Recently stumbled upon a couple of artists that I've been enjoying, thought I'd share. It's no surprise I've been going down the rabbit hole of protest music... Masks Off - Jesse Welles Fuck your AI - Luke Nickle On a side note, I wish more indie artists would offer CDs. Jesse Welles has vinyl on his store, but no CDs.
I've made the decision to delete any personal online presence outside of this blog. My Mastodon & Strava accounts are gone, Tildes.net account is in process, public YouTube videos are permanently deleted. I unfortunately can't delete my LinkedIn account (turns out it's company managed), and Reddit's "delete my account" button is broken (surprise). Going forward I'll only be reachable via email .
I really enjoyed doing macro shots last time, so I did it again! To switch things up though, I swapped my Sony aIV frame with an old Nikon D5100 (my first DSLR). It was kind of a beast to work with. I used the same lens as last time, but the D5100 doesn't have focus peaking. It was an additional challenge going back to a crop sensor. The shots are from the same park as day 6 , but during a rainstorm this time. There are very few things as wonderful as hiking through a forest at the end of a rain. The smells, the sound of birds coming out of hiding...it's magical. I ended up walking just over 3 miles and it was the most relaxed I've been in awhile. Field macro photography is a fun challenge, it forces you to focus on the small, easily missed details around you. You have to balance apeture and light a lot more than usual. Capturing anything more than a tiny slice of detail requires more light, which is hard in the woods. Slowing shutter speed to compensate makes it near impossible to capture something like a spider web swaying in the breeze. When you do get the camera dialed in, the viewfinder reveals a minitature world ready for you to capture.
On Palm OS, the interface for picking the start and end time of an event is represented as two columns, hour and minutes. The hours list either starts at 8AM and shows until 7PM (covering a full business day, or it starts at the next hour (if creating an event for today). Minutes are represented for every 5 minute interval, allowing every option to be shown at once. This interface is simple and requires an extremely low cognitive load to use. It's scannable and adaptive to the current situation (today vs another day). It limits options (ie you can't set a time of 12:33) to drive simplicity. If we compare to the time picker on Android, we can see it's significantly more complex. One must first tap the hour, then tap AM/PM, then tap the minutes section and tap the minute they need. While minute intervals of 5 are shown on the screen, the user is able to select specific minutes, if they know how (one must drag the circle to get a specific minute). The interface has many more taps, states and cognitive load. How about iOS? Like Palm OS, iOS limits you to 5-minute intervals. Similar to Android though, an additional interaction is needed to pick AM/PM. Picking hour and minutes is more involved as well, you must scroll the picker to the desired value. The Palm OS UI might not be the prettiest, but it's the fastest for most use-cases. The most common options (business hours and 5-minute intervals) are presented without the need for multiple states or scrolling. Setting the time is 2 taps away!
There's a shopping center I sometimes walk to for lunch. It's been there long enough that it doesn't have a sidewalk (before city ordinances required sidewalks I imagine). A few years ago, a mixed-use complex was built next to it, complete with a sidewalk that ended right at the boundary of the old plaza. This new sidewalk has resulted in a path of trampled grass as people (like myself) walk to the restaurants in the old plaza. Today on my way to get some "Italian food" (it's America, nothing is authentic here), I was greeted with a new gravel path at the end of the sidewalk. The path had been placed to line up with the curve of dead grass and perfectly connected both plazas. ↑ I didn't have a camera on me, so enjoy this detailed sketch done on my Palm Pilot It seems like a small thing, but it surprised me. Just a week ago I remember wondering to myself how long it would be until a "stay off of grass" sign appeared. Instead, I was treated to a rare instance of people's needs being directly addressed. It reminded me of a similar story around Ohio State University (the university in my city). The sidewalks built across the campus green were made to follow the paths students trekked in the early days of the campus. A similar method, named Sneckdown , is used to determine where traffic calming measures are needed based on snow that has not been touched by traffic. I wish this was more common, identifying pain points and improving the situation. Instead, we spend hours in meetings figuring out how to fight people's goals because what they want isn't "sticky enough" or "doesn't meet business goals".
This post is a quick tip for anyone else running into issues installing the Palm Pilot desktop software, JPilot on Arch Linux. If you just try installing via , the build will fail as the dependency no longer builds on modern systems. The solution is to first install , then .
David writes about the importance of reaching out to the author of blog posts and starting a conversation, I 100% agree! I love when something I write resonates with somebody, and more often than not it turns into a continuing conversation. I see this blog-o-sphere as it's own little world filled with friends across the world. I recently ran across a blog that belonged to a Youtuber. On the "about me" section they stated the following: NOTE: I don't answer any personal questions - Please don't send me emails. This does not sit well with me. What's the point of creating if not to spark conversation and meet others? At that point, it feels like you're just in it for the adsense revenue. The internet doesn't need that, it needs community (now more than ever). I don't have a problem with people making money off of their work, but it shouldn't be the only motivation. So reach out, send an email, even if it's just a "hello". I promise, you'll make the other person's day!
Today I returned to the park from day 4 armed with a macro lens I remembered I have. It's for a Nikon camera, and it's all manual (aperture ring and focus ring), but with an adapter it worked just fine with my Sony. I had some trouble with focusing, but I think a few of them turned out decently.
Thought I would try something different for this entry! Each of these photos were taken with my Gameboy Camera attached to an Analogue Pocket (since it allows easy exporting). I've had this cartridge since I was a kid (I included 2 photos from back then for fun)! The following photos are from when I was a kid and have been sitting on the cartridge for 20+ years. ↑ This was one of the cats we had when I was a kid, his name was Benthem. He had massive cheeks! ↑ I imagine this was one of my friend's chickens that lived in the countryside.
I created a tiny script for counting per-page visitors on your site. It's as simple as uploading the PHP file to your server and pointing a tag to it. Leveraging the script as an image is an attempt to seed out bots (since they typically don't render images). Here's a live version of the script: You can grab the script on my Codeberg . To setup with Pure Blog , upload the PHP file to your folder and add the following HTML to your page and post footer HTML under Settings->Site (this assumes the script was uploaded to ):
Woke up to this email in my inbox. At first I though "ugh a sales pitch", but then I saw the line at the bottom. This company runs autonomously · polsia.com This led me to visiting Polsia. It's an entire platform for doing the minimal amount of work to try and sell slop to people. It vibe codes, spams people and provides "customer support" with just the help of your credit card. Is this seriously the future? Cause I don't want it.
I'm working on a new application called TinyFeeds, it's a native RSS feed reader. Sure there's thousands of those, but this one is mine and as such I'm being extremely intentional about how it's built. I believe constraints breed innovation, and as such I've outlined a few constraints for myself in this project. First off, the file size has to be 5MB or under for the shipped binary. This is inspired by Matt's Fits on a Floppy manifesto. I'm also inspired by the Palm Pilot apps I use on a daily basis, many of which are under 5MB. Maintaining a small file size makes you second guess the need for features, libraries, graphics, etc. In a world where Google Chrome secretly downloads an extra 4GB for a local LLM , I feel like small apps are sorely needed. Second, the application is to be built in Rust and Iced . This constraint has forced me to finally dig in and learn Rust. The result is a fast, native application that has a high level of stability thanks to the tools used to build it. Finally, no LLM generated code is to be used. This again forces me to actually learn the language, focus on code structure, and de-scope feature bloat. It also makes me feel proud of what I've built, something I never feel when using LLMs. So how's it going? Great so far! As I mentioned, TinyFeeds is built intentionally for me and how I enjoy consuming RSS. With any feed reader I always filter by unread posts from today. I don't use folders, tags, bookmarks, etc. So that's exactly what TinyFeeds does: The UI has been designed to facilitate this. It's incredibly simple, but the layout is intentional. TinyFeeds won't be for everyone, heck it might only be something I want, but that's the point! I find it a joy to use even in it's early state. While it isn't ready yet, you can early trial it if you so desire by cloning from Codeberg and building it yourself ( ). The app currently clocks in at 4MB when built with the build script! After TinyFeeds, I plan to build similar apps focused on small size, performance and minimal feature sets. All hand coded. Possibly inspired by Palm OS apps :-P Reads your feeds from a simple .txt file Shows new stories from today Only shows a single story at a time Remembers what stories you've viewed so they aren't shown again
Took my soon to a park near our house. He had his kid's camera and had a blast taking photos with me. ↑ One of my son's photos of me.
I was at the gas station filling up the tank (unfortunately we still have 1 gas vehicle), when I noticed the numbers were in the typical 7-segment display style, but the screen was a modern LCD. It's curious that they made this intentional choice to imitate an older technology on a modern display. I imagine it must be due either to familiarity (most gas pumps still use actual 7-segment displays), or readability. I also wonder why they chose to use an LCD. The numbers only occupied a small corner of the screen. The only other active pixels were showing a tiny padlock icon. Maybe the screen facilitates maintenance operations not typically seen by a customer? Unfortunately I didn't snap a picture, still don't feel comfortable pulling out my phone near a gas pump!
Life has been busy and I missed the past 2 days, but thankfully I remembered to bring the camera with me today! I snuck out in the brief calm between rain storms, don't particularly want to test how waterproof my camera is. ↑ This is the side of the building I'm coworking in today. ↑ Sometimes I really wish I had a macro lens! ↑ I love how this one turned out.
This is in reply to Kev writing about his fears of flying. The first time I flew was also the first time I left the country. In September of 2012 my mother dropped me off at Columbus International Airport for a morning flight destined to Narita International Airport. I was fucking terrified. I was so inside of my own head with fears of flying I nearly missed my flight. The loudspeakers called out my name for a final boarding call...I was sitting right in front of the gate, completely oblivious to the fact that the whole plane had boarded. Once I was in the air, my fears started to ease as the excitement at experiencing air travel started to take over. It also helped that I had my first (and second) legal beer (after the stewardess confirmed we were safely over Canada). I flew semi frequently after that, yearly trips to Mexico, visiting family (and getting married) in China, etc. Flying became normal, and my fears were mostly gone. But after my son was born nearly 4 years ago, we stopped traveling. Last year, my wife and I were lucky enough to visit family in Australia for 2-weeks. That flight was terrifying for me. I'm not sure what changed, but I could not stop thinking of how high and vulnerable one is when flying. I calmed my nerves a bit with bad in-flight movies, but was still extremely relieved when we finally landed. During our 2 weeks in Australia, the D.C. AA 5342 disaster occurred, which was in addition to reduced/overworked ATC staffing due to "government efficiency". That was an extremely terrifying flight home, my hands were completely covered in sweat as we finally landed. I haven't flown since, admittedly less due to fear and more due to having a second kid now keeping us even busier. I did opt-out of attending a conference that would require air travel though. I'm sure I'll have to fly again within the next year or so, potentially to China. I'm curious where my comfort level will sit, if I had to guess I would say somewhere in the middle of calm and terrified.
Realized I issued myself a challenge, but failed to define any parameters! My goal is to post at least 1 photo taken with my Sony A7IV per day. Let's see how it goes! Today's photos are from a short e-bike ride my wife and I did along the trail near our home. I want to give some serious kudos to RapidRaw , it's a seriously fast Lightroom alternative that runs on Linux. I've been loving it!
David talked about their reluctance to share their blog with others in the real world. I have much the same reluctance, I definitely don't want a coworker on my blog, or even one of my IRL friends. I do occasionally share links to my articles with my wife, but that's infrequent, and I know she forgets the link between pings. For me, the reluctance is similar to David's. This blog is my space to write what's on my mind in my own little vacuum. It's disconnected from the expectations of real life, and a more real reflection of myself versus the "masks" I wear IRL. It's a playground, a place to rant and a place to nerd out. Sometimes I wish my blog was even more private, disconnected from my IRL identity. There's a lot I would like to rant about around corporate America, but I dare not publicly when it's linked to my professional identity. Gotta pay the bills after all. To forward David's ending question: "Do you tell people you blog?".
I've been wanting to get out and take more photos, so here's day 1 of a personal challenge to do so! These were taken while on my lunch break. There's a beautiful trail next to the coworking place. If you want full resolution versions of any image, just send me an email !
Before my daughter was born, I hosted a retro gaming night. I had recently acquired a PS2 and 32" Sony CRT and was looking forward to a night of fighting bots in Medal of Honor and chasing each other with RC helicopters in 007 Nightfire. I loaded up the 1TB HDD (total overkill I know) on the PS2 with every game from my childhood that had split screen. When the night finally came around, we booted up the PS2 and started with Rising Sun. Immediately the comments were "wow these controls are clunky", "how did we enjoy this as kids?". Feeling bad, I suggested we switch games to Nightfire, which brought on the same comments. I get it, modern games have refined controls, faster frame rates, better graphics, etc. But to me, those older games had more charm. Mastering the controls is part of the competition when playing split screen. We eventually landed on a copy of Worms we burnt to a CD-R and threw into the PS1. That stuck for the rest of the night and was a absolute blast. I guess Worms is timeless no matter who you are! While I can't blame others for not wanting to revisit the past, I'm glad that's not me. I find a lot of joy in the same games I played as a kid. Last night I played Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast on PSP before bed, it was the perfect game and handheld to unwind after a day with the kids. It's not just games either. Browsing the shelves of thrift shops for CDs and DVDs, reading through the pamphlets in the case, finally placing the disc in the stereo or DVD player to discover if you got a treasure or a dud. It's a great experience! I'm glad these things bring me joy, because it means there's a near infinite backlog of games, music, movies and books for me to discover. And the best part is, it's much less expensive to discover media of old versus new releases. Games are a ROM file away. CDs typically cost $5-$15. DVDs can be found for $2-$15. Even better, the library has all of them for free. Compare that to games coming out at $80 these days, or the stack of streaming services most people pay monthly for. I'm also glad my son seems to find the same joy in these things. A few days ago we were getting ready to go somewhere and he showed up with his hands full of "The Transformers" DVD cases (the original show) that he wanted to take. Yesterday he and I beat a new level in Sonic 3 on my Sega Genesis and 13" Toshiba CRT.
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