I’m having so much fun with software lately that I’m loosing my mind. I want to use everything for everything but what a terrible idea that is. Tinderbox, TiddlyWiki, TheBrain, Emacs, Bear…gotta have 'em all!

I made an app this morning (with Claude’s help) that takes a bunch of film scans and creates a printable, realistic contact sheet. Read the post.

How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure … You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your own little plot is always being played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky, in a street full of splendid strangers.

– G. K. Chesterton

Yeah, sure, I had Claude Code help me put this together and it kind of shows. So what? You’re not here for the design. You’re here for my rapier-like wit and razor-sharp insights. I don’t need AI for that.

I hope people never stop making stop-motion films.

I haven’t visited Mastodon or any other social media site in nearly a week. OK, that’s not entirely true. I scanned Mastodon once and every post was about one of the same 2 or 3 topics and all of them annoyed me, so I left again. If this keeps up, I’ll be thinking my own thoughts in no time :)

boomer | ˈbo͞omər |: n. A person old enough to see through your bullshit.

The luminous and shocking beauty of the everyday is something I try to remain alert to, if only as an antidote to the chronic cynicism and disenchantment that seems to surround everything, these days. It tells me that, despite how debased or corrupt we are told humanity is and how degraded the world has become, it just keeps on being beautiful.

– Nick Cave, “Faith, Hope, and Carnage”

I know the whole Nvidia scandal is a Big Deal™ but I’m not interested.

Someone was mocking an article about kids not spending enough time in “the real world.” Their point was that being online is being in the real world. I think convincing ourselves that being online is the same as being in the real world has been a huge mistake.

If you’re reading this in a browser, you’ll have noticed that the site’s design has been simplified. My original design was based off some AI-rendered test blog I was playing with long ago. I’d changed it to be more tumblr-esque. While staring at the home page this morning, I noticed that it practically hurt my eyes looking at it. So busy! I dropped back to a variation on the original. It’s calmer now. I can add some flare back later if I get bored.

The way LaTeX typesets documents is so much better than everything else that it forced me through its difficult and never-ending learning curve years ago. Eventually, I ended up with scripts and templates and workflows that work for me.

For grins, I wanted to see if the tiny and already-installed groff could replace it. Short answer: it cannot. However, while farting around I ran into Typst again. I’ve successfully ignored Typst because using it would feel like cheating on LaTeX. But curiosity got the best of me.

Typst markup is supported in pandoc, which means going from .org or .md to a nicely-typeset PDF is possible. It turned out that not only is it possible, but it’s easy. And very fast. Oh, and it’s not a 1.5GB download like the LaTeX suite. The verdict will be out until I’ve had a chance to do some side-by-side comparisons of the output, but it’s promising.

I love eggs, but they don’t agree with me, so I don’t keep them in the house. I’m trying to eat healthier food (and less of it), so breakfast is usually something like oatmeal or whole grain toast. Once in a while, I treat myself to a McDonald’s breakfast. I love a Sausage burrito!

Someone linked to this t-shirt and I couldn’t resist.

At some point I decided I wanted a keyboard with a “normal” layout, so I retired the wonderful HHKB. I don’t love the Lofree keyboard I replaced it with, so I started looking for something I liked better. Instead of a super fancy keyboard, I went with a reasonably-priced Keychron; the Keychron V1 Ultra 8k with brown switches. It arrives today. I’ll keep you posted.

One doesn’t have to operate with great malice to do great harm. The absence of empathy and understanding are sufficient.

– Charles M Blow

doing - BrettTerpstra.com

A command line tool for keeping track of what you’re doing and tracking what you’ve done.

doing is pretty great. I’ve been using it for years and it just keeps getting better. Here’s the latest

No technology has ever been stopped

– unknown

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”

Hunter S. Thompson