Recently updated blogs

A couple of years ago I worked on a strategic project that was outside my remit. It was an incredible learning experience for me and here is some of what I learned. The problem I wanted to solve The problem for my team was that our tech estate was in contention. I was leading one of a number of engineering groups within a larger organisation; each group had its own …

Silence may indeed be “golden” except when one is trying to maintain some regularity in writing a blog. My silence this past Fall and into the end of the year was not intentional. I actually got as far as starting a new post in November on a “Blouse for Fall” only to have its completion thwarted by more pressing priorities. Such is life, as all of us know. So now, …

Following last year, I created a CSS wishlist for 2024.Before I get into the details, I have to say that creating a wishlist almost feels wrong because there are more features in CSS today than I could have ever wished for. So, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who contributed to CSS being where it is today: spec writers, invited experts, browser developers, everyone involved in Interop …

Thank you Patreon Supporters! Thank you to my Patreon supporters who help make these studies happen. Patreon funds were used for purchasing two ultimately useless knives, and some steel. Patreon supporter Marcus Ho even sent me some steel all the way from China which also ended up not working out. And I used Patreon funds to pay Shawn Houston (also a Patreon supporter) to do microscopy and grind two CATRA …

A quick introduction to adjusting the panning of overdubs in Loopy Pro clips, including a link to a miRACK configuration and instructions on how to use it in your own Loopy Pro configurationsIt’s common practice in music production that, when you’re layering your vocals with harmonies or doubles, you pan everything but the lead vocal around the stereo field. That gives a sense of physical separation between the voices and …

Happy New Year 2024 to everyone! It is kind of strange for me to decide to get an Atari 2600+ system, and yet here we are in 2024! The reason I say this is because I was never really into Atari back in the day, with the exception of the Atari Lynx and the Atari Portfolio! The Atari Portfolio is the only Atari system I still have today, with the …

After a soldier enlists in the Israeli army, there are two words to describe him (or her, although I'm providing the male forms of the words): טִירוֹן tiron - "new recruit" and טוּרַאי turai - "private" (his initial rank). While the two words apply to a similar time in the military, and look somewhat similar, they are actually not related etymologically.Tiron entered Hebrew in the rabbinic period, borrowed from the …

The barball strategy, popularized by Nassim Taleb, is a way to navigate risk/reward tradeoffs when you’re skeptical about the accuracy the risk estimates. While it originated in financial investing, it can apply to product and business strategy. Imagine a menu of investments ranging from low-risk & low-reward to high-risk & high reward. The barbell strategy picks mostly conservative low risk investments to cap losses, and a few high risk bets …

A common mistake I see in web components is this: class MyComponent extends HTMLElement { constructor() { super() setupLogic() } disconnectedCallback() { teardownLogic() } } This setupLogic() can be just about anything – subscribing to a store, setting up event listeners, etc. The teardownLogic() is designed to undo those things – unsubscribe from a store, remove event listeners, etc. The problem is that constructor is called once, when the component …

Standing stones and a medieval tower house in sparkling January sunshine

To escape the neutral, I had long since forsaken the being for the persona, for the human mask. When I humanized myself, I’d freed myself from the desert. I’d freed myself from the desert, yes, but had also lost it! and also lost the forests, and lost the air, and lost the embryo inside me. The mask—humanisation—that we put on to help us elude the harshness of reality. A personal …

2023 has come and gone. Compared to the several preceding, it was a year pleasantly free of drama for me. I photographed opportunistically close to home for much of it, with three more substantial outings. I was very happy to have a great if short photo backpack in the big scenery of the Salmon River canyon, a longstanding wish fulfilled. Making the acquaintance of the true North Cascades was great …

I’ve been thinking alot about civic participation in machine learning systems development. In particular, involving non-experts in the potentially value-laden translation work from specifications that engineers do when they build their models. Below is a summary of a selection of literature I found on the topic, which may serve as a jumping-off point for future research. Abstract The literature on participatory artificial intelligence (AI) reveals a complex landscape marked by …

Thursday, January 11, 2024 a concise theory of notes about notes Previously: notes on notes 2020: meta meta 2020: the zettelkasten / the zeitgeist I came across an argument about what exactly makes something a zettelkasten, and then thought: “Zettelkasten” is a pretty great example of how one of the best ways to fuck up a neat idea is to have a bunch of people get really excited about it. …

This nebula is very, very dim and therefore it's not very popular with astrophotographers as it takes a long time to get a decent image. All in all this image took me over 50h of total exposure time over multiple weeks.The nebula itself is quite similar to many other nebulas with a center that glows from oxygen and sulphur emissions embedded in a larger area of hydrogen gas. There's also …