Inventing an ampersand without the corresponding typeface to go with it can be tricky!

The Lettering Style Challenge Day 6 — Condensed.

Then I thought, you know I should make something. I am supposed to be a graphic designer, of some sort. I whipped this up, and I think it's OK! We will test it out soon.

I am sharing the craft of block printing with folks, and I usually just wing it. My friends always does printed instructions for sewing and I thought that was a great idea. I found this free Block Printing 101 Zine and its great. Check it out. https://www.kintsugiprint.studio/prints/p/block-print-101-zine

pssssttt... hey kids. Here's a list of really good books, you should read them all:

https://bookshop.org/lists/books-banned-statewide-in-utah

Going with FreeBSD on this free PC.

Scored an unused 10th Gen i5 machine. Stuffed with 16GB of RAM from another machine and scavenged two SATA SSDs from a couple old laptops. I can definitely run a few web sites on this.

“Two likes isn’t a lot” imagine two cats purring

I decided to finally look at "Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities"https://nickm.com/books/exploratory_programming_2e/ by Nick Monfort @nickmofo , and wow, it is even more what I need to dig into than I thought. I don't necessarily need to learn how to program at this point, but putting using programming to learn about the world. It's a great intro to my self-directed, stay at home residency in creative coding and using computers for more than work.

Alright, I thought of 4 topics I could blog about. Now how do I get motivated to start?

Hm. If I want to have fun and un-CMS my web site, so migrate to static pages for my blog, what programming language should I try to learn in the process? I'd probably use Python since that's what I've used recently but that's too obvious. What's the most fun language to make it interesting? Better if the language has a PostgreSQL library, I think.

RE: https://information.garden/@benfry/117003580368321599

Wow, back about 15 years ago when I mostly quit software development, my "client" would create screenshots and show them to potential clients, and then expect me to develop the backend to produce it for a client demo within 24 hours. It was quite an experience.

I have been looking for a nice 70s cassette deck to go with my receiver/amp and I stumbled upon an Atari 410 Program Recorder 5 mies away for $25. I have to get it, right? I have been planning on making a cassette tape loop art piece and I think it's a sign.

@bit101 They were not fooling around.

Thanks to SIGOPS for republishing my blog post on systems in the AI era. Possibly even more exciting, I found these photos of the women that programmed the ENIAC. While Ekhart and Mauchley got the credit for the ENIAC, it was the women — Jean Bartik, Kathleen Antonelli, Betty Holberton, Ruth Teitelbaum, Marlyn Meltzer, Frances Spence — that actually figured out how to implement their ideas for calculating ballistic trajectories. https://www.sigops.org/2026/slow-software-the-case-for-high-latency-systems-development/

Watching some videos that could be regarded as "self-help" about rescuring yourself from tech and in the comments someone said "step one: stop watching self-help videos" which, yeah of course. I find a lot of self-help repetitive at best, if not mostly useless. I've learned that just thinking about what you are doing and why, and self-reflection is the secret to it all, and if a video or a book helps you do that, it worked! There are no secret answers hidden in them. Pay attention to yourself.

Wait a second, so I saw some LLM generated stuff and I was thinking, LLM's generate a predicted response based on the wording in the prompt, and if you call it out for a false statement, it then generates a predicted response based on that. So even the correction is just a generated based on who you word your response to the incorrect information. What are we even doing? (am I on the right track here?)

@MakersHour Q3: If you are completely reinventing your maker self, with a whole new set of skills and knowledge. Describe this new you in the form of your Mastodon bio. #MakersHour Ha! My profile already says "Maker, Artist, Problem-solver" so that includes every possible combination of weird skills and experience.

Dragon Dads (https://dragondads.org/) is a group of dads and other caregivers who are affirming and supportive of LGTBQIA+ kids. One of their big activities is going to #pride events and giving out free dad hugs. Many of them have been doing this for 10 years or more. This was my first time.

Let me tell you, I saw, and felt, absolutely everything.

There was someone who squealed when they saw the booth and did a ten yard sprint to catch me in a flying hug. There were people who walked by several times before they timidly came up and asked for a hug.

There were people who wanted long hugs, side hugs, pats on the back, fist bumps. (We have a menu.) People who don't like hugs, but were nonetheless thrilled that we were doing it.

People told me that their dads had passed away, refused to have anything to do with them, or that they had had to cut their own dads off. One told me "I miss my dad", and when I said I was so sorry, they said "he's in Arizona".

There was an elderly person in a wheelchair who told us how their alcoholic father used to beat them, then told us all the things they had accomplished in life in spite of him, just to show him.

There were people who trembled. People who sobbed. People who melted.

A giant dude in one of those neoprene dog masks (with my permission) grabbed me in a great big hug and lifted me off the ground.

I leaned down to hug people in wheelchairs, and stretched up to hug a woman who I swear was seven feet tall.

Some people stayed to chat, or to cool off in our misting fan in the blistering heat. Others got a hug and left quickly, tears in their eyes and a "thank you" on their lips.

Absolutely everyone who wanted a hug got one.

I've signed up for more events.

Sooooo.... I was thinking, if I wanted to learn how to get a computer without an LLM to categorize a bunch of text, what would I try to learn?