Snow day

Seeing the videos of people wearing Vision Pros around in public, I can’t help but think of the Gargoyles in Snow Crash and Loki in Daemon.

The Baker Creek seed catalog came today! Spring is on its way.

Roasted a duck for a get together tonight and it might become one of our go-tos. It is easier than it seems and the rendered fat makes great side dishes (roasted potatoes and sautéed haricot verts). Plus we have another pint of fat to use later!

‪Changed the profile on my skew lathe chisel. Previously was a 45 degree angle with a straight edge. Ground and shaped it to a smaller angle with a slight radius. Used a bench grinder and disc sander. First time I’ve done something like this!

I’m trying to learn how to use the skew better, and it became clear to me that the aggressive angle was hindering my ability to use it for peeling and planing, so I changed it. Kept a smaller one pointy for cutting Vs and lines. ‬

Whenever I’m having trouble finding something at a non-standard size (like a smaller than normal bench grinding wheel), McMaster-Carr usually has it in 4 variations. Always coming in clutch.

I’m not personally interested in a Vision Pro or any other VR/AR headset right now. I’m trying to spend more time working with my hands and doing things in the physical world, not less. I can understand why people want one and I’m glad they exist, but it is not for me right now.

I want more books published with lay-flat editions. Even spiral bound. Anything but more cheap paperbacks that barely stay open.

It is late and it looks like the italic text on my screen is leaning over further every second. I need to go to bed.

That would be a fun website Easter egg. Over the course of 30 minutes, italic text gets CSS transformed to completely horizontal.

Amanda and I went to Goosefeather on Saturday and I had a cocktail called “Vision of Love”. I enjoyed it, but I can’t find a recipe anywhere, so it must be something one of their bartenders created. The menu said it contains Caçhaca, Sweet Vermouth, Cynar, and Montenegro.

That sounds quite similar to a Rabo de Galo, which has everything but Montenegro. Montenegro has a sweeter profile, so I think I’ll adjust the proportions of sweet vermouth and Cynar down to make space for the Montenegro in the original and see how it goes.

Rare overlap of a rainy weekend day and gumption, so I’m organizing the basement and fixing a broken piece of flooring.

George Motz’s Hamburger America. Double onion, fries, and coffee milk.

I feel like this is a cliche, but even though WeWork is always crowded with loud people, the kombucha on tap is really good.

I love the eBay “submit an offer” option. I usually offer 20% under the current listed price and it almost always gets accepted. What is powerful is that you pre-auth your credit card so if they accept the offer they get paid immediately.

Hover started offering an “Account Balance” option as a backup for credit cards that expire: https://help.hover.com/hc/en-us/articles/217282297-Managing-payments#h_01c96997-dbe5-4b41-9ce3-ba8f8e65eeed

This is a step in the right direction for making domains a little less fragile. Related.

Oof. I just learned that the admin of BreachForums arrested last year was a kid who lived less than a mile from me. Kid was clearly talented and it is a shame that he went towards crime.

I thank my lucky stars every day that a teacher in my high school took me under his wing and helped me channel my curiosity and rebellion into productive, lawful activities (maintaining a website and mail server for the local school district, breaking into linksys routers in order to fix them and save the school district money rather than nefarious reasons, etc). Others in my high school friend group were not so lucky.

I’m not sure a person’s moral compass really starts to get solidified until their early 20s and what keeps younger folks from veering off is their community. It has to be more than just their parents, who teens have a natural tendency to rebel against. Teachers, librarians, neighbors, coaches, etc, are so important. I’m sorry all of those people failed this kid.

Heck, I wish I would have met him. Maybe I could have helped prevent this? Pretty sure he got started before I moved here, but who knows.

I guess the question is: What do I do now? How can I help prevent other bright kids like him interested in tech from going this direction? Do I reach out to the local high school and run a web development course (that is what helped me back then)?

There is so much knowledge stored in forums, but forum search is so bad that they are borderline unusable unless you want to sink a significant amount of time into reading threads. Each forum needs an LLM trained on it to unlock that knowledge.

I don’t have a bench grinder because I don’t have enough room on the workbench for it to live. I don’t know why it never occurred to me to see if there is one that can mount on the Shopsmith. I just found one on eBay!