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.

Here's a question we see, especially from AI skeptics: if AI coding is so great, shouldn't we be seeing more new, good software by now? Here are some answers. As usual in this style of post, these are conjectural, candidate answers, and I would give some of them little weight. We are in fact seeing software improvement, in the form of fewer bugs and better performance. We are in fact seeing software improvement, in the form of more and better features in existing products. We are in fact seeing…

When supermarket eggs were getting expensive a while back, a local farmer’s market vendor said she was raising the price of her eggs. Not because her input costs were increasing—they hadn’t, she said–but simply because the supermarket price had gone up. To paraphrase from memory, “It’s not right that I should not get paid just as much for my eggs, since they are a superior product.” I am as glad as anyone about the increasing preference for local products, particularly food, over the last few…

Classless, Mid-Strength Backgrounds, Strong Diagetic Growth Characters - Backgrounds - Advancement - Essentials of PlayJourneys - Delving - Encounters - Combat - Gear - Spells M.F. Fuller Creating a CharacterYou are only just beginning. Your song lies ahead, if you dare rise to meet it. AttributesTo make a character, begin by rolling their attribute scores. Roll 3d6 for each attribute, and record the rolled score only. 3d6 Score 3-5 -2 6-8 -1 9-11 +0 12-14 +1 15-17 +2 18 +3 STRENGTH (STR):…

I’m trying to catch up on my stray books here, but there’s one that I had a problem with when I first went to take care of it, and that problem was… it didn’t seem to exist. I mean, I had a copy of it, because my wife stumbled across it at a bookstore, but Amazon hadn’t heard of it. The website for the store where my wife found it, a Barnes & Noble, doesn;t have it. The book doesn’t have an ISBN number anywhere on it to search. It’s a recent book, copyright 2025, but it was defying the laws of…

Nintendo Gamechat episode 6 asked what nine games shaped who I am as a gamer. That’s a tough one! I might sometime do mental gymnastics to figure that out — some Atari games may be contenders — but there’s at least one game the easily stands out above the rest. I emailed the podcast to share one game that shaped me big time. Here’s what I said: “This is tough. I would need more time to reflect. But the #1 game that shaped me is Final Fantasy III on SNES. It was my first JRPG, and the first time…

“So what exactly am I supposed to do now?” The post Fourteen Years Later, I Still Don’t Know What to Do With a Baby first appeared on Correr Es Mi Destino.

I’m back, and I apologize that I’ve been away for so long. Now that I’ve pushed SuperPod Saga to bi-weekly releases, I have quite a bit more space to breath and work on other projects during my podcast downtime. At the very least, I’m hoping to keep the monthly roundups coming at a steady, consistent pace and avoid burning myself out like I tend to do. Let’s talk about video games and junk now! I want this monthly roundup to act almost like a checklist of games that I need to finish and what to…

Ignore the image above, this is actually for September 🫣 I’m back, and I apologize that I’ve been away for so long. Now that I’ve pushed SuperPod Saga to bi-weekly releases, I have quite a bit more space to breath and work on other projects during my podcast downtime. At the very least, I’m hoping to keep the monthly roundups coming at a steady, consistent pace and avoid burning myself out like I tend to do. Let’s talk about video games and junk now! I want this monthly roundup to act almost…

The "Creeps" series of books published by Phillip Allan during the 1930s are legendary books among supernatural fiction collectors, all are highly elusive and consequently exorbitantly priced if one is lucky to come across one in the antiquarian book trade. Comprised of short story anthologies by lesser known pulp magazine writers, sporting one word titles like Nightmares, Shudders and Terrors to name a few, they were compiled mostly by Charles Birkin who included his own work under the…

While on the bus on my way to work this morning the thought occurred to me that I should really make an effort to get back into meditation. To be honest I’ve been having this thought on and off for quite a while, but something about the way I thought about it today was different, I guess. Today it felt like a thing I should actually make an attempt at.A few years back I had a decent meditation habit going for quite a while, and I most definitely noticed the positive effects meditation can have…

One can’t see the forest for the trees.

I recently read a post on Meeting a Game Where It's At by Dungeon Merlin—The RootRing Random button continues to bless me—and it made me pause to think about which games I'm playing and what their intended goals are, so to speak. I'm mainly playing two games these days: Cairn, and a bastardized b/x Wolves Upon the Coast hack that I've really been enjoying. CairnSo where is Cairn? It bills itself as a game designed to run fantasy OSR modules with the simple fiction-first focus of an odd-like,…

Kottke.org is one of those sites I have been following for a while now, and a while back Jason Kottke linked to John Hartnup’s Poster Prompts. John wanted to see what range of visual styles AI could produce (beyond the typical AI slop), and ended up creating prompts for a hundred different design styles for […] Source

I made a tiny e-readerI saw this video a while ago and it absolutely ticked all my weird boxes.It's smallIt's pretty DIYIt's cheapI get to learn something newIt was honestly one of the simplest DIY projects I've done in a while. I had never 3D printed before, so I got my buddy to help me out (thank you Mason!). And otherwise, it was just sourcing parts using a very well manicured how-to from the creator's website and an active Discord. All in all, it took me and Mason like an hour and a half…

The Nobel prize in economics was awarded for the sixth time in 1974 (that is, it was first awarded in 196) to Gunnar Myrdal and Friedrich von Hayek “for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena.” Both responded by arguing that the award might better be abolished. Hayek made the case against the prize itself in his speech at the Nobel banquet on December 10,…

One of the fascinating things about new technologies or scientific discoveries is how they expose the cracks in our understanding of the world. New distinctions present themselves as evidence emerges to challenge the categories we previously constructed. There are tons of examples of this, but one that I particularly like is a historical example. Aristotle devised a method of categorizing living creatures and after his death until the fifteenth-century, that system worked pretty well for…

À propos the last post, from music editor Marc Weidenbaum: The first is don’t let anyone or anything, or anything acting like anyone, or anyone promoting anything, convince you that craft is outdated or will ever be outdated; you will only improve, only make the sounds you imagine in your mind’s ear and feel in yourself, by working steadily to achieve them. Also recognize that expected paths lead to unlikely ends the more patiently and curiously, guided by instinct and experience, you walk…

I should definitely do something with my Special Fish account.

@absolutelynotclassicusernam-blog asks:Hello,Your post about blushing has been a great help to me, especially the suggestion that blushing need not be the default way to show embarrassment and the list of other ways a writer might do it. Do you by any chance have a similar post about nervousness and the frequent use of a character turning pale when they are nervous? In the specific instance I am currently writing my character is from India, but any advice you have for any character of color…

I linked to his work before, and here’s The Art Of Storytelling with another interesting video – about what made Jobs such a good presenter: I’m not going to spoil the findings, which are presented well with good corroborating examples. But the most interesting thing to me was one short video snippet of Jobs being visibly nervous before a very early, 1978 presentation: It made me think about other examples of Jobs being off his presenting game. The most well-known one is likely the 2005…

Last time I made a dental insurance claim, Aviva insisted on sending me a cheque. So I asked them via live chat if I could claim via bank transfer. Yes, they say, although apparently I have to ask every time because "they can't store bank details". Sigh. Fine. At least they'll pay this one by bank transfer. Except a few days later they emailed to say they'd lost my bank details and could I provide them again. They asked me to add it to my claim, but their website won't let me do that because…

There are lots of tool/model/skill changes listed below, but the biggest overarching change is simplicity. The models are changing faster than the tools. I am increasingly finding little long-term value in anything that tries to improve the model from the outside. So the last couple of months have seen the removal of many tools and a lot of skills. Instead, I am now focusing on improving my inputs and pushing the model to verify and prove the output.ModelsOpus and Fable are from Anthropic.…

Watching football and contrmplating the feasibility of a “Super Lewp”. Orchestration in T3 is really helpful.