Posts

An essential part of my fitness routine is my early morning walks. On weekdays, I leave my home on the outskirts of my small provincial town, walk to downtown, and then return. It’s a brisk, almost hour-long loop before I sit down at my desk. On weekends, I take walks in the woods or to the beach, or if I have the time, head out for a mountain hike. These walks make my daily zen moment. Sometimes I come back and, if I try, I can’t remember what I was thinking about the whole time. Other times, however, and often, I mentally organize my day, or solve coding problems (or, more likely, study solutions to try later, once I’m at the keyboard). Sometimes I plan or dream about my future mountain trips, or remember past adventures, or plan motorcycle trips. Sometimes I listen to podcasts or music: there are mornings when I want to be on my own; others when listening to a well-told story is just what I need. In any case, once I get back, I feel refreshed, oxygenated, relaxed, and ready for the day’s work. ...

Super interesting. What’s happening across Sub-Saharan Africa right now is the most ambitious infrastructure project in human history, except it’s not being built by governments or utilities or World Bank consortiums. It’s being built by startups selling solar panels to farmers on payment plans. And it’s working. Why Solarpunk is already happening in Africa The ongoing discussion on HN is also worth reading (minus the AI slop complaints).

It is impossible to tell the story of electronic music without examining the pioneering beats, grooves, and performance aesthetics of Dusseldorf’s Kraftwerk and its founding member, Florian Schneider. Formed in 1970, the band brought an experimental approach to pop music, resulting in some of the most innovative and commercially successful electronic albums of the mid-1970s into the 1980s: Autobahn, Trans-Europe Express, The Man-Machine, and Computer World. The Florian Schneider Collection is the first auction to feature a comprehensive collection of items from Florian’s personal life and career, providing a tantalizing glimpse at his and Kraftwerk’s often-enigmatic musical processes. The sale features over 450 lots of stage- and studio-played instruments and gear, clothing, artwork and furniture from Florian’s home and studios (as well as from Kraftwerk’s Kling Klang Studio), bicycles, Kraftwerk memorabilia, and Florian’s extensive collection of historic woodwind and brass instruments (flutes, clarinets, oboes, saxophones, horns, tubas, and one-of-a-kind oddities). ...

I’m just back from reading the transcript of Beyond the Machine, a thoughtful and insightful talk by Frank Chimero. I’m trying to figure out how to use generative AI as a designer without feeling like shit. I am fascinated with what it can do, impressed and repulsed by what it makes, and distrustful of its owners. I am deeply ambivalent about it all. The believers demand devotion, the critics demand abstinence, and to see AI as just another technology is to be a heretic twice over. Today, I’d like to try to open things up a bit. ...

This guide is intended to be a comprehensive look at the tech that Star Trek suggested to drive humanity forward ad astra per aspera. The emphasis is on innovations that don’t violate physics according to present consensus understanding. Go ahead and explore boldly. Are We Trek Yet? – A guide for how close we are to Star Trek technology is a funny, revealing, and well-executed idea. It is somewhat comforting that at the time of this writing, eight of all the Star Trek technologies are readily available, and thirty-one are in progress. It only tracks Star Trek technology, though. ...

“For decades, garbage collection in .NET was a background concern. It was mostly invisible to the everyday developer and was regarded as ‘automatic’ unless (or until) something slowed down the application. However, .NET 10 changes this perspective by making garbage collection (GC) a key component of application performance.” What .NET 10 GC Changes Mean for Developers is a good in-depth article that explores the revolutionary garbage collection improvements in .NET 10, which deliver 2- 3x performance gains through seven key enhancements: escape analysis for stack allocation, DATAS enabled by default, flexible region sizing, delegate optimizations, intelligent write barrier elimination, enhanced devirtualization, and refined heap controls for containers. ...

The Marmarole mountain group is an island of quiet, where, especially at the end of the season, it’s easy not to meet anyone for entire days. Nature is harsh and wild; steep, apparently inaccessible ridges separate the slopes and basins. It follows that the elevation gains are significant and many obligatory passages are often technical, exposed and equipped with steel cables (via ferrata). Water is scarce everywhere, especially on the north face, which also lacks refuges at altitude. Up there, the support structures are spartan bivouacs, isolated and challenging to reach. The solitude up there is almost total, but frequent encounters with high-altitude wildlife compensate for it. It’s easy to spot chamois, ibex, marmots, and eagles. ...

Prompted by an old post by Bob Schwartz (2017), I revisited and reread Ur-Fascism, the essay Umberto Eco wrote in 1995 for the New York Review of Books. What are the features of Fascism? We need to know, so we can recognize them and point them out as they emerge, as they always tend to do, time and time again, as our societies struggle to evolve. Sounds like heavy reading material, but it isn’t. I mean, look at the incipit: ...

On Sunday afternoon, I suddenly decided to take my motorcycle, ride to the foothills, leave the bike there, and hike the Monte Mauro loop, including the climb to the summit. The Monte Mauro loop is a classic route in the Vena del Gesso area. Wooded areas alternate with exposed stretches below the summit of Monte Mauro, where you literally walk on chalk outcrops. The trail is well marked, but you have to pay attention to the path because there are often alternatives (also marked) that can confuse you. It is an enjoyable short tour. ...

Finally some good news for us old farts! Cognitive ability (probably) peaks between 50 and 60.