Once the Meta algorithm figures out that you like to wear hats — which is probably easy for it to do — you will be inundated with ads for hats and hat accessories. One of them is a clip that lets you hang your hat from your luggage. Which is, indeed, a useful thing because traveling with a nice hat requires commitment to fashion and tolerance of inconvenience. The struggle is real. The accessory you'll most likely see advertised is the Klipsta, which supposedly uses a "strong magnet" to hold…

I could’ve posted a photo of a CT scanner for the day, but I’ve done that many times before. After today’s routine scan (that I’d put off for years), I treated myself to lunch at Long John Silvers in Pleasant Ridge. (Sparing you that photo as well, but it showed up in the monthly digest.) Driving home I did a double take, and looped back to capture this Waffle House under construction. With a bunch of Frisch’s and White Castles closing of late, it’s nice to see something positive taking shape.…

On what comes next.

While I'm not shy about my pro-democracy, anti-authoritarian politics, this blog has kept to a more technical lane, veering into policy only out of necessity. As the scale of the web's setbacks at the hands of proprietary forces became clear, it became urgent to explain the forces at work and raise the alarm. But politics are inescapable now; the abuses inherent in centralised control of native app platforms aren't just enabling violent repression on foreign shores, but threaten the democracy I…

Today I completed my Digital Signal Processing assignment and submitted it. I spent too much time polishing up the last 10%, but old habits die hard I guess. In any case, I greatly enjoyed it: I learned about DTMF signaling (now I know where those tones come from!) and applied some deconvolution techniques to recover an astronomical image convolved with a point spread function modelling the aperture of the lens. I wont discuss it more, but it was great fun seeing the maths and computation blend…

I just read Tuesday's Child's most recent post at the time of writing this. I have a few things to say as someone who has lived both middle class and broke to the point of near homelessness. It's an age-old question, does money buy happiness? My answer is no... but with an asterisk. For context, I've lived in a hilltop condo in Anaheim Hills, I've lived in gated communities. I've also lived in a slummy duplex that had mold growing throughout parts of the dwelling that the landlord never…

That’s leftists for you. We don’t have money but we have stamina. The post French Protests, Act IV – Window Shopping Meets Tear Gas in Nantes first appeared on Correr Es Mi Destino.

I recently finished Roland Allen’s The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, and enjoyed it very much, as I thought I would. For as long as I can remember, I have been an incorrigible notebook fiend. Even as I embraced digital notes and e-ink note-taking devices such as the Boox and Supernote, I’ve always kept a paper notebook that holds a chaotic mishmash of notes: to-dos, timestamps of memorable scenes as I watch shows, thoughts, ideas, reflections, quotes, you name it. My notebook is…

For the Santa Clara Valley CNPS potluck, I decided to try making a few teas based on native plants, two from my own garden, Hummingbird Sage (Salvia spathacea) and Yerba Buena (Clinopodium douglasii), plus some packaged Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) tea that was a gift. Hummingbird Sage (Salvia spathacea) I tried to follow the suggestions from this recipe from Meghan Steinharter, manager for the Fort Funston and the Oceana nurseries: Freshly Picked, Tasty Tea Recipes (Archive). I picked 5…

You love to see it. Tesla to wind down Cybertruck production after years of poor sales in few markets.

In this game set in the Abbasid Caliphate in 820AD, you are explorers, cartographers and astronomers, setting out from Baghdad to explore and map the land, the seas and the skies. As you explore and discover, you must also remember to report back to Baghdad regularly to journal your findings. You score points mostly from the many cards you collect - land, sea and skies.

I was checking the post I made earlier today, proof-reading and whatnot now that it is actually published... and noticed that the CSS for the site header when viewing a post is white and has no shadow or underline that it used to have. I sighed, and started the process of seeing what class had changed or whatever, and updating the custom CSS in Pureblog and I suddenly thought "Oh fuck this. This shouldn't be a thing. I'm not going to do this process whenever something changes. I'll just migrate…

Stopping People From Doing “Bad” ThingsThe National Voluntary Self-Exclusion program is “a free way to stop gaming [gambling] across many different websites and casinos”: you sign a form, prove your identity, and submit. It’s basically the ability to voluntarily say “please prevent me from gambling in the future”. No matter how the casinos design their labyrinths of addiction and hell and depravity or the morally-corrupt companies program their slot machines or app algorithms, the self-excluded…

STREAMER COFFEE COMPANY is a cafe chain with 6 stores open in Tokyo. Coffees from chains never seem to taste as good as what you can get from independent cafes, and I would usually relegate them to a back-up option if nothing else was available in the area - but STREAMER has some really tasty coffee. I can’t speak for all their stores, of course, but the coffees I have had from their Harajuku and Nakameguro branches were both really good. The Nakameguro branch is right underneath a gym which…

Fremantle2026 November 8 (Sunday), 8:48AM I might complain about website hosting being annoyinger nowadays, but it is actually still possible and does work. If you have good (tested) backups and an immutable archiving system, then things are fine (he says, possibly while having a nice cup of tea and a sit down, as the flames rage around…). ← Previous My main RSS news feed: https://samwilson.id.au/news.rss(or Wikimedia.rss, Fremantle.rss, OpenStreetMap.rss, etc. for topic feeds). Email me at…

Endless Comics, Games, and Cards are some great folks with snazzy stores and they're helping do a cool event in a smidgen over a week! That's right, not this coming Sunday (it's the next one), there will be the Autumnal Hobby Street Market! There will be a whole mix of folks selling their hobby items, from board games to toys, dice, video-games, comics, and more! It'll be held from 11AM to 2PM on the 15th at 440a Rue Saint Francois in Florissant. It should be a fun time, and I look forward to…

A get to know you exercise from Robert Birming. A photo This can be a photo of you, your hometown, your pet, a drawing that represents you, or a photo that captures something that’s meaningful to you. I live on the edge of Atlanta. This is a photograph of downtown from some public parking lot. […]

Bike’s been gathering dust with the flurry of floods and travel and a litany of other excuses. Put some air in the tires, clocked in a good ride, and noticed fading flowers. Currently Listening: Ex:Re “Radio Station”Reply via email

Opera Australia honours Melbourne with the premiere season of their glossy new production of the world’s favourite opera, La Bohème. Finally retiring the celebrated Gale Edwards’ “Weimar Republic” production of La Bohème (programmed and enjoyed in 13 seasons since 2011), Opera Australia commissions a new production from the next generation of creative talent. Director Constantine Costi leads a terrific team to bring his imaginative vision to life. Set in the early 1900s, this La Bohème plays…

This is my iPad setup. iA Writer, Claude (as my research assistant) and Procreate (because it’s the single greatest app on the iPad and enough reason to buy an iPad in the first place).

I spent the morning reading Mysteries of the Dark Moon by Demetra George, then went to Wimpy's for breakfast (my favorite), and visited an antique store to have a look around. A slow-moving day that matched the rainy weather. ✦ 🌑 Dark Moon alchemy >>> journaling with a tarot card, resting, sleeping longer, writing letters to an ancestor, writing down dreams, drinking root-grounding teas, taking hot baths with no background noise, noticing energy leaks and deciding what to minimize. ✦ lately…

I went for a decent walk this morning along the dirt roads in the neighborhood. I woke up feeling groggy this morning and the walk helped me get my wits about me, but I ended up taking a nap for a while after the walk. While I was out and about I noticed the Santa Rita Mountains were looking quite lovely this morning. It’s a shame mining operations are taking place in those mountains; I don’t know how much of this beautiful landscape will be altered as a result of the mining. I know there’s a…

Recently I've tried to get into running... again. Running and I never managed to strike up a long-term friendship. I tried to pick it up multiple times over the past few years, but I would normally run out (pun!) of motivation after the first couple of training sessions. I thought that this time, to increase my chances of sticking to it, I should have a plan. Until now I would just run for as long as I could, which would be anywhere between thirty minutes and an hour; and then check my pace. So…

Late to post this, but happy blue tsunami to all are not down for fascism. 🇺🇸

The first recording today starts with the end of an episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures. There’s a promo for The Sarah Jane Academy website. There’s a trail for Arthur. Then it’s a repeat of Sarah Jane’s Alien Files. Media Centre Description: Sarah Jane Smith opens the Alien Files – the ultimate guide to everything you could possibly need to know when facing hostile aliens. Luke, back from university, has the lowdown on his creator Mrs Wormwood, and her fearsome Bane mother, as well as…

My latest Brit Noir viewing is TIME IS MY ENEMY (1954), from from the Kino Lorber Brit Noir Collection IV.TIME IS MY ENEMY is quick 64 minutes which rather reminded me of another lean, mean British crime film, the 69-minute WALK A TIGHTROPE (1963).The movie also calls to mind aspects of NO MAN OF HER OWN (1950), as far as a man from a woman's past showing up to blackmail her, culminating in a "murky" shooting.TIME IS MY ENEMY was written by Alan McKinnon based on the play SECOND CHANCE by Ella…

You are invited to our annual BLOOMSBURY JAMBOREE which runs from 10:30am – 4:30pm, Saturday 14th & Sunday 15th November at Art Workers’ Guild, 6 Queen Sq, WC1N 3AT. We are showing the work of our favourite makers and are proud to present these accompanying lectures. Tickets include entry to the Jamboree. SUZANNE COOPER: PAINTINGS UNDER THE SPARE ROOM BED Join author Lucy Hughes-Hallett for an illustrated talk exploring the life, work and rediscovery of Suzanne Cooper, an important modernist…

It is so just depressing these days. Several years ago now I started self-hosting things. Initially the learning process and how to set up everything drove me to eagerly keep learning more and more, and even how to manage keeping everything up and reliable. But then the LLM Scrapers arrived. I looked at Anubis and decided I didn't want the delay loading for regular viewers, so moved to iocaine which is slightly different in what it does, and that was fine until so many scrapers hit my site that…