https://minesweeper.mikelacher.com/ Sweep to survive in the action-packed, AAA reboot of the classic puzzle game.

John Lennon was born on this date in 1940. With that in mind, I thought that for today I would just leave you with one of my favourite songs he did as a solo artist. "Number 9 Dream" was released on December 16, 1974. It was the second single from John's Walls and Bridges album. Fittingly enough, it peaked at no. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100.Also fittingly enough, "Number 9 Dream" came to John Lennon in a dream. While the chorus, "Ah! böwakawa poussé, poussé" sounds like it is from an actual…

I was noticing some advertising for a new book and thought I’d reach out about it. I was sent a review copy and so here’s a run down. You can get one below! The Home Ramen Method: Making Restaurant Quality Bowls At Home Get it here The post The Home Ramen Method: Making Restaurant Quality Bowls At Home appeared first on THE RAMEN RATER.

Cross-posted from the new Kinopio blog From all the confusing and annoying ways to sign in to software we wade through everyday, developers must fear storing/encrypting/hashing passwords. I get it, no one wants to be responsible for screwing up critical security, so authentication has become one of those “no one ever got fired for buying IBM” type of problem that considers the user last. So why has Kinopio only had password-based login since it launched in 2018? Because all the other options…

View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Clear and very windy. I originally thought about doing a short loop going clockwise around the lake, but changed my mind and just ran the full 5K, then walked the rest of the way around. I skipped Wednesday’s run because my watch declared it a Rest Day and I obey my watch when it tells me to rest. My obedience is more uncertain when it tells me to do other things. The highlight (?) of today’s run was: wind! And plenty of it. Post-run the weather app on my phone…

In order to follow a proper 3-2-1 backup strategy, you should have three copies of your important data: two local on different media types, and one off site. For local, I have a DAS with two 14TB drives configured in a RAID 1 array1 and a RPI5 with a 4TB drive (my most important data is around 1.5TB). For the off site copy, I opted to utilize Backblaze's B2 Cloud Storage and restic. Backblaze is a cloud storage provider, while Restic encrypts and chunks the files before upload. Restic is…

Yesterday, Manton released yet another much-needed tweak to Micro.blog, and I realized something: I don’t really miss the old web. There are plenty of folks around me on the indie web who miss and even mourn the old web, and I get it — but actually going back? Nah. As I kept thinking about it, I realized that I don’t really miss how things were in general: I don’t really have a notion of “the good old days.” I know this is kind of a shock coming from a grumpy old man, and plenty would disagree…

So far, the AI threat story has run in one direction: corporate AI against people. The best example is the job apocalypse, of course. There’s been entry-level roles vanishing, white-collar work being automated, and layoffs being justified by the promise of AI efficiency. On top of that, creators' work are being scraped to train the models that replace them, and algorithms for a long time have quietly decide who gets hired, who gets insured, and who gets denied. But the thing about AI is that…

This is the seventh post in my 'hitting the digital brakes'-series on changing how I use technology and where I stopped using it altogether. These are the previous posts: the joys of imperfection Do we really need the latest tech My e-reader made me a worse reader Not everything needs to be in the cloud Anti AI? Be Pro Human! Algorithms are toxic —- Over the past month or so, I haven’t kept track of what I was reading in the perfect little list I kept in my notes app and then updated on here…

I'm torn on this one.First, I hate it because it feels like the Gulf of America. But I also really like it, both as a name and as a strategy.Both of these reduce down to "artificial" being derogatory.In the real internet of things I also used SI instead of AI, but there I called it "synthetic" intelligence instead of "artificial" intelligence. Same reason. Artificial is just a bad name for anything real. And AI is real.I prefer the term "synthetic" vs. "artificial" intelligence, as its…

Playwright David Ireland has fans among Hollywood stars but the 50-seat Finborough Theatre remains a regular venue for some of his older work, and now that includes his debut play, which features a couple of men trying to impress one such star. But being a work by a writer who's inspired by the scars left by decades of sectarianism, the star in question is one who's not exactly known for embracing all peoples and beliefs. What The Animals Say features two characters who grew up in Northern…

It seems like wherever there are ashes, there’s something new to rise up out of them. Author Dmitri Lincoln Melhorn explores these phoenix-esque phenomena in the Big Idea for his newest novel, Archipelago of Light. When the future is in the new generations hands, what will the kids do with it? DMITRI LINCOLN MELHORN: In April 1942, my dad and his mom emerged from their basement to find their home in ashes from British bombs. My dad was not yet two. He remembers the 1940s in snatches: begging…

I was trying to find a book suitable for teenagers, so I searched Google out of old habit. Now, searching Google these days means that their AI will answer first, because that’s how Google rolls these days. It did suggest a few books; one about a father and a son going on a fishing vacation, meeting a family with a daughter and promising some romance. So I copied the title of the book and the author into another tab, only to be told, by Google AI, that this book was not written by that author…

I haven’t talked to Dave Pruner in years, but you would never guess it listening to us chatting up a storm. We get into the new Microscope, West Marches, This Means War, 70s D&D, and about a million other topics in between. Plus there’s video, so you get to watch me gesticulate like a wild muppet. Interview with Dave Pruner Be warned, some of the subtitling is way off. My personal favorite is when I say D&D but it thinks I said “daddy”. Ahem.

First time at Parken - watching Denmark vs. Portugal We are getting dangerously close to the end of the year. 'Legra will soon be a full year old. She stands, has teeth, can almost walk. Slowly but steadily the household is getting into some sort of routine. Even though it's still a pretty chaotic and unpredictable one. I went to Lisbon for a couple of days and spoke at Lisbon AI about some of my work with European Portuguese LLMs. Thanks to a great deal on a second-hand running stroller, Vitto…

This week we have two pieces we are selling to readers: a Welsh-style stick chair I made last month, plus a gorgeous walnut shelving unit that journeyer Kale Vogt made for a pottery show. These items are being sold separately via a random drawing. Complete information on buying the items is below. First, a little about the objects. Elm & Ash Stick Chair by Christopher Schwarz I recently completed this chair while teaching a class in Wisconsin. It is the seven-stick comb-back I’ve been refining…

If you’re reading this post, and found it through Mastodon, Matt did a thing. I’m working on making a python script that will auto-toot my posts automatically, then get the toot ID so that the comments show up. Doing it through a Docker container and a bit of CI magic on Gitlab. If you read this and didn’t come here from Mastodon, follow me

Hopefully there won't be a part 3. Two weeks ago, I wrote about how a mosquito infiltrated our homes and bit me like 4 times. Since then, there hasn't been an incident. We eagerly assumed the mosquito decided to leave the warmth of our abode and the abundance of free food to venture out back into the wild, where the mornings and evenings have dipped to proper fall temperatures. That, or it died. Earlier this week, I tossed the bug zapper racket into our catch-all bench in the hallway. Summer…

Movies The Boy Who Cried Werewolf (1973) D: Nathan Juran. S: Kerwin Mathews, Elaine Devry, Scott Sealey, George Gaynes, Robert J. Wilke. When a WEREWOLF attacks dad Mathews and son Sealey, it bites (and curses) Mathews. Will anyone listen to Sealey before it’s too late? The film hurries genuine scares (Were-Dad stalking convenient prey Sealey), instead showcasing writer-actor Homel’s Jesus-freak hippie. Wanting makeup, but inept day-for-night photography’s the silver bullet. At best, an early…

I used to imagine what I'd want to teach you then caught myself and felt shame silly girl, thinking you'd even want that but there you are taking notes of the silliest things I choose to share

First time at Parken - watching Denmark vs. Portugal We are getting dangerously close to the end of the year. 'Legra will soon be a full year old. She stands, has teeth, can almost walk. Slowly but steadily the household is getting into some sort of routine. Even though it's still a pretty chaotic and unpredictable one. I went to Lisbon for a couple of days and spoke at Lisbon AI about some of my work with European Portuguese LLMs. Thanks to a great deal on a second-hand running stroller, Vitto…

First Mamet Character: And what if she brings it (the gun) what will we do then? Second Mamet character: Whatever we want. A movie in three parts about three separate yet connected cons. David Mamet is an extraordinary and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright who has also directed several of his own works. You know Mamet when you hear it, because nothing else sounds quite like. Even his imitators, of which there are many, struggle to get near it. They being the difference between corn on the cob…

this is a solid bit 🎮 🔗: Triple-A Minesweeper

Take your children to the river spirit, the villagers used to say, and do not fear for them. The river was their hidden treasure, the deep emerald shine, known only to those whose roots sprouted from this soil several generations back. Sure, there was the river’s fastest stretch, known to any visitor who watched it burst between the rocks at the beginning of the village. The river quenched the thirst of passers-by, the villagers and their fields. But the quiet, shining, emerald stretch of the…

There was a time I'd look at a board like the Radxa Dragon Q8B (at left, above) and be like, "there's no way I'd spend $209 on an SBC with 8 gigs of RAM". But we're in 2026, and seeing the 8 gig Raspberry Pi 5 going for almost the same amount, I figured I'd give it a shot. On paper, the Q8B beats the Pi 5 in pretty much every way. A lot of that is thanks to this Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 chip, which is the same chip I tested on Microsoft's Windows Dev Kit 2023.

Dear Constant Reader, Happy Friday! Here’s your tip! When creating a headdress, make sure it balances properly on your head at every stage of construction. If it’s off-kilter or top-heavy, you can correct as you go instead of panicking at the end. And you have the fun of trying it on and making faces in the mirror. These writings and other creative projects are supported by my 17 Patrons. I appreciate you all so much!

A few days ago I was writing about how humans (and any intelligence worth its salt, maybe even worms) are meaning machines. We extract features from reality - randomly - and we base our actions on them. Surviving makes those features become "the truth", regardless of the reason for that survival. Meaning is the axiomatic foundation upon which our lives are built as a combination of genetic and learned principles that govern the very basis of our identity. I was also saying that intelligence has…

Been thinking about the quantum ogre. Something that started out as a nuanced point that has evolved into a take-down phrase for railroaded games which negate player choices. No matter which way players choose to leave a village, the GM is putting an ogre on the road out (so it's "quantum", in both places at once, unavoidable. In other words, Strahd). Quantum ogres get fat when the GM is using the players to tell a story, and nothing they do matters because the GM is going to overturn their…

It was a very rainy day today. As predicted I got my photos during my commute, or – in case of the first image – while at the office. 👉 View one more image

Fun seeing CSS be a topic in WIRED. Pete Millspaugh shouting out some greats: One programmer recently re-created Doom in CSS. Others have used it to build holographic Pokémon cards and 3D-rendering engines. Cassidy Williams, who competed in this year’s inaugural March MadCSS tournament, built an experimental database-query engine entirely in CSS. I mean, hell yeah. Allow me to just… And I think Adam did it first!