Having a drink with Matt and JuliaHeres a shout-out to Julia Kalthoff, the Swedish axe-maker. We first became acquainted with Julia via an article in Quercus magazine, and immediately started carrying her axes thereafter. We finally met Julia in person at Handworks. She came all the way from Stockholm! Weve been out of stock of the axes for a while but good news were expecting a shipment next month. I also met for the first time Matt Johnson, a woodworker based in Iowa who was helping Julia…

Hey everyone!This is the list of all the changes we've done to our projects during the month of September. Wiki, added portland island, and updated alcohol stove. Donsol, released on Itch.io! Legs, we made a last minute gizmo for Catjam 2026. Rabbit Waves, finished a page about One-time Pads. Rejoice, discovered infinity. Tote, added support for I/O. Korokobot, added a page on Processing Analog Art. We're disheartened to see a lot of the organization for direct action done on platforms that spy…

Anthropic released new eval tooling for Claude Code. Their claude-api plugin now includes a new build_eval and hill-climb command that helps you build evals, check the graders, and improve your application against them. I usually don’t review eval tools. Software changes so often that a review has a short shelf life. But a first-party tool from Anthropic is likely to influence how people approach evals, so I wanted to try it. Isaac Flath and I livestreamed ourselves using it on conversation…

A fresh project can be a great tonic. A distraction from procrastination and an opportunity to focus on achievable yet tangible results…Over the weekend, despite a busy day out on Saturday I made steady progress on Defiance throughout a lazy Sunday. Parts for the lid had been cut and assembled in the week, holes for plug sockets had been drilled so all the enablers were in place - it just needed me to sit down and make it happen. If you’re like me then you know how difficult that can…

I have been running models on my own machine for a while. Then I gave a few friends the URL, and a question came up that I could not answer: what does the server do when all of them press send at once? My guess was simple. One person gets about 60 tokens per second. Ten people split that, so each one gets 6. That guess is wrong. These are my notes on why. Short answer: A GPU running an LLM spends most of its time reading the model from memory, not doing math. Once the weights are read for a…

City life Calling me all the time Me and my soul Geared to attack Never get a better chance So what you doing? Gotta get money Ain't quite what you're doing — Slow Country, Gorillaz (2001) Sun's out and the soundtrack of today is cattle bells. A dozen or so grass on the alp in front of me, non-stop feeding as their bells tingle at every move. These guys certainly don't have a single care in the world. The forest road winds its way up to the Priener Hütte. A couple of hikers follow it on this…

I was living in the dorms; it was Christmas break and I hadn’t gone home, but everyone else had. I’d opened the window in the tiny shared living room of our four adjoined rooms, and lay, smoking cigarettes, on the rug in front of the TV. Alice in Chain’s Jar of Flies played start to finish as the heat from the vents fought the Colorado winter. I’ve never been one who memorises lyrics, or remembers the name of a song for that matter. I can hardly remember a band’s name. I can remember everything…

We were lucky enough to be able to celebrate Bill’s 69th birthday with an eight course meal at Jano Bistro, one of Wellington’s three Michelin Star restaurants. https://www.janobistro.co.nz The Menu Selecting a drink A Negroni, of course! First Course - Venison Terrine Second Course - BBQ Brussel Sprouts, Walnut, Lemon, Toasted Yeast Third Course - Lewis Farm Asparagus, Pistachio, Garlic, Mint Fourth Course - Line-Caught Fish (Kingfish), Mills Bay Mussel, Broccolini, Grapes Fifth Course -…

All of these interfaces (Sonic Transducer, Medusa, and de-Medusa) are similar in interaction and instructive to compare, so I’ll be reviewing them together in this post. After the terrifying dinner party and subsequent chase around the castle, Janet, Brad, and Dr. Scott wind up on a raised platform facing Frank-N-Furter in the laboratory, and, fed up with their nonsense, he activates the Sonic Transducer. Sonic Transducer To do this, he pulls a large double-pole knife switch mounted to the…

Decluttering much? We had the painter in for the whole of August. I had to shift boxes of photos out of his way . . . and then back again. I foolishly started doing triage on the photos when the painting was in train rather than at my leisure in the Spring. Better still would have been to do it in the Spring of 2006! Painter stoutly affirmed that he could paint round the book shelves IF I bought an extra roll of masking tape ANDIF I covered the spines. I can take a hint! I stripped the contents…

Source The fire was not placed around the animal. It was placed inside it. Mongolian herders prepared boodog by cleaning a goat or marmot, filling the cavity with stones heated until extremely hot, then sealing the opening. The animal’s own skin became the cooking container. There was no metal pot, no roasting spit, and no need to keep the meat directly over flames. The method suited herders working across the Mongolian steppe, where practical cooking depended on fire, livestock, and whatever…

Did they call it "dots" because it rhymes with "bots"? 🤖🤔

The gate is not heavy to open, it requires no key or words. The man knows how. Patiently kneeling in front of the gate, until the light hits that right spot in his belly, that's when he knows to get up and dance with his breath, with the light. Like a peacock wooing his mate, he is in a dialouge with the gate. On the opening. Only when the dance is performed in its truest form, the dancer is fully expressed, can the gate open.

If you're craving classic take-out style sweet and sour chicken, but don't want the fuss, or the huge portions, this small-batch Baked Sweet & Sour Chicken is going to be a new favourite. Tender pieces of chicken are lightly coated, browned until crisp, and then baked in a glossy homemade sweet and tangy sauce that thickens beautifully in the oven.Its simple, satisfying, and perfect for one or two people. With everyday ingredients, and no deep-frying required, this is an easy weeknight dish…

30 unblogged things I did in September Tue 1: It's been the UK's hottest summer on record, and I wonder if in 10 years time we'll all be looking forward to September when temperatures finally cool down. Wed 2: If you fancy another daily game to play, try the slightly-unusual world of enclose-horse. Every day you have a set number of walls to place to enclose as much area as possible without letting the horse escape. Extra points for fruit, avoid the bees, and see if you can get the day's…

If you follow my monthly roundups, (1) who are you?? please say hi (2) you’ll notice a smaller post this time. September was a busy month for me. Lots of feedback on a small post I published “Anecdotally, programmers dislike ‘reduce’”. I finally wrote up a phenomenon I’ve observed for years. It’s a short post that didn’t take long to write. I got a tremendous volume of feedback—more than anything I’ve ever written. Dozens of messages, hundreds of comments, shoutouts in popular newsletters…I’m…

Schmitt Gets Jacked Up Some Senate Republicans are subtly distancing themselves from Donald Trump and MAGA. Others, by contrast, continue to flog the same old conspiracy theories that Trump loves so well. Are they trying to remain in the Dear Leader's good graces? Do they think this will help the Republican Party in November? Do they have a screw loose? Your guess is as good as ours. Click here for full story

Lately, I’ve been working on a lot of projects and I love it. I’ve been working on a few new ones, open sourcing a few that I’ve been using personally for years, and reviving some old ones. One such old project is Draw. It’s a real-time multiplayer drawing app from late 2013. I created it mostly because I love doodling and wanted to doodle from my phone or my computer. This is a screenshot from my Projects page. I’m too lazy to set it back up again and get a screenshot. Draw is the v1 of the…

Two wood-burn portraits by my great uncle Yura, carried from Russia with the family Kalevala and kept through every move.

Single O is a popular Australian coffee chain that also has five stores open in Tokyo - actually more than Australia itself (which only has three). After my recent visit down to the original Single O branch in Sydney, I was pretty impressed by their coffee and decided I wanted to check out one of the Tokyo branches as well to see how it compared. The other thing influencing my decision was that there was a small easter egg near the back of the Sydney menu. It mentions that if you show a photo…

In this conversation, I speak with writer Stella Harvey about her newest novel, Disruption, and about the writing life, mentorship, and the literary community she has helped build in Whistler. Disruption is set in a fractured future shaped by pandemic, environmental damage, surveillance and fear. At its centre is Kitianna, a young woman whose desire to write, ask questions and understand what lies beyond the wall surrounding her world gradually becomes dangerous. CiTR 101.9 FM / The Blue Hour…

They see me but I see them too. The post Why Do Canadians Sit in Their Parked Cars? first appeared on Correr Es Mi Destino.

I mostly love the town I live in, except that I really miss living in a more urban area with good walkability and transit.I also love being in the Seattle area, except that everything feels so far away because of the transit situation. And when I do end up in the city I get so fed up with the constant presence of every tech company I cannot stand the existence of.Sometimes I think about moving and starting a new chapter of my life, but I’m not sure what that would look like. Here are things…

“If you don’t know the exact moment when the lights will go out, you might as well read until they do.” The most ebullient and unpretentious book about the reading life I know is Clive James’ Latest Readings, published four years before his death in 2019. James had already been diagnosed with B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia and other ailments and the book is laced with references to his failing health and imminent mortality but remains largely free of self-pity. It sometimes feels as though…

i like hanging out with my friends

And so on to Folkstone. We’ll start with Nick Falconer’s venerable Konigshafen (N), returning to the Folkstone show after 30 years – and still running well. This is a different layout from the Konigshafen that went to TINGS – Nick has used the name across his German layouts. I always enjoy seeing Fence Houses NCB (OO) with it’s grimy coal wagons and interesting industrial steam. And Janes’ Creek (EM) is always a pleasure, with a mixture of ships and pre-grouping, SECR, trains. Dydley Junction…

Twenty Years Ago on FITK Minneapolis, March, 1976

Editor’s note: Article originally published on September 11, 2019. Gratitude is everything. Everything in this life originates proceeds through gratitude. I am incredibly grateful to have lived through a tornado and only have water in the basement it’s not even that much water. According to Blessed Solanus Casey, “Gratitude is the first sign of a … Continue reading Why Gratitude is Our Oxygen The post Why Gratitude is Our Oxygen first appeared on The Simple Catholic. The post Why Gratitude is…

Before he met his tragic end, Vørpé the Magic-User underwent just about every negative non-death setback a PC in my game could experience. I use death and dismemberment rules similar to this and a mutation table similar to probably every other one you've seen. I also have a boutique list of curses and diseases—which for practical purposes are treated almost the same in the world of Nevelorn—and a rough outline of dooms (for chaotic characters) and damnations (for their lawful counterparts) for…