Recently updated blogs

Baldur Bjarnason shared an article in a recent edition of his newsletter about AI in education. As a parent of an 8-year-old, this is something that’s been on my mind a lot recently. Like most other parents I’ve encountered, I find the idea that teachers can be “replaced” by AI so preposterous that I’d imagine no one who’s ever had a child, met a child, or even been a child …

Submitted by Bushland Maps, who say: Ferries are a bit of a forgotten mode of transport in Melbourne. With no integration into the fare system or journey planners, and with overarching public transport body PTV only “overseeing” three of the routes (which doesn’t have any practical effect on the service), they are mostly either seen as a tourist attraction (which fairly some are) or not seen at all. Since there …

To a visitor from lands afar (me) who sees this part of the world in little two-week periods twice a year, Jeune & Jolie feels like it did all the work of establishing itself as one of the best restaurants in California in a metaphorical blink of an eye, a few short months between opening, winning its Michelin star and becoming the last word in sophisticated Cali-French dining. Of course, …

It’s been a while since the last update, summer, holidays, birthdays, etc have all taken precedent over the last few months but there been progress! We’ve laid a lot of sleepers! I did make full use of child labour too! Abbie’s made a decent job of the sleepers she’s laid, probably between a third and a half of this board. My wife Kerry was helping me thread chairs as some …

Top stuff from English jazzman John Surman. View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize A lovely album with a mix of avant-garde/free/spiritual/post bop. A majority is on the free side though. It’s bombastic and chaotic at times and slower paced and more melodic in parts. There are plenty of different interesting passages throughout. It keeps …

The Arabian Heritage Collection by Areej Le Doré is a deliberately minimalist collection, focused on the three materials that are not only critical to Arabian or mukhallat style perfumery but happen to be the recurring motifs of each Areej Le Doré collection – ambergris (Al Ambar), oud (Al Oud) and sandalwood (Al Sandal). As always, when I smell an Areej Le Doré collection, I try to evaluate what I am …

The crew of the USS Cerritos are faced with a classic diplomatic mission in “Of Gods and Angles” as Captain Freeman and her crew work to bring peace between two races of photonic beings, the Orbs and the Cubes. Seemingly standalone from the multiversal storyline running through this season, this episode is a fun comfort food episode of Lower Decks — there’s some good character work, some funny jokes, and …

Yesterday at QCon, I got to give a talk with my colleague Dan Fike about the Principal Engineer role. You can also watch the video on YouTube. The content itself is largely based on the High-Context Triad of blog posts I wrote in late 2023: Layers of context Navigating ambiguity Useful tradeoffs are multi-dimensional I hope you enjoy the talk! (Unfortunately I don’t have a recording of Dan Fike’s portion, …

Check out As in guillotine... for more. This is my bi-weekly “newsletter” delivered straight to your inbox, with at least one guaranteed typo I’ll catch after hitting send! If email’s not your thing, don’t hesitate to switch to the RSS feed. I encourage you to click through the main links (there’s only five and they’re all interesting!), and if you enjoy something — send me (or them) an email, leave …

After much waiting and a couple of false news alerts, the latest expansion for bike racing game Flamme Rouge is finally really here: Grand Tour is available for purchase. For some unknown reason, this expansion has been multiple years in the making – or rather waiting as there were multiple times where it looked like this was about to come out. But now in 2024, six years after the last …

Join Lindsay Fryer, the founder of Lodestone DC, and me today at 2pm for a special pop-up LinkedIn Live to discuss the implications of the nomination of Linda McMahon to lead the Department of Education. Linda’s a Senate confirmed former SBA administrator, wrestling magnate, state board of education member, political candidate, and current Trump transition co-chair. To the extent that you can use the words “predict” and “Trump” in the …

https://kelake.org/wp-content/uploads/a2f22681-e119-4401-8eca-18e7ed7bb725.Nicole_s_Compass_and_the_Garden_.mp3 I had some credits for AI voice over at a sound effects service, so I thought I would plug-in the first paragraph from the latest story I wrote. I have a thing for British and Australian accents, so I chose a “middle-aged British female” with “slightly exaggerated” production. I think Sheryl is secure in her job, but it won’t be long before it becomes hard to tell the difference. …

After previously implementing support for image value remapping in my image-processing infrastructure, I’ve been looking into generating better gradient colour mapping schemes / palettes than the initial hard-coded HSV ramp I used. The thermal camera I have can bake in one or two pretty nice presets, but as previously discussed, I wanted the freedom and flexibility to “tone-map” them myself afterwards, for more creative freedom. There are a wide range …

Two grown men messing about by water Source

A shock report in the Guardian highlights claims of the immense cost to the British economy of health problems resulting from poor diets. The UK’s growing addiction to unhealthy food costs £268bn a year, far outstripping the budget for the whole NHS, the first research into the subject has found. The increased consumption of foods high in fat, salt and sugar or which have been highly processed is having a …