my fourth of july tradition in recent years is making tortillas, beans, and rice at home. i always try to do everything by hand the way my grandma would do; it's a time suck but well worth it.

not the best or best-looking this year, but comfort food nonetheless. this time around i threw in roasted summer squash, peppers, and zucchini, as well as some leftover tofu scramble.

Seen in the window of an auto parts store today. I guess they are products made by this company.

https://seafoamworks.com/

Nostalgia for when I was 8 and graphic design consisted solely of "this font looks cool"

Cobalt
Yvonne McKague Housser
1931
via https://bsky.app/profile...

Mentioned in this curatorial talk by Dr. Catharine M. Mastin, "Picturesque Ruins: Cobalt’s Modern Artists, 1900-1940"
https://youtu.be/upOLGOsu...

Lucy Knisley doing the work for us. Link for it formatted for sticker printing: http://www.lucyknisley.com/oh-no-st...

source: https://www.reddit.com/r...

I had a busy 4th of 5 weekend. Started with calling at Apgar at Lake McDonald in Glacier. Then up to Polebridge and backpacking trip up to Quartz Lake. Beautiful, quiet campsite and managed to catch the northern lights around midnight. Saturday, I took a different way back to the trailhead, and holy wow, that was a bad idea. So many downed trees to climb up, over, around, all of the above. Oh, and I managed to drop my phone navigating over of the downed trees, but which one? Took me about an hour, but finally found it. I was pretty well exhausted by the end. But wait, there's more! Finally capped Saturday by hiking up to this little gem in a mountain top. I've of my favorite spots, and I've been lucky to grab a reservation most years.

Every year during the early summer, my youngest and I went berry picking. We have driven into the surrounding counties, we have picked in the rain (including this morning). And we have our cleanup and storage down to an art.
Sadly, we were incapable of picking strawberries this season. My daughter had a life altering surgery and I had walking pneumonia just before and during the season opened here. While she’s still not back at work, her fiancée joined us this year in picking blueberries. It was just lovely.
It was a light rain, 20C and no bugs. We picked a little over a peck (~10 L) and delighted in hearing all of the wee ones there make exclamations regarding the size and sweetness of the berries that they were alternately picking for the basket and eating.
And, yes, I was one of those who purchased this shirt from a member of this fine collection of electronic contributors.

my standup for the extra long holiday weekend, padded with PTO on both sides.

hot damn, i love the “ducks and snakes” stone, which is just down the block from my neighborhood coffee shop.

this afternoon i’m simmering some arroz rojo, roasting down some summer squash, and putting on some records.

Two baby back and one St Louis rack, trimmed and rubbed with a honey mustard mix I bought.

Tomorrow about this time, I'll start the cooking process

source: https://columbusunderground.com/photos-d...

Beef. Pork, and poultry fat bits I've saved up. Rendering them to be used in ramen, cook eggs, maybe some baking.

all 12 months plus the dates here: www.toughpigs.com/calendar...

(99% sure we had this growing up, hope it's somewhere still at my parents' house0

If you have not seen the documentary "Class Action Park," it's worth seeking out.
https://classactionpark.com/

source: https://www.tumblr.com/tvneon...

A friend of mine reached out to see if I wanted my old computer(s) back. The answer was, of course, yes.

This particular Blue & White G3 was my first real Mac, bought barely used right after the first G4 came out. I think I traded this, a camera, and probably some cash to him for a Colnago cyclocross bike a few years later, when I got a new computer. This machine started life as a G3/300 (I think I eventually bought a G4 upgrade), which means it has a slow and limited IDE controller.

The 8500/150 is one of the many old Macs I somehow ended up with back in the day. Some came from various jobs (cleaning out the storage closet), people gave them to me, a few came from the Ohio University surplus auction (bundled a bunch of beige Macs as a lot, end up with many because I needed the one good one or a few nice keyboards). I usually found things to do with them, back when Macs didn't multitask all that well - I think this particular machine ran router software, and might have been my web server for a little while. Usually I combined the best of the working parts from the various machines and sold them cheap/gave them to people who could use them. I think I gave this computer to the same friend when I gave him my old SCSI scanner, since the G3 didn't have a SCSI port.

No idea what I'm going to do with these, assuming either of them still works. The G3 has the nostalgia factor and has always been one of my favorite Apple case designs (aesthetically and functionally), so it might end up on display if I ever get an office with shelves. I have a pair of work-given dual 450 G4s in the basement, which will do all the retro computer stuff this world do - but better. The 8500 is kind of rough, though I very well might have the missing trim and optical drive in my old computer parts bin. I don't have any beige-era desktop PowerMacs (only a few laptops), so there might be some value in having all the legacy ports for...something.

What does have actual value for me are the keyboards. The G3 has an ADB port, so I used an Apple Extended II with it since the included clear keyboard (and hockey puck mouse) sucked. Those keyboards slash felt great to me, so I still use an AEK II with a USB dongle. My current one is starting to show the 15-20 years of daily use (period key double taps sometimes, dead caps lock, other glitches). Hopefully this one is better once I clean it up. The Apple Design isn't mechanical and isn't as good otherwise, but should be a solid choice to have on hand for various retro computer needs.

as dumb and futile as it may be, i've been working with ai on a project, and it kind of hinges on whether the protocol we built functions at a cryptographic level, the problem is.. i don't know anyone who can test it, and the internet doesn't take anyone seriously enough to care anymore.

i've been building an asynchronous dead-drop messenger, but its also a backbone of another thing i'm working on that might be a bigger project for me down the road. anyone know anyone who might just poke it with a cryptographic stick?

https://github.com/cottenwe...

source: https://bsky.app/profile...

"I have such an expertly curated algorithm that I'm seeing posts from Mexican street food restaurants in the US and this is how they're advertising the game tomorrow night."

My garden is mostly a weedy jungle this year, but nice to see a few of these guys showing up.

this is your brain on incense.

source: https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...

This morning I'm going through some ska compilations I haven't listened to before and this one came up.

It's... weird. Extremely horny lyrics, in a British music hall way mostly. It's circa 1972 and one of those missing-link sounds between Jamaican ska of the 60s and the British ska revival of the late 70s. This record made him the first white man to have a top-selling reggae track in Jamaica, it was also the first of many singles by Judge Dread to be banned by the BBC. He set a record for most records banned by the BBC -- at some point the BBC was banning his records even when they were worksafe and straightlaced.

Anyway, I hadn't knowingly heard anything by him until this morning. His Wikipedia entry is worth a quick read because he packed a lot of living into a relatively short life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...

And yes he predated Judge Dredd and was the inspiration for the name.

uh-haw, uh-haw, uh-haw

source: https://mudwerks.tumblr.com/post...