A hundred watts is a guy and every time I make a cup of tea that's like having eighteen guys in my kitchen pedalling on static bikes hooked up to dynamos sweating while I moan "This kettle takes ages, I miss English kettles that run on thirty guys"

I'm pondering the phrase "draggin' ass" today... A number of decades ago, I got written up in the hometown newspaper for my small part in getting emergency medical help to a man who had been dragged by a donkey. This is your reminder that that ass is bigger than you and it is not the one that […]

Your spam filters are probably clogged with notifications from PayPay and Docusign and a million other places telling you that you just bought GeekSquad or an iPad or McAfee. I suddenly realized why they struck me so obviously as being spam despite coming from legit companies: They list a […]

I want one of those Japanese vending machines that has both the hot and cold cans. I also want a Japanese pay phone before they all disappear from this planet. Green? Grey? I don't care. Unfortunately, even the idea of shipping either of those is insane. Can you imagine walking up to […]

It is true that this number includes a particularly high 55¢ excise tax, but it is also true that these two photos were taken in the past 48 hours, 15 hours apart. He, and his enablers, did this.

I did a crash trip to Seattle to go to #vcfpnw. It is in a location at least twice as large as the interim festivals, and yet still too damn small. This seems like a good problem to have. Between this and the size of #rmrrf a few weeks ago, I'm feeling pretty positive about the state of makers […]

Now I'm learning about the lesson that users have learned from yes/no "consent" modals is that they just always have to say "yes" or the computer will deny them critical access to functionality that they need in order to perform their desired task, complete assigned work from an employer or […]

It is increasingly difficult to find the old matches that can be lit with sufficient friction. Modern "safety" matches require a special surface impregnated with the other half of a sort of binary explosive. This is apparently news to some people, including Mike Boyd […]

My favorite device at the Colorado 3D printing show #rmrrf? That would be the Muon. They're selling it as an ultra-portable device suitable for field service: Show up at a customer site and print the parts you need. For me, though, It's just a sexy device. Nothing else in the hall looked this […]

I love Yuumei's art so much!! She pioneered cat-ear headphones. Most recently she did koi lanterns -- laser cut flat-packs that you assemble into these amazing hanging sculptures. Now she's back, this time with star-projector lamps that paint your rooms with art, while being works of art […]

HEY, #Seattle #retrocomputing lovelies. It's almost that time of year again! VINTAGE COMPUTER FESTIVAL: PACIFIC NORTH WEST IS BACK! It's FREE to attend (though donations are appreciated) Come see a bunch of old computer stuff and meet the cool […] [Original post on social.restless.systems]

There are people out there who look at your situation and think, "You need a plant." Then they show up at your door with gift plants. The world is made immensely better by these people.

So there's this product, right? And it is perfect. It works everywhere on everything. It does what it is supposed to do, nothing more, and nothing less. I love this product. And I want you to use and enjoy this product, too. And I want to tell you all about it. However, it only exists through […]

I miss the old days when you could just email people. #plex changed their repositories and require people to make changes to their linux boxes. However, their instructions included the "sudo echo ... > file" construction, which doesn't write the file as root […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

I spent MAR10-day celebrating with the @mediaarchaeologylab I can't get the words together to say how amazing the experience was. Their collection is broad, deep, and varied. Yes, I got my obligatory game of Super Mario Brothers, but I also played with a […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Hey, today is MAR10... You know, like the Italian plumber of Nintendo fame? I just happen to be in the shadows of the Flatirons without a set plan for the day. Seems like the perfect day to try dropping in on Boulder's Media Archaeology Lab! I feel confident betting they've got an NES there […]

"Why don't you use our map app?" Well, this experience sums it up neatly.

@icefoxx Cookie has been freed! https://infosec.exchange/@0xabad1dea/116167206737582894

how it started / how it's going https://arcade.pirillo.com/space-needle.html

Ugh... a found a restaurant that is cheap and tasty and convenient, but I can't stand going there. Their building is strangely impervious to wireless network signals If I can't read fedi while feeding my face, then I'm gonna be sad.

When half the sign burned out, a local Popeyes restaurant appeared as [POPE yes]. I wonder if that was intentional? It pleases me a bit more than breaking at the obvious syllable break [POP eyes] would have.

and we both know which one is more trustworthy here

oh, you asked an LLM? well we posted an offhand question on mastodon and an autistic cat-type entity infodumped to us about it

I've been reminded of how important the photo tagging we do here in the Fedi is. I've reached the end of a cross-country move and I've discovered that the movers packed all my framed are in nondescript brown boxes, all helpfully labeled "Picture".

Few things enrage me more than doing the whole lockup-dance to buy a $5 can of shave cream.

I can't wait until ICE agents hit the "find out" phase and start appearing in the ER, where they hit yet another level of "find out".

I'm moved back to #denver and am looking forward to getting hooked back into the hacker scenes here. In the meantime, I've already received my home's first ValPak coupons and already been approached by the Mormons. So, yeah, I guess we're off to a good start.

Cool. I bought (and loved!) the last cell phone that LG released. Now, it appears I've also bought the last cell phone that Asus is releasing. There are just not a lot of choices out there if you want things in your phone like... a headphone jack. Or removable sims. Google already successfully […]

So, seriously: is there really no way to scan a QR code from a saved image on an android phone? I have a picture of a business card with a vcard encoded on it. Google tools just feed it to their AI which says "this looks like a QR code! Here's a thousand pictures of other QR codes!" The old […]

It's like watching your parents fighting, if your parents were terrible people. It is true that both Sparkfun and Adafruit are pioneers in my space and the world is a better place because of them. It is also true that I've been nursing a grudge against SF for decades. And it is also true that […]

How old am I? I'm young enough to not really know who Mae West was, but old enough that I remember when all the internet still went through MAE-West.

Back in 2021, Bo Burnham released _Inside_ which was emotionally wrenching. I've rarely felt so concerned for another human in my life. He and I don't run in the same circles, so it isn't as if I was going to be running into him at the bowling alley or the laundromat. It's no big thing that I […]

Free at last, thank dog almighty, free at last. Now maybe we could send someone down to Texas this time to tell all their trees.

Moving houses is proving to be a gigantic pain in the ass. But I'm quite looking forward to the opportunity to redesign my Home Assistant layout better. Maybe I'll even have an IoT VLAN configured, too!

At my restaurant, I'm going to have those huge 4K monitors displaying the menus. But I'm going to have a dial behind the counter that allows the employees to adjust the amount of blur filter to apply.

More than a few years ago, I was pulled out of a crowd seated on bales of straw to star as Friar John in a RenFest production of Romeo and Juliet. I was given ONE job: Deliver a letter to Juliet. But some hose-wearing pervert, playing the role of "rock," grabbed me and stole the letter. Oh […]

Decades ago, we had a regular meetup at the local pub, where our regular waitress took good care of us. One particularly bad day, when it was time to order I just groused, "I just want a bowl of ranch dressing and a shitload of rolls..." Dear reader, she /delivered/.

My Thanksgiving duty is making rolls from a recipe at least three generations old. Things have change a bit, though: Grandma didn't have a KitchenAid. The best was when I had DirecTV. Their satellite receiver used a ton of energy even when idle, and the prodigious waste heat turned the shelf […]

You know the old Dr. Demento classic "They're Coming To Take Me Away"? Ha ha hee hee hoo hoo to the funny farm etc... I only now actually listened to the lyrics and realized that it's a LOVE SONG. The reason he's gone mad is because she left him!! Girl, you made the right decision. 😬

I'm no flat-earther, but huge numbers trouble me, too. Something that helped was doing the math for how much a Super Walmart curves. The one near me is about 162m wide. You have two options for building a flat floor like this on a curved surface: 1) build a flat floor and balance a solitary […]

I just can't kick this feeling that there was something I was supposed to remember remember last week.

We've gotten so many of these pieces where a liberal engages in a good-faith effort to understand Trump voters. Every time, they discover that there's no deeper sympathetic reason they hold their views. They're just misinformed and hateful. My own efforts have found this too.

Another week, another stack of news about tech layoffs coupled with massive cloud outages and security disasters. Gee, I sure hope Pump Six keeps running... Ain't nobody left who knows what it's for or how it works, but that's okay: AI's gonna save us.

My doctor is concerned about the triglyceride levels in my blood. But on the other hand, I suspect that makes me attractive to any vampires that might be out there. My blood is well marbled. I have blood like a wagyu ribeye.

Yikes. If you ever happen to fall into a nuclear reactor, please remember to keep your mouth shut!! https://mastodon.tds.xyz/@whoopsie/115418337621820124

*laughing in ISO 8601*

[Spiders] @mdwyer No. https://27bslash6.com/overdue.html

[Spiders] Spiders are supposed to have eight legs, right? #seattle #spiders

The amount of microprocessor power available to small electronics is stunning. The little chip that might be running just your desktop keyboard is capable of emulating the capabilities of the 1984 Apple Macintosh. Designers are busy using that excess power to add cloud, smart, AI, etc features […]

A regular old cup of yogurt is about 80¢ here. You can pay almost double for that and get fancy Greek or Icelandic style. So is the cute little stoneware pot of froofy French yogurt, that is 20% smaller and costs almost 5x as much as the basic stuff, actually worth it?! Yes. 😑 Damnit, yes.