I’m back to woodworking after more than a year without a shop. During the long transition to move to a new home, I got rid of my remaining power tools. I’m now a 100% hand tool shop for my projects. Started out by making a box out of scrap pine to warm up after such a long hiatus. I’m rusty!
I read Christopher Paolini’s “To Sleep in a Sea of Stars.” I enjoyed this book, but I would say it was a 200-page book compressed into … well over 800 pages. 📚
I read Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Memory, the 3rd installment in the Children of Time series. If you’re confused for 4/5 of the book, wait for it. If you’re into writers that imagine other-than-human sentience and explore the meaning of self, there’s no better author. 📚
Good interview with Mozilla chair Mitchell Baker on this episode of Decoder. I hope it inspires more people to try Mozilla products and I wish more companies had nonprofit business models. 💻
“Our shareholder is not looking for maximum financial return; it’s looking for maximum public benefit.”
I read Stephen King’s Fairy Tale. Not a great novel, but enjoyable enough. It’s a meta creation that plays with tropes. 📚
Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, from the Maryland overlook. I hiked a 6.6 mile loop today, which included a stop to take this photo. It was relatively crowded on this cold and windy day, so I imagine this is a trail to avoid in the warmer months! What a nice view. 📷
Do mechanical keyboards really need arrow keys?
Interesting idea showcased in this article from The Verge: an upcoming Angry Miao mechanical keyboard that adds a capacitive touchpad to use for arrow movement or other functions.
I use an ErgoDox EZ split keyboard that has no arrow keys. I find that placing the arrow keys on another layer works fine with practice. However, I still prefer to have arrow keys visible and easy to access. My preferred solution is to use a tiny SIXKEYBOARD placed to the left of my keyboard. The primary downside: this adds another cable to manage.
A sobering read: The First Digital Nation by Lilian Bernhardt.
The island country of Tuvalu moves towards the virtual world as climate change threatens its physical territory.
According to Kausea Natano, the Prime Minister of Tuvalu, Pacific Island nations contribute less than 0.03% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
This is from The Long Now Foundation: “a nonprofit established in 01996 to foster long-term thinking.” It’s a small detail, but note how they reference the year.
I’ve been following this foundation since I learned about it in 2011. It’s interesting to look back at my old blog post, in which I cite IBM’s Watson, in light of where we are today with AI. Also timely to read this article about Tuvalu in light of the recent adjustment of the Doomsday Clock.
I also recommend The Long Now’s excellent podcast.
Whatever happened to “No Man’s Sky” coming to the Mac by the end of 2022? I’m not a huge gamer, but I do quite like this game and want to see what’s it like on my Mac Studio. I say I’m not a huge gamer, but I did just buy a Steam Deck … more thoughts on that later. 🎮
