Passing fancies #21

 

I used to call these posts with collections of links "link dumps" but I recently found another blog which also included books and television programs which the author enjoyed and I liked that idea.  I follow a number of RSS feeds to make it easier to find interesting articles without having to regularly visit my entire list of interesting blogs, many of which aren't updated often.  As you might gather from these links, I find a wide array of topics interesting.

Books

In the past week or so, I finished reading Jeeves and the Wedding Bells by Sebastian Faulks.  It's an homage to P. G. Wodehouse's characters Jeeves and Wooster.  It was enjoyable but it's hard to match Wodehouse's mastery of the English language so I found it a bit lacking.

I also finished Neil Gaiman's graphic novel The Sandman, Volume 5: A Game of You.   Gaiman's comics often send me researching terms or topics he includes and this book was no exception.  The only comic author I'm aware of whose works are more reference laden is Alan Moore.  This one sent me down a few rabbit holes looking up references.  For instance, I had no idea that Thomas Paine was imprisoned in a French prison for a while.

Music

Over the weekend we enjoyed another opportunity to hear a favorite local band called Felix Pickles.  They're causing me to buy more music by getting songs they cover stuck in my head.  I just bought the MP3 of Jenny Says by Cowboy Mouth because once I get an earworm, I need to listen to the song to get it out of my head.  The version from Felix Pickles was intensely interesting in its own right.

I also found a Youtube video by Red Baraat, a band I discovered while searching for bands like Hazmat Modine.  That search discovered a few interesting new bands for me but none of them were much like Hazmat Modine.  Red Baraat's music is happy music and seeing them perform it is even better.
https://youtu.be/lgmw41CY1Fo?si=HkbxMiY8MIR9q1aN

Television/Movies

We watched Project Hail Mary for the second time which was enjoyable because I always notice things in movies which I missed on the first viewing.  It was great on the big screen but watching via streaming allowed for breaks which is nice.  I'm happy to report that I liked it just as much the second time.  The book is excellent as well.

I also convinced my wife to watch Normal which stars Bob Odenkirk.  I've been enjoying his journey as an unlikely action movie star which I think started with Nobody.  Nobody is worth watching because it throws a surprising early twist at you.

I also watched Slaughterhouse-Five which surprised me by being shown on TCM for the first time recently.  I loved both the book and the movie.

Links

A few days ago I saw a post about on Bluesky about doing software estimates using LoC (lines of code) which I've always thought was absurd.  It reminded me of the comic linked below which in turn reminded me of a friend who reported his weekly status as 125% because he had exceeded the LoC estimate he had originally provided.  Management was not amused.  Often they seem to have no sense of humor.
https://www.workchronicles.com/p/comic-the-estimate-game

This article about Scrum (meetings in the Agile methodology) echoes my feelings about it being ridiculous but somehow a necessary evil.  I think it often trades careful design for quick results.
https://kasperowski.com/scrum-doesnt-matter-and-it-never-did/

I found the idea that someone was producing counterfeit BMW vehicles surprising.  It would be hard to produce cars as carefully as a German company does.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/07/11/bmw-warns-of-unauthorized-production-of-pirated-cars-in-russia-a93223 

Given how badly Facebook has managed to screw up people's timelines, it's no surprise that people are abandoning daily updates.  For me Facebook is more of an obligation to catch up with a few friends there than it is a joy these days.  I much prefer Mastodon and Bluesky where there are an abundance of interesting people and far less argumentative behavior.  Both seem to have the philosophy that it's better to block trolls than it is to interact with them.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/death-of-the-status-update-why-55-americans-stopped-posting-social-media

I was happy to catch a glimpse of Umberto Eco's large library of books.  I admire his writing and what he chose to spend some of his money on as well.  One can only imagine what it would be likely to have that much space to store the books accumulated over a lifetime.
https://www.openculture.com/2017/03/watch-umberto-eco-walk-through-his-immense-private-library.html

I've long thought that the English language could benefit from an attempt to correct its spelling and pronunciation.  What might young people learn if they weren't required to devote so much time to memorizing all the exceptions to the rules of English spelling?
https://boingboing.net/2026/07/07/why-english-spelling-looks-like-it-lost-a-bar-fight-with-history.html

People sometimes seem a bit surprised that despite having spent the better part of 50 years in the computer industry, I avoid smart appliances in our house.  After spending my days designing and writing code, I feel little need to interact with it to accomplish mundane tasks in the house.  I have friends who love to show off smart locks which can be activated by their phone.  I still recall the absurdity of a vacation spent in a rental house equipped with smart lights and ceiling fans controlled by Amazon Echo devices as well as people's attempts to interact with one ceiling fan which had no physical switch and which resisted all attempts to control it via vocal commands.  Apparently a previous owner had set up many of the smart devices and some were still tied to their account and unable to be transferred to a new account.  That's bad enough but paying for the privilege of being spied upon seems ridiculous.
https://www.engadget.com/2210745/smart-appliances-data-transmission-weekly/

The use of 3D printing to create tiles for a seawall which not only protects the coast but provides room for marine life to use as a shelter seems a brilliant use of the technology.
https://news.fiu.edu/2026/fiu-researchers-install-3d-printed-seawall-tiles-to-support-coastal-protection-and-marine-life

Hearing about a 95 year old mechanic who enjoys his job enough to continue working made me smile.  I plan on continuing to write software for my own use and amusement once I retire because I enjoy solving problems.  The reason I'll retire is because I'm tired of corporate nonsense after this long in the industry.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/old-school-tennessee-mechanic-celebrates-95th-birthday-working-at-the-shop

Three women set world records at the Lumberjack World Championships recently.  I'm fascinated by the customized chainsaws used in these type of competitions.  Some are basically a motorcycle engine with a blade attached.  This is one of the few sporting events I'll watch willingly.
https://abcnews.com/US/wireStory/3-womens-world-records-set-annual-lumberjack-world-134907345

The corporate shrine

This week I met 11 friends for happy hour.  I had worked with most of them about 25 years ago at a startup company called Ocular Networks.  Ocular developed optical network hardware and was a fun place to work despite the long hours required by most startup companies.  Eventually our company was purchased by Tellabs which caused a clash of corporate cultures which made work less pleasant.

A few of us were asked to visit corporate headquarters in Illinois where we discovered an unexpected corporate shrine.  It was a small meeting room containing little more than a large painting of the founder/CEO of Tellabs.  That painting struck me as weird and I was seized by the urge to make fun of it.  I got one of my friends to take a picture of me "worshipping" at the CEO's portrait.  We got odd looks from people who passed us in the hallways which made it all the more fun.

 

I didn't last long at Tellabs after that trip.  It became increasingly obvious that I wasn't cut out for that type of environment.

 

Passing fancies #20

 

I used to call these posts with collections of links "link dumps" but I recently found another blog which also included books and television programs which the author enjoyed and I liked that idea.  I follow a number of RSS feeds to make it easier to find interesting articles without having to regularly visit my entire list of interesting blogs, many of which aren't updated often.  As you might gather from these links, I find a wide array of topics interesting.

Books

In the past week or so, I revisited both books in Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently series.  Their titles are Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul.  I enjoyed both books more than the later books in the Hitchhiker's Guide series which I found a bit uneven.

Music

Over the weekend we enjoyed hearing a favorite local band called Felix Pickles.  Their music always makes me happy.  I particularly enjoy their covers of Tom Petty, Black Keys, White Stripes, and Nirvana songs.  The fact that the show took place at a local brewery was nice as well.

Television/Movies

We've been watching a couple streaming series recently.  The first season of Cross, based on the Alex Cross books by James Patterson, was gripping.  Most of the episodes ended on cliffhangers which coaxed us into watching later than we usually do.

We've also been watching Apple TV's new production of Cape Fear.  It's very suspenseful but since the episodes are dropping slowly, we've been forced to postpone our enjoyment until the next one is available.

Links

As a long time SciFi fan, I've read a number of books about Von Neuman probes.  While the concept is fascinating, I've long wondered how realistic the actual process of replication is.  Here's a metallurgist's opinion of how difficult it would be for machines to duplicate themselves using metal mined from asteroids or other sources.
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2026/07/10/a-metallurgists-doubts-about-self-replicating-probes/

The news that some types of monitors are installing Windows adware on the computers they're connected to is disturbing.  I'm guessing this is accomplished if the monitors have a USB connection to the PC since USB multifunction devices are possible which would allow the monitor to also appear as a storage device which can sometimes install software via AutoRun.  I have AutoRun disabled on all my computers.
https://www.techspot.com/news/113031-lg-alienware-monitors-caught-auto-installing-windows-adware.html

I had heard that doctors behave differently than most patients when presented with a cancer diagnosis.  I guess having knowledge of the low odds of survival and the high costs and suffering of attempting to fight the disease would make one weigh their options differently.  I think if diagnosed with some form of terminal disease with low odds of survival, I'd tend to refuse expensive and painful treatments as well.
https://archive.cancerworld.net/featured/how-doctors-die/

My favorite coding editor is Vim but I've been avoiding upgrading because the developers have been accepting AI submitted code changes.  The limited experience I've had with AI has not left me with a wholly positive view of its capabilities so I'm happy to be able to avoid it in my editor of choice.
https://jasonpolak.substack.com/p/interview-drew-devault-on-an-ai-free

It's been a while since I've heard about Hannah Montana Linux but apparently it's been updated recently.  I'm not personally a fan of ornate window managers so I'm guessing I'm not the target audience for it.
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/hannah-montana-linux-gets-modern-remaster-after-nearly-two-decades-sweet-niblets-new-v26-is-built-on-debian-with-a-re-skin-of-kde-plasma 

When I was young, I owned a 1948 Jeep for a while.  It was a very primitive vehicle which came with manual windshield wipers operated by moving a lever back and forth which operated the wiper blade. That caused funny looks each time I had to get a safety inspection.  These days I value my creature comforts too much to consider trying to assemble a replica of that old Jeep but it's nice to know it could be done if I ever got the urge.
https://www.theautopian.com/i-bet-my-company-on-an-impossible-jeep-build-then-a-miracle-happened/

Someone is creating handmade electric guitars using the valve covers from old car engines.  I imagine that metallic chamber gives an interesting resonance to the instrument.  Plus it looks so cool. 
https://www.designboom.com/design/old-car-engines-second-life-handmade-electric-guitars-vlado-plateis/

Isaac Asimov noticed the rise of willful ignorance in American society almost 50 years ago.  I fear it's only gotten worse since that time.
https://www.openculture.com/2026/07/isaac-asimov-laments-the-cult-of-ignorance.html

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is being shutdown for about 4 years for renovations which will make it better at studying the behavior of small particles.  I look forward to reading about new research done with the results when it's back online.
https://home.cern/cern-bids-farewell-to-the-lhc-and-enters-long-shutdown-3/

Our dog enjoys a new toy

Kya, our rescue pit bull, loves playing with stuffed toys which contain a squeaker.  They rarely last long since she's a determined and very powerful chewer.  We have to watch her carefully until she gets to the squeaker and we can remove it so she doesn't accidentally swallow part of it.  She killed the squeaker in this toy within the first three hours of having it but it's still providing many hours of fun removing the stuffing. After that, she'll carry it around proudly and try to get us to play catch with it.  She's such a playful and loving dog.

 

Passing fancies #19

 

I used to call these posts with collections of links "link dumps" but I recently found another blog which also included books and television programs which the author enjoyed and I liked that idea.  I follow a number of RSS feeds to make it easier to find interesting articles without having to regularly visit my entire list of interesting blogs, many of which aren't updated often.  As you might gather from these links, I find a wide array of topics interesting.

Books

This week I finished two books, both by favorite authors of mine.  The first was The Suitcase Clone by Robin Sloan who is probably best known for Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore which is my favorite of his books.  The Suitcase Clone ties in most directly to another strangely fascinating book of his called Sourdough, which is about a weirdly sentient sourdough starter.  Robin's books feature inventive blends of fantasy, technology, and food or wine.

The second book I finished this week was a graphic novel called The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country by Neil Gaiman.  Like the best graphic novels, the award winning The Sandman series features lots of interesting and sometimes obscure references which makes me glad that I'm able to read them on my iPad since that makes it easy to research the many references which sometimes take me on side journeys.  It inspired a streaming series which we enjoyed watching.  Another graphic novel I love which is similarly reference-laden is Watchmen by Alan Moore.  It also inspired a movie and a streaming series, both of which I enjoyed immensely.

Music

For a while, we had a Peacock streaming account and while we did, one of the programs we enjoyed was We Are Lady Parts which is about a punk band formed of Muslim women.  It managed to be funny, touching, and thought provoking.  Somehow this week I found a link to a song performed in the show called Bashir With the Good Beard which is funny as well as catchy.

Youtube recommended a cover of the AC/DC song Thunderstruck by a band called The Rock Orchestra which was really interesting.  I still prefer the AC/DC version but sometimes covers can be enjoyable on their own.  Youtube's recommendations are sometimes eerily accurate at predicting content I might enjoy.

Television/Movies

This week we finished watching the award winning streaming series The Bear.  The final season featured so many challenges for the people working in the restaurant that we could hardly wait to see how it turned out.  The finale wrapped up things nicely.

Something I read reminded me of the movie Highlander and it turns out that my wife had never seen it so we watched it although I don't think my wife enjoyed it as much as I did.  It's an entertaining fantasy but features some questionable accents, most notably from Christopher Lambert whose French accent often shines through his intermittent attempts at a Scottish accent and Sean Connery who doesn't attempt an accent to match his character Ramirez (aka the Spaniard) much like his performance as a Russian sub commander in The Hunt for Red October.

The first episode of the third season of Silo was released on Apple TV and we enjoyed continuing the story in this very compelling series.  Silo was based on Hugh Howey's Silo book series which starts with the book Wool.  I found the books fascinating.

Links

Have you ever wondered what F1 race drivers choose for transportation when off the racetrack?  Here's a set of photos which shows some of their daily drivers.  My favorite is Landon Norris' E-Type Jaguar shown in the last picture.  I think E-type Jag's are the most beautiful sports car ever made although I prefer the hardtop to convertibles.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/heres-a-peek-at-the-f1-drivers-parking-lot-in-silverstone

The Voyager 1 space probe is nearing the impressive distance of 1 light day from Earth.  The fact that it's still operating nearly 50 years after its launch in 1977 is evidence for my belief that NASA is responsible for some of the finest engineering ever done by humans.
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/where-are-voyager-1-and-voyager-2-now/

I share the concern which the author of this blog post expresses about being overwhelmed by the tendency of smart devices to chip away at our ability to concentrate deeply.  I disable almost all notifications and avoid smart appliances in our house.  My ability to stay focused while creating system software is something I value far more than the minor conveniences offered by smart devices.
https://www.terrygodier.com/the-last-quiet-thing

I found  this article about programmers needing to meditate interesting.  The author is involved with building AI infrastructure which I believe is largely responsible for much of the stress which programmers face these days.  I'm avoiding AI wherever possible because of the toll it takes on our ability to deeply focus by getting into the flow state.  It's rare for me to be able to achieve flow state on my days in the office due to having too many distractions.  While working from home, it's much easier for me to concentrate deeply enough to hit that mystical state.
https://jacob.gold/posts/programmers-need-to-start-meditating-now/

Apparently birds in Ukraine are making use of fiber optic cables when building nests.  This is weird because while it undoubtedly creates more durable nests, it's also a sad reminder of drones being used to cause destruction.
https://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2026/07/fiber-optic-materials-in-ukranian-birds.html

Here's an interesting and somewhat sad article by a travel writer who met her hero, Anthony Bourdain, and how those interactions affected her.  I feel a bit sorry for people who feel compelled to constantly search for new and exciting experiences because they seldom seem to enjoy having achieved something.
https://cailey.substack.com/p/i-wanted-to-be-anthony-bourdainuntil

The news that scientists have managed to create a living cell from scratch if nothing short of amazing.  It's also a bit disturbing since chirality can affect how molecules interact with living tissue so it may be possible to intentionally create harmful mirror molecules.
https://draft.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/6157418679944799691/2587135840302117398 

I was surprised to read that honeybees choose individual routes to foraging locations.  Bees seem more complex than most people think.
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(26)00084-9

While I enjoyed a good argument when I was younger, I find I no longer want to waste the energy and time necessary to prove I'm right about something.  Given people's tendency to ignore documented facts and hold on to misinformation, it's not worth the effort.  It's easier to walk away from argumentative people and go do something I enjoy instead.
https://wangcong.org/2026-06-30-why-i-stopped-arguing-with-people.html

One of the best things about being near retirement is I no longer need to worry about having to endure another technical interview.  The majority of interviews I've been subjected to have been absurd and unpleasant.  A couple have been bad enough that I've extracted myself early by telling them I was no longer interested in their company.  The looks on the face of the interviewers when they realized they would be denied further opportunities to torture me were priceless.  It reminds me of the time an interviewer told me I had more experience than they expected and asked my age.  I responded that I thought it might be illegal to ask that question which turned his smug look into a worried one.
https://nelson.cloud/what-i-actually-want-to-say-in-tech-interviews/

Apparently laughter was key to humans developing the vocal control required for speech.
https://thedebrief.org/new-research-suggests-human-laughter-may-hold-a-15-million-year-old-secret/

This article about keeping historical events in perspective states that humans are really bad at doing so.  The example is that Oxford University is older than the Aztec empire which I wouldn't have thought was true.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/university-oxford-older-than-aztec-empire-other-facts-will-change-your-perspective-history-1529607/

Our ability to see things does not work the way most people believe it does.  Human eyes perform motions called saccades, rapid movements which do scanning of objects which the visual cortex helps combine into a complete picture.  I first read about this in Jeff Hawkins' books On Intelligence and A Thousand Brains, both of which are well worth reading.
https://ishan.co/no-way/

Older tech workers are retiring (voluntary or involuntary) in larger numbers than usual.  At some point, I think this might catch up with companies similar to the way Ford was forced to rehire 350 veteran engineers to help fix the problems caused by their attempt to let AI do most of the work.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/older-tech-workers-are-tapping-out-early-heres-what-that-looks-like/

Raspberry Pi 5 as a development machine

 

This morning I replaced a noisy cooling fan on my Raspberry Pi 5.  The replacement fan cost a reasonable $10 with free shipping and only took me about 10 minutes to replace.  Only a small screwdriver and a pair of needle nose pliers were required for the job.  The fan noise had been most noticeable when it booted up as the firmware runs a fan check.  It will be nice not to have to endure that any longer.

One of the small ARM based embedded systems which I build firmware and software for at work uses the same Linux Debian Bookworm 64-bit release as I have running on the Pi which makes building code much easier.  The cross compile environment we had been using on Intel based Ubuntu servers took much longer to build our application software.  Plus having a Unix like environment readily available automatically makes me so much more productive.

It's so easy to install software packages on the Pi and there's such a wide variety of software available that I can use the Pi for almost any task I need to accomplish.  It's become my second favorite development machine of my lengthy career, marginally behind a Sun Workstation I used in the early 1990s.

This machine was affordable when I built it two years ago but AI's endless thirst for computing hardware has driven the price of memory and flash storage devices up a lot.  I think duplicating this machine at today's prices would be close to twice the $200 this originally cost to build. 

 

Passing fancies #18

I used to call these posts with collections of links "link dumps" but I recently found another blog which also included books and television programs which the author enjoyed and I liked that idea.  I follow a number of RSS feeds to make it easier to find interesting articles without having to regularly visit my entire list of interesting blogs, many of which aren't updated often.  As you can see, I find a wide array of topics interesting.

Books

This week I've finished two books.  The first was World of Trouble by Ben H. Winters.  It's the final book in The Last Policeman trilogy.  This was my second time enjoying this trilogy, the first time started in 2013 shortly after the first book was published.  I loved it on the first read and even more this time.  I'm often so keen to find out what happens in a book that I don't take enough time to fully appreciate the writing itself while reading it for the first time.  This series is about a policeman who continues trying to solve crimes even though the Earth is doomed to be struck by an asteroid.  It's an interesting tale about human nature under extraordinary circumstances.

The second was God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.  This was at least the second time I've read this as I'm a big Vonnegut fan.  It's hard to summarize what most of Vonnegut's books are about because they tend to cover so much territory.  They're always fascinating reads though.

Music

Somewhere I found a mention of Andrew Strong, the actor who played the lead singer in The Committments (which is an outstanding movie if you haven't seen it).  His voice was perfect for singing old soul classics.  After the movie he sang in a band called The Bone Yard Boys.  Apparently their music isn't available for purchase in electronic form which is a pity.  At least I was able to find a few Youtube videos of him performing like the one below.
https://youtu.be/QN43ZXivDa0?si=UC-GE4TU-nyz_dyU

I also found an intriguing mention of a band called Newen Afrobeat which I hadn't heard of previously.  I discovered I enjoy their music. 
https://youtu.be/YCZZWu9WR5s?si=3uU2h5mF4QHn-Vls

Television

We watched the first episode of Triumph: Jesse Owens and the Berlin Olympics on Netflix this week and are anxiously awaiting the next episode.  I knew parts of the story but there's so much I hadn't heard and it's fascinating.

Links

Like many people, I get tired of being pushed to secure my online accounts with passkeys.  While they may be convenient, I'm not convinced that they're more secure than the traditional username and strong password.
https://www.makeuseof.com/why-im-still-not-giving-up-my-password-for-passkeys/

When Quentin Tarantino states a preference for reading books over most of the movies being released, I know I'm not alone in finding most new movies insufficiently compelling to bother seeing them in a theater.  Project Hail Mary is the only film I was anxiously awaiting in the past few years.
https://brandons-journal.com/post/these-days-i-d-rather-read-a-book

Here's an interesting article which references Chesterton's Fence, a term I'd never encountered previously.   In it G.K. Chesterton states that changes should not be made until the thing being changed is fully understood.  The article below complains that changes to software are often made with insufficient documentation for the software in question to be properly understood.  In my experience this is true.  There are too many engineers who don't adequately document changes they have made. 
https://www.arp242.net/chestersons-finger.html

It makes me happy to hear that the producer of Star Trek: The Next Generation granted famous physicist Stephen Hawking's request to sit in the Captain's chair on the Enterprise bridge.

I'm not sure exactly how to feel about the news that Denmark has a Mullet Championship.  I had thought that questionable hairstyle was uniquely American.
https://apnews.com/article/denmark-mullet-hairstyle-festival-competition-ea0c4b66b1eb9f133983ea4d6f44f37c

Kentucky's economy is dealing with a huge downturn in demand for Bourbon.  The final line suggests that the same may eventually be true of Data Centers.
https://a.wholelottanothing.org/kentuckys-bourbon-problem/

Why doesn't it surprise me that Richard Feynman (famous physicist) had a method for optimizing food choices at restaurants?  If you haven't read any of the books about Feynman's life (Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character or What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character), you'd probably enjoy them.
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2026/06/06/eating-out/

A pulp magazine from 1912 containing the first appearance of Tarzan recently sold for $58,560.  I have fond memories of reading old books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of the Tarzan and John Carter of Mars books while I was in high school.  At that time I was hell-bent on absorbing all the genre books I could get my hands on.  The best part is they were often available cheap at area used bookstores.
https://boingboing.net/2026/06/11/the-first-tarzan-pulp-sold-for-58560-at-a-record-setting-auction.html

I was a little surprised to read that old iPod models are making a comeback thanks to Gen-Z and then I remembered that our granddaughter had asked for a portable cassette player similar to a Walkman.  Apparently cassette tape players have made a comeback as well.
https://www.engadget.com/2196894/ipods-comeback-gen-z/