To those currently caught up in the Bluesky euphoria, will you please snap the fuck out of it? Honestly, I hate being the wet blanket, but y’all are killing me with this. There is nothing new here, nothing that hasn’t happened before, and no reason whatsoever to think that it won’t end exactly the same way. I hear Bluesky’s leaders articulating their vision, and I believe that they believe that they’re a force for good, but venture capitalists are the ones paying for all of this1....
It’s been a bit less than 2 years since I parked my Xitter account. I rationalized leaving it in place at the time to prevent anyone from claiming my name. Enough time has passed though that if that were to happen, I don’t expect there would be any confusion. And I really don’t want to contribute to their subscriber count in any way. So I deleted my account.
I want to talk for a moment about I Am Legend. No, not the film with Will Smith, but the 1954 novel by Richard Matheson. The film is (allegedly) based on the novel, but if you’re familiar with the movie and not the book, then some explanation may be required (because it was not a great adaptation). Of course, it goes without saying that if you continue reading, expect spoilers (of both novel and film)....
Some years ago I wrote a sardonic series of posts tagged cat-a-log. I won’t delve too deeply into that here, but suffice it to say that we had come into a lot of cats, and I was not very happy about it. In my resentment, I wanted nothing to do with any of them. Most took the hint and steered well clear of me, one of them did not. Thumper was day 8 of the Cat-a-log....
The phrase I’m entitled to my opinion needs to be stricken from discourse. Unless your use of opinion can reasonably be used as a synonym for preference, then it is simply not true. Let me provide an example: If you are of the opinion that say—Oatmeal Raisin are the greatest of all cookies—then you and I disagree, clearly White Chocolate Chip Macadamia are greatest. Oatmeal Raisin is a perfectly acceptable cookie, but greatest?...
I used to really want a borescope. The problem back then was that they were very pricey (and I had less money, more mouths to feed, etc). I recently discovered though that the prices have come way down, so I bought one (on principal) off Amazon for about $40. Here is some video from sending the scope down the seat tube of my bike, to the area above the bottom bracket....
After nearly 14 years of Twitter, I’m calling it quits. Even before Musk took over, Twitter had become pretty awful; It was already a cesspool of hateful trolls, disinformation campaigns, wingnuts, and the aggrieved (basically, a sea of Karens, Kyries, Kanyes, and the odd Ted Cruz). Its algorithms work to fill your timeline with the content most likely to generate anxiety or rage. The point of which is to increase engagement—and it works—even knowing that this was the case wasn’t always enough to keep me from taking the bait....
The software previously hosting my blog was a bespoke thing that I’d used to experiment with Django. Once it was complete, my appetitite for maintaining it evaporated, and bitrot began to set in. I haven’t blogged in years, and it’s not likely that I’ll resume, but I thought I’d at least preserve what is here (this time using Hugo). Note: I did not preserve the link structure.
Next week is OUCE in Southampton UK, where I’ll be presenting on my recent work in time-series storage. I’ve never been to an OUCE, or Southampton, and I’m really looking forward to it. Since you get to Southampton via London (from here), and since I haven’t been back there in more than a year, I arranged to have a day or two there, and scored an opportunity to talk to the Cassandra London Meetup on Monday....
I had tentatively planned on attending OpenNMS Dev Jam this year, but then I got a new job, and it became mandatory. The eighth annual Dev Jam will be held June 23-28 at the University of Minnesota. NP: In Absentia, The Mars Volta