my thoughts are on a loop an image, an idea then remember I wrote about that before you must know already so I stay quiet and wait

My dad learned calculus from this book: Practical mathematics, theory and practice with applications to industrial business and military problems. I wanted to include a photo of the title page from his copy of it in a little biography we’re working on for him, but I ended up with jaggies when using my scaleimage tool. favr.dev’s Java – resize image without losing quality led me to the The Perils of Image.getScaledInstance() Blog (2015, originally on java.net). It says: When upscaling an image……

I have photographed this stunning Sydney building before in monochrome, but here is my effort to capture its architectural luminosity in colour. Walking off a tummy bloated with sushi and Japanese donuts (yes plural), I followed the dockside route. Couples and families and tourists swirled about their weekend quests. Down over there, where the walkway juts out a bit over the water and the view cuts through these tall sculptures to get to the casino, clumps of people were taking selfies and…

I can't speak too much about what happens in Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenhiem's insane documentary about Elizabeth Holmes and her husband, Billy Evans. There are too many good twists and I do not want to give them away. I'll just say that you should do everything you can to see this movie as quickly as possible, that it strikes me as an instant classic, and that Nathan Fielder (and Oppenheim, of course) is possibly the most compelling documentarian alive. If you can see it in a big theater,…

Sonic Generations was a big deal when it first released in late 2011 for PS3 and Xbox 360. It was the first major Sonic …

I have been running Caverns of Thracia with Fantastic Medieval Campaigns for quite a few sessions1, and just about every session I have to stop and discuss with the players about how to proceed with a ruling. In the spirit of FMC, I have been doing my best to avoid backporting modern D&D-isms into the game. In fact, where reasonable, I do my best to make my interpretations different from later rpgs. So, without further ado, here are a bunch of my rulings for FMC: All HD are rolled every…

I am writing this on my phone. I have been avoiding selling. Following up to people for the ai assistant my friend made for [redacted] and me. I set it up for [redacted]. [redacted] wants one. [redacted] asked me to send them what they needed a month ago. I sent them the list of hardware they needed yesterday. I feel like I might have lost the sale. The hard part for me is the asking for money. My friend built something really helpful. Something a 50-70 year old can text or email or interact…

Rush on tour in 2026? Yes! At almost three and a half hours, this was a tremendous and spectacular show, and pretty special to see a longtime favorite band in a new incarnation.

Jasper Johns, A Cartoon for Tanya, 1972, lithograph on Suzuki paper, 25 x 37 in., ed. 10+ 3AP +2PP + some other proofs, this ed. 3/10 was a gift of the Daytons to the Walker An unrelated search just took me back to David Zwirner’s show from January of ULAE prints, and how have I been looking all this time and never noticed this wack Jasper Johns lithograph? A Cartoon for Tanya, 1972, is just what it says on the label, including a thought bubble, sightlines, and plot. Our main character is seen…

For the last two weeks I’ve been barraged by people asking me to comment on the appearance of the ArtCraft clones of Adobe and Microsoft products. Whatever I have to say about them, though, will pale against the what both users and courts will eventually say about the clones. My first take is this: the (now) team behind this effort is sure good at storytelling and marketing. I’m also intrigued by the “Made by Artists, for Artists” tag line given that it really should read “Copied by AI, for AI…

or, how to build a workforce that has never once met the edgeIn Normal law, an Airbus A320 will not let you stall it. You can haul the sidestick fully aft and hold it there with the sincerity of a man wrestling a bear, and the aeroplane will decline. It will fly at maximum lift, mushing along like an offended cat, and it will not depart. Somewhere in three redundant flight control computers there is a rule, and the rule outranks you. You are not the pilot in command. You are a well-regarded…

"If it doesn't snow soon this summer will be all smoke", we say and say again, this small talk serving as some mass recitation, the human organism calibrating itself through every mouth until the words ring true from each body. "Yes, this summer..." I'll say it too. I don't care to know any different. What good would it be? Acting the prophet. I have better things to do. I have secrets.

I've already complained in numerous posts about how expensive food is. Y'all know gas is $5 a gallon. The cheapest new car is 40k. Blah blah blah. But what about stuff nobody needs? Like fun stuff? Well, given the need to retain customers you'd expect the big boys out there to come up with affordable options. Right? Apparently the opposite is on the table these days. You would think that the goal for most companies would be to sell items the majority of people could afford in order to make…

Thanks weather. Tricked me into going for a ride with gorgeous sunny weather. And then the dangerous wind storm and sudden temperature drop halfway through. That’s what I get for going outside .. 🚴‍♀️

Y'all, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. I've been going through the wringer lately, and it doesn't appear that my ass-beating will be over anytime soon. Maybe 2027 will be my year, but 2026 has not been pulling any punches. But I'm not here to talk about all the hardship again. I'm not here to say how my worldview has shifted or how I've made progress on my creative projects (because there definitely hasn't been enough to update about). I'm just here to say hey. Hope y'all have been having a better…

Card shop stop for Pokémon at Spitty’s Cards.

Had a proper fire brigade call-out on our street today. The smoke alarm went off two houses down and one of the neighbors made the call. No fire after all and we are not sure what exactly happened, but the fact that they arrived with four vehicles only three minutes after the call went out is somewhat reassuring. In other news, starting today, this here blog has a proper about page. I wanted to make it a little more self-contained instead of linking out to the other website, which is rarely…

There are many UI designers that have become experts in how to work with Figma Auto Layout or Framer Layout Templates. But if you’re designing for iOS, you need to be studying up on options like ArrangementView by following builders like Natalia Panferova: https://nilcoalescing.com/blog/ArrangementViewInSwiftUISplitAndOverlayLayoutsForIPhoneDuo/

Went to Homebrew Writing Club — Writing Edition today, which raised a lot of thoughts: I’m curious what makes writers choose a particular format for an idea? (e.g. blog post versus comic versus zine versus poetry) how much of working in a format is learning what ideas suit it, and figuring out an approach to starting a piece in that format? (e.g. I wouldn’t know how to approach writing a poem) James mentioned “remixing” several blog posts into a new post — I might try this to extract good ideas…

Delayed but not (entirely) forgotten. I kind of forgot to write the digest post a couple days in a row, hence the delay. I went to new employee orientation on Wednesday night and then had therapy and some errands to run on Friday. On Monday I have my first work training shift and then Thurs/Fri day. I'm not scheduled to work next week, but have put in my availability for November so hopefully will find out which of those shifts I'm working this week. There's lots to be anxious about starting a…

The weather here in Texas is finally cool and crisp. Fall is truly here, yeah! This morning I took advantage of it and rode my bike, getting some exercise, closing rings on my Apple Watch, and feeling good. I rode six miles one-way to a friend’s house to enjoy his Koi pond. It’s like a little garden sanctuary amidst the otherwise dry west central Texas climate, a real oasis. It was tranquil, serene, quiet. Cool temps, crisp air, light breeze, warm sun, blue sky…it doesn’t get much better. As I…

The lines between coder and software engineer have in practice often been blurry, perhaps due to misunderstandings of what the work of building software entails. The consensus among authorities is that while the “coder” may be endangered, the “engineer” remains essential, though that role is being redefined as part product manager, part reviewer, and part AI orchestrator. The End of the Coder?, by Logan Kugler The nature of the work is changing, as the available tools become more powerful.…

My dad is an inventor. It’s the coolest thing for a dad to be. You say you have a problem and your dad invents a contraption to fix your problem. My dad has created shoes that don’t require bending over to lace, he’s created retractable ski poles and bike saddles. At work, my dad has participated in a countless number of patents. I think my dad is pretty great. And he’s also my constant reminder that being an inventor with dozens of patents that bear your name doesn’t necessarily come with a…

I have a lot of fun with self-hosting lately. It got much easier with the help of AI. After tackling and improving music self-hosting, it was finally time to find an adequate solution for my AI chats. Previously I mainly used Gemini, then Mistral Vibe (Le Chat). But I’m not happy with having just another subscription, given I also use OpenCode with Cortecs.ai or OpenRouter for my private programming projects. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and other open-weight models got so good and cheap that I really…

You know when you're going to go out for a walk, and you dress to match the light and the colour of the sea? Takes some planning, that.133 words · 4 images

Early Levitation (demo) My darling strandberg I've been a bit in the pits lately,[1] and have been playing a lot of guitar to self-soothe. Much of the time when I'm in this kind of mood I don't come up with anything that gets me excited, but it's important to do this thing that I do to keep myself focused on sound, and on my hands. It's grounding. Noé suggested to me that I record more of my noodlings in case something pops out at me when I'm feeling more creative, so I've been making…

Samsung's Z Flip3 has been my phone of choice for the past 5 years. Good battery life, sturdy construction, great camera, and compact when its folded and not in use. After a couple days of failing to find a replacement in the Z series (they just don't have them out here, anywhere), I settled for the S26. Still a flat slab, which I loathe, it's the lightest and smallest 2026 phone I could find. Battery life is good, as is the camera. I actually considered digging out my old battered S8 to use as…

Art Deco Tool Chest. Highly original compact tool chest with shaped drawer fronts, handmade pulls, original first coat deep green paint. 18 inches tall and 14 inches deep. Side pieces are drilled for hanging tools. Sculptural and eccentric at the same time. Circa 1920 - 1940. Shows sophisticated style as it retains the folky made-do appearance of a handmade piece. Worth waking up on a Saturday morning to find!

News Link I don’t know what is going on but Steve was a fan of Ruger guns, especially the NO. 1 rifle. He would be disappointed. Money is likely behind it. Another corporation may have bought them. Usually that leads to cheapened products as they exploit the name.

When I was in Canada earlier this year, I was keen to add more books by Ethel Wilson to my shelves. I’d enjoyed her writing for a while, but was fully bowled over by how brilliant The Equations of Love was, which I read for another club year. One of the books I bought was her second novel, The Innocent Traveller, which fortuitously fits into the 1949 Club. The Innocent Traveller covers the lifespan of Topaz, and it is a long life – about a century, from the 1840s through to around the time of…