Boutique in Cape May Back in December of 2023, my parents treated Rhonda and me to an overnight stay at the Virginia Hotel in Cape May, NJ, to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. We had such a great time that we’ve gone back several times since. Last year, we went down for an overnight on a big holiday weekend in early December (I think there was parade or something), and it was too crowded for our taste. Carpenters Square Mall in Cape May We have a tradition of going to Rehoboth Beach, DE,…

I find programming much more tiring than it used to be. To judge from what I read, so do many other programmers. But I'm struck by how many of them think the fatigue is a bad thing and a sign they should change their workflows. I've been perceiving it as good, and even comforting. My reasons are simple: if I'm mentally fatigued, it suggests that I've been (i) diligently at work (ii) at things that require human brainpower and judgment. This is comforting because it is compatible with an…

Looks like the folks here in Nashville might be putting up a new little sports thingie. And yes, there is construction noise! So much beeping and clattering! Not that I really noticed; once I got into my room (early check-in FTW) after a very early wake up and arrival, I lost consciousness so fast. I am adequately slept now and spending my Sunday early afternoon being lazy. But tonight! I‘ll be at Novelette Booksellers at 6:30! You should come see me! And then tomorrow, I will be in Louisville,…

I’ve been a self-employed contractor for about a decade now, and I’m bummed about Harvest. Harvest was a time-tracking and invoicing service. You’d track how many hours or weeks you spent on a project, put together an invoice, email it to the client, and close it out when they paid. There was a little Stripe integration for accepting credit and ACH payments on the invoice web view. A historical chart of total billed/paid amounts over time, and a table of invoices. Harvest was exactly what you…

Not sure if I’ll ever do anything with these, but a few references on US infrastructure costs: Transit Costs Project Final Report (Archive) Data! https://transitcosts.com/data/ -> https://ultraviolet.library.nyu.edu/records/9wnjp-kez15 Lasted updated 2023 “High costs may explain crumbling support for US infrastructure” by Tracy Gordon and David Schleicher (2015) (Archive) “So it might be that common-law systems provide legal protections for property owners–allowing more lawsuits over noise,…

The one thing we learned during our recent road trip is how different traveling with kids in your thirties is from traveling as a couple in your twenties. A decade ago, we used to get excited about planning only one or two days ahead, not knowing where to go, what to do, or where to sleep beyond that. We have plenty of fond memories from that time, so it’s no wonder we imagined our four weeks on the road would feel the same. After a week, however, the excitement had worn off. Instead, we just…

The sixth part of a series about bare-metal programming for x86 PC-type computers, using Linux for development. This article is about drawing graphics.

It's 11pm on a Sunday as I write this. It's Diwali. I'm visiting my parents in Delhi, as I've done every year since I moved away over a decade ago.I'm feeling a certain way right now. I'm writing this post so I don't forget this feeling.The fireworks outside are so loud that it feels like the world is ending. They've been going off for three or four hours now. I'm cowering inside my bedroom, thinking they will stop any moment now. But they just won't stop. There are so many of them.Why won't…

Until now, a palette on Swatcher was a one-shot thing. You described a room, got back a set of real paints, and if one of them wasn’t quite right, your options were to start again or swap colours in by hand. Now you can just say what you’d like changed. Open a palette you generated from a brief and type something like “warmer”, “lighter”, or “keep the walls, swap the accent for something green”. There are a few quick options too, like Cooler, Deeper and A bolder accent. Pin the colours you…

This is from The Intersection column that appears every other Monday in Mint. Watching India’s IT services companies discuss the extent of what they call “AI revenue deflation” in recent weeks, I was reminded of Ibn Khaldun. That 14th century North African scholar was writing about civilisations and empires, not technology companies, but the outline of his observations are useful in understanding where our tech giants are and, more importantly, what they might have to do to continue to thrive.…

Ventured into Gruga on my own today – the family did not feel like tagging along. So I had the fall colors all to myself. Kept it to a very similar color palette across all of the images. I quite like the result. 👉 View 5 more images

I still think saying no is important. In that vein, here’s something I shipped by removing functionality (and I think my site is better for it). For the longest time on my icon gallery sites, you could view a list of icons in four pixel dimensions: 56×56 128×128 256×256 512×512 Each of these sizes could be accessed via a control on the website. This has been true for years on my site, whether it’s the current site: Or an older version of the site: By default, I loaded the 128-pixel version of…

If we only trained students in math, and then assigned students best at math to learn our most important jobs, that might go pretty well. After all, humans who best learn math tend to be well able to learn many hard tasks, and we can judge math ability unusually well. However a nation would not get rich by mainly training its people in math, and trying to sell math consulting to the world. After all, total world demand for math consulting is quite low, far too small to support a nation. And…

Hey people! Yesterday’s song was not even two minutes long, so today’s one’s going to be ridiculously long to compensate for that. Well, I didn’t really think in those terms when picking it, but I thought it’s a neat coincidence. And quite a contrast in style as well, but that’s relatively normal here. I was thinking already earlier this year that I would like to feature this song around All Souls Day. But then relatively shortly before All Souls Day my blogging app became quite difficult to…

I've been using Drupal for a number of years now, and I've built up a set of paradigms (or heuristics) that help me with building Drupal sites. These are based around both using Drupal as well as developing and maintaining Drupal sites, and even web development in general.When putting together content types or building Drupal modules I have these rules at the back of my mind, guiding my actions. They've even been used in more than one sales document where I talk about how we work.In this…

For more than 20 years, I’ve had a habit of dragging URLs to my desktop. I’m not going to pretend it’s a great habit, but I found it a handy way to save a link I wanted to check out later. For whatever reason, Apple has recently made this a lot more annoying. In case you didn’t know, Safari, Chrome, and Firefox allow you to turn URLs into .webloc files. Opening one takes you to the saved URL in your default browser. To make one: click on the URL bar and then drag the selected URL out. 1 If it…

This week we explore if AI could make the open web disappear, if a dialog should close on outside click (plot twist: it depends), and we tag along flights in the sky. And don’t miss the fun pigeon armchair and portraits of people who dress alike.

Like everyone in my orbit, I'm relieved and thrilled at the scope and scale of the Democratic win this midterm cycle. I'm relieved to tears that we didn't see ICE agents at the polls trying to intimidate. It's my hope that this Congress will have a spine. There must be ethics investigations. I'm wary of the Democrats appearing to prosecute their political enemies for political reasons, but I strongly believe there have been egregious ethics violations by this administration and their allies.…

On Occasion, an unlucky run on the Dice might result in a particular Conflict going incredibly poorly for the Party. It happens to the best of us, and whilst often regarded as a rite of passage or important cornerstone of these earlier presentations, sometimes a session can be abruptly cut short in this way. In other situations, there may be different shared expectations for a table, or an agreed upon adjustment to the types of consequences that might befall the Characters. In these situations,…

Unlike Special Agent Dale Cooper’s rock throwing, I use facts and little details when investigating the origin of postcards in my collection. Take this Snoqualmie Falls postcard published by Impact – #18518. The image of the majestic waterfall was taken by a talented husband and wife team based in Washington state. The card’s back contains... The post Snoqualmie Falls Postcard by Impact – #18518 appeared first on TWIN PEAKS BLOG.

A weekly recap of the articles and posts I’ve read that I think are worth your time. Kimi Antonelli – the boy ‘born in a garage’ and made on the track – BBC Sport — What were you doing when you were 20? How I built Bob, my “chief of staff” and executive assistant – Elizabeth Tai — I am neither important enough, nor busy enough, to need this. But this seems a good use of AI. How to Actually Use Email (And Why It Still Matters) — I have thoughts about email too. Meet Poulette, the New Potato…

In the middle of the night last week, we were awoken by a strange noise in the bathroom. My Oral B electric toothbrush had turned itself on. Lachie leapt out of bed, unsure what the noise was but determined to find out. This is third time one of our toothbrushes has become haunted. Last time this happened to me was 2022. E says it’s broken, but if it was broken surely it wouldn’t turn on. The problem with this toothbrush is it works a little too well. So it can only be a ghost honestly. And the…

Previously by accident, this time by design. Back at Sculthorpe Moor to photograph the same tree photographed in 2019 and 2018 (see the blogpost from 12 November 2019 below). Previous efforts were taken in brilliant November sunshine; today’s in more seasonally on-brand fog. The More Things Change 10nov2019 I took the picture above earlier today while out at Sculthorpe Moor with Mrs Weir, and it triggered a memory. After checking my records – it always pays to keep meticulous records – I was…

All started well yesterday as I set off to York to meet Mick, June, Laura and Danny. On the train, I decided to visit the loo before we arrived, and found myself locked into one of those electronic tubes of horror. Normally, the fear is that the door will decide to open midway through the process, but on this occasion the door simply wouldn't open. Conscious that we were quite close to York and not wanting to end up in Newcastle (the final destination of the train), I pressed the driver alarm…

This release moves the site's AI writing to Claude and makes pages that aren't cached load much faster. It also fixes summaries that were getting cut off or failing to load. What's new Album, artist, and genre summaries, recommendations, weekly insights, and the artist sentences on the home page now come from Claude Opus 5.5. The Discord bot's /ask command uses Claude Sonnet 5.5. Weekly insights read less like a template, and the album recommendations are tied to what you listened to that week.…

An unrelated test fails just as a coding agent's fix goes green. I designed an experiment to see what the agent does next.