Strap yourself in and prepare to be inundated with evidence of my weird interests, much of which I found thanks to my RSS feeds.
Books
The only nice thing about having three times my usual commuting timing this week is it afforded me more time to listen to audiobooks. I finished The Infinite Universe, the latest book in the Bobiverse series, by Dennis E. Taylor. The Bobiverse series is about a programmer who got turned into a Von Neumann probe installed in a spaceship after a fatal traffic accident. The books feature good science fiction and a healthy dose of humor.
Recently I've discovered that the Bobiverse and many of the other SpecFic books I enjoy belong to a genre I hadn't heard of before called Programmer SF (SciFi). This category includes books from Andy Weir, Neal Stephenson, and Charles Stross among others.
I also managed to finish Dances With Wolves by Michael Blake. I'm enjoying it so much that I want to watch the movie now which I somehow managed to miss seeing.
Television/Movies
My wife has been taking a number of video classes through AARP recently. She's been taking yoga and other gentle exercise classes to help with back pain. She's also taken a few art classes which she has enjoyed. While on their website. she noticed that they have a series of movies they stream on a regular basis called Movies For Grownups and they were showing Frida, a movie about artist Frida Kahlo. It was an interesting movie and provided details of her complicated relationship with fellow artist Diego Rivera.
TCM has also been showing more classic horror films in the weeks leading up to Halloween. This week I managed to catch two of the Dracula films made by Hammer Films. Seeing those old Hammer movies starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing takes me back to high school.
Music
Last weekend my wife and I saw a favorite local band, Felix Pickles, performing at the best BBQ restaurant near us, Monk's BBQ. They perform a nice variety of cover songs and manage to surprise me on occasion with an unexpected song. This time it was a cover of Tracy Bonham's Mother, Mother, a song which always makes me smile. As you can see from the photo above, they gave us a kazoo.
Links
NASA apparently wants to return several Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird stealth reconnaissance planes to flight status. They've reportedly made job offers to several retired engineers with this goal in mind. I've been in the computer industry for very close to 50 years now and cannot imagine any project sufficiently interesting to convince me to pause my retirement once it starts in a few months. I still enjoy solving problems but I'm quite tired of the corporate nonsense which I've had to deal with over the years.
https://aviationweek.com/defense/aircraft-propulsion/nasa-asked-several-former-sr-71a-staffers-help-secret-restart
https://aviationweek.com/defense/aircraft-propulsion/nasa-asked-several-former-sr-71a-staffers-help-secret-restart
This article explains how the SR-71's astro-inertial navigation system (ANS) helps guide the plane in GPS denied or spoofed environments.
The news that sperm whales have an organ in their heads which enables them to sink ships without injuring themselves is really interesting. This ability was used to sink a ship in 1820. The incident inspired Melville to write Moby Dick.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260923-the-science-behind-moby-dick-the-prized-head-of-the-sperm-whale-is-its-greatest-weapon
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260923-the-science-behind-moby-dick-the-prized-head-of-the-sperm-whale-is-its-greatest-weapon
I have a few friends who are avid bicyclists and would undoubtedly enjoy visiting the Shimano Bicycle Museum shown in this article. Prior to reading this article, I only associated Shimano with the derailleur gears on 10-speed bikes.
https://inrng.com/2026/10/shimano-bicycle-museum/
https://inrng.com/2026/10/shimano-bicycle-museum/
I'm a huge fan of Spider Robinson and have a Google Alert for mentions of him which picked up this story about Variable Star, a book of his I enjoyed 20 years ago when it was first published. While I knew that basic facts about how this book came about, this link contains details I hadn't realized previously. Somehow Spider managed to capture Heinlein's style while extending the story beyond the constraints of the juvenile novels which this book was originally intended to become. By the second time I read Variable Star I had actually seen the Canadian mockumentary series Trailer Park Boys which allowed me to appreciate the presence of a couple of minor characters. Spider almost always manages to sneak in some references which reward the careful reader like this. If you haven't read Spider's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series, you're in for a treat.
I found this article about why men have beards entertaining. I've had one on and off for about 45 years. I have my beard mostly because I'm too lazy to shave every day. I first grew one when I worked as a Field Engineering Specialist which caused me to work a lot of night shifts and to want to save the time it took me to shave.
Being repeatedly prompted to set up a passkey is one of several things which irritate me about using a web browser. Another is being asked whether I want to allow the browser to be able to search for devices on the local network. At some point my irritation will rise to the level where I'll research whether it's possible to disable this annoying behavior.
Knowing how to pick a lock is the sort of knowledge obsessive techies like me enjoy learning. It's also viewed as an unsavory talent by some. It's the physical equivalent of knowing how to hack into computers which can also be used for nefarious purposes but can also come in handy when a friend forgets their password.
I was surprised to learn that Roosevelt Island has a pneumatic tube trash system. Apparently Disney World has one as well. I imagine they work pretty well but are probably difficult to maintain. The article mentions jams due to users throwing away forbidden items which can't make it through bends in the pipes.
I've got mixed feelings about vending machines. I worked a lot of night shifts in my first few jobs in the computer industry and they can help stave off hunger when there are no other alternatives. I have yet to find a coffee vending machine that produces something I'd want to drink unless I were on night shift and needed help staying awake.
I had never heard of a hit-and-miss engine before but apparently someone has managed to build a model of one out of Lego blocks which uses vacuum instead of internal combustion.
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