A dad reunites with his three kids, ages 26, 23 and 15, and they decide to do a D&D campaign together. Now, this alone would be enough to catch my attention: I’ve been an avid D&D player as a boy, my older son has been playing too, and I always dreamed of playing one day with my three kids and maybe my wife. But there’s more to this story. Tenzin, the youngest son and long-time tabletop RPG gamer and DM, proposes to let OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4 be their DM. ...
Today I learned about psql-tips.org by Lætitia Avrot, an excellent repository of psql (the CLI tool, not the database itself) tips. I like how one randomized tip is playfully served on the home page while the complete list is always at hand.
Brian Rinaldi has an insightful post on his blog about the current state of developer conferences, where ‘current state’ means post-COVID pandemic. Brian is well-positioned to reason about this space as a long-time conference organizer. I appreciate that he also takes the time to explain how the developer conference business works. The core of his blog is about post-pandemic conference attendance, which has plunged. independent, in-person developer conferences are hurting. Based on my own observation as well as talks with organizers and sponsors that I have come to know over the years, the average independent in-person event is still down 30-40% from pre-pandemic attendance levels. And often it seems to require massive discounts or even giveaways to get to this level. ...
Jim Nielsen: That is why owning a domain (and publishing your content there) is like planting a tree: it’s value that starts small and grows. The best time to own a domain and publish your content there was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. More here.
Brad Mehldau plays Lennon/McCartney’s I Am the Walrus, from his upcoming album, Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays the Beatles.
I was reading iA’s grumpy writing about GPT (with which I sympathize) when my attention was captured by the image they added to their post. It was so fascinating that I had to research it. As it turns out, this is the Flammarion engraving, a famous wood engraving by an unknown artist, so named because its first documented appearance is in Camille Flammarion’s 1888 book L’atmosphère: météorologie populaire (“The Atmosphere: Popular Meteorology”). ...
Source Above all, I liked the affection and serenity that shines, through all stages, between father and son. A depiction of the circle of life I gladly subscribe to.
According to the always-interesting Ted Gioia, the recent turnaround of Barnes & Noble is to be attributed to the company’s new CEO and his love of books. Quite astonishingly James Daunt, who took the helm of B&N in late 2019, refused to take promotional money from publishers: Daunt refused to play this game. He wanted to put the best books in the window. He wanted to display the most exciting books by the front door. Even more impressive, he let the people working in the stores make these decisions. This is James Daunt’s superpower: He loves books. ...
Slow Sunday morning, while surfing the YouTube ocean, I stumbled upon the audio recording of David Foster Wallace’s This is Water speech. Any DFW fan knows about the commencement speech he famously gave at Kenyon College in 2005, and I’m probably one of the few who hadn’t yet listened to it. So this morning, I hit the play button and was blown away by it. Unsurprisingly, I guess, as the speech was met with universal acclaim. ...
On New Years Day of 2022, I stumbled out of bed and immediately lost my vision, fell to the floor, and had to get my then-partner to help me back into bed. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, and I knew what it was straight away - I was having a migraine. In the previous decade I’d had countless migraines, and they always followed the same pattern. I’d wake up after a night out, attempt to get to the bathroom, lose my vision, and most likely end up on the floor vomiting from the pain that I can only describe as feeling like someone trying to hammer a nail into my skull. The worst part about them? They were avoidable. ...