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There are a few places to sit along the active transportation trail that’s part of the new Cogswell district updates. But there are no trash cans. I was walking from my place downtown to a friend’s place so took the new path. This graffiti is in a few places along the trail, and like the rest of downtown Halifax, the point stands: there needs to be more trash cans. Photograph tags: BelieveInFilm, FilmPhotography, BlackAndWhite, halifax, graffiti, minoltacle
When I was a young boy, I saw Windows XP for the first time and thought it looked really nice. My family had an old beige desktop computer with Windows 98, so I spent many months asking my parents to buy the new Windows XP OS. They acquiesced at some point, and my computer’s interface got a beautiful makeover. Unfortunately, the hardware could barely keep up, and the software upgrade slowed my computer down immensely. That didn’t stop me from trying to make my computer’s...
FROM RIT SPORTSZONE TO THE WORLD: Behind the scenes with RIT alumna and tech expert Katie Linendoll. We’ve never met, though our times in the IT department overlapped.
In the week in which June crossed over into July, I read two short books, totaling about 220 pages in all. I’m in the midst of a run of books on the subject of translation, which will probably last for four or five titles, and I’m slowly working my way through the oeuvre of Toni Morrison. J.M. Coetzee and Mariana Dimópulos. Speaking in Tongues. Liveright, 2025. Speaking in Tongues is posed as a dialogue between the Nobel-winning writer Coetzee and the distinguished...
As I shuffle design around on my website, I still want to write occassionally, but also feel stressed with looking at the old timestamps on my post archive list. So, I've decided to remove them on the front-end, and it looks pretty clean. If you'd also like to do this, remove the following in your Bear blog's css: ul.blog-posts li span { flex: 0 0 130px; } and add i time { display: none; } to remove the time display for the blog posts list. Enjoy the slow web 🩶
Here’s something we argue about. What constitutes ‘visiting’ a country? Do you have to leave the airport? Stay overnight? Or what. I think we’d all agree that just flying over a country doesn’t count, you at least have to LAND. But what if you’re only in the airport? I am firmly on the side of “Landing at the airport counts, because you are on the ground in that country.” Others apparently disagree. (But why? Wouldn’t you want to increase your own country count as high as...
My favorite show of the season! 00:00 Intro 00:40 NIPPON SANGOKU: The Three Nations of the Crimson Sun 17:32 Outro Music Credits: “Clover 3” by Vibe Mountain “Seasons” by roljui
A couple of weeks ago I read The Last Quiet Thing by Terry Godier, and it made me very conscious of what my devices were asking from me. I keep talking about seeking calm to everyone who’ll listen, and still I hadn’t seen it like that: our devices demanding work from us. We tend to think it’s only the big, evil, soul-shrinking companies demanding our attention, but on our side, a secondary-effect of having a tech device always communicating with the world is that it...
Hey IF seal. first of all, i love seals so nose boop to you! Second, I'm working on my first IF and I think it's going really well, the only thing is... I have a hard time trying to fit choices in. A lot of the time, it feels like I'm just doing page break/next page with a lot of my passages. I'm worried my potential readers will get bored of it since I feel like it reads like a book and not like an interactive game right now. I have choices for dialogue options that come...
A classic string board appears in The Bear s04e02 (FX, 2025). ▲ The Bear s04e02 (FX, 2025) ▲ The Bear s04e02 (FX, 2025) ▲ The Bear s04e02 (FX, 2025) ▲ The Bear s04e02 (FX, 2025) ▲ The Bear s04e02 (FX, 2025)
I’m much taken by the story of an obese man in his 80s who in the winter months went for a walk alone in high hills. He slipped, fell, and broke his ankle. He survived only because a passer-by hugged him to keep him warm and organised an ambulance. Months of operations and hospital treatment followed, but despite needing care the man is alive and enjoying life. Has government money been well spent rescuing this man, or, as a friend says, should they have “just have left...
Hello, loves! We’re on the hook for extending illumination, and we need some way to remove the Path of Skulls. When Dot has ‘a brilliant torch’, we want to illuminate whole rooms as she enters them. And after we build the Necrotic Path of Skulls, we should find a sensible way to remove it. I think we’ll need an actual idea for that bit. If memory serves — Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence! — we already have the full-room illumination code somewhere. Let’s look....
I love taking notes, but one problem that I have is that that I start cherishing every notebook that I start. I can't seem to keep my notes messy. Eventually, I start structuring the notes, doing cleaner handwriting, adding a cover or some stickers ... and before I know it, the notebook is too well-organised for simply scribbling into. This, of course, raises the hurdle for taking more notes and makes me start a new notebook, where the same process repeats again. It's a...
One hundred episodes. For this occasion, years in the coming, Lyle and I talk about the thing itself — the nuts and bolts of the podcast, including how the robots now do an alarming amount of the work, what a hundred episodes taught us, and why we use the “The One About…” naming convention. : the show has a home at importantthing.show. Deep-link a favorite or just scroll through a hundred episodes of history. Stuff that came up: Riverside, where we record the show Rands...
Explain one thought to yourself every day. No matter how busy you are. No matter how tough you find that activity. Pick up an idea, a thought, something that bothered you throughout the day. And write down everything you know about that thought. What did you feel. Where did you feel it. What does it all mean. How did it actually feel? What was your expectation of that person who hurt you. Why did it hurt so much. These are important questions. A man has to live with...
I knew it was too good to be true. While a little bit of me hoped it was going to happen this time, mostly I was expecting it to not happen. It didn't happen. Today was the day when Openreach were supposed to turn up again and deliver me a full fibre connection. The engineer was booked to turn up some time between 08:00 and 13:00 (as before). I was ready at 08:00. I was ready before 08:00 if I'm honest. By 12:00 there was no sign of them. Despite there being an hour left...
A revelation has occured to me. Don't obsess about what you want. Figure out who you want to be.
Why did OpenAI postpone its IPO? What does science have to say about what constitutes life? This week we break it down with Tom Adams! Apple Spotify YouTube
AUDACIOUS BOOKCLUB HAPPENINGSOur July bookclub selection is Pool House by Mary H.K. Choi. We will be in conversation with Mary on July 30th at 8 pm EST/5 pm PST. Registration is open. For newcomers, there is a bookclub FAQ if you have questions about how it all works. And this is what we will be reading for the rest of the year. We’re partnering with the lovely people at Allstora for the Audacious Book Club. Now, you can sign up to have the monthly selections delivered to...
Shell history is one source of leaked credentials. Commands containing API keys, bearer tokens, passwords, or connection strings are often written to history files without much thought. We shouldn’t do it, but, let’s admit it, we all do it, especially when we feel safe, on a computer entirely under our control. export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-... curl -H "Authorization: Bearer ghp_..." https://api.example.com psql postgres://alice:password@example.com/db Best practices There are...
I’ve come to value those moments where this bit of light breaks out from within on a tiring day. That feeling of being content is easy to miss, if I am on the lookout for the big emotions. The satisfaction of a job well done, the feeling of hot sun on your skin after a thunderstorm, the shiver down your spine when listening to a magical song — all these count. When I pay attention and gather these, they often add up to a lot more than the showier emotions.
This week has been busier than last week, for a change. For the most part, it’s been busy doing nothing, and this is intentional. For last Tuesday, I had day case surgery on my scalp. I’d been to the local hospital for a biopsy at the end of May. Then the hospital phoned a fortnight ago to say they had an opening in their surgery schedule, would I like the appointment? At this stage, I hadn’t received the results of the biopsy, which was read over the phone. The biopsy had...
This donkey was striding purposefully in the pasture, after his friend, who I featured last month (here).
You like prawn? I mean sweet prawn, prawn that’s strong and savory? This is your jam. It’s been a top ten staple for awhile now and now they’ve got a little sticker on them! This is seriously good stuff – let’s take a look. Vecorn Hae Bee Hiam Dried Noodles – Singapore Detail of the packaging (click to enlarge). Contains shrimp. To prepare, boil noodle for 4.5 minutes and drain. Add sachet contents (I find heating the sachet makes it easier to add in to the noodle....
Almost surely, if you totaled up the number of hours of movie watching I’ve done and the hours of TV show watching I’ve done, TV dwarves movies. It’s not a conscious choice; just how it shook out for me. Via the internet, I “know” a couple of people who are consciously movie-only. Khoi Vinh does all these movie reviews and has more or less said he’s only got time for movies. Sean Fennessey, host of The Big Picture has said he only watches movies as well. Paraphrasing from...