Decided to go back to my old stomping grounds makerspace recently, and it gave me some hope. #maker #makerspace

@nuthatch we're not far from you. Goldfinches, house finches, and the California towhee often show up on Merlin in the morning. Really nice to hear them in the morning.

@gnomon I was scrolling too fast and read your lines to the tune of My Sharona

I've been working hard to create fun wearable technology projects others can make. Finally, I am starting to document the process on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@ChristineFarion?sub_confirmation=1

I'm just starting with videos so be kind :underheart: but I've got some great tutorials in the works! Let me know if there are sensors or techniques you'd like help or advice with please.

Go home Chrome, you're drunk

Welcome to a random Saturday in May in California where:
* Over 100% of grid load is being generated by renewables
* The emissions for the grid are net negative if you count exports displacing dirtier sources outside California
* This has been true since around 9:30 this morning

Just another day in May.

Next April the IRS will get a 1040 from a pope for the first time

Cinco De Mayo is NOT Mexico’s Independence Day.

It honors a 19th-century battle between the French and the Mexican armies that, strangely enough, may have influenced the outcome of the US Civil War (via @USCDornsife) https://theconversation.com/americans-might-love-cinco-de-mayo-but-few-know-what-theyre-celebrating-115780

Neat surprise for me about English while playing Duolingo for French

Born enslaved, John Andrew Jackson spent his life fighting for freedom as a fugitive, abolitionist, lecturer and writer. Along the way, he met an aspiring writer.

Here’s a look at their remarkable friendship:
https://theconversation.com/the-black-fugitive-who-inspired-uncle-toms-cabin-and-the-end-of-us-slavery-234256

#Bookstodon

The world’s political and economic systems can all unite over one central tenet: your mum does the washing. “Libertarianism: Your mum does the washing. You believe *you* did the washing.” https://kottke.org/25/04/your-mum-does-the-washing

I saw a jar of black olives marked as “Product of #Canada” on a grocery website last night.

I somehow doubt that 98% of that product was made in our borders.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/marketplace/marketplace-found-up-to-1-in-3-groceries-get-labelled-as-canadian-customers-say-they-re-skeptical-1.7496182

Right now it feels impossible to get anything done, but we all have to. So I wrote about how I’m trying to break my doom spiral by doing one thing: https://dansinker.com/posts/2025-03-16-one-thing/

https://tonsky.me/blog/checkbox/ - In loving memory of the square checkbox.

Reminds me of a Casio watch feature that I was very excited about many years ago https://petapixel.com/2025/03/09/livedrop-wirelessly-moves-data-using-dynamic-qr-codes-and-cameras/

@midendian I use the SOLO10G-TB3 on a Mac https://www.sonnettech.com/product/solo10g-tb3/overview.html . I'm not using jumbo frames now but I had it set up that way for a while last year

And last week I wrote a follow-up that does depth-separation in a video, frame-by-frame, using a monocular depth model https://robr.dev/2025/jupyter-pytorch-video-depth/. The depth separation result isn't fantastic but I thought it'd be interesting to share the process. The #pytorch visualization utilities really save a lot of work for this kind of work.

Notebook-style coding is really compelling to me. Mostly that means running Python in Jupyter notebook using VS Code for me. I like to do some exploratory coding for fun or just to try out new things in a fluid, interactive way.

Back in November I wrote about how to load a video with PyTorch and process it frame-by-frame, along with some UI widgets https://robr.dev/2024/jupyter-pytorch-video-processing/. My site isn't interactive but you can grab the notebook if you want to try it out locally.

In today’s “terminology matters”:

❌ Return To Office policy: middle-management language that assumes “office” is a neutral position, we’re somehow “returning to”. This term has been carefully crafted by corporate strategists to sound as palatable as possible.

✅ Mandatory Commute policy: centers the outcome for workers - spending hours each day on an unpaid commute to and from the office just so we can be on video calls all day.

We don’t just have to accept hostile framing.

When you can't sleep, try closing your eyes and work through everything you remember about the unit circle. I've been trying to figure out a couple basic trig equations for a month and it knocks me out every night.