2026-10-11Hello! I'm this close to pulling an all-nighter over nothing. No idea why, but there's always something worth doing.Past ten o' clock, I was still walking outside, exploring abandoned paths and overgrown gardens. I found this shed on my travels and decided to photograph it.I haven't yet gone back to this shed; maybe it's open during the day and I never noticed. Over my walk, I tried taking loads of photographs to get in the creative mood. It's crazy how a new scene will present itself…

There has been a lot of talk about website comments on Bubbles. I think it started with a post by Forking Mad, and a bunch of replies are linked at the bottom of that page. My blog posts have had a "Reply by e-mail" button for years. Some of them also link to other places where you can comment. This has been a nice trade-off: giving people the chance to comment somewhere where others will find it, but not having to manage the comments myself. I do enjoy reading comments below blog posts,…

Updated October 2026 How Easy Is That? was the second Barefoot Contessa cookbook I bought, and it was another one that helped shape how I work in the kitchen. For a beginner cook, this book gave me exactly the kind of confidence I needed. Most of the recipes are, as the title promises, relatively easy, but they never feel dumbed down or short on flavor. It’s a reminder I come back to often: complicated does not automatically mean better. Sometimes the best food is simply prepared, made with…

On 11 October 1870, Margaret Waters was hanged at Horsemonger Lane Gaol, close to present-day Newington Causeway, for the crime of what became known as baby farming. She had taken at least 19 children into her care for money, then she would murder or starve to death her charges. As might befit a person of her character, the hangman, William Calcroft, was just learning his craft on the job, but he managed his task. On 11 October 1919 on a flight from London to Paris passengers enjoyed the first…

a reflection on "off days" and impulses of optimization

For a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, one of our guests and my son requested a pecan pie. I was very happy to oblige, but through a series of oversights and senior moments, the desserts for this long weekend did not turn out as planned. I used recipes from the Duchess Bake Shop cookbook, a celebrated Edmonton bakery. The pie crust uses a half-half blend of vegetable shortening and butter and one recipe makes three pie shells worth. It’s very soft and greasy so definitely chill it thoroughly.…

The pain and discomfort have not passed. I just want to sleep

Over the past few months, the release of popular consumer/prosumer agents like Muse and Grok Bot has me truly impressed. I've used both, and I'm convinced that this paradigm shift from a simple chat interface → persistent AI agent whose knowledge about you grows will be the default way each of us interfaces with AI in the future. But what's really the difference? The magic of AI agents is due to smart context management. At their core - AI agents are nothing more than the simple chat interfaces…

Morning glory or perhaps sweet potato in the Veracruz lowlands, 30 Sep 2026 (photo by Kate St. John) 11 October 2026 Though birds were our focus on the WINGS birding tour in Veracruz, Mexico I found some flowers to catch my interest. I can only vaguely identify most of them, so if you have a more accurate identification please leave a comment to let me know. At top, Google Lens says this pretty flower is a water morning glory (Ipomoea acquatica) but it was not growing in water in the Veracruz…

[1980]The power-pop party carries on and we're just getting started.Speaking of Blondie this is Gary Valentine who was once the bass player in Blondie. He wrote X Offender and I'm Always Touched By Your presence Dear. After he was booted from the band he formed The Know with the drummer from 20/20 and the old bass player from The Motels. They were highly touted but only managed just the one seven inch single and this is it.Our Gazza sounds like Tom Verlaine's horny younger brother here in this…

It’s really a small thing in the grand scheme, and not unfamiliar at all to open-source developers, but I can’t help but get excited when one of my pull requests (PRs — basically a suggested change to someone else’s project) gets accepted and merged in with the main codebase. Just yesterday it was one to ESPHome which adds Onkyo RI support ([remote_base] Add Onkyo RI Wired Serial Support), something I’ve been waiting on since August and feels impactful as I receive email about it every month or…

It’s a Sunday. Leaves are beginning to fall as Autumn closes in. It’s a good morning to do some reading, even if it’s just “more knowledge generally diffused.” So, settle in for some Sunday Morning Reading. I too often fall into the trap of thinking one thing or the other might be inevitable. Sometimes I’m right, sometimes I’m off base. When it comes to AI, what it might or might not be is still anybody’s guess. Matteo Wong thinks Nothing About This Was Inevitable. I agree when it comes to the…

Claude Haiku 5.5, hard budget caps on usage-based APIs, zkAPI private payment credits, rumored Apple M8 Ultra AI servers, and Tufte’s Razor on the data-ink ratio, along with the launch of Your Version Number: Release Notes and the Twin Cities Marathon. Weekly Thing 353

I recently took John Quincy Adams to Alaska with me. He’d spent a good chunk of the first part of his life traveling through Europe and was more traveled than most people of his era. But he’d never been to Alaska and I felt bad about that. And as I happened to be heading that way, I thought I’d take him with me. It wasn’t much of an inconvenience. I tucked him inside my backpack. He didn’t seem to mind. At some point this year, I decided that I should spend some of my reading time going through…

What's been happeningWow, the past two weeks have been a blur, and I didn't even realise I couldn't get my weekly notes out. Travel often breaks this habit as I usually sit down on Sunday afternoon and write my weekly notes. For those subscribed, I sent out a post about our last weekend in Orange - give it a read! The Orange trip helped us relax and de-stress, especially with events of late. Having completed my beginner's swimming class, I haven't returned to the development classes yet, opting…

I found the article below in my recent perusal of Gadsden Times issues from the 1930s and 1940s. Lots of interesting stuff there.This item notes the coming sale of two Etowah County wooden schools and the five acres around each one. Pilgrims Rest was one of three communities settled before the Civil War that combined to form the town of Southside in 1957. I ran across a photograph of the Class of 1911 on Facebook; the building appears in the background. An existing nearby landmark is Pilgrims…

October 5, 2026 - our first “real” cold front of the season!This is my favorite time of year, this period between summer and fall. The humidity has departed. The days are warm, the nights are cool, and the light of the rising sun feels like a hug rather than an oppressor. Migration is still a trickle, but surprises are possible every day!This captures early fall in Kansas City perfectly in my mind - crows and leaves that only show their yellow in the light of the rising sun.Now, if you’ve been…

It's that time again for my weekly update, which includes a short collection of noteworthy finds, posts that inspire, as well as a few reflections from the past week or two. I'll aim to land these in your inbox by the weekend, in time to pair with your morning coffee (or your preferred cup of inspiration).The Latest Drippings ☕️Acquiescence. Finally got around to getting off my butt and cranking out a longer post on something that's been on my mind these days, the tyranny of meh. 'Some of the…

Today Smile Gig Economy Won’t Somebody Think of the AIs Languages World-Conquerors Context Back to AI Back to Context, for Some Reason In a Hole Yesteryear Something Overflowed One of Many Content Warning: The more that I have thought about this post, the more it feels conceptually incomplete, something missing that I can’t identify. The analysis (and the laugh at an expense of a company going to seed) still feels worthwhile—otherwise I’d let the post sit for a few more weeks—but I have the…

ready, almostI left these on the workbench to make sure neither of them had any stupid wood tricks up their sleeves. Spoiler alert - they both behaved themselves.checking for flatPut the boards together and they were flat against each other end to end. No humps and no playing Mr Helicopter. In all combinations the two of the lay together gap free 360.the big sighThis board wasn't planed on this face, it still has the scallops from the router. I was tired yesterday and not really paying…

The first three episodes of Avatar: Seven Havens released on Friday and I finished up the bundle last night. I am so very pleased to report that the show is excellent. The team there at Avatar Studios has not lost the sauce. It was filled with charm, stakes, maturity, grace, comedy, and a whole lot of bending. What a treat to be back in the world and in a powerful way. I was stunned at the end of Chapter 1: On the Horizon. Full blown surprised and I am so glad. Friday,…

Developers suck at writing documentation. We like to say RTFM but often there ain't no FM to R. At best we have a half-arsed collection of notes, some obsolete tips, and a link to a desolate forum full of people asking the same questions again and again. That's no way to treat our users. I naïvely believe there's a better way. As I've written before, you should sit down and actually test your readme. Spin up a fresh Virtual Machine, go through what you've written, and see if it makes sense. But…

Hard, steady rain since the wee hours, but the crows still show up to yell from the top of the tallest tree at what would be sunrise.

incredible song here

Well, another week. This one completely without any trains, so there’s that. Messed up sleep schedule, again. All my life I heard that with age people go to bed earlier and get up earlier. I cannot confirm. While my natural sleep rhythm was midnight to eight for almost all my adult life, lately it seems very much have shifted to 2 to 10. Experiments like a few weeks when I went to bed at nine in the evening didn’t change anything about that. Oh well. Want a bit of a media round-up?The latest…

I've been suffering from dental problems which are ongoing and likely to continue expensively for some time. It looks like the many years of neglect by the Scottish Schools Dentistry Service - I made that up - I went to the normal dentist as a child and as with almost all children of my time, I ended up with unstraightened teeth and a mouth full of amalgam. I don't recall eating that many sweets, but I suppose I did. Or maybe it was the various flavoured soft drinks of the time. I suppose it is…

The woman whose name keeps showing up in the last few posts was the wife of three powerful men in 6th-century Iran, one of whom was her brother.Born to one of the Seven Great Houses of Iran, Gordiya's father was a military officer under Emperor Khosrow I (531 - 579). She had three brothers, one of whom was Bahram Chobin, who later started a civil war against Khosrow's son (Hormizd IV) and then grandson, Khosrow II. She was married to Bahram; it is not known for certain, but they may have been…

Disclaimer: if you can't handle bathroom pictures, click away. They are a bit dank, but nothing too horrifying.Where does bad taste come from?I see what I consider bad taste everywhere around me. Most of it is boringly bad. A random wardrobe that belongs in a cheap 2BHK rental right outside the washroom of a Third Wave Coffee outlet (which, in another turn of bad taste, serves second-wave coffee). I am in fact sitting in this outlet as I write this. The table is too tall, and the cappuccino's…

A ceremonial game of Kemari, a game from the 7th Century similar to hacky sack, played in Heian era robes at Kyoto's Imperial Palace. 京都御所で、平安時代の装束を身にまとって行われる、7世紀に起源を持つハッキーサックに似た遊び「蹴鞠」の儀式。