Tue Mar 17
Took a day easy at a waterpark and closed things out watching the new Pixar flick, Hoppers. Enjoyed it lots. ⊕Currently Listening: Bikini Kill “Rebel Girl”Reply via email
Every now and then, Noyb (European Center for Digital Rights) highlights some of their volunteers for their GDPRhub project. Now I got my entry :) Check it out on Mastodon and LinkedIn. Fittingly, one of my translated and summarized decisions finally made it into the weekly newsletter last Thursday! Also, they give...
Another week coming in late with this one. The vibe Reflective, slightly overstimulated, but ending on a better note. Highlights Had my annual eye exam. My eyes didn’t change too much, I did get some new contacts though. I have been wearing my glasses again ever since I ran out of contacts quite a while ago and just...
LLMs, Agents, MCPsWait, it's not perfect? Alternative The root of it all Counter revolution? My short critique of MCP as an idea (Source: Star Wars ) LLMs, Agents, MCPs First we had LLMs (Large Language Models ) , where you sent text and got more text back. Under the hood, the idea is simple: your prompt is an input...
Really enjoyed this blog post that slowly traces the English language back in time for a thousand years.
On the theft of original thought and my fury at those who caused it. There are many times throughout the week when I purposely leave my phone at home or in the car, and certain situations where I simply refuse to take it out of my pocket. Small acts of resistance that would have been completely unremarkable fifteen...
最近迷上了一个叫 Cast 'n Chill 的游戏。 如其名，核心玩法就是甩杆，发呆，等鱼上钩，然后和鱼拉扯。没有复杂的技能树，没有每日任务，只有像素风的粼粼波光和耳机里循环的森林白噪音。如果想更彻底的放空，它还有自动钓鱼的放置模式。 跟传统放置类游戏不同，它的升级项少得可怜。很快钱就无处可用，没必要再去卖鱼，似乎在用这种方式鼓励钓获放流(Catch and Release)，让我们没必要为了赚钱而钓鱼。金钱的增长是无尽的，钓鱼是和自己的游戏。 游戏前期，鱼很容易上钩，我大多时间在放置，当背景音乐。而到了后期，则需要选择钓竿鱼饵的组合，和鱼来一场真正的搏斗。记得第一次大鱼上钩时，我可太开心了。...
In October 2023, Marc Andreessen published a 5,200-word manifesto declaring that intelligence and energy in a positive feedback loop would make “everything we want and need abundant.” When Dwarkesh Patel — who had interviewed Andreessen earlier that year — responded with criticism, Andreessen blocked him on Twitter....
Ya escribí sobre terceros lugares el año pasado. Y hace unos días, haciendo doomscrolling en Instagram, me crucé con este vídeo de Esteban Go que explica de maravilla qué es un tercer espacio y por qué son importantes, incluso aunque creamos que no lo son. No os lo perdáis.
Cherry blossoms at the tomb of Abe no Seimei, a 10th Century Heian court official and renowned specialist of Onmyodo. 10世紀の平安宮廷の官人で陰陽道の専門家であった安倍晴明墓所の桜。
Imagine I’m the design leader at your org and I present the following guidelines I want us to adopt as a team for doing design work: Typography: Use expressive, purposeful fonts and avoid default stacks (Inter, Roboto, Arial, system). Motion: Use a few meaningful animations (page-load, staggered reveals) instead of...
How to propose in 8 easy steps: Step 1: Give no indication that you are ready to propose. Act a little blasé or disinterested whenever any related conversations come up. Say that you're definitely not going to do it while travelling New Zealand and Australia. Step 2: Order a ring and get it shipped to NZ. Faff...
Three K-pop(-ish) songs I enjoyed recently: Hypnotize by XG, Catch Catch by Yena and Bang Bang by Ive. Reply by email
March 2026. Burton-on-Trent. A Friday afternoon in search of Burton Bass, and a couple of votes on the Bass fan page for the Burton Bridge, another GBG regular that has had it’s share of turmoil of late. But nothing like the turmoil of the Hangar, aka Crossing; Caliente; Brewers Bar; Cosmo; InnStitute; Cosmopolitan;...
Earlier this Lenten season, I expressed some thoughts and questions I had about the influence of the Holy Spirit. Does He communicate with us through feelings? Thoughts? Reason? I think it's all of the above. Chapter 1 of the book “The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith” by Terryl Givens and Fiona...
努力就会有回报吗？从我自己的结论开始回答——不，我觉得努力不一定会有回报。 这里说的回报，不是能力上的成长这种抽象的收获，而是奖学金、offer 这类看得见、摸得着的显化结果。努力不一定会得到显化的回报，甚至可以说，大多数情况下是得不到的。虽然人们常说「事在人为」，但事情最后会变成什么样，个人的努力其实只占一小部分。 我想象这个世界是一片贫瘠的土壤，长不出果实的树才是大多数。努力只能让土地变得更肥沃一点，但并不能决定种子的质量，也无法左右天候的变化，更无法阻止那些突发情况的发生。 尽人事，听天命。人事天命三七分。在自己已经很努力的情况下，学会去接受那七分不在自己掌控之中的部分，可能才是最大的课题。
Every once in a while, i see a blogpost like the one that chunk of coal recently made, treating bear like a social media platform. it's always a reminder that social media has kind of conditioned our brains to feel entitled to others attention on sites like these. But here's the secret, right: You don't actually...
I have man flu. This is a semi-fatal disease which affects males only. If you’re not male, there is no chance of understanding the disease, and it is quite common for non-males to poke fun at those who contract the man flu. Semi-fatal? Yes, that is correct – it almost ends your life or at the very least, it feels...
March 17 is never a fun day at Chez Tov, being the anniversary of the day my brother finally succeeded in killing himself with alcohol. So imagine my mood when I opened my email and a freelance client accused me of being AI. Specifically: "this draft came back as 99% AI. Can you rewrite it so it's no more than 60%...
Notes for book club: Sacrificial Beasts - this was sad.
Check out As in guillotine... for more. With the official announcement of the acquisition of LibraryPass and Comics Plus now public, I can finally address one of the biggest question marks I had coming into 2026: the day job, and what’s next. tl;dr: Almost six years to the day since I first started freelancing for...
If you ask people online if parents should tell their kids that they are beautiful independently of their actual looks, the answer is universally: yes. Why even focus on the looks of your children? Because they can tell that something is off when you do not make a comment about it at all. When they reach a certain...
And the birthdays just keep on coming – this time it's John Sebastian, of Lovin' Spoonful fame, and he's 82 today. I loved the Spoonful from the first time I heard them, and still regard Sebastian as a fine songwriter. Here is one of my favourites – a good-time song with some very clever lyrics...
The new issue of Mycelium Parish News (copies are still available on Etsy - details in that last link) arrived on my doormat this morning, full of the interesting things that James Burt and Dan Sumption have seen or heard about during 2025. It is, as always, a delight to read, and in the interests of transparency...
My Friend’s Stuffed Bird Rescue Yesterday (March 16, 2026), I published an article about a BLOB DYLAN tag in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on September 28, 2025. To be precise, I took two photographs of the BLOB DYLAN tag in question at 15:40:45 and 15:40:46 that afternoon. I was out with a friend that day. Just over one...
“We want to believe that love is singular and exclusive, and it unnerves us to think that it might actually be renewable…” While it is true, as generations of psychologists have found, that “who we are and who we become depends, in part, on whom we love” — a process known as limbic revision — it is also true, as...
All you need to do, if you are medically able, is to commit a couple of hours every couple of months, to become a regular blood donor. To remain a regular blood donor, you’ll ideally get your vaccines immediately after a donation, so you are again eligible eight weeks later; and, also ideally, you’ll avoid getting...
I saw Alex Wolfe answering these questions and I thought I’d give them a go! I even wrote an early draft by hand before transferring them to digital for some final edits. Feel free to reply to these as well, I would love to read your answers in the comments or on your own blogpost, send me a link if you do. What is...
In the search for evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life, astronomers, and organisations like SETI, often seek out narrowband radio signals. Space is full of radio signals, most of them broadband, which usually occur naturally. Neutron stars are but one generator of such signals. Narrowband radio...
To what extent has the development of AI over the past several years led to non-academic work for academically-trained philosophers? [Refik Anadol, “Unsupervised – Machine Hallucinations” (detail)]AI raises questions across various domains of philosophical expertise, including philosophy of mind, ethics, philosophy...
Si buscas en internet, la Epiphone Les Paul Custom es una gran guitarra por su precio. Buenos reviews, buena construcción, materiales decentes, buen tono, estéticamente hermosa, etc. Pero mi gusto por mi guitarra va más allá de eso. La mía la compré hace como 16 años en un Guitar Center en El Paso, TX. En ese...
There is something we gotta package into words, then sentences, then paragraphs and let loose into the ether in order keep going. Very recently I had a very large piece of Humble Pie served to me, and instead of sulking in sorrow about it, I'm just going to put all the cards out on the table and then move on. What...
“Oi, Paul. You coming to the demo?”I press the phone against my face. It’s Sabeena. My best friend a.k.a. boundary pusher. I slink over to my bedroom window and hush my voice. “What demo,” I whisper. “I’ve got college all day today.”She’s always getting me into trouble.“Sack college. This is more important. Roko...
Minecraft generates a bedrock floor at the bottom of the world from a random noise. Since it’s random, it can contain naturally generated unescapable regions – prisons. While small prisons are common, larger ones are hard to find – a Minecraft world is about 60 million by 60 million blocks, so locating these boxes...
日常#12 苹果设备的联动、最近做的一些菜式、死亡搁浅、深圳美术馆看展 🎵 Asylums for the Feeling by Silent Poet / Leila Adu 苹果设备的联动 最近在面试，但是收到的面试不多，就业环境是一个因素，长时间空窗也是个负面影响，个人能力也还需要继续提升，总之继续投递，打起精神做准备，希望早日找到工作。 一般面试的第一轮都是视频面试，我现在的主力设备是 Mac mini，它是没有摄像头的。幸运的是，Mac 上可以将 iPhone 用作网络摄像头，而我的手机正好是满足系统要求的 iPhone。按照说明，是可以无线连接的，但实际尝试的时候没成功，还好有线连接能用，用 iPhone...
BackgroundNavigation menus, like top nav bars and footer menus, typically add an active CSS class to the current page’s link, providing visual feedback and highlights the page you’re currently on. This is a common user experience (UX) feature. Although I have noticed this feature while browsing, I didn’t know it was...
Hey all, quick update continuing from yesterday's announcement that my homelab went down. This is stream of consciousness and unedited. Enjoy! Turns out the entire homelab didn't go down and two Kubernetes nodes survived the power outage somehow. Two Kubernetes controlplane nodes. Kubernetes really wants there to be...
ThatShubham: The user must perform visual triage, identify the close icons (which are deliberately given low contrast) and execute side quests just to access the 5KB of text they came for. Ridiculous. At first I felt like screaming ‘What!?!’. But then I realised that that is exactly what I have to do every day...
Why the middleware-to-handler boundary is a special case for context values.
After a bit more than ten years into my professional life, I've reached the stage where I can quite confidently say what works and what doesn't. Or at least I think I can. Or at least I can tell what usually works for myself, which might be different from what works for you. God, it already became unnecessarily...
(image courtesy of unknown artist) (personal) definitions: a writing exercise in hospital word (personal) definition kite i lost mine in scotland joy the eternal grandmother of my past self, who lives on the street corner ladybird a vibrant wish upon the back of a hand anger the uncontrollable uncorking of a...
My family has a history of "handy" men, but I did not inherit this trait. It is a deficiency I am attempting to remedy. Since retiring, I have successfully fixed a toilet, touched up the dryer with appliance paint, installed a rock garden, and built a workbench. I'm not sure why I need a workbench. My wife would...
No estamos ni cerca de Navidad, pero estaba viendo un show donde mencionaron las cartas a Santa Claus y me surgió la duda de cual fue la última carta que escribí a este ser mitológico. Es interesante pensar en esto porque para muchos yo creo que fue nuestra primera vez escribiendo una carta (para las familias que...
So I’ve been thinking, when was the last time I’ve experienced some sort of burnout from a community. And I had forgotten that tech was not my only interest, or the only thing I’ve been deeply enthralled with. While I started making websites when I was 13, I wasn’t always stuck on only thinking about web development...
I collect cool, interesting links spread all over the web and share them here in daily posts. Hope you enjoy! More of them in the archive. The new Ubuntu folder icons, Omg! Ubuntu. The changes will come in Ubuntu 26.04, scheduled for release in April. In addition to the folder icons (I think they’re prettier!), the...
Después de 10 años de mantenimiento, la guía no oficial para recién llegados a openSUSE cambia de manos que le da una actualización general para que siga siendo útil. Desde hace ya muchos años utilizo la distribución de GNU/Linux openSUSE como mi sistema operativo principal y único en mis portátiles y equipo de...
Noticing how less meaningful I've been finding my RSS reading habit, I went on the lookout for possible reasons. First, I really dislike the idea of reducing a sizeable part of my internet usage to a standardised homogenous experience. Imagine going to a bookshop and see all the books printed with the same style,...
March 17, 2026 I came across a great piece by Ben Lovejoy on 9to5Mac that offered a new perspective on Apple's MacBook Neo. According to Ben maybe the MacBook Neo isn't necessarily about offering a cheaper Mac, but rather about introducing younger users, like high school students, to the Apple ecosystem as early as...
On October 8, 2025, I sent an email some Members of European Parliament1. This was the first time I’d ever done something like this. The message was addressed to the European Parliament Committee on Industry, Research and Energy. They seemed like the right subset of Members to contact after reading a post on the...
Last weekend, I got an annual pass for a local botanical garden. I think it's the first annual pass I've gotten for anything, so I'm pretty excited about it. I'd already been to this garden twice and enjoyed it both times. The ticket wasn't too expensive, and if I go a total of five times over the next 12 months,...
I had been using XFCE as my desktop on EndeavourOS. I switched to Cinnamon after having some issues with XFCE (I believe tied to Nvidia drivers). Since I switched my desktop environment, I then had a hidden files display issue in Thunar (the default XCFE file manager), so I switched to Nemo (Mint’s). Nemo works but...
"Una che si concia con due specchi" (A woman dressing her hair with two mirrors) from the "Habiti delle Donne Venetiane", published by Giacomo Franco, c. 1610.
This post started off life as a note in Obsidian but I figure it may be useful to others, and sharing is caring. Once a year I create a new project directory for my tax return with sub‑directories for the various components. Creating that structure by hand is tedious, but I only do it once a year, so I never...
One of my favourite genres is “I’m going to teach you something secretly while you’re having fun.” This 2020 post by George Cave is ostensibly about Lego interface panels, but quietly sneaks in some stuff about shape coding and other kinds of coding: The Lego interface panels seem to have a certain hold on people....
One of the ideas Frances shared when we exchanged blog post titles was to write about a memory from a library. While the prompt “Sparking joy” is the one I ended up writing about, as soon as I started to think about library memories a few ideas came to mind. One memory in particular stands out.Last year I visited...
Everyone has a digital storehouse of contacts, calendar invites and to-dos. Of late, I've desired a PIM that can fit all my needs. This may sound like a tall order, but to me, a good PIM does the following gross tasks: - Calendars - To-Dos (optionally integrated with the Calendar) - Address Books / Contacts -...
James is hosting this month's IndieWeb blog carnival on the topic “museum memories.” One of my favorite museum trips was when my spouse took me to see the Antique Wireless Association's Communication Technologies Museum for my birthday a few years ago. I didn't know about this museum before we went — my spouse had...
This weekend, I finished reading “The Art of Spending Money” by Morgan Housel. If that name rings a bell, it’s probably because of his mega-bestseller “The Psychology of Money” from a few years back. He also writes a blog well worth reading. I never read “The Psychology of Money” because, from skimming the table of...
Daughters of Darkness by Samuel Chatman is a comic book in prose form, which mixes technology-based superheroes with standard urban fantasy tropes like vampires, werewolves and demons. (It's also another entrant in the SPFBO XI contest.) In this alternate reality, America is divided in two: there’s the evil American...