FontExplorer X is retiring. It doesn’t mean users (like me!) need to stop using it this instant or anything. Your software will continue to work as usual, but please be aware it will no longer be updated or supported after June 30th, 2023 That’s a year away still, but I wouldn’t … | Continue reading
This is a nicely done look at “the post jQuery era”. That’s Tyler McGinnis, right? You know how I was just remembering that time I was I did a music video? That was March 29th, 2022 when I posted that. This video was posted on January 21st, 2022, two months prior, and yet at 21 [ … | Continue reading
Ooooo new super cool-looking cards for the Delta American Express cards. I like those big bold separator lines. I’ve been rocking this combo for a long time. I just like watching our miles accumulate, even though we never use them. We obviously don’t fly that much these days, so … | Continue reading
There is no bar for the quality of a blog post. Allow me to be an example. See… every blog post on this entire site. I’d like to write better individual blog posts, but something has always compelled me to punt out a thought early rather than wait until I have some perfect way to … | Continue reading
Jim talking about Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: … the form of any communication shapes its content. For example: you can’t use smoke signals to communicate philosophically. In today’s world, we have media forms that are well suited to fragmented conversation. > Cultu … | Continue reading
Steve Yegge had (what he called) his Jerry Maguire moment when he published his “Google Platforms Rant”. It was originally published on Google Plus, which is long dead, and ironically what Steve was ranting about without specifically naming it. I’ll have to link to it via what I … | Continue reading
What an ambitious project! It would surprise me if Andrew Hickey didn’t get a TV deal out of this work… unless maybe he just doesn’t want one because this is cool and successful enough on its own? I took Seth Godin’s advice and started with a song I know and love. It’s a 2-hour m … | Continue reading
This was a pretty good call-out on Twitter for changing out Embedded Tweets work from Kevin Marks. Twitter has always provided semantic HTML for Embedded Tweets, in the form of a , then a to enhance it up into a fancy embed. It exhibited an interesting (and good) behavior: if th … | Continue reading
I love the fiddle. I bought one this year to see if I could battle my way up to having it be a fun side instrument (I have failed, so far). In the old-time music I normally play, fiddles are darn near required. It’s essentially fiddle music with accompaniment. You could argue the … | Continue reading
First I missed this incredible creation: Then I missed this damn masterpiece: What do I gotta do around here for a Mcdonald’s Lager or a Chipotle Mesquite Tequila? Oh well, at least I have a Gweneth Paltrow vagina candle, which is basically my retirement plan. | Continue reading
Interesting observation about software and features: Every few months in the early 2000s, a startup would appear, promising a new office software package that’s “just the 10% of Microsoft Office that people actually use.” All of these products failed (for various reasons), but th … | Continue reading
My kid Ruby (4) isn’t exactly a musician. She can’t really play an instrument. So when she wants to make music, sometimes she’ll hit a turned-over pot with a wooden spoon and shout words. But I suppose that kind of makes her… a musician? Who’s to say? What makes a web designer? I … | Continue reading
I enjoyed seeing the WWDC video of the upcoming expansion of San Francisco, Apple’s everywhere typeface. It’s coming in some different widths now: They all have the same height, which is a neat feature: So with all that plus the rounded, plus the mono, plus sprinkling in the seri … | Continue reading
I think it’s pretty notable Safari is doing Web Push this across all the platforms. That’s one of the big reasons a company might go for a native app instead of a web app, despite the heap of advantages of a web app. Like… URLs, to name a little one. I remember when Maximiliano F … | Continue reading
From this spot in this show: The more actively used the CMS, the more likely it has a blank template. See, the line goes up. Eventually, every hard-working CMS needs a “blank” template. Until! It’s either so big that it starts purging anything too special or stevebob invents an i … | Continue reading
I used Noom years ago as attempt #23098 at losing weight. Didn’t click for me. I really despise having little tasks that I gotta do, like log food. I know food logs are super effective. It’s even worked for me a few times in the past, but I still hate it. There were 2-3 other […] | Continue reading
These fellas have a good thing going. Simon Anthony and Mark Goodliffe essentially solve puzzles, mostly Sudoku, for our entertainment. The YouTube Channel has nearly half a million views, but the videos routinely go a bit viral as you can see from their videos somewhat regularly … | Continue reading
I love that my local gas station has one of those Bitcoin vending machine things. You put money in and it puts Bitcoin in your “wallet” (you scan a QR code to the wallet), and, of course, slurps up a fee to do it. I love it because this gas station, like most gas stations, […] | Continue reading
Situation: Cut git branch While I’m on this branch, I need to change a few lines in config-blah-blah.yaml for a very particular reason. Say, a change in database credentials to connect to a database specific to testing the changes on this branch. Changes to that config file are v … | Continue reading
Greek Restaurants Italian Restaurants Really any kinda European restaurant Really anything European at all really Weddings Funerals Really any kind of life event thing with printed accompaniment Really anything that people print at all really C Movie Titles B Movie Titles A Movie … | Continue reading
Remember when IMDb would do stuff like this? Part of me thinks that was pretty cool, actually. It’s a movie website and the ad was for a new movie. It was just an image, not 2 MB of JavaScript trying to learn every fact about you it can. It didn’t get in the way of […] | Continue reading
Say you have some data and it’s either an int or a string (of an int). Well, that sucks. Go is a typed language and this bit of data really should be properly an int. But, ya know, the world is a mess sometimes. Perhaps you have a giant database of JSON data put in […] | Continue reading
Adam Gordon Bell describes a situation in which a programming team has a tricky problem to solve. They ultimately solve it, but it attracts internal attention and a senior technical lead is sent in to ensure it doesn’t happen again. They propose a fix of creating a shared system … | Continue reading
It’s so weird to know people that are looking for jobs for ages, never finding a good fit. And also know people that are trying to hire and just cannot seem to find anyone good for the role. That’s why anecdotal data is no good. These are just stories, not a real picture of what … | Continue reading
Picked up one of these babies. I’m gonna keep it in my car. If some kid messes with Ruby at a playground I’m gonna slip it in their backpack. | Continue reading
Self confidence comes from keeping promises to yourself. It’s your reputation with yourself. If you have a good reputation with yourself, you won’t be so concerned about what other people think. Becky Nickerson | Continue reading
In the world of country/bluegrass, there was a time when Bill Monroe’s music was new and radical: Slowly, it started to sound typical. Some of the big “original” names of bluegrass were born out of players coming and going from Bill’s “Blue Grass Boys” band: Flatt & Scruggs, Jim … | Continue reading
Just a few days shy of the five-year anniversary of this absolutely golden blog post. Having a lot of work on my plate is fine. Meeting deadlines is fine. Planning long term projects is fine. Debugging code is fine. Writing detailed feedback is fine. Pairing with someone to teach … | Continue reading
Very well done documentary on Michael Cleveland, the virtuosic fiddle player (against all odds): Some bits I liked: The bit about how it’s a tiring cliche to ask a fiddle player to play a song like The Devil Went Down to Georgia or Orange Blossom Special, but instead of being a s … | Continue reading
Do you want your personal trainer to be absolutely ripped and who has been super fit their whole life? Or do you want them to be someone has fitness knowledge through struggle with their own health? Do you want to read a book about parenting from someone who appears to have their … | Continue reading
On iPhones, there is a setting called Silence Unknown Callers. That’s in Settings > Phone. It’s an important setting for me, as I get at least a couple spam phone calls a day and without this setting it makes me want to throw my phone into the ocean. Sometimes, though, you’re wai … | Continue reading
There are plenty of ways to make money in the metaverse — custom avatars, cool maps, unique digital experiences, ad-supported livestreamed playthrough videos — but the folks trying to convince you to buy a digital mansion or a virtual yacht aren’t going to be part of that new eco … | Continue reading
The first nice mandolin I bought was a Weber. I lived in Wisconsin at the time and bought it from Spruce Tree literally on layaway. If you kids don’t know what that is, it’s where you bring in a company some money toward the purchase of a thing whenever you want to, they take it, … | Continue reading
I open Facebook on my phone once in a blue moon to see if any old friends are up to anything interesting. Sometimes I end up watching mindless random videos or in their shopping section, Facebook Marketplace, probably because it sometimes puts red “unseen” dots on them sometimes … | Continue reading
I like using the Notion Web Clipper. As I’m readin’ my feeds, I’ll often save articles with it so they go into my special Notion database for articles I want to spend more time with later. While it’s my preferred way of saving articles, there are some things I don’t like about it … | Continue reading
I saw a tweet about this (I think?!) but can’t find it now, sorry person-I-should-be-crediting. I remember it while out in the wild the other day. I know I love this bush that grows here in the high desert because if you rub your fingers on the leaves, the smell is like a deep ru … | Continue reading
I think there is more talk about the how of monorepos than the why or the what. Once you know that you’re going to go (or convert to) the monorepo format, there are all sorts of interesting technical challenges like sharing packages (or not), shared config, and whatnot. But why d … | Continue reading
So goes the question in zeitgeist. A lot to unpack, as they say. I was thinking about this after staring at a slide Virgie Tovar posted to Instagram that reframes instead of directly answering: View this post on Instagram Here are a few from that slide. Better questions: Q: Why d … | Continue reading
The local community college had a STEM night the other night. A friend of mine who is a librarian there and a wonderful fiddler asked me and a few other local musicians if we’d play in front of the gardens for the kids passing through. Someone snagged a tiny bit of one of the son … | Continue reading
Embarrassingly, aside from voting, I haven’t been particularly politically active since college. But since the literal president is like boy golly gee somebody should do something (😳), instead of doing even the bare minimum, I can at least make sure everyone else whose jo … | Continue reading
I don’t think there is any computer science concept that distinguishes the terms scripts, templates, and programs in any real sense. Go code is Go code. Something runs the code, it runs. Maybe it exits in 0.01 seconds, maybe it exists in 15 hours after calculating some astrophysi … | Continue reading
Some Irish lads bust out the instruments at the airport to lift spirits. Fun! There is something special about traditional folk music. There is some real by-the-people-for-the-people energy to it that people respond to. They smile. They tap their feet. They like it, even (especia … | Continue reading
Daniel Howell is (was?) a Youtuber who peaced out of YouTube a couple of years ago with a brief return coming out video only to peace out again. Now has posted an explanation video Why I Quit YouTube that is a pretty interesting watch. Here’s a bit I like that I think will resona … | Continue reading
On the drive home, some cows on a plain: | Continue reading
It can be hard to summon the correct word for the characters below such that everyone understands which characters you mean when you are speaking. { } Curly Brackets [ ] Square Brackets ( ) Round Brackets Angle Brackets Consider this an homage to this wonderfully HTML4 page that … | Continue reading
Mary Kate McCoy for Wisconsin Public Radio: It’s the holidays and to quiet your pre-dinner hunger, someone hands you a slice of rye bread topped with a thick spread of fresh raw beef, chopped onion and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Cannibal sandwiches are a longtime Milwaukee tr … | Continue reading
The syntax is kinda fun to learn. There is satisfaction involved in learning how a different language does things and comparing it to the others you already know. It makes me wonder how much of programming is a strong understanding of the syntax and built-in methods and such. 25% … | Continue reading
“The best writing is rewriting” E.B. White I suppose, E.B. White, unless nobody ever reads it. So you gotta toss in a little: “I skate where the puck is going to be” Wayne Gretsky And you get: | Continue reading