Recently updated blogs

Recently I gave my first-ever in-person conference presentation! I was invited to RustConf 2024 where I talked about why we're building KCL (KittyCAD language), a programming language for 3D design, at Zoo.dev. The talk has three parts: background about computer-aided design (CAD) software and mechanical engineering, then why we built a programming language, then what I learned from the process and the gaps in existing compilers 101 education. At some …

A year gone, another year about to happen

Kate and I visited Mexico City for the first time in 2015. We were here for the holidays and to visit family, but one of the things I remember from that trip was standing in the middle of Paseo de la Reforma on New Year’s Eve during some kind of race, photographing the runners. I had no idea what race that was and didn’t particularly care—I just thought it was …

At the moment of writing this, I process the chapter “reward” from the book “Good Habits, Bad Habits” by Wendy Wood. The steps are: Review the chapter and my highlights. I have read it already and added highlights. Decide what I can build from this chapter. I start a short-term project to build a structure note on “reward”. Create a shortcut for my structure notes on “reward” and “incentive structure …

This year I set a goal to journal every day in the hope I can write one of these 2024 year-in-review notes for my site. I didn't get to it every single day but I did it enough that I can look back and remember the year that was! There was a lot that happened this year so I've tried to pull out some threads/themes that particularly stood out or …

The electronic version of the latest issue of the Girls’ Angle Bulletin is now available on our website. For this issue, we have a very special interview with Erica Klarreich. Erica earned her doctoral degree in mathematics from the State University of New York, Stony Brook, then later shifted into math journalism where she has written on dozens of diverse mathematical topics with her characteristic combination of clarity and precision. …

Hello You. A very hasty round-up written in the dying moments of 2024. Truth be told a LOT has ben going on and I should probably be having a stab at something a bit more substantial, but I’m having to type this squeezed onto a desk that barely has room to contain my laptop, one of Mum’s potplants, a boombox playing Indonesian Noise Music and the oversize keyboard I’ve had …

How in the absolute fuck can this be the tenth installment of the annual Tucker Awards recognizing excellence in swearing? Somehow, it’s true: feast your eyes on the nine previous installments from ’15, ’16, ’17, ’18, ’19, ’20, ’21, ’22, and ’23 if you don’t believe me. The year 2024 has once again provided us with a bumper crop of sweary excellence, and it’s another opportunity to keep alive the …

‘Anything that can be built can be taken down’: The largest dam removal in US history is complete – what happens next?Preliminary planning started back in 2011, and in 2020, the reservoir action management plan, a detailed 260-page document was published by the Klamath River Renewal Corporation – the non-profit entity formed to manage the entire dam removal project. “The document gave us our targets, and has kept us on …

Happy New Movie Year! Once again I made a letterboxd list of all the must-see movies released during the year. I’ve watched about 60 percent of these, which is good, for me. We went to the movie theater fewer times than any year in history, for reasons not worth mentioning, so I especially need to catch up with late-year releases like Anora and Queer and Juror #2 – but I …

Well that`s it them , 2024 done and dusted . A year to be remembered only for its miserable surface hatches and for having too much water at first and then not enough . for a lack of a summer and a lack of notable fish .For sure I have hooked several notable fish this season sadly they all did not quite make it to the net . There was …

La Rhapsodie Noir Parfums Dusita is a brand that does its best work in the herbal-aromatic vein (see: Issara, Erawan, Le Pavillon d’Or) because the perfumer, Pissara Umavijani, brings a Thai sensibility full of exotic herbs, woods, and spices to bear on traditional Western tropes, such as the fougère or the ‘oriental’ (ironically, a model created by the Western gaze upon anything east of Istanbul). And it is this touch …

I wrote this time last year that I hoped 2024 was a better year for the games industry - this has turned out not to be the case. In a fun inversion of my 2022 list, 2024 was the year I formally rejoined the games industry. I’m working in codevelopment, which is rather more sheltered from the storms that have wracked the wider industry, but I’ve seen so many friends …

So when last we saw our heroes they had rolled on the Carousing Table and all had gone sideways.I actually made a diagram to keep it all straightSo this time, I set things up to deal with the consequences:Olaf, halfling cleric of the Black Grip shows up with a skeleton arm, a replacement for an arm he got torn off a few sessions ago, he is hanging with, Bleezy aka …

One of the many delights of exploring northwestern Montana is its abundance of fossilized ripples and mudcracks. There’s a huge amount of stone here from the Belt Supergroup, 1.4+ billion years old, endless parallel slabs of it tilted up into thin ribs, thick ledges, entire angular mountainsides. That’s much older than plant life, and those ancient landscapes must have been a surreal domain of almost pure geology, uplift and erosion, …