Recently updated blogs

I’m fortunate to have the week between Christmas and New Year’s off work, and that affords me the opportunity to spend some quality time out in the garage, working on various projects. I knocked together a little cart for a new drill press using leftover wood from the workbench project. I was also able to build in some extra storage, which is always welcome in the workshop. My other big …

I don’t remember how I came across it, but this is one of the most exciting papers I’ve read recently. The authors train a neural network that tries to identify the next in a sequence of MNIST samples, presented in digit order. The interesting part is that when they include a proxy for energy usage in the loss function (i.e. train it to be more energy-efficient), the resulting network seems …

Why do so many guitar players resist learning the notes on the fretboard? This is my most complex set of animations so far, built in service of the simplest topic I’ve covered to date: how to learn the notes of the fretboard efficiently, and working on recall speed as a key enabler for improvisation.

Come for the tacos; stay for the birria One of the great things about tacos is that there’s nowhere to hide. When using a small maize tortilla, there’s very little room to hide slapdash sauces and miserable-quality protein. If you attempt to do so in anglocapitalist fashion by overloading with guacamole, refried beans and other frippery as if it were some of kind of burrito, then such a house of …

With a new year on the horizon, we pause to take stock of all the wonder in world, including some of our favorite classic episodes from the Atlas Obscura podcast. Join us as we reacquaint ourselves with bestselling author Mary Roach, whose take on science is both funny and fascinating, and meet Amir Siraj, a young astrophysicist who may have made the discovery of a lifetime. We'll also learn about …

Cash Cow Money Machine Woman Bonus Tenants If You Choose Sit back and Watch Hands Off Investment Cheeky Win Shoe Boxes, Pocket Sized Profit

‘It’s coming on Christmas, they’re cutting down trees.’ Do you know that Joni Mitchell song? ‘I wish I had a river I could skate away on?’ It’s such a sad song, and not really about Christmas at all, but I was thinking about it tonight as I was decorating my Christmas tree and unwrapping funky ornaments made of Popsicle sticks, and missing my mother so much I almost couldn’t breathe… …

Seventeen years ago my copy of Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land was delayed in the post and arrived long after the novel had been reviewed in all the big newspapers so, instead of riding the wave of publication, I was dragged under by its backwash. I had to answer a question not one of the reviews asked: Why is Frank Bascombe writing this?However, one question my readers might …

I remembered the National Transit Database a bit earlier this year, so here are the top hitters for 2022, and we can see the ridership recovery already. The four companies earning a profit from 2021 (Bay State, Trans-Bridge, Hampton Jitney and Hyannis Harbor) are joined by New York Waterway and the Chattanooga incline. Broadway Bus dropped from breaking even to earning just 23 cents on the dollar, and Peter Pan …

I have spent many thousands of hours trail running. In those thousands of hours, I have fallen victim to my own stupidity on more than one occasion. This post will detail some of my personal (uncoventional) tips for trail runners. Don’t expect tips for enhancing your running performance or form. These are focused more on avoiding embarrasment and unfortunate situations on the trail. Avoid caffeine mishaps Have you had caffeine …

When I started blogging again in 2020, I was using my work computer as my home computer was non-operational. Recently work appropriately increased security on the computers (which I fully endorse) so that I can no longer upload photos from that computer onto my blog. I received a Mac air iPad which is replacing the one I had been using since 2012 which really couldn’t do much. As such, I …

On the 1,729th workout without a rest day I completed a personal record squat set of 185 pounds for 76 reps. This post describes the process I employed to achieve that set and many others along the way. I hope you find this post helpful so that you too can achieve rep max personal records in any lift of your choosing. Watch it now if you haven't seen it. One …

There have been recent controversies and scandals in higher education in the United States. Many contributors and readers of this blog have (Irish) university connections. Is there a discussion needed about the relevance, or not, to Ireland of these issues, which concern the question of free speech, variously interpreted? Probably so, since free speech does not defend itself, our history is hardly one of free speech, and our new (so-called) …

Back in May, Eugen announced that I’d joined the team at Mastodon gGmbH, to look after Developer Relations. I was helping out in different ways, and getting to know the community across different Fediverse projects, since the start of the year; it was great to be able to spend a small portion of my freelance time working on something that I personally believe in, that I’m excited about, and where …