I woke up with questions. Do I start packing? Is it irresponsible to take the leap right now? Will I regret waiting? Will I even live long enough? Prevailing orthodoxy says to stay put, work overtime, save aggressively, and target a 4% withdrawal at 65. That would mean another 24 years of this shit. I’ll eat a .40 before that happens. Perhaps the real question is the boy. Would an unconventional life abroad be a boon or a curse? It’s not like the U.S. public school system is doing much for him…

Be sure to check out the latest addition to our lineup of Carl pencil sharpeners! 2026 Dallas Pen Show Recap (via Pen Addict - Kimberly). It’s difficult to get to gauge the Dallas show given the rapid expansion from 2 to 4 days, which changes how vendors look at attending the show. Friday and Saturday were relatively well attended, but a four day show is difficult to justify.Ryan Krusac 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (via Figboot on Pens). I love Ryan’s pens featuring hand-carved artwork. This…

As part of my Pinball Era I have been playing a lot of pinball video games as well, which includes both DEMON’S TILT and XENOTILT. Both are pinball games inspired by the Turbografx/PC-Engine games Alien Crush and Devil’s Crush and like everyone else that’s played them, I think these are some of the best modern pinball video games out there. At a very broad high level, they have the same format of there being three segments of a pinball table that you hit the ball up. Both games have two…

First, a demo! Overview: How does this work? The entry point (load-st.fn) Some Smalltalk bindings The Grammar (smalltalk.g) What does this parse to in practice? The Smalltalk base library (st.st) One of the example programs in the FN programming language is a tiny Smalltalk implementation, in about 400 lines of code. I wrote FN and this example over a decade ago, but it wasn’t open source until 2020, so I failed to write it all up so far. But as it came up in a discussion over beers on the side…

📷 267/365 - Varying weather today. Creating a nice double rainbow.

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades. Most of the things we present here at Sundry Sunday are things from gaming fandom, but this one is from an actual game, Treasure’s Wario World. Wario World might not actually be that great a game, but it is true that it’s full of character. Wario runs around to kicking music, taking out enemies with wrestling moves, literally inhaling coins around him, and then you press the start…

UpdatesIts been a few weeks, and while I don't have any excuse - I do have a few reasons. After being laid off in August - I took a bit of a break, and focused on the newsletter and writing but reduced my weekly commitments a bit. Now, I'm working towards starting my own business, and I've spent the last few weeks building some of the tools I want to bring with me. The first of those is The Values Finder, and if you've read the newsletter you'll know that this is an interactive version of a…

Sometimes I feel like I am only really alive on weekends. Sadly, that only seems to happen part-way through Sunday afternoons, which speaks to my utter lack of timing of late. The struggle against general entropy across work, life and the requisite bits of fiction required to keep myself motivated raged on throughout the week. Things started settling on Friday afternoon, and at least now I have a plan, most of which revolves around simplifying things and attempting to do less. Which my brain…

Dave, from #735: Never trust an adult over 35 who can’t explain what they need from you in a bulleted list. I’m thinking like a laptop sticker or t-shirt, right? A little AI slop to help pick a direction can be helpful. We’ll see we’ll see.

A really great (and I believe scarce) stereo view photograph of whirligig folk art sculpture dating to 1876. Maybe actually an automaton. Stereographs or stereo views sorta took the country by storm 20 years earlier and were placed into viewer to create a 3-D effect in a person's head. There have been a few other folk art objects captured by the process but are hard to find. A lovely relic. The cards were 3 1/2“by 7” and slightly curved to aid in the effect. Courtesy Box lot on Facebook…

Bullies and titans lurk about. Little reptile friends must stick together.

8710/21629The final of Celebrity Pottery Throwdown today. If you haven't yet seen it then watch it before you read this blog. It was rather lovely watching this again - not for the pottery or the competition but to be reminded of how intensely emotional things got amongst the potters and how Fatiha and me really connected.I had not met Fatiha before this, though had seen her on TV and thought she was very funny but might be a bit intimidating or that her faith and my atheism might put us at…

Mitzi will be back Tuesday, and I've made enough of a mess that Monday is going to be spent mostly putting things back to normal. I have yet to check out the Apple IIgs, it's just sitting on the table. I have yet to play with any of the sound cards I have for the IIe. I tried playing with Star Fleet 1: The War Begins! last night, but side 2 of both copies I have resulted in I/O errors. Using a disk utility, I was able to read the directory of one of them, so I'm somewhat optimistic. When the…

The very latest updates from the past, published in September 2026 (in hardback, in the UK). A few that I would like to have read, even if I probably will not get around to reading them: The University: A History in Stone, Silk, and Blood, by William Whyte. A university is fundamentally a place1, and a place is defined by stuff. Stuff like stone buildings, silk gowns and of course students! The Last Invasion of England: 1688 and the Dutch Armada, by Arthur der Weduwen. In which the glorious…

I am aware of the very real problems with Apple as a company. Nevertheless, I find their products and services extremely helpful when used intentionally and synergistically. This is not a paid advertisement, haha. Just sharing a few thoughts about how these tools are helping me. I am working on many things all at once to improve my life mentally, physically, and spiritually. It's a lot to manage all at once, and I have been focusing on managing my time more intentionally. I currently use an…

BitCam: 1-bit camera app and editor.

Some time ago, I did a monthly link compilation called "shinies" on my blog. Predictably, it became too cumbersome to update. In fact, my last update was last July. I'm trying something different called "weeklies", a combination of weeknotes and the original intent behind my "shinies". Anyway, the goal is to do more writing, less overthinking. Let's go! little joy(s) . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁Saw this while gathering references. I love this so much. "What now?", illustration by Jane Allen Boyer (1918)…

A student in Vienna, Austria has recently made the news because he has refused to stop using his Meta smart glasses at school, causing a legal dispute, and - to the surprise and outrage of many - actually preventing his expulsion. For now, he is allowed to keep wearing them and attend school until a solution is found. Why is that? I've looked at the relevant court case documents (the interim procedural ruling W224 2346501-1) and the (final) substantive judgment W224 2346501-1 on RIS) to get the…

Poem by Hafiz (1325-1390), tr. Bernard Lewis in Music of a Distant Drum: Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew Poems (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 131: Cupbearer, it is morning, fill my cup with wine. Make haste, the heavenly sphere knows no delay. Before this transient world is ruined and destroyed, ruin me with a beaker of rose-tinted wine. The sun of the wine dawns in the east of the goblet. Pursue life's pleasure, abandon dreams, and the day when the wheel makes…

We're all kind of working our way through the changes AI brings. This morning's Espresso Shots, pointed to this piece by Lex Friedman, which I think captures Michael Becker's view about using AI to "author" his app. Friedman is replying to what seemed to him to be implied criticism of his use of AI in reconstructing game apps, and his perception seemed to be that it was a criticism of his skill or ability as a "programmer" or "developer." What matters to me is that the app was built with…

While there might not have been much happening over here at the blog lately, that does not mean it has been a quiet autumn for me. On the contrary, I’ve published quite a few texts in different formats, as well as having gotten to take part in some very interesting events. So here comes a brief overview in case you want to see what I’ve been up to and what is coming down the pipeline. Military Mobility Northern Nordics So if there was a war, what would that mean for the transport infrastructure…

You hear a lot of things throughout your life.I know this. I know what I heard when I was young, like, say, “look both ways when you cross the street.”This is good advice, by the way. I agree with one of my greatest literary heroes, Robert Fulghum, and I agree with him most of all when he talked about all he needed to know, he already learned in kindergarten.I agree that words have meaning.I agree that it’s a good idea to always have a buddy, share, play nice, and hold hands when you are…

It’s been some years since I’ve ventured down the alleyways off Cornhill in the City of London and nipped into the historic Jamaica Wine House for refreshments. I shouldn’t have left it so long. What a beautiful pub. With the opening of The Jamaica Clubhouse, a new venue downstairs in the JWH I was prompted…

The Control key on the Apple II keyboard is where the Caps Lock key is on the Apple Magic Keyboard. (I have no idea what's "magic" about it.) When I'm playing with some Applesoft BASIC code in Virtual II, I'm firing AppleScripts based on Caps Lock as the "hyper" key. I think I'm going to have to remap this keyboard if I'm going to keep playing with the Apple II. ✍️ Reply by email Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:07 Sunday, 11 October 2026

Democritus, fragment 296 (tr. Kathleen Freeman): Old age is a general mutilation. It possesses everything (i.e. all the limbs and organs), but they each lack something. γῆρας ὁλόκληρός ἐστι πήρωσις· πάντ' ἔχει καὶ πᾶσιν ἐνδεῖ.

§ Although it looks like the fennel variety we planted earlier this year won’t produce an edible bulb for us, it is starting to produce clusters of dried fennel seeds. We’ve been picking them every few days to store in our spice cabinet. § Over the weekend I found my old acoustic guitar and I started trying to play it again for the first time in what must be at least fifteen years. I would have expected more to be retained by muscle memory but unfortunately I seem to have remembered zero…

In Bogost's first section he talks about the tactile connection we have to the world, and specifically the sensory connection we can have to certain things in the world. We touch a knit sweater and are transported into the arms of a loved grandparent. For me it's the brown sugar rolls I talked about last month with my kids. The discussion got my oldest daughter interested so she messaged my dad and asked for the recipe. The first bite almost brought me to tears. It made me realize how much I…

I went into this one like a cat into a bathtub, all claws and pre-emptive expectations of nothing good. The blurb promised something that’s increasingly my least favourite pairing: shy, naive boy (a “cinnamon roll!”) and gently bossy woman. And everything about this book is loudly telegraphing the main draw here is fantasizing about the dominant. She’s the only character on the cover, and the dedication mentions the hero being interesting only as a sort of afterthought. I guess, maybe, you…

The following is a rant and it contains some spicy language. Some of the words are naughty, but they come from a good place; I use them without apology because I care and, like many of you, I know how to make a good-sized mountain out of a molehill. If you’re not in the mood to hear me rant and cuss about something that makes me want to drink gin from the cat bowl, then give this one a miss. You’ve been warned. I learned something new today. Did you know that, according to some random guy on…

Background Completely out of the blue I received a similar message when trying to send mail to outlook.com live.com hotmail.com & msn.com host msn-com.olc.protection.outlook.com[52.101.41.123] said: 550 5.7.1 Unfortunately, messages from [97.107.133.211] weren't sent. Please contact your Internet service provider since part of their network is on our block list (S3150). You can also refer your provider to http://mail.live.com/mail/troubleshooting.aspx#errors. [Name=Protocol Filter…