The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

About this blog (v4.61)

Parker, 14 weeksI'm David Braverman, this is my blog, and Parker is my 14-year-old mutt. I last updated this About... page in May 2019, and the world has changed. So here's the update.

The Daily Parker is about:

  • Parker, 14 yearsParker, my dog, whom I adopted on 1 September 2006.
  • Politics. I'm a moderate-lefty by international standards, which makes me a radical left-winger in today's United States.
  • The weather. I've operated a weather website for more than 20 years. That site deals with raw data and objective observations. Many weather posts also touch politics, given the political implications of addressing climate change, especially now that we have a climate denier in the Oval Office.
  • Chicago (the greatest city in North America), and sometimes London, San Francisco, and the rest of the world.
  • Photography. I took tens of thousands of photos as a kid, then drifted away from making art until early 2011 when I finally got the first digital camera I've ever had whose photos were as good as film. That got me reading more, practicing more, and throwing more photos on the blog. In my initial burst of enthusiasm I posted a photo every day. That frequency is incompatible with having a life, so I'm updating this category less frequently. In June 2020, I got a flying camera, which may be my favorite toy ever.
  • The Apollo Chorus of Chicago, of which I am president for the 2020-21 season.

I also write a lot of software, and will occasionally post about technology as well. I've got more than 40 years experience writing the stuff, 25 of them as a professional. I own Inner Drive Technology, a microscopic software development company in Chicago, which has some interesting packages available on NuGet. I see a lot of code, and since I often get called in to projects in crisis, I see a lot of bad code, some of which may appear here.

I strive to write about these and other things with fluency and concision. "Fast, good, cheap: pick two" applies to writing as much as to any other creative process (cf: software). I hope to find an appropriate balance between the three, as streams of consciousness and literacy have always struggled against each other since the first time someone put chisel to tablet 5,500 years ago.

If you like what you see here, you'll probably also like James Fallows, Josh Marshall, John Scalzi, and Bruce Schneier. Even if you don't like my politics, you probably agree that everyone ought to read Strunk and White, and you probably have an opinion about the Oxford comma—punctuation de rigeur.

Finally, given that I started this blog over 21 years ago, it has old and crappy examples of my writing and of my opinions. I have evolved quite a bit. Author John Scalzi put it perfectly: the guy I was in 1998, the guy I am now, and the guy I'll be in 2028 are three different people.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you continue to enjoy The Daily Parker.

Last edited Friday, March 26, 2021 4:29 PM CDT