index.md (10984B)
1 --- 2 title: "Dispatch #43 (September 2026)" 3 date: 2026-09-06T17:20:49-04:00 4 draft: false 5 tags: 6 - dispatch 7 references: 8 - title: "3 books with Samuel Arbesman (Interconnected)" 9 url: https://interconnected.org/home/2025/11/14/arbesman 10 date: 2026-01-06T18:40:18Z 11 file: interconnected-org-9bc7pq.txt 12 - title: "How to Make Lofi Music — MusicProductionWiki.com" 13 url: https://musicproductionwiki.com/articles/how-to-make-lofi-music 14 date: 2026-09-06T17:12:16Z 15 file: musicproductionwiki-com-mosing.txt 16 - title: "The joy of making stuff with a 3D printer | Note to Self" 17 url: https://notetoself.studio/post/the-joy-of-3d-printing/ 18 date: 2026-09-06T16:20:03Z 19 file: notetoself-studio-e7higb.txt 20 - title: "Gina Trapani: The joy of making stuff with a 3D printer. I’v..." 21 url: https://kottke.org/26/09/0049548-the-joy-of-making-stuff-w 22 date: 2026-09-06T16:20:06Z 23 file: kottke-org-axmrn4.txt 24 - title: "Tiny E-Reader Is the Best Piece of Technology in Years - The Atlantic" 25 url: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/09/xteink-e-reader-best-technology-years/688539/ 26 date: 2026-09-06T16:20:27Z 27 file: www-theatlantic-com-xdprpu.txt 28 - title: "Changes to SourceHut's terms of service regarding LLMs" 29 url: https://sourcehut.org/blog/2026-08-27-tos-changes-and-llms/ 30 date: 2026-09-06T16:20:36Z 31 file: sourcehut-org-83c9jr.txt 32 - title: "ArtLung: Chuck Tingle and the Internet ~ 23 Aug 2026" 33 url: https://artlung.com/blog/2026/08/23/chuck-tingle-and-the-internet/ 34 date: 2026-09-06T16:20:45Z 35 file: artlung-com-uejw3z.txt 36 - title: "What I read online today: Aug. 24, 2026 – Tracy Durnell's Mind Garden" 37 url: https://tracydurnell.com/2026/08/24/what-i-read-online-today-aug-24-2026/ 38 date: 2026-09-06T16:20:48Z 39 file: tracydurnell-com-xu4yl2.txt 40 - title: "A Philosopher’s One-Word Theory to Explain Why the World Feels So Weird" 41 url: https://www.derekthompson.org/p/a-philosophers-one-word-theory-to 42 date: 2026-09-06T16:20:58Z 43 file: www-derekthompson-org-bwnzgl.txt 44 - title: "I’ve felt this for years (blogs have global context): “The u..." 45 url: https://kottke.org/26/08/0049474-the-uni-context-is-a-scen 46 date: 2026-09-06T16:21:00Z 47 file: kottke-org-oi76by.txt 48 --- 49 50 We had a couple trips essentially back-to-back in August, which made for a choppy, whirlwind month. First up, we flew out to California to spend a long weekend in Napa with some of Claire's friends. Highlights included renting e-bikes and riding the [Napa Valley Vine trail][1] and visiting [Muir Woods][2]. The kids did great on the flight; guess they're old pros at this point. Then we headed up to Delaware for our annual Rehoboth Beach trip. Even managed to make it onto the beach a few times, unlike some years past (the kids are generally much more excited about the arcade and candy store). 51 52 [1]: https://vinetrail.org/the-vine-trail/ 53 [2]: https://www.nps.gov/muwo/index.htm 54 55 <!--more--> 56 57 {{<dither IMG_6273.jpeg "782x600">}}Beach day beneath the Golden Gate Bridge.{{</dither>}} 58 {{<dither IMG_0726.jpeg "782x600">}}Cycling beneath a bright September sky, with the hills ahead.{{</dither>}} 59 60 {{<dither IMG_6427.JPG "782x600">}}A sunny family moment beneath a leafy garden arch.{{</dither>}} 61 {{<dither IMG_8647.jpeg "782x600">}}Four kids and a wagon full of sand toys at sunset on the beach.{{</dither>}} 62 63 {{<dither IMG_0828.jpeg "782x600">}}Four children pause along a beachside fence beneath a brilliant blue sky.{{</dither>}} 64 {{<dither IMG_0815.jpeg "782x600">}}A sunny family outing on a riverside boardwalk.{{</dither>}} 65 66 I picked up a [macropad][3] [a couple months ago][4] and set up some nice automations: 67 68 * [MeetingBar][5] to join my next meeting 69 * [FrostCam][6] to pause my video 70 * [toggleMute][7] to mute my mic 71 * As well as a few others that didn't stick 72 73 In setting this stuff up, I discovered that my main keyboard uses the same software to remap keys that the macropad does, and ended up repurposing the keys along the upper right (del/ins/pgup/etc.) for these frequently used shortcuts. I'm in the process of turning the macropad into a sort of notification/control center, inspired by the [Codex Micro][8] that OpenAI came out with a few months ago. I had Codex write some new firmware and a corresponding CLI so I can control colors and effects on a per-key basis. Now I just need to figure out what integrations I want and how to wire it all together. 74 75 [3]: https://doioshop.com/products/doio-16-keys-programmable-multifunction-mechanical-keyboard-translucent-acrylic-kb16-01?VariantsId=10571 76 [4]: /journal/dispatch-41-july-2026/ 77 [5]: https://meetingbar.app/ 78 [6]: https://frostcam.app/ 79 [7]: https://github.com/satrik/toggleMute 80 [8]: https://openai.com/supply/co-lab/work-louder/ 81 82 I've been slowly working my way through [_The Magic of Code_][9] by Samuel Arbesman ([via][10]), which includes this gem: 83 84 > Software consists of spells of crystallized thought. 85 86 It conjured up a memory: I'm probably seven or eight, and I'd typed in some BASIC program from a magazine, a simple rotation cipher. My dad gets home from his job at IBM and -- just off the top of his head, no internet at this point -- updates the code to accept flags to decrypt and adjust the amount of rotation. And I remember thinking, _are you a wizard?_ 87 88 [9]: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/samuel-arbesman/the-magic-of-code/9781541704480/ 89 [10]: https://interconnected.org/home/2025/11/14/arbesman 90 91 Our big deck project continues. We've yet break ground, but we're getting close. We're excited, but it has gotten _expensive_ and the price seems to increase by tens of thousands of dollars every time we talk to our contractors. Do we like this house enough to make a major investment in it? Bit of a chicken-and-egg situation in that we hope we'll like it a whole lot more once this work is done. 92 93 Finally, Nev and I discovered this gem on Netflix: [_Bad Dinosaurs_][11]. It's scary and hilarious, disgusting and heartfelt. Right up our collective alley. Too bad there's only one season, but what a season it is. 94 95 [11]: https://www.netflix.com/title/81301887 96 97 --- 98 99 ### This Month 100 101 * Adventure: Lake Norman for Labor Day weekend (looking at it right now!); turning 44 i.e. the end of my early 40s. 102 * Project: I've got a nice piano loop I'd like to turn into a finished track (perhaps using some of advice and plugins from [this article][12]); blog about my synth setup and, as ever, that 3D printing project I did earlier this year 103 * Skill: getting better sounds out of my Prophet polysynth; I feel like this really should be the centerpiece of my setup, but I struggle to make patches I really like and wind up leaning on simpler instruments 104 105 [12]: https://musicproductionwiki.com/articles/how-to-make-lofi-music 106 107 ### Reading & Listening 108 109 * Fiction: [_A Parade of Horribles_][13], Matt Dinniman 110 * Non-fiction: [_The Magic of Code_][9], Samuel Arbesman ([via][10]) 111 * Music: had a bunch of pre-orders finally show up at the end of the month, so nothing new until I've had the chance to spend time with those 112 113 [13]: https://mattdinniman.com/books/a-parade-of-horribles/ 114 115 ### Links 116 117 * [The joy of making stuff with a 3D printer | Note to Self][14] ([via][15]) 118 119 > Once I discovered Gridfinity, I went to town. When life feels out of control, there are few things more soothing than organizing small objects in little boxes. 120 121 * [Tiny E-Reader Is the Best Piece of Technology in Years - The Atlantic][16] 122 123 > In person, the Xteink is many things: plasticky. Flawed. Finicky. Nevertheless, it is the single best piece of technology that I have purchased in years. In the two months before getting this cartoonishly tiny e-reader, I finished only one book. In one month with the X3, I read three books without even really trying—and my iPhone’s average daily screen time dipped by 25 minutes. 124 125 * [Spring clean, fall prune – amanda untangled][17] 126 127 > Since it's the first of September and I can literally feel autumn in my bones, I wanted to spend some time today talking about a routine that my family and I came up with over the last several years. It's a rhythm that we've really come to enjoy at the turn of the season, every spring and fall equinox. 128 129 * [Changes to SourceHut's terms of service regarding LLMs][18] 130 131 > The use of LLMs or other generative AI tools to produce or assist with the production of source code, assets, tickets, emails, and so on, will no longer be permitted on SourceHut once these terms take effect. 132 133 My git forge of choice came out pretty hard against AI-generated code. I'm still processing this -- I've mostly stopped open-sourcing my slops, but I certainly use Codex for some of the tooling on this site, which appears to be against the letter of the TOS. 134 135 * [ArtLung: Chuck Tingle and the Internet ~ 23 Aug 2026][19] ([via][20]) 136 137 > The promise of the internet was that it was beautiful. “Charlie bit my finger” is such a fascinating thing. (The internet) was great but then the hand of capitalism evolved it against what it started as–human fostering human connection–and capitalism works to crushes connection. But the inertia of the universe is love, and sincerity is good. I think we can cycle back to that beautiful fostering of human connection. 138 139 I asked ChatGPT to confirm the origin of "trot your own trot," a phrase I borrowed from Chuck Tingle that Claire and I say with some frequency. It told me, "Ha — this appears to be **you**. Searching the exact phrase 'trot your own trot,' the earliest clear indexed use I can find is a 2017 Viget article by David Eisinger, [Using Microcosm Presenters to Manage Complex Features][21]." Which is hilarious and utterly false. 140 141 * [A Philosopher’s One-Word Theory to Explain Why the World Feels So Weird][22] ([via][23]) 142 143 > In general, goodness is more context-dependent than badness. There isn’t really anything that’s good all the time for everyone independent of context ... But there are reliable ways to make people unhappy. There’s a set of evils that are close to universal: death, pain, illness, violence. 144 145 I found this pretty insightful in terms of how easy it is to talk to people about things that suck (politics, climate change, etc.) and harder to talk about things that are going well (the rest of my life). 146 147 [14]: https://notetoself.studio/post/the-joy-of-3d-printing/ 148 [15]: https://kottke.org/26/09/0049548-the-joy-of-making-stuff-w 149 [16]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/09/xteink-e-reader-best-technology-years/688539/ 150 [17]: https://untangled.bearblog.dev/spring-clean-fall-prune/ 151 [18]: https://sourcehut.org/blog/2026-08-27-tos-changes-and-llms/ 152 [19]: https://artlung.com/blog/2026/08/23/chuck-tingle-and-the-internet/ 153 [20]: https://tracydurnell.com/2026/08/24/what-i-read-online-today-aug-24-2026/ 154 [21]: https://www.viget.com/articles/using-microcosm-presenters-to-manage-complex-features 155 [22]: https://www.derekthompson.org/p/a-philosophers-one-word-theory-to 156 [23]: https://kottke.org/26/08/0049474-the-uni-context-is-a-scen