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 )

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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 )

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 )

Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): Emacs.si (in person): Emacs.si meetup #7 2025 (v #živo) https://dogodki.kompot.si/events/0fb2dc00-8cea-4365-a6ca-ab1a3e76f0ee Tue Jul 8 1900 CET OrgMeetup (virtual) https://orgmode.org/worg/orgmeetup.html Wed Jul 9 0900 America/Vancouver - 1100 America/Chicago - 1200 America/Toronto - 1600 Etc/GMT - 1800 Europe/Berlin - 2130 Asia/Kolkata – Thu Jul 10 0000 Asia/Singapore Atelier Emacs Montpellier (in person) https://lebib.org/date/atelier-emacs Fri Jul 11 1800 Europe/Paris EmacsSF (in person): coffee.el in SF https://www.meetup.com/emacs-sf/events/308773527/ Sat Jul 12 1100 America/Los_Angeles 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…  ( 3 min )

in high school, i identified as a trans guy. this is something i don't bring up nowadays (some 8 years later, wow). not out of shame or regret, but because i don't know what it means about me now. i never connected with being a woman, not then and still not now. whether this is a result of my environment, or simply the way that i was made, who's to say... i circled back on that question a million times over the past decade. my 14 year old self thought they knew who they were with the utmost certainty, and they were only more certain when people said "it's just a phase". i'll prove them wrong, i thought. maybe it was 'just a phase' but does that take away the validity of how i identified all those years ago? does my operating in a straight relationship delete my prior gender identity? does my prior gender identity negate my current relationship? all of these pieces of me can co-exist. i can continue to be uncertain or never-knowing of who i am, today and maybe even when i'm 70 years old. i've sought certainty in myself since i was a kid, and that has never been my path. my path is not linear nor does it make sense to everyone. but with age has come the understanding that i will never be the perfect image of a woman or a man. i am so many things outside of my lack of gender identity. i am a creative, a student, a lover, a writer, a leftist, a passion-seeker. i want to prioritze the things i am certain about, not suffer over those i may never have answers to.  ( 3 min )

So I have been working with garbage collected programming languages mostly. I have written decent amount of C++ but that was during my uni days when I was solving LeetCode problems and college assignments. Recently I started learning Rust and here is my understanding of what’s happening beneath the abstractions. You can see this as a blog where I guide you through what’s memory and how memory is allocated in Rust. This is what I understood so if you think I’ve written something wrong or can be improved please dm me on X/Twitter. Before that WTF is Memory? Ok so consider memory as a massive array where each element can hold 8 bits of data. This data is nothing but an address. Address | Value (in binary) ---------|------------------ 0x1000 | 01110011 (115 in decimal, 's' in ASCII) 0x1001…  ( 5 min )

(This post has been loitering in my drafts for the past week. I recurringly circled around it, reworking sentences until they lost meaning. I even considered deleting the whole thing. Even now, I am certain it reads incoherently, but I accepted that incoherence might be the only way to write this.) A month ago, I made the decision to quit antidepressants. I hesitate typing this, because I don't want it misconstrued as a brave, triumphant declaration. I'm not writing this from the other side, waving encouragement back to those still struggling. Because I myself am still struggling, scared out of my damn mind. What does it mean when, for the past year, my ability to function was sustained by 20 mg of something I can barely pronounce? Medication steadied me, but I started wondering if the sca…  ( 3 min )

Justin Searls describes the "full-breadth developer" and why they'll win because AI, Cloudflare comes up with a way publishers can charge crawlers for access, Hugo Bowne-Anderson explains why building AI agents fails so often, the Job Worth Calculator tells you if your job is worth the grind, and Sam Lambert announces PlanetScale for Postgres.

Woke up early this Monday morning to work so I would have time to clock out for a doctor's appointment. I wasn't sure about the appointment time and Mom didn't have it on her calendar so to confirm the appointment time we called into the doctor's office. Nobody picked up the first few times — only an automated out of office message — but after the sixth time the receptionist informed us that the doctor was in fact not in today. They did not even call us to let us know. This is one of a series of strange, less than stellar experiences I've had with the medical industry of late. On Saturday morning I waited for my dentist for the better part of an hour and left shaken after he made brisk, painful work of my teeth. "Your gums aren't healthy," he'd said. "You need to floss more." I do in fact …  ( 5 min )

🗓️ // June 29 - July 5, 2025 A mixture of things this week from memories, to a little bit of self-reflection with my Week Notes, to wedding prep. 🏠 My parents have officially accepted an offer to my family’s second home / beach house in the East Coast. It’s bittersweet because it’s yet another one of our homes we’re letting go, alongside the memories made there. Upside to all of this is that as my parents are going through some of the stuff to get rid of ahead of the closing, they’re finding gems like photos and memorabilia I haven’t thought of in a while. Excited to get my hands on them. 🌎 Some really heartbreaking news coming out of this (US) country this week. We should be used to it by now, right? There’s always something that makes my heart break ever since the current administrati…  ( 8 min )

Thought this way of framing recent changes could be nice for a check-in every now and then. What I have stopped doing A while ago, I stopped paying for ==Discord==. I have wanted to quit for over a year now, but I was on a plan that didn't exist anymore and was grandfathered into1, which made it harder to let go because I knew I couldn't resubscribe to that stuff anymore. The subscriptions ends in September because I was on a yearly plan. I have cancelled my ==Spotify== a few days ago. I am not really much of a music person (compared to others, at least) and the recent news about Ek's investments gave me the final kick to just cancel. Again and again, I felt like it was missing features it didn't have but should, and whose suggestions were online in their forums as 'Under consideration' si…  ( 7 min )

aka: teenage woes. TRIGGER WARNINGS: mentions of transphobia, gender dysphoria, suicide, and sexual assault. I graduated from high school last month in June, and while I felt somewhat triumphant, I found myself detached from the whole experience. There was one half of me that wanted to celebrate the culmination of years of hard work, the bittersweet goodbye to my teenage years, and the march towards adulthood. The other half of me felt like I was finally getting permission to leave a party that was fun for a few hours before I grew sick of it. During my graduation ceremony, I performed "Somewhere Only We Know" by Keane on the flute with a group of friends. Before rehearsal, we ate pizza in the dressing room, fucked around with hair clay, and struggled with tying our ties. I walked across t…  ( 8 min )

Most days I say I’m tired. But that’s not the truth. I’m not tired. I’m distracted. Worn out from bouncing between screens, noise, low-value tasks, and the constant itch to check *something*. I confuse mental clutter with exhaustion. But deep down, I know better. When I cut the noise—even for a few minutes—I remember: I’ve still got fuel in the tank. The work isn’t killing me. The distractions are. The phone, the scrolling, the multitasking—none of it builds anything real. So I turn it off. I sit with the discomfort. And I get back to what matters. “The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.” — Bruce Lee  ( 2 min )

Why I am writing this? Sometimes I’d leave an event unsure if I connected with anyone—or if anyone noticed I was there. I’d show up, blend in, talk just enough, smile just enough, and then disappear. The next morning, I’d wonder if anyone even remembered I was there. This is what ==often happens to introverts trying to network==. It’s not that we lack social skills. It’s that we’re playing the game without a system that fits our wiring. I’m writing this blog as a reminder — a checklist for myself or anyone who relates — for the next professional gathering, party, or group event. A guide on what I now plan to do differently, step by step. Before we begin: credit to the book How to Talk to Anyone by Leil Lowndes, which gave me this structure. Before the event: shrink the unknowns Walking in…  ( 4 min )

Hi, and welcome to my blog, called aeryn.me. My name is Aeryn and this is just a short intro and welcome to any new readers. And a heads-up for existing readers. First up, if you would like to follow this blog in your feed reader, please go visit my Follow page for links and info. Hopefully, if you were already following, you will have found me ok. I have a few posts and thoughts in the pipeline but I will leave them for later. But anyway. Thank you again for stopping by. This is my first proper post here since I stopped using Micro.blog. What is this blog? It’s just whatever, really. It’s mainly a personal blog. It has been a collection of notes, thoughts, writings, snaps, and clips. Just daily life stuff. And it will continue like this. I try to be honest and authentic about who I am, where I’ve come from, where I want to be, and who I want to be. I often find myself self-censoring and I realise I am not expressing myself in the way that I want to. I am expecting to be writing a bit more and switching to more longer posts in the future. But we will see. The Platform So, a few months ago, I began migrating over to my Bear Blog account. First, I created a photoblog, and then began to build the beginnings of this personal blog. Exporting and moving content in from elsewhere has been much more laborious and challenging than I imagined. So in the end I decided to just make the jump and continue to migrate posts afterwards. This means that this blog is going to be a mess for some time to come. I will continue to publish old posts whilst I write new ones. And hope it is not too confusing for anyone. So my apologies in advance. I will do all I can to not spam anyone following the feed, or my socials. But things might break a bit. I am using the base Bear Blog theme. It’s simple and looks fine. I expect to be tweaking and changing it as I go along. That’s it. Already far too long a Hello post. Thanks for reading. See you around :)  ( 3 min )

I have an email address I use to sign up for stuff that I know will generate junk. I've had it for years. I rarely look at it. Today I had a 👀 This week someone has clearly used the wrong email address as I received a copy of a Doctors sick note excusing the guy from work for 90 days, and detailing the issue. The HR team have then replied to it acknowledging it, and then a further email enclosing forms to claim enhanced sick pay on their health insurance. I was going to ignore it, but I think I need to let them know. The odd thing is, it seems to be the guy himself who has it wrong. He sent the initial sick note from his work email to HR, copying in his private email (my junk email address!!) 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 )

CW: sexual assault, US politics For the past two days I’ve been basically bedridden with the worst menstrual cramps I’ve ever had. The pain was bad enough last night that I woke up at 4:00am unable to do anything except curl up in the fetal position and cry. Is this just what happens when you turn 35? It’s something I will talk to a doctor about, for sure. The good news is I was at least able to walk around the apartment a bit today. But that’s not the point of this post. The point is that being in this condition means I haven’t been able to work much on my creative projects in these past couple of days. Only two days of this and I already feel like I’m going insane. It’s not because of some weird workaholism or capitalist notion of productivity that I feel this way. It’s because every day…  ( 6 min )

Everyone usually sets a goal, whether it’s losing 10 kilograms, finishing a project by Friday, or climbing the corporate ladder. Goals provide a structured roadmap to success, thriving in controlled, predictable conditions like training for a marathon or preparing for an exam. However, life rarely follows a straight line. It’s messy, unpredictable, and full of curveballs. The traditional goal-setting approach, often rooted in the debunked 1953 Yale study myth can leave us rigid and frustrated when reality doesn’t align. Setting Constraints A better system exists: setting constraints. Inspired by innovators like John Boyd) and Richard Feynman, this method embraces limitations to foster creativity, adaptability, and meaningful progress. The allure of goal-setting lies in its promise of clari…  ( 3 min )

Walking won’t solve everything. But it won’t make anything worse. That’s more than you can say for most things we do when we’re stressed, tired, or lost. You walk to get out of your head. To breathe. To let your mind drift without crashing. You don’t walk to fix the problem—you walk because you need space from it. The world doesn’t look so cruel when you’re moving through it one step at a time. You notice things. You remember you’re alive. So when in doubt—go for a walk. “Solvitur ambulando.” It is solved by walking. — Diogenes  ( 2 min )

So, I've been working on getting ready to go back to full study mode, since I finally have the free time needed to spend a good 3 hours studying every day, but before that I decided to make a simple Japanese Compendium with all the resources I've been using, testing, playing around with, and my reasoning on why they're good, how to use them, and more. So yeah, there you have it! In the navigation area of my blog, you can find the new Japanese Compendium tab, right between the Blog and Guestbook tabs. It's nothing professional, but it might be useful for someone in the future. It's always good to have more resources to refer to when learning something. This is just my little grain of sand to contribute. It's simple, and I'm also a beginner in Japanese, but it's better than nothing! If you have any comments, please feel free to leave a message in my Guestbook. Don't feel the need to be formal, and let me know if you want me to delete the message afterwards. That's all! I hope to see you again soon! ★ ◀ ▲  ( 2 min )

I've been really enjoying going to the zine library as often as they're open, and have scoured my way through most of their perzine collection, now I'm onto lit zines and art zines. After making several one off art zines, some bordering into a perzine-ish territory, I've decided I think I finally want to start a serial perzine! I'm currently developing a little art piece that I'll feature in my inaugural issue, but as it's dependent on something developing in real time, I'll need to wait to put that in last. Anyway, my point of shouting this out is that I believe that I've really come to terms with my artistic direction, at least in this period of my life. I know for sure that I never want to sell my work, however most of what I like to do involves getting things out in public, and into peoples hands. I think I'd love to start a rapport of trading with people on here, and anywhere. For the sake of the mutual sharing of knowledge! By trading, I mean that I'll send a copy of my zine + maybe a little letter as I can't stop myself from writing if I tried, free as long as something finds it's way in my mailbox as well! This could be zines, postcards, a letter, literally anything. I could even trade pdfs for email back, lol. I'm thinking this might be my entryway into finally paying for bear so I can post the cover once it's ready. I'm curious to gauge this platform's interest in something like this, as I know there are many fellow zine creators here as well!  ( 2 min )

It’s been a little over a year since I implemented dark mode on my blog based on the user’s system preference. Essentially, if your system is set to dark mode, you’ll see the dark mode version of my site, and vice versa. This was done by setting color variables like this, and then referencing it where needed. :root { --background-color: #fff; --heading-color: #222; --text-color: #444; --link-color: #006C67; @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) { :root { --background-color: #0C1821; --heading-color: #f5f3f4; --text-color: #ffffff; --link-color: #90e0ef; It’s a fairly simple implementation, and it worked for me for quite some time. However, I eventually realized that often times, I want to override my system setting. That’s when I decided I actually want …  ( 8 min )

Jeff Cayley joins Adam to talk about selling mountain bikes all over the planet and making some of the best outdoor and mountain bike gear, parts, and accessories you can buy. They have a killer YouTube channel as well.

June 2025: 🖼️💦🪴🪡🪡🙃🍦🚲🪡🍪😴🍦🚲🥔👴👰🍓🌧️🦕🌡🥧😷🌡🍓🎵🪡🏊🏺🐸🪡 2025-06-30-04 June 2025 #monthly #review Text from sketch June 2025 2025-06-30-04 playdates, splash pads, sewing, Stardew 🖼️ art gallery 💦 splash pad 🪴 jump rope, seedlings 🪡 lots of sewing 🪡 sewed a hat 🙃 upside down with friends 🍦 radishes, ice cream 🚲 biked through rain 🪡 storage bag 🍪 cracker 😴 tough bedtime 🍦 ice cream bar 🚲 friend delivery 🥔 potato print, pizza party 👴 visited grandparents 👰 wedding dress in Stardew 🍓 hulled lots of strawberries 🌧️ rainy day, golden walnuts 🦕 ROM 🌡 sick day for A+ 🥧 apple pies 😷 my turn to be sick 🌡 fever, naps 🍓 strawberries, lettuce, report card 🎵 stayed up for music homework 🪡 aprons 🏊 last day of school, first day o…  ( 24 min )

I generally have a good job. My boss is great, most of my coworkers are good, I am good at the actual tasks, and I can set my own pace and priorities (within a limit). It pays reasonably well for my needs. But there are things that really exhaust me about it. Let me complain today. Every 6 months, we have to change our Windows password. I am (among other things) tech support for one of our databases that is logged into (manually) via Windows login data. So every 6 months, I get panicked calls and emails that they can’t access the database anymore. They never learn, they never remember. It’s happening right now! There are employees that blatantly lie and don’t care for the consequences. Yesterday for example, someone called me because they couldn’t get into the database and I helped them. …  ( 8 min )

There's something almost obscene about our relationship with missing out. We've turned it into performance art. We catalog everything we're not doing, not having, not becoming. As if absence were a currency we could spend on anything meaningful. The cruelest joke is that missing out isn't an actual problem. The problem is how we've weaponized it against our own human experience. We stand ankle-deep in the river, refusing to notice the water because somewhere upstream there might be a waterfall. We've become surveyors of our own dehydration. I watch people scroll through lives they're not living, amassing evidence of their own incompleteness. The investment they didn’t make. The startup they didn’t join. The newsletter they didn’t start, the career pivot, the relationship that might have be…  ( 7 min )

Thorsten Ball returned to Sourcegraph to work on Amp because he believes being able to talk to an alien intelligence that edits your code changes everything. On this episode, Thorsten joins us to discuss exactly how coding agents work, recent advancements in AI tooling, Amp's uniqueness in a sea of competitors, the divide between believers and skeptics, and more.