Life The cat continues to shit in the kids’ room. Hard to tell if this is a protest, or if its litter box isn’t big enough and/or if it’s a bit thick. Maybe a bit of all three. The low point of the week was the builder laying the bathroom floor tiles without checking with us how we wanted them. I don’t think me or Σσ thought we had an opinion until we saw how they’d been laid when it became clear our opinion was ‘not that’. I thought I’d saved the day when I pulled a row of them up so that they…
I don't really care for the roll under Characteristic value saves in a game where players always want to roll high. Classic Traveller already has a good system that insinuates what advantages high or low stats might give in a situation, the advantageous/advantageous DMs for weapon handling and experience. These mostly apply to the three physical stats which would be the most likely candidates for saves like this, though I can see Intelligence being used for psionic or magical effects. They…
8610/21529In an attempt to stay up long enough to watch the England match, I watched tonight's episode of the 1% club. As a fan of quiz shows (who would like to come up with one of my own) I admire the format and Lee Mack is the perfect host. Obviously I wouldn't mind a go, though I suspect a celebrity version might prove a bit expensive and you wouldn't even really see 80% of the contestants. I am not sure I'd succeed though, because (maybe due to my aphantasia) I can't do those puzzles where…
A while back I related how I had been mocked by an English person for using the word “burglarize”. I ended by saying: Okay, whatever. Brits have been mocking the American language for centuries now. Let them go ahead. We all know who won that argument. Since then I've been comforted by that thought. I smile to myself and say “It's ours now, we have you outnumbered.” But for the last few years this has always been followed by another thought: On that logic, it actually belongs to the Indians.…
The heat and humidity has been unbearable the last week. My back garden weather station has been recording 36c temperatures with dew points reaching 24c. For the UK that is ridiculous. It's actually quite unbearable at times but if it means I get an opportunity for some night time lightning, then I'll just about suffer it. It had been over a year since I last had a decent night time storm. I was definitely getting out of bed at 1am for this one. I spent 3-4 hours watching some rather chilled…
We have a laptop with a broken arrow key. It's quite annoying! I wondered how easy it would be to remap a different key to be the right arrow key? Turns out it was dead easy on Linux. This can be achieved using an application called Keyd. This was painless to install from source on Pop_OS. This also works system wide, and is not limited to your user session. git clone https://github.com/rvaiya/keyd cd keyd make && sudo make install sudo systemctl enable --now keyd Once installed, you need to…
Inspired by Rachel Roddy over on IG and the gorgeous apricots currently at the greengrocers, a small batch of preserve was on the menu this morning. Apricot preserve, not jam, because it contains only 25% sugar. Rachel pointed out that one can buy packets of pectin designed to confer success on small batches. At the supermarket, I discovered that they come in four distinct varieties, tailored to how much sugar you like in your jam: 2:1, 3:1, and 4:1. That's very appealling because with low…
In another hour or so, I'll put the last of my stuff in the car and head back to the mountains of North Carolina. I've been in Indianapolis, taking a class on Paul, another task done on the path to ordination in the Lutheran church (ELCA, the more progressive expression of Lutheranism in North America). It has been a great class, full of deep dives into Greek words and church history and Paul's theology, which can be summarized as Proclaim Christ Crucified. We even had a fun digression into…
LLMs have limited context windows. When an agent session grows too long, VS Code Copilot Chat uses compaction to summarize older history while keeping recent work verbatim. I traced exactly how it works from the source. The standalone `microsoft/vscode-copilot-chat` repo was **archived in May 2026**. The agent code now lives in the main [microsoft/vscode](https://github.com/microsoft/vscode) repo under `extensions/copilot/`, and it has changed since the standalone repo froze. Everything below…
TLDR Google Cloud shipped the Open Knowledge Format (OKF): a directory of Markdown files with YAML frontmatter that any agent can read and any human can edit. No SDK, no runtime, no database. I already do something like this in every coding repo. Markdown files the agent reads before it works, frontmatter on top, linked together. OKF is that pattern with a name and a tiny spec. The part I actually like is the frontmatter. One required field (type), a handful of optional ones, and now the files…
In the UK, the hottest June day on record has been broken three days in a row. And it's not just the UK experiencing unprecedented levels of heat. France, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands have also recorded their highest-ever June temperatures in the past week.You can get a sense of the scale of the heat dome currently sitting over Europe with the European Heat
Lay the bricks of the home we were to shareAnd build yourself as the man you dreamed to beAnd marry my ghost and bear with herAnother with your curls and my eyesCook your tofu sisig, and a pot of chiliExactly the way you like itLet the spice of it linger around the houseSo that my ghost might taste all of youAnd late at night, drive my ghost around townTo get chicken sandwiches and ice creamWhile you have my ghost blind rankFive different songs you put on stereoAnd watch our shows and tell her…
My wife and I begin each morning with coffee and Connections, the New York Times word grouping game. Then, at the gym, I work my way through the Midi, the Mini, Wordle, and Strands. Much easier on the brain than doomscrolling.Lately, however, I’ve developed a new interest in Spelling Bee, a particularly maddening puzzle with one of the weirdest and most confounding word lists of any similar game I’ve played. Each one looks like this:The goal is to spell as many words as possible. The only rule…
Om Malik, whose techy blog I’ve followed forever and whose articles have appeared here repeatedly, died Thursday. He was born one year before me, and I’m just 58. He died way too soon. Here is his site if you want to learn from him. Here is a lovely remembrance of the man by someone he counted as a friend. I am saddened by this loss. My writing elsewhere ▷ When you’re not paid as well as most software developers, you might not have a lot of sympathy for the grief they’re feeling over how their…
We stayed for 3 more days. It was already clear for everyone that they won't allow us to fly from this position, but the command still won't let us out. We needed to evacuate the equipment. We expected to have an NRK at the morning of the first day to load and move the equipment, but it failed to arrive. We had few close fpv hits this day and 1 round of artillery(3-4 shots). Patience of my comrade was out of the building. We were lying low. Although we had visitors looking for not occupied…
A nice sunny day but wind still cold. Cleaned big rose bed and top borders. The gang came for dinner. Went home 7.30pm. Had a nice play with little Jane.
A short list of things I want to do more often. Always carry a notebook. Learn more new things. Practice more. Prioritize sleep. Listen more than you speak. Write to think. Be useful. Be smart. Create space to think. Read more books. Look at the sky more. Exercise more.
Gifting can be fulfilling. The gifting person almost always gains something as much as the receiver of our present. Many of our actions are driven by motivation. Gifting is also one of them. Seeing the other person happy or showing them how much we care rewards us enough to put effort into the gift. If we remove ourselves from the equation, the gift loses its purpose. We want the receiver to know that we made the effort to show our appreciation. Anonymous gifts don't hold the same weight. We…
In preparation for running my equipment from a mixture of power stations and mains power, I’ve been investigating automatic transfer switches. My last post looked at two types of EARU switches which performed quite differently. This time, I decided to give the similar-looking, but slightly cheaper, TOMZN Night Light Series TOQ7-125/2P switch a try. Unboxing The unit arrives in a cardboard box with blue, white and teal colours. Interestingly, the product tagline implores the user to “open the…
At the mid-point of the year, asking how the #City26 challenge is coming along. On a pure stats, it is not bad - --% of total hex-count for the year achieved with 50% of the time gone. I have not gotten any of this to table but it has proved a nice distraction during travel of all things. Recall the 'rhythm' of the weekly tasks of this challenge with this guide from Pete of Garblag Games. So far I have been all over the place - I tend to do these as one ward in a sitting, with time in between…
"My Back Pages" by The Byrds Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. What song feels like a personal anthem right now? - My Back Pages, written by Bob Dylan, performed by The Byrds One of the greatest lines Dylan ever wrote “I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now.” As someone who has changed so much, decade by decade, personally, spiritually, politically, this songs feels like an autobiography. View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile
2024 science fiction novella, first of a trilogy. Ada Lamarr is a salvager, but there's a hole in the side of her ship and her suit air supply is running low. Hope that rescuer responds soon…
The following article appeared in The New York Times, June 8, 2026. Mr. Polakow-Suransky is President of the Bank Street College of Education in New York City Last year, I visited a seventh-grade math classroom in a public school in the Bronx. Twenty students sat bent over laptops, working with an A.I. tutor on story problems about converting fractions to decimals. A teacher moved around the room, checking a dashboard that tracked how many tries each student needed to reach the right answer. On…
Not many photos exist of Catcott after the line closed on 6 March 1966 with the rest of the former S&DJR apart from a couple of stubs. But here we are at the end of June 1967 as a demolition train waits patiently at the crossing for the gates to be opened. Sadly, there’s no longer a crossing keeper employed to perform that little luxury. Instead, Waving Wally has taken charge. Progress may be slow, though, for as many will know he’s been waving continuously since birth and doesn’t appear to…
Murder in Purple and Gold – Lindsey Davis Flavia Albia investigates the murder of a promising young charioteer and we learn about Roman chariot racing: the teams, the fame and the fans. Parallels with Formula 1 and Premier League Football, right down to the celebrity girlfriends. Author page: Murder in Purple and Gold – Lindsey Davis
One day last week I decided to return to the beaver swamp to see if I could get some better shots of the rose pogonia orchids that grow there. It was a very windy and changeable day with clouds and sun, and rain possible in the afternoon. The waterlilies didn’t mind. There were many hundreds of them blossoming. As soon as I got out of the car the first thing I saw was a small butterfly on a daisy. It wasn’t sipping from the daisy, it was just sitting on it and looking around, turning this way…
I almost burned out recently. I didn’t! But I almost did. It’s wild how after a little time pulling myself out of that mindset and clearing some things off of my plate, I suddenly want to blog again, make more videos again, and code again. Luckily (?), because I’ve burnt out before (which I’ve written about), I can identify the signs when it’s coming. I usually start caring about things less, being shorter with conversations, and really just think about sleeping and survival all the time. It’s…
Daily Drawing 909
Obviously all any of us can talk about is the heatwave. Oooof! I am very grateful for aircon in the office, and just about surviving the nights (even Hargreaves the cat has decided that sleeping under the duvet, on my legs, is no longer appropriate). But maybe a book, a blog post, and a link will help cool you down… 1.) The book – I just happened to google Michael Cunningham, to see if there was another book on the way. I didn’t have much hope but, excitingly, there is a memoir coming out in…
