I’ve just celebrated one year living in Ireland. I remain thrilled and grateful to be here and am setting down roots.

Since moving, I changed my domain name from novapatch.is to novapatch.ie. I am in Ireland after all and not in Iceland (although the Levenshtein distance is only one character). I’ve also started maintaining and contributing to this site again.

In June, I presented Queer Localization at LocWorld55 in Dublin, and in October I’ll present State of the Regex 2026 at the Unicode Technology Workshop (UTW) in Nancy, France. I’m also drafting a technical proposal to standardize Unicode Grapheme Cluster Properties.

After completing twelve monthly 100 km rides with Randonneurs USA (RUSA) and earning the P-12 award in June 2025, I started a new challenge riding twelve monthly 200 km rides with Audax Ireland to earn the RRTY award, with plans to complete it by riding the Mick Byrne 200 in the Wicklow Mountains this month. Next I’m planning my first Super Randonneur series of 200, 300, 400, and 600 km rides in a single year.

I’d never previously considered myself a runner but picked it up over the past year to regularly run the coastal cliff trails and rocky hills of Howth Head. I’ve since raced in the Gaelforce 10K trail run trilogy in Howth and Bray, with Wicklow following later this year.

While exploring the local trails, I found a gap in a stone wall that has been a great spot to set up my camera traps to capture wildlife photos and videos. Here’s a red fox making a midday traverse through the wall:

Red fox standing in a gap in a mossy stone wall

Other recent visitors include hedgehogs, rabbits, grey squirrels, wood mice, and brown rats.

Updated: 5 July 2026