A couple of years back I was discussing the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (RMP). It includes a table expressing as a sum $$\frac1{a_1}+\frac1{a_2}+\dots+\frac1{a_k} $$ fractions with numerator 1 (“unit fractions”). I said: Getting the table of good-quality representations of is not trivial, and requires searching, number theory, and some trial and error. It's not at all clear that . Today I wondered: did Ahmes (the author) have the best possible expansions for all the values, or w...
To my father and all fathers, fathering even in the midst of criticism and nonsense My parents. Senior Prom. My photo of their photo. 2026 ©Tremaine L. Loadholt Teenage parenting couldn’t havebeen easy.What were you thinking when Icame along?Your first child—a girl, mirror imageof you in a tiny body…The community practice baby,Trial-and-error baby,First model of how to get itright and wrong.That’s a lot of pressure forsomeone who’d justbroken away from his ownmother’s home a year before.You did…
I now assume you didn’t write the email by yourself. It will be harder than ever to earn the courtesy of a reply from your recipient. The longer your email, the more surface area it exposes to a human brain’s bot detection. Therefore, what you write in your first email is critically important. If you are writing to a human, write like one. Cold emails written by bots quote generic lines from your webpage.
Yeahhh it's been a little while. Things aren't the best. Coding/Tech Working on my 'life aggregation' tool. Slowly but surely Lots of other things going on in my head instead of actually doing them Gaming Took a long break from everything Played 007: First Light. Really enjoyed it! It was way too short though I want to go back to Factorio with a 'forever' save since now next week they will be releasing the final update Because of the long weekend (which I made longer) I took some time to try…
Why bounce back and forth between So many options? Choose one and glean From others what you can, but fix Upon the one. Else you will mix Together what should remain clean. Evaluate as best you may Within a time, perhaps a day, And don’t look back, but be serene. Avoid the mental politics. While choosing, don’t forget to pray.
Our discussion on clerical celibacy, and how Emperor Justinian decreed no bishop or higher position could be married, leads us to take a look at popes that were married.The first, of course, was Peter, long before the mater of celibacy was ever raised in the early Church. Peter's mother-in-law gets mentioned in Mark 1:30, Luke 4:38, and Matthew 8:14–15 when Jesus enters the house where she is and heals her.Pope Felix III (483 - 492) was the son of a priest and was married himself, though he was…
Another week another blur of activity as I sit to write this with a pint of fizzy water with a dash of lime whilst my house is currently 24c and due to get to 28c today. Mini heatwave! I haven’t really taken and photos this week, so here’s a Trio in the garden! 🥩 It is father’s day in the UK and I’m doing that very stereotypical bloke thing of cooking a steak for dinner. I’m making a chimichurri to go with it as well as Chef John’s scalloped potato gratin (the best!). I probably won’t be able…
It's that time again for my weekly update, which includes a short collection of noteworthy finds, posts that inspire, as well as a few reflections from the past week or two. I'll aim to land these in your inbox by the weekend, in time to pair with your morning coffee (or your preferred cup of inspiration).The Latest Drippings ☕️Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting. Remember 2020? The great reset of everything. Work from home was the future: a promise of more time for you, your family, and your…
Hello friends! I’m so glad we’ve reached the summer solstice and the darkness can start to return. I miss the stars and the moon. It’s not often I highlight just one bird in a newsletter - but this is no ordinary bird. Without further ado, let’s get to this incredible surprise.Meet Betty, the Brown Booby! Ok, I don’t know if her name is Betty, since no one here speaks booby. But I feel she needs a name! I saw someone post that conservation officials had confirmed her as a female, but I don’t…
This is all a huge amount of work. I’m retired (though my wife may dispute that!) and I’d rather be out sailing than working on rsync security issues, so I have reached for several AI tools to help with what needs to be done. I have absolutely no regrets about doing that, although from the storm of anti-AI rage it’s clear that many people think I should be hung up by my toe nails and flogged for even considering doing this. Source: rsync and outrage For the amount of vitriol that Andrew…
Dear readers, I am happy to announce the release of Don Matrelli’s Legacy. It is a mod for Grand Prix Circuit (DSI / Accolade, 1988), one of the best motor racing games available for DOS before Geoff Crammond entered the scene. The expansion features: Three new tracks Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps Baku City Circuit The Möbius Space Dragster Track Three new cars Rivella, with great maneuvrability and acceleration Anglo-German, the fastest car but with tricky handling Gastón Martini, for people…
Sometimes I hate Sunday evenings, especially when it is around 6pm. I look back at the weekend, I realised that it is gone and I did not do anything feels regenerative. The weekend is mostly running errands for the family. I might be able to slip in sometime to take a nap, read a few pages of book and exercise. Yet, I do not feel relax. In the back of my mind, there is always something that I need to do. When Sunday evening comes, I know Monday is around the corner, and I have to prepare for…
3 years ago I did a video on "How to Build a Project That Will Actually Get You a Job". It is crazy how much has changed since then. I still think there is value in creating these projects to help your chances of getting a job, but they definitely don't have as much sway as they used to. The reason of course is due to AI. How does a hiring manager looking at your profile know you didn't just vibe code the whole thing? The main points I covered in that video still apply though. The code was…
I started moving my site from alanwsmith.com over here to al9000.com earlier this year. I started with basic pages. The first blog post came in April. That post is called I'm Not Ready to Start This Blog1. One of the reasons I wasn't ready was I hadn't built an RSS feed for the site yet2. As of yesterday, the RSS feed is operational. There's still work to do. Things like adding a little header to posts that feature JavaScript based features that won't work in most feed readers. All that stuff…
There’s a lot of talk right now about companies deploying AI tools and not seeing results that map to the spend. Many reasons get cited. But I suspect the simple one at the heart of it is constraints. The analogy comes from Eli Goldratt’s famous book “The Goal”, a pre-read in most introductory operations management classes. If you’re manufacturing a car and you figure out how to produce doors more efficiently — great. But if doors aren’t your bottleneck, it doesn’t matter. The body still needs…
When I embarked on presence as my theme for the year, I hadn’t expected to learn about boredom. Half a year in, I’ve realised just how closely intertwined the two are. Boredom, in essence, seems to me to be the homelier and less glamorous twin of presence. Presence is easy to market. In a time when we can feel our attention becoming hopelessly fragmented, it feels like a very real oasis in a desert filled with parched sand and mirages. Take mindful breaths. Be fully here in the now. I don’t…
It’s been a crazy whirlwind of emotions lately. A death in the family. Keeping up with the grandkids. Celebrating my wife’s latest theatre gig. With that, Sunday Morning Reading is on hiatus this week. Enjoy your Sunday, while I enjoy time with the grandkids. (If they don’t wear me out!) Thanks for reading. Feel free to subscribe if you want. It’s free. If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading…
I am currently in the process of migrating to a new mailserver setup that is integrated into my normal hosting setup on a new VPS at netcup. This time, the setup is based on the Docker images and configuration from a project called docker-mailserver (I previously used the other more popular docker-mailserver). It’s less monolithic and more flexible to adjust configuration etc. It also has a web UI to configure users, domains and aliases. On my old setup, I used the European AWS’s SES as relay…
My back is still giving me trouble, but a week’s worth of moving about carefully and a little exercise “fixed” it (as in, I can stand again for extended periods of time). And I’ve pinned down the most likely cause–I have been spending far too much time sitting at my desk. As much as I love working remotely, the relentless (and sometimes idiotic) pace of dozens of daily meetings (often booked haphazardly and with the usual sense of bogus urgency that comes with the typical corporate need to…
We’ve seen a few test PCBs now; games that were only sold alongside Japanese arcade cabinets to satisfy a law requiring a minimum amount of functionality. Sega gave us Dottori-kun, a remake of Head-On; Taito gave us Mini-Vaders, another retro throwback. But what about Konami? Let’s test out our system with Target Panic! No Expenses Spent Konami’s Target Panic is a small densely-packed PCB, intended presumably to be sold alongside cabinets like the 1996 Konami “Windy”. We haven’t seen a Konami…
8604/21523I haven't got to spend too much time with the kids recently as I've either been in hospital or in bed and trying to isolate a bit so I don't pick up any treatment-threatening, life-threatening bugs. But they came in today to give me my Father's Day cards and presents and to remind me (as if I needed reminding) that I absolutely can't die for at least 15 years, however much my body wants to self-destruct.I didn't get the #1 Dad it the world this year, but it's nice that it's gone to…
This is a fun concept. Folks who set aside a little time each week to take calls with whoever about whatever. unoficehours.com I've got a bunch of traveling to do. Setting up calls with some folks is on the list for when I get back. -a Endnotes I'll totally be using this to talk with techy folks about bitty to get feedback from them. For the non-techy folks, we'll play the conversations by ear and see where they go.
Adventurers Character Race Class Description Anoran Hall Human Cleric level 2 A thin, wiry, and bald follower of Promehene, the God of Time. He doesn't know what drives him to adventure. Drokh Human Monk level 2 A tall, lean human monk with piercing eyes, weathered skin, and a warrior’s poise—calm and charismatic, he speaks with purpose and strikes with precision, wielding spear, bow, and blade. Ignaeus Elf Fighter level 4 / magic-user level 5 An arrogant and self-assured sellsword wandering…
Comics Curmudgeon readers! Do you love this blog and yearn for a novel written by its creator? Well, good news: Josh Fruhlinger's The Enthusiast is that novel! It's even about newspaper comic strips, partly. Check it out! Judge Parker, 6/21/26 Look, we know what you want and what you don’t want out of your soap opera comic strips, and what you don’t want is character growth. That sort of thing is how you get the man once known as “Tommy the Tweaker” yammering about his skivvies in a…
Caitie texted me Friday night and mentioned she was coming into Albany on Saturday, not Sunday. So I left early yesterday (0550) and drove straight through to Clifton Park without stopping. I guess it makes a difference if you skip breakfast and have nothing to drink! Traffic was light so I made good time. Got to Jimmy's Egg in Clifton Park a little after 9:00 to have some breakfast before I went to Mom's. Visited with her for a couple of hours before I went to pick up Caitie at the train…
Over the last few weeks, I've been writing about what it means to show up consistently. The compound effect of doing it. What it looks like when it's hard. The difference between presence and performance.All of that was about how you show up for your work. For your team. For your career.This week is about the showing up that people often deprioritise: showing up for yourself.The Things That Get PushedYou know exactly what they are. The training you've been meaning to do. The exercise that used…
The Cunning Plan Why Paying the Piper Bubbles and Pin Pricks A Certain Musky Odor The Point At the risk of constantly returning to the subject of the lack of use from large language models—and I hope to keep this one short—early in June, I started seeing a strange shift in sentiment. After years of screaming at us to “get on board or get left behind,” and after the massive backlash especially from software developers, a bunch of people—half a dozen blog posts that made it to my screen, as…
Love the spectrum of colours nature paints. Nothing man-made comes close. Reply to this post
