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
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/
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
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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