From humble beginnings in eLearning, I have somehow spent the majority of my career thus far in or around email. Not to flex, but I am an email expert. Cold, hot, and everything in between. I'm one of very few people on the planet that can say they've personally been responsible for sending 10,000,000 emails a day. I've recently nurtured an email-infrastructure-as-a-service platform from the ground up to over 100,000 monthly sends. I know nuances about SMTP and IMAP servers that would give you…

Trips for four, five days. Enough to get just a taste, enough to leave me wanting more. What a sweet escape: a place new to me, home to someone else. The smell of foreign shampoo lingers on your pillowcase, and in my hair. We wander through costume stores wearing each other’s coats, as if the costumes we're wearing already aren’t enough. I’d paint a portrait of you while we sit on the bus if my pencil was oil, if the inspiration would travel down from my head into my fingertips. Travel in the…

I made persimmon cookies today using this recipe. Two notes: Under no circumstances should you put raisins in these cookies. I like raisins but that is just silliness. Don’t put walnuts in the cookies. Put a single walnut on top.

One of our favourite actresses is Gloria Swanson, one of the biggest stars in 1920s Hollywood. She was a wisp of a gal at 4’11” and 110 lbs, but her talent and charisma fill the screen. Even today, her performances feel fresh and timeless. We recently saw her in Manhandled (1922) a comedy-drama about a gum-smacking sales clerk who runs … Continue reading →

Search, verify, and export symbols with the sfsymbols CLI

I’ve gained a lot from opening my doors to people who wanted a bit of help, so I found myself disagreeing with Dan Mall’s post about portfolio reviews this weekend. Dan argues that asking someone to do something is a pitch, and that you should explain what’s in it for them. If you’re asking for a favour with nothing in return, he wants that made explicit as a request for charity. He also offers some useful advice about asking specific questions and finding someone whose experience is relevant,…

While Europe was simmering in the summer heat, it was winter in South Africa and thereby primetime to do indoor activities, like attending a virtual summer school on AI for climate change—which I did. The MOOC was offered by Climate Change AI and while the minimum requirements probably would take about the equivalent of a week at most, I ‘overconsumed’ with more foundational and sectorial modules (8/6 and 10/4, respectively), which consisted of online lectures, tutorials, quizzes, evaluation…

One of my most popular posts is about how narcissism is a subset of autism. Since then I realized narcissism and autism are both about being terrible at setting boundaries. Autism is a disorder of extremes. Too much talking or not enough. Running around all day or not moving. Eating everything or eating five foods. Boundaries work the same way: too close or too far, because we can’t see where we’re standing. We would never believe that about ourselves. We’re obsessed with self-knowledge, so we…

I have been eyeing Traveler’s notebooks on and off for a few years. I haven’t used a notebook in that size, and I was curious if I would like it. Most of my notebooks are A5, so the Traveler’s size being tall and skinny would be different for me. Traveler’s size notebook (left) vs. A5 notebook (right) The Traveler’s system is a leather cover with elastic bands in it to attach notebook refills. I didn’t want to go all in on that system (about $60) when I didn’t even know if I liked the notebook…

21st September - 27th September The moon's full, uncaged by clouds and low over the horizon — a cold, golden colour. Stark as midnight. But this is five a.m. Not an ungodly hour by most people's standards. It shows autumn is here, and I'm feeling the witchy fingers of spooky season. Towards the end of my walk, about half past six, the first vestiges of the sun are making themselves known on the opposite horizon. By lunchtime, she'll be fully up, bringing one of those autumnal days of two halves…

i'm drinking a baja blast as i write this, unsponsored and unbothered after 2 nights in a row of sleeping through without waking up to heartburn and a sneeze and cough attack. pumagreg is cone-free, i am symbolically cone-free, and writing this retro has helped me remember what a crazy week i managed to function through. this week started with me excited to start a new class, get back to the studio, and - along with pumagreg - live life without the constraints of allergies. all but one of those…

Our ol’ grandpappy had it tough. Back in his day, when he wanted to build a new startup, he’d first spend months coveting the right venture capitalist, undergo hours of interrogations about his planned “agile development methodology” while being assaulted with steaks and strip clubs, diligently select the right lawyers to incorporate the company, and then he’d carefully spend a year or two assembling a crack team of multi-decade tenured employees from Oracle and Deloitte so they’d have just the…

You need to set aside about two hours of your life and watch this. Just watch it.

The name 'Vist' is not used in Hathaway 2, please make it stop With the second film in the Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway franchise, The Sorcery of Nymph Circe (probably shortened to Hathaway 2 from here on out) now available on demand and streaming, a lot more people have seen it...and this repeated misconception that is has connections to characters from Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn keeps coming up. It's driving me crazy and I need to vent lmfao Spoiler Warning for events from Gundam Unicorn and…

ജീവിതത്തിൽ തിരക്ക് നിറയുകയും എഴുത്ത് കുറയുകയും ചെയ്യുന്നുയെന്ന് തോന്നിയപ്പോൾ എഴുത്തിനെ തിരകെ കൊണ്ട് വരാൻ വേണ്ടിയുള്ളൊരു ശ്രമമാണ് ചിത്രക്കുറിപ്പുകൾ എന്ന എന്റെയി പ്രൊജക്റ്റ്. 1 ഒക്ടോബർ 2026 മുതൽ 100 ദിവസം തുടർച്ചായി എഴുതുക, ഓരോ ദിവസവും ഒരു ചിത്രം, അതിനൊപ്പം ഒരു കുറിപ്പ്. അതാണ് ആശയം. എല്ലാം തികഞ്ഞ എഴുത്തുകൾക്ക് പകരം ദിവസവും എഴുതുക എന്നതാണ് ലക്ഷ്യം. അത് കൊണ്ട്തന്നെ തെറ്റുകുറ്റങ്ങൾ ഉണ്ടാകും, ക്ഷമിക്കുക. എഴുത്തെന്ന സ്വപനം തേടി ഒരു നീണ്ട യാത്രയുടെ തുടക്കത്തിലാണ് ഞാൻ. ഏതൊരു സ്വപ്നമോഹിയെപ്പോലെയും പാതി…

Found a covid-era bottle of sanitizer. Read the right side of the label.

Finally moving the office.

Last March I made an export from my blog, so that I have all my blogposts since 2002 (some 3800 posts) in my notes locally. This makes it easier to find and link to my own blogposts while I am working, thinking, or writing in my notes. What I did not do in March was set up a way to keep syncing my blogposts to my notes from then on. Meaning I am now 6 months and 60 blogposts out of date. Meanwhile Dries Buytaert wrote a month ago about how he used embeddings to list related postings with a…

Finding new and exciting applications and hardware is fun. But sometimes, you just have to update some infrastructure. SoundSource from Rogue Amoeba SoundSource 7 SoundSource from Rogue Amoeba has been invaluable for me, especially during the pandemic, when I spent a lot of time on Google Meet calls. It allows you to select the sound outputs for different applications, rather than the system-wide setting. It sits in the menu bar, allowing for quick and easy changes to your Mac’s sound output.…

Peter Brooks is always worth reading, and his NYRB review article “In Search of His Vocation” (March 21, 2024 issue; archived) has interesting things to say about Proust, but what grabbed me was the final section, much of which I will reproduce here: Readers who can’t get enough of Proust from the novel now can delve into the beginnings of the Search in The Seventy-Five Folios. […] They apparently date more or less from 1908, when Proust, having abandoned Jean Santeuil, his first novelistic…

I can’t believe anyone just uses their phone as their main computing device. It’s so rubbish. Web page for insurance forms just reloads in the middle of it due to multitasking.

Like the Tobal series, AbalaBurn: A Battle Legend of Astterica is a 3D fighter that also has an RPG-style story mode. It takes place in a fantasy universe where the fighters hunt for eight crystals to summon the goddess Lemuria, who will grant them any wish. The roster includes Blood, the spiky-haired adventurer; Ariel, a ...Abalaburn was first posted on September 27, 2026 at 2:33 pm.©2017-2025 "Hardcore Gaming 101". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not…

Notes on capping CPU frequency for daily use. A decade habit of running laptops at 500 MHz, why it started, and what it actually feels like day to day.

London at Christmas is wonderful, but where you stay can make a surprisingly big difference to the trip. Choose Covent Garden and you can walk out of your hotel straight into some of London’s biggest Christmas displays. Stay in Marylebone and you can have the lights and shopping within easy reach, but retreat somewhere considerably calmer at the end of the day. Base yourself on the South Bank and your Christmas London comes with river views and evening walks along the Thames. So there isn’t one…

Review of Omarchy, one year later

guin's post in Pirate's Guestbook aligns with the intent of my unstory face reveal. Huh. I assumed that "reveal" was a (not terribly funny) joke, what with the rickrolling. Yeah, that's pretty much it. I found the joke reveal funny enough to share via the only blog I currently maintain. How well did it land for you, if you even recognized it as a joke? The cherry on top was people sharing the post around and riffing on it. Thanks for that! With that in mind, Pirate's subreply, I Can't Imagine…

Today’s illegal political ad, paid for by taxpayers amidst economy-crippling stagflation, features an old man slumping down a hallway, bitterly remembering his favorite things he said over the course of his failed life, not realizing how small and weak they reveal him to be.