Recently updated blogs

Back by popular demand, here are some AI-generated drawing prompts to use in this, the spooky month of October!Longtime AI Weirdness readers may recognize some of these. That's because this is a throwback list, all the way back to the times of very tiny language models. These models had not feasted on huge chunks of the internet, but had sipped delicately on hand-curated artisanal datasets. They trained rather slowly on …

I often think about writing a feature like writing a story. If I do my job well, it is coherent and easy to read, write, and maintain. When there's a lot of indirection, it feels like a book with its pages out-of-order. There seems to be a lot of similarities as well. We have readers, it just so happens that our readers are machines -- as well as our colleagues. …

Disclaimer: This post expresses my opinions, which do not necessarily reflect consensus by the whole Web Components community. A blog post by Ryan Carniato titled “Web Components Are Not the Future” has recently stirred a lot of controversy. A few other JS framework authors pitched in, expressing frustration and disillusionment around Web Components. Some Web Components folks wrote rebuttals, while others repeatedly tried to get to the bottom of the …

There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you’ve made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you’ve made a discovery.—Enrico FermiReply via email or Mastodon.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, the regional transportation planning body, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), has launched a major effort to improve the coordination between the region’s 27 transit agencies. One element of this, just unveiled, is a regional standard for transit network maps. The goal is to have all of the region’s maps evolve toward the same style, so that it’s easier to explore the entire region’s network. …

If you were listening to the radio in the 90s, or got a certain flavour of email forward, there's a good chance you've heard the song Jingle Cats. The original novelty single from 1993 is exactly what it sounds like—pitch-bent cat meows set to music to create the illusion cats are "singing" Jingle Bells. It was an absolutely huge hit and, between 1993 and 2009, led to the release of …

A rare example of a crazy wall in the real world or, at least, as the background for a press photo.(Thanks Šmingvin.)

[There is a shortage of skilled tech workers in Japan](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2024/02/06/tech/japan-tech-firms-labor-shortage/), and a growing number of Japanese companies have responded by building new, multinational development teams. An in-house multinational team, which typically uses English as a first language, can allow a Japanese company to take better advantage of the global talent market. But what's it like for the international developers working on those teams? Are there communication issues with management? Is …

The end of Summer is so close. We have a few days forcasted to be popping back into 30°c this week, but overall we’ve dropped down to the point where we can go outside without regret. We escaped out to Karuizawa to visit some friends. Karuizawa is a bit of a resort town. About an hour north of Tokyo. It’s an absolutely beautiful area filled with trees and views. And …

I like Charlie Stross in general, I really enjoyed Accelerando, and many people talked positively about The Laundry Files, so I decided to give it a go. I like the universe, where unspeakable horrors exist and governments have secret departments in charge of keeping the world safe. I like this premise already. But it’s a well trodden trope, and what differentiates this from, say, Hellboy, or Man in Black§ is …

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.

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 …

Many things have been said about the Andromeda Galaxy, arguably the most majestic galaxy that amateur astronomers can image due to it's sheer size in the sky—many times larger than the Moon appears to us, but also many times dimmer.With the naked eye, even in dark skies it appears but a tiny little fuzzy patch. But once you start collecting those photons photographically with long exposures it comes to life.Total …