Much progress yesterday and today. Builder Brad and Builder Bob were on-site with Bob's daughter and grandson, and Brad's right-hand-man Derrick to frame up the interior walls of the walk-out basement. It looks different IRL than it does on paper. That long wall of doors for one thing. But it's a basement, it's not the main living space, so we'll get over it. Met with Energy Vanguard yesterday to discuss details of the HVAC design. If there's one piece of advice I'd give to anyone building a…
Every disappointment, breakup, or failure turns into inspiration. A disappointment becomes a short story. A breakup becomes a poem. A failure becomes a lessons-learned post. Writing helps you revisit, process, and reframe. Nothing is wasted. It’s all material. I share some of my life lessons in 10 Surprisingly Simple Ideas That Changed My Life.
I know that when walking the coast of Britain, many people did it to raise money for charity. I didn’t mainly because I was doing it whilst working full time and for my own enjoyment and I didn’t think I could really justify asking for sponsorship for something it might take me 20 years or more to finish! Or put pressure on me to actually finish if I decided I didn’t want to or I wasn’t up to it. I didn’t want to take peoples money for something I didn’t end up doing (and I don’t like asking…
Galen, On Avoiding Distress 1 (tr. Sophia Xenophontos): [You also said] that you learned that when his books were lost in the fire, Philides the grammarian wasted away from depression and grief and died, and that various others were going around in black clothing for a long time, thin and pale, resembling mourners. πεπύσθαι δὲ ὡς καὶ Φιλίδης μὲν ὁ γραμματικὸς ἀπολλυμένων αὐτῷ τῶν βιβλίων κατὰ πυρκαϊὰν ὑπὸ δυσθυμίας καὶ λύπης διεφθάρη συντακείς, ἄλλος δὲ καὶ ἄλλος ἐν μέλασιν ἱματίοις προῄεσαν…
A roundup of interesting links I have enjoyed recently. A typewriter wiki: typewriter.wiki William Jardine’s 40-volume series on natural history: c82.net A searchable index of nonfiction book prizes: book-prize-index.vercel.app The Federalist Papers: federalistreader.org The making of the Declaration of Independence: jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu An atlas of carpet styles: rug-belt-atlas.vercel.app Drawing resources as curated by Robb Knight: rknight.me A call to kill the cookie banner:…
I had a lunch of takeout sushi in my car and managed not to drip any soy on my shirt. If you knew me, you’d know that this is definitely a win for me. You may now send applause my way. Send me an email Latest 3 posts 06 Aug, 2026 Today Was a Special Day 05 Aug, 2026 Chatting While the Robot Lawnmower Mows 04 Aug, 2026 Sometimes… Older Posts I'd Like You to See 05 Nov, 2024 Election Night, Anxiety Night 03 Jul, 2024 Every Cat's Got a Bit of an Asshole in Him 17 Jun, 2024 Popeye as a Role Model
“The international finals for the world’s longest-running space engineering competition were held at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre and the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida from 30 July to 2 August. Team ZA was the only African team in the competition. It was South Africa’s first time entering, and no African team had competed before.” So yes, not a solo win by Team ZA on their own, but it shows the tremendous potential that South Africa has. If only SA could rid itself of the corruption…
I believe you when you say I am good for a while a good day, I think until someone else paints a different picture not ugly in an obvious way only slightly unsettling enough to make me doubt if I am the monster in this story and someone else the victim only responding to the terror
Smaller images for the webTo prepare my images for my website to be smaller and progressively loaded, I had been using `imagemagick`. But my computer is now too old to properly install it with homebrew or macports, so I had to find another solution.imagemagickI found `sharp`, which is an NPM package, which I don't love, but gets the job done and is very lightweight in comparison.sharpThe big things I try and do for image processing for the web are:Lower quality to remove hyper detailSmall…
A Bit of Housekeeping 7 August, 2026 I plan to get back to blogging as usual soon, but here are a few notes about this site that I wanted to share with you. Update on the Move As I mentioned in a previous post, Random Notes will be shifting locations in the next month or so. Right now, I’m testing some automation to make redirecting you from here to the blog’s new home as seamless as possible. I’ll keep you updated on the progress of that project and will warn you just before it’ll happen.…
Dear You, Knowing almost exclusively the title, I dove in expecting an enjoyable but typical sci-fi romp, featuring a twisting tale of a futuristic war long in the past. I was delightfully mistaken. Instead, I was regaled with a collection of delicately crafted calling cards turned love letters documenting butterfly effect espionage evolving into a budding relationship. The literal of the story felt best left to the side, with it's abstract atrocities. I still can't tell what each side was…
Rivers’ bold treatment of the classics. View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize Stellar title with Rivers playing and deconstructing standards in a beautiful way, with avant touches sprinkled in throughout. Rivers remarkable ability to thread the line between the past and the future is simply stunning. These older tunes gets a new lease on life and becomes something…
Part 4 of the Blue Team Fundamentals track in my CybersecKyle Security How-To Series uses one small system to connect architecture, abuse paths, controls, and tests before the design becomes expensive to change.Threat modeling often fails under a scope called “the whole business.” The diagram grows, every dependency leads to another meeting, and the people building the next release leave without a decision. A useful first model can fit on one page if the target and the questions are narrow…
A retrospective included with the August 2022 issue of Musica Jazz, tracing the distinct, bittersweet trumpet voice of the late Polish master across a slew of ECM recordings. The title Songs seems almost provocatively plain for an artist whose music could turn breath into a philosophical emergency. His trumpet worried at a composition’s hidden seam until grief entered the room. Grainy at the edges and luminous within, that sound belongs to modern jazz history because it made European…
Stationery Fest was a big event in many ways, and Myke and I were on site in Brooklyn, New York, to take it all in. We run through our entire experience, the pros and cons, the panels we hosted, and our wide-ranging acquisitions. Then Myke ruins everything. Show Notes & Download Links This episode of The Pen Addict is sponsored by: Kaleidocraft: Playful stationery and functional goods. Get 15% off and an exclusive Pen Addict washi insert with code penaddict. Factor: Healthy, fully-prepared food…
I've been meaning to walk up here for a while but I keep forgetting or falling asleep. It's quite nice.50 words · 2 images
The popular weekly email newsletter, written by Melbourne based Australia curator and publisher Kai Brach, has actually been published five-hundred-and-seventy-nine times, but earlier editions were written under another title. But who’s counting? True to its tagline, “one email worth opening, every week”, Dense Discovery (DD) is something I’ve been reading for years. Er, this is via the web rather than email, but DD is certainly one website worth reading every week, for all things art, design,…
“They’ve gone, gone to a new place,we yearn for them, they must’ve forgotten us.Come home, come to your country, come on back.You’ll be back when we’re not around”– Translated from a Pothwari sher by Ch. Muneer Hussain In June, I went to Portugal for 3 weeks. It was just to get away from my life here in the States. It was the first time I had done something of the sort, no agenda, not a vacation with an itinerary, nobody to visit there. It didn’t give me an immediate epiphany of any sort but it…
The Z323 said goodbye It all started last Wednesday. I wanted to listen to some lo-fi music while coding. I turned on my speakers, and nothing happened. I tried turning them off and on again: nothing. I even plugged them into another wall socket, but the LED stayed dark. It came as a surprise. I had that 2.1 speaker system for 15 years and never had any problems with it. It also never showed any signs of issues before it broke. It was a Logitech Z323. The first movie I watched with it was The…
I did it! I read everything Comico The Comic Company ever published! You can share my pain over there, on the Comico blog, if you haven’t already been doing. Tsk tsk!
I had a lot to say in my twenties. I was what you’d call a smart-ass. The problem was that I was quite good at arguing against my own position. I didn’t like writing that way. It felt unclean. I think part of this was a rooted fear of being wrong. Well, it is years later and while I was told back then “don’t believe everything you read on the internet,” that was before malicious bots and bad actors filled the web with pseudoscience and false claims as an explicit attack on democratic customs.…
In this edition:Khurram Shahzad on satellite challengesWill satellites overtake fibre and mobile?Chorus TimeSyncComCom fibre reviewDatagrid signs Tasman Ring contractSpace-based cellular networks are reshaping Aotearoa’s market. Bill Bennett interviewed Khurram Shahzad, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner to get the big picture.Starlink fixes pain points and creates new onesWhile mobile networks cover roughly 98 percent of New Zealand's population, they only reach about 50 percent of the…
Saw a dude proclaim that xitter was “good again” so yeah I’m gonna go ahead and stop paying for your app now. There is no world where we can disagree that hard on the word “good” and I can support any version of your future work. 🚮
Here are three spots that, each for their own reason, stuck with me in Nanjing. The post Beyond the Obvious – Three Nanjing Spots I Loved first appeared on Correr Es Mi Destino.
Robb Knight: I’m shutting down EchoFeed within the next 12 months when the final subscriptions expire. It will continue to run as it is until then so if you’ve already paid you have access until the end of your subscription. EchoFeed was launched just a couple of years ago and I have been using it ever since to automatically publish links to the latest posts on Bluesky and Mastodon. It has been a really good service — the kind of thing I happily paid for and, in the best way, would forget…
I am waiting on a shipment of 10-0 paint brushes. This is Reapers #02983, Familiar Pack IX. This is from their Dark Heaven Legends series. This set includes some interesting characters. Counting the last set I took in that is twelve miniatures to paint. It will be fun.
More Awful British Comedians, because there are ALWAYS more. I picked up the Network DVD of FREEDOM OF THE SEAS because it was pretty cheap and pretty mysterious. I hadn’t heard of anybody in this 1934 comedy, which is highly unusual. There’s generally somebody from a Hitchcock or a Powell quota quickie. I guess I’ve […]
On Tuesday, Gina and Lindy and me went for our annual lunch together, going to a oc park afterwards where we watched a very friendly fox pottering around. It was so relaxed that it was perfectly happy for children to film it on their phones. There were tiny blue butterflies landing on the flowers around us, and a dusting of drizzle swept past us to complete the magical experience.I had to cancel everything last week because of illness, but thankfully everything slotted in an exact week later.…
