This idea jumped in my head when I pondered my blog and it set up a whirlwind of thoughts. Time to get them out of my head and on my blog. The reason for writing this list is that when words just don’t want to get posted, focusing on the who may help you to write. In random order, I write my blog for: myself. My aim is to figure out ideas, to share my discoveries and my creative path. Also, to spread joy! It also helps me become a better writer because I focus on writing daily and that means…

We’ve been inundated lately with AI-written press releases about AI-built tools and websites focused on beer and pubs. Who is asking for this? When we say inundated, it’s probably been one per week for the past couple of months. And we’re not the only ones who’ve noticed this: Do not in a million years send me a solicitious AI email asking me to endorse your beer guide website. Definitely do not do this if said website is riddled with wrong and/or outdated AI-generated info and covered in ugly…

After the highs of Amsterdam and the exhibition last Saturday, I naturally feel a little low. While we are on the lowlands, here’s the soundtrack of this week’s update: For the last two weeks, I’ve only posted photologs as updates. I’ll cover minor happenings in this week’s update, so there’ll be some small fragments. What have I been watching and reading lately? A friend recommended Agustina Bazterrica’s Tender is the Flesh (Cadáver Exquisito) to me. It was a short book, so I finished it in…

Hacker News (aka HN) is a link aggregator where “hackers”1 gather to discuss technology, politics, and anything which “good hackers would find interesting”. HN is a means by which its host, prominent startup incubator Y Combinator, projects soft power, promotes startups it funds, and feeds people with ideas into its incubation program. Hacker News is one of the most popular forums for discussing technology online today – perhaps the biggest.HN also has a pronounced political bias, which is…

I came across a post recently from a person I've side-eyed for a very long time. For obvious reasons, I won't be linking to the blog owned by this particular weasel as to not grant them even more attention than what they clearly so desperately didn't get from their family, but IYKYK. If this gets de-listed, then so be it. I've aired my bitch to this blogger before, their main blog last I talked about it was basically just regurgitating some lukewarm event and then asking 'wElL wHaT dO yOu…

What do you think the world has too much of, right now? There are probably a lot of answers that come to mind. Too many bills, too much being asked of us, too many stupid and dangerous people in politics, too many plates we need to constantly keep spinning. We are overwhelmed by how overwhelmed we are, and we are exhausted by our exhaustion. We are sick and tired of being sick and tired. A few days ago, I shared the thought that You need to build what you think the world needs more of. Everyone…

man starts blog. man's blog different. man writes real truth on blog. man understand all tricks brain plays, all illusions. man shrug nonchalantly at stupid things like stress and emotions and love. man writes Brennan tried and failed to be healer and saviour. man right. man writes about swede robert birming, his stupid positivity. how does robert not know all positivity is false? man helpfully informs the world of this. man doing service on his blog. man create interesting and subversive…

My cousin sister Swathi Murali has her first peer-reviewed paper out, expected in print in the December 2026 edition of Forensic Chemistry. Excerpt from the abstract: Electrical tapes may be submitted to forensic laboratories for analysis concerning their utilization in the construction of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). However, post-blast tape specimens collected at an explosion site are seldom pristine and may undergo physical and chemical alterations that can affect the outcome of a…

What’s the first song you’d play at a party? I’ve already suggested the track that popped into my head for this prompt. That’s how it starts, we go back to your house… And to be fair you can’t really go wrong with LCD Soundsystem to get things started (literally). Casting around for other ideas, I asked my wife who, without pause, suggested this ABBA track. For me, it’s a middle of the evening one, a pick up, a reset to get people dancing, but that’s my old party DJ head at play. Her reasoning…

Mentally I get jammed up all the time, every day I feel overwhelmed by work and tasks. Whenever I want to do a deep work, I find my mind wondering. I could not concentrate on the task and sometimes I do not even know what task that I should focus on. Step 1: Write it all down Whenever I feel stuck with work or life, I would do a brain dump onto a piece of paper. I write whatever that comes into my head. I do not care whether it is important or not important. I just write it all down. While…

The nice thing about keeping a blog is that I can say at precisely 9:51am, Wednesday 5th February 2025, I discovered that macOS 15.3 had enabled a feature that was phoning home every 15 minutes with personal data. And that I said “no” and turned it off.At the time Apple were generous enough to provide a setting to disable this feature.Although they hid the second part deeper, because why should saying “no” be easy?Last week I succumbed to Apple’s harassment and upgraded macOS 15 to 27. I only…

Tech companies and their executives have, broadly, moved to align themselves with investors and adopted a posture of, often, disdain or outright hostility towards their users and employees. If tech companies don't value you, why provide value to them? If they back political positions hostile to your interests, why not return that hostility? I'm not arguing for boycotts, I know that people are bound to different platforms for different, compelling reasons. What I am arguing for is that, given…

After more than two decades glued to screens (computer and mobile), my eyes have started to complain. Nothing dramatic, just the familiar fatigue after long sessions in front of the computer. I have always been particular about my colour schemes, I believe that anyone who stares in front of a computer for long hours should be, and for a couple of years, Solarized Dark was my loyal companion. I’ve decided to try something new, not because I don’t like Solarized, but just to try and adapt my eyes…

Over the years, I’ve had many battles about accessibility ‘modes’, and why they’re a terrible idea. That’s another article for another day, but one thing ‘mode’ advocates often come back with is that we already have modes for things like colour and motion, so why not just add more? Our users have already told their operating system how they want things to work, whether that’s darker colours, more contrast, or less movement. We should respect those preferences as they browse the web. The browser…

Use Johnny Decimal, set up a Zettelkasten, implement the PARA method, buy a Bullet Journal... none of it matters if you never do the work. I often read about people setting up these elaborate systems to save time. It only took you 3 weeks to set up, but think about how much time you will save going forward! It's bollocks. You're spending hours tweaking plugins, tags, and folder trees to avoid a five-minute task you don't want to do. All it does is give you the cheap dopamine hit of feeling…

The Grounds is a small chain of coffee shops in Sydney with over-the-top, very Instagrammable decor. Since it’s not too far from Sydney’s airport I like going there for a “bye Emma, see you next time” breakfast with my Mum before I hop on a plane back to Tokyo. Their original store in Alexandria opened in 2012, while their Coffee Factory is a more recent addition, having opened in 2024. It reminds me a little of the Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Tokyo which integrates all the coffee roasting…

Pixel Area Check out this cool project to feature independent blogs! And see if you can find this website in the grid!

I've been writing technical tutorials on my website since I started it last November, but this thread asking about static site generators for beginners on 32-bit Café made me realize I've never made a proper tutorial regarding SSGs from the ground-up basics. This post initially began as a reply to that thread, but I realized I had enough to say to fill an entire blog post. I hope this is helpful to anybody who has been interested in static-site generators but has found trying them out to be…

Roll a D6.If you rolled “1”:Read the article.Find and quote the weakest sentence. Must be tangential to the main thesis.Say “This makes me not want to read the article.”If you rolled “2”:Do not read the article.SF Bay Area humble brag: “This reminds me of the time I met Steve Jobs...”If you rolled “3”:Open with “I have a doctorate in point-set topology. This is utter nonsense.”Fail to explain the concept correctly.If you rolled “4”:“You no longer need to pay for software. I just spin up an…

[Epistemic Status: Speculative unifying theory of biology.] I don’t know about you, but I greatly resent having to be a biological organism and subject to all the poor engineering and design decisions that entails. This has many manifestations. A recent one is often wondering, why is the entire body such garbage except for the liver? Take the kidneys. Once you reach adulthood, they start to slowly decay. You can damage them through not-obviously-dangerous stuff like taking too much vitamin D or…

This whole circus at unstory.eu has been running for over three months. I had a website before. Maybe five people read it. This shit is read by maybe 500. It changes nothing. There is nothing to sell here. No service, no product, no subscription, no ideology, no data, no audience to convert into money. So what exactly am I doing? Playing a clown for free. There are practically two ways to exist online. You extract something from other people, or other people extract something from you. Money.…

So for about fifteen years this has been my TV/movie watching sitch — I’m over here, and the computer that plays the stuff is over there *points at bookcase*. And I control this with this handy li’l keyboard. Now, when I first started this thing, I went through about half a dozen keyboards until I found this one. Most mini keyboards have a pitiful range — like a metre at most. But this one (which is not Bluetooth, but uses a USB dongle) works pretty well. That is, normally it has, like, a 98%…

Exploiters took advantage of a legacy approvals bug in an old payment processor called Limit Break, which the platform had stopped using in late 2024. The bug affected listings on Magic Eden's EVM marketplace, which the company had shut down earlier this year. The attackers were able to steal numerous NFTs, including 10 Meebits, 50 Otherdeeds, 10 World of Women, and 235 Desperate Apewives. Attackers also subsequently stole 660 wETH (~$1.78 million).A whitehat rescue spearheaded by blockchain…

Attention minions raising smaller minions:Have you ever noticed something... off... about Peppa Pig's nose? I only ask because I keep getting Peppa Pig cakes over here, and they're surprisingly, er, adult for a kids' cake, if you know what I mean. Admit it: if you'd never seen Peppa Pig before this would make you spit out your Diet Coke. I mean, what is that lizard doing? Granted, if you do know what Peppa looks like, that's not too bad.[sing-song] BUT THISSSS IS! Flashing Flops Of Fleshy…

Once upon a time, I ran across an experimental project called TabFS, which mounts browser tabs as a filesystem. This seemed like such a cool idea! Ever since, I have wanted a way to interact with tabs programmatically. But the main thing I’ve wanted to do is be able to grab the URLs of some or all of my open tabs, and paste them into a text file. Each time I have looked into this before, it hasn’t been possible without installing an extension. And I don’t like installing extensions. I often…

I've more and more become passionate about trying different fiberarts, and it makes me want to be an advocate for crafting, especially when the world overwhelms. I'm a long time crocheter and knitter, and lately I'm adding more and more to my arsenal. I'm learning a lot of (sometimes ancient) crafts, and I love it. There's nothing more relaxing than working with wool or cotton (I refuse to use synthetic fibres), making something with my hands. It keeps me focused on the moment and not the noise…

I remember at some point growing up, I saw Elizabeth Holmes on magazine covers and spread across the internet as the "new Steve Jobs". I was fascinated to finally see a woman in that position; I think the #girlboss era wasn't quite there yet, and I welcomed a role model in spaces that were usually male-dominated. I kinda liked that she seemed very focused on her craft and the tech, while dressing in a more understated, but professional way. Instead of coming across like other "successful" women…

You heard me right. No more zero days.Shared by Reddit user u/ryans01 over a decade ago (can't believe I've just come across this concept), the simple premise is that a day where you've not worked on a goal or target is a zero day:What's a zero day? A zero day is when you don't do a single fucking thing towards whatever dream or goal or want or whatever that you got going on.I've had a lot of those zero days. Whether it was trying to learn python, get out walking everyday, becoming less…

I found a funky little used bookstore in my hometown recently. It might be my new favorite. There's a big sci-fi section which has a great selection of those mass market paperbacks I love so much. Usually on my first round through a bookstore I'll make a point not to consult the to-read list on my phone. Instead, I'll just take each title as it passes by, absent-minded and free of agenda. So I'm carrying on this way until I pass a copy of Mindscan by Robert J. Sawyer. I've been meaning to read…

For a year or so I have been struggling with my relationship with my phone. I am on it far too much, doing far too much of nothing. Hours have passed, and I have achieved nothing. I have learned nothing. A Slippery Slope It starts with a notification; a message, an email, a shipping alert. Then, I notice that I have other notifications that need my attention. Finally, I open Reddit, or YouTube, and I am sucked into the rapids of mindless endless scrolling. Why did I open my phone? Where did the…