JONTILLMAN.COM | part of the problem since 1976

Well, it seems that blog memes still exist, since my friend Jeff tagged me with one. In the true spirit of blogging, I will now blindly jump on board and reveal several seemingly interesting but totally meaningless factoids about myself:
What were you doing five years ago?
Living at the beach.
What are five snacks you enjoy?
I’m not [...]

Quite literally. For the last several weeks we have been working to get our planting done before it got really hot here, and today we finish up putting in the first round of vegetables.
Biodynamic, open-pollinated, heirloom seeds from Abundant Life and Nichols nurseries are going to provide us with Artichoke, Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, Cabbage, Carrot, [...]

I have previously (here, here and here) talked about my aversion to the concept of mortgage debt (Old French “death pledge”). I was sort of grasping at the reasons behind it, the justifications for co-owning a home with a bank just rang hollow to me.
Now the folks at eFinanceDirectory have addressed most of these myths [...]

Thanks to a timely heads-up from Jeff, I am now happily awaiting the arrival of my orchestra box seats for Eddie Izzard’s June 25 Atlanta show. Mrs. Badcrumble would be so proud.

Dear CenterIce Online,
I am an ice hockey fan, and have been for more than a decade now. I do not live in the same market as the team I follow, so the only way for me to legally watch my favorite team play is through the NHL’s Center Ice package. As a bonus, I get [...]

The young Marcel Proust was asked to fill out questionnaires at two social events: one when he was 13, another when he was 20. Proust did not invent this party game; he is simply the most extraordinary person to respond to them. While I am not nearly the personage Marcel was, I too shall take [...]

I’m testing out the integration between Twitter and Wordpress via Alex King’s Twitter Tools plugin with an eye towards perhaps replacing the current diversions with some form of Twitter thing.
Ideally what I would like to have is a way to have the entirety of the Diversions posts show up as a Tweet on Twitter instead [...]

…or South West Georgia for those of you not in the know, which is likely all of you. After a two week vacation of sorts in South Carolina, we repaired farther South in order to “chop wood and carry water”.
Somehow, six weeks rolled by and now here it is a week before my birthday. Fortunately [...]

Things have been a bit quiet around here as we prepare for our second intercontinental move in a year. Our time in London has come to a close, and we are headed back to the States at the end of this month.
Last year during our move, I basically stopped posting entirely, due to the really [...]

Down Sclater street, not far from Spitalfields market, there is a lovely oasis of vinyl goodness for all us music collectors who are not quite ready to move entirely to digital copies of music, or who hate going to HMV to get new music.
No matter what you’re into, music wise, Mike and crew either have [...]

Clive has an amazing history of the East London Line over at his site.
Its story begins in 1865 when a people involved with the first tunnel under the Thames formed the East London Railway, which purchased the second tunnel under the river to form part of an underground rail link between the GER at Liverpool [...]

banksy pulp fiction bananas
Originally uploaded by katenadine.

East London is a visually interesting place, and happens to be blessed with a plethora of excellent photographers. Every day I share one image with you that I think captures some aspect of East London perfectly.
Banksy’s pulp fiction bananas, now sadly gone [...]

Alley
Originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

East London is a visually interesting place, and happens to be blessed with a plethora of excellent photographers. Every day I share one image with you that I think captures some aspect of East London perfectly.
This one is something of a puzzle. If you don’t [...]

1. No One Wants It Sold, Except The Developers
The problem is that the local council are trying to sell it off to first one developer and then another. First Wal-Mart came calling, but backed out due to a huge outcry from the local populace. Now a new plan is afoot it sell it to another [...]

LONDON’s East End got a chance to show off its huge collection of toys to a bunch of delegates from all over the world.
The delegates planning next year’s international Toy Library Association conference in Paris came from across the globe, from France, Belgium, Italy, South Africa, Brazil, Japan and South Korea, to look at the [...]

One of the most amusing things about living in the UK are the subtle differences in phraseology that make it, in certain situation, impossible for Britons and Yanks to understand each other.
Case in point; I was completely confused to hear two men down the pub talking about “yummy mummy”. It took several eavesdropping minutes for [...]

From Lifeisland: PRESS RELEASE SAT 28TH APRIL. IMMEDIATE
Too little, too late! After almost two years of meeting with plot holders and repeatedly promising to carefully move this 100 year old community to a suitable site before eviction the London Development Agency (LDA) now say they haven’t made any ‘promises or commitments’.
These much filmed and [...]

A revolutionary “zero-carbon” house which removes harmful emissions instead of releasing them into the atmosphere is to be built in Hackney.
The environmentally friendly, two-bedroom home is one of the first designs to take in carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming, rather than causing it.

[youtube]Q-aNwauzO3Y[/youtube]
Manor Gardens Allotments are a small green paradise and thriving community hidden away in the East End of London. For nearly 100 years generations of local people have been able to grow their own food and enjoy their leisure in this uniquely secure and peaceful space, which time and the hard work of the plotholders [...]