> Notes...

“there really are no uninteresting things...”
06 Aug 2025 @ 13:02:13

From George this morning on a message, as he told me “I was patiently waiting for the day πŸ˜‚”. It went like this: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret!” You know from where that one comes, right? πŸ˜¬πŸ˜…πŸ˜‚

06 Aug 2025 @ 11:02:07
“First result of Google when searching for BofA number.”
First result of Google when searching for BofA number. A promoted scam.

This is the first search result—at least for me—on Google when searching for “call bank of america”. A Google sponsored scam. Yup. 🀯

05 Aug 2025 @ 10:44:46

We wouldn’t need ad blockers if your ads weren’t obnoxius, privacy invasive, and tasteless. Now you want us to subscribe, or stop using ad blockers (or both!), so that you can be supported. See the cycle you have created? If I were to condone ads, I would for sure pick Carbon Ads.

04 Aug 2025 @ 19:46:36

Now $3,000 poorer, that double pain is behind me. To make me feel better, Mother Nature has decided to bless us with rain. She knows I love it. I only need some sleep. Soon.

04 Aug 2025 @ 08:54:24

Today is the “joyful” day for a non-cleaning related dental appointment. Oh, the “fun” we will have! Joy, joy, joy! 😬

03 Aug 2025 @ 16:36:49

Re-watching “Mr. Robot” (★★★★★) because it has been 10 years or so—where did the time go?!—since I last watched it. It is as awesome as I remember it.

03 Aug 2025 @ 16:08:02

Saw “Project Almanac” (★★½) with the kid last night. I wasn’t expecting anything good but, oh dear, it was worse than expected. I am being generous on my rating though, of course, your rating might differ from mine. IMDB gives it 3 stars, Rotten Tomatoes gives it 2. Yeah.

03 Aug 2025 @ 15:55:36

Nursing homes are sad places. If the elderly has good money, their nursing homes are less sad—but sad nevertheless. For the poor and dispossessed, they can be/are a living hell. When, or if I get to that stage, I wouldn’t want to be in one. I would want to terminate instead.

02 Aug 2025 @ 15:44:00

Re: Claudrod #1754143775

The biggest problem I see with Instagram (same pretty much with all Meta apps) is that without an account one can’t do much, if anything at all. I agree that to participate it is often recommended—though shouldn’t be required—having an account. But having to create an account, and login, just to view? Now, that’s meta! (no pun intended 🀭)

02 Aug 2025 @ 15:18:22

I am defeated by Hugo’s syntax highlighter. I don’t use code blocks much around here, but the few I have do not want to play nice, and show fonts with different sizes on desktop, and mobile. I haven’t been able to figure out, for the good of me, how to fix that weird behaviour. For now, the few code blocks I around have syntax highlighting turned off.

Update: 02 Aug 2025 @ 16:17:40

OMG! This guy is a saviour! In his own words:

“Lately, I’ve been coming across many blogs that have weird font-size rendering issues for code blocks on iOS. Basically, in a code snippet, the text-size would sometimes be much larger for some lines than others.”

Exactly my problem. Applied the fix he recommends and, boom, just like that, magic! Thank you, Nathan!

code {
    text-size-adjust: 100%;
    -ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;
    -moz-text-size-adjust: 100%;
    -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;
}
01 Aug 2025 @ 21:10:37
“Niederegger Lubeck Classic Marzipan.”
Small box of Niederegger Lubeck Classic Marzipan, dark chocolate filled with marzipan. Yummy!

I have to note that Niederegger Lubeck Classic Marzipan is—though pricey in the U.S.—super delicious. I am going to look around to see if I can find the other varieties they produce, as I would love to try them all!

01 Aug 2025 @ 19:58:30

Was just watching “The Penguin Lessons” (★★★★) , which I am rating even though I havent finished it—because The Horse urgently needed to know on what I spent some money almost a year ago, and I had to stop watching to search for receipts on my computer, because searching on the pocket (iPhone) one wasn’t rendering any results.

Update: 01 Aug 2025 @ 22:48:06

I just finished watching the movie, and I am revising my rating to 4 stars instead. It is a good movie, based on real events.

01 Aug 2025 @ 15:06:43

Feeling the urge to buy an ortholinear keyboard. If anything else, it is the uniformity, and compactness of it, that has enticed me. The search for one starts.

01 Aug 2025 @ 11:37:38

“hi <my GitHub nick>, I noticed you stargazed <repository I starred>. Seems like you’re interested in the same kind of productivity software. I’d love your feedback for <web page for product they are advertising>.”

Getting more and more of these type of emails. They must be getting that information from some kind of GitHub API, right? I mean, sometimes they are plainly inventing things, but sometimes they are right on the spot. Is GitHub selling us out? Microsoft would never do such thing, wouldn’t they?

01 Aug 2025 @ 09:53:13

“You might not need tmux”, said no one, until now. I don’t subscribe to that point of view, I use tmux heavily. The author’s solution? Install shpool, which adds yet another daemon. No, thank you, tmux is just fine. Heck, tmux is superb!

➝ Via Hacker News.

01 Aug 2025 @ 09:08:04

β–‘β–’β–“ Having flashbacks to “simpler” times when Extended ASCII was used for just about everything—and yes, that included ASCII art β–‘β–’β–“

01 Aug 2025 @ 08:10:01
“ChatVows AI cartoon, The New Yorker”
“Jill, through every joy and challenge, I promise to always your free trial of ChatVows A.I. has expiredβ€”please subscribe to continue.”

You’ve got to keep your subscription up! πŸ˜‚ This cartoon from The New Yorker (one of the few sites still using “www”, I just noticed) made me laugh out loud. In a way, it reminded me of this one.

31 Jul 2025 @ 17:24:12

While on the topic of LLMs, I can’t stand “thinking” models. It is possible to set think to false on the CLI in Ollama for thinking models, but I haven’t found a way to set it as a variable. Their newly released application doesn’t have such feature. Granted, only DeepSeek and Qwen models are “thinkers”, so perhaps I will stop using them.

31 Jul 2025 @ 17:18:33

Providing an LLM a streamlined, but overall complete initial prompt is vital not to get perplexing answers. It will also greatly diminish the possibility of having the model astraying away, diluting the results. Though I believe this applies to all models, SaaS or local, it is specifically important when using local models, as processing and memory are more finite.

31 Jul 2025 @ 15:50:00

When we visited New York, we went to The Met. Ever since, and every once in a while, I get an email from them offering me membership. I would love to be a paying member, but what good is it to me, if I am near 1,000 miles away from it?

πŸ› οΈ 31 Jul 2025 @ 15:40:33

I have added the ability to use emoji as a note marker. For example, this one has a hammer and wrench emoji. It’s simply an entry on the front matter of the note. I will not abuse it, but I think it is going to be useful. If ends up not to be, removing it will be pretty simple, thanks to sed.

31 Jul 2025 @ 13:31:23

To speed up browsing on Chrome—yes, only available on Chrome at the moment—simply add these lines somewhere between your website’s <head>. Allegedly it provides “a near-instant loading experience”.

<script type="speculationrules">
  {
    "prerender": [{ "where": { "href_matches": "/*" }, "eagerness": "moderate" }],
    "prefetch": [{ "where": { "href_matches": "/*" }, "eagerness": "moderate" }]
  }
</script>

➝ Via Hacker News.

31 Jul 2025 @ 07:16:56

I mowed the lawn yesterday. Started at 16:00, and by 16:30 I had taken four breaks, and drank 5 bottles of water. I had to call it quits. The heat was truly unbearable; I thought I was going to faint. Waited until 19:30, and it was so much easier! Mental note: during summer, mow the lawn in the evenings.

30 Jul 2025 @ 08:10:20

Came across a static site (like this one) using Webmention, and got reminded of Pingback and TrackBack. There are also comments which are, arguably, more direct. I want none of it.

29 Jul 2025 @ 07:23:32

Last Friday I saw “Limitless” (β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…) with the kid. It is a relatively old movie (2011), starring Bradley Cooper, and Robert De Niro. First time I saw it, I can watch it again. Imagine been mentally limitless!

28 Jul 2025 @ 13:46:17

After sharing with a friend my step count for the last two weeks, and telling him that “the heat here has been excruciatingly punishing”, and because of it my daily step count has decreased to a laughable number, and that I was trying to compensate by working standing up for hours to no end, but still felt guilty about it, he replied:

“It’s a bit slack but with the heat, what can you do!?”

πŸ˜‚ Isn’t he the best friend?

27 Jul 2025 @ 17:47:20

From Franklin D. Roosevelt inaugural address, 20 January 1937, as ever present today as always.

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

26 Jul 2025 @ 18:45:37

The State of Florida is backwards in many ways. One of the many things, trash bins. The one for garbage has a green lid, while the one for recycle has a blue lid. Doesn’t make sense, right?

25 Jul 2025 @ 12:46:09

As seeing in a picture a family member sent, after we were chatting—in the family group—about how the Grim Reaper was so busy lately. “Well, not busier than Quynh, but almost!”, to which she replied with the image of a coffe mug with the following written in it:

Re-tired
(adj.)
I was tired yesterday, and I’m tired again today.

Update: 25 Jul 2025 @ 13:57:54

I should have noted that the “well, not busier than Quynh…” was messaged because she has been very inactive in the group lately. πŸ˜‚

25 Jul 2025 @ 07:39:28

Got invited to a warband raid yesterday, in Diablo Immortal. Afterwards got an invite to their clan. Upon joining, a warm welcome instructed encouraged me to join their Discord channel. Then, and only then, they started to lose me. There is no other technology I dislike more than Discord. Also, it is a game, to entertain me a little, not a job.

25 Jul 2025 @ 07:24:52

Re: Claudrod #1753427623

“Another day, another protein smoothie with blueberries and papaya!!!!111”

Wish I could have one of those right now, and not this lame coffee (it doesn’t even has cream today, because I ran out of it), Claud! Oh, and happy Friday everyone! πŸ™ˆ

25 Jul 2025 @ 07:16:51

“You’re in your prime earning years”, reads the ad. It continues, “Is your retirement plan account keeping up with you?”. Oh, darling, how little do you know me! You’ve been flattering me all along, telling me sweet little lies, assuring me you know me. Lies! Prime years, psst. As if!

24 Jul 2025 @ 15:12:51

Yes, alone in our galaxy. No one else but us. All we have is our family, our friends, our neighbours, our fellow citizens, our equal human beings. Why can’t we all get along? Why can’t we care about each other? Seriously.

24 Jul 2025 @ 14:48:01

Pretty hilarious short story of a conversation of two intelligent beings about, well, meat!

“Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?”

This part hit home for me, funny or not. Yes, it is supposed to be funny, yet it is also sad. After closing their case on the Solar System, they decided to visit a “rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence” nearby who, apparently, “wants to be friendly again”. “They always come around”, says one of them. To which the other replies:

β€œAnd why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone…”

US, that’s us.

24 Jul 2025 @ 11:36:28

I have heard over and over that “you can eat whatever you want, as long as you burn it through exercise”. Well, well, well, another fallacy.

“We can’t outrun a bad diet. Pontzer says if we want to tackle obesity, the public health message should focus on changing what’s on our plates.”

23 Jul 2025 @ 08:15:36

Not long ago I mentioned SecretDrop. On the same cryptography/encryption topic, I have also found FileKey, and its GitHub repository, which I think is very neat. It is also pretty simple to selfhost.

21 Jul 2025 @ 20:15:58

I haven’t had this much fun on a Home Owners Association (HOA) meeting in a long while. What’s making it super amussing is that our community manager is so clueless! Like she is moving in slow motion. πŸ˜…πŸ˜‚ Bless her heart!

21 Jul 2025 @ 14:50:19

Spotted while walking on my 10 minutes break this afternoon. A dumpster cage with the gate clearly, and boldly labeled, “Please Keep the Gate Closed”. It was fully open. Utter disregard. Not even a please does the job these days.

20 Jul 2025 @ 20:28:29

Just finished watching “The Notebook” (β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…Β½) with the kid. It is the third time I watch it, I believe. The second time I watch it with him. It gets me a knot in my throat every time.

20 Jul 2025 @ 10:12:23

Blue hasn’t dropped a note/thought since May 2025, and I am starting to worry. I don’t know them, I simply care. Can’t help it.

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