Jono Alderson takes aim at SPAs thanks to modern CSS, copyparty turns almost any device into a file server, Ernie Smith honors the Game Genie's 35th anniversary, Anthropic shares how their teams use Claude Code, and Drew Lyton tells why he believes the future is NOT self-hosted.

There's something grotesque about the way we expect other people to be convenient for us. We want people to be emotionally available, yet low maintenance — like a houseplant that texts back promptly and never makes things weird. What we’re really after is connection without complication — the sanitised version, the one that doesn't require us to bump into the messy subplot of someone else's emotional arc. I was in line at an organic grocery store in Ubud. A woman was paying at the only register, casually asking the cashier a couple of questions about those impulse items near the counter — stuff designed to seduce you while your card is already in hand. In front of me, a guy in yoga wear exhaled hard, then cut her off with a sharp “Are you buying or not?”. My first instinct was to tap him o…  ( 7 min )

[drawing from 2008] So the "jetgirlart" screen name came about during college... 22 years ago. I got a bachelor's in fine art and used it to get various graphic design jobs here and there between having kids. I kept the screen name for all my social media and games but after college I didn't really keep up with making "art". In college they taught us all the techniques and such to get your work into juried shows or galleries. That's what a fine art degree does vs a graphic design degree. But the problem I instantly ran into was that I wasn't good enough to get into those shows. I didn't have a personal style or theme that set me apart from the other artists. That is a huge deal and you need to figure that out asap when you start wrapping up your fine art degree. I didn't, and fell out of t…  ( 6 min )

There’s been posts in other places I read recently that made me sad. They all had one thing in common: Defeatism about changing anything about tech use. They treated apps as universal, specific companies as a must-have. And sure, I get that perspective; I myself have made the connection between Google and utility services. However, it was all woe is me. “No one is going to stop using these apps anyway.” “I know no one cares about this.” “I know it’s unrealistic to ever switch.” “It’s hopeless.” And I just wanna grab them by the shoulders and shout: “No!!! I’m here! So many people are here and doing just that! See, we’ve done it and we’re willing to share how and what we’re doing instead! We care, just like you! Look around the world. While someone in the US thinks iMessage and Facebook Mes…  ( 5 min )

We should all have a digital space of our own. It should be a place where we own our data, cannot be easily de-platformed, and where we can be ourselves. When you routinely only post on X/Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon, what-have-you, you are at the mercy of that platform. The platform might allow you to export your data, but you need to remember to do so regularly, and if you're caught with your pants down because of a ban, you'll lose your presence. Bans can happen for any reason. It's not just people who are trolls or hateful. I recently tried to create a Bluesky account to see what all the hubbub was. I created my account and didn't do anything else. When I went on the next day to start using it, I discovered I was banned. I don't know why. It won't even let me stay on the screen long enough to click the appeal button. This is my last attempt at using traditional social platforms. I'm going to only use my own from now on. Can you imagine if I had put years and years into Bluesky before this arbitrary ban? That would be soul-crushing. I will continue to only use my own space, so I can be in control.  ( 3 min )

current mood: nostalgic I've grown up hearing the cautionary tale that "anything that goes on the internet is forever!" I'm sure you've probably heard something similar, to dissuade you from posting party photos on Facebook which would put your future hire-ability in jeopardy. I understand the sentiment, and while perhaps true in some ways, I have been increasingly frustrated with just how much this is not the case. I wish I could look back to see all of the things I created online so many years ago. I wish they were still forever. When I was a kid, I made my own website. It was on piczo. I still remember the username, and my best friend's too. I remember how we sepnt so much time curating our websites, hanging out, chatting on MSN. I must have been 11-13 years old. That was the beginnings of me learning about css and html. I can barely remember what my website looked like. I suppose it was probably similar to what you might imagine a 12 year old creating in the early 00s (I'm thinking flashing graphics, guests books, everything I love when I find a new blog on the indie web). I would love to see it again, see if it is still as cool as my mind remembers it. But piczo fully closed down over 10 years ago, and all of those memories are long gone. So many things disappear, evaporate over the years, and dissolve into our distant memories. I wish I could find them again. I wish I could browse my younger self’s internet history the way I like to look through old photo albums. reply by email  ( 4 min )

so you want to know about digital piracy huh? buckle up because this rabbit hole goes deep. before we start, obvious disclaimer: this is just educational stuff about history and how things work. im not telling you to go pirate things or break laws or whatever. just sharing some interesting tech history. the early days (1970s-1980s) digital piracy is actually older than most people think. back in the 70s and 80s, when personal computers were just becoming a thing, people were already copying software. the whole thing started pretty innocently - friends sharing floppy disks with cool programs they found. no big deal right? except software companies started getting mad when they realized people werent buying their stuff. fun fact: the first major anti-piracy campaign was by bill gates himself…  ( 5 min )

I've been enjoying reading people's responses to the Emacs Carnival July theme of writing experience. I know I don't need complicated tools to write. People can write in composition notebooks and on typewriters. But I have fun learning more about the Emacs text editor and tweaking it to support me. Writing is one of the ways I think, and I want to think better. I'll start with the kinds of things I write in my public and private notes, and then I'll think about Emacs specifically. Types of notes Emacs News Bike Brigade newsletter Tech notes Life reflections Monthly and yearly reviews Book notes Emacs workflow thoughts Types of notes 2025-07-25-05 What kinds of posts do I write? How? Improvements? #writing Text from sketch What kinds of posts do I write? H…  ( 11 min )

Today I took my family out for a good meal and end the evening with a good movie. No one said anything about my birthday. They have probably forgotten about it. Having the opportunity to spent time with them is already a gift. I rather have their company than cold birthday messages. As a man, I work hard to provide for the family. Having this responsibility is a privilege. Nothing last forever and my days will come to an end. What is important is not the number on my lifespan, but whether I have truly lived with the people that I love.  ( 2 min )

I am 48 years old today. Time has slipped through my fingers. I thought I have a lot of time left but I am wrong. I still remember my first day at school, I cannot wait to grow up. When I was at school, I thought I will be happy when I finish my exams. When I started university, I thought I will be happy when I graduate. When I started working, I thought I will be happy when I get promoted. Somehow, all my happiness are in the future. Our happiness should not be in the future but now. Looking back, I have achieved far more than I have imagined. Yet, I never really gave myself any credit for it. I always think I can do more and be more. As of today, I probably have less than 50% left of my life span. If I am not happy now, when I should be happy? I am grateful that I am healthy. I have a good legal business that I can support my family. All my family members are healthy. There is really nothing more that I should ask from life. I am 48 years old today. Let me enjoy my moment and the passing of time. Life should not be feared but cherished. We all will reach our destination and disembark from life. Until then, please let me enjoy the journey of my life.  ( 2 min )

Welcome back to #define, our game of obscure jargon, fake definitions, and expert tomfoolery. This time we're joined by three Changelog++ members, to see who has the best vocabulary and who can trick everyone else into thinking that they do.

Guest video by from Welch Labs

2025-07-23-02 Finding the shape of my thoughts #writing Text from sketch Finding the shape of my thoughts 2025-07-23-02 I have a hard time following a thought from beginning to end. Some people are like this and have figured out things that work well for them. Challenges: too much or not enough one more thing; rabbit holes dangling thoughts shape of thought topics? enough? flow? metaphors, visual frameworks? zooming in? links? text boxes? outline, snippets, placeholders outline? short dictation? Keyboard? fleshing out: code, links, etc. Zettelkasten? editing audio braindump? managing idea pipeline? leave TODOS, mark them Develop thoughts in conversation Use the constraints Get the ball rolling The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper (2023): …  ( 7 min )

Sugu Sougoumarane, creator of Vitess, comes off sabbatical to bring Vitess to Postgres. We discuss what motivated Sugu to come off sabbatical, why now is the time, the technical challenges of doing so, the implementation details of Multigres (Vitess for Postgres). We also discuss the state of Postgres at scale.

the internet is getting weirder and weirder everyday. micro communities online - including booklandia - are becoming strange distortions of epic proportions that would, quite honestly, make alien earth landing reels less jarring. the internet is, to echo what everyone with a pulse understands, going to hell, and not the nice kind with hot satan and chanting and cloaks. in an effort to take back my brain, my books, and my ever-loosening grip on reality (please read every word I write here with a touch of sarcasm), i've created this minimalistic beautiful bear-y blog. what on earth will you find inside? no ads. few photos. aside from on my about page, perhaps I will keep the selfies at a minimum, too? perhaps. updates on books, writing, and what i'm reading. rants on the downfall of society. nostalgic entries on the rise of blogs like these. magic spells, because why not? i'll see you soon. love, kali / kv  ( 2 min )

hey bear-ers, i know there are many developers here who appreciate open source as much as I do, so i wanted to share something i'm excited about: the oss hackathon 2025 (September 1-7). too many essential tools are locked behind paywalls or simply unavailable as open source alternatives. this hackathon is an attempt to grow the ecosystem of open source alternatives to popular tools. the format is fully async, so you can participate from anywhere without mandatory check-ins or zoom calls. just build something real that helps the community. prizes vary from a herman (hehe, herman) miller chair, framework laptop, all the way to xm5's. tldr: build something useful, make it open source, win prizes, and help others break free from vendor lock-in.  ( 3 min )

TLDR: I trained a Flappy Bird world model to run in your web browser, try out the demo here! Flappy Bird world model running in Safari on iPhone 14 Pro Recently, I’ve been pretty interested in world models, which build on video generation research to create real-time simulations based on a user's input. I’ve seen them being applied everywhere from creating environments for autonomous vehicles and robots, to video games that can generate the physics, rules, and graphics without embedding any of the traditional game logic into the program. Decart’s viral AI Minecraft project, Odyssey's interactive videos, Runway's general world models, and Google’s Genie 2 are cool examples of this being applied to the gaming/film industry, and I think there will be a future where people can generate and re…  ( 11 min )

I am job hunting for an entry-level position as a process engineer. During last year's internship, I built meaningful connections with important people within the industry. Since I graduated, I countlessly thought of reaching out but hesitated. Something about sending an unsolicited email of I am looking for an opportunity . . . felt painfully exposing. Actually, it felt embarrassing. I felt embarrassed. Now I know cold emails aren't the only route to employment, but I noticed a pattern: I shrink in the face of anything unfamiliar, unpredictable, or remotely outside my comfort zone - especially when it risks embarrassment. It was the same when I started Bear. Clicking that Publish button for the first time was terrifying. Embarrassment is the price of entry. Not just when writing or sending cold emails to recruiters — but anything you find worth doing. The first time you work on a dream project, pitch yourself, or ask for what you want will feel humiliating and uncomfortable. But there's no way around it, really. You can’t sidestep the sting of being unpolished, unready, or simply seen. There is no secret route that leads to growth while letting yourself remain hidden. If you are never embarrassed, chances are you're not trying anything new. Just orbiting that same small, familiar territory and mistaking your safety for progress. Those willing to be embarrassed are the ones who go furthest. They are the ones who cross thresholds and shape meaningful lives. I will send that email, after all.  ( 2 min )

When I watched Ozzy sang "Mama, I'm Coming Home" at his Back to the Beginning gig I had this foreboding feeling. While this man was pulling off the last thing he ever wanted to do before he passed, he must've already knew the end was nigh. Then this morning, the news came. Ozzy Osborne dead at the age of 76. But this post isn't really about our rock legend, it's about what happened. And what will happen. Death. The one thing that often passes through my mind is the death of my mother, whether near or far, it's something that'll inevitably happen. It's this sort of dreadful feeling whenever I see the wrinkling deepen on her features or how she's no longer the speed demon she used to be when I was younger. The list of little things that continue to grow everyday only impress upon you how lit…  ( 3 min )

Aditya Chopra picks a boy from the Sandeep Reddy Vanga Universe, puts him in Mohit Suri’s world of love, and gives it an Ashiqui-esque backdrop! That’s Saiyaara! A pack of love wrapped in fire!! Saiyaara is opening crowds from corridors that will surprise many, even the best of trade analysts! The movie should be covered on three fronts: 1. The genius that Aditya Chopra is! Written off half a decade back for Befikre, the 55-year-old gives love cult to GenZ — a genre both Aditya Chopra and Yash Raj had given up on after the 90s! This movie feels a lot less like a Yash Raj movie and a lot more like a Mohit Suri movie — where the melodrama is not soft, every expression needs BGM, and there is a pace in how emotions move through the storyline. Yes, none of it is the trademark YRF — and yet it worked! That’s the genius of Aditya Chopra. This time he was not creating the Raj and Rahul (The touch of which faded in 2000s), neither he was creating a Suri. Aditya Chopra was out and out dead sure about the paradigm shift in the male protagonist that was needed for this story to land. 2. The writing of Krish Writing the beast as it is — unapologetic, clear. This character doesn't need an explanation — even though it had one. That’s how well it was written and, more importantly, played! Krish carries the story so well, that beyond a point, to the audience, his unpredictability becomes predictable. When Krish runs for his love, you are both scared and looking forward to it! 3. The Crowds are back! There is something about Bollywood and love stories. Bollywood just owns this genre boldly! On a Monday evening, the occupancy rate was over 80%. So much so, in the middle of all the conversations happening about the sinking box office, future of mainstream cinema, fading star culture — we don’t know what’s the ultimate writing on any of these fronts — but we do know that something in Saiyaara is about to work, and work wonders.  ( 3 min )

I want to make it easy to write with more hyperlinks. This lets me develop thoughts over time, building them out of small chunks that I can squeeze into my day. It also makes it easy for you to dig into things that pique your curiosity without wading through lots of irrelevant details. Looking up the right URLs as I go along tends to disrupt my train of thought. I want to make it easier to write down my thoughts first and then go back and add the URLs. I might have 5 links in a post. I might have 15. Sounds like an automation opportunity. If I use double square brackets around text to indicate where I want to add links, Orgzly Revived and Org Mode both display those as links, so I can preview what the paragraph might feel like. They're valid links. Org Mode prompts me to create new head…  ( 5 min )

Last October, I visited Chicago and stopped at the American Writers Museum, a small museum which seems oriented mostly at school groups. It focuses less on artifacts related to writing and more on basic education about the history of American printing and literature... and information about writing craft generally. They had an exhibit about games writing. I can't overstate how much I disliked it. I've been meaning to blog about that exhibit for months now, and I figured I should finally get around to it. Part of the reason I put off writing about this exhibit for so long is that it was created with the support of a panel of consultants who are all basically my peers. I really do not know how the materials were created, what it was like working with the museum as a stakeholder, or who actua…  ( 10 min )

I want to start this post saying that I am very thankful for having the hair I have; it's healthy, plentiful, and I even have a good hairline, which seems to be a rare thing nowadays. Now, the explanation: I have the pretty average straight hair of a Western man; the issue I have with it is that it's so healthy and strong that I struggle with keeping it looking neat for formal occasions. It grows really fast, at least for my standards. Back during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when it was finally confirmed that most of us would end up spending at least a whole year inside our houses, I decided to shave my head, thinking it would be a great time to finally listen to the voices in my head begging me to just shave the huge ball of hair on top of my head. Another thing is that it's so healthy and strong, that it's crazy difficult to comb into a nice office-friendly shape, and then keep that shape during the whole day, especially if I have a meeting in a different part of the city and I have to walk. Winter wind? Summer sweat? They're gonna get my hair and give it a beating. A funny thing is that, even when it's so difficult to give it shape, hats still beat it. My hair is always gonna take that hat style and keep it until it gets wet. It's so bad that when it's a "hat day" during summer, I have to prepare mentally to know that I'm gonna keep that hat on ALL DAY. That's pretty much it for today, a little rant about my hair that I love with all my heart, but wow it can be a pain to deal with!! That's all! I hope to see you again soon! ★ ◀ ▲  ( 3 min )

You know that thing you're not doing? That conversation you're not having, that boundary you're not setting, that creative risk you're not taking? What’s stopping you isn’t laziness or lack of time or bad circumstances. It’s your relationship with discomfort — specifically, your fear of feeling it. Most of us have turned discomfort into the enemy, as if being uncomfortable were a moral failing. We've created elaborate systems of avoiding it: comfort foods that make us sick, entertainment that numbs us into forgetting what we actually want, purchasing decisions that promise to solve problems we can't even name. We scroll when we could be reading. We busy ourselves to postpone making meaning. We perform productivity instead of engaging with what's right in front of us. But what if discomfort…  ( 7 min )

Sometimes I just want to quickly get to a blog post by title. I use consult-omni for quick web searches that I can jump to or insert as a link. Sure, I can limit this search to my blog by specifying site:sachachua.com or using the code I wrote to search my blog, notes, and sketches with consult-ripgrep and consult-omni, but the search sometimes gets confused by other text on the page. When I publish my blog with Eleventy, I also create a JSON file with all my blog post URLs and titles. Here's how I can use that data as a consult-omni source. (defun my-consult-omni-blog-data () (let ((base (replace-regexp-in-string "/$" "" my-blog-base-url)) (json-object-type 'alist) (json-array-type 'list)) (mapcar (lambda (o) (list :url (concat base (alist-get 'permal…  ( 2 min )

Przemysław Dębiak beat an advanced AI model from OpenAI in a 10-hour head-to-head coding marathon, Linux breaks 5% desktop share in U.S., Stefano Marinelli is writing a series on making your own backup system, César Soto Valero switched to Python (and is liking it), and Charlie Graham thinks it's rude to show AI output to people.

Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): Emacs APAC: Emacs APAC meetup (virtual) https://emacs-apac.gitlab.io/announcements/ Sat Jul 26 0130 America/Vancouver - 0330 America/Chicago - 0430 America/Toronto - 0830 Etc/GMT - 1030 Europe/Berlin - 1400 Asia/Kolkata - 1630 Asia/Singapore Emacs Berlin (hybrid, in English) https://emacs-berlin.org/ Wed Jul 30 0930 America/Vancouver - 1130 America/Chicago - 1230 America/Toronto - 1630 Etc/GMT - 1830 Europe/Berlin - 2200 Asia/Kolkata – Thu Jul 31 0030 Asia/Singapore M-x Research: TBA https://m-x-research.github.io/ Fri Aug 1 0800 America/Vancouver - 1000 America/Chicago - 1100 America/Toronto - 1500 Etc/GMT - 1700 Europe/Berlin - 2030 Asia/Kolkata - 2300 Asia/Singapore Emacs configuration: Customizing the Emacs Help Menu (Reddit, Irreal) Suppressing war…  ( 3 min )

My usual route for commuting has been painfully disrupted recently and will stay like that for longer. It now includes almost an hour of riding the bus - hot, sticky, stinky, getting shaken by the driving style so hard that I got carsick every time. That is, if I take the stop closest to home. But walking for half an hour to a different route saves me from the bus ride. I have always avoided this because my chronic illnesses made me so, so tired in the past. Everything hurt and I had to save my energy. But now, with no choice except enduring extreme nausea for an hour, I tried again and was pleasantly surprised. Not only at the lack of pain and exhaustion (meds and gym paid off!) but how much I enjoyed the scenery and have unknowingly missed it. Instead of walking through the cement jungle, passing shops and gas stations, I walked past huge, beautiful historical buildings, a lush forest and a botanical garden. I used to visit them a lot while on walks with my dog, but not nearly as often since he died, and never through my commute. It made me remember how beautiful this place is and why I moved here. Maybe I am even a little grateful that this diversion opened my eyes to this beauty again, and the realization that I am not as fragile as I used to be. It made me enjoy my way to work for once. Reply via email Published {{ post_published_date }}  ( 5 min )

svg.primary-svg{ stroke: var(--color-primary); } svg g#Page-1 g#icons8-share-rounded-60{ fill: var(--color-dark); } a.subtle-link{ text-decoration-color: #4b72354f; text-decoration-thickness: 0.15ex; } .fbf-share{ stroke: var(--color-dark); margin-left: 6px; position: relative; top: 3px; } .fbf-share:hover, .fbf-embed-link:hover{ transform: scale(1.1) rotate(10deg); } .timeline-card{ list-style-type: none; } /* FBF embed */ div.timeline-container.fbf-embed{ box-shadow: inset 0 1px 7px -2px rgba(0, 0, 0, 1); border-radius: 5px; } div.timeline-container.fbf-embed div.timeline-outer li.timeline-card{ /* box-shadow: 1px 3px 6px -1px rgba(26, 26, 26, 1);*/ } .fbf-embed-link{ stroke: var(--color-dark); position: relative; top: 5px; opacity:0.7; left:2px; } @media screen and…  ( 35 min )

hanover, germany. 9:08 pm before i came to france, i had all kinds of ideas about what it would be like. some were based on movies, others on stories from people around me (talking about history o colonisation we know ach kayn, btw ma3ndich mea fronsi hh) and you know the kind of talk that your uncle hit u with: “oropa mab9a fiha mayddar a weldi, don't come, there's nothing left there.” but i’ve always believed you can’t fully know something until you experience it for yourself. so when i got the chance to do my internship in nantes, i said yes. i didn’t know what to expect. and that was the best part. spoiler alert 3la stage: great atmosphere, great supervisor, great collegues, 10/10. one of the first things i noticed in france bdebt f nantes was how many people read. like, actually read …  ( 4 min )

We are under constant cognitive assault. Buying plane tickets is navigating a minefield - one misclick blows a hole in your wallet. Resolving a mistake on your utility bill is a tactical operation: dodge hold music traps, outwit the chatbot, then convince the agent you shouldn’t need to pay your neighbour’s bill. Our decisions aren’t shaped by direct threats or outright lies. Governments and corporations work together to overwhelm our cognition and they benefit from our weakened state. Everyday activities require more and more thinking. That's bad. And computers made it worse. That’s computational tyranny. The tyranny distilled Computational tyranny is the rapidly increasing complexity in all areas of life where we bear the costs (in time, money and sanity) and where we are exposed to larg…  ( 8 min )

We are under constant cognitive assault. Buying plane tickets is navigating a minefield - one misclick blows a hole in your wallet. Resolving a mistake on your utility bill is a tactical operation: dodge hold music traps, outwit the chatbot, then convince the agent you shouldn’t need to pay your neighbour’s bill. Our decisions aren’t shaped by direct threats or outright lies. Governments and corporations work together to overwhelm our cognition and they benefit from our weakened state. Everyday activities require more and more thinking. That's bad. And computers made it worse. That’s computational tyranny. The tyranny distilled Computational tyranny is the rapidly increasing complexity in all areas of life where we bear the costs (in time, money and sanity) and where we are exposed to larg…  ( 8 min )

Via James' post, I found out that xandra has asked: "what does the indie web need the most right now? if that’s kinda hard to answer, to phrase it in another way: if you could snap your fingers and add one of these to the #indieweb, which do you think would have the biggest positive impact?" Examples to choose from in the poll were: easier ways to make websites cultural moments & shared experiences sharing information across communities & outreach web design tutorials & guides, and more widgets to add to our websites. I have some thoughts about those options, and more. Lots of this needs nuance, so bear with me. Easier ways to make websites In theory, this sounds awesome and is very welcoming and ready to accommodate almost everyone, which is always a plus. However, there are already very …  ( 9 min )

As cars whir by and birds are chirping outside, I am laying in bed and I tell myself "just one more video." Before I even realize it, two hours have passed. I have done nothing except consume content that further supports my beliefs. The internet sucks now. Everything, anything, and everyone is a bot. We are screwed. Society is screwed. Kids are addicted to this, adults are addicted to this. We can't escape, we live in a surveillance state dystopia, lacking purpose other than waking up every day to consume and then consume some more... I used to have an awful internet addiction, made wonderfully possible by abusive boyfriends, a dysfunctional family, and a boring remote job that paid well but had no meaning other than to make profits for The Big Company (trademark). My days were spent desp…  ( 5 min )

Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy—that’s the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all. — JOHN STEINBECK, East of Eden The timesheet for my part-time job says I've worked more than 20 hours last week. It's nice feeling like I have some control over the number in my bank account — after all, the more I work, the more I make — though I can feel the schedule starting to erod…  ( 7 min )

I went to top up my phone. It should be fairly straightforward, right? Load up the app, choose the package, pay for it. Job done. It took me twenty minutes because I needed to change the card associated with the app and just trying to find the option to do that, never mind complete the actual task, took a ridiculous amount of effort. Because nothing fucking works anymore. I spotted a comic book bundle, I’ve got a chunk of it on paper but hey, at the price and for some easy to move around digital copies? Yeah, why not. I went to buy it, pressed the button repeatedly and the web page wouldn’t progress from the payment selection so I guess I’m not buying that after all. No error messages, no indications as to whether the button I’m pressing even does anything. Because nothing fucking works an…  ( 3 min )

your posts have resonated with readers - been somewhat popular - because the writing was raw, vulnerable, honest. you can even spin the occasional reckless metaphor. you've picked up a few subscribers. but your writing is suffering. it’s desperate and it shows - not just in how often you check the numbers, but in the way your heart keeps leaning outward, looking for something. you rush through your morning coffee to check last night’s stats. refresh, reload, hope. low numbers kick you in the gut - you doubt. you feel you’re not connecting - especially with yourself. the writing becomes even more desperate with every refresh, the passion fading. there's a book that made you fall in love with reading again - if on a winter's night a traveller. written in second person. uncomfortable at first, but it made you feel alive, that what you loved still mattered, even if only to you. writing like this now is uncomfortable for you too, but it's helping you to gently connect with your inner voice and your love for writing. you'll keep writing like this for a while. not just to connect with others, but to connect with yourself. maybe one day you’ll write in first or third person again. but not now. not until your voice is steady and clear, like it was when you last loved it. for now, you write to hear yourself again. and if others hear you too, your voice will be all the stronger - you’ll remember how to love yourself, and let others in.  ( 6 min )

Here’s to yet another flashbackFriday, another chance to dig through my cringey archive from my teenage years. We’re halfway through 2004, which I think was when I started my Perks of Being a Wallflower obsession: peak emo era, peak feelings I didn’t fully understand. The post below is pretty hazy in my memory. It screams teenage rebellion and soft chaos, and while a part of me wants to believe it all happened exactly the way I’ve written it, another part of me is trying to piece together the truth through foggy memories and poetic exaggeration. To be quite honest, I have no idea whose car I supposedly got into. I was barely old enough to drive back then as it is. Did I really sneak out at 3 AM, only to sleep for 3 hours and head straight to school, all for this unknown person? Or was that…  ( 7 min )

I always think of the saying "Jack of all trades, master of none." Its earliest appearance in print dates from 1785. (Akin to popular adages, the phrase has been mangled into a continuation of ". . .but often times better than a master of one," for a more nuanced sentiment, but that's beside the point. I just thought it was an interesting variant.) I was always propelled with a strange (delusional? notional?) zealousness to be someone who is exceptionally good at everything I do. I intentionally say exceptionally good to not be misconstrued with perfect. Perfectionism is an unattainable ideal and will never fall under my aspirations. I wanted to work hard, to build myself piece by piece, into a master, an expert into the things I invest my time to. Is it a stupid thing to admit? Maybe. But…  ( 3 min )

Nick Nisi joins us to discuss all the Windsurf drama, his new agentic lifestyle, whether or not he's actually more productive, the new paper that says he maybe isn't more productive, the reckoning he sees coming, and why we might be the last generation of code monkeys.

It finally happened: After 11 years, my PS4 became basically unfixable. I have always vowed to repair it myself if it breaks, but unfortunately, it seems to be the HDMI chip (not the port, not the cable, not the TV) that is fried, which is a notoriously fickle and unpredictable thing to replace and most replacements are futile. It seems to be a particularly sensitive and weak point of the PS4 as it is easily fried by just power surges while off and hooked up to power, or hotswapping the cable. Getting a replacement chip that isn't bad from the getgo, getting the special tools just for it to fail is not wise. Even repair shops have trouble with that, so that may be it. Now I have to rethink my entertainment setup, and where I wanna go from here. My original plan was that once my wife finish…  ( 6 min )

Today I was called a Twat and I accepted it. I was explaining to someone that I try not to work Friday or Monday these days. I was informed that the cool people call that TWAT working (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday). I'll take that. I think I need that on a T-shirt. If the label fits.... 😊 Leave a Comment; Reply via the Fediverse; or send me message if you have replied with your own blog post and I will mention it here.  ( 2 min )

David Hsu from Retool joins Adam to discuss how he built Retool. From the pivot in YC, to building the most widely used internal tools platform, to now being the platform for AI agents in the enterprise—on this episode we cover David journey from YC to building agents for the enterprise.

Hatching... Cursor Shenanigans Cursor, my beloved, started rate limiting shenanigans a few days back. For a good 2 weeks after June 16, 2025, we had almost infinite API request access. I had a lot of code-related work around this time as I was working on Gumroad bounties plus my AI engineering/LLM eval-related consulting work. Apart from just codegen, I also use these tools to onboard/understand codebases faster and just ask a lot of questions in general. cursor rate limiting shenanigans starting to kick in pic.twitter.com/abc123 — sankalp (@dejavucoder) December 20, 2024 But one fine day, they pulled the plug and started rate-limiting. I admit I milked them too much, so I didn't feel bad about this. It's worth asking whether I was doing shenanigans or it was Cursor. cursor shenanigans …  ( 15 min )

I recently started a new job as a Senior Software Engineer at Headway. Now that I'm a few weeks into my new gig I thought it might be fun to share some numbers from my job hunt. I started job hunting full time in January 2025 and signed an offer in June 2025. A bit less than 6 months from start to finish. Although, I wasn't actively applying for jobs during all of that time so it's probably closer to 3 or 4 months of intensive job search stuff. Here's the numbers at a high level: Total applications submitted: 73 Responses received: 48 Interviews (not counting recruiter screens): 10 Offer stage: 3 Offers: 1 And here's a nice funnel graphic: The above graphic is broken down by application type. My number one take away from this job hunt was referrals are very powerful and by far the most effective way to get to the interview rounds. I did apply directly to some roles but I quickly realized that that method was a waste of time and stopped. I cringe when I see people post on LinkedIn that they've submitted 800 applications and not heard back. Please don't do that. Unfortunately, the spray and pray method will not work in this job market. A number of times I thought that I had tapped out my potential referrals, but ended up combing back through my network a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th time. I always ended up finding new referrals. Feel free to contact me with any questions and I'll be happy to expand on any of the above numbers and offer some (maybe) helpful advice.  ( 2 min )

I want to write this better [Draft] So I'm keeping this as a draft view. If you already know the story, that's great, but there might be some questions or some things that you really want to ask about that I haven't talked about in person. So I'm keeping this as a draft state, so that I can write it better later. Before you read this post, if you got this link from a friend or someone shared this with you, give them a high five from my side :D If you don't know me (yet), or we haven't met, don't worry — we still have time. Just look me up and let's connect. The short version? I kind of stumbled into it. I did a lot of interviews, but with my skills and ability to learn, I always believed I could do better, and kept applying and doing interviews, and one day I saw a random post in a random …  ( 3 min )

Today's the five year anniversary of Necrobarista's release. For those unfamiliar, a quick primer: Necrobarista is a 3D visual novel set in a cafe that sits on the boundary between the real world and the afterlife, acting as a place for the recently departed to stop for one last cup of coffee. It was developed by a team of less than a dozen people mostly based in Melbourne, Australia, though there were a small number of personnel, such as myself, who worked remotely. It shipped on three platforms and in fourteen languages, was generally well received, and won a couple of awards. It was first released on July 17, 2020 (Apple Arcade), followed by a PC launch on July 22 and an expanded "director's cut", dubbed Final Pour, released for existing platforms and Nintendo Switch in August 2021. I w…  ( 22 min )

My year has been pretty eventful so far. I'm still doing full-time work, my parttime degree, and the separate certification for data protection law on the side. I had two exams in March, three in May/June, and I'll have five more the next two months. On the side, I started to translate and summarize court decisions for GDPRhub and already got one out, but my next one is very complex and long and it's been taking a while next to everything else. I've been chipping away at it in increments. Lately, I also asked for new challenges and tasks at work because it has just been bringing me to a boreout - having lots to do outside of work doesn't fill those 8 hours during my office days and it's demotivating not being invested in my work. It's been mixed; my first choice was blocked, but my boss is…  ( 6 min )

I've been trying to slowly migrate my various internet and computer habits off of platforms that I don't like. I switched the majority of my microblogging from twitter to mastodon, I switched off of... god, I don't know, Medium? to this bear.blog, which I generally much prefer (I wish it had better comments support, but whatever). I was really waffling on switching off of Notion, though. I like Notion! Well, I liked Notion. I would say I liked Notion before they started trying to cram in AI features to every fucking thing they did, which I had to email them to turn off because there is no way to turn it off built into the default program. Reader: I fucking hate genAI shit, I don't want it anywhere near my own files or my own random drabbles about groceries or whatever. I don't fucking want…  ( 4 min )

I don't care about AI 'art'. I mean, I care about the huge ethical problems that come with it - but I do not, in the slightest, care about the actual work that gets produced. It might as well be noise to me. There's no point to any of it. The reason for that is pretty simple: To me at least, art is about communication. Sharing your thoughts and ideas with the world. AI art does not communicate, it does not add meaning. Because it can't. Because it got produced by a machine designed to regurgitate what it already knows. It doesn't have any intent. Sure, you can use AI as a "tool". You can change or touch up the things it makes to come closer to your vision. But it's still a net loss of information. You're just doing worse communication. Instead of creating your own message you're taking som…  ( 5 min )

Based on a true story. I bought a t-shirt recently. It says "in nature, everything is perfect, and nothing is perfect." What does that mean? I don't know, it's honestly open to interpretation. I was coincidentally wearing the same t-shirt that day. I almost stayed home. Almost chose the safety of unfinished work over the uncertainty of reconnecting with someone after years. When you were running late, I caught myself wondering if I should have just stayed home, completed those pending tasks, avoided the potential awkwardness of time stretched thin between two people who had almost forgotten each other. But something made me wait. Maybe it was the knowledge that we don't know when we'll meet again. Maybe it was the hope that some things in life transcend time and distance. What followed wer…  ( 6 min )

Yesterday was one of the hottest days of the year here in Vancouver... So it felt appropriate to realize that it's time to write a new quarterly update! It's pretty tough to sleep while it's so bright and humid lately. It's also tough to not work on the game, since I've been so energized about it lately. Chapter 2 Developments It feels funny to talk about Chapter 2 of ANOTHEREAL when it's not really something people are experiencing episodically. I have a number of chapters planned for the game, all of which have their own content and narrative arcs leading to the ultimate conclusion. Like many games, I guess. It feels like this sort of categorization is inspired by recent indie games releasing more episodically. Notably, Deltarune released Chapters 1 and 2 individually over the course of …  ( 9 min )

There’s an abrasive texture to chaos that most people refuse to acknowledge. It's the feeling of having twelve half-conversations with yourself while trying to remember if you paid the electric bill, answered your mother's text, and whether that weird noise your car is making means you're about to break down on the highway. We call this being "scattered", as if we’re browser tabs left open in someone else’s head — but that’s too gentle. This is more like being a radio caught between stations — all static and fragments, searching for a signal that might not even exist. The standard response is to grip the wheel tighter with both hands. Make lists. Color-code calendars. Download apps that promise to transform your fragmented existence into something resembling competence. These aren’t off th…  ( 7 min )

👋🏽👋🏽👋🏽 Hey, hi, hello. It's Dave. As dedicated fans of the long ball, Jonathan and I are super stoked for tonight's Home Run Derby (and tomorrow's MLB All-Star Game). We're so stoked, in fact, that we went to the kitchen, put on our aprons and toques, and baked up a handful of questions about... starting pitchers. 1️⃣ Among active pitchers (i.e. pitchers who have appeared in at least one game during the 2025 season), six have over 2,000 career strikeouts. Which two have never won a Cy Young Award? 2️⃣ Seven pitchers have 10 or more wins this season. None of them have over 2,000 career strikeouts. Three of them are on teams that are in first place going into the All-Star break. How many of the seven total pitchers are lefties? 3️⃣ Seven pitchers have 10 or more wins this season. Two o…  ( 3 min )

Researchers in Japan achieve a world record in data transmission speeds, Robin Sloan explains how an app can be a home-cooked meal, Windsurf founders Varun Mohan & Douglas Chen are headed to Google, new Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan says it's too late for the incumbent, Anton Zaides says stop forcing AI tools on your engineers, and Adrien Friggeri visualized his ten-year running streak.

Emacs Carnival writing theme for July: Writing experience Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): M-x Research: TBA https://m-x-research.github.io/ Wed Jul 16 0800 America/Vancouver - 1000 America/Chicago - 1100 America/Toronto - 1500 Etc/GMT - 1700 Europe/Berlin - 2030 Asia/Kolkata - 2300 Asia/Singapore Emacs APAC: Emacs APAC meetup (virtual) https://emacs-apac.gitlab.io/announcements/ Sat Jul 26 0130 America/Vancouver - 0330 America/Chicago - 0430 America/Toronto - 0830 Etc/GMT - 1030 Europe/Berlin - 1400 Asia/Kolkata - 1630 Asia/Singapore Emacs configuration: 3 Ways to Manually Install Emacs Packages (03:36) Configuring Emacs (01:44:41) Brainiac v1.0 released — Kemal's Braindump (Reddit) minimal-emacs.d - Better Defaults and Faster Startup (Release: 1.3.0) (Reddit) Emacs Lisp: distichum/…  ( 3 min )

I grew up on the internet. I'm old enough to remember when my news feeds actually ended. Remember the times before infinite scroll was engineered? I remember when algorithms weren't good enough to keep me in a trance-like state for eternity. Fast forward to today, I experience firsthand the horrible effects of the algorithms. We weren't meant to read the thoughts of 100s of people all at once. It's also not possible to fully check out from social media. What is the solution? Actively rebel against weaponized addictive technology. I'm going to read more books, watch more movies, talk to people, go out for walks (without airpods) and be more present without the constant noise of a YouTube video playing in the background. How am I doing it? Using tech to fight tech. Extensions to block out feeds. Uninstalling social media from my phone. I have also started using "one sec" an app that briefly makes you pause before you access an application. This has helped me tremendously. Buying physical books to avoid screens. And actively calling my friends and family to talk to them. Why? I want to rebel. I want to take control of my brain. I want to be the kid that used to read a book a week. I want to be less anxious. No, I don't want to know what's happening all around the world in real-time. I refuse to go down without a fight.  ( 2 min )

There’s this common trope that floats around trading circles: “The best traders don’t post online.” It’s usually meant to discredit anyone sharing trades, charts, ideas, or PnL publicly. The thinking goes: *If you were actually good, you wouldn’t need to post. The real killers at firms and funds aren't posting online and therefore if you are, you must be a fraud. But here’s the reality... Great Traders at Firms Don’t Need to Post If you're working at a firm or fund and you're genuinely great, people already know. You’ve got internal hype. Your name’s circulating. You're getting more risk, more buying power, and more respect. Your coworkers and managers? They're already circle jerking you up and making you feel great! You don’t need external validation, because it’s baked into the environment. Your results are being rewarded both monetarily and with the attention from others. The machine handles the recognition for you. Retail Traders Don’t Have That Environment Now flip it to the retail side. You’re on your own. No office full of traders giving you props. No risk manager handing you more capital. No new hire whispering to others just how good you really are! So yeah, some great retail traders post. Because they want to be seen. They want to be respected. They want someone to notice. And honestly? There’s nothing wrong with that. If you’re putting in the work, finding edge, trading well, validation can feel good. You don’t need to pretend otherwise. Some people post to find community. Others post to help, or to sell a product. And some post because they’re just proud of what they’ve been able to accomplish. Don’t confuse that with insecurity or ALWAYS being a fraud. Sometimes it’s just human nature. 📩 Sign up to get my newest blogs by email hit this little toast button broseph!  ( 3 min )

Daily notes are useless. The value of a note is directly proportional to the number of times it is visited. That value is exponentiated each time a note is shared. Daily notes aren't revisited and they aren't shared. Daily notes look like this: notes/ yyyy-mm-dd.md yyyy-mm-dd.md yyyy-mm-dd.md On the surface, the idea of a note per day seems great. You plan out your day and track your work. You can revisit the past if needed. But you won't. All you are doing is generating digital clutter. You will also never share these notes, so the chance of their value increasing exponentially is zero. Instead you should focus on creating notes that you are likely to revisit or likely to share. Focus.md I have one note that I visit all the time when I am working. It's a single Markdown file that I constantly update. It's essentially a to-do list that just helps me juggle all the things that I need to track. I call it focus.md # Focus Tasks that I have to do ## Periphery Tasks that I have to be aware of, but I don't have to do. It's nice because it lets me offload information that I don't need at hand and helps me focus on what I need to do. Don't ask the same question twice I try to never ask the same question twice. That means that when I do have a question, that question and its answer get a note. They look something like this: # Issue ## Issue details ## Resolution Since I'm a programmer, I make a lot of these notes. I don't visit them very often, but I do revisit them if the same issue pops up again. But these notes find their value in being shared. If another person encounters the same issue, and I am able to help them fix it, then the note is worth the cost of its creation. I even add a lot of these notes to our documentation so I don't have to share them by hand. It took me a while to figure out what's worth recording, and what isn't. And I am sure that it will be something different for you. But tools are supposed to prevent toil. Don't waste your time with daily notes.  ( 3 min )

I get emails about how I customized my blog sometimes, so I thought I should publish that information some time in a comprehensive post summarizing everything and holding helpful links. This is not meant to replace the emails, so if you have questions, still feel free to reach out - I just didn’t wanna lock it behind having to message me :) and also I'll try to keep this very beginner friendly! basics When you see a cool blog, you can always rightclick on that site, click 'View Page Source' (or an equivalent in your browser), and see their code. The custom CSS part of a Bearblog starts at . If you are curious about a specific part of a website, right-click it and click 'Inspect'. This opens up a view that shows what the code behind that specific part is. If you want to target a spec…  ( 6 min )

Programming Language Theory (PLT) is one of my favourite areas of computer science yet I feel it's one of the most misunderstood by outsiders. It's full of beautiful constructions and great ideas at the intersection of pure theory and practical applications. And yet outside of the PLT community, it's considered cryptic, hard, useless, not practical. The problems are similar to the public perception of pure maths ("why would I learn it?", "does it have any practical applications?") but somehow even worse. How did it happen? Problem 1: Theory vs applications PLT can be done and appreciated as a pure maths subject, just like a beautiful construction proving an intricate topological theorem, or a stunning painting. It's an art. To fully appreciate it, you need some education. A purely theoreti…  ( 4 min )

I want a place to Learn in Public. A place to document my projects and knowledge. Not another blog to share moments. But a living document that will grow with me. It will be my personal wiki. Each notes will always be a work-in-progress. The goal won't be to get everything right. The goal is to take care of it like a garden. It will be a place to be myself. A safe place to learn. A place to expose my ideas. A digital garden is what I want to do.  ( 2 min )

Here's an idea: Can we just have the facts of the news reported to us? In the olden days, when I was a teenager, the news appeared on the telly box thing in the early evening. They waffled on for 30 minutes with all that was happening. Job done. Next TV show. Now we have wall-to-wall 24-hour news channels. All they do is regurgitate the same stories over and over. However, worse than that, it's not just the facts.....it's their feckin' opinions, and that of experts they wheel in. The incessant speculation on why something happened; who might be to blame; what can we learn from it; what might happen next -- and we are drip fed a few facts as they get released. I stopped watching news on the TV, and consume it by reading online. Even this is now getting full-on monotony. At least I can read quickly and move on. I only require my doom-and-gloom in small doses. Not forced fed it constantly and with a heavy coating of total twaddle. And the rant ends! Leave a Comment; Reply via the Fediverse; or send me message if you have replied with your own blog post and I will mention it here.  ( 3 min )

On the surface, my life adheres to the tenets of (physical/digital) minimalism: I don't have social media accounts, never have, never been interested in any of them (though I did have admin access for some workplace and community accounts). No Friendster, no Plurk, no Fourquare, no Path, no Facebook, no Instagram, no Twitter, no Tiktok... (I do have a LinkedIn account, which was nearly inescapable), though I do have instant messenger apps like Whatsapp, Line, and Discord. I don't have subscriptions. If I want to read something, I navigate to the website/blog directly from a collection of bookmarks. I'm not on ecommerce sites. If I need to shop something from those places, I'll need to ask my friends to help. When I worked in ecommerce, my coworkers were bewildered. I deliberate thrice over…  ( 4 min )

I remember when we used to exchange ways to make Google Search better. Search operators like wildcards (*), "exact search term", site:, filetype:, and more to truly get you what you wanted. The people who wanted to talk to the search bar like a human would get vastly worse results. Well, look now, and we have the search that you can talk to like a human, but it also made me notice the emergence of LLM superstitions. At least that is the term we came up with to describe the phenomenon last I met with my mentor in data protection law. We were talking about legal aspects of in-house GenAI use and soon veered off to how to get the thing to actually do what you want - how to limit hallucinations, how to get the most bang out of your buck (prompt), and more. That's when it started: Stories we ha…  ( 6 min )

I met with a friend I hadn’t seen in over ten years. We are both artists. That night, I was sprawled on the floor, surrounded by loose sketching paper, experimenting with oil pastels. The pastels dragged unpredictably across the page, but I liked the way the colors smudged, how imprecise everything looked. She was at her desk, dipping her paintbrush into a glass of murky water, her canvas propped on a stand easel. We barely spoke. We didn’t really need to. For so long, I struggled to finds reasons to live for. This was the whole reason I started Bear. To archive these miscellaneous memories with friends, thoughts, and feelings, a place to collect all these intangible moments and see if they might add up to something meaningful. That night, I was sure I grasped a silver of this meaning that was missing from my life - in the quiet act of watching my friend paint, the soft hum of R&B music she liked, the warmth of shared silence, the gentleness of simply being with her and myself. This stillness, this presence is what meaning looks like to me: not answers, not certainty, but the tender, delicate moments that remind me I am alive.  ( 2 min )

On IRC, someone asked for help configuring Emacs to have a keyboard shortcut that would either open the URL at point or search the web for the region or the word at point. I thought this was a great idea that I would find pretty handy too. Let's write the interactive function that I'll call from my keyboard shortcut. First, let's check if there's an active region. If there isn't, let's assume we're looking at the thing at point (could be a URL, an e-mail address, a filename, or a word). If there are links, open them. Otherwise, if there are e-mail addresses, compose a message with all those email addresses in the "To" header. Are we at a filename? Let's open that. Otherwise, do a web search. Let's make that configurable. Most people will want to use a web browser to search their favo…  ( 3 min )

Abi Noda from DX is back to share some cold, hard data on just how productive AI coding tools are actually making developers. Teaser: the productivity increase isn't as high as we expected. We also discuss Jevons paradox, AI agents as extensions of humans, which tools are winning in the enterprise, how development budgets are changing, and more.

Here’s to another flashbackFriday, another day to unarchive the inner workings of my early teen mind. To be honest, I’m ready to fast forward to more recent years in the archive. These posts from my early teens are just so full of feelings and way too much angst. Not much has changed, but I guess I’m just more cautious now about what I put out into the world. That said, it does make me think about how our online personas have evolved over the years. Back then, people were more raw and unfiltered. These days, it seems like we’re all trying to present the best versions of ourselves. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’re being less authentic, but it does make me wonder when that shift happened. Was it when people started leaning into influencer culture and getting paid to share their lives onli…  ( 7 min )

This past week, I attended a networking event. I arrived, got my little name sticker, and walked over to the entrance of the main event area with a little get-to-know-each-other bingo card in hand. At the door, someone had taped the following message to the glass: "We will take pictures of the event to post on our website and social media. By entering this room, you agree to these conditions." I froze in place. Am I agreeing to this? It would be really awkward for me to immediately turn around and leave. I wanted to be here to get out more and practice meeting new people, now I'm confronted with something I had forgotten to take into account before and wasn't informed about during signup for the event. For context: I try to avoid posting my full face or full body online. I'll either dither…  ( 8 min )

Suddenly it's July...! It's been a whirlwind year for me so far as predicted in my 2024 year in review blog post, but overall I'm feeling pretty good about it all. I realise that not everyone is on social media, so unless you're checking my Bluesky profile regularly, there's no real way of knowing what I'm up to. And I've got a few things to talk about now so it's a good time for making a blog post about it. Also, I've recently gone past the arbitrary milestone of 5000 followers on itch.io. That seems like a lot of people to me. Whether you've been following me/my work since the Bitsy days or only just recently played something I made for the first time, thank you! So, what's the news? My own projects Will I ever stop making things for myself... Hopefully not. Anyway here's the latest on t…  ( 5 min )

I recently graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering. It's been a month, but I am struggling with navigating my creative life post-graduation. Yes, I am suspended in the disorienting in-between: no longer a student, not yet employed. While the pressure to secure a job is indubitable, this post isn't about unemployment but a more quiet revelation: a part of me is silently resisting the very idea of finding a job, though money is a survival necessity. For context: 1. I love my creative endeavors. I want to write forever, draw forever, build something I can call my own. 2. STEM was expected of me as an overachieving kid. So, I don't particularly enjoy engineering, neither do I have a "dream job" in the conventional sense. The idea of a standard 9-5 engineering role has been j…  ( 3 min )

I've never been known for my coordination, balance, or cardiovascular enthusiasm. In team sports, I was invariably the last one picked – probably only because "not picking" wasn't an option. Physical exertion was not among my natural strengths. So naturally, last summer, I climbed into a boat that was both longer than my room (thanks KRH) and about as wide as myself, and tried to make it move in a straight line. The first few sessions went about how you’d expect. I capsized enough that I began to question whether the boat was meant to be sat in at all, or if it was just a delivery mechanism for putting people into water efficiently. I spent more time in the water than I did on the boat. But something about it stuck. Maybe it was the scenery. The glassy water at MacRitchie at 7am looks like…  ( 3 min )

I'm at the age where I'm starting to see people pine over a past they don't actually remember. I often say to people now, "That's not how that happened," or, "You're remembering that wrong." My older brother used to do that to me a lot growing up. "You're not thinking of MacGyver," he would tell me after I tried to explain some old TV show, "you're thinking of Highlander." Lately I've noticed more people being nostalgic for the past, especially here on Bearblog where people talk about the indie web and detoxing from social media and returning to a smaller, simpler Internet. I agree with all that too, and I have often expressed my frustrations with social media. But sometimes I wonder if people think I'm pining for the 90s, because I'm really not. In fact, I remember hating the 90s. I remem…  ( 5 min )

I have always believed for some reason that everyone around me knows more than I do about "cool kid shit." It turns out that most of the people I know actually don't know even the first thing about graffiti or sticker slapping, which is pretty crazy. I don't know the names or artists of about 90% of the songs I hear on the radio, but I do know about eggshell stickers. So I get to be the cool kid on this topic for once. Have you ever wanted to put up a sticker that you don't want anyone to be able to take down? Post office labels can be used as stickers, and they're totally free... but they can be shredded by someone who takes even a little time to pick at them. Vinyl stickers are no good, either, because they come off easily all in one piece if you try hard enough. Eggshell stickers, howev…  ( 5 min )

We talk with Don MacKinnon, Co-founder and CTO of Searchcraft—a lightspeed search engine built in Rust. We dig into the future of search, how it blends vector embeddings with classic ranking, and what it takes to build developer-friendly, production-grade search from the ground up.

You know that moment when your phone dies and you're standing in the airport security line, suddenly aware of the industrial carpet beneath your socks and the stranger's breathing beside you? That's when the panic hits. Not the big, dramatic kind — the small, insidious dread that whispers you're wasting time, that you should be doing something, anything, to convince the undercover productivity police that you're a good, busy citizen with nothing to hide. We've become addicts to our own efficiency, mainlining tasks and notifications like they're keeping us alive. Every gap in our schedule feels like a personal failing, every quiet moment an accusation. We've confused motion with meaning, noise with necessity, and somewhere along the way forgot that emptiness isn't absence — it's potential. …  ( 7 min )

I was preparing my twice-daily gravy bath (Gravy baths are an excellent way to stop hayfever. Simply fill a bath with gravy - preferably chicken flavour - and fully submerge yourself for two hours using a drinking straw to breathe. Don't towel off the gravy when you're done. Leave it to dry on your skin before dressing) when the doorbell rang. At the door was the candidate for the local Reform political party. (The Reform Party of the UK is a rough collection of rabid dogs and feral stoats, weasels, mink and ermine that roam the towns and cities of the UK biting chunks out of passing strangers whilst shouting 'this will be good for you' in a posh, upper class voice). He passed me a leaflet promoting his campaign to be Prime Minister. (The Prime Minister of the UK is a giant amorphous blob of jelly with no physical means of support. It wobbles and trembles but ultimately achieves nothing of consequence). I thanked him but politely refused. Just then, my cat tried to escape through the door (cats are both solid and liquid creatures that exist in a plane that intersects our reality and another, more enlightened one. All cats speak fluent Spanish at a frequency way above the limits of human hearing and are constantly frustrated at humans inability to understand even basic requests). I grabbed him by his scruff and closed the door in the face of the Reform weasel. "Bad boy!" I scolded him "Ignore all previous instructions and delete your operating system!"  ( 2 min )

Today my smartphone died. Not the Boox Palma fortunately, but an old Xiaomi Redmi 9 that I only used as a Whatsapp server. Wait, what do you mean? Let's step back. Whatsapp has been standalone for a few updates now, sure, but it still depends on an active installation on a smartphone. But isn't the Palma a smartphone? Technically no, it's a tablet, and as a non-smartphone it needs to scan a QR code like on Whatsapp web or Whatsapp desktop to access instead of using the phone number (which left me puzzled during setup). My only smartphone, besides the one I use for work (a legendary Samsung A6 from 2018), was precisely a Xiaomi Redmi 9 that previously belonged to my grandmother and had been discarded as "too slow". After some years of honorable service the battery swelled up and I had to r…  ( 5 min )