watching a bunch of horror movies on halloween to amp themselves up for watching a horror movie a day in November

The emoji picker is now content-aware.

Previously, when you pressed 🌐 (or command + option + space), it would just open the emoji picker. Now it looks at the previous word you typed and if it matches an emoji it will suggest entering that (e.g., world it suggests 🌎, 🌍, 🗺️ [but not 🌏, even though it's present in the full pickers options for world] and with mad it suggests 😠, 😡). You have to press down or press 🌐 again to get the full picker. If you choose a selected one it will replace the word with the suggested emoji.

I don't like it. This might make sense in a touchscreen environment but it just makes things inconsistent in a keyboard environment. Now I no longer know if pressing will take one press or two. It's also inconsistent insomuch as when I open the picker and type, return will insert the emoji. if i get the small popup, enter only sometimes works (this might just be part of the general flakiness of the picker)

I haven't been doing the crossword during the week lately, so thanks for the heads up. I liked it!

I had been having trouble identifying a tree growing along the Seine and I was annoyed that I couldn't identify it because it was distinct and also because I even had found English-language articles about "trees growing along the Seine". It was confusing me because the leaves looked like maple leaves but it had almost-mossy round conker-like seedpods. This confounded me because it would be impossible to mistake maple trees wing-like seed pods with conkers and it would be equally impossible to mix a chestnut leaf for a maple leaf. [ed: It's revealed in the next paragraph. Pause here if you want to guess]

I had been busy the last few days so I hadn't looked into it further but this morning before work I was trying to confirm that a seed pod in a separate photo was a datura plant (I'm all but sure because the pod and leaves both look correct in shape but I'm used to the pod hanging down and this one is facing upwards. I wish there was a flower) and I accidentally stumbled upon the right answer for the tree. It's an oriental plane (platanus orientalis, sycamore is a North American tree in the platanus genus)! I still don't know about two different purple flowers I saw growing wild so get ready to tell me what they are whenever the full set gets posted.

Anyway, I'm unsure why I thought I'd be done this early this week and am even less sure why I publicly posted it. Optimism aside, there's no reason to set a date on a personal thing unless it's explicitly to force me to finish it. It's a thing I'd like to do less. I'm sure some of you are excited to see those photos but it will be fine if you see them next week or next month (Wait, next month is actually earlier than next week. Fucked up).

A channel that puts out videos in the style of the lockpicking lawyer but each video is the person opening one of those prank containers where springloaded snakes fly out. They could also do jack-in-the-boxes

Quebec says private colleges are selling citizenship. The data tells another story

It sounds to me like this is racist fear-mongering and should be treated as such. The Canadian Press's wording tells another story

According to my photo tagging tool, there are exactly five rivers

Abracadabra is a palindrome that only works one way

I play the Spelling Bee on the weekend as part of playing word/map games with friends and there always ends up being a bunch of discussion about what words it does/should/shouldn't accept. This weekend we were annoyed hella didn't get accepted and we've been repeatedly annoyed that atlatl doesn't make the cut (fun words should be held to lower standards!). Sometimes a term we feel is too technical makes it and other times common technical terms seem missing because they're outside the purview of a NYT Games editor. That's all fine. It's an unenviable position to decide what is common enough.

Where the cowardice comes in is in word forms. Somewhat famously, Spelling Bee never includes the letter S. Presumably Sam Ezersky and co decided that it would be too much of a slog to type in every plural but it limits the world pool and regularly the puzzle included E-D or I-N-G and those are apparently fine. Where my real frustration usually comes in is that they have decided most -able, de-, non-, and un- words are not wordy enough to count (admittedly, many nonstandard non- words would get a hyphen when written out [nonstandard or course, being a standard word at this point]). If it's such a slog to allow them, why allow -ed and -ing? Why not only allow the base form of a word? It is a strength of the language that I can negate words or morph them into a different part of speech and their meaning will be unambiguous.

Anyway, I didn't play today's puzzle so this isn't about that.

Pre-dream background

If you have a reel-to-reel device, and want to have the tape to progress at a linear rate, you have to vary the speed the reels spin at because the radial distance is changing. Some recorders didn't have this linear tracking, and tapes recorded on those devices would only sound right when played back on those same devices. That's basically fine because running a tape faster/slower during recording effects the quality a bit but not the mechanics of recording to tape.

The dream realization

If we ever had film reels without linear tracking, that would mean the frame rate would vary as the tape progressed, but also you would need to either vary the film speed (as in how quickly the film reacts to light), or when you developed the film you'd need to adjust how long you were processing the film as you went to compensate, or the film would start dark and get progressively lighter. In my dream I only thought about the first solution but clearly it's way easier to go from pushing the film to pulling it as you process it. I also thought the film would run faster as it got to the end but now that I'm awake I'm fairly certain that's backwards.

Hope this helps.

Had a nice vacation and then had some nice time at home.

I'll hopefully have the last of my vacation photos up early this week

You would think the biggest heartbreak after you've given up and are trawling google image search for a flower that looks like the one you saw and the only result is some pinterest bullshit. You're close.

It's worse when it's a stock photography photo because that thing has a million description words and tags and somehow none of them are the name of the flower

A bunch of good photos over on Nicky's blog. My faves are probably the driveway, the dog, and the orb

no idea how the links in liz's reply got so mangled at first. oh well

Still haven't implemented them properly for this site (I mean I a little bit did since they should be showing up as categories in feeds) but I just noticed that my site displays them in alphabetical order not the order I wrote them. Given how I store them, I think that makes sense but I'm definitely not sorting them at any point during the process.

After a mere year-and-a-bit I have finally updated my photo blog so that it serves images the size of the viewport instead of sending you a huge photo that your browser then downscales (if you click on an image it will show you the full-size original still). This should make all the pages (and the entries in your feed reader) a few hundred times smaller. Sorry to your and your mobile data plans that this took me so long. It literally took longer for rsync to copy all the thumbnails than it did to implement and test the change locally. Why did I keep putting this off?

On the I'm smart actually side of things, while I was on my trip, I updated my photo blog deploy script so that it rsyncs things to my server in two waves: first it copies over all the images, then it updates all the pages and the feeds so that you can't go to a page with missing images, even if I'm on a slow internet connection. Not a bad idea imo

If the site being slow and huge was what was stopping you from checking out my photos, there's never been a better time to sign up for the Atom feed. Also, please let me know if anything looks weird after this update. Everything appears to be fine to me, but maybe on your device/browser there's a problem.

Also, this means if you're downloading any images from my site make sure to click through first or to "save link as" instead of "save image as" from the blog page

Decided to look up what the technical term is for the metal rings for mooring boats in a harbour. Apparently it's called a mooring ring. Sometimes the jargon in a given industry is just so complicated for outsiders

Two young girls dressed like witches with hobby horse-style broomsticks

I learned on my trip that the left joystick on my Switch Lite was broken again and instead of just replacing it again I realized I had the rare opportunity to buy a fancy new thing and save a bunch of money in the process.

My ~7 year old windows machine has been increasingly struggling with running Spelunky 2 (a game that runs perfectly fine on my Switch) and I have been dreading the thought of having to buy a new machine with Windows 11 just to play a 4-year-old indie platformer. Literally the only other thing I use the computer for is streaming the crossword with friends on the weekend and I can easily do that from my laptop instead.

The ~2020 Mac Mini I bought to be a server (it's running this site) and to watch movies on in my living room works just fine and is more than powerful enough for the simple task of processing H.264 video so instead of buying a new Windows machine I could just buy a Switch that supports video out and a cheap USB capture card and solve all my problems at once.

Anyway, the big life change is that next time I submit a Spelunky run I'll have to select platform switch instead of pc. It turns out the Switch Pro controller has a d-pad that's unusable for speedrunning Spelunky but I can fix that either with some electrical tape or by buying an adaptor so I can use my X-Box controller instead

Throughout my tenure on Cohost, I kept a Twitter (sorry, X: The Everything App) account to keep up with some online friends/acquaintances who weren't elsewhere but I basically stopped posting outside of replying to friends because it's sort of a shambling zombie. I avoided ever making a Blue Sky because Twitter again was deeply unappealing as a pitch.

With Cohost gone, I finally caved last week and made an account because some Cohost people are there and some of the Twitter holdouts were switching over and I wondered "Oh, was making a posting site worthless because I'll just end up using Bluesky instead?"

Having been on the site a week I feel like I can safely say no. More people I know and like are there so I'll maybe reply a bit more but that site has exactly as wretched of vibes as I thought. After Cohost, I simply have no interest being active on it. I'm not going to say it's worse than Twitter is now but I am going to say I feel like I need a site to be more than not worse than Twitter is now for me to invest in any real time on it. I'll be there out of some sort of social obligation to keep up with friends like I was on Facebook before I finally gave in and suspended that account.

I guess we'll see in a month or two if I walk this back but that will be less a victory for Bluesky than a loss for me.

y'all heard about this?

but wow, an hr and font-size: small really are all I need for them to look decent. good to know

I had been wearing my big headphones a lot lately so I decided to use some smaller, lighter headphones to listen to something last night. I plugged them into my laptop and was only getting sound out of the right ear. I figured they had gotten damaged because I had just thrown them in my duffel bag for the flight home so I grabbed a new pair* and had the exact same problem. I guess my laptop's headphone jack is busted. I know I have a USB C/headphone jack adaptor† so I search my house for it and then have the exact same problem. My mac definitely can channel sound to just the left or right speaker but somehow both external methods fail in the exact same way. I restart my computer in case it's somehow a software thing but no luck. That sucks.

This morning, I plug the new pair of headphones into my iPod to listen to while shopping and for some reason, audio is only coming out of the right ear. I finally think to grab my big headhpones from out of my bag. My iPod and laptop both work fine. It just turns out my small headhpones broke and the new-in-box pair I grabbed to replace them are broken in the exact same way. Just grabbed another new pair and they work fine (for now anyway).

---

* I am a long-time fan of sony's inexpensive 'street-style' headphones (over ear headphones where the headband goes behind instead of over the head). They're comfortable to wear for long periods of time, you can run in them, and they're inexpensive enough that if a pair breaks it's hardly the end of the world (so I can just throw them in a bag without worrying about them). They used to be readily available back in the CD player era and a bunch of the iPod era but even before apple ruined their phone by removing the headphone jack and people decided they wanted more their headphones to be able to run out of battery, they had started to become less ubiquitous as people decided they wanted either huge can headphones or earbuds. I had a big futureshop gift card I had gotten somewhere (credit card points?) so I decided I'd just buy a bunch of boxes of headphones at once so I'd be set for life. After like 15 years, I still have 4 (now 2) unopened pairs. Recently, I also made the switch to big can headphones but I do still use these cheap headphones regularly

† I accidentally bought it when trying to get a lighting/headphone adaptor. Thanks Apple!

we love to not be surrounded by thousands of strangers

it's nearing midnight relative to when i woke up and i am just drinking my first coffee for the day

We simply have to do something about people having giant carry-on bags that take up all overhead bin space. You can check a bag. If you need more than a backpack why not check a bag?

but there's definitely some overlap`

me: your honour, I ask you cancel this trial. I was sleepy

judge: You can't cancel a trial. That's not the right terminology

me: Oh, sorry. I didn't know. I'm sleepy

judge: case dismissed

that's apparently how many I took for part 2 of the trip. probably won't have anything up until nearer the end of the week

For me it’s going to be restaurants all having outdoor seating where you sit both people on the same side viewing the street. It’s charming

I had two things I needed to do this trip (wedding and today's plan) so now my last few days are just bonus. I can do anything. I can do nothing. Either way, it's fine. bonus days

While I was in London, I had to deal with Google giving me AI Overview results when I looked up things (they did this a ton while I was trying to work out some bird and plant species from my photos) and wow, these are real annoying. The semblance of a useful answer but worthless

While I was on the train from London, the guy beside me was working on a powerpoint presentation about ChatGPT and business. Hope he's having a bad day

I filled up 25 pages in a little passport notebook today. I think this is more writing by hand than I have done in the last year or two cumulatively

also tired

For too long people have been too focused on sandwiches (good as they may be). It’s bread’s time to shine

Vs catgirl

Happy to see there are dozens of people who had the same idea i did for my vacation and seemingly not all of them are local

Do you?

I know I just posted my photos from Halifax but I have since come and gone from London and those photos are up now on my blog too

vs being objectified

hmm, i guess if i have a dynamic server up to be able to post, there's no reason not to implement webmentions. Probably not the top of my todo list but it's there

But also packing for this trip was stressful since i needed to pack a suit for the wedding. If I started just bringing my main lens on trips it would be perfectly fine. Will i do this? Probably not

photos

Theory: We could build much smaller and more efficient homes if we had them constantly spray hot water on the occupant

Here's my favourite photos I've taken on my trip so far. More on the blog.

But what the fuck do its badges even mean?! I have a little 20 by the unread and there are 7 items

Uh, this is specifically the iOS app. the site just gives a normal number

I'm currently sorting through photos I took while sitting at the airport and a thing I appreciate is that both the taking of the photos and the tagging them aid in learning things about the world around me.

When I'm out and about I'm looking for new and interesting things to photograph or new ways of looking at familiar things. Then, later, when I'm home, there's learning in trying to find the name of a new flower I saw, or trying to track down where I saw a cool building or the name of an interesting sculpture

Travel between the US and Canada is common (I've been known to do it myself) and as a consequence of that, the US has their own customs agents at many (all?) Canadian airports (the rest of the security people for travel to the US might even be TSA? I don't remember off-hand). A consequence of this is that many Canadian Airports end up having two sections: US and Domestic/International. Accidentally stumbling into the truth about the US's place in the Canadian psyche

Each of the little divots in the rumble strip along the highway is full of water reflecting the morning sun

Spent the morning walking through a forest. It was nice

thanks.

bugs (ambiguated)

From London, Ontario to Paris, Texas

Ok, if li and casey are posting their roadmaps, here's mine:

• Make the image link absolute so it isn't broken in feed readers. I just noticed this and I'm not fixing it at midnight. This would also make the images not broken when I look at drafts (that's right, I've had drafts for a while)
• Add support for other attachment types
• What if I actually had a parser for the post editor so I could write markdown
• Adding an avatar both for myself and for posts I reply to
• User links for posts I reply to
• Add support for re-importing posts from other sites (I can manually edit them at least)
• A specific CSS rounded corner that's broken for replies
• Add a comment (mailto) link and maybe a comment post type that can appear in the feed
• A bunch of boring behind-the-scenes cleanup

Do you have any plans to release this so others can use it?

Nope. Just for me

I added support for image attachments

kind of blowing up my spot for when I announce I've bought the name 'cohost'

They’re way ahead of me. It's not a race or a competition but I am losing

kind of wild how anything I don't personally care about or have to deal with just doesn't exist

After video surfaced of me calling variety the spice of life back in 2017

guy in front of me: This is going so slow, they should open up another security line

me, wisely: I guess you've never heard of induced demand, huh

I wasn't planning on posting photos today but there was a hawk (I think a Cooper's Hawk) in a tree in my yard eating another bird so I had to take a few photos. I wouldn't say the photos are especially gory but they are photos of a bird being dismembered.

If you want to see the only photo in the set that isn't gory, here's some salsify growing in my yard:

I'll add an actual comment option at some point (i.e., a mailto: link like I do for some of my other sites and like several people have done for their new post sites) but feel free to just send comments using the ask link. If you want to be pseudonymous let me know.

How will comments appear? Will comments appear?

It will probably depend on the comment. I might turn it into an ask/post. I might reply to your email (what I originally planned to do for that last one). Or I might just sort of nod at it and think wow, they're so right for saying that.

Probably I'll either make it so the word asks in the ask format can be says or some other intransitive verb. Maybe I'll make it a new post type so it can appear in the feed but have the external post styling like the ones I import to reply to.

I'm not stealing Misty's thing. This is a different time of day.

Anyway, there's a new Jeff Parker album next month and it isn't a solo one. Cool!

Has there been a disaster that limits supply? Let's make sure that supply is only available to the people likely to be least impacted by that disaster

But it time to admit that soup truly is nature's goop?

We should build a structure that is so unimaginably large that to gaze upon it is drive yourself mad contemplating its scale. Obviously you won't be able to take it all in at once but like viewing a human by way of a single blood cell.

Enchanted swords are such a goofy idea. I would get so incredibly killed by a run-of-the-mill non-magic sword. No need to was magic on it

Uh, the enchantment could make it lighter or unbreakable or whatever?

A waste of time and effort. I'm not budging on this one

Casey says:

now bcj is reblogging things too and I haven't implemented h-entry support yet!

The trick is kind of a two-fer:

• I was procrastinating on things that were much more important for me to do
• Since I have no ambitions of releasing this as a general tool, I can rush out functionality in real janky ways. E.g., why isn't this post a reply? Because my thing would completely butcher your post and I have no way of previewing that in advance and while I can edit my own posts I have no way to edit imported ones short of manually modifying a row in a database (this is also why my other reply to you incorrectly has a title right now)

Didn't get my updates to this site done today but I did finally get a new time in the No Gold category in Spelunky 2. This one is a good 50 seconds better than my previous time (which was, bizarrely, the first teleporter run I ever completed). By ranking, this is my best category by far now as I am 68th on Mossranking.

It's the weekend where I make soup and also a bunch of bigger changes to my posting site to make future development easier

Just something I think we should have

Wow, I hope Casey gets a version of Octobug out soon so more people start posting again. Not trying to rush them, they're going to release it when it's good and ready but also there's a reason there's is top posts and mine is merely posts now.

"This movie reminds me of several other movies"

my server tried to stop me from posting that. Was it because I was onto something or because I started downloading movies last night and ran so out of space that it couldn't create a single post. Who can say?

And to me that's what makes it the cinema

#talkies, #i haven't implemented tags

I added the ability to edit posts but not yet to delete them so I'm repurposing this one.

I'm going to try to make at least one update to this thing every day until it's nice to use and easier to interact with others

li asks:

any fans of coffee out there?

Oh hey, I like coffee. Right now I'm drinking some cold brew that is over-extracted. I made cold brew yesterday and not all of it fit in my carafe so this is the remains that were still had the grounds submerged in them

On a technical level:

• Make this not miserable to use (I am handwriting this list that will hopefully render correctly)
• Add functionality like embedding things
• Make sure these posts all have the right metadata

On a non-technical level:

• Make this not feel like I am whispering into a void. Make this feel like I can talk to people
• Make this feel like I can talk to people who are not programmers
• Work out how I can find other people out there that I don't already know