Recently updated blogs

Could not put the damn book down! Very easy book to read, and annoyingly difficult to stop reading late at night. The story is told from Evelyn's perspective, a brilliant scientist working in the field of human cloning. There's a lot that goes on in the book, both from the story moving forward and driven by plot twists but also from Evelyn's own inner monologue. The clone aspect of the …

New Year, New Projects!I am taking this spring term off from teaching, partly to re-energize my batteries which have been rather low on account that I've been going full speed (🚌) since 2018; the pandemic didn't help because teaching increased around that time (not that I am complaining, the cosmos provided something I needed at the time). Another reason for the break is partly to work on a new course …

While waiting for a hot chocolate the sun was out blasting us with warmth on a chilly day. Nice break from the snow flurries. Note tags: halifax, BlackAndWhite, iphone, waiting, winter

In early 2014, I joined as an engineering manager for Uber’s Infrastructure team. We were responsible for a wide number of things, including provisioning new services. While the overall team I led grew significantly over time, the subset working on service provisioning never grew beyond four engineers. Those four engineers successfully migrated 1,000+ services onto a new, future-proofed service platform. More importantly, they did it while absorbing the majority, although …

The images coming out of Los Angeles this morning are heartbreaking. From the BBC: We don’t yet have concrete answers as to what started the LA fires, it is too early to tell and first responders are still focused on evacuating and tackling the blazes. But, officials have pointed to high winds and drought in the area, which has made vegetation very dry and easy to burn. An important factor …

A new report in The Atlantic focuses on the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) in contemporary Christianity and its growing influence in the political culture of the United States. Stephanie McCrummen writes: “A shift is under way, one that scholars have been tracking for years and that has become startlingly visible with the rise of Trumpism. At this point, tens of millions of believers—about 40 percent of American Christians, including Catholics, …

Stepping back into the conjurings of an imaginary soundtrack… Back in 2021 I started to post a series of “Songs for A Year In The Country”, which in some way was a form of Desert Island Discs… the selection included some of the songs during my AYITC explorations that I have variously found myself repeatedly returning to, ones that I’d “save from the waves” or bundle up to take into …

How can I feel I have arrived home in something that is in many ways so ­foreign to me? And yet beneath the surface it is not foreign at all, but a reversion to the sacred order of things. I sit in a monastery chapel before dawn. There is snow on the ground outside. The priest murmurs the liturgy by the light of the lampadas, the dark silhouettes of two …

In this edition: News: Two deaths dubiously linked to Bigfoot hunting Cryptid Media See This – Out There: Crimes of the Paranormal Cryptid Media Skip This – Lost Monster Files Update on naming taboo cryptids AI cryptid carnival Google Earth cryptids Hood cryptids meme Hello and welcome to the 2nd Pop Cryptid Spectator – my chronicle of observing the changing appearance of and attitudes towards “cryptids” in popular culture. My …

The gang marvels at Meike's new home.

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18XX. This has been a year of 18XX games. Things started slowly in the Spring, but then 18 India hit us by a storm. I ended up playing various 18XX titles over 20 times this year; that’s more than a third of my all-time 18XX plays since 2006. Forest Shuffle. I still played a ton of Forest Shuffle on BGA. I’ve played the game over 200 times this year. If …

Lordy. Is all the holiday cheese finally gone? Is 2024 gone? Really? Check the back of the bottom shelf. Me, I finished off the holidays with a Covid needle in my left arm and a flu shot in my right. I’d rather have had the cheese. So perhaps a short post today, given me with the low grade fever and insomnia and all you all getting over eating the Yuletide …

2024 was a transitional year for me. I spent the first half of this year working at Shopify, and in the latter half I went freelance again. Being a freelancer is great in terms of freedom, so I am able to branch out a bit more now. Top Shopify web performance content # Most of my top content was really the posts I wrote on performance.shopify.com. Luckily, the folks still …

I recently kicked off a 99designs contest for a new logo: https://99designs.com/logo-design/contests/logo-brand-ai-engineering-podcast-help-define-industry-1307842/