Cory Dransfeldt

Husband, dad, developer, music nerd. Engineering, music, automation, general nerdery, #tattoos and rescue dogs. Pronouns: he/him/his 🌐 coryd.dev 🎧 coryd.dev/music 📚 coryd.dev/reading 📖 coryd.dev/feeds

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Longform Stories

The Way of the Gun

Karma? Karma's only justice without the satisfaction. I don't believe in justice. A weaving, vicious film, The Way of the Gun kicks off with a drawn-out, wildly offensive screed by Sarah Silverman (wh…

2d ago·2 min read·243 words

Cobweb

Cobweb is a middling autumnal horror movie rooted in family secrets and childhood trauma. Lizzy Caplan excels at the crazy-lady role and is perennially trapped in it. Antony Starr is hard to mentally …

2d ago·2 min read·205 words

The Autopsy of Jane Doe

The Autopsy of Jane Doe is standard horror fare. The leads are both extremely capable and it's all bottled up in a single location. The slow unwinding of events is effective at building tension, from …

3d ago·2 min read·218 words

Hokum

Hokum is a bleak film. It's slow, it's atmospheric and it is dark and, in that way, is not at all unlike Damian McCarthy's Oddity . Ohm Bauman is a writer haunted by a tragic childhood. It's in his wr…

4d ago·3 min read·562 words

Hum at Hollywood Palladium

Slide Away Los Angeles Hum are legends. They've released classic albums , they've surprise released incredible new music and hadn't toured in 7 years following the passing of drummer Bryan St. Pere. T…

6d ago·1 min read·171 words

Nothing at Hollywood Palladium

Slide Away Los Angeles We saw Nothing several months back at a different venue and they were fantastic then and remained so. This set was comprised entirely of their now 10 year old album Tired of Tom…

6d ago·1 min read·114 words

Chapterhouse at Hollywood Palladium

Slide Away Los Angeles Chapterhouse are an iconic shoegaze band and Whirlpool is a genre touchstone up there with other classics. They hadn't played the US in 16 years up until this festival run and p…

6d ago·1 min read·78 words

ovlov at Hollywood Palladium

Slide Away Los Angeles ovlov was on when we arrived at the venue and was more soundtrack to the Hum merch line than a set we paid proper attention to. But, but , they sounded really good. I should've …

6d ago·1 min read·86 words

The Four Agreements

Overt religiosity aside, there's some real value in the guidance in what is, by any measure, a brief book. Be impeccable with your word Don’t take anything personally Don’t make assumptions Always do …

May 30·1 min read·81 words

Riders of Justice

Mads Mikkelson is a gift. While Riders of Justice sits comfortably within the action genre, there is so much subtly and nuance surrounding that gunfire filled core. It's a movie about the unpredictabl…

May 27·2 min read·373 words

Alternative for the Masses

I'm nostalgic for the 90s and alternative music but I wasn't there for any of it. I was 4 and a half years old when Nevermind was released and was introduced to Nirvana by my dad playing MTV Unplugged…

May 27·2 min read·236 words

Sick Puppy

Your husband is a serial killer. You've accepted that and you lend him a hand disposing of his victims. But you also want him to take a beat and watch a 90 Day Fiancé . Maybe he'll change. You get him…

May 26·2 min read·201 words

BLOOD INCANTATION - All Gates Open: In Search of Absolute Elsewhere

I don't really watch making of the album or behind the scenes sort of stuff but I made an exception here. Blood Incantation are one of my favorite modern death metal bands and Absolute Elsewhere is de…

May 25·1 min read·141 words

Copshop

I drew ya a dick. It just got weird. Well, it's gonna get weirder. Copshop starts at a jog, lurches around and then flips over, skids, giggles and takes off at a run as soon as Toby Huss shows up. Thi…

May 25·1 min read·199 words

Normal

Nothing is normal in Normal because if anything were to be normal in Normal then Normal would be a boring movie because normal is boring and Normal isn't terribly creative but it's also not boring. Bu…

May 21·1 min read·97 words

Lifting Mastodon rate limits

I'm a reluctant Bluesky user and a new Bluesky user. I expanded my site's syndication implementation to support Bluesky and updated my links implementation to support tagging authors on Bluesky. Why j…

May 20·1 min read·54 words

Florence + The Machine at The Forum

Florence + The Machine are reliably impressive performers. I dropped off listening after Ceremonials and haven't seen them in about 10 years (when The Weekend opened for them at the Hollywood Bowl — w…

May 20·1 min read·146 words

Mannequin Pussy at The Forum

Mannequin Pussy, like so many openers, provided a mental buffer against the anxiety I have about making it to a show through Los Angeles traffic. But, unlike so many openers, they delivered a standout…

May 20·1 min read·66 words

Hush

Hush is a pretty ok horror movie about Maddie. Maddie is deaf, she's an author and she lives alone in a small home in the woods. Sarah and John live nearby and seem like pretty great neighbors. They s…

May 19·1 min read·176 words

Locke

Ivan Locke's a simple man. He pours concrete. C6, not C5. If there's a crack, it'll grow. The foundation will shift, the building could shift. But, like his concrete, he cracked. He's got a child on t…

May 19·1 min read·108 words

The Strangers

Do you think they ever found Tamara? What if they'd had a no soliciting sign? Remember those old phone chargers that inevitably turned into a knot? Or how you used to be able to swap out batteries in …

May 18·1 min read·153 words

Outcome

Outcome is a frustrating movie. It’s a wall to wall wonderful cast. Jonah Hill is an absolute character , but there’s little substance here. Keanu plays Reef Hawk, who we’re told is an incredibly famo…

May 18·1 min read·96 words

London Falling

...I have no fear, 'cause London is drownin' and I, I live by the river... You can't write a book called London Falling and convince me it's wholly unrelated to London Calling . Perhaps it is, perhaps…

May 16·1 min read·173 words

Let Me In

Let Me In is a surprisingly tender and sweet film that happens to feature blood, immolation and dismemberment. It's incredibly easy to screw up remakes, vampire movies and remakes of vampire movies (I…

May 15·1 min read·166 words

Converge at The Belasco Theater

I can, without reservation, say that this is the best metal show I've been to. The best live sound, presence, engagement with the crowd, energy — that a band as chaotic, precise and emotive on record …

May 14·1 min read·125 words

The Armed at The Belasco Theater

The Armed were...fascinating? They were a seven person band with one member cycling between guitar, saxophone, keys and vocals. They also featured two complimentary vocalists and an impressive stage p…

May 14·1 min read·86 words

The Punisher: One Last Kill

One batch, two batch, penny and dime... I enjoy the hell out of everything Jon Bernthal does. Whether that's in The Punisher , We Own This City , brief appearances in The Amateur or when I had the opp…

May 13·1 min read·133 words

Project Hail Mary

Fist my bump! Project Hail Mary is destined to be a modern science fiction classic. It represents the genre at its most hopeful. Humanity faces a clear, oncoming cataclysm and, rather than squabbling …

May 12·2 min read·279 words

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

Can I have a cigarette? Ready or Not 2 such a wonderful, over the top, gleeful exercise in horror, satanism and camp. The Faculty is perhaps my all time favorite movie, so seeing Elijah Wood and Shawn…

May 7·2 min read·249 words

Manufacturing Consent

The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, bel…

May 6·3 min read·428 words

Building the future

Watching the tech hype train while working in the industry has always felt a bit surreal. There's this nascent feeling that what I'm working on, while it pays my bills, either won't amount to much or …

May 5·1 min read·68 words

Urban Legend

Do you smell something? Urban Legend occupies the same milieu as Cherry Falls and I Know What You Did Last Summer but is far closer in quality to the latter. I vaguely remember having seen this before…

May 5·2 min read·207 words

Ribbon - a linkding client

I built a native iOS client for linkding and launched it, as I usually do, with a sarcastic-ish Mastodon post. I'd been using my instance as a PWA (inasmuch as PWAs are supported on iOS) and found it …

May 4·1 min read·77 words

Cherry Falls

Class dismissed! Cherry Falls is a ludicrous slasher that manages to be campy while landing oh so shy of self-parody. A serial killer is on the loose murdering high school virgins so all the high scho…

Apr 30·1 min read·139 words

Triangle

Triangle is a late aughts horror gem that takes the aesthetics of a slasher film and wraps them around a time loop ala Timecrimes . Visually it feels very much like Dexter — there's an overlap in timi…

Apr 28·2 min read·278 words

Ralph Breaks the Internet

Ralph should break the internet, but not how he does here. This is a fun movie, it's cute but it takes all the wrong things away from the internet. That it takes all the wrong things away from it spea…

Apr 25·1 min read·126 words

Murder the Truth

Murder the Truth is another entry in a line of books illustrating the ways in which immense wealth has warped the foundations of American society. We all watch in horror as things bend, fold in and wo…

Apr 25·2 min read·238 words

Apex

Apex is more The Most Dangerous Game than it is Vertical Limit (though the elements it shares with the latter lead to the former). This is certainly Taron Egerton's most deranged role yet (though my f…

Apr 24·1 min read·76 words

Land of Bad

Land of Bad is more Land of Mediocre . It’s your standard “Hooah!” (is this the right service for that?) jingoistic American war film. The new guy gets hazed, captured, rescued, goes on a mission to h…

Apr 23·1 min read·82 words

Crimes of the Future

The Cronenberg family has made some of the most grotesque movies I've ever watched. To their credit, they're never needlessly grotesque. Crimes of the Future exists solidly within body horror, which i…

Apr 21·1 min read·178 words

England's Dreaming

I like the Sex Pistols ’ music but was only vaguely aware of their history, so England’s Dreaming made for an interesting and, at times, conflicting read. I find it easy to get caught up in an ideal o…

Apr 18·2 min read·259 words

undertone

Use promo code ABYZOU for 50% off your first meal kit! Movies like this are always fascinating because they hinge entirely on the ability of a single actor or actress to keep the audience engaged. Nin…

Apr 16·1 min read·145 words

Crime 101

I will watch and compare every single heist movie and compare it to Heat because Heat is the pinnacle of the genre. Crime 101 occupies a similar cinematic space. Davis shows shade's of Neil McCauley —…

Apr 14·2 min read·344 words

Emperor at The Wiltern

What can one say about Emperor ? They're regarded as legends (and deservedly so). Their catalog is flawless and they put on an incredible live show. While it's easy to want more recorded output from t…

Apr 13·1 min read·144 words

Blood Incantation at The Wiltern

It's interesting to see what death metal bands become popular (relatively speaking). Blood Incantation are seeing a surge in popularity and they're seeing it with Absolute Elsewhere , arguably their o…

Apr 13·1 min read·157 words

Sacramento

Kudos to the folks here who actually drove up the 5 from LA to Sacramento. It's not a bad drive and I've done it a lot, but it can drag. You get to know the rest stops, the gas stations, which exit ha…

Apr 12·1 min read·144 words

Avatar: Fire and Ash

Avatar: Fire and Ash is mediocre in the way all Avatar movies are. The colonizer versus the colonized dynamic is a story that bears being told and retold because it's a wrong that can never really be …

Apr 9·1 min read·97 words

Personal site infrastructure, diagrammed

That I even need and have made a diagram of the infrastructure for this site speaks to how over-engineered it is. Yet, while it is ostensibly a personal site, it's a personal site that's replaced many…

Apr 8·1 min read·45 words

Battling bots

I've already blocked entire countries to combat scrapers , I update my robots.txt for well-behaved bots (and 403 any included in the list that access anything other than my robots.txt ). In addition t…

Apr 6·1 min read·52 words

Scream 7

AI? I refuse. That is the death of civilization. There were plenty of missed opportunities here to have even a vaguely meaningful discussion about AI and deepfakes and, while I appreciate the cheap sh…

Apr 2·1 min read·160 words

El Paso

El Paso is a heartfelt, beautifully written tale that manages to connect the city's history to that of her family's, other migrant families and the dynamics of immigration woven deeply into the fabric…

Apr 1·1 min read·191 words

Migrating infrastructure off Coolify

I've spent a while recently migrating my personal infrastructure off Coolify . Coolify 's an excellent tool and one that helped manage the initial learning curve of managing and deploying things when …

Mar 27·1 min read·72 words

Send Help

HEPL A dash of Lord of the Flies , a splash of Castaway , a douchebag nepobaby boss and the eccentric lady from planning and accounting that said boss abuses relentlessly. Oh and she's a fan of Surviv…

Mar 25·1 min read·166 words

More Everything Forever

More Everything Forever is an essential read for the modern, tech-empowered dystopia we find ourselves in. Adam Becker methodically examines and destroys the pseudo-religious nonsense of modern tech f…

Mar 22·2 min read·229 words

East Valley Road at Camarillo Community Center Park

A wonderful Americana outfit that fit perfectly with a warm summer day in the park.

Mar 21·1 min read·23 words

Nothing at The Belasco Theater

Nothing have been on my short list of bands to see since a friend recommended (and hooked me on) their debut album years ago. We missed an earlier date we had tickets to due to an illness, so I was an…

Mar 19·1 min read·145 words

Full Body 2 at The Belasco Theater

Full Body 2 is an odd band name. It is. Not a bad name, but odd and, for that reason, memorable. What happened to Full Body? Full Body 1? Did it start with Full Body 0? Anyways, they played a more ene…

Mar 19·1 min read·72 words

Cryogeyser at The Belasco Theater

Creyogeyser were a natural opener for Nothing . They were more subdued, played their own compelling take on shoegaze and have me thinking about giving their recorded music a listen.

Mar 19·1 min read·35 words

War Machine

Alan Ritchson is great in these roles — particularly Reacher . There's nothing new, nothing novel, nothing terribly admirable about War Machine . 81 (Ritchson) loses his brother, he becomes an army ra…

Mar 18·1 min read·116 words

The Dreaming Void

Peter F. Hamilton has quickly become one of my favorite authors, having found his work via Exodus (which I realize is not the recommended starting point). There are concepts that cut across Exodus , P…

Mar 17·2 min read·297 words

Gilded Rage

Gilded Rage is well written and covers a lot of what one might already know from paying more than passing attention to the tech industry and political landscape of the United States in recent years. I…

Mar 13·3 min read·560 words

Dead Man's Wire

Dead Man’s Wire is a well-made movie with a wonderful cast that isn't enjoyable to watch. I don't like my milk with ice and I don't particularly care for Tony Kiritsis either. Was he wronged? It sure …

Mar 10·1 min read·164 words

F1

I put off watching F1 until now because I don't like the whole vroom vroom race cars go fast thing — but — I wasn't really right to do so. Yes, it's about racing. It's focused in on it, it's the core …

Mar 4·2 min read·234 words

Killer Clown

I have an on and off again relationship with true crime. I found I'll Be Gone in the Dark to be both riveting and terrifying. Adnan's Story was another gripping read. [Killer Clown](Killer Clown) isn'…

Mar 3·2 min read·229 words

Fight or Flight

Fight or Flight . Fight on Flight. Fight and Flight. Fight in Flight. JUST KILD SOMONE This movie is violent and completely, unabashedly absurd. I've loved Josh Hartnett since The Faculty and it's ref…

Mar 2·1 min read·139 words

Eddington

Eddington is an embarrassingly stupid movie. It's a humorless satire about COVID-era America with a cast of characters who are all shallow, unlikable parodies of people populating modern American life…

Feb 24·1 min read·50 words

Cleaner

A good, clean (neat?), action movie that clocks in at a tidy 97 minutes. There's nothing unique or special about Cleaner , but Daisy Ridley works well as a lead, Clive Owen is a welcome (albeit brief)…

Feb 19·1 min read·81 words

Building a Navidrome scrobbling plugin

Navidrome released plugin support a few weeks ago and I've been working on implementing a plugin that scrobbles my listens to my own API endpoint. This has replaced my previous approach of regularly p…

Feb 18·1 min read·62 words

Owning your data

Owning your own data is hard . I've been trying to own as much as I can, and my site has become a reflection of that process, both in what I display and discuss. As difficult as it is, there's a freed…

Feb 18·1 min read·52 words

To Catch a Fascist

An easy, extremely engaging read and a necessary journey into forces defining our modern political moment. The author clearly sits with and sympathizes with the antifascists covered here, a sentiment …

Feb 18·2 min read·343 words

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

Surreal, touching, horrifying and somehow all three at once. Yet another entry into the 28 Days/Months/Years saga that never falters, never slows down and refuses to disappoint. Ralph Fiennes is magni…

Feb 17·1 min read·177 words

Small Engine Repair

This was an odd movie — it's uneven, but it manages to work because it's uneven. The first two thirds of it is a somber tale of lifelong friends, familial dysfunction and all involved try and do what'…

Feb 17·1 min read·138 words

The Home

Look, normally I'd say it's safe to assume that a movie like The Home is bad purely because it's a horror movie featuring Pete Davidson. But the fact that Bodies Bodies Bodies proves that this can wor…

Feb 9·1 min read·113 words

Underworld

Underworld is more of the same from Jared Savage, but not in the bad way that that phrase typically connotes. It's a necessary conclusion to a trilogy of books that remain novel for their locale and i…

Feb 9·1 min read·123 words

Sisu: Road to Revenge

Much like the first Sisu film , Sisu: Road to Revenge is unrelentingly violent, action-packed and helmed by the stoic, silent Aatami Korpi. The guy lost his family and all he wants is to move his hous…

Feb 5·1 min read·114 words

We Bury the Dead

It's incredibly rare for a truly compelling movie like We Bury the Dead to emerge from such a well-trodden genre. It's not the apocalypse, but in Tasmania, it feels like it is. We've seen this though,…

Feb 4·2 min read·244 words

Gangster's Paradise

This and Gangland could very well have been a single book. They both stand on their own, but Gangster’s Paradise is a continuation in style, structure, setting and the cast of characters it features. …

Feb 1·1 min read·88 words

Greenland 2: Migration

To survive the apocalypse in Europe, all you need to do is ask for help. How do you know you're in Europe? Post-apocalyptic European infrastructure is better than pre-apocalyptic American infrastructu…

Jan 27·1 min read·118 words

Bring Them Down

This felt quite similar to The Beasts , but less engaging and what felt like lower stakes. They both center on disputes among neighbors in rural settings, with Bring Them Down having a romantic link s…

Jan 26·1 min read·143 words

Gangland

An interesting and easy read on the drug and gang landscape in New Zealand. It reads as a series of vignettes with connections across several of the stories. The author is an investigative reporter in…

Jan 25·1 min read·79 words

Pinning homebrew dependencies

You learn something new every day. I've been using Homebrew for over a decade and, up until a few weeks ago, hadn't hit a case where I would not want to update something.

Jan 23·1 min read·36 words

The Rip

The Rip is a good heist movie. I love a good heist movie. It's not exceptional, but it's entertaining as hell and, frankly, rips. You could not ask for a better cast for a bottled up, tense whodunnit …

Jan 23·1 min read·131 words

The conditionally open web

I spend a lot of time thinking about the open web. We talk about it a lot. But I'm not sure it exists, at least not in the way it's often described. Embedded within the underlying architecture of the …

Jan 22·1 min read·59 words

Getting cited as a source on Wikipedia

I use analytics on this site primarily to see where referral traffic comes from. It's not necessary, but it satisfies my curiosity. One of the most interesting referrals I've received was from Wikiped…

Jan 21·1 min read·40 words

How to Stand Up to a Dictator

Maria Ressa is a remarkable individual. She's a journalist, author, activist and is both innovative and tireless in her pursuit of truth and justice. How to Stand Up to a Dictator is an essential read…

Jan 19·2 min read·338 words

Foo Fighters at The Forum

There are no bad Foo Fighters shows. It's simply not a thing. There are certainly variations in quality, but none are bad. Why? Well, it's hard to have a bad show when someone like Dave Grohl is havin…

Jan 15·2 min read·328 words

XCOMM at The Forum

There was no opener announced for this show, but there was one and they were an incredible opener. All the more incredible? Their members range from 14 to 20 years old. Their 14 year old drummer also …

Jan 15·1 min read·134 words

Blocking entire countries because of scrapers

I use Goatcounter for analytics primarily to see where things I post might get mentioned. I don't get a ton of traffic, nor should I expect to.

Jan 14·1 min read·33 words

Don't Worry Darling

Don't Worry Darling is what happens when guys sit home alone, all day, in chat rooms listening to crap on YouTube. Guys that are also too stupid to know that you can't take the same phone you use in t…

Jan 13·1 min read·172 words

Rainbow Girls at The Venice West

Fuck ICE! We'd never seen (or heard of) Rainbow Girls before, but they were excellent and made it hard to check out of the show early in the face of our slowly advancing age and the need to work in th…

Jan 12·1 min read·113 words

Avi Vinocur at The Venice West

We've seen Avi in various projects over the years (and he's a genuinely awesome guy), most notably his primary band Goodnight, Texas. But, we've also seen him as part of the Pharaohs of Rhythm who pla…

Jan 12·1 min read·106 words

Chip War

God decided where the oil reserves are, we get to decide where the fabs are. Chip War offers many interesting anecdotes about the state of the global chip industry, it's founding and development. It s…

Jan 10·2 min read·224 words

A House of Dynamite

A tense, pressure-cooker of a movie that does the whole single narrative told through a round robin of perspectives to make an extremely brief, unbelievably stressful sequence that much more stressful…

Jan 6·1 min read·100 words

Wake Up Dead Man

Scooby Dooby doo If you've seen the other Benoit Blanc movies, you'll know they follow a well-designed formula. I hesitate to call them formulaic given the negative connotations of the term, but they …

Jan 2·1 min read·137 words

Fight Oligarchy

Fight Oligarchy is both brief and direct. Bernie Sanders, while imperfect, is one of the more inspiring political figures on the left in the United States. (The actual left, not the center occupied by…

Dec 30·2 min read·224 words

The Idaho Four

The Idaho Four is a thoughtful, fair and empathetic retelling of an American tragedy. One of many American tragedies. Every day seems to bring a new one. I didn't follow the case, I had a passing awar…

Dec 28·1 min read·138 words

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere

This is the movie I expected knowing it shared a name with Warren Zanes ' book about the same period on Bruce 's career. I'm not a dedicated fan of Bruce . I love the albums everyone loves and skip ov…

Dec 23·3 min read·479 words

The Fort Bragg Cartel

It’s not at all surprising that starting forever wars, giving elite forces license to do whatever they want while enabling and covering for their worst behavior would produce all sorts of negative out…

Dec 20·1 min read·196 words

2025 in review

This year has, to be frank, been exhausting. At least in a macro sense. It feels quite like the United States is collapsing as fascism and kleptocracy continue to take hold. Institutions are being tur…

Dec 18·1 min read·79 words

The Running Man

The most depressing part of this movie is that it's set in 2026. Taps the sign. Science fiction is often a warning, but The Running Man feels so close to the present moment that it's a warning that we…

Dec 18·1 min read·193 words

Good Fortune

Good Fortune could’ve easily fallen on its ass and joined a long line of clichéd stories about people switching bodies. But, it doesn’t. Yes, Arj and Jeff switch bodies, yes it’s done to change their …

Dec 14·1 min read·131 words

Year of the Rat

From reading about nazis to reading about the British far right that both admires and wants to revive their ideas. Harry Shukman infiltrated the British far right with the help of HOPE not hate and ve…

Dec 12·1 min read·124 words

Using Calibri on .gov sites

The US government is run by petty morons that are threatened by a font. But because the web is the web, you can at least force .gov sites to render all text using Calibri.

Dec 11·1 min read·39 words

App selection criteria

The last app I bought through Apple's app store was a client for my Audiobookshelf instance and this reminded me why I'd built a Navidrome client . I wanted to use the web application as a PWA, but Ap…

Dec 11·1 min read·63 words

Die My Love

Where are you, Grace? I'm right here, you just can't see me. There were moments early on where Die My Love felt like it wasn't for me, it wasn't what I would have expected (though I didn't come in wit…

Dec 10·4 min read·695 words

Building my Myspace

I mentioned on Mastodon that my wife lovingly (and jokingly) refers to my site as my Myspace. She's always right and this is no exception.

Dec 9·1 min read·28 words

Bugonia

Humanity is cooked and every once in a while a conspiracy proves to be true. Plemmons' Teddy is a worker bee for Stones' queen (who happens to be named Michelle). The workers are dying out and the dyn…

Dec 8·2 min read·316 words

Turning my reading list into podcasts

linkding is one of my favorite applications that I self-host and the place where I save everything I want to read later. The catch being that what little time I can dedicate to actually reading is spe…

Dec 5·1 min read·79 words

TRON: Ares

TRON: Ares is a move that's easy to feel conflicted about first and foremost because of Jared Leto's inclusion in a leading role. The guy is at best extremely odd and clearly, well, not at his best. B…

Dec 4·1 min read·184 words

The Nazi Mind

The Nazi Mind is informative, but not profound. It's populated by vignettes about the atrocities committed by Germany during World War II. There were vignettes I didn't know about, who was involved an…

Dec 4·2 min read·205 words

The Last Class

Pessimism is fine, cynicism is not. This is such a thoughtful and touching documentary given its brief runtime. It's scoped to Robert Reich's final semester teaching at UC Berkeley and works incredibl…

Dec 1·1 min read·110 words

Predator: Badlands

I so very much wanted to love Predator: Badlands , but it ended up being resoundingly mediocre. Picture a Predator movie made by Disney and that's what you have here. There are some Mandalorian vibes …

Dec 1·1 min read·157 words

Deploy on push with Forgejo and Coolify

All of my projects are now stored on my Forgejo instance rather than GitHub as the latter continues to speed run the enshittification curve. I've implemented a manual deploy button in my site's admin …

Nov 28·1 min read·56 words

Stillwater

Stillwater plods along at its own meandering pace. Generally, this is a bad thing with movies but it works here because Matt Damon is committed to his role as Bill and Bill meanders along at his own p…

Nov 27·1 min read·192 words

My default apps, 2025 edition

An update on my 2024 post . Some fairly major changes this time around. I've been making a concerted effort to move to more self-hosted applications and, failing that, hosted applications built with p…

Nov 25·1 min read·55 words

Sing Sing

Sing Sing deserves every possible superlative I can throw at it. Colman Domingo is transcendent. Clarence Maclin is truly incredible and seeing every "as himself" credit flow by destroyed me. Seeing J…

Nov 23·1 min read·159 words

There Is No Place for Us

Brian Goldstone uses the stories of several families in Atlanta to methodically and compassionately examine the plight of the working poor in America. It's a story of families doing everything they ca…

Nov 22·2 min read·247 words

The Hunt

I vaguely remember some controversy around this movie when it was first on its way to a release. Having watched it, it feels to farcical and stupid to have been controversial. It picks the worst caric…

Nov 20·1 min read·117 words

Judas Unchained

Judas Unchained and Pandora's Star are one book with an acceptable split between the two. The former picks up directly where the latter stops, following the same set of well established characters and…

Nov 19·2 min read·322 words

One Battle After Another

I thought you took AP Common Sense? A perfect movie for which I have heaps of praise and a dearth of criticism. This is easily the movie of the year. It's heartfelt and fucking hilarious. It couldn't …

Nov 18·2 min read·212 words

Automating my reading progress updates

I've tracked my reading progress on my site for a bit now. I'd originally done this by fetching my progress from external APIs and sources on platforms like Oku , fetching and parsing the DOM on the S…

Nov 16·1 min read·84 words

Updating forgejo's robots.txt

I've moved all of my personal, private projects over to my own forgejo instance . It's been reliable and an altogether simple transition — I even have it mirroring the ai.robots.txt repo.

Nov 15·1 min read·35 words

Afterburn

Afterburn is as mediocre a movie as you might expect. It's headlined by Dave Bautista who's a perfectly capable professional wrestler turned actor (though not as charismatic as Dwayne Johnson or as fu…

Nov 13·1 min read·89 words

Caught Stealing

I build websites. First, I feel attacked. Second, holy hell . This is the best take on the someone falls ass backwards into a ramshackle caper since I first watched Snatch . I can't and won't explain …

Nov 12·2 min read·220 words

The Smashing Machine

This is an undeniable tour de force on the part of all involved. It's the only movie I've seen Dwayne Johnson in where he disappears into his role and his character. He's such a towering, imposing fig…

Nov 11·2 min read·229 words

Future Boy

I've heard of Family Ties , but I've never watched to and likely never will. But , I have watched Back to the Future and its sequels countless times, having been born a few years after the release of …

Nov 11·1 min read·191 words

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

It is a hallmark of failing societies I’ve learned, this requirement that one always be in possession of a valid reason to exist. This is a haunting, beautifully written book and the framing implicit …

Nov 8·2 min read·376 words

Black Phone 2

I am a bottomless pit of sin. Nostalgia and memory are such a funny thing. The further you get from events, the more they fade, become blurry and linger as feelings. Certain moments stand out, sure, b…

Nov 5·2 min read·293 words

Sovereign

You declare yourself a sovereign citizen like you imagined this was declared a sovereign nation. You reject a system you feel has failed you, you read, you cite legal code and you expect that rejectio…

Nov 4·1 min read·179 words

Superbloom

This is the best book I've read on communication, technology and the intersection of the two in some time. It contains some criticism of social media (which is always well deserved) but, instead, posi…

Nov 4·3 min read·506 words

No JavaScript necessary

One of my ongoing efforts in building this site has been to embrace progressive enhancement and make it every bit as functional without JavaScript as it is with JavaScript. This has become much easier…

Nov 3·1 min read·46 words

The Ritual

The scariest part of this movie is that you can never get back the time you spent watching it. Al Pacino is old and receipts scripture. Dan Stevens is young and confused. Abigail Cowen speaks in a low…

Nov 2·1 min read·61 words

Hierarchy

Hierarchy aspires to be Heat on a shoestring budget but, instead, ends up bogged down by uneven performances. It features an understated score, disembodied narration voiced by one of the leads and ple…

Oct 28·1 min read·151 words

Enshittification

Here's the natural history of enshittification: First, platforms are good to their users. Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers. Next, they abuse those busines…

Oct 26·2 min read·284 words

Dead of Winter

Uff da There's parts of the United States that I can admire the geography of for its beauty, but could never bear to live in. This movie takes place in one of those places — the upper midwest. It's fr…

Oct 23·2 min read·261 words

AI browsers are straight out of the enshittification playbook

Enshittification isn't cliché, it's simply pervasive. Browsers being launched by AI companies will, undoubtedly, follow the same playbook we've seen over and over again.

Oct 22·1 min read·33 words

A Flock of prying eyes

The city of Camarillo (where I live) is planning to install 15 new Flock ALPR cameras , bringing the city's total installed base up to 20. The city is adding to a surveillance network that has already…

Oct 21·1 min read·51 words

The Long Walk

💰🩸🧦👟🚶‍♂️🚶‍♂️🚶‍♂️🚶‍♂️ The only guarantee you have as a human being is that you are going to die. And, if you're lucky, you get to choose how to spend those last moments. ... Every moment matter…

Oct 21·3 min read·432 words

The Tech Coup

The Tech Coup is an insightful, easy read on the various ways in which tech and government intersect and conflict. Given the author's experience in the European parliament, advisory boards and broad i…

Oct 19·2 min read·288 words

Evolving my personal music scrobbler

I've nearly entirely rewritten my site over the past few months. First, I refactored the frontend into a Laravel application that leveraged the same postgREST endpoints that my long-running 11ty site …

Oct 17·1 min read·62 words

Midsommar

🇸🇪🌅💐🐻🔥 I've watched a lot of weird movies and quite a few weird horror movies. This is terrifying, but not in the grotesque Cronenberg-ian sense. It's also not as immediate or as overwhelmingly …

Oct 16·1 min read·180 words

She Rides Shotgun

Remember, kids : how do you know a law enforcement officer is corrupt? That they're wearing a badge is a good indicator and, if they're not wearing a badge, that's an even better indicator. She Rides …

Oct 14·2 min read·217 words

Analyzing the domains (and sites) of an authoritarian regime

If you've ever wondered what domains the US federal government has registered, there's a rather exhaustive list over in the dotgov-data repository on GitHub, which is maintained by CISA . You can see …

Oct 13·1 min read·69 words

Owned

Owned is, unfortunately, a fairly shallow look at how the patronage of tech billionaires has managed to push several prominent journalists to the political right, causing them to defend and align with…

Oct 12·2 min read·267 words

fleshwater at Henry Fonda Theater

I've had fleshwater on my list of bands to see since I was first introduced to them with their debut album We're Not Here to Be Loved . They managed to create the longest merch line I've ever seen at …

Oct 11·1 min read·161 words

Chat Pile at Henry Fonda Theater

Fuck AI, right? Right? I'd heard good things about Chat Pile live and they surpassed my expectations. Their live sound leans heavily into their rhythm section, Raygun's frenzied vocal performance and …

Oct 11·1 min read·98 words

Balmora at Henry Fonda Theater

Standard metalcore: a whole lot of breakdowns, solid sound and an energetic set.

Oct 11·1 min read·18 words

Rebel Ridge

How do you know a law enforcement officer is corrupt? That they're wearing a badge is a good indicator and, if they're not wearing a badge, that's an even better indicator. Rebel Ridge isn't a terribl…

Oct 9·2 min read·255 words

CAPTCHAs and the punishment of privacy-conscious users

I've been using an adblocker of some sort or another for roughly as long as I've been using the internet. It's become a necessary security measure and a necessary part of protecting your attention onl…

Oct 8·1 min read·61 words

HIM

WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO SACRIFICE?! EVERYTHING! Then show me. Are you HIM? Is Austin Reaves screaming "I'm HIM" HIM? Is HIM HIM? I mean, not really. It's an interesting, ruminative fever dream about r…

Oct 8·3 min read·436 words

Love Lies Bleeding

Dave Franco with the mullet, Ed Harris with the skullet. It's not lost on me that A24 is one of the last movie studios that consistently releases movies that are risky, challenging and genuinely artis…

Oct 7·2 min read·368 words

This Is for Everyone

This Is For Everyone feels perfectly timed. The web is at an inflection point and, as its originator, there's nobody more qualified than Berners-Lee to discuss its past, present and future. What this …

Oct 6·3 min read·421 words

Relay

Go ahead. A sharp, well-written and relentlessly engaging little thriller. The relay service was a truly novel idea. Riz Ahmed is consistently amazing and Lily James turns in a killer performance to m…

Oct 5·1 min read·84 words

Primitive War

🇺🇸🇻🇳🇷🇺🦖🦕🪖🔪👨🏻‍🔬🧨🚁 Oh, good. We're following a junkie into hell. The best war movies are often the ones made by folks who don't have historical ties to it and thus benefit from some dista…

Oct 2·1 min read·173 words

A changelog

I've made a ton of changes to this site that I haven't yet written about. I likely will write about at least some of the changes given enough time, but I wanted to spit out a rough changelog in the me…

Sep 30·1 min read·43 words

Superheaven at Oxnard Elks Lodge

This was my second time seeing Superheaven this year. The first was in your standard "professional" venue and this in a wholly informal venue. The sound at the former (as you might expect) was smoothe…

Sep 27·1 min read·155 words

Modern Color at Oxnard Elks Lodge

Everyone move in. This is a relationship. When someone jumps at you, put your hands up to catch them. I don't have much to say about Modern Color 's set other than that it was outstanding. They're lou…

Sep 27·1 min read·109 words

Secret World at Oxnard Elks Lodge

Secret World were a late addition to the bill courtesy of Superheaven and Modern Color . I could never be that energetic after a 13-hour international flight and a drive out into farmland/the suburbs …

Sep 27·1 min read·47 words

VTB at Oxnard Elks Lodge

Help Nothing Drain Rotting Gold As Always

Sep 27·1 min read·12 words

Apple in China

This was a fascinating read not necessarily for the details of the centralization of Apple's decision to move nearly all of its manufacturing to China, but for the context, pressure and politics caugh…

Sep 26·2 min read·370 words

The Fantastic 4: First Steps

There's a sad irony to Marvel movies being made by a company as cowardly as Disney. I mean, much of the recent Marvel output has been barely better than awful, but still. Offer your audience heroes wh…

Sep 25·3 min read·533 words

Cloudflare proposes the Spotify model for the web

Cloudflare posted a 2025 founder's letter and I haven't seen much discussion of it. But, when you read through it, what they discuss and propose is deeply troubling for the web as have and currently k…

Sep 22·1 min read·45 words

Nobody 2

All he wanted to do was take his family to a weird theme park he had a good memory of from childhood. But hey, sometimes that theme park is operated by a criminal beholden to an even scarier criminal …

Sep 16·1 min read·104 words

Weapons

This wasn't what I expected going into this. Not that I had much in the way of expectations. I liked the cast, I liked the previewed tone and I went with it. What I got was a well-assembled horror mov…

Sep 15·2 min read·251 words

Careless People

Has Meta not heard of the Streisand effect ? Or is it just Zuck that hasn't heard of it? They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into th…

Sep 14·2 min read·308 words

Descendent

Descendent isn’t entirely without its redeeming qualities. It sports some interesting visuals, a capable if largely unknown cast committed to their roles and emotionally-relatable dynamics. A loving c…

Sep 12·1 min read·97 words

Together

It’s called diazepam now! A couple in a relationship that’s teetering on the edge of failure moves to the country for a job. For one of their jobs. While the other one pines for a return to the city. …

Sep 8·1 min read·119 words

Get Away

Your waffles are dry as fuck. 🪓🔪👺 A family goes on vacation to Sweden because there's a festival they don't seem that invested in. They rent a house from a creepy dude who they initially thought wa…

Sep 7·1 min read·99 words

A short list of tech security tips when traveling

Whenever I travel, I take a few basic security-related steps. I've left the US all of once, but I follow these steps whenever I travel anywhere.

Sep 4·1 min read·35 words

Hallow Road

When I see a run time so short I expect to either be seriously disappointed or very impressed. Hallow Road left me very impressed. Nearly the entirety of the film consists of Rosamund Pike and Matthew…

Sep 3·1 min read·191 words

Chokepoints

This was a thorough, engaging and — at times — dry explanation of sanctions and modern US and western economic warfare. The author builds a compelling case for the use of economic weapons, but makes a…

Sep 2·3 min read·452 words

Slingshot

This film is only notable for how profoundly mediocre it is. Every second of it felt like a slog . I haven't seen a space film this dull since I made it through Solaris . The acting is perfectly decen…

Sep 1·1 min read·78 words

Importing artist and album data from Navidrome

Since adopting Navidrome to stream my own music I've been tracking my listening activity from my instance and have recently added pages for all of the albums in my collection, with a record for each t…

Aug 31·1 min read·55 words

Everything flows from economics. It shouldn't.

In the US, at the very least, everything flows from economics with market and financial concerns placed first. It's always been that way. It shouldn't. It's led to a societal death spiral. Selfishness…

Aug 30·1 min read·52 words

Hereditary

Holy shit. Clicks tongue. ✂️🐧🍰🚙💈⚰️🔥🧙🏻‍♀️ You can't choose your family, but you can choose your friends and this family is fucked. So are your family's friends. But, don't lose your head. Your s…

Aug 30·1 min read·136 words

Letter to Camarillo city council regarding local ICE activity

In light of recent ICE activity , we've been pushing local officials to engage with and more proactively support the community. In light of that, I submitted a letter to our city council in advance of…

Aug 27·1 min read·68 words

Tech is political

Tech is political. Tech has always been political, but it's especially so in the moment in which we find ourselves. Tech leaders have taken more liberal and "popular" positions in the past, but their …

Aug 26·1 min read·65 words

The Order

White supremacy is a sad feature of the American experiment, not an outlier, not a bug, not abnormal. It's what the country was built on, tries to convince itself it wasn't, tries to push into the sha…

Aug 26·2 min read·310 words

Black Bag

A brisk, modern spy film with (to my ear) a quirky score that still manages to work. A lighter Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy . Another laudable entry into the Michael Fassbender plays a spy genre (this ti…

Aug 25·1 min read·114 words

Sinister

I had high hopes for this seeing Ethan Hawke in the leading role but oh my did I hate it . Scary? Sure, more jump scares though. Failed writer moves his family yet again to write a true crime story, s…

Aug 25·1 min read·94 words

Clown in a Cornfield

Girl, it's bad... 🌽🤡🔪 There's clowns! There's cornfields! The clowns are armed! It's a gore-soaked movie with murderous clowns killing teenagers. One moved to town recently, her dad's a doctor and …

Aug 24·1 min read·75 words

Osiris

A truly, truly mediocre sci-fi/horror flick. LaMonica Garrett is the cast highlight here and he does as much as he can with what little he's been handed here in the way of writing. This borrows libera…

Aug 24·1 min read·94 words

Opus

Opus is one more entry into a class of dark, horrifying and weird movies that have been en vogue recently. There's Blink Twice , Get Out and — perhaps — The Menu . An otherwise "normal" jaunt turns, s…

Aug 23·1 min read·161 words

Pandora's Star

I'd say Peter F. Hamilton has done it again given how much I liked Exodus but that doesn't make sense inasmuch this preceded said book. So I suppose he did do it again with Exodus but I started at the…

Aug 23·2 min read·300 words

Copaganda

Copaganda is the most important book I've read in a while both for its impact and its insight. As a working civil rights attorney Alec Karakatsanis is supremely qualified to expound on the subject of …

Aug 20·3 min read·413 words

Abigail

I fucking hate ballet. 🩰🎱🥃🩸 If you don't have anything nice to say. One of those fun locked in a house oh god what's going to happen horror movies that — as none of them should — doesn't take itse…

Aug 19·1 min read·151 words

Awesome adblockers

Adverting sucks. It's insidious, pervasive and outright malicious. So, block ads.

Aug 18·1 min read·13 words

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

I kill people. Tramell Tillman should get every role he wants. The man is a treasure. Your project will be better because he's involved. We need to be kicking more people in the head while lecturing t…

Aug 18·1 min read·159 words

The Shrouds

I've said before that I'll watch any movie with a Cronenberg family member attached but this was fucking awful . Vincent Cassel is a talented actor and, I suppose, does the best he can with what he wa…

Aug 17·1 min read·92 words

40 Acres

This was a wonderful, harrowing surprise. I love post-apocalyptic explorations whether they're movies, shows or books and went into this knowing enjoy it based purely on that. Danielle Deadwyler shine…

Aug 17·2 min read·208 words

Superman

Kindness is punk. Superman is an immigrant and Homelander is the villain. Right? But hey, go ahead and argue about manufactured outrages because you're fragile and easily enraged. James Gunn clearly h…

Aug 16·1 min read·120 words

Removing your house from street view

I've been on an adventure removing photos of our house from the internet. Street view, realty sites, whatever else I can find. I know what our house looks like, I know the address and only folks we sh…

Aug 13·1 min read·50 words

My preferred GitHub alternative

GitHub's now former CEO went in for some bold absolutes on software development as a career last week: Either you have to embrace the Al, or you get out of your career. And, this week, resigned. : Git…

Aug 11·1 min read·63 words

Delete your account

Much, if not all, of the modern web is built on or has elements of user surveillance. It's ubiquitous. Use an ad-blocker absolutely everywhere. Pay for what you use. Minimize what you use. Delete your…

Aug 11·1 min read·39 words

Code Name: Pale Horse

A reasonably engaging piece of copaganda . The groups the author helped impede, bring down and infiltrate are all, with little argument, terrible and his actions — as described — were well intentioned…

Aug 11·1 min read·173 words

Blood Incantation at The Wiltern

Absolute Elsewhere The Stargate [Tablet I] The Stargate [Tablet II] The Stargate [Tablet III] (Followed by a brief pause while Isaac Faulk’s kick drum was replaced) The Message [Tablet I] The Message …

Aug 8·1 min read·60 words

Cynic at The Wiltern

Nunc Fluens Integral Birth (with Max Phelps) The Eagle Nature (with Max Phelps) Evolutionary Sleeper (with Max Phelps) The Unknown Guest (with Max Phelps) (First time since 2010) Uroboric Forms (with …

Aug 8·1 min read·55 words

Punk Paradox

Greg Graffin's Punk Paradox is an interesting, winding read that works well as a compliment to Do What You Want . The latter gives you a full view of Bad Religion 's history, this gives you a full vie…

Aug 2·3 min read·402 words

28 Years Later

Boots, boots, boots, boots Moving up and down again This was everything I never knew I wanted out of the 28 N Later franchise. A film in two parts — Spike growing up on a first trip to the mainland wi…

Jul 30·2 min read·371 words

This site runs on Laravel

As I've continued to over-engineer this site, there's been a mounting tension between what is and isn't dynamic. What should be dynamic, what needs to be dynamic, how often a given page or element is …

Jul 28·1 min read·41 words

Dangerous Animals

🦈🩸🚤📹📼 Hey baby, jump over here When you do the ooby dooby I got to be there I always shudder before I watch something from Shudder. But this was entertaining. Beautiful scenery, a nicely placed P…

Jul 28·1 min read·163 words

Summer of Fire and Blood

I often enjoy reading about history and know that we can learn a lot from it. We can certainly learn from the German peasant uprising but I'm not sure I took as much away from this book as I would've …

Jul 23·1 min read·125 words

M3GAN 2.0

M3GAN Impossible: Silicon Valley. Wherein Silicon Valley is every bit as unbearable as it's portrayed in the eponymous show . The billionaire that installed chips in his brain is a lech that entirely …

Jul 21·1 min read·119 words

I made a music app

I've been using Navidrome to stream music for a bit now. It's lightweight, snappy, stable and does everything I need. It lets me stream my own music, mark things as favorites and track my listening ha…

Jul 17·1 min read·75 words

Bring Her Back

Just meat. Easily the most harrowing rumination on grief and loss I've ever seen. Depraved even. I can't begin to imagine the horror of losing a child. But allowing that horror to warp you to the poin…

Jul 15·1 min read·169 words

Locked

Bill Skarsgård as Pete Davidson as Eddie, Anthony Hopkins as William and a film that's a classic example of something being less than the some of its parts. Lecter lectures, Eddie listens only as much…

Jul 14·1 min read·152 words

Drop

Well, I mean, bad first date. Sure. Get all the awkwardness and gun shot wounds out of the way up front. Did Apple limiting AirDrop from everyone to 10 minutes force them to come up with a fictitious …

Jul 13·1 min read·99 words

The House of My Mother

A compelling, empathetic and flawed read. It certainly draws you in, but much of the detail of the author’s experience(s) with her mother is surface level. You know there’s more there, you can feel it…

Jul 12·1 min read·198 words

Thunderbolts*

Cucumber, Cucumber, Cucumber! New Marvel movies are at their best when they're irreverent and self-deprecating. They were novel initially, slowly came more polished after Disney acquired the rights to…

Jul 9·2 min read·205 words

Ballerina

You couldn't ask more of a spinoff in the John Wick . I hesitate to say this was perfect, but it's very, very close. I mean, really close. Razor close. None of these movies shy away from violence. The…

Jul 8·2 min read·227 words

Jurassic World Rebirth

We're far, far past the point where new entries into the Jurassic Park franchise are necessary. That they're no longer necessary does not preclude them from being fun and this was certainly fun. Chris…

Jul 7·2 min read·213 words

Personhood

Personhood details the rise and unrelenting march of an American political movement with a singular focus on establishing personhood rights for the unborn. Not stopping with the repeal of Roe — no, no…

Jul 5·1 min read·168 words

Cruel Deception

Gregg Olsen’s Cruel Deception is a faithful retelling of a factitious disorder imposed on another (originally Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSbP)). Equal time is given to the defendant and prosecution…

Jul 1·1 min read·75 words

Marshmallow

I almost gave up and maligned this movie. Almost . I never did summer camp (fuck summer camp). I did "outdoor school" which was an extended field trip during middle school when kids are at their most …

Jun 29·1 min read·176 words

How Infrastructure Works

I'm not — by any measure — a deeply studied fan of infrastructure. I value it, I appreciate it and I know that it's at its best when you don't think about it. It does its job, you rely on it so faithf…

Jun 24·1 min read·151 words

Recommended email providers

I'm reasonably confident I've tried every privacy-friendly email provider out there. I prefer some over others and haven't run into any significant issues with any of them.

Jun 19·1 min read·30 words

The Raid 2

🔨🔨⚾️ This manages to surpass The Raid . I didn't expect it to. Sequels rarely surpass the movie(s) that preceded them and they often can't exist without the context provided by those preceding films…

Jun 18·2 min read·244 words

Using Signal to communicate securely

Now more than ever it's important to keep your communications with those you know secure and private. Signal is the best available option for doing so. It is secure, private and run by a non-profit or…

Jun 16·1 min read·46 words

The Sirens' Call

Hayes' The Sirens' Call is a compelling read and part of what makes it so compelling is his framing of attention as a finite resource that has been totally commoditized. Which, well, it has been. It's…

Jun 16·2 min read·329 words

Cowards in masks

Fascism. You know it when you see it. A march towards authoritarianism. It's a rapid descent. Wrapping it in the nation's flag doesn't change that. It shouldn't be controversial to accurately apply a …

Jun 13·1 min read·37 words

The Raid

I'd never heard of The Raid until I watched Havoc . Gareth Edwards directed both, the later was superb and the former — this particular movie — is essential. Whenever anyone holds up a list of action …

Jun 13·2 min read·217 words

Wolf Man

To say too much about this movie would be to put too much thought into something that feels as though it wasn't thought about much. The cast is accomplished, though this is not at all in contention fo…

Jun 12·1 min read·110 words

Companion

Oh this was fantastic . It doesn't shy away from forecasting what may well be a future born out of the failed imaginings of modern tech leaders. Lonely men, a misunderstanding of human nature, a lack …

Jun 11·2 min read·227 words

Stories Are Weapons

Topical, well-researched, compelling, concise. Framing recent campaigns, memes, psyops — whatever you'd like to call them as propaganda and weaponry feels both novel and accurate. It's a helpful frami…

Jun 11·2 min read·253 words

The Amateur

I feel safe saying that this is my favorite action movie of the year so far. That may change when the new John Wick spinoff is released, but for now this is firmly in first place. The Amateur manages …

Jun 10·2 min read·269 words

Venom: The Last Dance

A little bit of family-friendly Deadpool , some Power Rangers vibes, a dance scene with Mrs. Chen who happens to be in Vegas at exactly the wrong time and a Maroon 5 tune. Venom: The Ted Lasso Crossov…

Jun 9·1 min read·116 words

AI Snake Oil

I was tempted to set this aside when I first got into it, but I stuck with it and I don't regret doing so. It provides a high-level overview of the field, its shortcomings and possible, realistic outc…

Jun 7·2 min read·230 words

Who writes the documentation?

If the future is AI writing code (or writing much of it) — who writes the documentation? Is it the developers reviewing the code?

Jun 6·1 min read·28 words

Venom: Let There Be Carnage

Oh what the hell why not. There's camp, a lot of tentacles, sexual tension (everywhere), some buddy comedy elements, post-credit novella scenes. This movie is weird, vaguely cohesive and also — kinda …

Jun 6·1 min read·78 words

The Accountant²

Alright, let's get this out of the way: the premise of this movie and the original are ridiculous on their face. Next, I will watch anything with Jon Bernthal in it. No questions asked. He's in the ca…

Jun 5·1 min read·123 words

Exodus

This is my first time reading anything Peter F. Hamilton's written and it will not be my last. I spent years barely reading (books at least) or not reading at all and I can't shake the feeling that I'…

Jun 5·2 min read·387 words

Another AI company lying about their user agent

While digging around for AI crawler (read: scraper) user agents to block I found another company, platform, tool — whatever — that's using an altogether generic user agent.

Jun 4·1 min read·36 words

Venom

This manages to be more enjoyable than a lot of recent Marvel movies simply by not taking itself so seriously. Venom is juvenile — sometimes to a fault, but it's not unbearably serious to the point th…

Jun 4·1 min read·118 words

Havoc

Another Netflix Christmas movie. A $90,000,000 budget? That is wild. But it's good, it's the best Netflix movie I can remember watching (it's either that good or their movies are that forgettable — yo…

Jun 3·3 min read·461 words

No More Tears

Johnson & Johnson is a healthcare empire and a household empire in the United States (and elsewhere, perhaps? I can't speak to that). That they are so deeply entrenched and recognizable is a crediting…

Jun 3·2 min read·399 words

Novocaine

For a movie that isn't stellar and that doesn't step outside the bounds of genre expectations, Novocaine is a ton of fun. That's in no small part due to the fact that Jack Quid is every bit as charism…

May 31·1 min read·141 words

The 'agentic' web is nothing more than a moat

Copilot in Edge. Gemini in Chrome. AI chatbots in Firefox. Opera becomes an 'AI agentic browser'. The Browser Company announces Dia and declares that 'traditional browsers' will die. Perplexity is bui…

May 30·1 min read·44 words

A year of tracking my music listening activity

I've spent the better part of a year tracking the music I listen to day in and day out. The implementation has changed and the players have changed but the data collection, storage and display has bee…

May 29·1 min read·47 words

'Slop' is also an apt description of your new AI feature

Slop originated as a description of low quality images and text extruded from LLM and and image diffusion models, but it's also a perfectly apt description of AI features being rolled out en-masse.

May 28·1 min read·44 words

Despite the warnings, I tried self-hosting my email

I've been moving more and more of the infrastructure I run and host on to my own servers. One thing led to another and nearly all of what I used was there: analytics, photo storage, music, RSS, saved …

May 27·1 min read·60 words

World Eaters

A well-researched, well-constructed and compelling read about the venture capital sector's ongoing malign influence on the economy. There is so much money chasing so few "power law" returns that heaps…

May 27·1 min read·162 words

Red Planet

Fuck this planet. Right? There's a vocal set that insists on going to a dust ball that's not designed to kill us, but everything about it makes it perfect to kill us. Why? Hubris, probably hubris. The…

May 26·1 min read·168 words

The Monkey

WE HAVE TO MAKE LIKE EGGS AND SCRAMBLE! Holy hell this was fun, gross and funny. It's Jumanji but instead of a board game you get some horrific cursed monkey that people won't stop screwing with. Yes,…

May 26·2 min read·202 words

Fountain of Youth

Firmly in the fun but not good camp of movies. Borrowing liberally from Indiana Jones , National Treasure and even The Mummy , that this is as entertaining as it is is a credit to a deep, talented cas…

May 26·1 min read·97 words

Until Dawn

This was based on a video game? Cool. Hopefully the game was better. Don’t drink the tap water. Please don’t. That turned my stomach and horror movies don’t really do that. Is it harder to make it unt…

May 24·1 min read·89 words

Sinners

Honestly, by any reasonable definition, this is a perfect horror movie. It spends exactly enough time setting up characters to get you invested in their deaths and shines in everything it does and is.…

May 24·2 min read·283 words

A clarified stance on blocking AI crawlers

My clarified stance on blocking AI crawlers is this: block all of them . I won't speak for everyone on the matter (I can't), but feel ok walling them all off .

May 23·1 min read·39 words

Matt Berninger at Palace Theatre

No Love Frozen Oranges Breaking Into Acting Distant Axis Serpentine Prison Silver Springs Junk Let It Be All for Nothing Nowhere Special One More Second Silver Jeep Little by Little Times of Difficult…

May 22·1 min read·55 words

The AI Con

A book of and for our current societal and technological moment. Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna are the experts we need and can trust to write this. It's essential, it's critical and it's both easy to…

May 21·3 min read·516 words

Building an oEmbed endpoint

For reasons that elude me I cannot get Open Graph tags to work when anything from this site is posted on Mastodon. I've fiddled with server configs, my aggressive robots.txt and still — nothing. They …

May 19·1 min read·49 words

Emperor at Hollywood Palladium

Nightside Intro Into the Infinity of Thoughts The Burning Shadows of Silence Cosmic Keys to My Creations & Times Towards the Pantheon The Majesty of the Nightsky I Am the Black Wizards Inno a Satana O…

May 17·1 min read·68 words

Agalloch at Hollywood Palladium

Ashes Against the Grain Limbs Falling Snow This White Mountain on Which You Will Die Fire Above, Ice Below Not Unlike the Waves (with a tease of Slayer’s 'Raining Blood') Our Fortress Is Burning... I …

May 17·1 min read·60 words

On Air

I've never been a fan of NPR in any meaningful sense — I trust their reporting, find it credible and reliable but have never become attached to its more lauded shows and the hosts attached to them. St…

May 17·2 min read·301 words

Managing music with rclone

I've been listening to my music via Navidrome for a bit now and it's working quite well. To manage my music, I use rclone locally and on my host machine.

May 14·1 min read·34 words

Last Breath

The true story underpinning this is far more impressive than the reality of the film. I like the cast — Simu, Finn Cole (big Animal Kingdom fan right here) and Woody Harrelson shines as the grizzled o…

May 8·1 min read·89 words

Running 11ty and PHP concurrently

Now that I have several sections of this site served dynamically using PHP I've finally put together a single command to work on the site locally.

May 7·1 min read·31 words

Black Tunnel White Magic

I often look to the true crime genre for engaging narratives, detailed retellings of stories I'm perhaps only vaguely aware of and a simple interest in the genre. I wasn't aware if this case and I'm s…

May 6·2 min read·256 words

Using a Docker for deployments on Coolify

I have Coolify building my site and rsync -ing the build output to a separate LAMP server. There was a recent bug in a release that broke compatibility with Nixpacks that broke my previous deployment …

May 4·1 min read·66 words

Superheaven at The Belasco Theater

Humans for Toys (Jake's rig not working; tossed his Strat and switched to his Les Paul on backup rig (no Marshall)) Numb to What Is Real Leach Crawl Youngest Daughter Downswing Cruel Times Life in a J…

May 3·1 min read·56 words

Glare at The Belasco Theater

Mourning Haze Blank Floating Guts 2 Soon 2 Tell Do Not Enter Void in Blue

May 3·1 min read·20 words

28 Weeks Later

A more than capable sequel that trades in the lo-fi quality of the original, brings in a star-laden cast and leans a bit more towards gung-ho action movie. Britain has been emptied out of the infected…

May 2·2 min read·283 words

JAMstack is an entirely unnecessary term

Boom! Lead with the hot take. JAMstack : JavaScript, API and Markup — it's not novel, it was never new and it incorporates foundational parts of the web. JavaScript? Yep — always had that. Markup? You…

May 1·1 min read·80 words

Captain America: Brave New World

A thin-skinned old man gets elected president, spars with allies and the press, turns bright red and tears down the seat of American government. But he doesn't toggle tariffs on and off like they're a…

May 1·1 min read·99 words

Reducing spend with Apple

I'll likely never escape Apple's walled garden entirely — my entire family uses Apple devices and — at a minimum — not being on iMessage is a non-starter. But given Tim Cook's recent altogether shamef…

Apr 29·1 min read·64 words

Ash

More visually appealing than narratively coherent Ash is a fairly compelling and ambitious debut for Flying Lotus (whose work I’m entirely unfamiliar with so everything here is absent that context). E…

Apr 27·1 min read·151 words

28 Days Later

A classic of early aughts horror. Oddly optimistic, violent, bloody and visceral — plus it looks like it was shot on my second iPhone, or an iPhone 4? I immediately knew this was British not because o…

Apr 27·2 min read·226 words

Fahrenheit-182

One of the better music memoirs/autobiographies I've read recently and — perhaps — credit should be due to Dan Ozzi for that (at least in part). I've got distinct memories of Mark, Tom and Travis soun…

Apr 26·6 min read·1044 words

Tracking listens from Navidrome

Migrating from Plex to Jellyfin to Navidrome has meant refactoring how I record listens at each step. Much of the code architecture has remained the same — error reporting, inserting tentative artist …

Apr 24·1 min read·47 words

Play Nice

I loved StarCraft, had a passing interest in WarCraft, spent a lot of time on Diablo II multiplayer with friends and that's where my interest in Blizzard ends. I spent a lot of time playing Diablo II.…

Apr 21·2 min read·281 words

A site setup script

I wrote a setup script for this site All of the secrets necessary to run it are in a 1Password entry and this script leverages their CLI in order to populate the configs necessary to run this site loc…

Apr 18·1 min read·48 words

The Woman in the Yard

Half-baked, over-acted and mediocre at best. The twist is...terrible? Not gross, but yeah. No, no — don't watch it to find out. It's not worth it. I'd be upset if someone pulled up a chair and stared …

Apr 17·1 min read·84 words

Flight Risk

🍜🫎👮🏻‍♀️🛫🗻🔪🛬🚒🚑 Add Topher Grace to the list of folks who never seem to age. Trust, trust, everything comes down to trust. Can you trust Winston to flip and act as a reliable witness? Can you …

Apr 15·2 min read·313 words

The Wonder Boy

Tim MacMahon is a talented writer — his NBA coverage speaks to that. He's knowledgable and well-positioned to write this book. He didn't have sufficient access to Dončić himself and the book would be …

Apr 14·3 min read·463 words

Meshuggah at The Forum

Careless Whisper (George Michael song) Broken Cog Violent Sleep of Reason Rational Gaze Combustion Kaleidoscope God He Sees in Mirrors Lethargica Born in Dissonance Dancers to a Discordant System Swar…

Apr 10·1 min read·41 words

Cannibal Corpse at The Forum

Scourge of Iron Blood Blind Inhumane Harvest Evisceration Plague Death Walking Terror Unleashing the Bloodthirsty Summoned for Sacrifice I Cum Blood Stripped, Raped and Strangled Hammer Smashed Face

Apr 10·1 min read·33 words

Carcass at The Forum

Unfit for Human Consumption Buried Dreams Incarnated Solvent Abuse Tomorrow Belongs to Nobody Death Certificate (Intro only) Corporal Jigsore Quandary Heartwork Carneous Cacoffiny (Outro only)

Apr 10·1 min read·29 words

Red Scare

History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes. Our current political moment is one that rhymes with the red scare . Clay Risen does an admirable job covering the history of and events around the post-w…

Apr 9·2 min read·344 words

Alien Clay

Tchaikovsky is one of the best science fiction authors around and Alien Clay exemplifies his talent for immersive world-building, gripping narratives and structure. This particular tale centers on dis…

Apr 8·2 min read·292 words

Carry-On

Nah nah nah nah Bateman! It’s a Christmas movie in an airport that isn’t Die Hard and isn’t as good as Die Hard . Christmas copaganda. Guy gets girl, girl gets pregnant, guy saves girl (and their baby…

Apr 6·1 min read·72 words

All of Apple's services are abysmal

All of them. Seriously. Except iMessage. Everything else? They range from mediocre to outright unusable and none of them are reliable . I've written about Apple Music. That one launched and cost me a …

Apr 6·1 min read·48 words

Death Is Our Business

This felt like more of a primer on Wagner than a comprehensive history. Nonetheless, it’s a compelling explainer of private military companies (PMCs) with Wagner at the heart of it. From the conflict …

Apr 1·1 min read·133 words

Humane

Another Cronenberg making horror movies? Sign me the hell up. Not as outright grotesque as the work of her brother or her father but the concept is dark, doesn't entirely avoid some gore and entertain…

Mar 29·1 min read·122 words

Refused at Shrine Auditorium

Refused Are F**king Dead (and This Time They Really Mean It) North America 2025 Poetry Written in Gasoline The Shape of Punk to Come The Refused Party Program Rather Be Dead Coup d'état Soft (First ti…

Mar 29·1 min read·94 words

Quicksand at Shrine Auditorium

Refused Are F**king Dead (and This Time They Really Mean It) North America 2025 Fazer Colossus Thorn in My Side Too Official Supercollider Omission Brown Gargantuan Head to Wall Inversion Unfulfilled …

Mar 29·1 min read·46 words

Slaughterhouse at Shrine Auditorium

Refused Are F**king Dead (and This Time They Really Mean It) North America 2025 State of Emergency Smiles Whips and Chains Reflection Telephone My War ( Black Flag cover) Sick and Tired Poison Time Ki…

Mar 29·1 min read·42 words

Amazon breaks compatibility with third-party S3 providers in JS SDK

Amazon issued a recent update to their S3 JavaScript SDK that breaks compatibility with many third-party S3 providers.

Mar 27·1 min read·28 words

I built myself a TV guide

I built myself a TV guide. Why? Because the more I tack things on to this site for my own utility, the less I want to use other services. So I built a TV guide.

Mar 25·1 min read·41 words

Above the Noise

DeMar is one of those classic "fuck fuck fuck stay in front of him — oh god he's in the paint — fuck put your hand up — nice defense, oh shit he made it anyways" guards. Stay in front of him, make the…

Mar 25·2 min read·222 words

The Ritual

🌲🦌👐🏻🏚️🩸 And this is why I don't like hiking. I appreciate nature, I like the abstract concept of nature but I don't want to go commune with it. You've got a map, a compass and more dead friends.…

Mar 24·1 min read·109 words

Presence

A haunted house movie shot from the perspective of the presence haunting it. Or, well, maybe not — the scariest presence in the house is the family. Sure — some stuff flies around. That's part and par…

Mar 23·1 min read·162 words

Meltdown

A neatly organized chronology of yet another bank failure. You get some history on Swiss banking, a good deal of insight into the firm and a conclusion that ends with its failure and an acquisition by…

Mar 21·1 min read·135 words

Children of Memory

Children of Memory takes a sharp narrative turn from the two novels that preceded it and it's not better for it. It's different. There are still spiders, Nodan interlocutors, post-scarcity voyages, bu…

Mar 17·1 min read·169 words

When the Sea Came Alive

I've never — probably will never — be a history buff. I enjoy reading about it, value the insights gleaned from studying it but never find myself getting lost in it. I don't actively seek it out, I do…

Mar 16·2 min read·371 words

Rogues

Patrick Radden Keefe has a knack — hell, actually, let's call it a gift — a gift for crafting truly compelling retellings and detailed nonfiction narratives. He did it in Say Nothing , Empire of Pain …

Mar 7·1 min read·179 words

If your content is only on social media, I'm not going to see it

If you only post on social media, I won't see it. If you don't have an RSS feed, I won't follow it, I won't subscribe to it. I don't want want your app because I don't want a homescreen full of apps f…

Mar 6·1 min read·60 words

Generating absolute URLs in my RSS feed(s)

My RSS feeds are generated by 11ty at build time from a Liquid.js template. When I wrote posts and link elsewhere on my site I use a bookmarklet to capture the URI for linking. To ensure I have absolu…

Mar 5·1 min read·58 words

Alternatives to US tech platforms

With the US rapidly devolving into a failed state with the endorsement (both full-throated and tepid) of many tech leaders, I’d urge you to reconsider your use of any tech platforms and tools offered …

Mar 4·1 min read·78 words

Smoke and Ashes

This made for a fascinating read about a historical topic I only had a vague familiarity with. It's detailed inasmuch as it connects the spread of opium's history, production and consumption — meticul…

Feb 28·1 min read·178 words

Make yourself less valuable to tech companies

John Oliver dedicated the primary segment of his most recent episode on Meta and it's many moderation and privacy failures and violations. It was a well-reasoned take if not a redundant one for everyo…

Feb 26·1 min read·70 words

Are we self-segregating on social media?

Are we? Yes and that's ok. If everything is political, then it follows that everything is as toxic as our politics. It's perfectly ok to avoid toxicity.

Feb 24·1 min read·33 words

Ask Not

The author's qualifier that they've taken creative license with some of these accounts is...well, it does a lot to strike down a lot of trust you might have had in what follows. Everything that's desc…

Feb 23·1 min read·182 words

Children of Ruin

🐙🌊🚀🕷️🧑‍🚀 The octopus book! I enjoyed the hell out of this — more than Children of Time even. It benefits from the historical context so thoroughly laid out in its predecessor and expands beautif…

Feb 20·1 min read·119 words

Live music

I went to my first metal show in a while this weekend — at a nice venue in one of the worst neighborhoods I've ever been in.

Feb 19·1 min read·29 words

The Witch

Picking apples, making pies. The atmosphere throughout this movie is so weighty it could sink a ship. Maybe it should have. Every step of it is brilliantly acted, shot in gray-ish, desaturated hues an…

Feb 18·2 min read·221 words

Timecrimes

A smart, brief, low-budget time travel tale. You step right into the loop in what you're told is the start of it, but could have been at any point in Hector's time travel cycle. It "concludes" with He…

Feb 17·1 min read·119 words

The Exvangelicals

An explanation of the cult-like Christian right as the author works through her own exit from it. You gain empathy, compassion and a freedom to think while losing the friends and family still tightly …

Feb 17·2 min read·276 words

The Gorge

A perfectly entertaining movie that works better by virtue of its romantic elements than its horror and action sequences. It's corny, the special effects are decent enough and the plot is pretty predi…

Feb 16·1 min read·65 words

Smile 2

🙂😃😄😁🎤😫 One of the rare examples of a sequel being dramatically better than the original film. Pro-bono therapist that's still wealthy? Gone. Troubled pop star anchor? Yes. This uses the same jar…

Feb 14·1 min read·145 words

Dynamic pages with PHP and 11ty

When I moved this site to my own hosting I rewrote the dynamic code that had previously been handled by edge functions in PHP. To speed up build times and make things scale nicely as I add more conten…

Feb 12·1 min read·70 words

Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties

This was a fascinating read that did a lot to punch holes in the default narrative of the Manson murders that Bugliosi established in Helter Skelter . What it doesn't do is draw any definitive conclus…

Feb 12·1 min read·189 words

Psycho.com

Oof. A true crime compilation focused on the retelling of three horrific tails and their conclusions. Not essential, but gripping enough and thoroughly dark and detailed. Gird your guts, I guess. One …

Feb 6·1 min read·48 words

The Sing Sing Files

It goes without saying that the US’ carceral system isn’t just deeply flawed, it’s entirely broken. From private prisons looking to fill beds and doing nothing to reduce recidivism, to law enforcement…

Feb 4·1 min read·164 words

Den of Thieves 2: Pantera

Not a good movie, but a fun movie. Gerard Butler's got that dirtbag swagger down as Big Nick, O'Shea is excellent (again) and the scenery is beautiful . Not as serious or as gripping as Heat but fun a…

Feb 3·1 min read·118 words

403ing questionable referrals

I'm 403ing AI crawlers and now I'm 403ing what I find to be questionable referrers.

Feb 1·1 min read·18 words

Blog questions and whatnot

I've seen the blog question challenge going around recently among folks I follow and bacardi55 was kind enough to tag me to participate. So, without further delay, here we go!

Jan 31·1 min read·34 words

Heavier Than Heaven

As memoirs go this was thorough, lovingly crafted and unsparing in its treatment of its central figure. Kurt was troubled — tortured even — and deeply flawed. Many musicians are, but he was more than …

Jan 31·2 min read·236 words

Chronological feeds, slow feeds

RSS has always been the best way to consume news online. I first used Google Reader soon after it launched (RIP), have cycled through Feedbin, Inoreader and NewsBlur and the slow, orderly chronologica…

Jan 30·1 min read·61 words

Migrating from Plex to Jellyfin for music

I've been using a hosted Plex instance for my media consumption for a bit now and while I've been happy with it, I've moved my listening over to a Jellyfin server. I've been working to self-host more …

Jan 28·1 min read·68 words

The Substance

AND THIS IS WHY YOU NEVER EVER TOUCH ANY, ANY PART OF THE WALK OF FAME. Visceral, gross, drenched in nudity and vile body horror. I was nauseas after watching this, even as it descended to the utter, …

Jan 27·1 min read·180 words

Children of Time

A beautiful, absorbing sci-fi tale: mankind at its worst, aimlessly seeking a new home and declaring their manifest right to the first habitable planet that they encounter. Never mind that said planet…

Jan 27·1 min read·179 words

Invisible Rulers

Social media is pervasive and its impact has largely been malign. It’s birthed myriad influencers who shouldn’t have influence, pseudo journalists, scientists, hacks, quacks and conspiracies. All of t…

Jan 24·1 min read·130 words

Salt

A fun, fun, fun action movie. I was caught up in the action and didn’t see the twists and turns coming. I imagine that was intentional — how could it not be? Jolie, Schreiber, Ejiofor, Braugher — you …

Jan 23·1 min read·111 words

The Return

This was pretty to look at, well acted, rendered and about everything you'd expect from an objectively great film and I think it is that — a great film. But it's a great film that didn't click for me.…

Jan 22·1 min read·77 words

Apple Intelligence is anything but

I'm disappointed, but not surprised that Apple Intelligence will be on by default in their upcoming 18.3.0 releases. I'd originally toggled it on and then quickly toggled it off.

Jan 22·1 min read·34 words

Goodbye commercial social media

I've been almost entirely off of corporate social media for years now. I closed my last holdout account this past week.

Jan 21·1 min read·25 words

Nosferatu

🏰🧛🏻‍♂️ Of course that was Bill Skarsgård. I had no idea, but he's also perverseley skilled at bringing the most vile creatures to life on screen. Artfully crafted, dark, immersive and drenched in a…

Jan 21·1 min read·98 words

The Thicket

Between Levon's turns in this film and Blink Twice , Maya's in Stranger Things and Ethan's litany of accomplishments I'm starting to blindly associate the last name Hawke with movies worth watching. T…

Jan 20·1 min read·187 words

Vertical Limit

I'll forever remain nostalgic for 90s/2000s movies given that those were pretty formative years for me and movies are always a nice escape. Rich asshole is a rich asshole, presumably because he got lu…

Jan 16·1 min read·183 words

Mood Machine

SCREAMS Takes a deep breath SCREAMS Takes a deep breath Repeats until passing out and slowly regaining consciousness. This is easily one of the most well-written, researched and infuriating books I've…

Jan 16·3 min read·533 words

Shot Caller

A gruesome character study focused on Jacob (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) who has an idyllic life before fucking up royally (RIP Schmidt ) and forcefully pushing away his family in an effort to get them to …

Jan 15·2 min read·262 words

Sustainability versus scalability

Yesterday we saw announcements from the Mastodon team announcing its intent to transfer the platform assets to a new non-profit organization and another from Free Our Feeds looking to "Save Social Med…

Jan 14·1 min read·38 words

I deleted all of my email filters

Gmail's long had a segmented/tabbed inbox and Apple added their own (to iOS) recently. I've long used manual mail rules to label and sort inbound messages into different folders.

Jan 14·1 min read·36 words

1992

I like heist movies and this was a perfectly decent heist movie. Tyrese is a strong, reliable lead, Scott Eastwood is a welcome sight (unlike his father — shoo, shoo go away). Ray Liotta delivers a cl…

Jan 14·1 min read·175 words

403ing AI crawlers

Now that I'm self-hosting this site and the associated infrastructure , the public facing part of the site (where you're reading this) is served via a boring old Linux/Apache/PHP stack. Which means I …

Jan 14·1 min read·42 words

30 Days of Night

God? No god. 🧛🏻‍♂️🪓🚜 Certainly not in Barrow, Alaska. Yet another Josh Hartnett in a horror movie movies that I loved more than anyone reasonably should. The scenery is beautiful, the gore is visc…

Jan 13·1 min read·189 words

The Lost Boys

Over the top and absurd in all the best ways (as is often the case with good movies from the 80s). It's unserious in a way that's not unlike Buffy and there's blood, gore and practical effects in abun…

Jan 12·1 min read·150 words

London Has Fallen

This time London tips over. Gerard Butler remains a scary guy and we get dense city-level combat and action scenes. What kicks this one off? The US uses a drone to (they claim accidentally) bomb a wed…

Jan 9·1 min read·112 words

Smash!

I was around 7 years old when Green Day released Dookie so I can't say I explicitly recall any of what's discussed, but I love the album all the same. Ian Winwood does a remarkable job retelling the r…

Jan 9·2 min read·261 words

Olympus Has Fallen

I started this series out of order and still don’t feel like I missed anything. Gerard Butler’s a scary guy. Not as scary as Bruce Willis or Jason Statham or Keanu Reeves. Dwayne Johnson isn’t scary —…

Jan 8·1 min read·123 words

2073

I wanted a post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie, I got a pre-apocalyptic documentary shouting at the viewer to turn back from a briefly previewed future dystopia that we're sprinting towards. It doesn't work…

Jan 7·2 min read·301 words

Zapping the web

Apple added a feature to Safari that lets you hide distracting items. It’s not an adblocker and it was never framed as one.

Jan 6·1 min read·26 words

(Most) pages are actually posts

Adam wrote up a post about everything on a site being a web page — posts included. He's absolutely write. I have some pages I think of on this site as being static ( about , uses , colophon et al) and…

Jan 6·1 min read·58 words

Angel Has Fallen

I didn't realize this was part of a series and now I'm watching this series out of order. Haha movies! Of course it's a series. Everything is a series. Want a franchise? We've got franchises! Is this …

Jan 6·2 min read·263 words

Your platform is a trap

We're well past the platform where enshittification has become cliché and bandied about to death but every new "platform" I see now feels like a trap.

Jan 5·1 min read·31 words

Accepted

This feels like it should have Judd Apatow’s name attached to it given the time it was made, the tone and the presence of Jonah Hill. But it doesn’t. And that’s fine. Not as compelling as Apatow’s wor…

Jan 5·1 min read·86 words

Elevation

A by the book post-apocalyptic sci-fi jaunt. Solid performances throughout, a plot anchored by personal stories and committed performances throughout. Original or spectacular? No. Fun? Absolutely. I w…

Jan 5·1 min read·74 words

Choosing Death

I’ve spent years as a massive death metal fan and much of what Choosing Death covers I’ve learned previously as a product of my obsession with the genre. Mudrian — as the editor of Decibel Magazine — …

Jan 3·2 min read·372 words

Gladiator II

Mescal Pascal Mescal Pascal Mescal Pascal Mescal Pascal Mescal Pascal Mescal Pascal Mescal Pascal Mescal Pascal Mescal Pascal Mescal Pascal Mescal Pascal Mescal Pascal Mescal Pascal Mescal Pascal Mesc…

Jan 1·2 min read·204 words

Heretic

What’s the one true religion? I suppose it may well be cruelty and the drive to inflict pain and your beliefs on others. I’m loving late career Hugh Grant — the roles he’s been cast in lately feel ris…

Dec 31·1 min read·178 words

Adventures in self-hosting

"What did you do over the break?" "I moved everything to my own hosting!" ... I mean, that's hardly everything and it's far from the most important thing (or set of things) that I did, but it is a thi…

Dec 30·1 min read·44 words

My Damage

Keith Morris seems like exactly the kind of musician it’d be fun to sit down and shoot the shit with. Not grab a beer with (he doesn’t drink and neither do I), but sit down and trade stories with. He …

Dec 28·1 min read·188 words

Christmas Vacation

I, uh, found this one to be generally pretty dull and thoroughly unfunny. I had no idea that was Johnny Galecki until I looked at IMDB and Juliette Lewis is always great but the whole thing was about …

Dec 26·1 min read·49 words

My default apps, 2024 edition

A quick update on my 2023 post . Some changes, but nothing particularly major.

Dec 23·1 min read·19 words

Home Alone

12/22/2024 A classic in every sense of the word and required viewing annually during the holidays. Is Kevin a sociopath? How do the sticky bandits survive? Has Catherine O’Hara made a career out of be…

Dec 23·1 min read·63 words

Can I Say

I really wanted to love this, but I only kind of like it. blink-182 are one of my favorite bands and Travis is an incredible drummer, who has been through quite a lot, but I didn't find myself particu…

Dec 20·1 min read·142 words

Livesuit

I'll continue to heap praise on Abraham and Franck. This novella sets aside the events of The Mercy of Gods and drops you into the life of a soldier named Kirin who volunteers to be deployed as a Live…

Dec 15·2 min read·237 words

Populating env vars using 1Password

I love automating things and — with that impulse entirely unchecked — I've written up a shell script to make setting this site up for local development even simpler.

Dec 14·1 min read·34 words

An aspirational web

The W3C released a statement on ethical web principles and — before proceeding any further — I'd strongly encourage you to go read it . It's a brief read and one well worth reflecting on.

Dec 14·1 min read·38 words

The Mercy of Gods

What is, is. I haven't read a scifi book this quickly since I wrapped up The Expanse . Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (as James S.A. Corey) have a real knack for developing expansive universes and drawi…

Dec 14·2 min read·216 words

The Beasts

A captivating, simmering rural thriller. The tension between Antoine and his Spanish neighbors is evident from the outset, but Sorogoyen masterfully ramps it up and the pace at which he does so is ago…

Dec 13·1 min read·185 words

Why So Serious?

An absolutely superb — superb — biography of one of the best players playing (and to have played) the game of basketball. Mike Singer does a brilliant job presenting Jokić as exactly who he is: a brot…

Dec 11·1 min read·119 words

Design for Developers

I found this particular book quite helpful and insightful. I've done frontend development work for 10+ years and have worked with so many designers I've respected and learned from. What this did was t…

Dec 10·1 min read·89 words

Topic blockers

Manuel wrote about the idea of topic blockers and I thought I'd chime in. I run adblockers in my browser and at the DNS level and I leverage the latter as a blunt instrument to block areas of the inte…

Dec 9·1 min read·47 words

Benjamin Gibbard at Alex Theatre

Steadier Footing ( Death Cab for Cutie song) Such Great Heights ( The Postal Service song) Here to Forever ( Death Cab for Cutie song) Black Sun ( Death Cab for Cutie song) Me & Magdalena (The Monkees…

Dec 8·1 min read·146 words

The Running Man

I love this exact brand of 80s/early 90s sci-fi cheese. We’re 7 years past 2017 but it feels like we’re hurtling towards a similarly stupid post-apocalyptic society. There’s spandex, dorky one-liners …

Dec 8·1 min read·44 words

The Virgin Suicides

Dreamy, detached and dark. I'll need to watch this again but it was tough to watch this first time. The narration is stellar, Mr. Lisbon feels detached, the presentation is dreamlike and the Lisbon gi…

Dec 7·1 min read·82 words

Rebuilding your Netlify site at regular intervals

With my site on Netlify I've set up a function to rebuild it at regular intervals (hourly, in my case).

Dec 6·1 min read·27 words

Under the Skin

Minimal, beautifully shot and slow . It's an almost entirely visual movie — for better or worse — that didn't really go anywhere. Scarlett's an alien, Scarlett lures people in. Guy on motorcycle clean…

Dec 5·1 min read·70 words

Black Bear

Could've used more bear. Aubrey Plaza really shines in this one — whether she's deadpan in the opening act where she trades places with Sarah Gadon or the messy, emotional wreck starring in the film d…

Dec 4·1 min read·149 words

2024 in review

Wow, what a year. To address the elephant in the room up front: on the macro scale, things are bleak. Electing a fascist for economic reasons still means you elected a fascist. That said fascist proce…

Dec 3·1 min read·84 words

A year of blocking AI crawlers

We've been blocking AI crawlers (or politely suggesting that they leave) this year.

Dec 2·1 min read·19 words

They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

Hanif has this way of reaching into your chest and ripping your heart out in the most tender, loving way possible. A book about music but a book that uses music as a lense through which the author exp…

Dec 2·2 min read·239 words

DNS records and a Cloudflare security violation

This site (was) hosted on Cloudflare Pages. In an effort to make scheduling more convenient for my mentee from Underdog Devs , I set up SavvyCal . Without giving it any thought, I added an easy to rem…

Nov 30·1 min read·51 words

Scheduling posts and links

I updated my post, link and syndication feed query logic to allow for post scheduling.

Nov 28·1 min read·19 words

Consider Phlebas

This is the first book I’ve read by Iain Banks and it took me a bit longer to get through than I would’ve liked. This is my fault, not the author’s (finding time to read is hard and my inability to fo…

Nov 28·1 min read·197 words

When Evil Lurks

This thing starts at a run, quickly picks up speed until it hits a dead sprint and then slides into a horrifying finish greased by blood coating the victims and the protagonists. It's unbelievably dif…

Nov 26·1 min read·105 words

Oddity

One of the few horror movies in recent memory that I've found to be both genuinely and unexpectedly terrifying. It's all tension, practical effects, basic human failures and a touch of the supernatura…

Nov 25·1 min read·35 words

Road House

A polar bear fell on me. Violent, hilariously 80s, cliched and utterly ridiculous. It's a classic. Swayze does Swayze things and it's oh so appropriate that the director's name is Rowdy. (Also, the Ja…

Nov 24·1 min read·40 words

Bastille at The Theatre at Ace Hotel

Intros & Narrators Emily & Her Penthouse in the Sky Seasons & Narcissus Eve & Paradise Lost Drawbridge & The Baroness Leonard & Marianne Pompeii Zheng Yi Sao & Questions for Her Telegraph Road 1977 & …

Nov 23·1 min read·74 words

There's Always This Year

This is about so much more than basketball. I picked it up for the basketball connection (and I'm glad I did) and it uses the structure of a game (quarters, timeouts, asides) to guide Abdurraqib's lov…

Nov 23·1 min read·88 words

Never Let Go

She loves me more. A decent enough horror movie if you can get past it show its hand early on that the real horror — the true evil — is generational trauma and abuse. Maybe I'm wrong, but momma being …

Nov 21·2 min read·204 words

Nocturnal Animals

Jake Gyllenhaal is not one of my favorite actors. Jake Gyllenhaal is not one of my favorite actors. Jake Gyllenhaal is not one of my favorite actors. Jake Gyllenhaal is not one of my favorite actors. …

Nov 20·1 min read·158 words

Cured: The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys

I am the very definition of a casual fan of The Cure . I have the utmost respect for them but, you know how there are those bands that you enjoy and know are important but don't fall in love with? The…

Nov 15·1 min read·165 words

Organizing and archiving music

Every time I purchase digital music it gets downloaded and archived the exact same way.

Nov 14·1 min read·19 words

12 Strong

'Murica! Probably a story worth being told but it ends up being a mediocre action movie with a foreign policy disaster as the backdrop.

Nov 14·1 min read·26 words

Social media's broken (and that's awesome)

Post on Mastodon, post on your own site, post on Bluesky, skip the algorithmic soup that is Threads (or — if you do — enable federation so I can follow you absent the noise) and please, please skip po…

Nov 13·1 min read·54 words

End of Watch

I turned this on and I hated — HATED — the way it was shot. Then I got over it. Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña are fabulous in what amounts to a relentlessly watchable buddy cop movie shot documenta…

Nov 13·1 min read·76 words

Your AI help bot is a phone tree

"I see you're on our website, would you like to play choose your own adventure with our docs?"

Nov 12·1 min read·26 words

Buying music

I'm (still) not streaming music . Here's where I'm buying it.

Nov 12·1 min read·13 words

Antlers

🦌 A lesson about respecting the environment told with the set dressing of a horror film. It succeeds by focusing on the narrative it introduces and avoiding a heavy-handed lecturing directed at the v…

Nov 12·1 min read·147 words

Importing music metadata from Plex

To track the music I listen to I need to add records for artists and albums associated with them. This is something I've tackled manually — add an artist name, slug, description and a record for each …

Nov 12·1 min read·43 words

Just enough news

Follow just enough news .

Nov 11·1 min read·8 words

The Penguin

Season 1 Oh boy — whoever transformed Colin Farrell into Oz for this show deserves some sort of recognition. A lot of the recent DC output has been — odd? Or polished in a way that I just don't like. …

Nov 11·1 min read·198 words

Web Components in Action

Well worth the read as a primer on web components. I found the whole book to be approachable, insightful and well-written. Highly recommended for front end developers with an interest in standards and…

Nov 11·1 min read·42 words

Shoot 'Em Up

Dull, violent and devoid of a discernible plot or engaging performances. It’s vaguely entertaining and not totally unwatchable but it’s basically all over the top violence, gore and juvenile humor.

Nov 10·1 min read·33 words

Rocky

A predictable story but a classic nonetheless. An underdog story in every respect and a film that rises above the limitations of its script by virtue of the impassioned performances of its cast. Among…

Nov 10·1 min read·41 words

Knowing

One of those movies that aims for profundity but instead works best as idle background noise. Nic Cage does Nic Cage things and well, yeah — good enough.

Nov 10·1 min read·29 words

Here's how this is all put together

I've been fiddling with this site for the better part of a year now and now that it's fairly stable, I'm putting together what amounts to a public README (or a note to self). This post is that documen…

Nov 8·1 min read·46 words

The Night House

FUCK That's it. That's all I've got — most of what I've got. A meditation on grief that wraps a loss up in horror, depression, isolation and suicidal ideation. Is any of this real? How could someone y…

Nov 8·1 min read·74 words

RoboCop

I’ll buy that for a dollar! Union-busting, privatization of vital public services, rampant corruption, tech companies over-promising (who needs police when you have an untested robot that can’t naviga…

Nov 7·1 min read·75 words

The Frozen Ground

One of my coping methods/self-care strategies is throwing on movies or TV (AirPods in) and exercising before everyone else wakes up. This is today's movie. An effective true crime thriller that — sadl…

Nov 6·1 min read·78 words

Unstoppable

What a day to watch a movie about Pennsylvania! An action movie focused in on two employees trying to do the right thing for their families and communities in the face of corporate greed and incompete…

Nov 5·1 min read·47 words

Chickenhawk

Ostensibly about the Vietnam war but laser-focused on the author — Robert Mason's — experience flying a helicopter in assault missions over the course of a year-long deployment. Mason manages to avoid…

Nov 5·1 min read·119 words

Salem's Lot

I can see why this was originally sequenced as a miniseries — it's overlong when presented as a movie. Anchored by Lowe's sober and staid performance as Ben Mears it's perfectly watchable but not outs…

Nov 3·1 min read·78 words

Halloween H20

"There comes a point in your life where you have to concentrate on what's right about it." What's right about mine, does not include this movie. Cheap slasher, solid cast and an "introduction" for Jos…

Nov 1·1 min read·60 words

The Kingdom

A decent action movie buoyed by a strong cast (I always enjoy Chris Cooper). It dances around overt post 9/11 patriotism before tripping all over itself to make a point about how similar both sides ar…

Oct 30·1 min read·88 words

Building an album releases calendar subscription

As part of tracking the music I listen to I also keep track of upcoming albums. When I add an album, I also have fields for release dates and links.

Oct 27·1 min read·36 words

Speak No Evil

James McAvoy is spectacular (as are Davis and McNairy). Not essential viewing but it does an extremely compelling job of slowly ratcheting up tention until the very end — McAvoy is supremely confident…

Oct 26·1 min read·106 words

11ty meetup: Tracking and displaying music history

I got to speak at the 11ty meetup today about the music tracking contraption I've built into my site. I have a fairly detailed post on how I built it and another on the method I'm using to render dyna…

Oct 23·1 min read·52 words

Dynamic pages with 11ty and Cloudflare workers

I was rendering about 3300 pages every time my 11ty site built — probably overkill. About 615 artist pages, 1200+ movie pages, 500 show pages, 500 for books and ~35 for genres. Whew. Build times hover…

Oct 22·1 min read·55 words

Meet Me in the Bathroom

I'd been hoping that this would focus a bit more on The National than the strokes but that does nothing to diminish the fact that this is a great book. There are bands in every scene that are parallel…

Oct 19·1 min read·110 words

Alien: Romulus

The Alien franchise is among my favorite scifi/horror franchises because it lands firmly in the don't invent the horror vortex camp. It's realistic, not optimistic and its vision of space is all rough…

Oct 16·2 min read·233 words

Automatic Mastodon embeds for posts (again)

I've updated my RSS to Mastodon syndication worker so that it will add the link to the Mastodon post to the post.

Oct 14·1 min read·28 words

Things Will Be Different

Things won't be different, but you can drive yourself mad trying to change things you can't control instead of accepting them as they are. One Alabama, Two Alabama, Three Alabama, Four Alabama, Five —…

Oct 14·1 min read·53 words

The National at Hollywood Bowl

Zen Diagram Tour Start a War Eucalyptus Tropic Morning News Afraid of Everyone Bloodbuzz Ohio The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness I Need My Girl This Is the Last Time Apartment Story Conversation…

Oct 8·1 min read·73 words

The War on Drugs at Hollywood Bowl

Zen Diagram Tour Baby Missiles Pain An Ocean in Between the Waves I Don't Wanna Wait Red Eyes Strangest Thing Harmonia's Dream Lost in the Dream Under the Pressure I Don't Live Here Anymore (with Luci…

Oct 8·1 min read·43 words

Lucius at Hollywood Bowl

Zen Diagram Tour Nothing Ordinary Tempest Two of Us on the Run Old Tape Genevieve

Oct 8·1 min read·19 words

Re-Googling

I'm leaning into Google services when, at least in the circles I frequent, doing so is, frankly, seen negatively or simply out of the realm of consideration. But, hear me out.

Oct 6·1 min read·32 words

Aggregating content using collections in Eleventy

I have a bunch (too much?) content on this site and I use a collection containing a few child functions to aggregate all of it into a sitemap, search index and unified feed that gets syndicated to Mas…

Oct 4·1 min read·44 words

1408

You never know when you'll be trapped in a haunted hotel hoping — desperately — that Yahoo! messenger connects so you can make one last video call for help. "It's not my code! Your computer's haunted!…

Oct 4·1 min read·88 words

The Blob

Launching a virus into space and waiting for it to come back down to earth so we could see what happens seems like exactly the kind of thing we'd do without thinking too critically about it. I'm glad …

Oct 3·1 min read·50 words

Deadpool & Wolverine

🫶🏻 Crude, ridiculously violent and — somehow — touching (insert Deadpool joke breaking the 4th wall here). The cameos are a delight, the soundtrack is perfect and Hugh Jackman had better be doing th…

Oct 2·1 min read·66 words

The Last Stop in Yuma County

This feels like it could be a Coen brothers movie (where's Frances McDormand?). Tense and (at times) subdued, with an excellent cast (none of whom I recognized outside of Jon Proudstar). Doesn't overs…

Sep 28·1 min read·59 words

The Fly

There’s something about the physicality of 80s horror movie effects that make them so much more grotesque. David Cronenberg deserves plenty of credit for just how gnarly this is — he’s very good at ma…

Sep 27·1 min read·138 words

Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division

Insightful, funny, poignant and unapologetic. Peter Hook renders the tale of Joy Division's founding, trials, success and tragic dissolution in an honest, charming and heartbreaking fashion. I'm not t…

Sep 26·1 min read·160 words

The Sum of All Fears

A decent enough action movie buoyed by Affleck and Freeman's performances (the rest of the cast is great too — Schreiber, Moynahan, Rifkin, McGill et al). It's coated in aughts American jingoism and f…

Sep 25·1 min read·106 words

Tracking the music I listen to

I've talked about building my own music scrobbler , I've talked about improving it and I've complained about wanting to stream my own music and then I wrote a retrospective about it . I've settled on …

Sep 24·1 min read·55 words

Preventing mailto links from opening on macOS

I use Gmail via Safari's add to dock feature and it doesn't work well with mailto: links, so I've stopped them from working altogether (well, mostly).

Sep 23·1 min read·33 words

Colocating your code and your Cloudflare Workers

When I first moved my site to Cloudflare, I kept all of my Cloudflare Workers in their own repositories. I wanted to keep my account and zone IDs secret, but wasn't sure how best to do so. So there th…

Sep 23·1 min read·61 words

Syndicating an RSS feed to Mastodon using a Cloudflare worker

Everything shared from my site to Mastodon runs out of a single all activity RSS feed. You're welcome to subscribe to it, but it's formatted with social syndication in mind — emojis, hashtags and trun…

Sep 22·1 min read·81 words

Blink Twice

An outstanding directorial debut for Zoë Kravitz. The whole thing plays out as a fever dream that oscillates between abject horror, social commentary and free flowing debauchery. So many movies overpl…

Sep 22·2 min read·222 words

The Insider

I bought this as an afterthought based on the price ($4.99) and cast (Pacino + Crowe) and had baseline expectations based on the latter. What I got was an altogether action-free and extremely compelli…

Sep 21·1 min read·136 words

Sturgill Simpson at Santa Barbara Bowl

The Promise (When in Rome cover) A Whiter Shade of Pale (Procol Harum cover) I Don't Mind All Said and Done Long White Line (Moore & Napier cover) Railroad of Sin Brace for Impact (Live a Little) A Go…

Sep 16·1 min read·182 words

The Hillside Stranglers

A gripping book about two utterly vile and unrepentant monsters that preyed on any victim they could get their hands on in Los Angeles. It's one of those tales that illustrates how little justice can …

Sep 16·1 min read·86 words

SLC Punk

A 90s coming of age movie filtered through the lens of punk rock and the myriad tenets of that scene as established in a small town. Stevo and Bob embrace being punks and the life that they see as com…

Sep 12·1 min read·163 words

The Drop

A superb, slow burning crime drama with outstanding performances by Gandolfini and Hardy. There’s so much to love about this movie — Hardy’s taciturn Bob taking in Rocco after finding him in the trash…

Sep 9·1 min read·151 words

Expend4bles

The 4th entry in the Expendables franchise is closer in line with the 2nd and feels a bit incongruous. A lot of the original cast is back (and Curtis Jackson is a solid edition) but the change in the …

Sep 7·1 min read·157 words

CSS in Depth

An approachable, thorough and clear explainer on CSS. Handy if you’re new to the language and a nice refresher regardless of how much time you’ve spent with it. Highly recommended.

Sep 7·1 min read·33 words

The Expendables 3

I am The Hague! I guess it shouldn't be surprising that this entry into the franchise — the entry with the most demonstrable emotion — ends up being the best of the bunch (so far). Things kick off wit…

Sep 6·2 min read·204 words

The Expendables 2

Every bit as over the top as the first one (but this time with more self-referential cheese courtesy of the governator). Norris was a fun edition (yes, I watched Walker back in the day — there was not…

Sep 5·1 min read·69 words

The Expendables

Riddles with an equal amount of clichés and bullets, this is an absurdly over the top action flick with an incredible cast. Good? No. Fun? Absolutely.

Sep 4·1 min read·28 words

A personal website is a bit like a quilt

If there's one thing I'm good at, it's torturing a metaphor. I grew up wrapped in quilts — my mom has made them for years (as a hobby and later, professionally). It's a passion, it's a patchwork assem…

Sep 1·1 min read·65 words

Trap

A movie with about as much depth as the music played at the concert that anchors the narrative. It is about as entertaining as the concert though — fun in the moment, over the top and not all that mem…

Sep 1·1 min read·108 words

This Isn't Happening

Another compelling exploration of a unique and important album by Steven Hyden. I didn’t “get” or appreciate Radiohead until well after Kid A came out but it’s now one of the first Radiohead albums I’…

Sep 1·1 min read·126 words

Rambo: Last Blood

If you encounter Rambo, leave him alone. If you can't do that and he actually talks to you — maybe, just maybe — listen to him. If you can't do any of that, well, I wish you luck. Taps the sign. This …

Aug 31·1 min read·86 words

Rambo

If you encounter Rambo, leave him alone. If you can't do that and he actually talks to you — maybe, just maybe — listen to him. If you can't do any of that, well, I wish you luck. Lots of people irrit…

Aug 29·1 min read·94 words

Lovely, Dark, and Deep

The better of Georgina Campbell’s dual cinematic sojourns into the woods. Lovely, Dark, and Deep relies far more on subtle feeling and slowly drawing you into the woods than The Watchers inclination t…

Aug 28·1 min read·58 words

Rambo III

Historical context isn't particularly kind to this one, but it's a fun action movie (with some pacing issues) and Stallone in peak John Rambo form. Stick to stick combat, hand to hand combat, a pletho…

Aug 26·1 min read·51 words

White Robes and Broken Badges

I found this to be an easy read and one that's hard to put down. The author's self-aggrandizing town wears on you a bit but his actions are certainly commendable (and I sympathize with the personal co…

Aug 26·1 min read·87 words

Longlegs

A bleak, sparsely scored horror movie that touches on the occult and lets Maika Monroe shine throughout. It also showcases Nicolas Cage in one of his best late-career performances this side of Mandy .…

Aug 25·1 min read·46 words

There Was Nothing You Could Do

You end up most attached to music that you find and relate to at the right moment. Born in the USA is a classic album by every measure, but it’s not one I’d hold up as an all time favorite. I recogniz…

Aug 22·1 min read·101 words

Rambo: First Blood Part II

A fun action movie, though a pale shadow of the first in the series. Less nuance and — in its place — more violence and jingoism.

Aug 18·1 min read·31 words

First Blood

An intense, timeless and violent action thriller. Stallone manages to convey some genuine vulnerability towards the film's conclusion and the whole film speaks to the way in which unrelenting cruelty …

Aug 18·1 min read·54 words

The Watchers

A subdued thriller with a few twists, turns and a standout performance by Dakota Fanning. It's not perfect, but it is a solid and entertaining journey. I'm curious to see what Ishana Shyamalan does ne…

Aug 16·1 min read·37 words

The Black Dahlia

A dull and — altogether — uninspired fiction. The narrator is difficult to sympathize with, the characters are dull and the conclusion is predictable. Not unbearable, but totally unnecessary.

Aug 16·1 min read·32 words

Twisters

A note for note, perfect summer blockbuster. It's got a charismatic ensemble cast, feels and villains meant for the moment (climate change, data brokers et al). It's fun. Go watch it.

Aug 13·1 min read·32 words

Out of Darkness

A dark, beautifully cinematic vignette highlighting the human tendency to fear and destroy what we don't understand. Deeply atmospheric, chilling and austere — "nasty, brutish and short" (as Hobbes wo…

Aug 12·1 min read·57 words

Shogun

We do what we can, when we can. We can only hope it's enough.

Aug 12·1 min read·15 words

A feed for everything and everything in a feed

At the moment my site has 6 different feeds . 5 RSS feeds, an ICS feeds and JSON versions of the 5 RSS feeds. I was asked how they're put together and, well, it's a bit involved.

Aug 9·1 min read·46 words

Tracking (and integrating) the concerts I've been to

I mentioned — recently — to my wife how much music data I'd incorporated into my site and she suggested I add all of the concerts we've attended over the years (she's worked at CAA, Capitol Records an…

Aug 9·1 min read·102 words

Wrath of Man

An above average Statham film, capably guided by Guy Ritchie. It doesn't really transcend the genre, but does an excellent job of giving the whole film an emotional heft via H's son that a lot of Stat…

Aug 8·1 min read·110 words

The Night Stalker

A dark, factual retelling of a string of utterly horrific crimes. I have little to say other than to express sympathy for Ramirez's victims. A monster — truly.

Aug 7·1 min read·31 words

Monster Hunter

An uninspired and altogether unnecessary (but not unwatchable!) movie. Rife with clichés — the enemy of my enemy is my friend, training montages — it's loaded up. There's even a cat cameo. A catmeo — …

Aug 6·1 min read·55 words

Freaks

Slow to get moving and slower yet to unveil itself, but the payoff is worth it. It's very much a lesson in the abject terror of being different from everyone around you and threatened because of that …

Aug 5·1 min read·51 words

The Abandon

An outstanding — almost entirely — one room thriller anchored by a brilliant performance by Jonathan Rosenthal. It plays wonderfully with the tenuous human connection he established with Damsey who ex…

Aug 4·1 min read·86 words

Night Shift

An engaging — and altogether brief — thriller. It's not the scariest movie but it is clever and did a good job of consistently throwing every hunch I had for how events would unfold out the window (wa…

Aug 3·1 min read·82 words

I.S.S.

In space no one can escape human nature. Or something. A solid cast, engaging movie and a pretty clearly choreographed lesson in either sticking together or failing apart, mirrored by the events on ea…

Aug 2·1 min read·36 words

Simulant

A nicely rendered and competently acted movie that says a bit more by not asking more interesting questions. It's the future, people are cloning themselves as androids (the legality of which is questi…

Aug 1·1 min read·71 words

A Quiet Place: Day One

Wow. What a movie. The most compelling part of the movies set in John Krasinski's Quiet Place universe is the way in which they succeed so deftly at humanizing characters and telling stories when thei…

Jul 31·3 min read·530 words

Real Steel

It’s not about the robots, it’s a redemption story — with robots. It’s riddled with clichés, nicely acted and with a Danny Elfman score to boot and, well, I’m not crying — you’re crying. Where are the…

Jul 30·1 min read·43 words

Lifehouse

I wanted to like this, I liked the premise and I liked various parts of it but the whole of it felt disjointed. I love the notion of mutual aid, I share the author’s concerns for the apocalyptic impli…

Jul 29·1 min read·139 words

Darkman

A genuinely solid studio debut for Sam Raimi. It's distinctly 90s and cheesy in the best possible way. The action is highly entertaining, the villains over the top (bad haircuts and all) and Liam Nees…

Jul 28·1 min read·61 words

The 5th Wave

A spectacularly average movie if ever there was one. The leads do their thing(s) and are serviceable but the story is uninspired, the twists are easy to spot a mile away and it's hard to get invested …

Jul 25·1 min read·79 words

Challenger

I grew up after the Challenger tragedy occurred and — as such — didn't have a personal connection or framing for the disaster. Higginbotham does an outstanding job crafting a narrative, humanizing the…

Jul 23·1 min read·92 words

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

At turns sad, sweet, hilarious and cute, it holds up as a classic teen comedy 40 years on.

Jul 22·1 min read·23 words

Starship Troopers

A satirical, witty, gruesome, oversexed and utterly over the top sci fi film. It's a cautionary tale of reckless militarism and succeeds in large part by embracing how absolutely over the top it all i…

Jul 21·1 min read·55 words

I Saw the TV Glow

A journey into self-discovery that leverages a 90s aesthetic to great success, I Saw the TV Glow uses The Pink Opaque to force its central characters to consider their perception of themselves and rea…

Jul 20·1 min read·77 words

It turns out a CMS can be pretty awesome

Having a CMS to update your site can be awesome. It's not strictly necessary and mine is entirely over-engineered but here we are. It's helpful on mobile, it's been incredibly useful on desktop.

Jul 18·1 min read·42 words

Joy Ride

A tense thriller that feels right at home in the early 2000s. It's perfectly cast and Ted Levine voices Rusty Nail exceptionally well. It's a fun watch, minimally gruesome and the kind of popcorn movi…

Jul 16·1 min read·42 words

Permafrost

A brief novella from an author who is often anything but. It's a gripping read from beginning to end and manages to make complex plot devices work remarkably well in such a short span. If you enjoy Re…

Jul 16·1 min read·59 words

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

A fun entry into a franchise that's been enjoyable for the duration of the ride. Don't expect anything grandiose but it's an excellent addition and engaging the whole way through.

Jul 14·1 min read·37 words

It Comes at Night

A bleak film in which the true horror is what people will do in the face of unseen threats and desperate circumstances.

Jul 14·1 min read·26 words

NOFX: The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories

Pack a barf bag and an open mind. A bizarre and interesting read — I'm glad they're alright (sounds like they're lucky that's the case).

Jul 9·1 min read·32 words

Green Room

A musically well-researched, taught, relentlessly entertaining and utterly horrifying thriller. The band (actually) sounds solid, has some great stickers on their van and ends up in hell chasing a gua…

Jul 8·1 min read·63 words

Pushing Ice

This is — I believe — the first standalone book I’ve read from Alastair Reynolds and I’m left wishing there was more to it. The crew of the Rockhopper is richly developed and imagined, set firmly in t…

Jul 7·1 min read·83 words

Building out a books page

I had a ton of fun reading about how Melanie put together her reading page that I thought I'd write up a quick post on how I built mine.

Jul 3·1 min read·34 words

Structured styling with custom properties

I keep tweaking the CSS for this site but the tweaks have become smaller and smaller. I removed Tailwind. I added a bunch of features[for my own amusement and then circled back to clean things up.

Jul 1·1 min read·41 words

Building a contact form with a Cloudflare worker

Moving my site to Cloudflare meant I lost access to Netlify's forms functionality. I wanted to keep my contact form and have implemented a Cloudflare worker to handle submissions.

Jul 1·1 min read·37 words

Sorry to Bother You

A bizarre, hilarious and brilliantly rendered attack on capitalism, the dehumanization of workers and gentrification. LaKeith Stanfield is brilliant (as always) and Tessa Thompson is a force. Words ca…

Jul 1·1 min read·44 words

The Beekeeper

As fun as it is absurd. Upsetting Jason Statham never seems to go well for anyone. Except for The Rock, but he’s not in this movie, so yeah — bad news all around.

Jul 1·1 min read·35 words

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Sprawling, epic and — at times — deeply touching. George Miller leaves me wanting ever more entries in the Mad Max saga. It’s not quite as good as Fury Road , but it’s the more dynamic and deeply felt…

Jun 29·1 min read·68 words

Code Dependent

A nuanced look at AI and it's effects on the modern world — it's not as negative or absolutist as I am myself. It touches on some benefits of the technology and focuses in on the human side of its imp…

Jun 29·1 min read·107 words

Shields up

I have been getting so many political texts. All from the 202 area code. I have an ever-growing number of automations in Shortcuts.app that look for substrings and reply STOP. It's still noisy — and i…

Jun 28·1 min read·38 words

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

Monsters! Explosions! KONG! GODZILLA! It was fun and Mini Kong was pretty adorable. Solid cast and performances, some heartfelt cheese and an overt car product placement (can't recall the brand now th…

Jun 25·1 min read·38 words

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

This could have been better — undeniably — but, as some fun fan service with the original cast complementing the new, I enjoyed it. Mckenna Grace carries the film as Phoebe and Kumail Nanjiani is a we…

Jun 24·1 min read·84 words

John Mulaney: The Comeback Kid

It's a John Mulaney special: which means it's relentlessly entertaining, self-deprecating and thoroughly hilarious (plus, Bill Clinton manages to feature prominently).

Jun 23·1 min read·26 words

Mandy

This is such a visually rich and spectacularly odd and gruesome film. Leading with a King Crimson tune was brave but works unexpectedly well. Outside of that track, Jóhann Jóhannsson provides a brilli…

Jun 21·1 min read·86 words

Dark Wire

Joseph Cox is a deeply engaging writer and has a knack for covering technical topics in a pretty engaging fashion. This was a read that felt more fun than I'd have expected given the seriousness of th…

Jun 20·1 min read·116 words

The Invasion

If movies could be summed up by associating them with a color this one would be a dull gray. The whole thing is drab. The performances are flat, the plot is tiresome and as much as you'd hope that an …

Jun 18·1 min read·79 words

Building a responsive menu with CSS (and no JavaScript)

For much of the time I've spent fiddling with the code for this site, I kept my navigation for desktop and mobile nearly identical. A horizontal row of labels and icons: on desktop, displayed next to …

Jun 18·1 min read·74 words

John Mulaney & The Sack Lunch Bunch

A spectacularly weird variety show that John Mulaney conducts as a droll, sarcastic pseudo-Mr. Rogers. The kids are quirky and hilarious compliments to Mulaney, while Richard Kind and Jake Gyllenhaal …

Jun 15·1 min read·70 words

Skyscraper

Dwayne Johnson! Pablo Schreiber! Predictable double crosses, explosions, stunts and adequately believable villains. Fun, not good. I didn't expect good, it delivered fun.

Jun 14·1 min read·24 words

Columbine

Dave Cullen's investigation of the Columbine tragedy makes for a compelling read and I say this as someone aware of the tragedy but also as someone who hasn't studied it in detail outside of this read…

Jun 13·1 min read·196 words

Summer of 84

Unfortunately, this one really wasn't all that fun and it certainly wasn't great. It was decent. I love a good riff on Rear Window (see Disturbia ) but Summer of 84 was fairly mediocre throughout. The…

Jun 12·1 min read·75 words

It's not just a blog

Lately, one of the things I've most enjoyed doing on this site has been expanding on the facets of it that aren't strictly related to the blog. I've been working around the edges on filling out music,…

Jun 11·1 min read·48 words

On to Cloudflare

Long story short: if you're reading this, you're reading it on my site now hosted at Cloudflare. I'd had it hosted at Netlify for quite a while but I wanted a bit more granular control and a quicker p…

Jun 11·1 min read·48 words

Did anyone ask for these AI features?

I wasn't going to say anything about WWDC. I wasn't going to say anything about WWDC. But, did anyone actually ask for these AI features?

Jun 10·1 min read·32 words

Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome

This one far, far exceeded my expectations and caps off the early phase of a franchise that — improbably — got better as it went on. The world George Miller brings to life in this is what I'd been hop…

Jun 6·1 min read·153 words

Do What You Want

A capable and thorough retelling of Bad Religion's history — it touched on many things I didn't know about the band or hadn't previously explored. I do remember wandering through record stores in my c…

Jun 5·1 min read·127 words

Integrating a (somewhat) custom CMS with Eleventy

I've spent the last, uh, month or so inching my way towards leveraging a CMS to manage the content on this site. It started with improving my self-hosted scrobbling setup, importing yet more of my per…

Jun 3·1 min read·57 words

The amount of money Spotify makes should be close to zero

It's been increasingly clear lately that Spotify only cares about music inasmuch as they can profit from it. They're not overly concerned with payouts to artists or artists themselves — they're a busi…

Jun 3·1 min read·45 words

Mad Max 2

This is closer to what I expected out of the first Mad Max movie . It's decidedly post-apocalyptic in the way I expected the first entry in the franchise to be. It sees Max scavenging for supplies in …

Jun 2·1 min read·116 words

Mad Max

Announcing that this is set in the "near future" via a brief interstitial was an abrupt way to start things. That said, it wastes no time jumping into an action packed chase scene, before settling int…

Jun 2·1 min read·92 words

Partnering with an AI company means I can no longer trust your output

Look, I get that publications are hurting for revenue and AI companies are handing out cash but you're not just providing access to written and human-generated output — you're giving up goodwill.

May 29·1 min read·45 words

Halloween Ends

This movie was and wasn't necessary and was barely fun and not good. It was necessary inasmuch as Halloween Kills didn't settle what happened to Michael. I suppose it could have, but I guess that leav…

May 28·1 min read·173 words

Halloween Kills

This one picks up directly after the 2018 continuation of the Halloween saga and I mean directly after. It could've been one movie, but runtime becomes an issue with things this gruesome and lightly c…

May 28·1 min read·150 words

Halloween

I decided to jump ahead in the Halloween saga by a good 40 years and watch the first entry in the trilogy of modern remakes. It didn’t have the novel heft of the original but it was still and thrillin…

May 27·1 min read·123 words

Halloween

In the context of its time this was likely far more terrifying than it is viewed about 46 years later. It’s thrilling, feels a bit campy and is a fun watch throughout. John Carpenter’s music is fairly…

May 27·1 min read·47 words

Blood for Dust

Hardly the most memorable movie, but it's a capable, well-acted thriller. It starts off mid-stride using a flashback to set things up and rolls slowly into the action. I can never quite square seeing …

May 25·1 min read·115 words

Civil War

A movie called Civil War that is not, in fact, entirely focused on a civl war. They don't explain how it started or why it's continuing — it begins before the movie and ends, to a degree, when the mov…

May 24·1 min read·111 words

Building pages from data in Eleventy

I've expanded the media sections I already had built to include pages generated from data using Eleventy.

May 24·1 min read·23 words

Your new tool will be used in the worst possible way

Ok, the title is hyperbolic — I like hyperbole — but it's broadly true. If you build something, someone will misuse it or break it — it's human nature.

May 24·1 min read·40 words

Boring is good

Boring is good — often great. My favorite applications and tools are typically the most staid. The ones that change little or where there's a clear progression of minor versions leading to major versi…

May 22·1 min read·37 words

AI-free products

Everything and everyone is stapling AI into their existing products at the moment. Can we get a counterbalance, a category of products that don't include it?

May 20·1 min read·28 words

This is my favorite band

I've called the same band my favorite for a long time and, the older I get, the less likely I feel that designation is to change.

May 20·1 min read·31 words

Delete your Slack workspace

Slack updated their terms of service, announcing plans to train AI/ML models on customer datas which is, frankly, super gross.

May 18·1 min read·24 words

Search is dead — long live curation

Google has planted a flag in the ground, declaring AI the future and ushering in what is best characterized as a disinterest in investing in traditional web search. It's strange to see a company shift…

May 15·1 min read·62 words

Adventures in self-hosting data

I think my self-hosted scrobbling implementation is, at this point, fairly stable. The charts I'm calculating track pretty closely with last.fm's and I'm inclined to chalk the difference up to how we'…

May 15·1 min read·38 words

Against the commercial internet

It's been mind-boggling to watch the commercial internet accelerate in an ever more user-hostile direction over the last year and change. It's no longer about offering users a "free" service in exchan…

May 10·1 min read·44 words

Improving my self-hosted scrobbling implementation

I wrote (fairly) recently about implementing my own scrobbler using Plex webhooks, edge functions and blob storage. So far — so far — this has worked quite well.

May 8·1 min read·33 words

The tech industry doesn't deserve optimism it has earned skepticism

Take a step back look around at the tech products you use, the industry and its impact on society more broadly and ask yourself: does its track record warrant optimism or have they earned a healthy de…

May 6·1 min read·49 words

Single points of failure

When I was a kid — I want to say 5 or younger — my family went to the local cemetery. My father's sister had passed away at a young age and we made regular visits to clean up her headstone and those o…

May 4·1 min read·70 words

Adblocker required

You open your browser, you go to check sports scores. The page shifts down to show you an ad, you click to close it and open the page by accident. You close the tab, you close the ad, you scroll down …

May 3·1 min read·52 words

What song is in your head?

I saw this carved into a table in Austin once and it — like many songs — has been stuck in my head ever since. I'll get hooked on a song and circle back to that roughly carved message.

May 1·1 min read·45 words

Handling images with B2, Netlify's image CDN, Hazel and Mountain Duck

I've spent a while hosting and fetching images from bunny.net when my 11ty builds. I had multiple pull zones configured and wanted to leverage bunny.net's transforms, but the pricing of $15/month per …

May 1·1 min read·46 words

Some site updates

I updated some things on my site and then I started to lose track of all of said updates.

Apr 29·1 min read·22 words

Data ownership and agency

I've been shuffling more of the data I display and present on my site around recently and I've been thinking about the agency or lack thereof associated with that data.

Apr 22·1 min read·34 words

Minimalism as self-preservation

I like to tell myself that I enjoy minimalism, that it's a preference and an aesthetic that I choose and pursue. I believe that's true, but I also believe that I've adopted it as an approach I take fo…

Apr 22·1 min read·59 words

Model behavior

AI models can generate output modeled on input. They can respond to prompts and generate vaguely intelligible text — provided the right inputs, the right human-generated inputs.

Apr 14·1 min read·29 words

You can choose to be kind

It's trite, but it's true and maybe, just maybe, the phrase has been burned into my brain from my kids watching Daniel Tiger on repeat. I've found it to be the best way to approach interactions in lif…

Apr 14·1 min read·56 words

We've stopped making things anyone wants

I'm getting older, I'm definitely getting older (everyone is), but I remember when we made things that users wanted. We don't seem to doing much of that anymore.

Apr 11·1 min read·34 words

Don’t be afraid to admit when you don’t know something

I often apply this thinking to development work but I've found it holds true in many other situations. I've dealt with imposter syndrome for my whole career and still battle with it. I'm a self-taught…

Apr 10·1 min read·59 words

A retrospective on a year without streaming music

I wrote, roughly a year ago, about wanting to stream my own music and I've spent that time exploring and settling into options. I still don't want streaming music and I don't miss it, but I've learned…

Apr 9·1 min read·51 words

Data collection should always be opt in

If you're offering a service online, you should only collect data from users that is strictly required to operate service. I don't care what you're building.

Apr 9·1 min read·33 words

AI cannot and should not replace search

Name a search engine and it will have integrated AI — but can you name one that's any better for it? I'm at a loss and I can't help but wince every time another announces some sort of LLM integration.

Apr 5·1 min read·47 words

Enhancing pagination with a page selector

I've made a change to my site's pagination wherein I've enhanced the page count displayed at the bottom of my home and links pages to display the page count in a select element. The select displays a …

Apr 5·1 min read·54 words

Access to data isn't a grant to exploit it

As the AI hype cycle continues and continues to take on ever more characteristics of a bubble, we should be making an ever more concerted effort to block, confound and frustrate the crawlers they use …

Apr 4·1 min read·75 words

Building a scrobbler using Plex webhooks, edge functions and blob storage

I've written before about embedding music into my site and I've largely used Last.fm to do so. Their API is rather extensive, though it is showing its age — the default response format is XML, they've…

Apr 2·1 min read·79 words

I like Safari, but nobody should be required to use it

I've tried all the browsers and I always return to Safari. I've been a longtime resident of Apple's walled garden/prison, my grandmother bought stock during Apple's IPO and my whole family uses, well,…

Mar 27·1 min read·59 words

Thoughts on permanence

I think a lot about permanence — both as a broader concept and how it applies to myself, my life and my work on a more personal level. It's a comforting concept when you're seeking stability, but it's…

Mar 27·1 min read·55 words

We have a content quality problem, not a content quantity problem

Are you short on things to read? Things to watch? Things to listen to? Things to scroll through? Me neither.

Mar 26·1 min read·31 words

An indie web primer

If I haven't made it clear enough recently, I love where the open web is heading and the indie web's part in it. This has grown out of the opportunity created by the ongoing fragmentation of the corpo…

Mar 20·1 min read·79 words

It's not AI generated music, it's AI generated noise

I'm going to harp on this again but, yes, yes AI-generated content is derivative. Music is appealing because it is an innately human, creative act. It could be something as ugly as death metal, as soo…

Mar 18·1 min read·57 words

Lightweight search in Eleventy

I've been using Pagefind for my site search for a while now and would readily recommend it, but I wanted to throw together something a bit lighter weight and customizable.

Mar 18·1 min read·34 words

Look for longevity

Whenever I'm looking at a service, a product or a tool I like to look for longevity or evaluate the potential for it. It's easy to get caught up in the hype around something new but, so often, we fail…

Mar 15·1 min read·57 words

Building a reactive website

No, not that kind. I'm thinking of the indie web kind we're seeing lately. The kind that incorporates content from around the web that the creator of the site cares with and engages with. I find this …

Mar 14·1 min read·68 words

The internet isn't dying, it's changing

Ok, maybe some of it's dying. I believe it's too far reaching and too deeply-embedded to really, truly be dying. What we're seeing is a bust cycle for commercial social media and information-driven pl…

Mar 12·1 min read·99 words

Of course AI is extractive, everything is lately

It's easy to pick on AI, because, well, it's costing a whole lot and providing, at best, dubious benefits. One of the easiest criticisms to lob at it is that it's extractive — whether you're pointing …

Mar 10·1 min read·73 words

Sharing links via RSS, sharing links via APIs

I follow and subscribe to a whole bunch of blogs and less and less high-volume news via RSS. It's one of my absolute favorite mediums for keeping up with and reading content on the web.

Mar 10·1 min read·43 words

Using an Eleventy event to optimize component JavaScript

I've added a small event to optimize web component JavaScript when my site builds.

Mar 10·1 min read·22 words

Surfacing most used tags in Eleventy

I made some lightweight design changes to my site, keeping things simple but moving the date up above post headers, surfacing tags below and restoring Read more links.

Mar 9·1 min read·34 words

Signs you've taken a bad job

This applies to full-time employment, but still. I've encountered all of these (all in the same role — and yes, hindsight is 20/20!). I've had several excellent roles since and experienced none of thi…

Mar 5·1 min read·41 words

A music workflow for 2024

I think, I think I've found a music workflow I'm happy with for 2024 and it looks like this.

Mar 5·1 min read·24 words

I'm going to keep opting out

Marketing, solicitations, advertising, political contact, direct mailers, email campaigns, cookies, ads — it's all opt out. It puts the burden on you to opt out of each communication each message, eac…

Mar 3·1 min read·66 words

Go ahead and block AI web crawlers

AI companies are crawling the open web to, ostensibly, improve the quality of their models and products. This process is extractive and accrues the benefit to said companies, not the owners of sites b…

Mar 2·1 min read·44 words

Now's the time to own and host your own content

We've seen Meta, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Reddit, Automattic, Mozilla — name a company — integrate AI that continues to be trained on public data with or without creator consent.

Feb 28·1 min read·39 words

Everything is a checklist

The author ruminates on routine, mental health and productibity.

Feb 28·1 min read·13 words

Building a theme toggle web component

I (very recently!) added a theme toggle to my site, right up there in the menu. It's a shiny sun or a purple moon depending on your preference. It was a liquid template with some JavaScript sprinkled …

Feb 27·1 min read·51 words

Towards a quieter, friendlier web

I love the internet, I grew up on it and (probably) spend too much time on it. I found the music I love on it, I've made friends on it, I went to school for business but built a career on the web inst…

Feb 27·1 min read·72 words

Give me a web feed or an API for everything

If I'm using your service, if I'm paying for your service, I really need it to have an API or a web feed.

Feb 26·1 min read·33 words

It's past time to delete your Reddit account

Head on over to your account settings, scroll down, click Delete enter some parting thoughts and confirm. Go outside and touch grass, as the kids say. The best social network has always been your cont…

Feb 26·1 min read·44 words

I need AI

I need AI to waste energy. I need it to deprive vulnerable communities of water so that it can be used to cool new data centers. I need AI to make up answers to my questions.

Feb 25·1 min read·39 words

Weaving music data in and out of my personal website

I started integrating music data into my personal website when I added Last.fm artist and album displays to my now page. Initially, I tried sourcing artist images from a few different services, knowin…

Feb 22·1 min read·91 words

Building a bespoke now-playing web component

I've long had a now playing element on the home page of my site that displays either what I've checked into on Trakt, the Lakers' record and who they're playing when a game is on or the last song I've…

Feb 21·1 min read·73 words

Automatic Mastodon post embeds

I use Nicolas Hoizey's GitHub action to syndicate my web activity to Mastodon. Recently, I removed the display of webmentions from my posts after seeing Chris and Robb discuss some privacy concerns ar…

Feb 20·1 min read·60 words

Using B2 as a JSON data store

My links page is powered by the Readwise Reader API but because there are, quite reasonably, rate limits in place, I've gone ahead and reduced the page count I fetch on each build and cached older lin…

Feb 19·1 min read·52 words

Adding a light-dark theme toggle

I dropped a light/dark theme toggle into the navigation of my site, replacing the prior reliance on the visitor's preference set at the OS level (though it does still consider this preference).

Feb 17·1 min read·37 words

Setting up image transforms in Eleventy

Eleventy added a transform option to process images in Eleventy v3.0.0-alpha.5 and Image v4.0.1 so, naturally, I had to set it up on my site. If you don't want to read this post, you can check out the…

Feb 14·1 min read·49 words

Renting your music means accepting that it will disappear

When I was using Apple Music I had a smart playlist that would surface music that was no longer available on the service and having to do that sums up one of the many problems with music streaming ser…

Feb 9·1 min read·71 words

On getting tattooed

I got my first tattoo over ten years ago. It was a few lines from Tom Waits' Coney Island Baby set on the inside of my left bicep as a dedication to my then fiancé and now wife of ten years. I was tol…

Feb 7·1 min read·79 words

Check if images are available before optimizing in Eleventy

How to check if a remote image is available before attempting to optimize it using @11ty/eleventy-img.

Feb 5·1 min read·25 words

Browsing the mobile web sucks

The mobile web isn't all bad, but so much of the experience is.

Feb 3·1 min read·18 words

I don't want anything your AI generates

AI output is fundamentally derivative and exploitative (of content, labor and the environment).

Jan 31·1 min read·20 words

Mobile web development with Codespaces

Wherein the author describes making code changes on a mobile device (iOS) and pushing them live.

Jan 26·1 min read·21 words

You don't need a framework for that

You don't need a framework for any website primarily focused on presenting information to users.

Jan 26·1 min read·22 words

Your attention is precious

It's finite, it's exhaustible and it ought to be held close and carefully guarded.

Jan 11·1 min read·18 words

Link page improvements

I made a few improvements to my link page that's powered by Readwise Reader.

Jan 10·1 min read·17 words

Link blogging using Readwise Reader

How I use Readwise Reader to post and share links.

Jan 10·1 min read·15 words

Your site, your home, your web

A brief, perhaps unoriginal, plea to have fun sharing and building on the web. (updated)

Jan 9·1 min read·21 words

I found the music I love on the internet

My roundabout journey of musical discovery on the internet.

Jan 8·1 min read·18 words

I removed Tailwind from my site

A brief run through removing Tailwind.css from this site.

Jan 5·1 min read·15 words

2023 in review

A quick year in review post to close out 2023.

Dec 28·1 min read·13 words

Programmatically importing your Last.fm listening data to ListenBrainz

I love Last.fm, but in the interest of redundancy, Ive started programmatically importing my listening data from Last.fm into ListenBrainz.

Dec 5·1 min read·28 words

Check in to your personal site

For a while now I've had a line on my homepage displaying the track I'm currently listening to via Last.fm. In the interest of taking things entirely too far I've expanded what it does a fair bit.

Nov 30·1 min read·43 words

Hacking together a Tweekly.fm replacement

I mused the other day about wanting a replacement for Tweekly.fm which shut down due to Twitter's API changes and restrictions. In my case, the aim would be to make this compatible with Mastodon since…

Nov 15·1 min read·50 words

Doppler, locally stored music and storage as a beneficial constraint

Over the weekend I moved my music listening to the excellent, macOS native app Doppler. I've spent entirely too much time moving music, thinking about music and fiddling with my setup for someone that…

Nov 13·1 min read·48 words

My default apps, 2023 edition

In the spirit of following a trend, here are my default apps as of now (the end of 2023).

Nov 6·1 min read·24 words

Onward, to The Storygraph

Recently, I've been using Goodreads, begrudgingly, to track my reading activity. I had been using Oku but wanted to hedge against the lack of updates since 2022 or so. Looking around for an alternativ…

Oct 23·1 min read·66 words

The Postal Service at Hollywood Bowl

The District Sleeps Alone Tonight Such Great Heights Sleeping In Nothing Better Recycled Air Clark Gable We Will Become Silhouettes This Place Is a Prison Brand New Colony (Dedicated to everyone in at…

Oct 18·1 min read·68 words

Death Cab for Cutie at Hollywood Bowl

The New Year Lightness Title and Registration Expo '86 The Sound of Settling Tiny Vessels Transatlanticism Passenger Seat Death of an Interior Decorator We Looked Like Giants A Lack of Color

Oct 18·1 min read·38 words

The Postal Service at Greek Theatre

The District Sleeps Alone Tonight Such Great Heights Sleeping In Nothing Better (with Jen Wood) Recycled Air Clark Gable We Will Become Silhouettes This Place Is a Prison Brand New Colony (Dedicated t…

Oct 12·1 min read·65 words

Death Cab for Cutie at Greek Theatre

The New Year Lightness Title and Registration Expo '86 The Sound of Settling Tiny Vessels Transatlanticism Passenger Seat (Started over due to medical in the crowd) Death of an Interior Decorator We L…

Oct 12·1 min read·46 words

Migrating your Letterboxd data

In case you missed the news Letterboxd was acquired and, assurances about nothing changing quickly followed. But, I think it's safe to say we've seen this movie before.

Oct 3·1 min read·32 words

'It Is Possible to Both Stream and Buy Music'

I've been streaming music again in part (and I know this is ridiculous) because Spotify is ubiquitous, well-integrated and has a — well — API that's usable for my purposes.

Sep 19·1 min read·39 words

Semi-automated hashtags for syndicated posts

I went out on a limb recently and decided to build a custom collection in Eleventy that aggregates my post tags and link tags (sourced from Matter). These tags then get appended to shared post or link…

Sep 10·1 min read·49 words

On imposter syndrome

I had imposter syndrome when I entered the tech industry and I still have it years later. I imagine most folks have it to one degree or another.

Sep 6·1 min read·31 words

Now page: grouping episodes of the same tv show

I made a minor update to how I'm normalizing TV data for display on my now page.

Sep 6·1 min read·26 words

Drying up now page templates and normalizing data in Eleventy

My now page consists of a number of similar sections — some bespoke text, a number of media grids and lists. The text is repeated once, the lists are easily templated out in Liquid.js and the media gr…

Sep 3·1 min read·52 words

Displaying now playing data with matching emoji using Netlify edge functions and Eleventy

My site is built using 11ty and is rebuilt once an hour. These frequent rebuilds accomplish a few things, notably updating webmention data and keeping my now page current.

Aug 25·1 min read·42 words

Road to madness: charting Apple Music listening data

I've written before about displaying my listening data from Apple Music but, recently, I've attempted to take things a bit further.

Jul 21·1 min read·29 words

Building a popular posts widget in Eleventy using Plausible analytics

I took some time last week to build out a popular posts widget after seeing Zach's implementation using Google Analytics.

Jul 12·1 min read·30 words

Embrace, extend, enshittify

Meta launched Threads and it'll support ActivityPub soon. You should federate with the app since, well, all your posts are accessible to them anyways should they make the effort to obtain them.

Jul 5·1 min read·35 words

Displaying listening data from Apple Music using MusicKit.js

Up until now my now page has sourced music data from Last.fm (and may well again). But, in the interest in experimenting a bit, I've tried my hand at rewriting that part of the page to leverage data f…

Jun 21·1 min read·52 words

Cynic at Teragram Ballroom

Intro Veil of Maya Celestial Voyage Interlude The Eagle Nature Sentiment I'm but a Wave to... Interlude Uroboric Forms Textures How Could I Saging Ritual / Dedication to Sean Reinert and Sean Malone K…

Jun 18·1 min read·58 words

Atheist at Teragram Ballroom

In the Flesh? ( Pink Floyd song) No Truth (Intro) No Truth Mineral On They Slay Enthralled in Essence Your Life's Retribution Air An Incarnation's Dream (Intro) An Incarnation's Dream The Formative Ye…

Jun 18·1 min read·58 words

Support small businesses (internet ones too)

Small businesses are awesome — the owners are local, the service is better, the products are often unique, and they don't usually look to scale until their employees are peeing in bottles. Go out of y…

Jun 16·1 min read·47 words

From ICS to JSON: surfacing anticipated albums

I use MusicHarbor by Marcos Tanaka to track upcoming albums from my favorite artists (typically by syncing my last.fm data with the app.) When I see something new that I want to add to my collection I…

Jun 8·1 min read·52 words

Optimizing for performance with Eleventy

In the interest of over-engineering my personal site I've gone out of my way to optimize it for performance.

Jun 7·1 min read·24 words

The National at Greek Theatre

Once Upon a Poolside Tropic Morning News Eucalyptus New Order T-Shirt Don't Swallow the Cap Bloodbuzz Ohio I Need My Girl Abel Conversation 16 I'll Still Destroy You Alien Grease in Your Hair Humiliat…

May 31·1 min read·66 words

Soccer Mommy at Greek Theatre

Crawling in My Skin Darkness Forever Unholy Affliction Bones Feel It All the Time Circle the Drain Shotgun Your Dog Don’t Ask Me

May 31·1 min read·28 words

Domain names as discoverable personal identifiers for the web

What if — and hear me out here — instead of using email or a platform-owned account, we leveraged individual domain names as personal identifiers for the web?

May 26·1 min read·37 words

I block ads

I block ads in the browser. I block ads at the DNS level.

May 23·1 min read·16 words

Now page update: favorite articles from Matter

I dropped in a quick update to my now page to display the 5 most recent articles from my favorites feed in Matter.

May 5·1 min read·30 words

A Safari-specific guide to making the modern web suck less

Take a second, turn off all of your browser extensions, go to a popular website that comes to mind and take a look at how bad the default experience is. Bonus points — pull up the dev tools, go to the…

May 1·1 min read·63 words

We lost the thread

We've arrived at a point where we can say that our attempts to port relationships and social interactions to the internet has been an unambiguous failure.

Apr 27·1 min read·30 words

Talk: Building a now page with Eleventy

My talk from the Eleventy meetup about building my now page (you even get to see how much I resemble my avatar).

Apr 24·1 min read·29 words

I don't want streaming music, I just want to stream my music

I don't want your streaming music service, I just want the music I've collected and care about available to stream.

Apr 5·1 min read·32 words

Another Eleventy content syndication path

After posting and discussing my post from yesterday with Nicolas Hoizey I decided to explore his suggested path and explore using a GitHub action to handle posts to Mastodon, rather than Make.

Mar 28·1 min read·37 words

Automate and syndicate content from Eleventy to Mastodon

I've discussed building a now page using Eleventy, but I also syndicate a subset of that content out to Mastodon using @11ty/eleventy-activity-feed and Make.

Mar 27·1 min read·32 words

Lazy select-based pagination in Eleventy

I've relaunched, rebuilt and rewritten my personal blog more times than I can count, and I've had a trail of posts I've never fully migrated at each turn. This weekend, while relaxing and watching mov…

Mar 27·1 min read·67 words

.env files in Eleventy

The Eleventy docs recommend the dotenv package for working with .env files, but I've found dotenv-flow to be a bit more useful inasmuch as support for .env* file patterns make development more conveni…

Mar 24·1 min read·37 words

Scheduled Eleventy builds on Vercel with cron-triggered GitHub actions

In an effort to get away from client-side Javascript and embrace Eleventy for what it is (a static site generator), I've dropped my social-utils instance offline and my now-playing track display on my…

Mar 19·1 min read·49 words

Building my now page using Eleventy

As part of my commitment to writing about things I've written in other frameworks in Eleventy, this is how I re-engineered my /now page in Eleventy.

Mar 18·1 min read·32 words

Webmentions in Eleventy

In the interest of continuing to repeat myself I'm writing, once again, about adding webmentions to a blog.

Mar 17·1 min read·21 words

Automating RSS syndication and sharing with Next.js and GitHub

I wrote a basic syndication tool in Next.js to automate sharing items from configured RSS feeds to Mastodon. This tool works by leveraging a few basic configurations, the Mastodon API and a (reasonabl…

Feb 23·1 min read·59 words

Building a now page using Next.js and social APIs

With my personal site now sitting at Vercel and written in Next.js I decided to rework my now page by leveraging a variety of social APIs.

Feb 20·1 min read·35 words

Adding client side webmentions to my Next.js blog

The latest iteration of my website is built on Next.js, specifically Timothy Lin's wonderful Tailwind/Next.js starter blog..

Feb 18·1 min read·25 words

Workflows: handling inbound email on Fastmail with regular expressions (now featuring ChatGPT)

I've been using Fastmail for years now and have explored a number of different approaches to handling mail. I've approached it by creating rules targeting lists of top level domains, I've gone with no…

Feb 17·1 min read·68 words

Adding client-side rendered webmentions to my blog

My blog is currently hosted on weblog.lol which allows for a simple and configurable weblog managed in git with posts formatted in markdown.

Feb 9·1 min read·30 words

Automating (and probably overengineering) my now page

omg.lol (where I point my domain) and host most of my site content recently launched support for /now pages.

Feb 6·1 min read·26 words

The Smashing Pumpkins at Hollywood Bowl

Atum Empires Bullet With Butterfly Wings Today We Only Come Out at Night Cyr Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads cover) Solara Eye (with The Veronicas) Ava Adore Tonight, Tonight (with Mike Garson) Star…

Nov 20·1 min read·58 words

Death Cab for Cutie at Santa Barbara Bowl

I Don't Know How I Survive Roman Candles The New Year Cath... A Movie Script Ending Here to Forever Black Sun Northern Lights I Miss Strangers Crooked Teeth Rand McNally I Will Follow You Into the Dar…

Oct 20·1 min read·90 words

Apple-centric digital privacy tools

A rundown of privacy tools that work well with Apple's technology ecosystem.

May 31·1 min read·16 words

Fixing Safari iCloud syncing

I've been having an intermittent issue with Safari failing to sync any data via iCloud that you would normally expect — history, tabs, bookmarks and the landing page were all behaving independently de…

May 28·1 min read·41 words

Simple data fetching with custom React hooks and SWR

My site was scaffolded out using Timothy Lin's tailwind-nextjs-starter-blog project (which I highly recommend checking out). As part of the build out I wanted to display the books I'm currently readin…

May 23·1 min read·55 words

Migrating to Fastmail

So you want to migrate over to Fastmail for your email — here's how you can go about doing so as seamlessly as possible.

Apr 13·1 min read·27 words

Apple Messages: a tale of woe OR how to fix sync, a crash loop and accept data loss

Apple's Messages app recently started crashing in a loop on my Mac Mini — it would happen every time the app was opened after a 5-10 second delay. Deleting conversations from other devices and letting…

Apr 6·1 min read·61 words

2022 reading list

I'm still plugging away with my reading habit and my streak is now at 772 days.

Apr 3·1 min read·19 words

Automating email cleanup in Gmail

Lately I've been leaning into automating the cleanup of email I receive in Gmail using a combination of Inbox-era categories that the application still exposes via search and Google Apps Script.

Mar 28·1 min read·36 words

Dinosaur Jr. at Henry Fonda Theater

Bulbs of Passion I Ain't Garden I Expect It Always To Be Waiting I Met the Stones No Bones Been There All the Time The Wagon Little Fury Things Mountain Man Start Choppin Feel the Pain Freak Scene Gar…

Feb 21·1 min read·56 words

Apple Music: a tale of woe

Last week my Apple Music collection, in as far as I can tell, become corrupted or otherwise unmanageable. This isn't the first issue I've had with the service nor is it the most severe — I gave Apple …

Feb 15·1 min read·57 words

Don't Think of an Elephant!

Don't Think of an Elephant! is the definitive handbook for understanding what happened in the 2004 election and communicating effectively about key issues facing America today. Author George Lakoff ha…

Aug 28·1 min read·179 words

A brief intro to git

As a developer, a version control system is a critical part of your toolkit, no matter the size of the project or team you may find yourself working on.

Jun 7·1 min read·34 words

Digital privacy tools

This is a helpful, albeit basic, guide to online privacy tools.

Apr 1·1 min read·14 words

2021 reading list

I've been working on making reading a habit again for the past few years (my streak in books is currently 383 days).

Mar 21·1 min read·25 words

.ssh directory permissions

I was recently setting up a new, always-on machine that I do occasional dev work.

Nov 9·1 min read·18 words

EARN IT Act threatens end-to-end encryption

While we're all distracted by stockpiling latex gloves and toilet paper, there's a bill tiptoeing through the US Congress that could inflict the backdoor virus that law enforcement agencies have been …

Mar 13·1 min read·44 words

FBI Director Chris Wray Pitches Weakened Encryption At A Cyber Security Conference

On May 29, 2018, the FBI promised to deliver an updated count of encrypted devices in its possession. As James Comey and his replacement, Chris Wray, continued to advocate for weakened encryption, the…

Mar 12·1 min read·72 words

Tech companies agree to voluntary principles as governments ask for encryption backdoors

Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, Snap and Roblox have agreed to adopt 11 voluntary principles to prevent online child sexual exploitation, government officials said on Thursday.

Mar 11·1 min read·37 words

Chrome tool helps developers make websites more color blind friendly

Google has launched a new Chrome tool that allows developers to mimic visual impairments like color blindness to help them fix accessibility issues on their sites. Developers can use this feature by l…

Mar 11·1 min read·52 words

Dressing for the Surveillance Age

Tom Goldstein, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, took an 'invisibility cloak' from a pile on a chair in his office and pulled it on over his head.

Mar 10·1 min read·38 words

The EARN IT Act Is Unconstitutional: Fourth Amendment

So far, I've covered what I believe to be some First Amendment and due process problems with the EARN IT Act bill. Last but not least, let's talk about the Fourth Amendment.

Mar 10·1 min read·40 words

Last Week's Internet Calamity That Wasn't

This is a story about something that could have gone wrong on the internet this week but instead turned out mostly OK. How often can you say that? Around nine o'clock on the East Coast on Friday, Febr…

Mar 9·1 min read·54 words

DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

Google recently launched a desktop redesign. The favicon and URL breadcrumbs were turned into a header for organic search results.

Mar 6·1 min read·27 words

Ajit Pai follows Congress' instructions, requires new anti-robocall tech

Phone companies would be required to deploy technology that prevents spoofing of Caller ID under a plan announced today by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai. Pai framed it as his own…

Mar 6·1 min read·53 words

EARN IT is an attack on encryption

Yesterday a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators introduced a new bill called the EARN IT act. On its face, the bill seems like a bit of inside baseball having to do with legal liability for information …

Mar 6·1 min read·45 words

The EARN IT Act Is a Sneak Attack on Encryption

A bipartisan pair of US senators today introduced long-rumored legislation known as the EARN IT Act. Meant to combat child sexual exploitation online, the bill threatens to erode established protectio…

Mar 5·1 min read·54 words

The History of the URL

On the twenty-two computer scientists met to discuss an issue with 'computer mail' (now known as email). Attendees included the guy who would create Sun Microsystems, the guy who made Zork, the NTP gu…

Mar 5·1 min read·50 words

The Graham-Blumenthal Bill: A New Path for DOJ to Finally Break Encryption

Members of Congress are about to introduce a bill that will undermine the law that undergirds free speech on the Internet. If passed, the bill known as the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of I…

Mar 4·1 min read·60 words

Let's Encrypt Vulnerability

The BBC is reporting a vulnerability in the Let's Encrypt certificate service.

Mar 4·1 min read·15 words

Debugging JavaScript - Interview with Mehdi Osman

Debugging JavaScript is one of those topics where people tend to be divided into two camps - those that console.log and those that use a debugger. In this interview, I am learning more about the topic…

Mar 4·1 min read·53 words

Firefox is showing the way back to a world that's private by default

One of the nice things about looking at the full scope of tech news for the day is that two stories that you otherwise wouldn't think to connect end up playing off each other perfectly. So it was toda…

Mar 2·1 min read·58 words

Prevent content from being hidden underneath a fixed header by using `scroll-margin-top`

If you've ever implemented a design with a fixed header, you've surely had this problem.

Mar 1·1 min read·27 words

Tech Companies Are Helping Bosses Monitor Everything You Do at Work

Microchips, mobile spyware, and perpetual monitoring are all part of capital's fantasy of twenty-first-century scientific management — a future in which our movements, impulses, and rhythms are perfec…

Mar 1·1 min read·45 words

Deploying a Jekyll site to Netlify with Docker and GitLab CI

This is a step-by-step guide covering how to automatically deploy a Jekyll site to Netlify using Docker and GitLab CI/CD. This post assumes that have already set up a GitLab repository and a Netlify s…

Mar 1·1 min read·46 words

FCC Proposes to Fine Wireless Carriers $200M for Selling Customer Location Data

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today proposed fines of more than $200 million against the nation's four largest wireless carriers for selling access to their customers' location info…

Feb 28·1 min read·52 words

Power to the People

When you upload photos to Instagram, back up your phone to 'the cloud', send an email through GMail, or save a document in a storage application like Dropbox or Google Drive, your data is being saved …

Feb 27·1 min read·44 words

Let's Encrypt hits 1 billion certificates issued

We issued our billionth certificate on February 27, 2020. We're going to use this big round number as an opportunity to reflect on what has changed for us, and for the Internet, leading up to this eve…

Feb 27·1 min read·71 words

Fixing memory leaks in web applications

Part of the bargain we struck when we switched from building server-rendered websites to client-rendered SPAs is that we suddenly had to take a lot more care with the resources on the user's device.

Feb 26·1 min read·40 words

Firefox turns encrypted DNS on by default to thwart snooping ISPs

Firefox will start switching browser users to Cloudflare's encrypted-DNS service today and roll out the change across the United States in the coming weeks.

Feb 25·1 min read·35 words

Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech

After a decade or so of the general sentiment being in favor of the internet and social media as a way to enable more speech and improve the marketplace of ideas, in the last few years the view has sh…

Feb 22·1 min read·58 words

Facebook asks for a moat of regulations it already meets

It's suspiciously convenient that Facebook already fulfills most of the regulatory requirements it's asking governments to lay on the rest of the tech industry.

Feb 18·1 min read·34 words

The DOJ Asks Startup Investors: Are Tech Giants Too Powerful?

Whether the largest tech companies have too much power has become a common question in Washington, DC. The House Antitrust subcommittee and Federal Trade Commission both have active investigations on …

Feb 17·1 min read·42 words

EFF's Recommendations for Consumer Data Privacy Laws

Strong privacy legislation in the United States is possible, necessary, and long overdue. EFF emphasizes the following concrete recommendations for proposed legislation regarding consumer data privacy…

Feb 17·1 min read·33 words

Khalid at Staples Center

Free Spirit 8TEEN Twenty One Hundred Saved My Bad Bad Luck Bluffin' Vertigo Motion Better Right Back Location Silence (Marshmello cover) American Teen Another Sad Love Song Heaven Alive Paradise Self …

Jun 26·1 min read·63 words

The National at The Theatre at Ace Hotel

A screening of the film I Am Easy To Find soundtracked by the album of the same name by The National .

May 7·1 min read·30 words

Touché Amoré at The Regent

Flowers and You New Halloween Just Exist Pathfinder Rapture Praise/Love Anyone/Anything The Great Repetition Art Official Harbor Amends Displacement Steps (with Jon Simmons) Palm Dreams Skyscraper Hom…

Mar 24·1 min read·36 words

Balance and Composure at The Regent

When I Come Undone Quake I Can't Do This Alone Parachutes Back of Your Head Void Fade Keepsake Stonehands Cut Me Open Midnight Zone Spinning Postcard Reflection I Tore You Apart in My Head Encore Tiny…

Mar 24·1 min read·45 words

Australian political parties hacked

Morrison said that the Australian government had made moves to 'ensure the integrity of our electoral system,' including instructing the Australian Cyber Security Centre 'to be ready to provide any po…

Feb 18·1 min read·50 words

Waste of Space Orchestra - Seeker's Reflection

I could not be more excited for this release.

Feb 18·1 min read·16 words

Russia tries to force social media giants to relocate servers to Russia

The Russian government agency responsible for censorship on the Internet has accused Facebook and Twitter of failing to comply with a law requiring all servers that store personal data to be located i…

Jan 21·1 min read·46 words

GoDaddy secretly injecting js into customer sites

I wish this were surprising. If you're still using GoDaddy for hosting, you should disable this.

Jan 14·1 min read·23 words

The tech education con

Public education, like any institution, has to change with the times. Learning digital skills like coding should be part of any twenty-first century educational program.

Jan 13·1 min read·29 words

Senators press wireless carriers on mobile throttling

'All online traffic should be treated equally, and Internet service providers should not discriminate against particular content or applications for competitive advantage purposes or otherwise.'

Nov 15·1 min read·32 words

Fugazi - Turnover (Live 1991)

Absolutely classic.

Nov 10·1 min read·7 words

FCC calls community broadband an attack on free speech

... ISPs could prevent this by simply offering better, faster, and cheaper service. But it's far easier and cheaper to try and buy laws restricting consumer rights, and to have your favorite public of…

Nov 5·1 min read·76 words

America's internet freedom rating drops following net neutrality repeal

Freedom House, a US think tank, analyzes internet freedom around the world every year, and this year's report saw a drop in the US's rating.

Nov 5·1 min read·34 words

Facebook isn't sorry — it only wants more data

We've already given it so much, why stop now? No one else is going to delete Facebook, so why should I? Facebook understands this — the data tells them so. It also tells them that slickly produced vid…

Oct 9·1 min read·59 words

CA governor signs nation's strictest net neutrality law

The Justice Department immediately challenged the law, saying only the federal government can regulate broadband providers.

Sep 30·1 min read·24 words

Death Cab for Cutie at Hollywood Forever Cemetery

I Dreamt We Spoke Again Summer Years The Ghosts of Beverly Drive Long Division Gold Rush Title and Registration Photobooth No Sunlight What Sarah Said 60 & Punk I Will Possess Your Heart Autumn Love N…

Sep 29·1 min read·75 words

Bastille at The Wiltern

Good Grief Blame Icarus World Gone Mad These Streets Warmth The Draw I Know You (Craig David cover) (with "Durban Skies" snippet) Flaws Happier (Marshmello & Bastille cover) Overjoyed Two Evils Laura …

Sep 25·1 min read·57 words

The National at Santa Barbara Bowl

Nobody Else Will Be There The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness Walk It Back Guilty Party Don't Swallow the Cap Bloodbuzz Ohio I Need My Girl Sorrow (with Phoebe Bridgers) Start a War Green Gloves …

Sep 23·1 min read·71 words

Phoebe Bridgers at Santa Barbara Bowl

Smoke Signals Georgia Me & My Dog ( boygenius song) Killer Motion Sickness Scott Street

Sep 23·1 min read·21 words

U.S. cell carriers want to help manager your identity online

But do you want your carrier managing your logins across the websites and apps you use on your phone?

Sep 15·1 min read·29 words

The Copenhagen Letter

Tech is not above us. It should be governed by all of us, by our democratic institutions. It should play by the rules of our societies. It should serve our needs, both individual and collective, as mu…

Sep 6·1 min read·43 words

FCC chairman boosts telecom companies, throws Silicon Valley under the bus

There's absolutely a legitimate conversation to be had here in terms of what to do about privacy and speech in the Facebook and Twitter era. And that may or may not involve crafting new regulations. B…

Sep 5·1 min read·98 words

Time to break up Facebook

...the chilling effect of Facebook and other tech giants buying up every promising startup is noticeable. 'I think if we have a tech economy entirely premised on the idea that monopolists may one day …

Sep 4·1 min read·51 words

California passes net neutrality bill

S.B. 822 bans blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization, classic ways that companies have violated net neutrality principles. It also incorporates much of what the FCC learned and incorporated int…

Sep 3·1 min read·67 words

Google tracks user location — even after they opt out

This isn't at all surprising. Google's business consists of monetizing data provided to it by its users — if you're not comfortable with that, the only real fix is to stop using Google's services alto…

Aug 13·1 min read·45 words

CA net neutrality bill back on track

The bill enshrines not only the fundamentals of net neutrality, such as prohibiting ISPs from throttling or blocking sites, but also prohibits other telecom trickery, such as zero rating—a practice wh…

Aug 10·1 min read·53 words

OIG report: FCC lied about being hacked

The OIG report shows that Pai knew from the start that the story of a hack-attack was unsupported by evidence and disputed by experts -- we knew that too, because those experts were speaking publicly …

Aug 8·1 min read·54 words

FCC admits its site was never hacked

No one seriously believed the FCC's hackers-ate-my-homework excuse, especially after the FCC refused to cooperate with law-enforcement agencies who wanted to investigate the supposed attack and stonew…

Aug 7·1 min read·38 words

Don't pin your political hopes on tech giants

Elon Musk donates to Republicans, Facebook donates to Republicans. This doesn't excuse Musk, however. If anything, it should deepen the growing sense that Silicon Valley is concerned first and foremos…

Aug 2·1 min read·55 words

Panoply announces ad targeting for podcasts

The last thing we need is the ad industry co-opting podcasts to enable more invasive tracking. No, thanks.

Aug 2·1 min read·24 words

The Bullshit Web

An honest web is one in which the overwhelming majority of the code and assets downloaded to a user's computer are used in a page's visual presentation, with nearly all the remainder used to define th…

Jul 31·1 min read·77 words

FBI once again compares creating encryption back doors to putting a man on the moon

We're a country that has unbelievable innovation. We put a man on the moon. We have the power of flight. We have autonomous vehicles… [T]he idea that we can't solve this problem as a society -- I just…

Jul 25·1 min read·56 words

CA net neutrality bill makes a comeback

After compromise, nation's toughest net neutrality bill back on track.

Jul 8·1 min read·17 words

Comcast throttling mobile video and charging extra for high quality streaming

Comcast's Xfinity Mobile service is imposing new speed limits on video watching and personal hotspot usage, and the company will start charging extra for high-definition video over the cellular networ…

Jul 3·1 min read·41 words

California approves new online privacy rules

Consumers would have the right to request all the data collected about them from a business up to twice a year, and businesses would be required to disclose the information free of charge. Consumers w…

Jun 29·1 min read·63 words

Popular tech companies work to stop California privacy law

The idea that Californians might gain sweeping new privacy rights has spooked Silicon Valley, internet service providers, and other industries that increasingly rely on data collection, leading to a l…

Jun 26·1 min read·48 words

Silos and centralization on the internet

For years, we've been saying that it's time for us to rethink the internet, and move back towards a more decentralized, distributed world in which this kind of censorship isn't even an issue. It hasn'…

Jun 23·1 min read·71 words

Bill promises Californians more control over their data

the bill would allow California residents to find out what information businesses and data brokers collect about them, where that information comes from, and how it's shared. It would give people the …

Jun 23·1 min read·88 words

Consolidation swiftly follows the death of net neutrality

Combined with the death of net neutrality, the U.S. is creating a very uncertain future where a handful of companies now dominate everything from local sports and news broadcasts to broadband, with fe…

Jun 13·1 min read·53 words

Net neutrality is repealed as the real fight for it begins

So while many are understandably frustrated today, the elimination of the FCC's 2015 rules shouldn't be seen the end of net neutrality, or the end of the road. It's more like another chapter in a stor…

Jun 11·1 min read·55 words

CA senate passes strict net neutrality law in defiance of ISPs

As a general rule, if something is good for ISPs, it's bad for their customers.

May 31·1 min read·26 words

Japandroids at Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever

Near to the Wild Heart of Life International Fire's Highway To Hell With Good Intentions (mclusky cover) Arc of Bar Heart Sweats North East South West Wet Hair Midnight to Morning Younger Us Alice No …

May 30·1 min read·63 words

Vermont passes law regulating data brokers

This sounds like the kind of law that should also exist at the federal level to benefit everyone. Data brokers are terrible companies that make money by exposing and endangering everyone's personal in…

May 27·1 min read·39 words

Popular sites support long-shot effort to save net neutrality

The measure would still face long odds, however. Republicans, who tend to support the FCC's move to repeal net neutrality, hold a solid majority in the House of Representatives. If it were to pass the…

May 8·1 min read·68 words

LCD Soundsystem at Santa Barbara Bowl

Yr City's a Sucker You Wanted a Hit Tribulations I Can Change Get Innocuous! Daft Punk Is Playing at My House Movement Someone Great Call the Police Tonite Home Encore Oh Baby Emotional Haircut Dance …

May 4·1 min read·46 words

FCC strategically delays finalizing net neutrality repeal

Pai has been fond of saying that the net neutrality repeal hasn't harmed consumers, but that's a pretty low bar to clear given that the rules are still in effect.

Apr 24·1 min read·37 words

Generating Jekyll posts using Drafts and Working Copy

I put together a script that will take a draft, grab the title and body and then prompt you for front matter data before sending the completed post off to Working Copy. It's specific to my site, and p…

Apr 22·1 min read·60 words

The FCC sucks at repealing net neutrality

... the FCC shot itself in the foot, and when it neutered its own authority over ISPs at Comcast, AT&T and Verizon's behest, it managed to also neuter its authority to preempt states from filling the …

Mar 15·1 min read·82 words

FCC, ISPs grapple with net neutrality challenges

Twelve lawsuits filed against the Federal Communications Commission over its net neutrality repeal have been consolidated into one suit that will be heard at a federal appeals court in California.

Mar 12·1 min read·37 words

Move slow and break nothing

Reliability and stability are features. Focus on them.

Jan 31·1 min read·13 words

California state senate passes net neutrality legislation

This is a positive first step and one that will, hopefully, be taken up and passed through the state house before being signed into law. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out with the FCC's l…

Jan 30·1 min read·52 words

Automating package tracking on iOS

I try to do as much shopping as I can online and a lot of the shopping I end up doing is through Amazon. This means I end up with quite a few order and shipping confirmation emails in my inbox.

Jan 9·1 min read·46 words

Avoiding phishing

Someone just tried to phish me, and it made me want to put together a little guide to help you catch this stuff before it ruins your day.

Jan 6·1 min read·30 words

Blocking spam calls from similar numbers on iOS

I've been seeing more incoming spam calls from numbers similar to mine recently. They're annoying in large part because traditional iOS call blockers like Hiya, Nomorobo and so forth don't screen them…

Jan 6·1 min read·63 words

Fort Collins votes in favor of municipal broadband

While the Federal Communications Commission has voted to eliminate the nation's net neutrality rules, the municipal broadband network will be neutral and without data caps.

Jan 3·1 min read·33 words

TV on the Radio at The Theatre at Ace Hotel

Young Liars Province Golden Age Could You Wolf Like Me Love Dog Ambulance Staring at the Sun

Oct 15·1 min read·27 words

Responsible encryption

The Department of Justice has said that they want to have an 'adult conversation' about encryption. This is not it. The DOJ needs to understand that secure end-to-end encryption is a responsible secur…

Oct 10·1 min read·40 words

Ending net neutrality will end the Internet as we know it

The path forward is clear. The FCC must abandon its ill-conceived plan to end net neutrality. Instead of creating fast lanes for the few, it should be moving all of us to the fast lane by encouraging …

Sep 30·1 min read·75 words

A vote for Pai is a vote against consumers and for Big Cable

Mr. Pai, has a long track record of putting big cable before consumers, big corporations above small businesses and pay-to-play over the free and open internet.

Sep 30·1 min read·39 words

ISPs look to the Supreme Court to kill net neutrality

None of this would be necessary if ISPs and cable companies were capable of creating and providing services that consumers actually wanted to use. Instead, they pursue legal action to cripple competit…

Sep 29·1 min read·52 words

Using server alerts to generate Todoist tasks

I manage a few different servers (including this one) for several different friends and clients. As part of managing each server and site hosted on it, I'll typically receive alerts for errors, common…

Sep 23·1 min read·64 words

Why do we keep using Facebook?

Facebook offers a terrible bargain: It gives you the connectedness you crave, but it's unfulfilling and leaves you wanting more. It's like drinking Coke, or eating McDonald's, except you don't even ha…

Sep 16·1 min read·42 words

RSS still beats social media for tracking news

Gizmodo has a simple explainer on why RSS still beats social media for news. If you don't currently use an RSS reader, check out the post and the services it recommends.

Sep 10·1 min read·39 words

The Equifax breach is a disaster

At some point, we need to rethink why we've given Equifax, Experian and TransUnion so much power over so much of our everyday lives. You can't opt-out. They collect most of their data without us knowi…

Sep 8·1 min read·66 words

Data is a toxic asset

We can be smarter than this. We need to regulate what corporations can do with our data at every stage: collection, storage, use, resale and disposal. We can make corporate executives personally liabl…

Sep 8·1 min read·69 words

FCC continues to completely disregard public opposition to net neutrality repeal

Let's not mince words: the FCC's plan to gut net neutrality protections in light of severe public opposition is likely one of the more bare-knuckled acts of cronyism in modern technological and politi…

Aug 31·1 min read·45 words

Three days left to comment on the FCC plan to kill net neutrality

The Verge has a helpful write-up on how to comment on the FCC's plan to roll back net neutrality protections, along with details about the decision. If you care about a free and open internet, you sho…

Aug 28·1 min read·63 words

Sarahah uploads your contacts without permission

This behavior seems to be all too common lately and, while most apps ask for permission to access contacts, it's worth bearing in mind that they may not need that access. Additionally, once that acces…

Aug 27·1 min read·53 words

Updating to the latest version of git on Ubuntu

If you're using git on Ubuntu, the version distributed via apt may not be the newest version of git (I use git to deploy changes on all the sites I manage).

Aug 13·1 min read·40 words

Unobstruct for iOS

I had been using the 1Blocker extension to hide floating share bars but this content blocker makes the whole process dramatically easier.

Aug 10·1 min read·25 words

Ajit Pai accused of conflict for helping former client

A prisoners' rights group has accused Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai of having a conflict of interest because he used to represent a prison phone company as a lawyer.

Aug 10·1 min read·39 words

EFF argues border agents need warrants to search digital devices

It's ludicrous that a warrant is not currently required for these searches. If a search is truly necessary, the authorities in question should be able to obtain a warrant with ease.

Aug 8·1 min read·41 words

FCC is ignoring public interest in net neutrality repeal

Although ISPs have claimed that the net neutrality rules harm investment, the cable industry's top lobbying group recently boasted that US Internet speeds are continuing to soar and that the cost of d…

Aug 4·1 min read·47 words

We Should All Care About Encryption

If we squander privacy by allowing back doors or building illicit vulnerabilities into encryption tools, there is nothing to protect us from prying corporations, spying governments or even criminals b…

Aug 1·1 min read·57 words

Lawmakers blast FCC net neutrality rollback

The current incarnation of the FCC is entirely pro-industry and anti-consumer in its approach to regulating the market it oversees.

Jul 26·1 min read·26 words

Lawsuit seeks records of FCC net neutrality discussions

hey're listening to ISPs and their lobbyists — they couldn't care less about the public.

Jul 26·1 min read·23 words

Verizon argues throttling isn't throttling

Throttling is throttling. The justification on Verizon's part doesn't matter — they should be passing through traffic without filtering it.

Jul 25·1 min read·25 words

Misleading Arguments Against Net Neutrality Abound

Comcast's argument that gutting existing net neutrality rules will help members of protected classes is totally disingenuous. The best way to protect consumers and the open internet across the board i…

Jul 20·1 min read·60 words

Senator attacks ISP and FCC argument for net neutrality repeal

ISPs are already investing in infrastructure with existing regulations in place. They want net neutrality restrictions repealed so that they can more freely continue their existing abusing and anticom…

Jul 20·1 min read·40 words

Comcast continues to whine about net neutrality

This is, of course, nonsense as the article goes on to explain. Comcast and so many of the other players in the net neutrality argument appear to either miss or intentionally bury the point: in the ab…

Jul 18·1 min read·66 words

Google's new obsession with your photos

'Sergey Brin says that Google wants to be the third half of your brain,' [Pedro] Domingos says. 'But now think about it: Do you really want the third half of your brain to make a living by showing you…

May 27·1 min read·48 words

How to comment on the FCC's proposal to kill net neutrality

The Verge has a handy write-up on how to comment on the FCC's proposal to kill net neutrality

May 23·1 min read·29 words

GOP advances plan for ring-free voicemail spam

It's like a U2 album release — but for annoying political crap.

May 23·1 min read·19 words

FCC and ISPs begin campaign to gut net neutrality while pretending to protect it

All this amounts to is ISPs attempting to irreperably harm the internet in an effort to prop up businesses that would otherwise not be competetive. Strong net neutrality protections are absolutely vit…

May 3·1 min read·59 words

Protecting your privacy

Nonsense. If you're not paying for the service your data is being monetized in a way that benefits the interests of the company providing the service, not you.

Apr 23·1 min read·31 words

DHS Boss Calls For More Fear, Less Encryption

This is wonderful stuff if you're a fan of authoritarianism. Shut up and show your support. It's a message that's been sent several times by the new president. Now, it's being echoed by his top offici…

Apr 20·1 min read·44 words

Don't like systematic privacy violations? Stop using the internet

We desperately need to stop electing officials that have no understanding of the impact of the legislation they help pass.

Apr 14·1 min read·29 words

Silicon Valley fights to preserve net neutrality

I sincerely hope that net neutrality is preserved in its current form. Voluntary commitments from companies with the appalling track record shared by most ISPs are simply not going to be enough to pre…

Apr 12·1 min read·48 words

Lawmakers want to require border agents to obtain a warrant for smartphone searches

I'd love to see this implemented, but I just can't see it happening.

Apr 4·1 min read·26 words

Internet privacy rules repealed

No, customers should be able to expect that their data remain private and, the fact of the matter is, customers typically have a choice who they provide their data to (whether that be Facebook, Google…

Apr 3·1 min read·43 words

Congress guts internet privacy protections

Thanks to a cash-soaked Congress there will be neither broadband competition, nor functional regulatory oversight of an industry with a documented history of aggressive, anti-consumer and anticompetit…

Mar 28·1 min read·38 words

Senate chooses ISPs over customer privacy

I truly wish I could be shocked or surprised by a move like this coming out of the senate but, lately, congress appears to be dedicated to making decisions that actively harm their constituencies in o…

Mar 23·1 min read·47 words

Installing HTTP2 on Ubuntu 16.04 with virtual hosts

Now that HTTP/2 is fairly stable and widely available, I decided to try and install and run it on this server. I'm currently running the Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS with virtual hosts configured, so I can serv…

Mar 19·1 min read·65 words

Spotify begins to gain leverage in its relationship with labels

Spotify has done a lot to make music more accessible and available since it first launched. It's spent a lot of time since its launch beholden to labels and content providers so anything it can do, at…

Mar 19·1 min read·68 words

Keep the Internet Open

'The internet is a public good, and I believe access should be a basic right. We've seen such great innovation in software because the internet has been a level playing field. People have been able to…

Mar 14·1 min read·49 words

CBO analysis confirms GOP health bill is little more than class warfare

This bill amounts to tax cuts for the rich by stripping healthcare subsidies away from individuals that desperately need them. It should not be allowed to pass.

Mar 13·1 min read·39 words

FCC throwing consumer privacy protections out the window to help ISPs

There's not really a bright side here for consumers. Internet providers asked for permission to start sharing your private data again, and without much of a fight, they're about to get it.

Mar 11·1 min read·43 words

GOP senators' new bill would let ISPs sell your Web browsing data

'Big broadband barons and their Republican allies want to turn the telecommunications marketplace into a Wild West where consumers are held captive with no defense against abusive invasions of their p…

Mar 8·1 min read·51 words

iPhone spam call blockers

I've tried all the apps Marco calls out in this post and I agree with his assessment of all of them. I liked Nomorobo a lot, and it worked reliably, but I've settled on a different app that wasn't cal…

Mar 4·1 min read·48 words

The Internet belongs to the people, not powerful corporate interests

The Internet is an invaluable platform on which we depend to spur innovation and job creation. Our economy works best when innovators, entrepreneurs, and businesses of all sizes compete on a level pla…

Mar 3·1 min read·71 words

FCC chair offers poor excuses as he seeks to strip consumer protections

Eliminate functional regulatory oversight and refuse to address limited competition? The end result is... Comcast Corporation and its record-shatteringly-bad customer service, high prices, and usage c…

Mar 1·1 min read·38 words

Internet Privacy Rules in Part Face a Halt at the FCC

Rolling back privacy protections for consumers is only good for ISPs. This move reflects the current FCC chair's willingness to work for the interests of the businesses his agency should be regulating…

Feb 26·1 min read·47 words

Castro v2.3 released

Castro is easily one of the best podcast apps on iOS, and it just keeps getting better.

Feb 22·1 min read·20 words

Techdirt podcast on the new FCC

I really enjoyed this episode — it's an engaging deep dive into the history of net neutrality and where it stands under the oversight (or lack thereof) of the new FCC chairman, Ajit Pai.

Feb 20·1 min read·40 words

Clearing mod_pagespeed cache

I use mod_pagespeed on this server to help speed up asset delivery and force optimization best practices across all the sites I host.

Feb 20·1 min read·26 words

Securing your personal devices and accounts

With the current US administration pondering the possibility of forcing foreign travelers to give up their social media passwords at the border, a lot of recent and justifiable concern has been raised…

Feb 20·1 min read·57 words

The next big blue collar job is coding

I couldn't agree more with this article. There are ranges in every profession, but development is filled with rich opportunities that more people could benefit from with the proper support.

Feb 12·1 min read·38 words

Senators warn against net neutrality repeal

The unfortunate reality of the situation is that the current administration will always prefer the vested interest of corporate telecoms and lobbyists over those of the consumers they serve.

Feb 10·1 min read·35 words

Trump FCC chair begins dismantling consumer protections and subsidies

We're barely two weeks into the new presidential administration, and it looks like net neutrality will be yet another casualty of this administration's drive to strip away consumer-friendly regulation…

Feb 4·1 min read·38 words

JavaScript topics and frameworks to learn in 2017

A fantastastic read on what to stay on top of in the ever-changing JavaScript ecosystem in 2017.

Dec 31·1 min read·25 words

The year encryption won

It's not a firm guarantee, and who knows what a Trump administration will bring. For now, though, it's enough to appreciate the gains encryption made in 2016, and be hopeful that 2017 will only build …

Dec 30·1 min read·41 words

The Lumineers at Henry Fonda Theater

Sleep on the Floor Ophelia Flowers in Your Hair Ho Hey Cleopatra Classy Girls Dead Sea Charlie Boy Darlene Subterranean Homesick Blues (Bob Dylan cover) Slow It Down Submarines Gun Song Angela Big Par…

Dec 17·1 min read·46 words

Throwing together a blog

I've been working on this site for longer than I'd care to admit (years at this point). It's been through a few domains, two content management systems, multiple versions of those content management s…

Dec 11·1 min read·58 words

Sturgill Simpson at Fox Oakland Theater

It Ain't All Flowers Some Days Turtles All the Way Down Sitting Here Without You Water in a Well Long White Line (Moore & Napier cover) Call Me the Breeze (J.J. Cale cover) Life of Sin Living the Drea…

Nov 20·1 min read·100 words

Kanye West at The Forum

Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. 1 Pt. 2 Famous (Restarted three times) Pop Style (Drake cover) THat Part (ScHoolboy Q cover) Facts (Charlie Heat Version) Mercy (Kanye West feat. Big Sean, Pusha T & 2 Cha…

Nov 3·1 min read·127 words

Jimmy Eat World at Arlington Theatre

Get Right Bleed American I Will Steal You Back Big Casino If You Don't, Don't You Are Free Pass the Baby Futures Polaris Blister It Matters You With Me For Me This Is Heaven Goodbye Sky Harbor Always …

Oct 29·1 min read·64 words

Bon Iver at Hollywood Bowl

22 (OVER S∞∞N) 10 d E A T h b R E a s T 715 - CREEKS 33 “GOD” 29 #Strafford APTS 666 ʇ 21 M♢♢N WATER 8 (circle) 45 _ 00000 Million Minnesota, WI Towers Michicant Skinny Love Calgary Creature Fear Enco…

Oct 24·1 min read·50 words

blink-182 at Santa Barbara Bowl

Feeling This What's My Age Again? Family Reunion The Rock Show Cynical First Date Down I Miss You Bored to Death Built This Pool Dumpweed Stay Together for the Kids Reckless Abandon San Diego Not Now …

Oct 6·1 min read·63 words

CHVRCHES at Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Never Ending Circles We Sink Keep You on My Side Make Them Gold Empty Threat Tether Playing Dead Science/Visions Lies Gun High Enough to Carry You Over Under the Tide Recover Bury It Leave a Trace Cle…

Oct 5·1 min read·49 words

The Hotelier at The Echo

An Introduction to the Album The Scope of All of This Rebuilding Piano Player N 43° 33' 55.676" W 72° 45' 11.914" Two Deliverances Among the Wildflowers Life in Drag Soft Animal Sun You in This Light …

Oct 3·1 min read·50 words

Counting Crows at Greek Theatre

Lean on Me (Bill Withers song) Sullivan Street Daylight Fading Scarecrow Colorblind Good Time Omaha Cover Up the Sun Recovering the Satellites Miami Goodnight Elisabeth Goodnight L.A. A Long December …

Sep 9·1 min read·54 words

Father John Misty at El Rey Theatre

Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings When You're Smiling and Astride Me Only Son of the Ladiesman The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apt. Nothing Good Ever Happens at the Goddamn Thirsty Crow Funtimes in …

Aug 29·1 min read·97 words

Turnover at Troubadour

Cutting My Fingers Off Humming Like Slow Disappearing Hollow New Scream Hello Euphoria Change Irreversible Humblest Pleasures I Would Hate You If I Could Diazepam Dizzy on the Comedown Take My Head

Aug 22·1 min read·35 words

Generating a responsive CSS grid using Neat

I use a responsive grid system for this site (and a number of other projects) that's generated by pulling in Thoughtbot's Neat framework.

Jul 24·1 min read·30 words

Senate push for encryption legislation falters

Fantastic news. This bill (and the push behind it) was ill-conceived at best and would have caused untold damage were it to pass.

May 30·1 min read·29 words

Scriptable Backups with Arq

I've been using Arq for my backups for several months now and have regular backups being pushed to both Amazon Cloud Drive and AWS. A big part of Arq's appeal is its flexibility, configurability and t…

Apr 24·1 min read·58 words

Turnover at Teragram Ballroom

Dizzy on the Comedown Diazepam Take My Head Hello Euphoria Change Irreversible Humblest Pleasures New Scream Like Slow Disappearing Humming Cutting My Fingers Off

Mar 26·1 min read·28 words

DOJ takes war on encryption to WhatsApp

The government is taking its war on encryption to WhatsApp's front door. This is, perhaps, even more terrifying than their effort to force Apple to hamstring its device security.

Mar 13·1 min read·36 words

Dutch government on encryption

...forcing companies to add backdoors to their products and services would have 'undesirable consequences for the security of communicated and stored information,' since 'digital systems can become vu…

Jan 9·1 min read·39 words

Backdoor password in Juniper's firewall code

This is exactly why creating back doors in to encryption is an awful thing. We don't need a 'Manhattan-like project' to create more security holes like this one — if you create backdoors, even for leg…

Dec 24·1 min read·57 words

Will Sheff at Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever

Song of Our So-Called Friend Black Sheep Boy (Tim Hardin cover) Black Sheep Boy #4 A King and a Queen In a Radio Song Get Big Last Love Song for Now A Glow Missing Children No Key, No Plan Black A Sto…

Dec 20·1 min read·64 words

A Cadillac for Your Thoughts (2015 in music)

2015 has been a genuinely fantastic year for music (both live and recorded). That's very much a personal assessment of the year but music is an inherently personal thing. There's been a number of albu…

Nov 27·1 min read·79 words

TV on the Radio at The Theatre at Ace Hotel

Young Liars Lazerray Golden Age Happy Idiot Could You Winter Wolf Like Me Trouble Province Forgotten DLZ Staring at the Sun Encore Seeds (with Miguel) Adorn (Miguel cover) (with Miguel) Vitamin C (Can…

Nov 14·1 min read·46 words

Scotch Box for local LAMP development

If you spend any amount of time working on LAMP stack development projects you should take a look at Scotch Box. It's a full-featured Vagrant Box and is far easier than fiddling with setting up a serv…

Nov 12·1 min read·48 words

El Vy at The Independent

Careless It's a Game Sleepin' Light Sad Case Happiness, Missouri Silent Ivy Hotel Return to the Moon (Political Song for Didi Bloome to Sing, with Crescendo) Paul Is Alive I'm the Man to Be She Drives…

Nov 7·1 min read·56 words

The National at Troubadour

A Benefit for Cooperative for Education Setlist Peggy-O (traditional cover) Don't Swallow the Cap I Should Live in Salt Hard to Find Walk It Back Bloodbuzz Ohio Sea of Love Squalor Victoria I Need My …

Oct 17·1 min read·63 words

Catfish and The Bottlemen at Henry Fonda Theater

Rango Pacifier Sidewinder Fallout 26 Business Kathleen Homesick Hourglass Cocoon Tyrants

Sep 25·1 min read·19 words

Circa Waves at Troubadour

T-Shirt Weather Setlist incomplete.

Sep 22·1 min read·8 words

Circa Waves at The Chapel

Young Chasers Good for Me So Long Fossils 101 Talking Out Loud Stuck in My Teeth 100 Strangers Get Away My Love T-Shirt Weather

Sep 18·1 min read·29 words

Update OS X from the command line

If you don't want to bother dealing with the Mac App Store you can check for any recent updates for OS X from the command.

Sep 5·1 min read·32 words

Moving to Bitbucket

I recently moved all the repositories for my personal and client development projects to Bitbucket. I had been paying for GitHub's micro plan to manage a few projects that I didn't want public, but ma…

Aug 29·1 min read·61 words

Rise Against at Hollywood Palladium

The Great Die-Off The Good Left Undone Satellite The Dirt Whispered Give It All Re-Education (Through Labor) Survive I Don't Want to Be Here Anymore Collapse (Post-Amerika) Make It Stop (September's C…

Aug 14·1 min read·65 words

Vintage Trouble at Henry Fonda Theater

Total Strangers Doin' What You Were Doin' From My Arms Angel City, California Strike Your Light Another Man's Words My Heart Won't Fall Again Run Like the River Shows What You Know If You Loved Me Bef…

Aug 13·1 min read·48 words

Bastille at Hollywood Palladium

Things We Lost in the Fire Laura Palmer Hangin' Weight of Living, Pt. II Laughter Lines The Driver These Streets Flaws Blame No Angels The Draw Icarus Overjoyed Bad Blood Snakes Of the Night Pompeii

Aug 5·1 min read·39 words

Hypebot Hosts LA Music Tech Meetup July 23

If you're based in LA be sure to come out to the meetup and say hi!

Jul 18·1 min read·24 words

Death Cab for Cutie at Hollywood Bowl

No Room in Frame Crooked Teeth Photobooth Black Sun The New Year The Ghosts of Beverly Drive Title and Registration Little Wanderer No Sunlight President of What? You've Haunted Me All My Life What Sa…

Jul 12·1 min read·77 words

Death Cab for Cutie at Amoeba Music

No Room in Frame The Ghosts of Beverly Drive Little Wanderer Black Sun El Dorado Everything's a Ceiling The New Year

May 31·1 min read·28 words

Brand New at Coachella Music Festival

Coachella 2015 weekend 2.

Apr 19·1 min read·10 words

Jack White at Coachella Music Festival

Coachella 2015 weekend 2.

Apr 19·1 min read·10 words

The Weeknd at Coachella Music Festival

Coachella 2015 weekend 2.

Apr 19·1 min read·10 words

The War on Drugs at Coachella Music Festival

Coachella 2015 weekend 2.

Apr 18·1 min read·12 words

at Coachella Music Festival

Coachella 2015 weekend 2.

Apr 18·1 min read·8 words

AC/DC at Coachella Music Festival

Coachella 2015 weekend 2.

Apr 18·1 min read·9 words

Tame Impala at Coachella Music Festival

Coachella 2015 weekend 2.

Apr 18·1 min read·10 words

Interpol at Coachella Music Festival

Coachella 2015 weekend 2.

Apr 17·1 min read·9 words

Alabama Shakes at Coachella Music Festival

Hang Loose Dunes Rise to the Sun Future People Always Alright The Greatest Gimme All Your Love Don't Wanna Fight Be Mine On Your Way Gemini

Apr 17·1 min read·32 words

Exploring OS X mail clients

I've been using Fastmail for over a year now and have been exploring email clients the entire time I've been a subscriber. Until recently, the best client I've been able to find has been Fastmail's we…

Apr 17·1 min read·53 words

Currently reading

I've been reading a lot lately (mainly on my phone when I catch a spare moment). I've picked up several books on front end development and am currently digging in to JavaScript: The Good Parts by Doug…

Mar 28·1 min read·40 words

Syncing OSX app preferences and dot files

I've started using a command line tool called mackup to back up and sync many of my dot files and application settings on OS X.

Mar 15·1 min read·32 words

Death From Above 1979 at The Regent

Red Bull Sound Select: 30 Days in LA.

Nov 15·1 min read·15 words

BANKS at The Wiltern

Alibi This Is What It Feels Like Brain Goddess Fuck Em Only We Know Change Fall Over Warm Water Bedroom Wall And I Drove You Crazy Drowning Waiting Game Beggin for Thread Encore The Motion (Drake cove…

Oct 21·1 min read·42 words

Streaming Music Has Left Me Adrift

The New York Times has published an interesting piece on streaming music and the transition from analogue listening, CDs and other physical media. What I find most interesting is the author, Dan Brook…

Oct 20·1 min read·60 words

External links and redirects in Statamic navigation

I put together a fieldset and template that allows external links to be added to the navigation of Statamic sites alongside internal links.

Oct 15·1 min read·30 words

ISPs secretly furious at Verizon

That's good news if I've ever heard it (though I suppose I shouldn't be overly optimistic). Anything that upsets ISPs and, ultimately, leads to stronger net neutrality rules is a win for consumers.

Oct 3·1 min read·38 words

Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators at Whisky a Go Go

You're a Lie Nightrain (Guns N’ Roses cover) Halo Standing in the Sun Back From Cali (Slash song) Stone Blind You Could Be Mine (Guns N’ Roses cover) Doctor Alibi (Slash song) (Todd Kerns on lead voca…

Sep 27·1 min read·105 words

Beck at Orpheum Theatre

The Golden Age Blackbird Chain Blue Moon Say Goodbye Heart Is a Drum Country Down Lost Cause Wave Waking Light Devils Haircut Black Tambourine The New Pollution Loser Chemtrails Hell Yes Think I'm in …

Sep 22·1 min read·76 words

One Direction at Rose Bowl Stadium

Midnight Memories Little Black Dress Kiss You Why Don't We Go There? Rock Me Don't Forget Where You Belong Live While We're Young C'mon, C'mon Right Now Through the Dark Happily Little Things Moments …

Sep 14·1 min read·107 words

5 Seconds of Summer at Rose Bowl Stadium

18 Out of My Limit Heartbreak Girl Kiss Me Kiss Me Heartache on the Big Screen Amnesia Beside You Long Way Home What I Like About You (The Romantics cover) Happy Birthday Niall Horan Good Girls She Lo…

Sep 14·1 min read·48 words

Fastmail in Fluid.app

I've spent the last few months bouncing around OSX mail clients. I went from Mail.app to Airmail, to a Mailmate trial, back to Airmail and then back to Mail.app. Now, however, I've finally settled on …

Sep 8·1 min read·49 words

Standard Markdown

This is about legitimizing their fork over all the others. Not just another fork here, this one is named 'Standard Markdown'!

Sep 4·1 min read·23 words

Front on email

I would gladly trade Hangouts, GroupMe, WhatsApp, Line et al. for a unified, open chat / messaging standard.

Sep 2·1 min read·21 words

Death from Above 1979 at Troubadour

You're a Woman, I'm a Machine Cheap Talk Right On, Frankenstein! Turn It Out Sexy Results (Interlude) Blood on Our Hands Cold War Virgins Crystal Ball Government Trash Going Steady Gemini Nothin' Left…

Aug 15·1 min read·69 words

Annie Lennox at Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever

This was a listening part for Annie Lennox's album Nostlagia . I spent most of the night driving attendees too and from their cars parked around the cemetary in a golf cart.

Aug 13·1 min read·40 words

Sublime Text 3 - ctrl + tab key bindings

I use Sublime Text as my primary text editor but have never liked the default tab behavior where ctrl + tab takes you to the most recently used tab rather than the next horizontal tab in the tab bar (…

Aug 6·1 min read·56 words

Arcade Fire at The Forum

Blade Runner (End Titles) (Vangelis song) Reflektor Rebellion (Lies) Joan of Arc Rococo The Suburbs The Suburbs (Continued) Ready to Start Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) Crown of Love We Exist Intervention…

Aug 3·1 min read·104 words

Jack White at Henry Fonda Theater

Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground (The White Stripes song) High Ball Stepper Lazaretto Hotel Yorba (The White Stripes song) Temporary Ground You Know That I Know (Hank Williams cover) Missing Pieces Yo…

Jun 11·1 min read·154 words

The Preatures at The Echo

Two Tone Melody Somebody's Talking Manic Baby Rock and Roll Rave Threat Whatever You Want It Gets Better Cruel Ordinary Is This How You Feel? Encore Take a Card

Jun 3·1 min read·34 words

Ben Thompson on net neutrality

This is a fantastic piece on net neutrality by Ben Thompson. This is a balanced, realistic look at net neutrality and the issues surrounding it.

May 19·1 min read·30 words

Sorting email using aliases and plus addressing in Fastmail

I subscribe to a number of mailing lists and, up until recently, had been using individual server-side rules to sort all incoming messages from those lists in to a specific folder. However, as the num…

Apr 30·1 min read·59 words

The National at Greek Theatre

Start a War Don't Swallow the Cap Mistaken for Strangers Sorrow Bloodbuzz Ohio Sea of Love Slipped Afraid of Everyone Squalor Victoria I Need My Girl This Is the Last Time The Geese of Beverly Road Ab…

Apr 28·1 min read·76 words

The National at Santa Barbara Bowl

Don't Swallow the Cap I Should Live in Salt Mistaken for Strangers Sorrow Sea of Love Hard to Find Afraid of Everyone Conversation 16 Squalor Victoria I Need My Girl This Is the Last Time Santa Clara …

Apr 26·1 min read·68 words

Arcade Fire at Coachella Music Festival

Coachella 2014 weekend 2.

Apr 21·1 min read·10 words

Neutral Milk Hotel at Coachella Music Festival

Coachella 2014 weekend 2.

Apr 21·1 min read·11 words

Pharrell Williams at Coachella Music Festival

Coachella 2014 weekend 2.

Apr 20·1 min read·10 words

Sleigh Bells at Coachella Music Festival

Coachella 2014 weekend 2.

Apr 20·1 min read·10 words

City and Colour at Coachella Music Festival

Coachella 2014 weekend 2.

Apr 20·1 min read·11 words

OutKast at Coachella Music Festival

Coachella 2014 weekend 2.

Apr 19·1 min read·9 words

HAIM at Coachella Music Festival

Coachella 2014 weekend 2.

Apr 18·1 min read·9 words

Bastille at Coachella Music Festival

Coachella 2014 weekend 2.

Apr 18·1 min read·9 words

Bastille at Warfield Theatre

Bad Blood Weight of Living, Pt. II Blame Laura Palmer Poet Overjoyed Laughter Lines These Streets The Silence Oblivion Icarus The Draw Things We Lost in the Fire Flaws Encore Daniel in the Den Of the …

Apr 11·1 min read·47 words

The National at Shrine Auditorium

Don't Swallow the Cap I Should Live in Salt Mistaken for Strangers Bloodbuzz Ohio Sea of Love Hard to Find Afraid of Everyone Squalor Victoria I Need My Girl This Is the Last Time All the Wine (stoppe…

Mar 26·1 min read·83 words

Run River North at Troubadour

Record release show.

Mar 4·1 min read·8 words

Automatic Feedbin subscription backups

A few weeks ago I switched from Fever to Feedbin. I had been using Fever on a shared hosting account and, over the long term, was proving to be slower than I had expected it to be.

Feb 27·1 min read·41 words

Dumb pipes

I can't help but agree with everything Ben Bajarin has to say in this post. Carriers and broadband providers acting as 'dumb pipes' is the best outcome for consumers and I can't help but cheer every t…

Feb 25·1 min read·48 words

Miley Cyrus at Staples Center

SMS (Bangerz) 4x4 Love Money Party My Darlin Maybe You're Right FU Do My Thang #GETITRIGHT Can't Be Tamed Adore You Drive C-Stage Rooting for My Baby Hey Ya! (OutKast cover) Jolene (Dolly Parton cover…

Feb 23·1 min read·97 words

Amos Lee at The Wiltern

Thinkin Bout You (Frank Ocean cover) (instrumental) End of the Road (Boyz II Men cover) Black River (with Priscilla Ahn) Sweet Pea Arms of a Woman Windows Are Rolled Down Jesus

Feb 21·1 min read·36 words

Photo management with Dropbox and Hazel

I recently abandoned iPhoto as a means of storing, organizing and managing photos on OSX and deactivated the associated iCloud Photo Sharing feature running from iOS in to iPhoto via iCloud.

Feb 3·1 min read·37 words

Leaving Google Apps for Fastmail

I recently began a process of re-evaluating the web services I use, the companies that provide them and an evaluation of where I store important data. I had used Google services extensively with Gmail…

Jan 18·1 min read·73 words

Dawes at Echoplex

From a Window Seat Someone Will If You Let Me Be Your Anchor The Hula Hula Boys (Warren Zevon cover) My Way Back Home Most People Right on Time Peace in the Valley A Little Bit of Everything When My T…

Jan 12·1 min read·45 words

Changes coming to Droplr

If this helps Droplr grow and continue as a successful business, I'm all for it. I use the service daily to shorten links, share files and post images.

Jan 6·1 min read·32 words

Sam Smith at Troubadour

Nirvana Together (Disclosure, Sam Smith, Nile Rodgers & James Napier song) Leave Your Lover (Unknown) Happy Birthday to You (Mildred J. Hill & Patty Hill cover) La La La (Naughty Boy cover) Latch (Dis…

Dec 2·1 min read·50 words

Two Door Cinema Club at Greek Theatre

Sleep Alone Undercover Martyn Do You Want It All? This Is the Life Changing of the Seasons Wake Up Come Back Home Spring Sun Pyramid I Can Talk The World Is Watching Next Year Something Good Can Work …

Nov 3·1 min read·62 words

Capital Cities at Greek Theatre

Kangaroo Court Origami Center Stage Stayin' Alive (Bee Gees cover) ("Undone (The Sweater Song)" outro) Farrah Fawcett Hair (with Shemika Secrest) Chartreuse Chasing You (with Soseh) I Sold My Bed, but…

Nov 3·1 min read·42 words

Arcade Fire at Hollywood Palladium

Reflektor Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) Flashbulb Eyes Joan of Arc You Already Know We Exist It's Never Over (Hey Orpheus) Afterlife (w/ The Velvet Underground's 'Beginning to See the Light' outro) Head…

Nov 1·1 min read·58 words

Tom Waits at Shoreline Amphitheatre

Part of the Bridge School Benefit Concert. Raised Right Men Singapore Talking at the Same Time (live debut) Chicago Lucky Day Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen) Lucinda / Ain…

Oct 27·1 min read·79 words

My Morning Jacket at Shoreline Amphitheatre

Part of the Bridge School Benefit Concert. The Way That He Sings What a Wonderful Man Gideon Golden Bermuda Highway (Jim James solo) Wonderful (The Way I Feel) Anytime

Oct 27·1 min read·35 words

Heart at Shoreline Amphitheatre

Part of the Bridge School Benefit Concert. Even It Up The Rain Song (Led Zeppelin cover) Nothing but Love War of Man (Neil Young cover) (with Neil Young) Dear Old America Crazy on You

Oct 27·1 min read·38 words

Queens of the Stone Age at Shoreline Amphitheatre

Part of the Bridge School Benefit Concert. Long Slow Goodbye Make It Wit Chu I Sat by the Ocean …Like Clockwork Kalopsia Go With the Flow

Oct 27·1 min read·34 words

Katy Perry at Hollywood Bowl

I Kissed a Girl Dark Horse (with Juicy J) Part of Me By the Grace of God Walking on Air California Gurls Teenage Dream Unconditionally Firework Encore Roar (With Ellie Golding, Sara Bareilles, Tegan a…

Oct 24·1 min read·46 words

Tegan and Sara at Hollywood Bowl

Closer Back in Your Head Drove Me Wild I Couldn't Be Your Friend I Was a Fool

Oct 24·1 min read·23 words

Sara Bareilles at Hollywood Bowl

Chasing the Sun Gonna Get Over You Love Song Gravity Brave

Oct 24·1 min read·16 words

Kacey Musgraves at Hollywood Bowl

Stupid Merry Go 'Round Blowin' Smoke Follow Your Arrow

Oct 24·1 min read·14 words

Ellie Goulding at Hollywood Bowl

Figure 8 Ritual Goodness Gracious Anything Could Happen I Need Your Love (Calvin Harris cover) Burn Lights

Oct 24·1 min read·22 words

City and Colour at The Novo

The Golden State The Lonely Life The Grand Optimist As Much as I Ever Could Sam Malone Weightless What Makes a Man? Body in a Box Comin' Home Paradise We Found Each Other in the Dark Sleeping Sickness…

Oct 16·1 min read·53 words

Michael Franti & Spearhead at Henry Fonda Theater

I Don't Wanna Go Yes I Will / Stay Human (All the Freaky People) Yell Fire! (short) Rude Boys Back in Town Do It for the Love The Sound of Sunshine (with balloons) 11:59 One Step Closer to You (All ov…

Oct 13·1 min read·85 words

White Lies at El Rey Theatre

Getting Even To Lose My Life There Goes Our Love Again A Place to Hide Mother Tongue Streetlights Farewell to the Fairground Be Your Man E.S.T. The Power & the Glory Unfinished Business First Time Cal…

Oct 10·1 min read·49 words

Neko Case at Santa Monica Pier

Way Over Yonder 2013.

Oct 6·1 min read·10 words

Shovels & Rope at Santa Monica Pier

Way Over Yonder 2013.

Oct 5·1 min read·11 words

Calexico at Santa Monica Pier

Way Over Yonder 2013.

Oct 5·1 min read·9 words

Brett Dennen at Santa Monica Pier

Way Over Yonder 2013.

Oct 5·1 min read·10 words

Godspeed You! Black Emperor at Henry Fonda Theater

Hope Drone Mladic Chart #3 World Police and Friendly Fire Peasantry or 'Light! Inside of Light!' Lambs' Breath Asunder, Sweet Piss Crowns Are Trebled The Sad Mafioso

Sep 13·1 min read·35 words

Where are you going?

I've been a fan of Godspeed You! Black Emperor since high school and finally got the chance to see them live. The band put on a devastating, energetic performance that was worth the nine or so year wa…

Sep 13·1 min read·47 words

The National at Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Graceless This is the Last Time Don’t Swallow The Cap Sea Of Love Pink Rabbits

Sep 12·1 min read·21 words

Turns out your kids really did love that music you played

The connection to parents' music isn't entirely surprising. Music plays a central role in child-rearing, both in the songs children are taught at home and in school and in those heard more informally …

Sep 7·1 min read·64 words

The story behind Drafts

A nice, brief interview with Greg Pierce, the developer of Drafts.

Sep 4·1 min read·15 words

Arcade Fire - Reflektor

This sample sounds promising. I can't wait to hear more from Reflektor on the 9th.

Sep 4·1 min read·19 words

New Sleigh Bells album in October

The new track, 'Bitter Rivals', sounds very poppy and cleanly produced which eliminates a lot of what I liked about Treats. I'll still be checking the album out but don't have particularly high hopes …

Sep 3·1 min read·48 words

Damien Jurado - 2014

Damien Jurado has been one of my favorite musicians for years. He's a talented, albeit nervous, performer and a gifted songwriter.

Aug 27·1 min read·25 words

Listen - Okkervil River, 'The Silver Gymnasium'

Okkervil River's The Silver Gymnasium sounds every bit as good as I had hoped it would.

Aug 26·1 min read·23 words

Why Millennials are Ditching Cars and Redefining Ownership

I wish ditching a car in Los Angeles were a workable option for me personally but, at the moment, I have a sixteen-mile round trip, daily commute that isn't workable with public transit.

Aug 21·1 min read·41 words

The Silver Gymnasium

This is an extremely creative and well-executed move by Okkervil River to promote their new album, The Silver Gymnasium.

Aug 21·1 min read·22 words

Publishing to Kirby using Drafts workflows

I have recently begun publishing content to my Kirby powered site using workflows from the endlessly-customizable Drafts.

Aug 20·1 min read·23 words

Pile on the kale salad and an extra chicken wing

Dawes played an acoustic set at the Whole Foods in West Hollywood to celebrate Whole Foods adding a record store to the location. Brothers Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith were joined on stage by Tay Stra…

Aug 17·1 min read·62 words

Design by numbers - typography

A clear, concise primer on typography by Dan Eden.

Aug 15·1 min read·14 words

The National at Jimmy Kimmel Live!

I was finally able to see The National for the first time. The band has been promoting their newest release, Trouble Will Find Me on the road but, after having missed them at Outside Lands, the Greek …

Aug 14·1 min read·67 words

Okkervil River - Lido Pier Suicide Car

This is proving to be one of my most anticipated albums (and shows) of the year.

Aug 14·1 min read·23 words

How The Head and the Heart made organic music

I cannot wait to get my hands on Let's Be Still and finally see The Head and The Heart live.

Aug 13·1 min read·29 words

Grapes of Wrath

Interesting read on climate change, wine and agriculture via Mother Jones.

Aug 13·1 min read·14 words

Hanni El Khatib at Santa Monica Pier

Twilight Concerts presented by myspace.

Aug 9·1 min read·12 words

Bombino at Santa Monica Pier

Twilight Concerts presented by myspace.

Aug 9·1 min read·10 words

Bombino and Hanni El Khatib at the Santa Monica Pier

The most recent entry in to the Santa Monica Pier's Twilight Concert series featured Bombino and Hanni El Khatib performing to a packed crowd on the pier that spilled out on to the beach.

Aug 9·1 min read·44 words

Okkervil River - Stay Young

Another strong track from Okkervil River's upcoming album The Silver Gymnasium.

Aug 7·1 min read·16 words

Dawes - Most People

A wonderful new video for one of the highlights of Dawes' most recent album Stories Don't End. I love videos from bands that give an insight in to live shows from both their perspective and that of th…

Aug 1·1 min read·43 words

Blitzen Trapper - 'Ever Loved Once'

I'm not quite sure what to make of this new track. It's a mellow, well-written song that's consistent with Blitzen Trapper's past material, but it doesn't quite make the connection that their previous…

Jul 30·1 min read·41 words

The Postal Service at Greek Theatre

The District Sleeps Alone Tonight We Will Become Silhouettes Sleeping In Turn Around Nothing Better Recycled Air Be Still My Heart Clark Gable Our Secret (Beat Happening cover) This Place Is a Prison …

Jul 28·1 min read·67 words

The Postal Service at Greek Theatre

Jul 27·1 min read·67 words

Postal Service - Some Idealistic Future

A well-produced documentary and a great look at a band who, ten years later (and after only one album), still means so much to so many people.

Jul 25·1 min read·33 words

Who the Fraggle designed this?

Sufjan Stevens' thoughts on Savages' use of typography.

Jul 24·1 min read·13 words

NoMeansNo live via Marinet TVM

One of punk's greatest bands live via Marinet TVM. I still need to see them live and sincerely hope I get the chance to before they hang things up. Superb performance.

Jul 18·1 min read·36 words

Okkervil River - Open Mic Night

Not out of place at all at an open mic night. Excellent.

Jul 17·1 min read·18 words

New Arcade Fire Album Is 'Epic,' James Murphy Says

It took me longer than it should have to get in to Arcade Fire, but I have been absolutely hooked of late.

Jul 16·1 min read·31 words

Maps And Music - Explore Okkervil River's New Album

The next album from the Austin, Texas band Okkervil River will tell the childhood tale of its lead singer and songwriter Will Sheff, a self-described awkward, nearsighted, asthmatic kid growing up the…

Jul 15·1 min read·64 words

Skin and Bones - Old Horses

Beautiful, stripped down song from a musician with a strong voice and truly heartfelt delivery.

Jul 10·1 min read·21 words

Frightened Rabbit at Henry Fonda Theater

Holy The Modern Leper Old Old Fashioned Late March, Death March Nothing Like You Backyard Skulls Head Rolls Off The Oil Slick My Backwards Walk State Hospital Poke (Scott solo) Good Arms vs. Bad Arms …

Mar 14·1 min read·63 words

Swedish House Mafia at Los Angeles State Historic Park

We Come We Rave We Love (Axwell & Sebastian Ingrosso cover) Greyhound / Raise Your Hands (Axwell Mashup) Ran Tam Tam / Atomic City (Axwell Mashup) Teasing Mr Charlie / Nothing but Love / Lights Wakand…

Mar 9·2 min read·237 words

Bloc Party at Hollywood Palladium

Intro So He Begins to Lie Hunting for Witches Like Eating Glass Real Talk Kettling Waiting for the 7.18 Song for Clay (Disappear Here) Banquet Blue Light Coliseum Day Four One More Chance Octopus Enco…

Dec 8·1 min read·59 words

Dum Dum Girls at Hollywood Palladium

Always Looking Catholicked I Will Be Rest of Our Lives Bedroom Eyes

Dec 7·1 min read·18 words

Sufjan Stevens at Henry Fonda Theater

(Unknown) (A TON OF CHRISTMAS SONGS) Christmas Woman Put the Lights on the Tree Do You Hear What I Hear? (The Harry Simeone Chorale cover) Vito's Ordination Song (First time since 2005) Mr. Frosty Man…

Dec 5·1 min read·114 words

Jonas Brothers at Pantages Theater

Paranoid That's Just the Way We Roll Goodnight and Goodbye Take a Breath Much Better Fly With Me Give Love a Try Turn Right Gotta Find You (Joe Jonas song) First Time Just in Love (Joe Jonas song) Who…

Nov 29·1 min read·113 words

Benjamin Gibbard at Wilshire Ebell Theater and Club

Shepherd's Bush Lullaby Such Great Heights (The Postal Service song) Oh, Woe These Roads Don't Move (Jay Farrar & Benjamin Gibbard cover) Title and Registration (Death Cab for Cutie song) Dream Song C…

Nov 15·1 min read·173 words

Mumford & Sons at Hollywood Bowl

Babel I Will Wait Roll Away Your Stone Winter Winds Below My Feet Timshel Little Lion Man Lover of the Light Thistle & Weeds Ghosts That We Knew For Those Below Broken Crown Holland Road Awake My Soul…

Nov 13·1 min read·73 words

The xx at Treasure Island

Treasure Island 2012. Angels Heart Skipped a Beat Fiction Crystalised Basic Space Reunion Sunset Night Time Swept Away Shelter (Unknown) VCR Islands Chained Infinity Intro Tides Stars

Oct 15·1 min read·32 words

M83 at Treasure Island

Treasure Island 2012. Intro Teen Angst Reunion Sitting Year One, One UFO We Own the Sky Steve McQueen Outro This Bright Flash Midnight City Couleurs

Oct 15·1 min read·29 words

The War on Drugs at Treasure Island

Treasure Island 2012.

Oct 14·1 min read·10 words

Best Coast at Treasure Island

Treasure Island 2012.

Oct 14·1 min read·8 words

Ty Segall at Treasure Island

Treasure Island 2012.

Oct 14·1 min read·8 words

Florence + the Machine at Hollywood Bowl

Only If for a Night What the Water Gave Me Drumming Song Cosmic Love All This and Heaven Too Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) Spectrum Breaking Down Happy Birthday to You (Mildred J. Hill & Patty Hill cover…

Oct 9·1 min read·74 words

The Weeknd at Hollywood Bowl

Lonely Star Loft Music The Party & the After Party What You Need Next High for This The Knowing Wicked Games The Morning House of Balloons / Glass Table Girls Outside

Oct 9·1 min read·36 words

The Black Keys at Staples Center

Howlin' for You Next Girl Run Right Back Same Old Thing Dead and Gone Gold on the Ceiling Thickfreakness Girl Is on My Mind Your Touch Little Black Submarines Money Maker Strange Times Chop and Change…

Oct 6·1 min read·60 words

Osees at El Rey Theatre

The Dream Tidal Wave Lupine Dominus Carrion Crawler Block of Ice Drum Solo Contraption / Soul Desert Goodnight Baby Meat Step Lively I Was Denied Destroyed Fortress Reappears Dead Energy (Unknown) (Un…

Sep 9·1 min read·37 words

Stevie Wonder at Golden Gate Park

How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You) (Marvin Gaye cover) Master Blaster (Jammin') Higher Ground The Way You Make Me Feel (Michael Jackson cover) Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer Overjoyed (Included…

Aug 13·1 min read·101 words

Jack White at Golden Gate Park

Outside Lands 2012. I'm Shakin' (Little Willie John song) Black Math (The White Stripes song) Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground (The White Stripes song) Freedom at 21 Missing Pieces Weep Themselves to …

Aug 13·1 min read·123 words

Bloc Party at Golden Gate Park

Octopus Hunting for Witches Positive Tension Real Talk Song for Clay (Disappear Here) Banquet Team A So Here We Are One More Chance This Modern Love Ares Flux Helicopter

Aug 12·1 min read·35 words

City and Colour at Golden Gate Park

We Found Each Other in the Dark Sleeping Sickness The Death of Me The Grand Optimist The Girl Waiting... Body in a Box Fragile Bird

Aug 12·1 min read·32 words

Trampled by Turtles at Golden Gate Park

Outside Lands 2012. Walt Whitman Widower's Heart Keys to Paradise Victory Wait So Long Again Midnight on the Interstate Alone

Aug 12·1 min read·27 words

Sigur Rós at Golden Gate Park

Outside Lands 2012. Í gær Varúð Svefn-g-englar Sæglópur Festival Olsen Olsen Hoppípolla Með blóðnasir Hafsól Untitled #8 – Popplagið

Aug 12·1 min read·25 words

Metallica at Golden Gate Park

Outside Lands 2012. The Ecstasy of Gold (Ennio Morricone song) Hit the Lights Master of Puppets Fuel Ride the Lightning Fade to Black The Memory Remains Hell and Back Sad but True Welcome Home (Sanita…

Aug 12·1 min read·68 words

The Kills at Golden Gate Park

Outside Lands 2012. No Wow Future Starts Slow Heart Is a Beating Drum Kissy Kissy DNA Satellite Baby Says Last Day of Magic Tape Song The Last Goodbye Pots and Pans Fuck the People Monkey 23

Aug 12·1 min read·42 words

Tame Impala at Golden Gate Park

Outside Lands 2012. Solitude Is Bliss Desire Be Desire Go Lucidity Apocalypse Dreams Half Full Glass of Wine Elephant Encore Runway, Houses, City, Clouds

Aug 11·1 min read·30 words

Passion Pit at Golden Gate Park

Outside Lands 2012. Take a Walk The Reeling Moth's Wings Better Things Carried Away Constant Conversations To Kingdom Come I'll Be Alright It's Not My Fault, I'm Happy Eyes as Candles Mirrored Sea Sle…

Aug 11·1 min read·42 words

Father John Misty at Golden Gate Park

Outside Lands 2012. Funtimes in Babylon Only Son of the Ladiesman Nancy From Now On I'm Writing a Novel Misty's Nightmares 1 & 2 Everyman Needs a Companion Well, You Can Do It Without Me (Unknown) Hol…

Aug 11·1 min read·47 words

Explosions in the Sky at Golden Gate Park

Outside Lands 2012. First Breath After Coma The Only Moment We Were Alone Catastrophe and the Cure The Birth and Death of the Day Let Me Back In Yasmin the Light Memorial

Aug 11·1 min read·40 words

Alabama Shakes at Golden Gate Park

Outside Lands 2012. Goin' to the Party Hold On Hang Loose Always Alright I Found You Rise to the Sun Heartbreaker Boys & Girls Be Mine Mama I Ain't the Same You Ain't Alone Heavy Chevy

Aug 11·1 min read·42 words

Foo Fighters at Golden Gate Park

Outside Lands 2012. White Limo All My Life Rope The Pretender My Hero Learn to Fly New Way Home Walk These Days Aurora Best of You Everlong

Aug 11·1 min read·33 words

Beck at Golden Gate Park

Outside Lands 2012. Black Tambourine Devils Haircut Novacane Loser Soul of a Man Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (Bob Dylan cover) Hotwax Modern Guilt Soldier Jane The Golden Age Lost Cause (Dedicated to Ad…

Aug 11·1 min read·54 words

Of Monsters and Men at Golden Gate Park

Outside Lands 2012. Love Love Love Dirty Paws Beneath My Bed King and Lionheart Mountain Sound Little Talks

Aug 10·1 min read·26 words

Blind Pilot at Henry Fonda Theater

Always The Story I Heard Oviedo Two Towns From Me The Colored Night I Know Go On, Say It White Apple Keep You Right I Buried a Bone Get It Out Just One New York Half Moon Strangers (The Kinks cover) W…

Jul 8·1 min read·61 words

Chickenfoot at Greek Theatre

Lighten Up Big Foot Last Temptation Sexy Little Thing Soap on a Rope Up Next My Kinda Girl Down the Drain Something Going Wrong Turnin' Left Future in the Past Different Devil Oh Yeah Rock Candy (Mont…

Jun 13·1 min read·42 words

Bon Iver at Santa Barbara Bowl

For this show we were seated behind Ryan Kwanten (of True Blood fame) but we'd never watched True Blood . He was polite, asked to see our posters and was talking to another audience member whose siste…

Apr 23·1 min read·101 words

The War on Drugs at Avalon Hollywood

Black Water Falls Baby Missiles Comin' Through Your Love Is Calling My Name The Animator Come to the City Best Night Taking the Farm I Was There Brothers

Mar 21·1 min read·35 words