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Every so often, somebody makes a bot account in the fediverse, expects people to love it, and is then surprised when people get mad. If you are thinking of writing or hosting a bot account on Mastodon, Pleroma or other fediverse software, here are some tips that will make it less likely that a server admin will ban your bot and yell at you. 1. Identify your bot as a …

Paul Linebarger (aka Cordwainer Smith) was an interesting guy. Among other things he was heavily involved in developing psychological warfare techniques for the US military. He was also a close adviser to Chiang Kai-shek and the godson of Sun Yat-sen, the first leader of the Kuomintang (Wikipedia) The table Pinlighting is a hell of a way to earn a living. Underhill was furious as he closed the door behind himself. …

Like many parents, I have a kid that loves playing games on his tablet. He's gone through several iPads over the years. One tablet has managed to survive his rough-and-tumble lifestyle, and it's a budget-friendly option from Amazon. The Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids Pro has proven itself as a perfect match for a rambunctious youth. The Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids Pro offers a blend of durability, parental control, …

The weekend markets live-ish and direct in my hand A few years ago, I ended up spending 9 months living in South Gippsland, about two hours from Melbourne. We were doing a renovation on our house and had wonderful builders who took care of everything, so we left town for 9 months and left them to it. It was mid-Pandemic, too, so that provided a bit of extra incentive. My …

It's time to bring the curtain down on Stats, Maps n Pix now, after 1.5 million page views and 150 posts. I'll leave the blog archived here, but if you're looking for me, you can always find me via my business website. When I started this blog as a replacement for my original one I was still working at a university doing academic stuff and it kind of fitted in …

The first "pyutrecht" meetup in Amersfoort in the Netherlands. (Amersfoort is not the city of Utrecht, but it is in the similarly named province of Utrecht). I gave a talk myself about being more of a proper programmer to your own laptop setup. Have a git repo with a README explaining which programs you installed. An install script or makefile for installing certain tools. "Dotfiles" for storing your config in …

Good morning, I’ve been thinking about the “Goldilocks principle” lately. You know, how the correct amount of something is great for you, but too little or too much does nothing, or even ends up hurting you. Like how ten minutes in the sun can be rejuvenating. Ten hours, however, can leave you burned. Everything in life has a correct dosage. But that dosage is not the same for every individual, …

I guess this does. We’ve been in the house two days. Moving took all of one. There’s something subtly different in the new place. Kind of a relaxed vibe. I really did this whole thing for my wife. Where I live has not mattered for awhile to me although the last house resulted in lots of lost sleep. What I wanted was to give a change to my wife. Let …

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be playing at Bristol Beacon’s Housewarming party! It’s the venue’s reopening celebration after yonks being closed for refurbishments. The event is FREE (but you need tickets) all day from 11am - 2am on 2nd december, 2023. I’ll be performing at MIDNIGHT which is way past my bedtime these days so please come with all your energy so I can feast on your vybezzz and …

Last week, I wrote about my experience at a meditation retreat, in which a man fainted and reminded me of the preciousness of life. Another lesson I learned that day came from observing the leader of the retreat, Marc Lesser. He was sharing wisdom from the classic book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. As he spoke, I was reminded of a retreat of his I had attended more than four years …

Introduction Antimatter is a platform for teaching and learning through memes. Teachers use Antimatter to invite students to create memes based on their current unit as a means of what teachers call formative assessment, because, in the classroom as in life, in order to create a good story, joke, or puzzle, you have to really understand the subject matter. Antimatter was founded in January 2021, before DALL·E and other foundational …

IntroductionI wish it were possible to look up any medical issue without being exposed to the most graphic photographs ever taken by man or beast. —Velveteen, Post on akko.wtf While browsing the WICG discussion forms, I stumbled upon a proposal for a standardized <spoiler> element in HTML5. I made two comments, and stopped myself before writing a third; this called for a blog post. I think HTML should have a …

Pre-registration is the best and possibly only solution to p-hacking. Ten years ago, pre-registrations were virtually unheard of in psychology, but they have become increasingly common since then. I was curious just how common they have become, and so I collected some data. This post shares the results. The data From the Web of Science... The post [115] Preregistration Prevalence appeared first on Data Colada.

Wishful Thinking Postcard: Finnair, Sud Aviation Caravelle 1970s Gift of Thomas G. Dragges Collection of SFO Museum 2015.166.0701 I spoke at the 2023 Museum Computer Network conference, in Philadelphia, last week and presented a talk titled Wishful Thinking – A critical discussion of "extended reality" technologies in the cultural heritage sector. These are my notes for the talk. This is what I was planning to say sticking to these notes …

One of the most endearing and enduring pop journeys of the last few years has been the epistolary odyssey undertaken by the redoubtable members of Team Philpott, who have been firing off missives to some of the most famous and infamous musicians of the last forty years, feigning confusion and asking for clarification on the lyrical content of their most memorable hits. The enquiries are amusing in and of themselves …