven taxonomic tagging of wildlife with a focus on birds. I've also integrated iNaturalist taxonomy so the mammal, reptile, insect, and plant-life tagging is solid too. More to come on this as I'll do a detailed blog post on the app. Let me know if you want to try it (MacOS only).

Also:

1. Africa fall 2026 trip prep — vaccination gap analysis and Passport Health appointment (Hep B, Tdap, cholera, typhoid; malaria pills to follow), visa research and applications for Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Namibia, an antelope-ID Anki deck, and the NVCC Classic schedule. This month: sorted out the power-bank strategy for running a Starlink Mini in camp (two ~100 Wh banks, both flight-legal on United) and dug into road conditions south of Kasane. Also trying to figure where Starlink will and won't work as pass from country to country.
2. I'm taking the EcoTraining Online Birding Enthusiast Course — weekly Zoom classes, started with biology and evolution and now we are deep into identification strategies. Focus is on southern African continent.
3. Scotland 2027 housing — I'll be living in Scotland next summer from late May until early September, with about 2 months residence in Brora planned. July will join around July 1. Housing in Brora is ironed out as well as plans for joining the local golf club. More on this to come.

That's it for this month. My next one will probably be sent from Newark or thereabouts as we venture to South Africa. Have a great summer!

-Chris