Category: Misc

Yes, it’s everyone’s favorite time of the year — time for the annual Ingram Christmas Letter! I know that you’re as excited as I am 🙂 I’ve been doing this now for about a quarter of a century, I think. And yes, I know sometimes it feels like longer than that (imagine how I feel). I’ve been pulling together all the previous versions and publishing them as blog posts at mathewingram.com/work, but since we’ve moved several times, and I’ve switched internet providers and computers multiple times, piecing those old letters together was harder than I thought it would be! When the first one came out I think Caitlin was ten, Meaghan was six and Zoe was one. Caitlin is now 36 and has two children, Meaghan turned 32 this year, and Zoe is 27. What’s really surprising is that Becky and I haven’t aged at all!

As usual, the photos that I link to here are in a Google photo album, and you can also find them all on the Ingram Photo Server (if that link doesn’t work let me know and I will ask Meaghan to turn the server back on — it’s sitting on the coffee table at their house in Kingston). You can also find an old-fashioned web version of this letter, complete with old-timey Santa images, on my website. If you have any questions, you can reach me by email at [email protected] — unless you have a criticism, in which case please email [email protected].

It’s not every day you get a new member of the family, but this year we got two, although the way we got them was very different :-). The first was the inestimable Casey Graham Hemrica, who came into the world on March 31, to be greeted by big sister Quinn and family. He is a wise old man of nine months or so now, and he has already learned how to pull himself up on things, and has mastered the front crawl (the land version) after spending a little time trying out the combat crawl (which features the arms only). He has a number of thoughtful opinions on the issues of the day, including food — which he thinks is fantastic — and the fire in the fireplace, which he is also a big fan of. 

Continue reading “The Ingram Christmas Letter for 2025”

On 25 April 1982, two teenage boys in the small town of Borden, Saskatchewan, Canada began playing the relatively new fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. Today, 43 years later and more than 2,000 km away, Robert Wardhaugh’s D&D campaign is still going strong. The Dungeon Master, who is today also a history professor at the University of Western Ontario, is the proud holder of the GWR title for the longest running D&D campaign (homebrew). He estimates that around 500 player characters have passed through the ranks of the Party of the Pendant over the last four decades, which corresponds to over four centuries of in-game time. Characters have come and gone, empires have risen and fallen, magical items – taken from cursed tombs or dragon’s hoards – have been handed down through generations of player characters. (via Guinness)

The Top Gun anthem might not have existed if not for Billy Idol

Electronic drums. A naval deck and the first hint of early morning sun. Synths, and the murmur of an F14. Then lift-off – cue Danger Zone. Harold Faltermeyer’s Top Gun Anthem is so synonymous with the film from which it takes its name that it’s hard to imagine it being used anywhere else, but it turns out that it almost ended up in a very different kind of movie. The anthem’s iconic melody was originally intended for a dream sequence in 1985 neo-noir comedy Fletch, in which Chevy Chase imagines that he’s starring for the LA Lakers basketball team. While Faltermeyer was working on the theme, it was overheard by Billy Idol, who was recording in the studio next door. “That’s great – you should use it for Top Gun,” the singer said. And the more Faltermeyer thought about it, the more he agreed with Idol. (via Music Radar)

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “He’s been running a DnD campaign for over 40 years”

It is easy to miss California’s biggest environmental disaster. Driving north on Highway 111, you wouldn’t expect to find an inland sea. If it’s summer, the thermometer in your car could read 115 degrees. But amid the shimmering heat, there are signs of water. All around you, rows of broccoli, lettuce, and alfalfa stretch in every direction. In the fields, farmworkers bend and straighten. The air is sharp with cow dung. A pall of dust hangs over everything. You are sixty miles north of the Mexican border. You’re driving out of poverty and into money, away from one of the poorest counties in California and toward towns named for oases. Palm Springs. Rancho Mirage. The left turn is easy to miss, the brown sign a seeming anachronism: “Bombay Beach.” Surely there is no town here, you think, let alone a beach. But if you continue, you’ll see hints of life. In the distance, a squat building hangs on under the punishing sun. (via The Believer)

Three-year-old chess prodigy becomes youngest player to earn official rating

India’s Sarwagya Singh Kushwaha has become the youngest player in chess history to earn an official Fide rating at the age of three years, seven months and 20 days. The chess prodigy edged out the previous record of compatriot Anish Sarkar, who was three years, eight months and 19 days when he reached the milestone in November last year. Kushwaha, who is enrolled in nursery school in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, holds a rapid rating of 1,572. To achieve a rating from Fide, the International Chess Federation, a player needs to beat at least one Fide-rated player. A rating is a score that measures a chess player’s strengths based on their performances and is not the same as a ranking. World No 1 Magnus Carlsenis the top in rapid chess with a rating of 2,824. Kushwaha defeated three rated players in events across his state and other parts of the country to secure his record-breaking status. (via The Guardian)

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “A ragtag group of artists have taken over Bombay Beach”

The infamous Black Death — a pandemic that killed as many as one third to one half of Europeans within just a few years — may have been aided in its devastation by an unknown volcanic eruption. That’s the hypothesis presented in research published December 4 in Communications Earth & Environment, which argues that the eruption triggered several seasons of climate instability and crop failures. That instability, in turn, forced several Italian states to import grain stores from new sources—specifically, from regions surrounding the Black Sea. Riding along on those grain stores, the researchers posit, were fleas infected with Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes the plague. (via Scientific American)

Research shows cold pizza might be better for you than hot pizza

Your first thought on hearing this is probably “Why? Why is leftover pizza healthier for me?” And the answer has to do with what happens when you cool the delicious crust. When you cool a pizza to below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, some of the starches in the dough will start to mingle together to form these long chains called resistant starches. They resist digestion, and another word for a carbohydrate that resists digestion is fiber! And even if you reheat the pizza, the chains stay intact, so your body doesn’t break them down to sugar. They mostly pass through. This could help reduce blood sugar spikes for people with diabetes or people who just need more fiber for a healthier gut. And this seems to work for a lot of starches, like rice, pasta, potatoes—even beans and lentils. Heating then cooling the starch changes its properties. It’s like tempering chocolate or forging a stronger steel. (via Scientific American)

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “A volcanic eruption may have led to the spread of the Black Death”