I've found myself on the path of least resistance lately. I go to work. I come home. I stuff around on the internet before and after work. That seems to be it. It's a yearly thing for me. It's during the time it's cold. This year it might be the worst it's ever been. I feel like I've been doing some things but in reality I don't think I have been. I have good days and bad days. The bad days seem to be taking over currently. From writing, to updating things or staying on top of tasks, these have…
This blog post is based on a presentation I recently gave to our engineering team at my day job. I wanted to share more broadly, so I used Gemini to do the slides → blog post translation, then I heavily edited it to make it my own voice and strip it of anything specific to my company. Much of this is specifically about Claude Code. Using LLMs to Investigate And Reproduce Complex Bugs With Reasonable Token Spend Every engineer knows the feeling of staring down a cryptic stack trace buried deep…
The lagoon was settled in Antiquity, and in the 600s, there were numerous known towns, and several important cities. Venice, however, was not one of them.
Every time I have given up on America, it has been a mistake. And yet, America has never, ever given up on me.
With Independence Day (in the US) happening this weekend I lit my share of fireworks, along with most of my neighbors, in my little town that goes nuts with them every year. I’ve been thinking about a time (a long time ago) when I knocked myself unconsious and almost lost my right hand doing dumb things with fireworks. Preface: DO NOT do anything I mention in this post. There is absolutely no reason to do any of the totally hypothetical things I mention here. All of this is “fictional” and just…
It's that time of the year again. For the past three years I participated in the old computer challenge every year, and I always had a lot of fun, so I wanted to do something this year, too. The topic for this year isn't strictly about old computers, but rather about making something yourself, to combat the onslaught of AI slop that we're all being subjected to on a daily basis. I like this topic, and so I've been racking my brain without much success on what I could (and want to) make. I…
“As for a book to mark the settled sobriety of my advanced years, I keep Boswell’s Life of Johnson close by. Its praise of steady judgment, as well as its moral force, make it a reassuring survivor.” Here’s a reader/writer worth paying attention to. William M. Chace is a retired professor of English and university president of the old school, the sort who taught the books they loved and often reread. A reader sent me a link to a recent essay, “My Books,” published by Chace in Commonweal. The…
Every week, I share something I learned in the previous seven days. I usually find these while I'm putting my weekly newsletter together but somehow, they don't quite fit! This week I learned what an 'Otrovert' is - and how they differ from common Extro- and Intro- 'verts'What is an ‘otrovert?’ The internet is buzzing about themDon’t feel like you fit into any group? Not even personality types like introvert or extrovert? You may be an \ Get better at work. Every Week. One Email. Practical…
Today I am going to look back at June one more time and provide a quick rundown of the classic crime reprints which were published during this month. If you spot any omissions, do let me know so I can add them to the list.
“The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bow-spit of the sturdy yacht… There was bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand open graves, and a sound that the chronicler would not put on paper. For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething...” Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Vol. 1/p> Thing
Sunday 5th July 2026 Welcome to Suffolk’s only bus route numbered 99. After last time’s exploration of the infrequent rural route 99 between Maldon and Chelmsford in Essex, I’ve moved north to Lowestoft to sample First Eastern Counties’ route 99 to Kessingland and Southwold together with its sister route 99A from Southwold to Halesworth. A nice colourful timetable and route map showing the route’s Coastal Clipper branding is available on the First Bus website and gives “BUS TIMES from 26th May…
It’s tough to get really real about having too much gear. To acknowledge that it’s a problem, and then actually do something about it. But as I start to sell some of these things, I realize there is a lot of energy in them. Not that there’s literally energy inside these things, but I’ve connected a lot to them. And the mental aspect of keeping things I don’t use is heavy. But as soon as they’re listed, it’s like mixing while having a friend/ audience in mind. You can think about what your…
Three entries this week, and every one of them turned out to be an examination I didn't schedule. The drawing hand was tested against fifteen years away from traditional illustration. The project was tested against the ego's ledger of attention and engagement. The fear response was tested by a mantis growing in my palm and a masked man parked at my front door. No one graded these. I'm starting to think the response was the result.
Well, this is a bit different. When Andy Christie first mentioned that he was putting on a display featuring garden railways at the massive Gardeners' World show, I knew I wanted to be involved. The setup process is a bit more protracted than that for most shows. When I built "Layout in a Day" for the NGRS, I get half a day to do the job. Andy and team had a week, pretty much standard for displays at this show it seems. That included moving a lot of railway sleepers to build a fence!Thanks to…
Danny and I spent the 4th appreciating an aspect of this country we both have no hesitations about celebrating: nature. We put Ranni's harness on and packed up her collapsible water bowl and a water bottle, and the three of us headed out to Seven Islands State Birding Park. I mentioned in another post that we have a list of things we want to do together this month, and this was the first one checked off the list! We left early so we could get there before the worst of the day's heat settled on…
The boy asked us to not wait for him to fall asleep before leaving his room tonight 🧐
Programming note: The newsletter now has over 1,000 subscribers! Thank you! It has been a joy to write, and your subscriptions help buy me time to research future posts in my signature style, where I just download and read endless papers like a dinosaur. If you know someone else who would enjoy reading these posts, please let them know!Share Mars For The Rest of UsA photo taken inside Biosphere 2 in March 2025The first impression you get when visiting Biosphere 2 is that it would be a great…
first American editionreprinted by DellOne thing I enjoy about Sara Woods is how she varied her London settings with more than occasional jaunts to Yorkshire, taking her brilliant barrister-sleuth Antony Maitland up north to her own native ground, where she was born in 1916 and grew up into adulthood in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1967 in the detective novel And Shame the Devil, she introduced to her loyal readers the city of Arkenshaw, "one of the smoke-grimed industrial cities of the West…
But first, the cuteness! Colby is one of several cats that just love that garden bed cover. So adorable! And yes, those are garlic scapes on the netting beside him. Those are from the few garlic that are growing in the wattle weave bed. More on that later. Today was our first market day at … Continue reading Our 2026 Garden: a harvest, some transplanting and direct sowing
Miscellaneous bits of news and fun stuff from around the Internet......Happy Independence Day, and Happy 250th Birthday to the United States of America!...A new biography of director Frank Capra is on the way: FRANK CAPRA by Sam Wasson is due out from Harper in October....Farran Smith Nehme, aka the Self-Styled Siren, has republished a terrific piece she wrote in 2012 on I CAN GET IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE (1951) with Susan Hayward, George Sanders, and Dan Dailey....Colin's latest essay at Riding…
I recently purchased an ultra-cheap HDMI-to-VGA DAC to hook up my Nintendo Switch to my CRT monitor and external speakers. Unfortunately its audio out jack produced serious noise problems on my audio mixer, as well as my PC's mic jack. I spent several days diagnosing impedance issues, prototyping filtering for the delta-sigma audio DAC, and reworking PCB components to produce the best quality audio achievable with the hardware.
Walked outside to find the city slowly consumed by clouds, displaced by the bright lights and thunder of a vainglorious empire.Reply via email
Links Posted to Thoughts The Week of 06-28-2026 There were 6 links posted this week. 07/03/2026 @19:45 Returnal - Penny ArcadeGabe: First they got rid of manuals, and now there's no disc? I'm just buying an empty box?[...]Tycho: [...] When this shit started, you didn't own the machine at all. [...] They've been chasing that high ever since.Spit truth, boys. 07/02/2026 @10:30 Inside the Luddite Festival Harnessing Gen Z’s Rage Against Big Tech | WIRED[...] one of the opening events of the Summer…
No worries about Bowser – he’s fine! It was me that was down for the count this past week with a brief but impactful stomach bug. No Canada Day celebrations for this girlie. I needed to stay close to home and to the…uh… facilities, at all times. Bowser, who hasn’t gotten up beside me on the couch for months and months, decided he would join me while I was dozing napping recuperating. You know it’s bad when you are back in your winter woolies in order to stay warm, on the 1st of July. Do dogs…
Got out again today to go to the riverfront, and as expected it was pretty busy, and we couldn't enjoy it as much as a lot of the riverfront was ticketed and we didn't wanna pay for it. Didn't stop us from enjoying some chili dogs and milk shakes, and stopping by my favorite thrift shop again where they had everything at 50% off! I was able to get two cute tops and a denim skirt for like $25 bucks! I'm in looooove with that store. After walking around in the heat a bunch until we were both…
📍 Yokohama Burg 13 (横浜ブルク13) Toy Story 5!Location: Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, JapanComment by email
Today I learned of Subsoccer and it is both preposterous and something I would in fact like to have. American spirit of invention chugs along even at 250.
Table of Contents Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7 Hello and welcome to the Old Computer Challenge - 2026 Edition! This is the third year when I’m participating, and if you didn’t read my previous years’ entries, you can check OCC24 – Party like it’s 2004, and also the OCC25 – Old Tech, Old Tricks articles. If you don’t know what the Old Computer Challenge is, we’re a bunch of dorks that refuse to let old hardware die or be forgotten and still use them ten, twenty, thirty years or even…
