Great story at Cartoon Brew about Peter Cullen’s voice acting work. I had never really thought why he was so good as Optimus Prime:
His brother’s idea of heroism became central to Cullen’s interpretation of the character and arguably had a tremendous impact on generations of children who could look up to a strong leader who didn’t rely on bravado or overt displays of aggression.
Rest in peace.
I shaved off about half a second while loading the Micro.blog home page timeline. It helps, but also doesn’t have as dramatic a perceived effect as I was hoping. Performance is so many small things.
The tariffs were largely a waste of time and money, but still nice to see this part of it resolving well: Panic is refunding tariff fees for Playdate purchases, via Lex Friedman’s new blog.
Mandolino
I try to see my friends Dan and Sue as often as I can. The problem is that I live in Brighton and they live in Baltimore (that’s Baltimore, Maryland not Baltimore, West Cork).
We sometimes make it work though. Like crossing the Atlantic together.
Dan and Sue were in Italy ...
Micro.blog book readers who like libraries: Libby integration seems to be working pretty well again. You’ll need to reconnect it on the web, Bookshelves → “…” → Import. 📚
Paradoxically I’m increasingly believing in two things at the same time:
- Not a bubble. Not overhyped. We’re still near the beginning of the growth and what will be possible.
- Nvidia could crash and bring down much of the stock market with it. We’re all going to be hit hard if this happens.
Twitter.now is going to make a lot of money for 48 hours and then disappear. I’m sure they are well-intentioned, but creating new silos (even with nostalgic brands) is not what we need. If you want blue in your online social life, Bluesky is the way to go.
FeedLand Rivers for WordPress: I've noticed that people are setting up news reader sites with FeedLand that are getting considerable flow. We thought they'd use News Products, a feature that was supposed to make it easy to create standalone sites like the one I did for WordP...
Reading as participation in the indie web
jamesg.blog/2026/08/27/reading-as-participation-in-the-indie-web
Reading as participation in the indie web
In the past, I have used the shorthand “if you have a website, you’re in the indie web community.” I have used this because I don’t think there are, or should be, any other qualifying factors (i.e. using particular tools, having a certain site layout). While I think this sho...
My WordPress mirror site stopped updating on August 12. It's now updating once again. I'll try to watch it more carefully.
The Atlantis project continues. Today I'm working on the code that updates the frontier.root object database using RSS, a technique I started in 2007. I actually let the codecasting.org name lapse, figuring I'd never get back to that stuff, but here we are, doing unpredictable things.
All of a sudden it's cold here in the Catskills this morning. It's still August, I don't get what's going on. We haven't had a really hot day all month. I'm starting my workday wearing a freaking hoodie and am thinking about turning on the heat.
Moods, places; translations
I was listening to Lorde’s Melodrama, an album I haven’t listened to for some time. Her music continues to echo through my week. It is hard to believe that I got to see her perform live a few days ago; the electricity of the performance still sticks with me: the moments we a...
What are we not talking about anymore? - Nerd
I try to keep on doing what I do in order to stay sane. I keep on teaching about the wonderful web to my students, even if nobody will ever hire a talented, creative, junior developer again. I keep on teaching about the consequences of the open web, even if it’s harder and harder to find anything open in this monopolised web anymore. And I do that because I still care.
Midnight scrapbooking
A warm glow from the still-on kitchen light passed through the hallway, illuminating the floral book, opened, on my lap. The night’s task: to start making the book my own.
My impulse to create new things – music, stories, memories – is not dampened by the absence of dayligh...
Thanks to some work by Jacob an 8 year bug with posting to wordpress...
Thanks to some work by Jacob an 8 year bug with posting to wordpress from Omnibear should now be fixed!
ArtLung
• Joe Crawford
Losing one of my handplanes last week has inadvertently unlocked new ride approaches. Progress is not linear. Progress and serendipity are sometimes aligned.
Please let me interact with your blog post!
michaelharley.net/posts/2026/08/22/please-let-me-interact-with-your-blog-post/