Recently updated blogs

There’s a delicate, industrious ticking at my left-hand side. A tiny golden hand advancing second by second around the upturned face of a watch from 1969. My grandfather’s watch. A watch I didn’t know existed before this month, belonging to a man I’d never met, whose personal effects I just traveled 5300 miles to retrieve after 30 years in storage. I’ve always been a sucker for tiny, functional items; things …

Unfortunately, it seems that today’s big LLMs are more like physicists than philosophers. Rather than more knowledge improving their awareness of their own ignorance, it only makes them more cocksure about knowing everything.

In the early years of my descent into the proverbial rabbit hole, Le Labo‘s City Exclusives collection was available in September. I didn’t follow it closely, so I’m not sure when it changed, but this year I noticed that the collection opened for online orders on August 1st. I wonder if it’s the beginning of […]

In this video, I make 8-bit SID music on a Commodore 64 without any software apart from the built-in BASIC interpreter. This involves poking numbers into memory and hardware registers and writing machine code in decimal.

The previous post showed making (warp knit!) lanyard cords with a crochet hook, suitable as drawstrings for hoodies and the like. In this post, we'll look at starting and ending these cords. There are lots of choices!From easiest to most complex, lots of choicesOf these endings, some are simple knots, some involve crochet, some are a form of macramé. But these are by no means the only

I really appreciated Cory LaViska’s take on #WebComponents here. Especially this bit:You know what framework I want to use? I want a framework that aligns with the platform, not one that replaces it. I want a framework that values incremental innovation over user lock-in. I want a framework that says it’s OK to break things if it means making the Web a better place for everyone. Yes, that comes at …

November 28, 1520 – March 6, 1521 After consulting with the pilot João Lopes Carvalho, Magellan decided on a straightforward plan for reaching the Spice Islands at long last. The fleet would sail north along the western coast of South America for about 1600 miles (2600 kilometers), until it reached a latitude of 32 degrees south. Then it would finally bid farewell to the continent around whose edges it had …

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It finally seems to be happening. The old hotel I worked at is getting torn down. It seems weird to see it go. I wouldn’t have had this website without that hotel. Here is a link to the Beloit Daily News article about the place getting torn down.

A path at Parc Angrignon, Montreal. Watercolor, 6" x 9". Attention -- our loss of it, our lack of it -- seems to be on many people's minds these days. From Ezra Klein to close friends of my own, it seems that more of us are acknowledging that sustaining the quality of awareness and focus we call attention has become a significant problem, not just for young people who've grown …

I’m happy to announce that I’ll be playing bass as part of the Pittsburgh Plays concert series on December 14th at The Roxian Theatre. From Pittsburgh Play’s website: Pittsburgh Plays is a semi-annual event that offers music lovers of all kinds the chance to experience the talents of local artists through the coveted music of legendary performers who have influenced generations. The mission of Pittsburgh Plays is to build community …

I’m trying to write a little bit about some of the materials, techniques and equipment that I use for my printing. These will be my personal opinions about what works for me and how well. Anything I say about cost, value and quality is from my personal experience and I’m well aware that the way we all work and our preferences and values are very individual. Out of all of …

Vincent Simonetti collected his first historic tuba - a ~1910 Cerveny BB-flat Helicon - in Boston in 1965, while playing tuba on tour with the Moyseev Ballet Company. Today the collection has grown to more than 350 tubas, and is now the largest private collection in the world that is dedicated exclusively to members of the tuba family. The collection entirely fills five rooms of a bright yellow house in …

Thought experiment: What’s the ugliest game book you’d still pick off a shelf if you came across it again for the first time? Indie snobs will of course claim it’s a whole long list, but the reality is that we really do judge a book by its cover. That’s why they have covers. Fair warning: it’s not a great movie! But I did appreciate the (ham-handed) message. Last week I …

Discussing climate change alongside The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu 2017-) is unorthodox but offers an alternative and marginalised perspective. Typically, when thinking of climate change, David Attenborough, Britain’s national treasure, comes to mind. But while attending the 2024 online CST Conference: Sustainability and Television, which ran from 24th June to the 4th of July, that all changed. Source