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Food Around the Clock – New York, New York I shot this picture somewhere in Times Square. Given that they serve breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late night, apparently they pretty much serve food around the clock. Though I can’t tell if they are actually open 24 hours. The black-and-white conversion works well here. There’s a nice shine and glow to the image, and the lack of color simplifies the photo. However, I like the color version too, and the red neon is a real bonus. I included that version…

Today was quite busy and full of excitement! We went to a bunch of activities and had a ball! The day kicked off with Clarkson and me going to a carnival event for his school, where he was excited to go on some bounce houses. Then, we drove over to the Tatertot Con Year 3 I had just recently discussed being excited about. When it officially kicked off at 12 PM, it became busy quite quickly! A number of vendors and creators were there. Near the entrance was Go Getter Gamez with their usual…

The suspense and drama of postseason baseball is exciting, but it also slightly spoils my preferred mode of enjoyment, which is putting on another low stakes regular season game to provide company in a relaxed evening.

A family member needed to move from Seattle down to the LA area in a hurry last week, and the best car I had to move a whole apartment's worth of stuff safe and dry was our VW ID Buzz van. But it is an EV and I did wonder how it might affect a long trip, but headed out in it for the first leg of my journey.This would be my third EV road trip of over 1,000 miles (here's: 1 & 2). This time, I went around 2,600 miles, from Portland up to Seattle and back, then down to Ventura, Los Angeles, and…

For as long as I've been alive, I've been entrepreneurial. Excited, eager, always wanting to start things. Someone I've known for a long time recently described it as a compulsion. It is. About 12 years ago, I started a non-profit in Mumbai that taught underprivileged children how to code. (Here's that story.) This year, I handed it off completely to the local team. They took the bones of what we built and turned it into an excellent local organization, Tinker Qubits. I have often found myself…

It has been a very good vacation. Digital Camera

16 October 2026 in Melbourne, supported by Primitive Ring and DB4.Again we find ourselves in Thornbury, beholden to some of Melbourne's worst night-time public transport. Getting home usually means just missing a train and having to wait 40 to 60 minutes for the next one, or getting on the very slow 86 tram. On the train on the way there we realised it would be replacement buses for the journey home, as an added treat.Yeah, I am not a big fan of High Street but it's hard to avoid, and I am,…

I have access to a Large Language Model. It can do things for me. Most anything I can imagine done with ones and zeroes. It used to be that I’d come up with an idea, and then had the puzzle part where I tried to make the code fit together so it did the thing I wanted it to do. Alan Watts tells a story: See, there’s this guy, a farmer, who ordered a helping man to come in and found that he was an extraordinarily efficient worker. For the first day he put him on sawing logs. And he sawed more…

I have a friend who grow up and lives in a poor country. He is a brilliant person. Takes good care of the family, works hard to earn a living. However, the place that he lives has limited employment opportunities. Nevertheless, he still makes good money in his employment. I think that he could achieve far more if he is born in a first world country. Due to his age, migration is not an option. The next best hope are his children. The aim is to let his children step on his shoulder to find bigger…

Morning time and this morning like usual, I go to see the puppies and I’m attacked. They both will start wanting the attention but soon they get jealous. If I pet one, the other starts attacking me or the other. I enjoy their company I guess more than some humans I know here. I started working on this little thing for the blog the other day. Got it wrong more than right. That’s my way I guess. Finally was able to have it working kinda how I want. What I’ve figured is that I am never done making…

If you've slept on the Apple TV show Dark Matter, you should watch it. Season one based on the book, and was good. Season two has surprised me. Without any further source material, it's better than season one. Highly highly recommended.

midnight don't mean much to me anymore but so many fragments of song that fly from my fingers together in wing and flight unfinished in earlier hours still crushed by autumn of sunrise then desert winter daytime contains other things said explicate It Was Just Like Yesterday :: 17th October 2026

Got a another bill from the urgent care just under $400. Stupid, annoying, whatever. Put it on the credit card, will probably pay it off one half at a time. My partner did find out they can put me on their insurance, so next year I'll have that, that's something. It's whatever, we push forward. I did sign up for a R.U.S.H. tournament next week, so I'm excited for that! I may stream it so I can rewatch my gameplay after!

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. (1 Corinthians 13) I've been learning that love isn't the feeling at the top of the mountain. It's what you do on the way back down. Growth looks a lot less like winning and a lot more like keeping no record of wrongs, telling the truth gently, and protecting the people in your life, especially when they're not in the room. This week I read The Shape of Trust — Anatomy of a Sangha, a small interactive piece…

Friday (16 October) would have been my father’s 83rd birthday. Here is a link to his obituary, along with some additional photos.

Everyone who bothers with this inevitably asks themselves, Who am I writing for? Many will answer, For myself, of course. But then why a public-facing website? Why the upvotes, guestbooks, Contact links? Be honest with yourself. Does knowing someone might read your writing change what you’re willing to say? Perhaps the for myself claim isn't really about the absence of an audience. Rather, it's about refusing to let that audience dictate what you write. L’air du temps, the hate mail, the…

Er....just a coffee for me.

Some pics from the SF Old Car Picnic today:

Click here to book for The Gentle Author’s Tours Click to enlarge Sometimes in London, I think I hear a lone dog barking in the distance and I wonder if it is an echo from another street or a yard. Sometimes in London, I wake late in the night and hear a dog calling out to me on the wind, in the dark silent city of my dreaming. What is this yelp I believe I hear in London, dis-embodied and far away? Is it the sound of the dogs of old London – the guard dogs, the lap dogs, the stray dogs, the…

DOLMENWOLVES - THURSDAY #1 Thursday's group also chose to start at a dungeon. I picked Winter's Daughter, rotated the map, restocked the dungeon a little and placed it in the hills near Lankshorn. They reached the barrow and immediately found signs that somebody had beaten them there. Fresh tracks, the stone slab sealing the entrance pushed aside and tools still lying outside. In the first room, a sack was stuck beneath a knocked over plinth. As soon as they started talking, something inside…

Yes, I’m finally home! With a couple of side trips. Last night was a strange one. I kept getting nurses coming by, asking if I was ready to go home, pretty much until shift change. I was quite a mess, apparently. I took a selfie after my brother came and left with my daughter, sent … Continue reading Home – the long way

As a chemical engineering student, I never expected to learn the physics behind why sausages usually split lengthwise. Sausages are actually very similar to pipes, and I learned about pipes. A sausage has a casing and its content/stuffing inside. A pipe has a wall with a thickness, and it's hollow so fluids can flow inside. They are both cylindrical. In a sense, a sausage is a pipe. When there is stuff inside a pipe, it pushes on all sides of the inside of the pipe and creates stress. If we…

trying to find space in the world for just a little longer even a single night is acceptance supposed to come from the inside? there's nothing there and so it's destined to remain void i wonder if ambition makes it easier to take up space but i believe i have lost too much of myself already like a decayed orbit of a planet looking at its diminishing star knowing everyday is a longer goodbye i'm tired of existing i'm tired of my flaws the version of myself that deserves love is a mirror image of…

Sickness and onslaught of overtime don't do well for one person's morale. Having to miss two sketchwalks because my flesh could not endure more abuse was not conducive to my mood. But we carried on. I have finished the black book with 12 paintings for Inktober. It's a miracle I've only missed five, given the amount of ordeal I'd had to go through. We make do, perhaps. The old dog also learned some new blending tricks with acrylic markers, so that's a win overall. With this, I'm officially rid…

Having recently visited my daughter, and having observed the unrelenting demands upon her and her partner as parents of small children in these challenging times, I’ve been thinking about what I should have said. What I did say was along the lines of: No matter what choices you make, somebody will confidently inform you that you erred, and without walking one step in your shoes, they will explain why you should be doing things differently. They will not offer time, money, or resources to assist…

Last weekend the inlaws and I finally explored Fagan Park in northern Sydney together. It’s a 55 hectare former estate that was donated to the Hornsby Shire in 1988. It’s gorgeous. There was so much to see and explore, but I was especially taken by the landscape. We couldn’t have picked nicer weather for it. By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-10-18.

I buy a not insignificant amount of stuff from eBay, surprising nobody here. I owe much of my retrocomputer hobby to Japanese second-hand good stores, my father in law, and online auction sites. Much of this comes from Europe, but I do buy the odd item from the United States as well. Sellers in certain countries like the US and UK can opt into eBay’s Global Shipping Programme. This allows sellers to list their items as available for purchase from overseas. These sellers send their items to a…

It’s universal in basically everything, but I would say especially in music and with bands. Do not listen to what people say. Only watch their actions. I have found these things to be so polar opposite sometimes that it’s ridiculous. If you frame things this way, it’s really hard to be on the fence about people. And I’ve found generally that the only ones that make me mad are the ones who are saying something totally different. I think, especially in a band situation, which is a live-action…