Oh my this was too much food for lunch! Leftover onion bhajis, egg, cheese, and a leftover homemade flatbread.463 words · 1 image

I wonder if Gruber ever watched The Good Place? Life imitating art much? ✍️ Reply by email Originally posted at Nice Marmot 15:04 Monday, 12 October 2026

Today was is a holiday in Brazil, and me and my friend were feeling pretty down, só we went to the beach together to stare at the ocean and feel the sun.

That is to say, little or no ethics. Since Apple has returned to Twitter, er, I mean, X, and has taken some heat for doing so, John Gruber has decided that Twitter, er, I mean, X, is a benign environment. Just a wonderful place for people to gather. And by "gather," I mean, "support." The culture on X today is remarkably friendly and inclusive. It is a cheerful place. That cheerfulness is another differentiator. If you believe the world is falling apart and doomed only to get worse, that our…

I have a longing for you that ebbs and flows. I do not know what makes it swell. Often in dreams — maybe nightmares — I'm wandering corridors, looking for comfort, not knowing how to ask. As if you should understand it as I do: without words, without thought, without effort. That isn't how this works. I know it. (I still want it to.) We both still want it too, though we only admit it when we're pushed. This is the fear of unrequested solitude — silence that comes from outside rather than in. So…

Like many others building software that communicates with servers on the Fediverse, I followed the How to make friends and verify requests tutorial that demonstrated how a server can easily verify a digital signature to accept a message from another server. It was good enough to get started! Meanwhile, an IETF working group was producing a standard for HTTP Message Signatures that became RFC 9421 and was published in February, 2024. In August, 2026, Mastodon 4.7 was released which began sending…

After a slow decade where Melbourne hardly improved its off-peak Metro train frequencies, the last year has seen some significant action. The February 2026 Metro Tunnel timetable cut maximum waits on the Sunbury - Pakenham/Cranbourne corridor while the August 2026 timetable cut maximum waits on the Craigieburn, Upfield, Mernda, Hurstbridge and Sandringham lines. The infamous Sunday morning 40 minute gaps are now gone and many more lines have 20 rather than 30 minute evening service. Sunbury,…

I wrote the chapter on app icon history for The iOS App Icon Book. The other day I found an old note stashed away where I had started researching the macOS version of that chapter (which Michael ultimately ended up writing). At the time, I didn’t know what to write. I mean, how do you write a history of icon design for the Mac? It’s rich! To get my creative juices flowing, I started by researching the different docks in macOS through the years and compiled them all into a single graphic (big…

Thoughts 🫩 I'm worn out. We have a week before holiday and of course I'm going to be busy right up to that point.

What happened was, Lauren’s NZ family includes a nephew who’s currently living in Brisbane and got married last month, so a dozen or so Kiwis and three of us Canadians got on airplanes and converged on easternmost Australia. We went on to tourist a bit and visit friends in the Melbourne area. Came away with impressions and pictures. Australia’s different. I don’t claim any particular deep understanding, but at least we were mostly among locals and often off the tourist trail. Also I find some…

A satirical re-write on this piece, “X Once Again Marks the Spot” on Daringfireball.net. Congratulations on sparking discussion, I guess? Upon rolling out his latest legal initiative, Stephen Miller began posting aggressively on X. He posted a terse “Ready,” shared a preview of administrative deportation blueprints followed by a sleek sizzle reel for detention infrastructure, celebrated courtroom victories and prime-time cable hits, and commemorated the anniversary of hardline immigration acts…

A few years ago, I started collecting notes and quotes from various sources. Like books, blogs, and occasionally the comment section of Hacker News. The inspiration came from author Ryan Holiday. Ryan takes notes on subjects he reads about. Later uses these notes as a foundation when writing his own books. One of the quotes (sadly I forgot to write where I read it) goes as follows: “Let them keep doing what’s popular. You keep doing what’s necessary.” Like most of the notes I have collected,…

★★★★: A tightly designed, slightly spooky, rogue-like deckbuilder that doesn't overstay its welcome. Read more in my full review! FYI: My reviews are scored out of 4. Also, thanks for subscribing to my RSS feed and supporting the indie web!

It's like Slay the Spire, but smaller and more focused. Read the whole thing.

I've just finished reading The Last Temptation of Beck by Josephine Riesman. The book focuses on his change: from being a child of scientology parents into being a fully–fledged scientologist, from humble beginnings to a double suicide, from being young with a girlfriend to being older and leaving people behind because that the choice of scientologists, perhaps not Beck himself. Where does the self die in lieu of an illusion? Riesman digs into how Beck grew up, through a variety of sources,…

Over the next two or three months, in addition to 31 Days of Toy terror, be prepared for a ton of G.I. Joe reviews. I've got a lot of missed ground to cover! Take the Cobra Ramp Rats, for example; these guys showed up at my door back in May! I've had them on my desk for about five months. I've messed around with them quite a bit, though, so I'm excited to finally talk about them. Who are the Ramp Rats? The packaging and promotional material identify them as the ground crew for the Cobra…

Cool - without fail the toxic Bear blog meta (that I'm now adding to I know) kicks in and a post responding to mine points out that obviously I'm wrong and stupid and using the wrong search engine. The search engine called 'small web' akshually doesn't search the small web - who knew (not me). no seriously, is Kagi evil? "I realise there are lots of other places to find blogs" and "doesn't necessarily lead to content. Also a large pinch of English sarcasm here too." Sorry can't remember why I…

A high-level dungeon, season to taste.The PCs are nominally supposed to free the prisoner (8) and defeat the Sorcerer (21).The entire dungeon is made of some material on the border between crystal and white marble with translucent veins that seem to move. The material automatically resists any attempt to manipulate or bypass it--it has an extra saving throw to prevent Passwall, Stone Shape, Teleportation, et al. and if that save succeeds, some unsavory disaster will occur--the caster ends up…

A CEO whose company I’ve followed for a while posted a thesis this week, and I’ve been turning it over since. Websites, he argued, are going the way of contact lenses. I’ll paraphrase his point below, but read it for yourself. I left a comment right away, and as I thought about it more, my comment became the rest of what is on this page. The first contact lenses were expensive and durable. You bought a pair, you cleaned them, you kept them in a case, and you expected them to last. The cost…

Table of Contents Writer Improvements Performance Improvements Footer Caching and Reuse Id-Based Access to Dictionary-Encoded Columns Also in This Release I’m happy to announce the release of Hardwood 1.1.0.Beta2! The latest version of the Hardwood open-source library for reading and writing Apache Parquet files brings new features for the writer, significantly improves performance for many different workloads, provides a new API for caching and reusing Parquet file footers, id-based dictionary…

Show me a person who looks forward to walking in waders and I’ll show you someone who hides a silver cilice in the back of their sock drawer and hangs a camel hair shirt at the front of their closet.

Gerhard Richter, Flasche mit Apfel, Bottle with Apple, 2026, “fine art print mounted between dibond and perspex,” 83 x 62 cm, ed. 25+5AP, via David Zwirner In 1988 Gerhard Richter made three paintings after a still life photo of a bottle and apple, which is on the same sheet of Atlas as his portrait of his daughter Betty. The Flasche mit Apfel paintings are all the same size, and seem to vary only a little in overall light intensity and the shape of their shadows. In 2003, Richter made some…

Called out today, cause I need a rest day after everything. The med that masks my symptoms is doing a great job, so I actually feel pretty normal, and actually got a decent nights sleep. Now just gotta hope the antibiotic does it's part.

Eeeeeeveryone’s got a bug. A lot of Ponyo and Timmy Time over here right now.

An Evil Vizier and a Noble Prince were among a group playing Stellar Ventures. True to his wicked ways, the Vizier greedily bid to acquire the “best” corporation, only to discover that he could not retain control of it. The Vizier skulked as he lost. The Noble Prince contemplated: ego led that one to believe that it could “control” a corporation, when it could not even control itself and attained enlightenment. Stellar Ventures tries to mix cube rails (like Chicago Express) with 18xx train…

Just got back from biking around my new neighborhood, and into Beverly, the next town over. Its very nice out, and the air is cool enough that you need a light jacket, even while biking, which I love. I meandered through the curving streets, up and down slight hills, with no plan in mind. My phone was tucked away in my backpack, I didn't need it. I didn't look at it the whole time I was out. That felt really good. In fact, I still haven't looked at it since getting back. Most of the places I…

A few days ago I posted about my experience playing around with TinyJS. This is a very light "web to desktop app" platform for - well - building desktop apps. Its simplicity and similarity to PhoneGap (at least for the desktop) has got me interested in seeing what I can build with the project. One of my ideas would be improved with a login system so I naturally looked into adding a "Login with Google" feature. While this was mostly straightforward, I ran into some oddities and figured I'd share…

📷 268/365 - Locked away

Took another color image from almost the exact same position (a couple of steps to the right, actually) in early 2026. This time, the colors inside the building looked interesting, but didn't work very well on their own. Hence the idea of using a long exposure to get some more movement/lights in the foreground. It took a couple of minutes until I had cars crossing in front of me. The result is ok, but I am more happy about the fact that I headed out with the intention of making an image and…

The fifth part of a series about bare-metal programming for x86 PC-type computers, using Linux for development. This article is about handling files using EFI's Simple File Protocol.