Random Thoughts

Shirt Made By Someone Who Wants You To Realise That You Can’t Actually Iron But Should Hire A Professional And Thereby Sustain Ancient Craft Knowledge

C’mon. This much lining is just too hard. But props for supporting the struggle.

Gadgets are annoying

It s one of those distracted-feeling Sundays, so I thought I d distractedly have a go at poking at this thing So: Last year I made a kitchen clock, but then it started doing this: So of course I did all the voodoo things that people do with Raspberry Pis changed the power supply four times Continue reading Gadgets are annoying

Music Festival

Music Festival

Mercantilism

I ve really had a go at tidying up cupboards, misc drawers and the loft storage this spring and summer, and I m nearing the end here. It s amazing how much stuff piles up after a decade or two After pulling stuff out and deciding what I m gonna keep, the rest have gone into four piles: Junk Continue reading Mercantilism

The Box

I found this mysterious box in the attic, so I opened it Dramatic reenactment follows: It cannot be! Oh well. No treasure except the precious boxes themselves! My preciouses boxeses!

Prehistoric Blogging Evidence

I ve been cleaning out the loft, and I found this in a box. What kind of exciting pictures could lurk within! Heh heh. Right during the 90s, while doing Gnus development, I sold a whole bunch of merchandise. These must be the mugs for Pterodactyl Gnus? Man, so many shots, and almost all of them Continue reading Prehistoric Blogging Evidence

I can stop buying IBM keyboards whenever I want to

Comico Completed

I did it! I read everything Comico The Comic Company ever published! You can share my pain over there, on the Comico blog, if you haven t already been doing. Tsk tsk!

Dude

Random Comics

Here s some comics I ve read over the past month. Dear Historian by Joff Winterhart is really good. I really enjoyed his artwork and it s apparently done by drawing on the other side of the paper, and then the paper picks up ink from the surface it s lying on? It s an interesting technique. The story Continue reading Random Comics

Adventures In Hardware Triage

I ve been pulling things down from the loft storage to see whether to keep, sell, give away or throw away, and I ve been making a lot of progress on that project. But it means finding things like the above (a fanless little computer from StealthPC), which I have absolutely no recollection of, and then trying Continue reading Adventures In Hardware Triage

Is it a good sign when the laptop screen looks like this?

No, not really. I ve never seen a screen delaminate in that way before this is a 2012 era Sony Vaio 2-in-1 slider laptop that I found in the attic today. (The screen is supposed to be all-white, in case you wondered.) It s just kinda so organic. OK, going into the recycling once I ve erased Continue reading Is it a good sign when the laptop screen looks like this?

Comics Daze

Another lazy Sunday I could turn it into a dazy Sunday? Yes. And for music albums from 2005 only. Because. Kate Bush: Aerial (1) 09:40: The Depressed Hunter by Moebius (Dark Horse) Well, a new Moebius book doesn t happen every day, so that s something to celebrate. I don t love how Dark Horse printed this on Continue reading Comics Daze

People put too much effort into stuff

I haven t had a look at the kwakk.info logs in a while, but I had a peek today and saw something really odd. The pattern is this: GET /res/search/eng/BODOI/NONE/the.json GET /res/search/eng/BODOI/NONE/and.json GET /res/search/eng/BODOI/NONE/of.json GET /res/search/eng/BODOI/NONE/in.json GET /res/search/eng/BODOI/NONE/is.json GET /res/search/eng/BODOI/NONE/for.json GET…

July Music

Music I ve bought in July. Hey, I bought a lot of stuff in July, and the reason is that I decided to buy everything from 99 Records and Spy Records that I didn t already have. These are two Downtown New York labels that only survived for a short time. Spy Records was run by John Continue reading July Music

Roots

I ve been trying to grow some rose bushes on my balcony for years. Most die during the winter because I suck at wrapping them up and stuff, but one of them seemed to hang on, year after year, popping up a couple of branches and a couple of roses before succumbing to some insect. So Continue reading Roots

Internet Pioneer

Requiem for a Doomed Speaker

Do you remember the pandemic? People did some pretty odd things during those years. For instance, bands were doing live streams, and people were apparently watching them? I remember think pieces going Is this the future of music? and kinda expecting the answer to be yes , for once. All that came to a grinding halt Continue reading Requiem for a Doomed Speaker

It’s nice that not everybody is watching TV

(From a short story by Chigozie Obioma, a professor at the University of Michigan, by the way.)

I’m happy to learn that Faro’s Daughter is entirely accurate

It’s time to wake up: An Emacs alarm clock

I ve been using some variation of the same system for my alarm clock since at least 2011. Probably earlier I didn t have a blog before that, so who knows? As the saying goes: What hasn t been blogged about is lost to the mysteries of time (Here s some music to play while reading this blog Continue reading It s time to wake up: An Emacs alarm clock

I love subtle literature

Comics Daze

The weather s turned cold and stuff, so I think it s time to spend a day reading comics. And accompanied by music from 1982 only. Kate Bush: The Dreaming 12:03: Betas by Nick Maandag (Drawn Quarterly) This book feels kinda displaced in time it s about PC Madness Gone Wrong etc, and is probably meant Continue reading Comics Daze

I guess the lumberyard had a sale

Surveillance

When I was in Paris, like, fifteen years ago, I happened past a glassware shop and I saw these dinner plates in the window: That is, out-of-focus night-time surveillance photos. On dinner plates. And I had a sudden vision: A what s this style called in English? Peasant romantic or something? It sounds less insulting in Continue reading Surveillance

Blowsy

It’s too hot to do home renovations

For years, the above has annoyed me: It s the padlock to the attic storage. Every time I go up there to stash something away, I have to put that something down in order to unlock that stupid padlock. Opening it requires holding it with one hand and using the key with the other hand. And, Continue reading It s too hot to do home renovations

Stuff Mixtape #435

Things are heating up

Flatpak

I ordered some furniture for my balcony some months ago, and today it arrived. It s a small balcony, so I thought some small chairs would make sense The shipping company said they were going to be delivered in one 47kg package: And I got heart palpitations, because I hadn t ordered carry-stuff-up-all-the-stairs service, and how on Continue reading Flatpak

Well, the temperature did drop below 22C last night…

If you were this t-shirt, what would you be trying to say?

Got it in the mail today, and I have no recollection of buying it It s too large for me, and I can t make out what the text is saying at all. Hulp!

There’s something abhorrent about what AI produces

Here s my little thought: Humans find AI output to be subtly disgusting and avoid subjecting themselves to it. Because that seems to be the only reasonable explanation for stuff like this: Again and again we see people having an LLM generate text and then somehow avoid reading before posting. Sure, people are lazy, and laziness Continue reading There s something abhorrent about what AI produces

A Farewell to Jetpack Stats

Once again, I got one of these mails from WordpreSs they ve determined that this blog is a commercial site . They did this once before, and I said er, no , and then they went OK, you re right . Then a few days later, unrelatedly: I no longer have a blog on wordprEss.com I selfhost the Continue reading A Farewell to Jetpack Stats

Random Comics

I read some comics over the past fortnight. Or rather attempted to. Let s do the ones I actually read first: Riviere has done a lot of comics, but Goffin is unknown to me and so is this series. I picked this up at random at a used book store. And we re talking classic, classic Continue reading Random Comics

A Review of the Reterminal E1004 13.3″ Full-Color Epaper Display

I ve had the following thing on my wall since 2020: It s fun because it s an epaper frame that runs on battery so I can have it conspicuously displayed on a wall without any wires leading to it. Mysterious! Enigmatic! And it just displays the temperature and the currently playing album. It s fine, but it s Continue reading A Review of the Reterminal E1004 13.3 Full-Color Epaper Display

On the other hand…

There’s some software that could use this as a logo…

70% Of Drivers Really Are Above Average

You see it all the time 70% of drivers think they re above average used as an example at how stupid people are. Often mixed with some confused Dunning-Krueger references. But the thing is: Most people observe the other drivers around them and come to the conclusion that they drive better than the drivers around Continue reading 70% Of Drivers Really Are Above Average

Even more deduplication on kwakk.info

As I ve nattered on about before, I started including text pages from comics in the comics zine search engine, and this has some unique problems. I m just dumping hundreds of thousands of comics into the grinder, picking out the text pages, and then OCR-ing them. But many comics have been scanned several times, and many Continue reading Even more deduplication on kwakk.info