Between it being kind of a weird month (on several counts), my increasing activity on Substack, and some hobby project work, I haven’t posted much here this month. In fact, this is only the second post this month. Given the date, probably the last.
Which may be something of a harbinger. I do seem to be migrating towards Substack and, to some extent, leaving this blog behind. It feels like abandoning a friend, though, and I’m finding it hard to let go. And probably won’t, at least not entirely.
But who knows. Maybe it’s all Friday Notes from here on out…
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6 Comments | tags: blog, blogger, blogging, Service Today, smoke alarm, Tim Walz, WordPress | posted in Friday Notes, Politics
Ceiling Cat’s Cradle
Back in September of 2019 I wrote about how the 100-amp main breaker for my electrical power went flakey and then flooey. That ended up being a $2400 service call because I also got new smoke alarms, a carbon monoxide detector, and a main power surge protector. [See Whadda Week!]
I was and am fine with everything. Obviously, glad to have reliable electrical power. Presumably the surge protector is doing its thing, and the CO detector blinks its green light every minute, so it seems happy.
But while I’ve had no fire nor anything like it, the ceiling cats have shown a trying tendency to go off seemingly randomly — all four screeching loudly from their cradles and seriously raising my heartrate.
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5 Comments | tags: ceiling cat, electrical current, Service Today, smoke alarm | posted in Life
I’ve been sitting on a fence for several months now, and it’s starting to get a bit uncomfortable. Back in March I opened branch office over in Substack land. Ever since I’ve been trying to figure out whether to shift operations there or remain here. (Or try to do both more or less equally.)
A complicating factor is that, despite both Substack and WordPress being blogging platforms, there is something of an apples and pumpkins comparison. They have, for me, contrasting pros and cons, mead and poison.
Change is hard, but it can also be invigorating, and it might just be time.
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6 Comments | tags: blog, blogger, blogging, human consciousness, Roger Penrose, Substack, WordPress | posted in Computers, Life, TV Tuesday, Writing
It has been an interesting summer. The actual weather has been on the cool and rainy side; the political weather has been … words fail. What I’m seeing — the apparent final death knell of the original American Dream — makes me speechless. A deeper question, did we lose our way or hit our ceiling, tasks me.
Regardless, there is a looming deadline in November that overhangs my thoughts and makes it hard to find much interest in anything else.
Regardless of that, Friday Notes marches on.
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10 Comments | tags: agnosticism, gnosticism, haiku, hot dogs, Minnesota Twins, MLB All-Star Game, rain | posted in Baseball, Friday Notes
Back on Tau Day (which is also my retirement anniversary), I posted about a scene in the superhero comic Invincible that involves a baseball orbiting the Earth at a very close distance (roughly airplane height). Regardless of superhero strengths, I found the scene impossible on multiple counts.
At the time, I could only calculate the velocity of the ball given the circumference of the Earth and some guesses about the length of the presumed orbit. Suffice to say the answers sufficiently demonstrated the impossibility.
Here, I’ll use orbital mechanics for some hard data on putative baseball orbits.
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3 Comments | tags: Invincible, orbital mechanics, planets, Python | posted in Science
I don’t mean the social kind of integration, which I learned as a child, but the mathematical kind of integration, which I never learned in any of my math classes. I didn’t even take calculus until The Company sponsored some adult education classes for employees.
But those calc classes only got me through basic derivatives (of polynomials, mostly), so integration has been a bit of a mystery to me. Lately, though, I’ve been trying to pick up the basics.
This post just records my first attempts — my math lab book, so to speak.
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3 Comments | tags: calculus, integrals | posted in Basics, Math
Someone on another platform used the phrase “social entropy”, and it has been echoing in my head ever since. It strikes me as perfectly encapsulating what feels like the fraying of our social fabric. I almost wonder if the new millennium blew some of our mental fuses.
It’s hard to know what to make of things now. Is this just another pendulum swing along humanity’s path or a genuine sign of decline. Has humanity peaked, been found unworthy, and slid into a dumb and numb acceptance of our lot?
What the hell is even going on anymore?
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2 Comments | tags: Democratic Party, globalization, Joe Biden, Republican Party, social entropy | posted in Politics, Society
The Earth has completed yet another orbit from this particular spot, so here we are (or at least here I am) with another Blog Anniversary. Almost hard to believe the Earth has spun ’round the Sun thirteen times since I began this blog. My blog’s a teenager now!
Thirteen years, fourteen hundred posts (this is post #1400), lots of wyrds (1.8 million). Lots of Wyrd, for that matter. This has been a self-documenting project from day one.
Needless to say, I have lists, stats, and charts (oh, my).
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9 Comments | tags: Anniversary, blog, blogger, blogging, July 4 | posted in Life, Writing
My President.
Okay, the debate was disappointing, let’s get that out of the way. There’s a long history of dismal first debate outings. Sometimes they are followed by stellar second debates. I’m ever hopeful, but there is a fundamental problem here with the Democrats that worries me.
I’ll get to that, but I want to stress my other point right away. Biden and the Democrats are far (far!) from perfect, but the alternative right now is unthinkable. What is offered by the Republicans is contrary to long-established conservative American values (let alone progressive ones).
I have no plan here, no notes, just some thoughts.
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10 Comments | tags: Biden-Trump debate, debate, Joe Biden, social entropy, Trump is a liar | posted in Politics, Society
Be a Tauist!
I’ve found it extremely difficult to focus this past week. Most of the blame is on Substack Notes, a part of Substack that’s very similar to Twitter or a Facebook feed. I never had Twitter, dumped Facebook ages ago, and barely know what Instagram, Snapchat, et cetera are.
I have no immunity to a doomscrolling feed of interesting micro-posts. Reading them is bad enough. The urge to jump in join the fun is all but irresistible. But days are passing with little to show for them: no books read, no posts worked on, no software projects advanced.
Now it’s Tau Day, and I can’t let that pass postless.
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16 Comments | tags: 360 degrees, 60 minutes, circle, Invincible, orbital mechanics, pi, tau, tau day | posted in Baseball, Science, TV
Logos con carne 