Tue Sep 02
Today, even a lazy after-thought can become a useful project
Friction is a force of resistance. Overcoming friction takes energy. More friction takes more energy. Reducing friction frees up energy.
First off, I recognize the irony of me complaining about subscriptions when I have a Patreon page that offers subscriptions. I appreciate the support folks throw me, and I always will. I don’t think I can help though complaining about my own struggles with subscription services. I think this revolution we’ve gone...
Le vi cruzar con paso rápido la plaza de Furstemberg de París. Podía ser Peter Handke, por qué no. ¿O no pensaba en él a veces y siempre acababa preguntándome qué habría sido de su obra tras ganar el Nobel? … Sigue leyendo →
Good lord, it's like I'm an entirely different person. I started a list over lunch in an attempt to track what-all I've changed since January 7, when I clicked on Janet Vertesi's Cyber-Cleanse in someone else's CoSo post and thought "well, I'm already not using Chrome for a browser, I wonder what email options exist...
If you host a paid newsletter on Substack, pay attention to the platform’s new in-app subscription offering for iOS. The company published a long FAQ about the change. Apple requires all apps that sell digital content to use its in-app payment system — the one that charges a 15–30% fee. Substack relied on a loophole...
It's a wonderful rainy day in northern India. The rain is pouring regularly in the late monsoon season when it is expected to be gone. News channels are reporting that this season can extend until mid-September. Although it's pleasing for me while sitting at home, the effect of this long monsoon season on the...
On my way back from a trip last month, I stopped in Baltimore to catch a Conan show. I've been getting into doom metal lately and Conan is a lot of fun. When asked for their favorite Conan album, one redditor responded: "the one with the yelling about battle." That about sums it up. The venue was the Metro Gallery,...
I've had a busy month and I'm not done yet! By a stroke of luck I found myself having to travel to NYC on the exact same week as the Hackers On Planet Earth conference in Queens, NY, so I did the only thing I could possibly do, convert my …
1999 Napster software running on Windows 98; photo by Christiaan Colen. When AOL completed its acquisition of Netscape in March 1999, a part of the old web died forever. By the end of the year (and the century), Netscape's share of the browser market had shrunk to about 20% and Microsoft's Internet Explorer had...
In this video, I talk with Amin Bandali about free software, free knowledge, the importance of community and the commons, and life in Canada. Our discussion starts with the topic of EmacsConf, the annual conference about GNU Emacs. Amin has helped organise a few of those and I ask what kind of work is involved. As...
The end of summer brings reflection, so here are a few of my thoughts as we head back into the workaday. ➸ Sunday marked 100 days since I hit my target weight, and I checked in two pounds lower than I was in May. The embarrassing pile of sweets my family brought home from Martha’s […]
I took a short break from writing due to some family matters, which have left me feeling incomplete. These days, I’m trying to come back and build those broken habits once again. Although I didn't write much, I somehow had a lot of spare time for reading; 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there. It’s too short for writing...
When I was new staff at Durham, I did a PGCAP (Post-Graduate Certificate in Academic Practice) en route to obtaining Fellowship in the Higher Education Academy (which I think is now called “Advance HE”). One of the assignments for the certificate required us to engage with pedagogical literature relevant to our...
More battle rap slogans I like! Real Sikh Said vs A. Ward: I'm on that Jersey sh*t, that going all out sh*t Real Sikh, and I'm the problem that you want rounds with? You were supposed to put in work, but it's wrong now b*tch Because you can't show up to work, when you call out Sikh Arsonal Said vs Tay Roc: My sh*t...
I’ve been playing around with some protocol ideas and I have some more thoughts.
Hu, Linhua BSNa; Liu, Hongli BSNb; Liang, Fengbing BSNc; Du, Zhi MScd; Jiang, Shudan BSNc; Chen, Guoxia BSNa; Fang, Xiaoting BSNa; Bi, Lixia BSNa,*. Characteristics of the gut microbiota in...
I think it is fair to say that the vast majority of us take the independent/small web for granted. An army of individuals, or small groups of people, beaver away behind the scenes creating fantastic applications and web content. Take a moment to think how many free apps you use on your computer and/or mobile...
I love visiting personal websites. It's been a good replacement for doom scrolling...
Walking in Monsal Dale (one of the glorious dales of Derbyshire) on a sunny day a couple of weeks ago, I was pleasantly surprised to see large numbers of undoubtedly brown-skinned people walking the trails, frolicking in the water, and clearly having a high old time. At Monsal Head there was a group of decidedly...
Back at the lab, Wemly had essentially given up on her abstract---the one figure she was allowed could be culled from some previous presentation given to Warner, and she already had the basic shape of the text. It was only 250 words, and she could knock that out from scratch on a bad day if needed. But the...
Dorde P reported for Automation West that the remake of Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, is receiving a simultaneous global release on September 19 [Source: Automation West]. The report notes that this is Nihon Famicon’s “first simultaneous global release in the [long-running] Trails series” (consider this fact...
The burden of consciousness — intelligence, certainty, sorrow, and relief. Essays in this edition: Certainty Epidemic Would You Rather Be Happier or Smarter? The Quiet Grace of Nothing Terrible Happening Today i. Certainty Epidemic If these strange last few decades have given us anything, it's certainty. A lot of...
How I fell in love with calendar.txt The more I learn about Unix tools, the more I realise we are reinventing everyday Rube Goldberg’s wheels and that Unix tools are, often, elegantly enough. Months ago, I discovered calendar.txt. A simple file with all your dates which was so simple and stupid that I wondered 1)...
Abstract Who Killed Who is a detective mystery game set in a virtual desktop. The player must investigate the files, chat messages, emails and other such information located within a desktop in order to figure out who killed a person. Contradictions and hints become clues. Development Overview WKW takes place in a...
Amnesty dit des choses intéressantes, et je suis décidément pas doué pour les titres.
Listen to A Requiem for My Dignity, Sacrificed at the Altar of AI via my podcast I consider myself a technologically competent person. I can navigate the internet's darkest corners and wrestle with code that would make a lesser mortal weep. So when I decided to try a geek's attempt at an, ahem, "AI" screen reader,...