Thu May 07
Mandy hated New Year. It left her feeling desolate, in spite of the whisky and sleeping pills that helped her to function on less harrowing days. It was two years ago, on New Year’s Eve, since her fifteen-year-old son, Charlie, ran away. After a thorough search, full media coverage, and all the usual legal...
Our internet bill was too high. It had gone beyond the promotional contract period and the triple-play bundle for 300/300 net, medium-level TV package, and home phone (yes, a landline!) was just too much considering that we almost never watched live TV/DVR anymore. My goal was simple: Increase our net to gigabit,...
TIMBRE [La Jornada, Martes 5 de mayo 2026]PRESIDENTA CLAUDIA SHEINBAUM. PRESENTE. PARTE II. Uno de los triunfos de los feminismos mexicanos de inicio de siglo XXI ha sido, sin lugar a duda, la tipificación del delito de feminicidio, que se incorporó poco a poco en los códigos penales a lo largo de una década,...
The Pixar animated short Lifted was released in front of Ratatouille in 2006: I’ve always been amused by this imaginary interface, which is so clearly not how any sort of computer would work. Or so I thought. These are photos I took in Melbourne in 2024 of CSIRAC, Australia’s first digital computer from about 1949:...
Lately, there’s been a lot of buzz in my tech bubble about good old RSS/Atom feeds. Not only are people rediscovering them and making them available on their blogs, but new services are also popping up around this 30-year-old technology. It’s just so wonderfully independent and fits the trend of moving away from...
Skipped Weeknote and Mac Disk CorruptionI’m feeling poorly myself for the past week (have an appointment tomorrow with the doctor), so unfortunately my weeknote for 2026-W18 will be cancelled. Not only am I not feeling well, my Mac Mini is also acting up, reporting that the primary data volume is corrupt and needs...
The Psychology of this is so amazing!! So well done!
I met with Amin Bandali to talk about Emacs, specifically Amin’s upcoming ffs package. Amin informed me about changes to ffs in light of a discussion we had during a previous session. Amin asked me to record the meeting and then publish it, which I happily agreed to. You can watch it on Amin’s website:...
Un post de esos que realmente no tienen nada interesante que contar
The problem is not that Google wants more AI inside Chrome. The problem is that Chrome appears willing to treat users’ computers like rollout infrastructure. There is a version of this story that is too simple. It goes something like this: Google is shoving AI onto everyone’s machine, therefore everything about it...
Volví a publicar una entrada (con fecha original de publicación) sobre las llamadas «Páginas Matutinas» que tenía en un blog anterior, a mi actual. Por si quieres leerla esta acá. Ahí escribí sobre el problema con ellas y la forma en que lo resolví. Puede que te ayude si lo has intentado hacerlo varias veces sin éxito.
Totul a pornit de la clip pe care l-am văzut pe YouTube: Is Firefox a Pig?. Nu era ceva la care mă așteptam să petrec mai mult de câteva minute, dar m-a prins pentru că punea degetul exact pe problema cu care mă luptam și cu care se luptă aproape fiecare utilizator de Firefox. Folosesc Waterfox - un navigator bazat...
K recently joked that were I to appear on Mastermind, my specialist subject would be Iron Maiden. She may be right. They’re certainly the band I have paid the most attention to over the years. Throughout the 90s they were the band I listened to the most, and this led to me discovering more bands. As a teenager my...
a half-assed review"> From the award-winning creators behind Journey (2013 Game of The Year) and the highly-acclaimed Flower, comes a ground-breaking social adventure that is set to warm your hearts. Welcome to the enchanting world of Sky, a beautifully-animated kingdom waiting to be explored by you and your loved...
My backup strategy follows the 3-2-1 backup rule: Three copies of your data On two different media One copy off-site Some people argue that your production data (the copy stored on your laptop, for example) counts as one of those copies. I disagree. While it may be a copy of your current data, it's not a copy of...
I'm out and about, MacBook Air in tow, with a couple of hours to kill. So I dip into a coffee shop and decide to tinker with stuff. I open up Codeberg and... Okay, guess I'll be using something else at the moment then. So far I'm not having a lot of success. PS: That . after the : though...
The only research I have done for this post is observing finches in two very distinct geographic locations. This is a true, plausible—even spurious—fact. Finches have a sinusoidal flight pattern. Meaning they flap their wings up to the top of the wave and then tuck their wings in and let gravity take them, then...
In the modern era of age verification, I’m seeing more parents expose themselves for who they are and what they let their kids do. Parenting used to be giving children toys and then watching them play or even playing with them. Then it turned into sitting in front of TVs, and then it turned into giving them The...
An update to this. All this time, I either tried to find a good time to do it and delayed it, or told myself I could make it work for the rest of her life. It could get better, we have good times sometimes, and I could deal with seeing her once or twice a year, right? I thought everyone wins in this scenario: I...
2026-05-07Hello!This is a close-up photograph of the glamorous louvers of the science laboratory from before. These things are about forty feet tall, and have held up for a few years now. They're installed outside — you can see the clouds through these structures — and I wonder how the architects and builders tested...
On my Mac, I use Alfred for quick searches across specific engines. The setup is: custom URL patterns with keyword triggers gs in the Alfred bar launches a Google search, ds launches DuckDuckGo. The problem is Alfred doesn't exist on iPhone and iPad. That's where xSearch comes in. xSearch is a Safari extension for...
The purpose of a design file is to gain consensus not tell developers what to build. A design file should be included with a functional specification as supporting information to help a developer visualise the output of the code they are writing. Because, no matter how much you use Auto-Layout or variables, a design...
After successfully finding my way back to my blog I have so far failed to do any blogging. I found that I had committed myself to doing so many other things that the time and energy for self-indulgence (i.e. writing for my own amusement) was lacking. We spent over a year sorting out my late mother’s belongings and...
Managers Returning to "Coding" with AI We have been talking with other engineering leaders around me about the impact of AI in our profession. Although nobody knows what will happen, I kept thinking about where I'm standing and what others are doing today. There is certainly a trend among managers to go back to...
A decent startI just returned from the first run of the 3rd week of my Couch to 5k programme, and I'm feeling surprisingly good. Here's what today's run looked like: Start with a pre-run stretch (I've found this quick 5 minute stretch to be quite effective) A brisk 5-minute walk to warm up A 90-second running...
Difficulty: Impossible.Let’s set the scene. I am a line cook by profession but my passion is in fashion. I am on the job hunt and I figure the best way to find my Ikigai is the internet, so I look up “fashion line cook career” in my favorite search engine. I am moderately tech savvy so I skip past the first few...
worldofreel.com Aster once quipped that he couldn’t believe A24 was “stupid enough” to give him $35M to make “Beau Is Afraid.” They shelled out another $30M for “Eddington,” which also failed to ignite. Maybe that’s the end of that partnership. Bless their twisted hearts, they are back again for another dip into...
Credit Feed is the name I chose for my posts on video games. It is a term used by players of arcade games, particularly shmups, in reference to the act of using continues to finish a game. Most players have encountered shmups (shoot’em ups), and many are aware that arcade games are supposed to be challenging. I love...
Quoted Strawberries were on sale by Chris Glass (Chris Glass) I try my best to stick to the grocery list but this was a really good deal for strawberries. I did that thing mixing 1 part white vinegar and 3 parts water, soak for 10 minutes and dry thoroughly to extend their freshness....
Now I am 26 + 1 years old. My better half made me this delicious cake and gave me these beautiful flowers and some cool presents!
Right now there’s a cruise ship parked outside Cabo Verde because of an outbreak of Andes virus. Yep, another cruise ship. I don’t get the appeal. It’s like a big open-air serial passage experiment: you get a bunch of old people with failing immune systems in close contact and race a pathogen through them. How much...
In this blog I’ve often mentioned the name of my late friend Bertrand Dufresne, who passed away 10 years ago this year. Despite all the good memories I have with him, I wanted to remember him through an object he offered me once. The eiPott was this short-lived thingy made by Koziol in 2010: a small, colorful...
While staying at an AirBnB during our visit to the Netherlands, I wrote some code to import all of my AirBnB stays from over the years, as a part of my ongoing attempt to import all the things! There haven’t been all that many of them, but each of them is a nice memory, and what’s a personal website if not a place...
Let me start by saying this: I do not like transmigration dramas. It’s one genre I avoid like the plague. Alongside youth dramas, they sit firmly on my personal “I can’t watch this” list. That said, I did give another transmigration drama by Wang Yilu a try once: Yummy, Yummy, Yummy. It had potential because the...
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There’s a debate that’s been running on the internet for nearly two decades: when someone gets harassed or hurt online, whose fault is it? The platform’s? The creator who posted the content? The person who chose to read it? This essay argues that the debate itself is the problem — and that keeping it going actually...
A quiet week at work. There were two public holidays in South Africa on Monday and Friday, so quite a few of our SA-based colleagues took the other three days as leave. I had some nice gaps in my diary to allow me to get things done. I took Friday off to relax ahead of an early start on Saturday, but ended up...
我不再在通勤路上刷 Instagram了。我卸载了 app，但是因为有一些朋友习惯用它来代替 LINE，所以我在浏览器上登录了我的账号，不定期上去 check 一下，令人欣慰（？）的是目前为止我每次打开都能看到有朋友联系我。 我不再订阅 Spotify。虽然可以用女朋友的学生认证一个月没有多少钱，但是发现最近的新歌越来越无聊了，而且总是听着东西感觉有些信息过载。目前在用本地音乐播放器听下载下来的自己喜欢的歌。 我不再在睡前看手机了。我把 kindle 放在手边，这样如果我不小心在床上拿起了手机，我可以看一会儿 kindle，这样就不算睡前看手机了。 我不再纠结手机屏幕使用时长。看电子书以及用 app...
Dear Ciara, The garden beds are built, the seedlings are growing, but they’re still not large enough to be transplanted. I’m hoping another next week is all that is needed, provided the weather behaves itself and I keep on top of watering them consistently. Transplanting seeds in the tropics is a challenging...
“What we’d hope for on the planet is creativity and sanity, conviviality, the real work of our hands and minds.” “The universe is made of stories, not atoms,” Muriel Rukeyser wrote in her poem “The Speed of Darkness” not long after James Baldwin told an audience of writers that “we made the world we’re living in and...
Una cosa que sé que tengo pendiente en general es mejorar mi hidratación. En general bebo poca agua; como no suelo hacer esfuerzos físicos durante el día ni estoy en exterior no paso calor y, al final, no tengo sed. Pero sé que necesito beber más agua de la que habitualmente bebo. No hace falta cumplir a raja tabla...
Check out As in guillotine... for more. Earlier this year, LibraryPass (my full-time passion for nearly six years) was acquired, and I decided it was a good time to figure out my next adventure while helping the new owners through the initial transition. That transition is in its final phase now, so for the first...
Excerpts related to "Venetia" and the "Veneti" from the "Naturalis Historia" by Pliny the Elder (1st century)
April 2026. Royal Tunbridge Wells. A gorgeous Tuesday night in Royal Tunbridge Wells, as blogging royalty headed out to see the state of pubs in commuterville. Mrs RM was racing down to the Pantiles, the picture postcard quarter, where I’d asked her to meet me in the Ragged Trousers, a long-term favourite from her...
In January my corner of the social web was abuzz with the surprising announcement at Davos of a new social network: W Social, which aspires to be an alternative to X, based in Europe, with "identity verification to fight disinformation." Its goal? To foster social sovereignty for European citizens, away from the...
Hoy tuve una hermosa sensación cuando llevé a mi hija al colegio. Salimos bien temprano así que no había necesidad de ir rápido, es más, es el momento que la vida nos da para pasar 20 minutos juntos, hablar un poco de algo, cansarla con algún consejo y reír. Hoy fui más despacio que de lo normal. Si bien la...
A few months ago, during a therapy session, I mentioned the possibility that I might be addicted to screens. The psychologist asked what I do when I’m not looking at them. I could only come up with a few things — all simple, some pathetic, like “washing dishes.” She said it’s common for addicts, upon recognizing...
Cómo hacer que Amarok reproduzca archivos de música en formato .wma en openSUSE Tenía un par de discos en mi colección de música en formato .wma que el reproductor Amarok no me reproducía en mi sistema openSUSE Tumbleweed. Te cuento cómo lo solucioné. Un sencillo tutorial para mi yo del futuro o para ti que andas...
Eu estava a tempos querendo escrever um texto sobre como era incrível poder viver nos anos 90 e como era um dia naquela época, como tudo era simples e fácil. Ou pelo menos é o que as memórias alteradas daquela época pareciam ser. A grande verdade é que conforme ficamos mais velhos nós vamos romantizando certas...
Metal Gear Solid is a very cool franchise, that is apparently a bit of a mess when it comes to its story and the connection between each game and all of that. I am not as attached on it as I am on Resident Evil. I did not spend countless hours watching video essays about Metal Gear, or Hideo Kojima or the history of...
Sorry for the radio silence, for I’ve experienced a lot of first world problems. I’ve had some ups and downs the last few weeks, it’s fair to say. I think I shared the majority of them on the Now page, but the main one was that my laptop had experienced a battery failure, meaning I had to transfer over to my Windows...
Went to yoga again today, a different teacher, and it was so transformative. Instead of talking constantly, he got us to pause between each asana, in tailor seat, eyes close. I teared up several times because I could feel what each asana did to my body. I could feel the strain in my muscles, the breath, first high,...
Hago mucho eso de asociar objetos a personas (creo que algo común para todos ¿no?), siempre que veo tal objeto que pertenece o pertenecía a alguien, inmediatamente me acuerdo de él. Estuve pensando hoy cuales objetos son estos y ahí me di cuenta que desde la primaria tengo esta costumbre. Identificaba a mis...
Hey, dipshit. You know what compiles in two seconds, deploys as a single binary, and doesn't shit itself when a transitive dependency gets yanked from npm at 3am? Go. The same way HTML has been sitting there since the dawn of the goddamn internet waiting for you to stop overcomplicating the frontend, Go has been...
Nobody really talks about radio anymore. And by "nobody", I mean people my age. Speaking of people my age, I've been noticing this uptick in content about curation. Its the mechanic behind online aesthetics and microtrends1, which is in part engineered by human enagagement and curated by algorithms. We're given a...
Since I’m still in the process of developing my own, I currently have to rely on other RSS readers. And from time to time, I switch them. Today was such a day. Normally, what I do is export an OPML file from my old reader and import it into the new one. But in my current reader, I couldn’t find that export option....
We're in the process of moving and it's eye-opening just how much stuff we've accumulated over the span of just two and a half years. During that time, my in-laws from Viet Nam stayed with us for several months, and we welcomed our son into the world. As a result, we made a lot of purchases and learned a few things....
Recently I've been struggling to find things to write in the intro of these posts, or finding things to write on the blog in general. I'm kind of in a creative slump it seems... and I don't really know what to do about it except wait it out and see when the creativity comes back. Don't worry, the linkdumps aren't...
I have a Yamaha P-115 digital piano, it’s been propped up in the corner for about three years. Today I took 20 mins to shuffle some things around in my office (our spare room), and it’s set up. And my son is currently sitting bashing away at the keys. I need to try and remember […]Thanks for reading and keeping RSS...