Recently updated blogs

A brand new experience for me: finishing first in a race. Assumed audience: People interested in endurance running (or endurance sports more generally), or who just like to hear what I am up to as a runner. Here is a story you ve heard from me recently: Today, I ran a race! Specifically, the half marathon event at the Longview Marathon and Half Marathon. Here is another story you have …

Voting is now open for BC’s election, which concludes in one week on Sat Oct 19. I’ve done voting guides for Vancouver and Canada in the past, but I’ve never done a BC one since the decision here has traditionally been simple. There has long been two viable parties: one on the left, and one on the right. This continues, with no centrist party on the ticket and the Green …

A tanuki statue welcomes travelers to Temple 40. On entering Ehime prefecture, an ohenro is used to the journey. She is able to see things as they are, which reflects the entry to enlightenment. The fantastic, romanticized delusion of … 🐞 Read more about it ➞ ➞ ➞

Today’s post is something quite different to the norm – instead of sharing painted models, I’m sharing some Character Cards for Zombicide 2nd Edition importing the survivors from Flying Frog’s Last Night On Earth. Some time ago, I found Zombicide character sheets for the LNOE core box characters and Marouda and I have been using those for a year or so, but I’ve personally just never been completely satisfied with …

One day with Ableton Move and I’m hooked. It’s way more capable, versatile and intuitive than it looks and suits my workflow (sofa, studio or outdoors) perfectly. I think carefully before buying new gear, and I researched Move’s scope for two days (I think YouToobers are revealing its abilities better than Ableton’s own material does). I made a long list of I/O and setup scenarios to test and so far, …

I just came across this video on the DECtalk, an early and famous speech-to-text synthesizer. (It was used by Stephen Hawking, among many other things.) And then I wondered if I could use it on my modern, decidedly-not-Windows-NT computer. And the answer is: yes! Huzzah! I found two versions of the DECtalk software. The first one appears to be a bit more modern. Here’s where you can find it, at …

wow the passage of time!! it really is passing!! i have beeminder watching my RSS feed so i usually remember on friday that i haven't been posting. however since i've posted two more alphabet superset posts i have messed up my rhythm. I guess i could crank it up so it's expecting two posts a week but that feels ludicrous for some reason? I might do (and change the goal …

This week in Modern Plain Text Computing we put together some of the things we’ve been learning about cleaning and tidying data. Here’s a somewhat sobering example using data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, which is how the NTSA tracks information about road accidents in the United States. Our data file shows counts of pedestrians aged <16 killed in road accidents on each day of the month in the …

The point of a blog is to catalog writing. I've switched platforms a couple of times and I decided it was time to get archives front and center again. With this small update, there's now a link to posts by year on the right (you might need to do a refresh to get the addition). This is an easy way to jump from one spot to another and will help …

It’s super late at night on Thanksgiving weekend in Canada. I shouldn’t be thinking about weird internet drama, but here we are. Since I last wrote about the ongoing WordPress situation: Matt Mullenweg promoted a “fork” of WordPress that wasn’t actually a fork. He then hijacked one of the most prominent plugins in the WordPress development world. The first point is pretty minor, but highlights the depths of strangeness at …

The comet has returned! Will it live up to expectations?

The video game market is far wider than it has ever been. If someone were to ask what the target market was for video games in the 1990s, most people would respond, “Elementary and teenage boys,” and the games being made reflected that. Now, however, the market has become so broad that it essentially includes everybody, and the games being made today reflect that as well. You can see it …

Recently I came upon these action figures at the Dollar Tree. They stand around 4.5 inches and are well detailed.

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In 2016, I had returned to America after several years outside the country. I did an amazing job of avoiding most, but not all the election season. I didn’t see any meaningful difference between either candidate. Hillary Clinton was evil and corrupt1, and her name is associated with a “two to the back of the head” suicide2. I joked with a friend that I hoped Trump won, just so that …