The search engine has recently gained the ability to index the PDF file format. The change will deploy over a few months. Extracting text information from PDFs is a significantly bigger challenge than it might seem. The crux of the problem is that the file format isn’t a text format at all, but a graphical format....

Creating a Basic Status Page on NearlyFreeSpeech 2025-05-12 Since I talked about hosting multiple websites through NearlyFreeSpeech in the past, I thought it would be nice to walkthrough setting up a barebones “status” page that runs automatically on your existing NFS server. This post isn’t going to be mind...

My wife and I have the same problem: We definitely have a strong taste in music, but it is very wide. Not wide as in We listen to everything that is on the radio, rather wide as in acquired, eclectic, maybe a bit convoluted at times. By no means do I think that’s a bad thing—there’s a lot of amazing music out there...

TitleKiki's Delivery Service CreatorHayao Miyazaki Year1989 Kindanime film Dates2025-05-13

The common wisdom seems to be that Apple is critically behind in AI, but that makes some 'AI triumphalist' assumptions that bear examining.

The pushback I received made me think about a way to re-clarify my message about digital gardens. The last thing I want people to think is that one is better than the other. I rather communicate the freedom digital gardening has given me, and how I've written so much more since taking this approach to writing for...

I’ve been trying something a bit new with my phone since yesterday. What am I looking at? This is a launcher for Android called Olauncher and I’m trying it out to see if it can help me cut down on mindless phone usage. Olauncher replaces the built-in Android home screen with a simple list of 0-8 apps of your...

En el Perfil de España sobre la gestión de residuos municipales y de envases publicado en marzo de 2025, la Agencia Europea de Medio Ambiente hace un repaso a la situación, con cuatro mensajes clave: Leído en diagonal y sin más pretensión, el informe da para el triunfalismo y las palmaditas en la espalda. Para […]

I first went to see Reading play football in the 1972-3 season aged just 8. They were in the 4th division, now League 2. We lived in Tilehurst in Reading and my dad took me and my brother to home matches. Sometimes my mum came too which was unusual. There weren't many women at the games let alone much in the way of...

I was challenged by Joel to answer 10 pointless questions. I probably won’t challenge anyone else. I’ve always been uncomfortable with that. Do You Floss Your Teeth? Not as often as I should, but likely more than most people. Tea, Coffee, or Water? Water, hate the other two. I am a big milk drinker, though. Footwear...

After 25 years of typing on traditional German QWERTZ keyboards, I decided to do something radical: switch to the Kinesis Advantage360 Pro, an ergonomic split keyboard with a U.S. QWERTY layout and a price tag that makes most people flinch. I’d been eyeing it for a while, intrigued by its promise of better...

I often jokingly refer to my aircraft photography activities as Flug und Fraß ("Airplanes and chow"), because that's exactly what it is: I capture airplanes and enjoy whatever food I either bring with me or find nearby. And now that I can ride my bike, Flug und Fraß becomes Fahrrad, Flug und Fraß.

In a world that has gotten too fast for its own benefit, email poses a nice counterweight. It's slow. So slow, that in times of instant messaging, email has become the new snail mail.

I found this topic from Jodie Ettenburg's Curious About Everything Newsletter, and considering the cool physics involved I had to re-share it here. Researchers at Northwestern University have just broke the record for the smallest pacemaker. From left, a traditional pacemake, a leadless pacemaker and the new...