Previously on Phil’s Newsletter: It was a skip week for 3 weeks!
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… so skip week turned into skip weeks pretty easily. But we are back, and I have been collecting The Good Links for you. My trip back to the ancestral homelands were productive in a roundabout way, which you shall see as this edition of the newsletter plays out. It is good to see you again.
Long Way Home
I was lucky enough to spend almost 3 weeks with my family in Michigan. I hadn’t visited any of them in over 2 years, for obvious reasons, and I could not wait any longer. Even 3 weeks was not nearly long enough, and I hope I can go back again soon.
The Nelsons have more or less accepted their fates as the cultural leaders of Niles, MI as foretold in prophecy. Henry plays guitar at the Niles Brewing Company during dinner time and open mic nights, Jess is a tireless city council member, Katie serves brews and looks at the Brass Eye, George sucks, there is a RetroStrange Movie Night every 2 weeks, there’s a weekly livestream show every Monday called Nelson Family Radio Hour and so on.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
The second thing I did when I got home from my trip (see below for the first thing- we tell stories asynchronously around these parts) was re-arrange my office space which is really just half of my bedroom. My bedroom is now… mostly office. This is fine.
Some Guitar
To beans honest the thing I missed more about my apartment was my guitar, The Boss. My nephew Henry let me use a Squire Telecaster while I was out of town, but it just wasn’t the same (and weighed a goddamn ton). The first thing I did upon walking in to my apartment was set my bags down, plug Boss into my Pignose amp, and annoy the neighbors.
I’ve been experimenting with sticking a mic in front of my little Vox Pathfinder practice amp, which is more than loud enough for my city apartment, and so far I like the sound. Here’s a sample recording on my blog- just a little inexpensive GLS ES-57 mic pointed at the cone and fed into my Soundcraft Notepad 12 mixer.
Is being specific about all this gear making me sound American Psycho-y? Don’t answer that.
Department of Purchasing
The Wizard Tower got some upgrades upon my arrival back.
The first and most important is a real chair for my office. I’ve been using a very cheap shop chair (about $30) for over 2 years now and it was time to take better care of my back.
Being a good Michigan boy I naturally started by looking at chairs from Steelcase, and ended up settling on the Series 2 task chair in all black. It feels great so far. Soft recommendation. Check with me in 6 months to find out if it was worth the $500.
The second purchase was a little Lumecube LED light panel, which should improve my appearances on OpenCV Weekly Webinar. We’ll find out.
R.I.P. Elliot Harmon (1981-2021)
I’m still not quite processing the reality of it, but my friend Elliot is dead. His former workplace, EFF, has a remembrance.
Three Weeks Worth Of Good Links
The Readme Project has a longform piece about software developer why the lucky stiff, who famously nuked their internet presence back in 2009
Google search (and Google home) gives extremely dangerous advice when you ask what to do after someone has had a seizure
John Deere cut off 10,000 employees from insurance just as COBRA subsidies expire
Katie Couric was never really a journalist, more like an unofficial PR flack
Before MMOs, There Were MUDs is the first episode in a new video series for Fangamer called Forgotten Words. A great history lesson and remembrance
A Twitter thread about Kinko’s “Academic Courseware Exchange” which encouraged people to develop and sell courseware to schools
The Jetson Aero is a commercial personal hovercraft available for $92,000
Facebook, ignoring its own teams, secretly prioritized “angry” reaction emojis
Major League Baseball tried out a bunch of weird new rules in the minor leagues this season. The Ringer has a review of what they tried and how it worked
Facebook renamed itself to Meta, as if you can erase a stain by renaming it. But “Exploiting data to manipulate human behavior has always been Facebook’s business model. The metaverse will be no different.”
Another day, another Christian scammer gets life in prison for stealing from the elderly
People were calling frantically about someone with a jetpack over LAX airport in Los Angeles. Turns out it was Jack Skellington
Final Assault is a first person shooter created for Atai 8-bit computers and it is cool as heck
Delphi is a new project that says it can automate morality. You know how this story goes already.
An oral history of Bank Python, a longform post about the weird ways the Python programming language is used by massive banks
Thanks for coming back. I’ll see you next week.
— Phil Nelson
Wizard Tower Gamma, South of Market, San Francisco, California, United States of America, Earth
11.12.2021
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