Personal blogs

Protocols and plain language. Read here.

I first saw (and loved) the Dimension Films cut of Police Story 3 when it was released in the U.S. in 1996. For years, I didn’t even know it was a sequel, since the American …

While digging through some old work chat logs (from 2011, more than 10 years ago!), I found some interesting advice I was giving to some junior developers in our company about how to handle and …

The first crocuses appeared in the front garden at 100 Prince Street this weekend, right in time for the vernal equinox. See also 2020 (March 24), 2021 (March 12), 2022 (March 18).

A kind correspondent read my post about Do Interesting and thought I might be interested in Atul Gawande's 2005 Commencement Address to the Harvard Medical School. She's right. It's fantastic. Here's his Rule 3: "Count …

. . . in them thar youtubes . . . for a teeny fraction of those generating content on that platform. A few years ago, I was suck[er]ed into a feed of snipers / snorklers …

A couple of years ago I converted an old Bang & Olufsen CX50 speaker to take a Hifiberry Beocreate DSP amplifier and a Raspberry Pi running Airplay and Spotify Connect. The Beocreate board has an …

Since moving to the USA I have been attempting to understand the place a little better by reading its literature. I have finally got around to reading the great edifice...

We’ve had this recipe in our Paprika for a really long time, labeled exactly as above. It’s a creamy, rich tomato soup that’s perfect as an entree on cold winter days, but it’s best when …

Although I love RSS and am keen on ActivityPub becoming more widely used, I wish there were some way to be more selective about when my posts get shared. After I publish something on my …

The first single from my third EP is streaming everywhere. A Different Kind of Light is a theme for Osaka, a city so big that its edges are blurred, with a downtown that fizzes with …

Why write a blog post somewhere nobody has published in five years, in a new WordPress interface where you recognize… yeah, nothing? Where somehow you can’t even upload a JPG or PNG file you downloaded …

The ol’ ellipses. That punctuation that denotes a pause. If ever there was something that could be used as a placeholder for the past year, the ellipses may fill that void. It marks a transition …

Extracting Code from a git Repo Today I nerd sniped myself. I wanted to do something completely different, but then decided to extract the JavaScript compressor that is built into DokuWiki into its own repository. …

Lots of little gems in John Seabrook’s 1994 New Yorker profile of Bill Gates, but this note stuck with me particularly. For years after the telephone was invented, in 1876, people thought it was a …

Bush Terminal Park and 29th Street Recycling Center, 27 February and 2–3 March 2023

Early in 2001 I was a freelance journalist, writer and speaker, doing my best to help people understand the internet and how it was transforming the world, and arguing that it should be reshaped to …

This essay debuted as a talk at FWB Fest in Idyllwild, California, 2022. I’ve rearranged and expanded the material for the essay version. It is 2018 and I am on a flight to San Francisco. …

Oliver Bateman: As a lifelong strength athlete, I have toiled in filthy gyms and basements to maintain my own physical condition. I would like to say that remaining “natural” or practising intense physical discipline offers …