Last 24 hours

[DREAM] The missing ticket

 I was at an airport and I was late to board my plane. I had my phone out and I was frantically looking for my airplane ticket. Every time I thought I found it I would show it to the clerk who invariably proceeded to tell me that what I was showing them wasn't a valid ticket, which threw me again into a panic as I looked for it. I was flustered and stressed that I wouldn't be able to get to my flight in time. I felt like an idiot for not having had my boarding pass ready beforehand.


I think all of this happened in the check-in part, so before I was actually inside the gates area. I get the impression that I was going to travel by myself for work reasons, and losing my flight meant I had to explain to my boss why, since the company had paid for it; though I wasn't really that worried about this as I was about not finding the ticket.

It's an interesting dream. Airplanes take you places, and I interpret them to be a symbol of growth. The check-in booth is important since it is a liminal area, representing the threshold between normal life and access to the mechanisms of change and travel.

My misplacing of the tickets is strange, since I'm usually quite well organized in these matters, not to mention that technology makes most of the work for us nowadays. This means that perhaps this is an important symbol here. The ticket is sort of my authorization to undergo the process of transformation. Maybe the fact that I thought I had it but can't find it suggests I'm not yet internally convinced that I'm actually ready to undergo this transformation, even though I desire it?

Another interesting symbol is the clerk. He stoutly keeps rejecting my attempts at authentication, over and over. Maybe he can be seen as a king of critic here? I wonder though if he's being a protector (protecting me from something I'm not ready to experience), or whether he's a negative influence (sabotaging my attempt at self-growth). Maybe he can actually be both at the same time? The strict, unfriendly attitude seems to suggest the latter, but the fact that I don't view him as the enemy (I'm my own enemy here) suggests it can also be a bit of the former. Though I think it's more negative than positive, as the attitude does seem to be saying You're probably not good enough.

A core conclusion that comes to mind here is that I might be stuck in some sort of loop. I know I have the tickets, but my standards for allowing myself to grow are impossibly high.

Meadow

24 Jul 2025 at 16:06

Weeknotes: July 12-18, 2025

 
cellular shades on French door in kitchen nook next to large window with shade covering bottom third
we haven’t had window treatments for either these doors or this window the whole time we’ve lived here and I am stoked

Win of the week: our new shades got installed — and right before our first 90 degree day! they seem to be making a difference 🦾

Looking forward to: I bought a giant flat of mixed berries on Wednesday and am trying to get through them all before they go bad! May involve baked goods 😋🍓🫐

Stuff I did:

  • 4.75 hours consulting — sent off another deliverable — alas they required T&M so I’m shooting myself in the foot with efficiency 🤦‍♀️
  • 4.5 hours writing — planning out new scenes to write, it’s been a while since I actually got to write new prose so I’m psyched 😄
  • spent Sunday, Monday and Tuesday tidying up the house
  • reorganized closet shelving I’d been using for long-term storage to store hand tools instead… now I need to figure out what to do with the other junk but I’m so happy there’s a home for tools and household backups like lightbulbs and spare filters
  • sorted through the pile of stuff to donate, recycle, and store
  • set up a shelving unit I bought a while back and organized stuff we’re keeping on it
  • did new job admin / paperwork for husband’s new job — still need to choose health insurance
  • attempted to calculate updated withholding numbers and the IRS calculator sucks, so I contacted my tax person… and I actually do owe a lot 😅 so I made a large makeup payment in hopes of avoiding penalties 🤞 (to be fair I was on track until getting the contract revision in June)
  • don’t know how they got in but a ton of houseflies have materialized — husband is ushering out 5-10 every time he’s in the kitchen and somehow there are still more 🙃 also I found a missing wool laundry dryer ball under the sofa when we moved it for the shades installers that appeared to be a breeding ground for moths 😣
  • dropped off a return of three of the five shirts I ordered a few weeks back 🤷‍♀️
  • played Valheim with my husband
  • baked sourdough cream scones
  • walk with my friend when it was no longer an inferno outside
two shelves with stacked, labeled small bins and a tool caddy
yay the hand tools are organized a way that makes sense for me not my parents 😂

Dinners:

  • farfalle + jarred marinara sauce with a splash of cream — boring but edible
  • Thai takeout — coconut shrimp + peanut sauce and rice
  • baked potato with cheddar, sour cream and peas + orange juice
  • leftover Thai
  • box mac and cheese with peas, garlic scapes, leeks, and smoked salmon + Coke
  • pizza beans with leftover marinara (based on) + ciabatta bread + ginger beer (didn’t go 🤷‍♀️)
  • Seattle dogs with caramelized onions + curly fries

Reading:

  • Read Along Came Amor by Alexis Daria, My Demon Hunter by Aurora Ascher, The House of Green, and The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst
  • Finished reading What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund 👍
  • Started reading Rose in Chains by Julie Soto and Pirate Nemesis by Carysa Locke
  • Received Ew, It’s Beautiful by Joshua Barkman

Words I looked up:

Pretty stuff I saw:

New music I listened to:

Website changes:

  • Updated my PHP version because HostGator didn’t do it automatically for my main domain, just for everything else lol 🙄
  • I installed a plugin to limit login attempts and apparently people are just pounding down the doors in here :/ I am eyeing Cloudflare…

Nature notes:

  • hummingbird has been visiting the bee balm several times a day 🥰 I planted it for yooooou!
  • think I saw a Swainson’s thrush on the edge of the yard
three bumblebees crawling on an oblong star thistle flower and a little waspy guy resting on the leaf beside
I prefer growing natives but the bumblebees adore this globe thistle — one day I counted at least five different species of bees and wasps
green blue globe thistles with white spiky collars form a floating sea of flowers dotted with bumblebees
just swarming with pollinators every time we step outside… then the birds go mad for the seed heads come winter
Tracy Durnell

19 Jul 2025 at 04:31
#

Nick Heer asking the right question about Apple suing Jon Prosser:

This multitrillion-dollar company was financially injured by a few YouTube videos showing the redesign of its operating system?

This lawsuit is clearly a threat to future leakers. Apple shouldn’t throw its weight around like this.

Manton Reece

18 Jul 2025 at 22:01

Finding flavor in life

 Me intently rolling out dough on a kitchen counter.
Me baking at age 2.

“It didn’t feel worth it anymore. It took up too much of my life.”

That’s what a customer recently told me during a house inspection, explaining why he’d just resigned from a well-paid, high-ranking position.

I congratulated him and praised his decision. I also shared that I’ve made similar choices in life — ones I’ve never regretted.

It’s so easy to get fixated on coveted roles and impressive salaries. But no amount of money in the world can replace the feeling of true contentment.

This idea applies to most things in life. If prestige is the main ingredient, the flavor will always be lacking. We might get fleeting moments of satisfaction, followed by a bitter aftertaste.

But if we choose the ingredients with heart, and do everything with love, even the simplest “dishes” can create flavors far richer than anything you’d find in a cookbook.

Robert Birming

18 Jul 2025 at 18:42
#
 

A small update to my post from yesterday:

I did one final (really, the last one!) optimization to my network (luckily without new hardware). Instead of letting the new ASUS router do all the networking and QoS, I repurposed one of my GL.iNet Beryl AX routers with vanilla OpenWRT as the main router, doing SQM, DHCP, DNS proxying, and all the other stuff. Now the ASUS is running in Access Point Mode, handling just the mesh WiFi and partly acting as a LAN switch (because the Beryl AX has just one WAN and one LAN port). My bufferbloat is much better (or non-existent), and the Cloudflare Speedtest is showing me “Great” in all categories, even when connected with WiFi to the repeater.

I think I will stay without cake-autorate, but try to tweak the optimal SQM bandwidth limits a bit over the following days.

Interactions & Comments

Jan-Lukas Else

18 Jul 2025 at 17:32
#

Just discovered a wrinkle with our setting to disable fediverse posting. If you @-mention someone in a blog post, Micro.blog sends a copy to that person, so your post will leak out to fediverse servers anyway. Not sure what to do about this.

Manton Reece

18 Jul 2025 at 17:05
#

AI researchers are still mostly on Twitter / X, unfortunately. This thread from OpenAI’s Keren Gu shows the interesting balance between biological safety and not preventing actual biologists and chemists from getting work done. Good to err on the side of not helping people make weapons.

Manton Reece

18 Jul 2025 at 17:01
#

Excited for Portland fans. Not enough players get to spend their whole career with the same team, or at least retire with it. From @cheesemaker:

There are so many terrible things going on in the world but for this one moment I am mainlining the pure joy knowing that Damian Lillard is once again a Portland Trail Blazer. 🏀

Manton Reece

18 Jul 2025 at 15:06
#
 

Did some wildflower picking.

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Colin Devroe

18 Jul 2025 at 12:26

P&B: Alex Sirac

 

This is the 99th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Alex Sirac and their blog, alexsirac.com

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Let's start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

I'm Alex, hi! I'm 31 years old and am from Grenoble, in the French Alps. I've lived in several places over the world and am happy to say that I came back home to my beloved city and mountains.

I work in a tiny tech startup where I manage content, a role that includes a bit of marketing and a lot of technical writing. I love writing and researching things, and the job requires a lot of daily learning.

This aligns perfectly with my favorite pastime: editing Wikipedia, or more accurately, Wikipédia, the French-language version of the website. I've been creating articles for the past eight or nine years, having a great time falling into research rabbit holes and sharing them with anyone who could be interested in them.

What's the story behind your blog?

I had my first blog in the early 2000s as any French pre-teen did. It had butterflies on its homepage and I shared copy-paste tweets and very cringe poems. It chronicled my daily life as I left home in 2009 and lived on my own for two years. Then, I stopped for a few months, and when I came back I was all grown-up and different.

When I came back, it was early 2012, I had just stopped my sports career and wasn't sure what to do with my life. My mental health had been in the dumps for nearly a year and I needed something to live for, I guess. And because in the meantime my brain had been polluted by « personal branding » and because I was terribly deprived of the feeling of success that had been part of my speed skating experience, I decided to become − although the word wasn't quite there yet − an influencer.

So I opened two blogs on wordpress: the first one would be my personal blog, under a fullname dot fr format. The second was called Réussir Mes Études (acing my studies), because I avidly read student hacks blogs in English and had noticed how little of those existed in French. I had stopped skating, I was going to be good at something, and it was going to be school. And everyone would benefit from my Wisdom in the process.

And somehow, that worked. Really well. On my personal blog, I only did translations; on Réussir Mes Études, I shared a mix of personal anecdotes as I was getting out of my slump and going through the highly-competitive process of entering a business school masters' degree in 2013, and of generic advice, racking up an impressive audience. Réussir Mes Études got me my first job, paid for my rent for most of my masters' degree, and made me realize how much I love writing and explaining things. The personal blog disappeared in the background.

In 2016, I got my first digital marketing job and decided to revive the personal blog to « showcase my expertise », because lack of self-confidence has never been what stops me, I guess. I had lost access to the original URL so I created fullname.com, and I started a digital marketing newsletter and consulting blog posts.

I stopped again.

In 2020 or 2021, I was tired of the Internet. Truly exhausted and disgusted, and I was working at a giant online conglomerate and it was destroying my soul. And then I signed up to Mastodon, and COVID hit, and I was really bored and reading all that I could find and I stumbled upon Tracy Durnell's blog. Through her, I found the IndieWeb, met some wonderful people like Sara, and decided once again to get a blog. In the meantime, I had changed my first name, so I created a new blog at fullname.com (never gets old). It's at alexsirac.com and it's still running, with the same CMS as 13 years ago when I started Réussir Mes Études, even though I dabbled with a few others in the past (Django and Pico most of all).

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

I generally have an interesting conversation and get deeply carried away and decide that everyone needs to benefit from my Wisdom, of course!

More seriously − my brain is polluted by years and years of daily Twitter usage. I've stopped a few years ago, but I've been sharing my thoughts online since I was ten years old and I can't really explain where my inspiration comes from because it's just as natural to me as making dinner − probably more, since I've never been very good at feeding myself!

Nowadays, I generally write on my computer, on Obsidian. You can really see at what times I'm busy at work: those are the times when I don't turn my personal computer on over the weekends so that I won't have a ten-day streak of staring at a screen all day, and suddenly I've written nothing for a month.

Every month, I post my monthly recap, and it's the one habit I've managed to keep. I sometimes get really motivated by book reviews, do a whole batch, and then get lazy for another six months.

I do some research, but tend to share opinions more than anything else: if I want to share researched facts, then that goes on Wikipedia, not on my blog. I usually only have one draft, and I'm a relatively quick writer, but I only write when inspiration hits, which is not so often. When it does hit, I'll write pages and pages, that's just fine, but I've never managed to stick to a consistent routine.

I don't get my blog posts proofread unless they might bring me lots of angry comments (like my takes on activism) or they're a translation (I think I'm a decent translator, but I also know after 6 years as a translation editor that even decent translators do absolutely disgusting mistakes sometimes). For that, I'll generally rely on a friend or on my partner, although I sometimes post a call for proofreaders on Mastodon, usually to no avail.

(I also need to note that in my current job, there is a lot of writing involved, and these days not getting reviews on my blog is pretty important, because I need the freedom that I don't necessarily get at work.)

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

I do not have an ideal creative environment. I largely prefer writing on my computer than on my phone, but that's about it. I do find myself writing on trains pretty often, and I don't know if it's the environment so much as having nothing else to do!

When I travel and know I'm going to have to write a lot, such as during my European train trip, I sometimes bring a Bluetooth keyboard for my phone as I find the typing comfort much higher than on the phone's virtual keyboard.

A fun fact, which might be TMI and so be it, is that I've noticed that my writing output strongly correlates with some specific times of my hormonal cycle.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?

My hosting and domain name are done through OVH, a French provider. I like that they're French and I love that they have a one-click install for Wordpress. My CMS is WordPress and it's been, with some exceptions, since 2012.

I use Ghost at work and really like it. I might possibly consider moving to Ghost someday, but my server is old and I'm not super tech-savvy and Wordpress won't let me export my whole database because the plugin isn't compatible with my version of PHP. Oops.

Here's a more or less complete list of my WordPress plugins (not super up to date, I should get to that).

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

As said above, I wouldn't be against trying a more streamlined platform like Ghost, but I do like the flexibility of WordPress as someone who's not a dev and still wants some customization.

I sometimes toy wiht the idea of a static site. Love the idea, hate the execution of moving 500 blog posts to markdown files.

And as for my identity… I often wish I was more anonymous online. But I fail again and again to keep myself anonymous, and I like having my full name there as a reminder that you're never fully safe. I find it almost easier to deal with than being pseudonymous and too easily forgetting that people will still be able to find me with a bit of effort.

Financial question since the Web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost, or does it generate some revenue? And what's your position on people monetising personal blogs?

As far as I can think of, I only have two costs:

  • The hosting, ~10€/month (it includes my blog as well as other websites, like the Réussir Mes Études archive, and some storage)
  • The domain name, ~50€/year

I don't monetize my personal blog, and I respect people who do, because I've needed to do it on Réussir Mes Études many times. I used to sell coaching services (nice and predictable) and sponsored articles (I hated those, but was also keenly aware that when I got lucky and snagged one my rent would be covered for the month). I am fascinated by monetization issues and unfortunately have no « perfect way » of solving them.

I like to donate or subscribe to other people when they allow me to, especially if they have a one-time or annual donation solution. I hate monthly donations because they stack up and I drown in them too easily.

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

Aaaah that's an excellent question! I feel like you've already interviewed pretty much all of the English speakers I follow, heh.

Today I think I'd recommend you interview Elizabeth Tai and the wonderful Elle.

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

Yes, a bunch!

  • Contribute to Wikipedia if you like writing and/or researching. Contribute to Wikimedia Commons if you like taking pictures. Contribute to the Wiktionary if you enjoy words. Contribute to OpenStreetMaps if you like walking around (I recommend StreetComplete for a chill beginner experience).
  • If you speak French, come check out blogroll.fr
  • Find a niche sport and get really into watching or practicing it. I do roller derby, which is really amazing, and I also watch ice hockey − for our North American readers, I need to state that ice hockey is a niche sport here in France. Finally, I am passionate about short-track speed skating. It's fun. Find yours!

This was the 99th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Alex. Make sure to follow their blog (RSS) and get in touch with them if you have any questions.

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Manu's Feed

18 Jul 2025 at 12:00

Creating Hugo posts using hpost (from Mike Hall)

 

Creating a new blog post for Hugo couldn’t be simpler. One simply creates a new Markdown file in the correct folder, making sure it contains the proper YAML front matter, and…OK, it’s not that simple.

Normally I use a small lisp function in Emacs for creating posts, but that doesn’t help me on days that I don’t feel like using Emacs1.

Another option would be to use the built-in hugo commands, but for some reason I never think of that. Probably because it requires that I cd to the right place and tell it what to name the file.

Mike Hall recently published an update to the Ruby script he uses. It’s called hpost.

I used hpost to create this post. Worked fine, but made me think about how I might do it, given some private time with Claude.

  • I wouldn’t use Ruby. It’s a nice language, but dependencies and version management confound me. Same with Python. I bet it could be done using bash. Or maybe Go, which would be Hugo-appropriate.
  • New posts would go in dated folders (e.g. /posts/2025/07/my-new-post.md)
  • I’d offer a choice to use a Hugo bundle (/my-post/index.md vs my-post.md) to make it easier to include images.
  • Including a slug: entry in the front matter would be nice for maintaining URL consistency in case of title changes.
  • Daily Notes would have to conform to my own conventions (/journal/2025/07-july/20250718/index.md)

What I’ll likely do in real life is to continue using Emacs for creating posts. I’ve got Dired bookmarks for getting to previous posts, dwim commands for building/deploying, etc. hpost (or equivalent) is still nice for days like today when I’m off Emacs.


  1. Rare, but it happens. ↩︎

Baty.net posts

18 Jul 2025 at 11:50
#

Ingarö, Sweden, 25°C and mostly sunny.

I upgraded my account to Premium yesterday. This is my first test posting a video. The shot is from an area where I did a house inspection today. I’ve been in this neighborhood before, and it’s so beautiful — like being thrown back in time a hundred years. 📹

Update: Not working for me. Same for you? 😕

Robert Birming

18 Jul 2025 at 10:38

[Article] Please Fix This Site? Okay!

 This week, digital agency Humidity Studios launched PleaseFixThisSite.com, a website with a deliberately awful design aesthetic.

Screenshot of PleaseFixThisSite.com, featuring all of the design sins described below.
Honestly, I’ve seen worse.

Inspired by XKCD 3113 “Fix This Sign”, the site features marquee animations, poor font choices, wonky rotation and alignment, and more.

Like the comic, it aims to “extort” people offended by the design choices by allowing them to pay to fix them. Once fixed, a change is fixed for everybody… at least, until somebody pays to “reset” the site back to its catastrophic mode.

XKCD comic. 

Transcript:

    [A single panel containing a large, elevated sign with Ponytail standing in front of it.]

    [Title, slightly off horizontal, more to the right than central and the character spacing is not entirely consistent/aesthetic:] Doanate[sic] to fix this sign!

    [To the left of the lower part of the sign there is an 'QR code', tilted slightly with a plaintext link beneath it:] https://[illegible].com

    [To the right are several dollar values, in one column, and 'fixes', in a second, some of which have their own self-demonstrating quirks.]

        [The letters "R" and "N" may be too close together:] $10 fix kerning
        [Both dollar value and fix text are shifted left of their respective columns:] $20 align columns
        [This line is in a smaller font:] $20 fix text size
        $50 fix typo
        $50 fix centering
        $100 fix rotation

    [Ponytail stands looking at the sign, apparently in the process of using a smartphone:] Grrr...

    [Caption below panel:] My new company's business model is based on extorting graphic designers.
I can’t criticise Humidity Studios for taking a stupid idea from XKCD and taking it way too far, because, well, there’s this site that I run

That’s cute and all, but the difference between a billboard and a web page is, of course, that a web page is under the viewer’s control. Once it’s left the server and reached your computer, there’s nothing the designer can to do stop you editing a page in any way you like. That’s just how the Web works!

A great way to do this is with userscripts: Javascript content that is injected into pages by your browser when you visit particular pages. Mostly by way of demonstration, I gave it a go. And now you can, too! All you need is a userscript manager plugin in your browser (my favourite is Violentmonkey!) and to install my (open source) script.

PleaseFixThisSite.com but with all of the problems fixed.
Much better! (I mean, still not a pinnacle of design… but at least my eyes aren’t bleeding any more!)

I enjoyed the art of the joke that is PleaseFixThisSite.com. But probably more than that, I enjoyed the excuse to remind you that by the time you’re viewing a Web page, it’s running on your computer, and you can change it any way you damn well please.

Don’t like the latest design of your favourite social network? Want to reinstate a feature of a popular video playing site? Need a dark mode to spare your eyes on a particular news publication? Annoyed by artificial wait times before you’re “allowed” to click a download button? There’s probably a userscript for all of those. And if there isn’t, you can have a go at writing one. Userscripts are great, and you should be using them.

📰 Using a feed reader is the best way to read my blog posts. How clever you are to know that! 🚀

Articles – Dan Q

18 Jul 2025 at 10:14



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*
Notes – Dan Q
*
On my Om
Own Your Web
Paul's Dev Notes
QC RSS
rebeccatoh.co
*
reverie v. reality
*
Rhoneisms
ribbonfarm
Robert Birming
*
Robert Birming
*
Robin Rendle
Robin Rendle
*
Sara Joy
*
Scripting News for email
Sentiers – Blog
*
Simon Collison | Articles & Stream
strandlines
Tangible Life
the dream machine
*
The Torment Nexus
*
thejaymo
theunderground.blog
Thoughtless Ramblings
tomcritchlow.com
*
Tracy Durnell
*
Winnie Lim
*
yours, tiramisu

About Reader


Reader is a public/private RSS & Atom feed reader.


The page is publicly available but all admin and post actions are gated behind login checks. Anyone is welcome to come and have a look at what feeds are listed — the posts visible will be everything within the last week and be unaffected by my read/unread status.


Reader currently updates every six hours.


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Colin Walker Colin Walker colin@colinwalker.blog