Thu Oct 16
We had a wonderful time in Ohio this week celebrating our anniversary. I’d like to thank my wife for sticking by my side for so many years. Life wouldn’t be the same without you. Your presence never ceases to bring me joy and excitement. Not every day lives up to our expectations but each day with you is still...
An essential part of being able to say ‘I told you so’ is in fact having told you so. Here goes. In April 2023, I wrote an article titled AI: Guaranteed to disrupt our economies. In this piece I also announced I was going to make a fool of myself by making some AI predictions. I have singularly failed to do so. In...
Trying to commit to a goal is always kind of hard, but I will keep trying, even when I keep failing!
Problem statement: Given an existing repository whose default branch is master, make it become “fresh” (=fully reset it), as if it had just been created. # backup the current default branch, just in case git branch backup-old-master git push origin backup-old-master # create an orphan branch git checkout --orphan...
What do you do as a philosophy professor? What does it take to get a job as a philosophy professor? To get tenure? What is teaching like? What is a philosophy department like as a work environment? How much does college or university administration affect your work? What are plusses and minuses of the job? When...
Watching the morning sky from the Togetsukyo Bridge, as the sun emerges from behind the Higashiyama mountains in the east. 渡月橋から朝の空を眺める。太陽が東山の向こうから顔を出し始める。
Have been writing couplets lately, the perfect form for the internet, on an instance of Misskey that Chris has spun up for me. Most are proper five-meter lines and rhyming, or almost so. Some take a spiritual turn, others not. Here's a set, each one independent of the others. Good morning, humans, goats and cats and...
There's been a lot of drama at my house lately, although that's unsurprising. My mom is old and sometimes needs assistance from a nurse. This nurse has been working with us for months and has been great. My mom (bless her heart) is slightly crazy, forgetful, easily confused, and then blames other people for her own...
Born in the heyday of the denial of the human animal’s animality, in a world where nature was considered an ember of wildness to extinguish with civilization, its partitioned mystery dissected by various sciences walled off from one another, Alexander von Humboldt (September 14, 1769–May 6, 1859) set out to...
Personal notes on assorted nootropics I've tried and used, including stimulants such as caffeine and nicotine. Anecdotal experiences, musings, and reflections on optimising cognitive performance.
文章赏析Post-Punk乐队The Jesus and Mary Chain的专辑《Darklands》。这张1987年的专辑以其蓝色调的封面营造出冷暗基调，辅以模糊霓虹，寓意在压抑中寻求一丝温暖。文章揭示了专辑中浪漫、潮湿且充满挣扎情绪的情歌，流露出求而不得的痛苦。尽管歌词充满挣扎，但同名歌曲《Darklands》的吉他前奏却意外明亮温暖，像阳光下波光粼粼的海面，也像夕阳下跑步时感受到的宁静美好，即使旋律深层可能并非如此。这为听众提供了情感共鸣与反思。
Updates from the bridge: I finally released my blog post on programming minnimalism on my main blog! If you're interested here's a link Been making small tweaks to sipp and one of my favorite additions is a small bash script that works like a CLI. Just point it at any file and it will turn it into a snippet URL you...
I've reached mid-life by muddling through one of life's great challenges. For too long I have disguised my failure and disgarded my effort, with some disgust and embarrassment, in the depth of the cupboard. Today, fellow readers, I can proclaim I have mastered the folding of the Fitted Sheet. For too long my neatly...
As y’all know I’ve hacked a lamp switch to start and stop music so I can do it screenlessly but the other day I added a new feature: “stop after playing the current song completely”. Instead of abruptly pausing. It’s so calming compared to a jarring end. One would think subtle things like that wouldn’t matter. So...
As I continue to reflect on arenas and lifetimes in C++, I realized that dealing with destructors is not so onerous. In fact, it does not even impact my established arena usage! That is, implicit RAII-style deallocation at scope termination, which works even in plain old C. With a small change we can safely place...
Jean: You have a right to have an ideal. Oh, I guess we all have one. Charles: What does yours look like? Jean: He’s a little short guy with lots of money. Charles: Why short? Jean: What does it matter if he’s rich? It’s so he’ll look up to me. So I’ll be his ideal. […]
Finished reading my 18th book of 2025. Some of my favorite quotes from The Snowball Effect by Haley Cass
Ayer tuve día de ayuda con la tecnología de la familia, pero de los que van bien. Mi mamá compró una tablet de Lenovo después de años usando sólo móvil, y se sorprendió cuando le desinstalamos las apps y los juegos por defecto, que la distraían muchísimo, y le hicimos el setup sencillo de app […]
October 2025. Sfântu Gheorghe. Romania. A week in Romania seemed a bit of a risk with Dad and Mrs RM’s folks on the decline; most of our trips have been a 5 day blur. But you need the extra time to tackle Transylvania’s problematic transport. And so it proved, as Bran Castle, inspiration for the… Continue reading...
…that I’ve given to my academic advisees this year so far. Reading philosophy is a particular skill, which means it’s something that can be taught and learned. It does get easier with practice. Accept that some of it is hard, and you’re going to have to read it multiples times over, and you may still not get exactly...
I’ve been using Atlassian Jira for more than 20 years already at this point, and I have seen a fair share of patterns and antipatterns (that’s Japanese for “fuckups”) and, being the new rambling old man, I feel entitled to spread my dystopian views on the pages of this publication you’re reading right now.
A former star lecturer tries to turn the worst students in a school to Tsingbei-quality candidates.
While tinkering with a new project last week that involved my old BBS tagline database I rediscovered the tagline that I used as the title of this post. I've been trying to keep up with my pattern of posting at least once every month but it's been hard, what with everything going on. Out of an abundance of caution I...
I pre-ordered the original Steamdeck right when it was announced. I cancelled that, but ended up pre-ordering it again. My biggest draw to this handheld gaming machine was that it is a gaming machine meant for the masses that runs Linux. I’m a Linux guy. I also figured I could make some content about the Steamdeck...
AutoDescriptor: Added page description via AutoDescriptor bot [[File:Social Security Card Envelope.jpg|thumb|I have been renamed, but my daughter has a card now. Fair trade.]] Our daughter, [[Astra Meridian]], has a last name that's different from either mine or my wife. This introduces certain complexities to life,...
Edie knows something is up. She senses it when the luggage is brought out. It is this evening we begin to lock in plans for our trip. +
Active Storage uses two main models: blobs and attachments. Blobs store the uploaded file's metadata and a link to the actual file, while attachments link those files to records. Understanding how they work together makes it easier to manage uploads, generate URLs, and process uploaded files.
Denote aims to be a simple-to-use, focused-in-scope, and effective note-taking and file-naming tool for Emacs. Denote is based on the idea that files should follow a predictable and descriptive file-naming scheme. The file name must offer a clear indication of what the contents are about, without reference to any...
A glimpse into one of my favorite simple pleasures: browsing the aisles of Amoeba Music with friends and Cocoa.
Authors Tasma Walton (Instagram link), based in Western Australia, and Robbie Arnott (Instagram link), based in Tasmania, have been named joint winners of the 2025 ARA Historical Novel Prize, with their novels I am Nannertgarrook, and Dusk, respectively. I’m yet to pick up I am Nannertgarrook, but read Dusk earlier...
I hope this week you all did The Right Thing™ and threw away your old Windows 10 computers. If you haven't yet, what are you waiting for? These things are now a hazard to your and everybody's health and safety! If your computer is not on The List then I'm sorry, but it has to go. Bring it in for recycling, send it...
Wait a minute... I'm starting to see a pattern... are they all versions of herself in different timeliness correcting her own mistakes????
Wczoraj dostałem od rekruterki telefon, że firma, do której się rekrutowałem, nie jest zainteresowana współpracą ze mną, z powodów, których nie potrafię zrozumieć. Ten wpis jest moją próbą opisania rzeczywistości zawodowej, w której się znajduję, w poszukiwaniu tego zrozumienia. Bo na ten moment to nie ma sensu....