If you mash the audio example buttons on the wikipedia page for the IPA vowel sounds you can create a choir of mildly disgusted men

Since I can't do much else, I'm taking this opportunity to work my way through some of the more intimidating movies on my lists. Last night and today was Best of Youth (2003), which was so, so good. And I don't even usually like sprawling, multi-generational epics! Rare for a 6 hour movie to […]

Welp, it finally happened, I've tested positive for covid. I lasted 5.5 years but my luck ran out on the hiking trip. I just couldn't keep up my normal precautions when needing to eat out multiple times a day. But we've managed to prevent intra-household transmissions before, so hopefully those […]

*thinks he'd like to make a video about the hike, but isn't sure if he'll remember to film enough stuff* *comes back with 841 clips, including 61 separate GoPro shots of the non-POV kind where you set up the camera, walk by it, then walk back and collect it, tripling the distance walked*

Working from my Timeline data to refresh my memory (...which meant having to write a conversion script since Google Earth somehow can't import Google Timeline data...), I've worked up a reasonably accurate reconstruction of the route I took hiking around SF Bay […] [Original post on clacks.link]

Ta-Nehasi Coates is doing a lot of things with this essay, but one of the most important is fearlessly using examples of anti-trans hate to describe Charlie Kirk's politics. The contrast between his choices and those of other writers for major legacy outlets is revealing.

This is where I left the airport, 17 days, something like 225 kilometers and countless blisters ago. The circle is closed.

Today was a pretty good day. I made a pilgrimage to City Lights*, rode a cable car, and saw 2.5 more Andy Goldsworthy installations! (Tree Fall is closed, but I could kind of see it through the mesh door.) And I continued the walk to the southern end of the […] [Original post on clacks.link]

Tranio, since for the great desire I had To see fair Padua, nursery of arts, I am arrived for fruitful

There it is!!!

Since I was walking right by, I had to stop in to see the Bay Model again. Even on this scale, walking around the whole thing is a bit overwhelming.

App-based hotel laundry payment systems are a fucking scam, and they don't even work reliably.

Egrets? I've had a few.

Made it across the Richmond-San Rafael bridge. This was a big question mark in the hike plan, as the ped/bike path is closed most of the day for bridge inspections this week, and at some point soon 'in the fall" it will be closed Mon-Wed entirely. Made for the […] [Original post on clacks.link]

Call me overly literal, but I'm disappointed that the Rosie the Riveter Memorial is, in fact, bolted and welded together.

It feels so weird seeing this and knowing I'll have walked there in just a few days.

The Illuminati has fallen on hard times.

God I love a good spite house.

I'm next to the Oakland airport tonight, which means I'm now solidly north of where I started in SFO, 9 days ago. I've been having some foot problems, but nothing catastrophic yet. If I keep up the current rate, I should be done in a week, with a day to spare on my vacation time. The […]

Gone, but not forgotten.

Immediate impression of the southeast Bay: I don't think I saw a single lidar unit today. Which is the normal amount I expect to see, of course, but I probably saw more over the last week on the peninsula than I have in the rest of my life combined -- and I used them in grad school!

Yesterday, in addition to doing 17 km, was exciting for two reasons: I finally turned north to start heading up the east bay, and I got to tour CrunchLabs thanks to friend of the channel Evan Barnes! But now I'm getting into what looks to be a pretty boring […] [Original post on clacks.link]

Today I turn 48. In 1995, 30 years ago, my dad had emergency quad bypass heart surgery. He was 48 -- and survived, and is still alive, but that was one of the more traumatic events in my life. And now I'm the same age. I've been watching this date approach for my entire adult life. Last heart […]

Today was something like 14 km, but with lots of inefficient routing enforced by geography, so I'm only in Sunnyvale for the night, almost to San Jose but not quite. Started the morning with the Computer History Museum, which I hadn't visited in 15 years. Then a […] [Original post on clacks.link]

Signs you might be in Silicon Valley: your hotel room has a framed collage of Charles Babbage made up from images of his creations.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a Lake.

I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to see an Andy Goldsworthy installation in person -- Stone River, on Stanford campus. And there is at least one more along my route, in another 10 days or so.

Today was the second full day of the trip, and my feet are definitely in less than pristine condition. But they're doing better than day two of when I circled Lake Washington 6 years ago, so hopefully things will hit an equilibrium soon. 16+ kilometers today, including a side jaunt to the Hiller […]

I couldn't resist swinging by the labyrinth on the EA campus, despite already having 2 weeks of walking ahead of me. It was very serene. ...but my waffle labyrinth (https://youtu.be/SlCJ6hp1xZY) is tastier.

@attoparsec Wondering what one of these for the Demon Core would look like

Due to the prevalence of trace fossils, e.g. figure 1, it is believed that this carbonate unit of the Redwood City Formation was deposited in the early fall.

I don't think this utility box is going to pass the design rules check.

...oh, goddammit, are the Oracle buildings supposed to look like the cylindrical database icons from old system diagrams?

Now THAT is a comprehensive set of warning icons!

The SF Bay hike project has begun! Tonight I am in Burlingame. It turns out that, yes, you *can* walk south out of SFO, despite what Google says. You just have to walk for 2 km in a bike land along a depressing utility road, sandwiched between a highway and a […] [Original post on clacks.link]

10 months ago, a company across the world put my neighbor's access to medical care at risk, giving us 2wks notice that software behind our 40 electric car chargers would be shut down. This is the story of how my neighborhood broke free from this potential disaster […]

I'm beginning to think I've made a mistake putting off the conversion of my plate tectonics simulator from a naive mantle convection model to a more accurate slab pull (plus a bit of ridge push) one. I only used the long discredited convection model to give some rotation vectors, so I could […]

Bay Area folks: I'm starting to seriously plan my attempt to hike around SF Bay. I'll be there from Aug 30 through no later than Sep 16, starting at SFO and working my way widdershins from there. Any input on pedestrian routes I should aim for (or avoid!) would be very welcome. If you want to […]

I've assembled and disassembled this crane far too many times, that is, more than once. But I think I finally figured out a halfway decent way to do it!

I will be exhibiting at the Georgetown Steam Plant Science Fair, September 20-21, for those of you in the Seattle area. https://www.georgetownsteamplant.org/2025

Step 1of the new kinetic sculpture project (Goose II) is making my gantry crane wider enough so flatbeds can fit under it. Step 1.1 is now done: acquire a longer I-beam.

Regaining rule of law and democracy is going to take decades. So those of us committed to that project have to think and act very differently than most of us ever have - not in terms of two or four or eight year efforts but in terms of efforts that may well take anywhere from 70 to 100 years […]

The invasive Himalayan blackberries in Seattle are fast-growing menaces that can spread from a single seed to dozens of square meters of dense brambles in just a few years, presenting a wall of thorns worthy of a fairy tale curse. But I do love this time of year when you regularly see people […]

I picked up this lovely old "visible file" cabinet when passing through Portland last month. I'd been looking for an improvement to my sandpaper storage system, and I think this is going to work. The sheets have to be cut in half, but the units wide enough for a […] [Original post on clacks.link]

I've often thought what a shame it is that we're so vulnerable to radiation and heavy metals, and I just thought of another reason: plutonium ice cream scoops that stay hot for decades.

Five years ago I came across this view of the Lynnwood light rail expansion, the guideway still under construction then. It would be a brave sight, I thought, when the trains were running. Tonight I finally got around to passing that way again, and, yes!

Actually made some progress on the plate tectonics sim tonight, for the first time in at least 18 months. (Not a scientific simulation, but not really a game either, more of... an experience which attempts to get things qualitatively accurate.) Subduction is mostly working again, and I added a […]

Dear flavor designers, Just a brief note to remind you that, every time you add a flavor to something, you're reducing the number of people who will like it. The audience for watermelon-strawberry-mango-guava is going to be less than the audience for any one of those flavors on their own. It is […]

Number 3 isn't bad! https://www.hackster.io/news/the-best-of-open-sauce-2025-our-top-9-picks-0d1e72723245

And safely back in Seattle. That was probably my best Open Sauce experience yet, even though it didn't involve a cable car commute. And now I am *done* with road trips for the foreseeable future... other than trips to Idaho for the new goose sculpture project. Thanks to everyone who stopped by […]