Just in case I haven’t made my feelings clear lately on the current United States of America administration, I shall blog. It’s the little things that make me think Donald Trump is a vindictive prick who, among his catalog of things he hates, is Black people. For instance, he’s chosen to change what days are […]

I think the Worry Bird is a cute idea. You use it to, ya know, worry into, by rubbing your thumb into the satisfying little divot to do so. Of course, us web workers tend to turn our worry into superfluous personal website redesigns. [feels urge growing]

I know I’ve mentioned a ton of times: while I enjoy playing videos games sometimes, a little, I enjoy watching other people play them more. Even as a little kid. Like an awesome play date would be going over to a friends to watch them play. Perfect world, the friend would only play when I […]

Normally I like to work or read on planes, but on a return home flight yesterday I was exhausted to the point that movies sounded best. Four (!) movies on Netflix:

Jeremy: The common belief is that nobody uses RSS feeds these days. And while it’s true that I wish more people used feed readers—the perfect antidote to being fed from an algorithm—the truth is that millions of people use RSS feeds every time they listen to a podcast. That’s what a podcast is: an RSS […]

Quite a lovely essay from Henry: When those promises of exorbitant wealth and a life of decadence through per-click monetization ultimately dry up (or come with a steep moral or creative cost), creators and learners must look for new solutions for how educational content is shared on the Internet. The most self-evident, convivial answer is an old […]

It’s a time of slow change for me when it comes to the apps I use most regularly. I also maintain my subscription to SetApp, because I use a handful of things it offers that makes it super worth it: TablePlus, Typeface, Paste, CleanMyMac, Bartender, etc.

JA Westenberg: When you write a blog post, you’re creating a standalone document with a permanent URL. It exists at a specific address on the web, and that address doesn’t change based on who’s looking at it, when they’re looking at it, or what algorithm has decided they should see next. The post is there, […]

Three good thoughts from Shane Parrish: Short-term results come from intensity. Long-term results come from consistency. ** Ninety percent of success can be boiled down to consistently doing the obvious thing for an uncommonly long period of time without convincing yourself that you’re smarter than you are. *** Working smart isn’t the opposite of working […]

Does the leadership at my company promote a xenophobic agenda and use the wealth I help them acquire to donate directly to bigoted causes and politicians I find despicable? Yeah, sure. Did I celebrate my last birthday at Drag Brunch? Also yes. I even tipped with five-dollar bills. I contain multitudes, and would appreciate it […]

The decision is in from the Forest Service: Of the over 500 miles of singletrack maintained by COTA, about 320 miles of trails are in the Deschutes National Forest (DNF). As of December 2025, it is now allowed to use Class 1 pedal-assist e-bikes on 160 miles of those trails. Feels like this is on […]

🎵 Florence + The Machine, Everybody Scream — I have no prior Florence experience but really like this album. The whole “start slow and build a song to a wild ass peak” thing works for me. “You Can Have It All” is a favorite. A little called out by “It must be nice to be a […]

My friend Jason came over as he’d just got a new MacBook and a new Black Lion audio interface he wanted to try out. We plugged my Ear Trumped Mabel into it and did a few songs. I dragged my web cam setup downstairs to do the video haha. The song is Ol’ Bob from […]

There’s the thing where if you’re reading an article in the newspaper, and it’s about stuff you don’t know a ton about, it all seems well and good. Then you read another article in the same paper and it’s about something you know intimately (your job, your neighborhood, your hobby, etc) there is a good […]

I like a good hot sauce. It’s not, like, my personality, but I enjoy them. There are enough different hot sauces that having a bit of a collection of them is reasonable. Cholula is a mainstay, working equally well on Mexican and egg-based dishes. Although admit Tabasco is my general go-to. The green Tabasco works […]

I know this is a weird product recommendation, but I’ve just thought about it too long and it needs to come out. I’ve used the ToiletTree Fogless Shower Mirror for like 15 years at least. See you’ve got this problem with shower mirrors where they like instantly fog up with the steam. This mirror solves […]

For my own long-term reference. My favorite keyboard is the Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard. But Microsoft is out of the keyboard hardware game. So apparently they sold the design to Incase, who now continues to sell it at a perfectly fair price.

Tom Burkert on controlling what he reads, through RSS of course. If I’m in the mood for something lighter, I can just look into my “Fun” folder to check out new stuff from The Oatmeal or xkcd. If I feel like reading something more thoughtful, I’d dive into my “Reads” folder for The Marginalian or Sentiers. Feeling like catching up on […]

Over in the ol’ ShopTalk Discord (that’s what our Patreon thingy unlocks) our editor Chris Enns was venting about some streaming gear woes. And I said: Nothing Ever Works Chris ultimately blogged the situation and used my reply as part of the title of the blog post. Then shortly after, Jason Rodriguez’s post made the […]

I bought a new set the other day, after asking about it on Bluesky. This is me jotting down the good recommendations I got.

My co-worker Robert is into model rocketry. I made a few rockets in my day, but the hobby stopped at Estes. I didn’t really realize people take rocketry much further until knowing Robert. His partner Michelle produced a short video piece for OPB on the community around it here. I’d embed the video here, but […]

Reading Oatmeal stuff is always such a seesaw for me. It’s so riddled with like boobshark jokes and I’m like, yeah yeah ha ha. I don’t hate that kind of humor or find it offensive, I just don’t think it’s very funny. Then it’s also so riddled with such earnest heartfelt well-articulated thoughts that I’m […]

📺 Wondla — 10/10 kids show. I was way into it. Post-apoc situation with underground bunkers (apparently Apple loves that theme) where when the protagonist girl busts out of it, the world is quite different. The premise and payoff in Season 1 was better than the commentary vibe of Season 2, but I liked it […]

Clapping on the on-beat sounds weird and wrong on (most?) songs. In (most?) 4/4 songs, that means clapping on the 1 and 3 sounds bad and 2 and 4 sounds good/normal. But an audience of a bunch of random folks just getting excited can get it wrong! This video of George Collier extending a bar […]

On my Mac, you can use this command like… And it’ll open some built-in GUI app called FileMerge to show you the diff. It wasn’t working for me. I wish I copied the exact error but it was something about the path being wrong or the executable not being available or something. The solution that […]

Maybe a few months ago on my Mac Studio, Local by Flywheel became incredibly slow clicking any button in the UI would take literally minutes. I was gonna just give up and switch to Studio, but I had tried that once and it had enough rough edges I gave up (can’t remember why now, but […]

Danger Gently is the name of the band I occasionally get a seat in here in lovely Bend, Oregon. We played at the High Desert Museum the other week for their “Art in the West” event. We play at The Cellar every Wednesday night (I make it to as many as I can). Here’s a […]

Back when I went to the Alaska Folk Festival, a real highlight was catching The Strongbacks do their version of sea shanties live on the main stage. I remember a real tear-jerker protest shanty that I’d love to hear again. As fate would have it, I also went to Zig Zag campout this year and […]

Chef’s kiss stuff here from Colin Cornaby: Today’s microwave can cook a frozen burrito. Tomorrow’s microwave will be able to cook an entire Thanksgiving Dinner. […] We all need to transition to this way of cooking, because clearly this is where the future is going. I expect in a few short years kitchens will be […]

Me: is there like an established good way of sending your friends a song? I feel like I need a spreadsheet of which music service they use. Turns out there are a couple of services for this. But honestly it’s *just* enough of a pain in the ass to do this, particularly on-the-go, that the […]