Sunday, September 27, 2026

Passing fancies #29

Strap yourself in and prepare to be inundated with evidence of my weird interests, much of which I found thanks to my RSS feeds.

Beer

Last week we were invited for a tour of our new office space at work.  My company has a number of offices near ours and they determined they could save money by moving us to a new building across the street.  The guy giving the tour mentioned that they had a couple kegs at work and had a regular "thirsty Thursday" event to encourage employees to get to know one another.  I was interested until someone asked what they had on tap.  The answer of Stella Artois nor Blue Moon didn't thrill me.  Blue Moon can be refreshing on a hot day provided it's served with a slice of orange but I think Stella tastes like any of the mass produced pale fizzy lagers.

The news that members of Gen-Z in the UK seem to be enjoying cask beer (aka real ale) made me smile.  It's a gateway beer and could help keep the craft beer industry alive.

I'm happy to hear that the Vienna Inn is still attracting new customers.  I first visited the Vienna Inn in 1981.  Their chili-cheese dogs are legendary and the place has more character than any other bar I've visited.

Books

This week I finished reading Ken Liu's The Passing of the Dragon and Other Stories which I found to be excellent.  A few of the stories hinted at interesting uses for AI while others toyed with ways that technology might be viewed in the future.  I won't elaborate because these stories deserve to be discovered and enjoyed without spoilers.

Television/Movies

Somehow I stumbled across a recommendation for a movie called The American Astronaut.  It's a weird combination of retro sci-fi, parody, and musical.  Somehow it proved to be amusing.

We watched Chuck Amuck tonight.  It's a documentary about Chuck Jones, key figure behind the golden age of Warner Brother cartoons.  I loved those movies as a kid and they still make me laugh.  I also just enjoyed this article about What's Opera, Doc?, one of my favorite of their cartoons.

Tonight I found Prometheus playing on BBC American.  I'm a sucker for Ridley Scott movies.  I had forgotten the reference to Lawrence of Arabia, which is one of my favorite films.

Music

My wife and I spent many years enjoying series of Celtic concerts at the Old Brogue in Great Falls, VA.  The house band during those days was called IONA.  Their lead singer has a lovely voice and one of the instruments she plays is the bodhrán, a handheld drum which I find hypnotic when played by a master.  I discovered the video below this week of a young man who is well worth watching as well.
https://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2026/09/three-minute-drum-solo-on-bodhran.html

I've been reading a biography of Jimmy Buffett and it mentioned his cover of Lord Buckley's monologue, God's Own Drunk.  I mentioned this on Facebook and a friend told me about the cease & desist order which the Buckley estate had filed.  Apparently it was resolved because Buffett released a digital version of it in 2011.
https://youtu.be/Tv7W23T6CTY?si=nW1eEAsg-A7jdfxN

Something reminded me of a weird song by Jake La Botz called You Can't Put a Hobo on a Passenger Train which made me want to hear it again.  It has odd lyrics but it's quite catchy.

Links

This article about the history of Star Trek games on computers brought back memories for me.  I started my career in the computer industry 50 years ago as a field engineer.  Whenever I got stuck on night shift, there was often idle time between repair calls.  I used to connect to the mainframe used to store information about repair calls using a Texas Instrument Silent 700 dial up terminal.  I discovered that in addition to the software used to record repair calls, there were also games on that computer.  My two favorites were Colossal Cave Adventure and Star Trek.

Here's an email from someone at Palm Computer (manufacturer of the Palm Pilot) announcing their Graffiti handwriting recognition from 1994.  I joined U.S. Robotics in 1996 and bought my first Palm Pilot shortly after joining.  I was much faster taking notes on my Palm device thanks to Graffiti.

The news that reading carries health benefits shouldn't surprise people who read for pleasure.  I got a paper route in intermediate school to support my reading habit.  The fact that I willingly got of bed at 5 AM to deliver papers should show how obsessed with reading I was (and continue to be).  It helps my mental health so much.

Apparently moose cause a lot of damage to farms, particularly broccoli farms.  Given how large and aggressive moose can be, I would not want to be in charge of keeping them out of farm fields.

When I was in elementary school, my sister and I stayed with my grandmother after school until my mom got off work.  Grandma subscribed to a few nature magazines, one of which featured a lot of photos of various creatures under water.  The photos in this article remind me of that time in my life.
https://www.popsci.com/environment/ocean-photographer-of-the-year-2026-winners/

Ctenophores (aka comb jellies) are beautiful but strange looking.  The variety and colors are amazing.

The news that a car museum is forced to close because their onsite mechanic was retiring.  Apparently they couldn't find younger mechanics who understand carburetors.

I found a mention of Australian currency featuring a picture of Andrew Banjo Patterson.  He was the author of the ballad Waltzing Matilda and a poem called The Man From Snowy River which was made into a favorite movie of mine.  The bill featuring Patterson's picture also contains microprinting featuring the text of The Man From Snowy River.

Scientists have managed to create a solid form of water at more than 2,000 °C.  I hesitate to call it ice the way the article does but it's definitely an interesting development.

I've seen too many reported problems with Samsung's devices and so called smart devices don't tempt me at all.  The news that Samsung issued a failed firmware update which caused their refrigerators to let food spoil renews my resolve to never buy a Samsung device nor a connected appliance of any kind.

I used to watch a fair number of vampire films when I was younger.  That might be part of why I found this article about historic measures taken to prevent the undead from rising so fascinating.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ancient-anti-vampire-grave-undead

It's a little disappointing that the tales of Viking funerals in flaming boats have no evidence to support them but once you get to a certain age, you realize much of what you've been told has no basis in truth.  Still the idea of a funeral pyre on a flaming boat has a certain draw to it.

The Curiosity Mars Rover has sent a postcard home in honor of its 5,000th day on Mars.  NASA's engineering continues to impress me.

The news that mayors in Japan are fighting a Ninja duel caught my eye.  If nothing else, it might be a way to rid the world of an unwanted politician or two.

I'm fascinated by miniatures and this origami model of a typewriter definitely qualifies.  I admire the ability create 3-d objects out of paper but I don't possess the desire to do so myself.
https://laughingsquid.com/origami-typewriter/

It continues getting harder to find people who are able to fix things to prevent us from needing to discard the broken object followed by replacing it.  I was surprised that glasses are starting to fall into this category.  I feel fortunate to have found an independent optometrist with the ability to fix and adjust my glasses.

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Tuesday, September 15, 2026

Passing fancies #28

Strap yourself in and prepare to be inundated with evidence of my weird interests, much of which I found thanks to my RSS feeds.

Beer

Each year I start anticipating a few favorite beers which are only available when cooler temperatures arrive.  Here's a few I look forward to buying each Fall/Winter.

Troegs Mad Elf has been my favorite holiday beer for a long time.  The combination of cherries, local honey, and the base of a really fine Belgian strong ale makes this one of my favorite beers ever.  I love most Troegs beers and I'm grateful that their brewery is only about 2 hours away from us.   Mad Elf is typically available from November to January each year.

Commonwealth Marveloso is a barrel-aged imperial stout which I've sought out ever since I heard about I first heard about it around 2017.  I wasn't able to find it until two years later but I have managed to buy some every year since then.  Each year they release two "variants" which is a base beer with a few "adjunct" ingredients (typically non-traditional beer ingredients) added.  Unfortunately Commonwealth Brewing's main location is about 4 hours away which is a bit far for a day trip so I have to be satisfied with the few bottles I manage to track down each year.  It's typically available in the December to January timeframe each year.

Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Stout (aka BCBS) is the original Bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout, having first been brewed in 1992.  It's very flavorful and quite potent.  Goose Island offers a few variants each year, some of which are really tasty.  It's released Black Friday each year which gives me something interesting to buy instead of fighting the crowds at the traditional start of holiday shopping.

Books

Last week I finished reading Drown by Junot Diaz.  It's a collection of short stories which I enjoyed nearly as much as The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, an award winning novel of his which I last re-read a few years ago.  I'd be hard pressed to describe why I like Junot's books so much.  They provide a peek into the lives of characters who are quite different from me and yet suffer from similar insecurities and problems.  Here's a link to a Google Talk given by Junot about his most celebrated work which I found fascinating.

Television/Movies

This week we enjoyed seeing a movie called Mayday on Apple TV.  It featured a nice blend of action, suspense, and humor (which you might expect from a movie starring Ryan Reynolds).  Recommended if you have an Apple TV account.

We also watched episodes of Silo based on the excellent books by Hugh Howey and Ted Lasso which we were happy to see return for a 4th season.  We enjoy both series a lot.

Music


Last weekend we had the chance to see a favorite local band, Bad Press Band (pictured above), at Harvest Gap Brewery which is close enough to be very convenient.  The band is quite talented and they played a great mix of music which kept us smiling for their 3 hour set.  Harvest Gap is a nice venue for enjoying live music as well.  There's a view of the mountains, an interesting selection of beers and ciders on tap, and some tasty food available, making it a nice place to hang out on weekends.

Links

This author's tribute to his mother struck a chord with me.  I was fortunate to have a very supportive mother.  I'm even more fortunate that she's still around at 88 which lets me continue to enjoy her company.  She has been obsessed with books for as long as I can remember and passed that interest along to me.  She took me to libraries and bookstores whenever I asked.  Her relationship with my stepfather showed me what marriage at its best could be.  My wife and I have been married for 34 years as a result of their example.

At work I develop firmware for small SDRs (software defined radios) which are used to provide PNT (positioning, navigation, and timing) in areas which don't have GPS (aka GNSS) access for some reason which can be due to jamming or spoofing.  My company attends events like the one in the article link below where GPS signals are intentionally jammed or spoofed to see whether vendor devices are able navigate in such a hostile environment. 
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260908-inside-the-fight-to-protect-the-worlds-satellite-signals

I subscribed to Byte Magazine in the glory days of personal computing from the late 1970s to the late 1980s.  Here's a web site which has very tiny digitized pages from Byte Magazine which are also searchable and amazingly enough zoomable enough to be fully legible.  Since I have such fond memories of Byte from that time, I find this website fascinating.
https://byte.tsundoku.io/

Phone hacking used to be a thing back in the days when long distance calls were ridiculously expensive.  Hackers found ways to make calls for no money.  One of the most interesting was a toy whistle which was included in cereal boxes.  John Draper, aka Captain Crunch, got his nickname from his use of this whistle for phone hacking.  Another interesting fact about phone hacking is that prior to starting Apple Computer, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak designed a Blue Box which helped make phone phreaking easier.
https://boingboing.net/2026/09/08/fountain-pen-capn-crunch-whistle.html

I've been a fan of Sherlock Holmes stories as well as the many ways they've been adapted since I was a kid.  The way the character ends has fascinated many fans including me.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/various/sherlock-holmes-and-the-mystery-of-his-endless-afterlife/91626765

The term "load-bearing people" in this article caught my eye.  I think most organizations have a few people quietly doing excellent work but whose efforts aren't recognized.  These people may not be appreciated until they finally leave.  Sadly it's not only work where people can feel unappreciated.  Make sure you let people whose company you value what they mean to you while you have the chance.
https://mikefisher.substack.com/p/load-bearing-people

I've been wearing glasses due to being near-sighted for 60 years.  Apparently that condition gives me an elevated risk of retinal detachment, glaucoma, cataracts and myopic maculopathy.  I've always thought of my poor vision as a nuisance but I guess it's more serious than that.
https://www.aao.org/newsroom/news-releases/detail/ama-backs-formal-classification-nearsightedness

Since I'm planning on retiring soon, I'm always interested in hearing about interesting hobbies.  Building a Soviet-era supercomputer out of vacuum tubes is several orders of magnitude more ambitious than I'm looking for.  It's still fun to read about.
https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2026/09/08/retired-man-turns-spare-room-into-soviet-era-supercomputer/5295046

I've known that cosmic particles (secondary particles created when cosmic rays impact Earth's atmosphere) pass through objects for a long time.  Some attribute bit flips and random computer crashes to these particles.  I never thought about them passing through our bodies though.
https://www.livescience.com/physics-mathematics/how-many-cosmic-particles-are-passing-through-your-body-at-any-moment

News stories which involve space travel always catch my eye.  Launching a mission which hopes to reach Alpha Centauri in less than 80,000 years seems hopelessly optimistic and a waste of resources better spent solving the numerous problems facing humanity.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/09/private-group-wants-to-launch-cheapest-possible-mission-to-alpha-centauri/

Since I'm most definitely not a fan of modern art, the news that an art collector tried to make a bid of $4000 for a broken vacuum cleaner in an art gallery thinking it was an experimental sculpture made me smile.  A mistake like that should be a clue that the collector has more money than common sense.
https://artinc.co/art-collector-bids-4000-on-broken-vacuum-cleaner-only-to-discover-it-was-trash/

The author of this article suggests that LLMs have placed us at the intersection of the Dunning-Kruger effect and the Voigt-Kampff machine from the movie Blade Runner.  It's an interesting observation.
https://www.thesimgap.com/p/the-synthetic-yes-man-ai-dunning

I've found South Park amusing since I saw the first episode nearly 30 years ago.  They always seem to find crazy ways to stay relevant and are often controversial.
https://southpark.cc.com/news/beycql/after-29-years-south-park-changes-its-name

Apparently leather can be made from fungus instead of animal hides.  I'll be interested to see when products made this way reach market.  It makes me picture tough guys wearing mushroom jackets.  Nah, it doesn't have the same ring, does it?
https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2026/09/plastic-free-fungus-based-leather-is-going-big/

Starlink and other companies which have large numbers of satellites create a number of problems.  The RF frequencies their signals bleed into the surrounding frequencies used by radio telescopes. Also, the sheer number of satellites interfere with viewing by traditional telescopes.  Don't get me started about the absurb plans of Reflect Orbital, either.


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Sunday, September 06, 2026

Passing fancies #27

Strap yourself in and prepare to be inundated with evidence of my weird interests, much of which I found thanks to my RSS feeds.

Beer


About a month ago, I was talking with an old friend (of ~40 years or so) and he mentioned that a mutual friend of ours had passed away a while ago.  One of the weird things about getting older is having to accept the fact that friends I haven't seen in a while may have died without me finding out until long afterward.  I met Randy while working at a company called Netrix which made networking equipment (X.25, Frame Relay, ATM, and voice) about 30 years ago.  Randy and I discovered that we had many geeky interests in common which led to us enjoying many long conversations over food and beers.  At one of those meals, he recommended I try the beer pictured above, a North Coast Old Stock Ale.  It's become one of my favorite beers and I raised a toast to Randy tonight while drinking one.

Books

This week I finished reading After Midnight aka Not After Midnight, a collection of short works by Daphne du Maurier.  It includes her stories The Birds and Don't Look Now, both of which were adapted into weird and suspense filled movies.  She was an excellent author who had a deft hand with stories featuring some weird or supernatural element.  I'm not normally a fan of shorter fiction but this is an exceptional collection which I enjoyed.

Television/Movies

With the sad news about Dolly Parton and Tim Curry passing away recently, we watched several short clips of Dolly with the Muppets.  It turned out my wife had never seen Muppet Treasure Island with Curry playing Long John Silver.  We watched it this week and enjoyed Curry's absolutely delightful performance.  In the past my wife has dragged me to a few late night performances of The Rocky Horror Picture Show which are always fun.

I also watched Rooster Cogburn which has John Wayne reprising his character from the movie True Grit.  Rooster Cogburn reminded me a bit of The African Queen because Katherine Hepburn had such good rapport with both John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart.


Last night we were catching up on episodes of Stuart Fails To Save the Universe when I saw what appeared to be ASCII characters on a doormat in the intro sequence as shown in the photo above.  Being slightly obsessive, I couldn't reset until I had decoded the hexadecimal bytes into legible text.  The show is an interesting blend of science fiction, weird references, and humor which somehow manages to be enjoyable.  Apparently a lot of the critics didn't care for it but I'm rarely influenced by things like that.

Music


Speaking of Dolly Parton, we listened to the White Stripes cover of her song Jolene on our way to a local brewery called Harvest Gap last weekend.  At the brewery we enjoyed live music provided by a talented musician named Andrew O'Day who also performed a fine cover of Jolene while we were there.  That's Andrew on the stage behind my beer, a fine sour ale.  Both the brewery and the musician are worth seeking out if you're near northern VA.

Links

I was surprised to find this article about the origins of the Windows BSOD (Blue Screen of Death).  It lists 3 people responsible for the BSOD, one of whom I've known since he was in high school.  I met John Vert while frequenting a few favorite DC area BBSes in the late 1980s.  Even back then I could tell he was a gifted programmer.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20240730-00/?p=110062

One of the first social networking protocols was called Finger.  I remember it fondly from the early 1990s when I had a Sun Workstation on my desk at work.  Back in the day we used to use it to share what we were working on, a favorite quote, or upcoming after work plans.   It just made the workplace a little more fun.
https://en.andros.dev/blog/54572bc7/finger-the-1971-social-network-that-never-died/

Speaking of Sun Workstations, one of the technologies I loved on them was the X-Windows which enjoyed its 40 anniversary a couple years ago.  I know it's been replaced by Wayland but X-Windows is still readily available on the systems I use.  Since it works for me there seems to be little advantage in making the switch.

Have you ever heard of Fordite, a weird by-product of painting automobiles?  After reading an article about it a while back, I found the patterns interesting enough that I found some earrings for my wife made from Fordite.  The patterns can be fascinating.
I find this graphical demo of fluid dynamics interesting enough to be almost hypnotic.

It's stories like this one about DoD refrigerators possibly getting hacked that makes me hesitant to ever get a smart appliance.  Making anything network accessible makes it vulnerable to hackers.  Often the networking capability offers no significant advantage over non-networked appliances.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/08/is-someone-hacking-dod-refrigerators.html

When I read this article about Columbia House shutting down, my first reaction was surprise at the fact that they were still around.  I was a member for a while 30+ years ago but it's been a long time since I heard about them.  It was a great way to build a music collection at the time.

This article about core memory modules used in space brought back made me nostalgic.  In the late 1970s and early 1980s I worked as a Field Engineer for Honeywell mainframes and there were still machines with core memories in use at that time.  The core memories I worked on back then were huge, taking up more floor space than any single room in our house.  Now it seems a bit surreal that we stored individual bits of data on tiny magnetic donut shaped devices.

Speaking of core memories, the first practical patent for one was filed 75 years ago.

The recent launch of the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope has space geeks like me excited.  I can't wait to read about the discoveries it helps make.

I think I'd like this inflatable Oktoberfest beer hall from Samuel Adams more than the inflatable holiday decorations I see on so many lawns around various holidays.

Apparently Linux has been used in space missions since 1996.  It makes sense since it's very stable and since the source is readily available, it can be customized for any application.

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Thursday, August 27, 2026

Passing fancies #26

Strap yourself in and prepare to be inundated with evidence of my weird interests, much of which I discovered via my RSS feeds.

Beer

Saturday we had lunch with some friends I met 26 years ago while working at a startup company called Ocular Networks.  Since one of these friends moved to New Jersey a few years ago, we have to look for places that are roughly equidistant to get together.  This time we chose Troegs Brewing in Hershey, PA.  Troegs has been a favorite brewery of mine for about 20 years and their Mad Elf is my absolute favorite winter beer.  The mixture of a strong Belgian style ale made with cherries and honey always makes it feel like the holidays to me.  During lunch we raised a toast to our friend David who we lost a little over a year ago.  David loved beers from Troegs as much as I do.



Books

Today I finished Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return, a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, who died a couple months ago.  I had read the first volume of Persepolis years ago and while looking at stories about her recent death I learned about this second volume.  These books provide insights into what it was like to live in Iran during the Islamic Revolution.  They've won awards and I can see why.  This is proof that graphic novels can qualify as literature.


Television/Movies

This week we finished watching Lucky, a miniseries streaming on Apple TV.  It was a suspenseful series and since they didn't drop all the episodes at once, it gave us something to look forward to seeing each week.  The cast and writing were excellent.  Highly recommended.


We also finished watching the second season of Cross which streams on Amazon Prime Video.  It was entertaining but not quite as gripping as the first season was.


Today we saw Spider-Man: Brand New Day at Alamo Drafthouse and it was a fun movie as well as a great movie going experience.

One of the reasons I enjoyed the movie so much is Spider-Man is my favorite superhero.  I've been reading comics featuring him since I was a kid.  I liked the fact that in the early comics he was a teenager who didn't fit in at school prior to obtaining his powers.

The Alamo experience is so good that I'm reluctant to visit other theaters.  One of the many things I love about Alamo is that they feature themed short films for 30 minutes prior to the feature film.  For this movie, they had a summary of the previous films Spider-Man has appeared in for people like my wife who don't follow superhero films as closely as I do so they could understand a few of the references in the movie.  

At Alamo today I was pleasantly surprised to find a favorite beer like Founders Rübæus on tap there.  It's a lovely refreshing raspberry ale which manages to be both sweet and a bit tart at the same time.  That just made the movie that much more enjoyable.


Music

While watching Cross, season 2 episode 7, I heard a snippet of a song which I found intriguing.  A bit of research showed it to be Devil Always Makes Me Think Twice by Chris Stapleton.  I like it because the guitar in this song has a nice bluesy sound to it.  I often end up doing searches to find the artist and name of interesting songs which are featured as background in various movies and TV programs we watch.  This capability wasn't available when I was young so I enjoy being able to track down interesting music this way.
https://youtu.be/25yizPKZeDo?si=EEqiP2QR5Dw7niVb


Links


The news that dogs can tell when their owners are happy confirms what I've suspected for as long as we're had dogs.  They are amazing companions who have enriched our lives.  I say this as our latest rescue dog, a pit bull named Kya, relaxes next to me but as you can see from the photo above pops her head up when I tried to take her picture.
https://time.com/article/2026/08/10/your-dog-can-tell-when-youre-happy/

This story about J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings being rejected by the Nobel Prize Committee in 1961 should be surprising but I'm skeptical that this and similar prizes are ever awarded to the most deserving art.  Tolkien's books are among my favorites and I've revisited them periodically ever since I first read them while in high school..
https://www.openculture.com/2026/05/when-the-nobel-prize-committee-rejected-the-lord-of-the-rings-tolkien-has-not-measured-up-to-storytelling-of-the-highest-quality-1961.html

This interview with Melanie Buggey who crossed the Strait of Georgia in record time is amusing to me mostly because of how offbeat some of her answers are.  Humor can help elevate an otherwise routine interview.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/b-c-swimmer-crosses-strait-of-georgia-under-nine-hours-9.7316260

Sadly, the fact that Black artists have been largely left out of the history of punk and indie music isn't terribly surprising.  It's given me the desire to seek out music from the artists mentioned in this article.
https://thequietus.com/culture/books/history-itself-justifies-our-presence-stephanie-phillips-on-the-erasure-of-black-voices-in-punk-and-indie-music/

I found news of members of Gen Z embracing retrotech interesting.  While I'm a baby boomer much older than the generation mentioned in the article, I also find retrotech more interesting than most modern tech.  User interfaces have gotten more complicated but they don't seem more efficient to me.  My latest toy is a Friendly fZ80 computer designed and produced by Tom Jennings which provides Z80 emulation to be able to run the CP/M and MP/M operating systems.  If you're a fan of BBSes, you may have heard of FidoNet, which Tom created.  I'm looking forward to the HDMI to VGA adapter I ordered arriving so I can give it a try.
https://www.euronews.com/next/2026/08/24/from-ipods-to-wired-headphones-why-more-gen-zers-are-picking-retro-tech

Since the Z80 is an 8-bit CPU, this article about how 8-bit computers work seems appropriate.
https://amenzwa.github.io/stem/ComputingHistory/How8bitComputersWork/

The small brains called organoids which scientists have been growing for experiments apparently have a sense of time spanning several years.  That makes me wonder whether these little brains are more aware of other things about their environment which we don't know about yet.
https://thedebrief.org/scientists-grew-human-brain-organoids-for-years-and-discovered-they-keep-track-of-time/

A teacher in Illinois built an amazingly detailed model of Disney World out of Lego.  I'm fascinated by miniature models of real world things like this.
https://www.stlpr.org/culture-history/2026-08-19/illinois-disney-world-lego-kragle-kreations

Working on the Mars rover Perserverance which is capable of operating autonomously much of the time, must have been tremendously satisfying.  Seeing the product of years of planning and implementation operate so well has to feel good.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/08/the-first-self-driving-vehicle-on-mars-has-proven-to-be-a-smashing-success/

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Tuesday, August 18, 2026

Passing fancies #25

Strap yourself in and prepare to be inundated with evidence of my weird interests, much of which I discovered via my RSS feeds.

Beer

 


The founder of one of my favorite breweries, Dogfish Head, is one of craft brewing's most memorable characters.  I've had the good fortune to talk with him on several occasions, including sitting next to him at a brunch celebrating Dogfish Head's 20th anniversary as shown in the picture above.  He's a really interesting guy.  Here's an article about his considerable impact on the industry.
https://www.americancraftbeer.com/craft-beer-legends-dogfish-heads-sam-calagione/


Books

This week I finished Tim Sullivan's latest book, The Tailor.  It stars his fascinating character, DS George Cross, a neurodivergent police detective.  I've been eagerly devouring this series as they become available in the U.S. which had been subject to a delay with his earlier books which I assume was due to the challenges of publishing books destined for a foreign country.  I was hooked quickly and have preordered the last few books.  Unfortunately, in my enthusiasm I end up reading each new book far too quickly.
https://crimefictionlover.com/2026/07/the-tailor-by-tim-sullivan/

Television/Movies

I recently watched Picnic At Hanging Rock which was entertaining but which I felt had an unsatisfying ending.  Then I made the mistake of searching for more information and found hints that the author had intended time travel as a possible explanation for how the girls disappeared.  I think I would have been happier had I not found that out.

I also watched The Shawshank Redemption which I thought was a much better film.  I had read the book by Stephen King recently and wanted to see how faithfully the material was adapted.  I'm happy to report that aside from the inevitable need to shorten the story to a movie, the story was kept largely intact, much like the movie Stand By Me, also adapted from a King book.


Links

When I was a kid, few movies entertained me more than those with stop-motion animation like that done by Ray Harryhausen.  The skeleton battle scene in Jason and the Argonauts is a particular favorite of mine.  This article with more information about how the illusion was created is a treat.
https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/how-ray-harryhausen-conjured-the

Since I recently featured a link about a new form of trebuchet, this article about possibly the first victim of Edward I's Warwolf trebuchet caught my eye.  Having 167 fractures does not sound like a pleasant way to die.
https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/skeleton-with-167-fractures-discovered-at-scottish-castle-may-have-been-first-victim-of-edward-is-war-wolf-trebuchet

I was surprised to hear that unfavorable forecasts from the weather apps on people's phones are having such a dramatic effect on small businesses.  I think people often don't investigate the timing of potential inclement weather to try to work around it.
https://finance.yahoo.com/small-business/articles/weather-app-rain-icons-cut-213000881.html

It's easy to overlook modern conveniences which make our lives easier than our ancestors had it.  It's also nice to take a moment to appreciate how much they increase our enjoyment.
https://ordinaryabundance.com/

I'm fascinated by octopuses and how alien their intelligence is.  Their nervous system is distributed between their brain and their eight arms.  The arms are capable of operating on their own and continue to do so for some time when lost by the octopus.  Understanding more about them might help us when and if we meet aliens from other worlds.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/octopus-extraterrestrial-intelligence-1.6871036

Finding out that the person who bought the domain name noreply.net is being inundated with email makes me smile and feel a bit sad that people are so clueless as to try to direct email to the domain name.
https://www.wired.com/story/sensitive-info-goes-into-no-reply-emails-constantly-this-guy-sees-it-all/

It doesn't surprise me that hobbyists are rejecting the use of AI.  I enjoy solving problems and programming is a perfect way to scratch that itch.  LLMs can be occasionally helpful but I never enjoy using them.
https://boingboing.net/2026/08/12/hobby-coders-against-llms.html

Like the author of this article, I fear that true craft of programming will be lost once everyone resorts to the use of AI.
https://www.alexkroman.com/p/the-new-craftsmanship

This combination of a black hole and a massive star looks pretty amazing.  We can thank the James Webb Space Telescope for assisting with this discovery.
https://news.mit.edu/2026/astronomers-discover-brand-new-type-astrophysical-object-black-hole-star-0812

While the winner of the DARPA Lift Challenge didn't quite hit the 4:1 ratio of payload to weight ratio required to win the full prize, it got impressively close.

My stepfather died of ALS 10 years ago.  This brain-computer interface would have made his last few months much more pleasant.  For a man who had been active his entire life, being confined to a wheelchair, having to rely on others to do everything for him was hard to deal with.

Back when I was a field engineer, the oldest systems I worked on were the GE-200 series machines.  They had so little memory that when I needed to run diagnostics on a peripheral device, the computer operators were forced to give me the entire system.

One of the things which worries me is research into dangerous areas such as inverted bacteria which might be able to confuse or bypass our immune systems used to dealing with non-inverted bacteria.  I hope they're using redundant safety systems with lots of oversight.

It's amazing to consider how much thought went into computer input devices.  Even the devices which appear simple on their surface are more complicated than they appear.
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Tuesday, August 11, 2026

Passing fancies #24

 


Strap yourself in and prepare to be inundated with evidence of my weird interests, much of which I discovered via my RSS feeds.

Beer

Divers just discovered a bottle of Guinness in a shipwreck which is 162 years old.  Would you try a sip?  While I'm not disappointed when visiting a restaurant where Guinness is the best beer on the menu, I don't think it ages particularly well.  I believe I'd skip the opportunity to taste it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4kx9zkd90o

I found this photo of a very cool lamp at a Sapporo location.  I'm almost always amused by decorations made from beer bottles or kegs.

Books

I follow Zach Weinersmith on Mastodon and when he described his new book, Sawyer Lee and the Quest to Just Stay Home, it sounded like a great gift for our youngest grandson so I sent him a copy.  Then I got curious from the reviews I read, so I bought the Kindle edition for myself.  It was weird and amusing which is exactly what I had been hoping.  I enjoyed another book by Zach and his wife, Kelly called A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?  It helped confirm my opinion that the plans to create a Mars colony are overly optimistic.

I also follow another author, Catherynne M. Valente, on Mastodon.  Since I've been enjoying her posts there, I had been wanting to read one of her books.  Fortunately, Audible just had a great sale featuring some of her books.  I just finished reading Comfort Me With Apples which I quite enjoyed.

And finally, I re-read A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs who is better known as the creator of Tarzan of the Apes.  I first read Burroughs' Mars books over 50 years ago.  Back then it was easy to find the original paperbacks as well as the stories serialized in pulp magazines in used bookstores.

Television/Movies

This week we watched a documentary about the Voyager spacecraft called It's Quieter in the Twilight which I found very inspiring.  Some of the people working on the project have been working on it for the better part of 50 years.  I find NASA's efforts to keep the probes going in order to further humanity's knowledge admirable. 

Links

I find the notion that a toolbox which appeared in a scene in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off might sell for a lot of money both baffling and a little sad because people's priorities are so misguided.  It's just a toolbox and not even a particularly nice looking one.
https://www.jalopnik.com/2233865/snap-on-toolbox-ferris-buellers-day-off-auction-for-sale/

This article about Kelly Slater still surfing so well at 54 made me smile.  I've found surfing fascinating since I first heard the Beach Boys singing about it when I was young.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/aug/11/kelly-slater-near-perfect-surf-tahiti-pro-monster-swell

I think it may have been on Northern Exposure that I first heard about trebuchet.  Ever since then they've been a minor obsession for me.  If you want to see more about them, search on Youtube for videos of them flinging large objects like the piano one flung on Northern Exposure.
https://hackaday.com/2026/08/09/creating-a-supersonic-trebuchet/

I had heard about cocaine being used to make early versions of Coca-Cola, but its use in wine was news to me.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/a-short-history-of-cocaine-wine-and-coca-cola-44600

This bluegrass version of the theme from the movie Jaws is actually pretty good.
https://laughingsquid.com/blugrass-jaws-theme/

I've thought Ray Harryhausen's special effects were are amazing since I first saw them as a kid.  Those stop motion skeletons were amazing!
https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/how-ray-harryhausen-conjured-the

I enjoyed reading this article about Rudy Rucker, a favorite SciFi author of mine.  It's hard to believe that I first read one of his books over 40 years ago.
https://losgatan.com/rudy-rucker-writer-mathematician-painter/

I used to enjoy taking the kids to the Maryland RenFest so I found this article interesting.  The last time I took my daughter, I found it somewhat formulaic.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-surprisingly-radical-roots-of-the-renaissance-fair-180982918/

I've read a number of books about how our brains work including a couple by Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm Computing.  Many of the books have discussed how inaccurate our senses are.  We spend our lives trusting our eyes but it turns out you can't necessarily believe what you think you've seen.
https://boingboing.net/2026/08/05/gray-apple-brain-sees-red.html

A book which Mark Twain wrote in 1898 seems to predict the Internet. at least according to this article.
https://boingboing.net/2026/08/07/mark-twain-telelectroscope.html

The term Tendril Perversion describes how the cords on land line phone used to get tangled, seemingly on their own.  I used to be obsessed with trying to undo the strange way they got messed up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendril_perversion


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Sunday, August 09, 2026

Working on Linux kernel modules offers a nice change of pace

I'm fortunate to be able to do most of the low level programming for my team at work, a type of programming I enjoy more than application level programming.  I got my start in software because I taught myself machine language programming while I was a field engineer 40+ years ago.  Working on computers with front panel switches and lights which made it simple to enter short machine code programs and to step through them was impossible for me to resist.  Having started at that level of programming made me a natural for doing systems programming once I made the switch to software.

The majority of the low level programming I do these days involves mapping device registers to allow me to use them to control various devices on our custom hardware.  Last week I was trying to fix a problem with a Linux kernel module (aka device driver) which behaved strangely when the system was under a heavy load as it often is.  We use an open source device driver supplied by the vendor of one of the chips on our device to transfer data via PCIe (a peripheral I/O bus used to connect peripheral devices to a system).  This device driver exposes a few of its driver variables via sysfs (a pseudo filesystem used to provide access to device information and controls to application programs).  I was using one of the sysfs variables in the application program to dynamically change the timeout control to improve data transfer performance.  The problem was when the system was under heavy loads, there was a noticeable lag between when the application program updated the sysfs variable and when the device driver actually saw the linked variable change.  With this delay, the data transfer speed was noticeably degraded.

I find this type of problem particularly interesting to try to solve.  It usually starts with trying to build a mental model of the hardware and software involved by studying the code and any documentation available.  Once the model is somewhat accurate, you can consider what modifications might affect the problem and testing out your theories one at a time.  I first tried a custom callback procedure for the module parameter in question but that still allowed the delay to occur.  Then I decided to try adding an IOCTL command to allow me to change the variable directly and was happy to discover that this approach actually worked.  With this problem solved, I'll be moving back to application problems and looking forward to my next opportunity to do true systems programming.

 

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