Saying “I always review what the AI gives me and I don’t let it write for me” is the new “yes, dentist, I do floss every day.”
Connections Band Names
When playing the New York Times Connections game, it occurred to me that it would be a good band name generator.
This day in particular had some great band names:
- Octopus Breeze
- Thunder Messenger
- Moon Saddle
- Bull Waltz
- Bunk Gold
- Hobo Mosey
- Bilge Crossbody
- Stroll Baloney
I’d go see Hobo Mosey opening for Octopus Breeze.
Countdown Standard
I endorse this Countdown Standard proposed by XKCD:
Sound design of old
I was talking about sound design for user-interfaces with some colleagues today and remembered this gem. Back in 2004, I asked Brad Sucks to help with some sound design for the open-source instant messaging app, Gaim.
The sounds he came up with hold up well even 22 years later. I remember an interesting debate around whether the send or receive sound should have an “upward” tone (like asking a question), or “downward” tone. It depends whether you consider it a notification if your receipt, or the other persons sending (also see moving meetings “ahead” or “back”).
Hat tip to Brad for keeping his post about the sounds alive to this day. Cool URIs don’t change!
(and yes, I’ve reached the “blogging about my own old blog posts” stage)
The Web is a Guitar Amp Now (Literally)
I’ve been working with the web platform for years – and I was pretty blown-away to be able play my guitar through a website, and have it processed like a vintage amp.
I wrote about it over at the silverorange blog.
The perfect book for the 10-year-old soccer / football fan
My son is 10 years old and loves soccer. He received a novel for Christmas called The Academy by T.Z. Layton.
When we started reading it together, I felt like someone had plugged directly into my son’s brain and formulated the perfect book for him. The dialog among the characters sounds like my son talking soccer with his friends.
When you find a great book, it’s even better to find out that it’s the start of a whole series. We devoured book one, and quickly turned a few bookstore gift cards from Christmas into the next few entries in the series. We’ve now enjoyed books 1 through 4, with book 5 coming this week and book 6 later in May.
The book is such a hit in our house that is has changed our approach to reading and writing.
If I could bet on the further success of this book series – or any adaptations for TV or film, I would. The writing level and subject matter are perfect for a kid around 8 to 12 years old. I don’t mind it either.
Shipping a button in 2026
Every web developer should enjoy this (and if you’re not a web develop, skip it):
As it is with bacon, so it is with life
We have a saying in our house that’s about our approach to cooking bacon, but it applies in many different aspects of life:
Cook the bacon until the fat turns to meat.
It goes without saying
I don’t like writing, or thinking, about Donald Trump and everything is presidency represents. First of all, it’s gross. He’s awful. Second, the situation seems so obviously terrible that my comments don’t add anything to the discourse. If it’s not obvious to you why threatening democratic allies, promoting dangerous misinformation, and encouraging hate towards trans people is bad, I’m not going to convince you.
That leaves me saying nothing. If I read a diary of someone who lived through the 1940s in Europe and it didn’t mention World War II, I would be bewildered. If I (or someone else) looks back on this website decades from now, they might wonder: What did he do about it*.
* The ‘it’ will be more obvious in historical hindsight depending on where we end up, but in general, I’m talking about a political climate of intolerance, corruption, and dangerous stupidity.
I’m a Canadian who lives in Canada, but today I ended up on the United States Department of Health and Human Services website. What I saw that scared me more than any of the dangerous garbage that Trump and his enables spout off.
The site will change, but when I looked at it back in February of 2025 (screenshot) if featured a photo of Donald Trump with Robert Kennedy Jr. – A guy who has an entire section on his Wikipedia page called “Anti-vaccine advocacy and conspiracy theories on public health”. In the parlance of the show Succession, the “are not serious people.”
The next most prominent thing is a photo of a smiling white woman with the darkly Orwellian headline “Protecting Women and Children.” This leads to a page from the Office on Women’s Health” where you learn that what seems to be their most important health issue for women is blatant fear-mongering about trans people in sports.
Fuck that.
It’s somehow much more disturbing when the garbage I expect from Trump shows up on an official government department website. A real government department that matters to people’s lives.
Trump also keeps talking about taking over Canada (and now Greenland). It’s absurd on the surface. I would have assumed fifteen years ago that no country could take over a part of another modern democracy. Then Russia took Crimea from Ukraine. It’s not acceptable to even suggest taking over another country.
What am I doing about it? Not much. I don’t know what to do.
I’m relieved that we in Canada didn’t hand over control of parliament to the Conservative party, which is parroting Trump-style nonsense more and more.
Trump is dangerous and needs to be stopped. But this type of passive-voice statement isn’t changing anything.
Yellow snow warning
Environment Canada has a new color-based weather warning system.
How do they know the snow is going to be yellow before it comes?
