A Blaugust swap: James writes here, I write there. A Note From Me First One of this year's Blaugust prompts is to write a guest post on someone else's blog. James G. and I decided to do it both ways at once: he wrote the piece below for me, and I wrote I Thought It Was A Tire for him. Go read his side of the swap once you're done here. James and I have been trading posts for a while now, and it's one of my favourite things about keeping a site. You write something, someone writes something…
TL;DRI'm shutting down EchoFeed within the next 12 months when the final subscriptions expire. It will continue to run as it is until then so if you've already paid you have access until the end of your subscription. Last night, after a few months on and off of problems with EchoFeed from my side and general feed problems I made the decision to shut it down. As of right now, this is what I've done: Registration for new accounts is closed Existing free accounts can no longer upgrade to EchoFeed…
This post was written by Zachary Kai as part of Blaugust 2026. Read the post I wrote about art history for Zachary's site. ⁂ ⁂ ⁂ I’m participating in Blaugust this year. Like most things, on a whim.Nerd Girl, who’s coordinating this year’s edition, compiled community-builder prompts. I’m always for those, because where would we be without community?One challenge: write a guest post for someone’s site, or have someone write one for yours.I thought: why not both?If you’re wondering why the…
On Sunday, Beatrix will walk out of the arena at Circus Juventas for the last time, and that thought has me up early this morning. It's not like I did not know it before, but it's hitting especially hard.I started working with Circus Juventas in 2005, before Patrick and I were even married, before Beatrix was even a concept. I was brought in on a special project to reconcile a backlog of credit cards, quickly solved some other issues (including getting a retroactive sales tax refund of several…
Week-old humpback whale calf ✒️ Written by: Abbie It may have been a little while since we uploaded a blog post, and that's because we've simply been so busy traveling, settling, and—regrettably—working. While we still have many stories to share from our travels, in the background we have officially finished the first half of our Aussie adventures and found somewhere to call home. That place being the beautiful Gold Coast. We decided on Gold Coast when we passed through during our campervan…
… and I’m finally okay with it! Last week I pulled up my for-fun acoustic-coding Go project the last commit was from April 27th, exactly 3 months ago. Well that just smells like yet another abandoned project. But instead of feeling bad, I tied up the main functionality and added a small feature (after getting reacquainted with the code). It started as an elaborate joke and my mate and I had a chuckle, delightful. In the last year or so I’ve realized that I’m a cyclical hobbyist and instead of…
An Account at Oriskany |The Battle of Oriskany (/ɔːrˈɪskəniː/ or /əˈrɪskəniː/) was a major engagement of the Saratoga campaign during the American Revolutionary War. On August 6, 1777, an American column of Tryon County militia and Oneidas marching to relieve the siege of Fort Stanwix was ambushed by a contingent of Britain's Indigenous allies and Loyalists. It was one of the few battles of the war in which most non-Indigenous participants were settlers born in the Thirteen Colonies. The…
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. Emily McBride’s novel Queen Mab is a brilliant debut that marries folklore to postpartum depression. The New Yorker wrote of the book: “The body horror of birth gives way to the fairy-tale…
1) And how would it be? A new world? A new life? A new time, made for a new form of living and a new way which is mad or madder than the madman who lives to die or dies to live.What is this? What is desire if nothing else than a spot or a place in my heart to which I swear to live and remain unfearful to die, or if at all or if anything else, who am I now or who will I be now? Who will I become now that the older versions of me have been dismissed? And so, if I am free to exist, then how can I…
As Wielder of Arms flapped her vast, strong wings she climbed away from the ground. She crested the village and saw beyond it hundreds of people running. They were armed for war and Wielder realized the others had been stalling. She cried to her friends, “We have been betrayed! More foes come to join the fight!” The people below begged Delver to wait, “Yes, we had sent word for aid.” "We’ll tell them to stop. We wish not to fight. If you wait, the peace will hold.” But Wielder of Arms heard…
Just a quick announcement from Rockstar this morning — the video is basically just a moving JPG, so don’t worry yourself too hard about hitting play — but what’s fascinating is that the reveal will be on Netflix in addition to YouTube. I wonder who is paying who on that one?
A good two-state toggle can actually express all three data model states. Until recently, if you looked at most websites with a theme toggle[1], you’d find three options: Light, Dark, and System. Examples of tri-state dark mode toggles. In (LTR) reading direction: Ant Design, Red Hat Design System, Web Awesome, Excalidraw, Taiga, Astro, Hero UI. Thankfully, these days the trend has shifted towards a simpler two-state toggle, but tri-state ones are still incredibly common. Examples of two-state…
Inspired by Automatticians James Kemp and Dave Smith, I’ve been thinking a lot about how much of our discord in the design of WordPress stems from the differences of our two big tribes: Bloggers and Builders. Many of the OG developers of WordPress, including myself, tend more towards the blogging side. Writers, photographers, podcasters, journalists, the people for whom a reverse chronological stream on the homepage is the most obvious thing in the world. We link out a lot, love comments,…
Henry Bolingbroke and his cousin, Richard, were childhood friends, but when they were older Henry became one of the Lords Appellant in 1387 who took it upon themselves to curtail what they saw as excesses and corruption in the administration of Richard when he became king.Not only had they been friends, but Henry's father and Richard's uncle, the powerful (and sometimes feared) John of Gaunt, was a steadfast supporter of Richard personally and of royal authority generally.After all that…
The story of The Hummingbird and The Hound, originally told in a series of posts on the fediverse. It’s was a day! I’m dog sitting for a friend’s very high energy young rescue with more than a touch of separation anxiety. We go on a lunch walk and stumble upon this hummingbird. How do you try to help a tiny struggling bird while a high prey drive dog wants to pounce on it!? Note:Alt-text provided as closed-caption This is the dog, Sandy. She is very very sweet but loses her mind when she sees a…
The beauty of blogging with Pika is how low the barrier to entry is. Think of a thought, write it down, click “publish post,” and you’re good to go. No bloated “update your plugin” horror show that ruins your layout yet again (hello, WordPress); no friction (though friction can be a good thing in itself). Can’t everything in life be this simple, please? I’ve noticed, however, that a quiet, organic division has crept into my daily publishing routine. And that’s one that I don’t like: short,…
Much in the same way that the SECNAV in 1975 created 15 new “cruisers” from thin air by reclassifying DLGs to CGs to gain a two-cruiser lead over the Russkis, the Navy has just dubbed 19 planned Blocks V and VI Virginia class SSNs as SSGNs to fill the gap left by the four retiring TLAM-commando boats. The first of four Ohio-class SSGN conversions, USS Georgia is pending decommissioning after 42 years of service, with her sisters Ohio, Michigan and Florida soon to follow. Each was given a $1…
Florida-based KelTec continues its established trope of delivering strange yet intriguing new guns to the market, introducing the SUB-SDP last week. The pistol, dubbed the “Nub Sub” in the company’s own marketing materials, is based on the KelTec SUB2000 folding carbine, made into a pistol format and sporting a stabilizing brace instead of a stock on a shorter extension tube and a 6-inch barrel. Set up to take Glock-pattern 9mm double stacks (i.e., G17, G19, G45), the base model ships with a…
Sixth Fleet images, some 40 years ago this month. How about this surreal photo of a 44,000-ton Soviet Kiev class (Project 1143 Krechyet) “heavy aviation cruiser” (CVHG) seen from across the deck of a Sovremenny class destroyer, Mediterranean, August 1986. USN Photo DN-ST-86-11164, via NARA And this full-length version, sans Sovremenny: USN Photo DN-ST-86-11165, via NARA How the Kiev and the Sovremenny stack up to the rest of the fleet: DD-ST-86-06685 The above CVGH is believed to be the Minsk,…
When AI-generated code breaks something, the real problem is often how we reviewed, understood, and trusted it.
One obscure, but very useful Bash trick is CTRL+X CTRL+E, which will open $EDITOR to edit the current line. This means I can switch to a Vim session with whatever I was typing on intact. This is handy for those times where I need a search-and-replace operation or fix things in a long command or build a long complex command from scratch. I’m aware of Bash’s vi-mode, but I prefer using the default Emacs keybindings because I also work in other’s remote servers. Also, it’s a Vi emulation. I’ve…
Come write HTML with me this Saturday. HTML Day is an annual celebration of getting together and writing HTML, created by Elliott Cost and Laurel Schwulst. Saturday, August 8, 2026, is this year's date, and I'm running two online sessions again, same as last year. Sessions Two one-hour sessions, so folks across time zones can join in. Oceania Time — 6-7pm AEST European Time — 6-7pm CET The European session also works out to 9-10am PT, 11am-12pm CT, and 12-1pm ET, if you're in North America. No…
I’ve never been fortunate enough to have a room I can use solely as my study/office, so I’ve had to stick my desk wherever there’s a free spot. Here’s where I last had it at the old house, in the living room: When we moved to our cottage, space was even more at a premium. I carefully planned out where every piece of furniture would go and was resigned to downsizing my 120cm desk to one nearly half the size. The printer table, along with all its paraphernalia, would have to go somewhere…
And with slowly I mean slowly to the point where it actually not bothering me enough to take action immediatly… Did you ever had that? A piece of Hardware slowly losing it’s reliability but refuses to die properly. It just dies enough to bother but not fully so you actually need to spend money and solve it. Maybe it’s a me problem, but I refuse to replace tech which is actually working. Not because I want to save a few bucks, but becaus well - cite the meme - “This is fine” nad partly it is.…
Performing circus can teach kids about hard work, dedication, teamwork, performance, etc. Most importantly, it teaches kids how to fail in front of a crowd, get back up, and try it again. “Smile and Style” as they say. The crowd, for their part, will cheer even louder when you get it the next time.
I kinda like this framing of doing work vs. going to the gym: At work, if your job is to move a bunch of heavy things from one side of the room to another, you should use whatever assistive tech you have on hand: a wagon, a forklift… even an AI-powered robot. But at the gym, it makes no sense for that robot to lift weights for you. The point of weightlifting isn’t to move heavy things across the room; it’s to actually lift those heavy things.
[🎶 Look out! Here comes the Spider-Man ad! 🎶] Surprise! You don’t really own your BMW.Link: https://www.techspot.com/news/113327-bmw-putting-spider-man-ads-dashboard-after-promising.html
Celebrating 25 years of blogging with gratitude, reflection, and a sweet slice of success surrounded by creativity and joy. August 6, 2001, 25 years ago. I started blogging. I had a website made by Microsoft FrontPage and hosted on GTE (now Verizon) in the homepages they offered back in those days for residential customers. In fact, your ISP provided everything for you. You had so much website space and an ISP-provided email, which you lost if you changed providers. That's foreign today. But I…
Why read the book? Peter Thiel explains how to build companies that create new value instead of improving on old ideas. He shows that the best businesses escape competition by solving unique problems and securing monopoly positions. The book draws on his time founding PayPal and investing in firms like Facebook. Thiel stresses that copying successful products only leads to small gains. Real advance happens when you invent something no one else has. He rejects the common view that competition is…
This is a survey for developers about everything but coding, that is accepting answers up to September 5. If you’re a developer, it’s worth participating! It doesn’t take long to fill and can help understanding the current environment of the dev industry in such chaotic times.
