# This is an RSS-only post. It's a secret! Read more about RSS Club. I'm tired of my "open a tab to the 'front page of the internet'" behavior. When I first used the internet, I had a rich set of bookmarks that turned into RSS feeds. I used the internet like a library, not a tabloid. Now I just open up the "front page" and scarf down whatever tripe I'm served and I'm grateful for it. 🤮 So I've gone back to redirecting reddit and twitter to localhost. Have any of you successfully dismantled your…

Another Father’s Day! Joe got me this cute little He-Man minifig at a nearby toy show. Happy Father’s Day He-Man! We’re not really doing much since Aaron has to work and won’t be home until close to seven tonight. The pool and some spritzes beckon, though. I cooked a nice picanha roast last night for our dinner after he got home after a lengthy soak in the sous vide tank. macOS 27 “Golden Gate” Developer Beta iPad is usually where I’m OK installing a beta OS: I need my Mac to do work, and I…

Pub visits have been somewhat curtailed over the past week, for a variety of reasons, most of which have been family related. There’s also been quite a lot of boring, DIY – home improvement projects going on, nothing major, but still time-consuming and not the stuff that people will necessarily want to read about. On the plus side though, there are a number of out of town* events on the horizon, so there is plenty to look forward to. *Out of Tonbridge.This coming Tuesday, Mrs PBT’s has bought…

Power Cat Sunday 2026-06-21 I imagine this is what it's like having a job.

Buying a birthday present… “We have these tote bags. They’re so practical,” she told me. I was secretly buying a birthday present for my sister. “I’m looking for Hello Kitty merch,” I told her when I entered the store. My sister was turning 30, but still adored Hello Kitty. She left the register and guided me to a red aisle with almost every Hello Kitty item you can imagine. When I showed her a photo of my sister, she recommended the right lipstick—Hello Kitty-themed, of course. “OK, I trust…

A deep dive (ho ho) into the Mandelbrot set rendered with Wasm and WebGPU.

Today I cleaned my apartment. Pretty much the entire thing. The only part that I've yet to do (and that I'm not completely sure if I will do) is to clean my kitchen and clean the fridge. I've actually yet to do that final one for a bit longer than what I want to admit, but I guess that's just a truth of life at times. Maybe I'm at bit hard on myself at times, considering that I have basically moved alone to the other side of the world. I'm struggling with finding direction in a few things. I…

Jag anmälde mig till halvmaraton på Tromsø Midnight Sun Marathon i september 2025, innan jag ens hade klarat min första HM i Uppsala. Då visste jag inte att träningen skulle gå helt åt skogen under vintern och att jag knappt skulle komma igång med löpningen igen förrän det blev varmt i år.

As I was birding at a nearby garden, partially hidden behind a mass of three-foot tall native plants, I found an unexpected delight: a Michigan lily! Found in wetlands and prairies around the Great Lakes, Upper Mississippi Valley, and some southern US states, Michigan lily (Lilium michiganense) is a native plant with striking upside-down orange-red flowers. It can grow up to five feet tall. This weekend is the first time I’ve seen it growing in the wild. My Experience Growing Michigan Lily…

It's time for a quick peek ahead at the July schedule on Turner Classic Movies!As has been the case recently, I'm writing this preview with somewhat less information than usual, but I have enough information to provide a solid peek at some of the fun things coming to TCM starting 10 days from now.There will be a "theme month" for Star of the Month, featuring singing stars every Monday evening. Singers featured will include Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Elvis Presley,…

In a sea of dystopian fiction and shitty world news, here are some science-fiction stories that have help me see positive visions for the near future.

The top photo was taken yesterday on my now semi regular Sunday morning wander around the lake. I saw this rower coming from a ways back and had a time to crouch down and compose this shot. I’m very happy with the framing amongst the grass and the linear white structure of the carillon in the background. Already feeling pretty chuffed with myself for having already captured this photo… …the rowing man was a bonus and, I think the better of the two images.

We ended up staying two months at Town Basin. That was not the plan. But winter here brings foul weather every few days, and both Kerri and I had a mountain of work we wanted to finish before the big passage, so we settled into the comforts of city life. We don’t sit still this long very often. Usually the nomad-itch sets in within a few days of stationary life, but this time nothing in particular was calling us away from the dock. It was an odd feeling — being just fine staying put. Beyond…

It is the longest day of the year. Often this fills me with horror. The light will fade, the nights draw in. But this year I'm feeling okay about it. I wasn't planning to write a post but why not. In the UK during the summer it doesn't get fully dark, in astronomical terms. For a month either side of the solstice. In the very north of the UK it stays just a little light around midsummer. Not great for getting the telescope out but the moon looks nice in the twilight and maybe I can catch some…

(Continued from my previous posts.) Last time I left off on getting immediately killed by a pirate when entering a niche at the train station. Predictably, you can also get killed by waiting for the train in the track while not going west into the niche. It is now 13:5 There is a rumbling sound and a distant whistle from a VS+EL RR train. WAIT It is now 13:10 You have just been run over by a VS+EL RR train. There are no other exits. I ran through my item list (rope, pendant, charm, keys, can…

title: 10 Technologies You Need to be Aware of (2020) date: 2021-05-24 description: "A couple of useful predictions narrowly focused on technologies and tools used by software professionals. Since these tools preceed and influence future software that will be built it maybe useful to help predict the future state of technology..." img: "/img/ry.png" draft: false tags: technology--- "Predictions are hard. Especially when they're about the future." -Yogi Berra A hobby of mine is to try to…

title: "Everyone has a boss" date: 2026-01-18 description: "I had always expected to be an Entrepreneur. As an American, we are born into a world where your safety and health depends on having deep pockets when (not if) an emergency occurs." img: "/img/dilbert.png" draft: false tags: business leadership technology--- I had always expected to be an Entrepreneur. As an American, we are born into a world where your safety and health depends on having deep pockets when (not if) an emergency occurs.…

title: "Better Corporate Communication" date: 2023-12-31 description: " Communication can be made more or less effective by working with or against Human biological limitations. To put it another way, the way you organize and provide your information can increase your throughput, retention, and utility of the information you are providing. Here are some strategies... " img: "/img/spaceman.jpg" draft: false tags: business leadership--- I originally wrote this stuff up for my wife's company which…

title: Code Review Template date: 2018-04-06 description: My thoughts on how to do a better code review, basically in template form... hoping to find some enlightenment with a tough part of the job" img: "/img/abstract3.png" draft: false tags: technology--- This template is designed to help create a better process surrounding your code review. Every company/project is different so don't take this as God's word... it's just meant to help Git Repository: ____ Pull Request Number: ____ Code…

title: "Best Practices are Dead. Long Live Best Practices." date: 2025-01-18 description: "Went down a rabbithole on the old web and I learned that 'Bloodletting' was a common medical procedure for the better part of 3000 years. I'm kind of spellbound by the duration- it was one hell of a lindy effect. Our first evidence of its use appeared in Egypt..." img: "img/prettykitty.png" draft: false tags: business technology leadership--- Went down a rabbithole on the old web and I learned that…

title: "The 5% Rule" date: 2022-12-30 description: " ...I learned a lot from that period, but one of the things I learned that I did not expect was what I now call my '5% rule.' No matter how kind, warm, thoughtful, amazing, cheerful, consistent, and perfect I treated people roughly 5% of them would just be terrible (yes, I have the numbers to back this)..." img: "/img/bart.jpg" draft: false tags: business leadership--- I've mentioned this before (e.g. Lowest Common Denominator) but between the…

title: "5 Marbles" date: 2024-05-26 description: "Did a corporate dinner with the team in Monterrey last year and it was a pretty standard event till about 3/4 through. Two of our executives were having a conversation and inadvertently drew the attention of the rest of of the group. Our CTO decided to open up to everyone what they were discussing and it turned out to be a nice little nugget of wisdom..." img: "/img/poohbear.jpg" draft: false tags: business leadership--- Did a corporate dinner…

title: "Take care of yourself first" date: 2026-01-01 description: "Life's most important moments, the ones who shape us and determine our success or failure by our own definitions largely occur when individuals are under pressure and stress" img: "/img/girl-with-headdress.jpg" draft: false tags: family leadership--- Take care of yourself first. Life's most important moments, the ones who shape us and determine our success or failure by our own definitions largely occur when individuals are…

The word that sums up this week is: thin. I continue to be stretched by work, and am feeling very ‘thin’. I foresaw a tough day on Tuesday so booked myself into a lunchtime swim and sauna, which was lovely. It was still really tough and I had to think about being someone who is focused on showing up despite everything. A top moment for me was taking a break on Sunday to read my novel after cleaning and tidying. Something I’m looking forward to next week is going to London for work.…

Here’s some comics I’ve read over the past month. This is the one that I’ve spent the most time with, by far. It’s a collection of DC westerns from 1970-73. It’s not something I would normally have bought, but Matt Seneca made an argument for it collecting a masterpiece — Son of Tomahawk by Robert Kanigher and Frank Thorne, so I thought I’d give it a go. I’ve been reading a couple stories here and there, so it’s taken me weeks to get through these six hundred pages. And… is Son of Tomohawk a…

Doomscrolling this, screen time that. Touch grass! Go outside and so on. You’ve likely heard any or all of these kinds of phrases and directives but video games are becoming an antithesis to these behaviours, at least to some people. mikyatto made a video asking if gaming was considered productive and touched on the backlog ideal which she talked about in a different video. As part of that, she also pondered on whether we were just replacing one set of screens and scrolling for another and I…

My dad looks so much like my pawpaw. which makes sense because that's his dad. duh. But like, the genes in my pawpaw's family line are SOOOOOOOOOO STRONG. Like, on one hand, it's a blessing to have people in my family who are still alive and remember the intricacies of my family tree. I'm 2-3 generations removed from sharecroppers, so it's been really hard to archive my family tree, but thanks to my living family members, they remind me that we also come from entrepreneurs, chefs,…

In case you haven’t gotten the news already from (tom)[https://tomstu.art/] - it’s warm. I like it but he doesn’t and annually I say “lovely weather” on my blog and he describes the tyranny of the oppressive heat on his. This is called free speech. The queue for the Soho mayonnaise (soho-mayo?) pop-up was round the block. I sent a video to Lachie because he hates mayo. He’d probably dislike it a normal amount were it not so prevalent in cheap sandwiches. Speaking of cheap sandwiches, I tried to…

I ran across the term Чермное море in my Russian reading; for a moment I was confused by its resemblance to Черное море ‘Black Sea,’ but it turns out чермный is an old (Church Slavic) word for ‘(dark) red’ which Vasmer derives from an IE word for ‘worm’ (cf. Lith. kirmìs, Skt. kŕ̥miṣ, Alb. krimb, OIr. cruim, Welsh рrуf). So far so good, but is this red sea the Red Sea? Who knows? The Russian Wikipedia article links to English Yam Suph, a term I was unfamiliar with (though I’d doubtless seen…

As I write, the lowering sun is gently shining on the monstera plant in the living room, casting a shadow on the wall. I am enjoying the changes in light outside as the longest day draws to a close. The birds sing quietly outside.Yesterday, the clouds started to move away for the first time in days, leaving a sky so clear at sunset I couldn’t see a cloud out the window. The clarity carried on to this day: for all the day there have been few clouds in the sky. I look out the window and see a few…