Tag Archives: Bentley
Apparently, I’ve been on my own form of spring break. It has been over a month since my last post here (or anywhere). And there was a three-week stretch between previous posts and the single gap-filling Friday Notes post on May 15th.
Getting from the last paragraph to this one took over an hour due to a number of self-induced distractions. For a variety of reasons, I’m just not feeling it lately. Some of it is blog blahs, but most of it is… I just don’t want to.
Yet there is much to write about…
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22 Comments | tags: Bentley, blogging, cricket, Peter Gabriel, spring, squirrels, Summer Solstice, weather | posted in Friday Notes
Pardon me for going momentarily meta, but these three-paragraph opens (hopefully with a pithy cliffhanger punchline for the third) are sometimes a real challenge. The intent is a recognizable style that acts like a watermark.
Some opens are more challenging than others, though. The right half-dozen or so sentences comprising three thoughts (with a hoped-for haiku-like third) can take forever to whip into shape.
Friday Notes are among the hardest because there isn’t much to say other than “here we go again…”
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12 Comments | tags: adaptations, AI, Bentley, Dogma (movie), opinions, seconds are long, Substack, weather | posted in Friday Notes
I meant to put out a rare early-in-the-month Friday Notes post this time but with one thing and another didn’t start on this until last week (on the very day I meant to post it). It’s true what they say about time passing faster when you’re older. In part because so much becomes known.
Novelty makes life richer — it’s one reason I love and pursue science and math. Endless new vistas to explore; always a new hill to climb.
And always new notes on the pile…
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15 Comments | tags: atoms, Bentley, Substack, time passing, Watching the Detectives, weather | posted in Friday Notes
This post begins with a bit of what I see as good news. We’re exactly one month away from Winter Solstice — December 21st at 15:03 UTC. That’s 9:03 AM USA Central Time, and I set posts to publish at 9:14 AM, so by the time you read this, it’s just under a month away.
Cue regular Solstice-Equinox reminder that the day-length changes very slowly at the Solstices and very rapidly at the Equinoxes [cue regular link: Solar Derivative].
Until then, here’s another edition of Friday Notes.
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5 Comments | tags: AI, Bentley, eagle, equinox, Python, snow, Solstice, squirrel, weather | posted in Computers, Friday Notes, Math
I’ve been dog-sitting Ms. Bentley Beans since last Saturday. She’ll be hanging out with me until at least the first of October. We’ve been enjoying the fall weather, though it has actually been slightly muggy for late September. Not like the swamp of late summer, but enough to soak my tee-shirt and make Bentley pant a little during our walks.
As usual, I take Bentley’s visits as my own vacation and spend most of the time hanging out with her and catching up on reading and TV.
Sadly, Friday Notes won’t write themselves, so while Bentley snoozes, I blog.
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12 Comments | tags: Ai Safety, autumnal equinox, Bentley, Digi-Comp I, hail, Mandelbrot, Microsoft Windows, Timex Sinclair 1000, Ultra Fractal, weather | posted in Friday Notes
I find myself (almost) surprised that July of 2025 is nearly over. The year seems to be slipping by quickly. One’s sense of time really does change as one gets older [see Perception of Time].
More to the point, this is the last Friday in July, so if I’m to get a Friday Notes post out this month, today is the day. While my notorious pile is much reduced, I still have two ancient notebooks full of very old notes to get to.
So, let’s get to it, shall we?
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12 Comments | tags: Bentley, high school, memes, Minnesota Twins, Philosophy, Twins 2025 | posted in Friday Notes
Until now, I haven’t posted here all month, and I’m not sure I’ll post anything before the end of the year. My attention definitely is more towards Substack these days, and I increasingly ask myself why to bother with WordPress anymore?
For one, their technology continues to depress me. This week it’s because the notifications bell icon can’t clear the little dot that means messages pending. It’s on all the time, but there are no messages pending. Basically, at this point, I’m pretty disgusted and done with WP.
But first let’s have at least one more edition of Friday Notes.
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9 Comments | tags: Apple Corporation, art, Bentley, stats, Substack, The Jazz Avengers, WordPress | posted in Friday Notes, Movies
It’s been a slow month here, this is only my second post, and it could be the last. (This month, I mean, not forever.) One thing that has become clear to me is that Substack Notes is too much of a time sink. I’ve been learning to tear myself away from it.
I’m sure I’ll keep posting there, though. I’ve been updating some of my older posts and republishing them for a new audience. I wrapped things up here on computationalism some time ago, but now I have an excuse to revisit and distill those thoughts.
As for this blog, at least for now, there’s always Friday Notes.
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6 Comments | tags: astronomy, baseball season, Bentley, blog, blogger, blogging, Election 2024, Gourdian, Substack, World Series | posted in Friday Notes
Once again we pivot into the dark half of the year. Here in the northern hemisphere, anyway. Folks below the equator are enjoying the opposite pivot, the good one into light.
The Autumnal Equinox is my least favorite Solar Occasion (today: 12:44 GMT, 7:44 AM CDT). It means winter is coming. I can deal with the cold, but the short days and long dark nights, that’s tougher.
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3 Comments | tags: autumnal equinox, Bentley, equinox, Jon Stewart, Sun, sunshine, The Daily Show | posted in Life, Politics
Often, the hardest part of Friday Notes (and, in fact, most) posts is writing the lede. Very soon after I began back in 2011, I settled on a three-part opening structure consisting of (as my template puts it): Intro… More… Punchline… followed by the page break that divides the lede from the body of the post.
That page break comes into play when WordPress lists a bunch of posts as well as in the notification emails (except in the double-damned WordPress Reader, which corrupts everything in the name of sameness). And while I’m on the topic of WordPress, I’m getting really fed up with it.
But that’s a post for another day. For now, I’ve got Notes…
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18 Comments | tags: Bentley, food, galaxy, Invincible, Spider Robinson, stupid people, stupidity | posted in Friday Notes
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