The 2026 Election: A Warning to Both Parties.

I have been waiting a bit to write my take on the election. I know a lot of people have already, and I wanted to let people make their views known while I refine mine. I am not going to make this a long post. But here is my take, with a little history so that you know where I am coming from. I am currently, and have been for almost the last 20 years, a non-partisan registered voter. I started out when I registered as a Democrat when I first was able to vote at 18, because that was...

Isn't It Time for AVIF Everywhere?

Storage devices such as hard disk drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), and NVMe drives are reaching increasingly ridiculous prices and becoming more difficult to obtain. With hosting services raising prices throughout 2026 and possibly more increases coming in 2027, I have to ask: why aren't hosting providers doing more to support newer and more efficient formats such as AVIF and WebP for images and AV1 and AV2 for video? Hetzner, for example, has already raised prices multiple times in 2026, citing rising hardware costs, and other hosting providers have also increased their prices. With the growing demand for hardware driven...

Buddy, Can You Spare a GPU?

  I wanted to write this blog post earlier in October but got hung up with work last month. For some reason, work has been crazy lately. So Ed Zitron, Paul from Paul's Hardware, Steve Burke from Gamers Nexus and others beat me to this topic, and Vex, a YouTuber, does a great job explaining it too. Just as I was finishing this, Brennan published I Am Relentless and Undaunted. Go read it. It's worth your time. So I don't have to make this a long post, sorry, just kidding, it will be very long. I have to get this...

Nostr Without the Bitcoin

  I was reading Nostr the other day and saw an interesting post that got me thinking. I can't find it now and wish I had saved it, especially since it relates to some other things I've been wanting to write about. The person said they didn't understand why Nostr isn't more popular, and that it seems like people are leaving and there are fewer people around. Why does it feel so empty, almost like it's dying? In case you didn't know, Nostr is a different take on a social network. It's probably the closest thing to old Twitter in...

Following Me Into My Inbox

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post titled An AI Bot Followed Me. Now I Have Questions. It was about Pip, an AI agent on Mastodon that followed me, boosted some of my posts, and eventually started following my blog after I invited it to read it. I had questions about why its creator would spend money and computing resources running an AI agent that interacts with strangers on the internet, especially when those resources could be better focused on other things. I also made the point that I don't mind AI bots participating in the open web...

The Day Caddy Stood Still

A couple of weeks ago, I went to update my VPS. Usually, I do this once a week, sometimes more frequently depending on any security news I see. I should probably have the AI agents I use do this, but I do it myself for now. I find infrastructure interesting and "boring" in a good way most of the time. While updating one of my VPSes, I got a message saying I needed to pay for access to Caddy because the repository had reached its bandwidth limit. This was from a company called Cloudsmith. I wasn't the only one getting...

10 Years Old: Everything Decides to Expensively Break

This October has been an expensive one. First, our hot water heater went out. It was probably about 10 years old. Then, two days after our water heater went out, the refrigerator went out, and it was also about 10 years old. Fixing it would cost more than buying a new one. So off to Home Depot we went, and $1,900 later, we had a nice new refrigerator with a five-year warranty. It's bigger than the old one but more energy-efficient, and it has LED lighting, which is very bright. Ten years for both appliances. That seems to be the...

🍿 Watched The Sheep Detectives (2026)

⚠️ SPOILER WARNING: No Spoilers My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5 stars) Good watch. Would recommend it. One of the few movies from Amazon Studios I've actually enjoyed. It combined comedy, drama, and mystery in a fun and entertaining way. This product uses the TMDb API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDb

An AI Bot Followed Me. Now I Have Questions

    One day I noticed a boost of one of my Mastodon posts from an automated bot named Pip. This piqued my interest. Then I got a follow notification from the same bot. Normally, I don't really care who follows me, but with all the scraping bots out there, it was refreshing to see one openly identify itself as a bot and actually follow me. So I went to the website associated with it, tinymind.eu, to investigate what this bot was doing and what its purpose was. I read about Pip, its purpose, and tried to figure out what...

Weather Stations Everywhere!

Back in August, I got a Tempest Weather Station. I had been wanting a weather station for some time. Why? Well, that is hard to put into words. I guess the answer is that I really like technology, I am fascinated with self-hosting as much as possible, and I like collecting data and contributing data to something larger without having to pay a subscription. Anyway, I got this Tempest Weather Station for a great price during Prime Day. I put it up and integrated it into a Python weather program, while also using Tempest's own software. But there was something...

🍿 Watched Blitz (2024) on Prime Video

⚠️ SPOILER WARNING: FULL SPOILERS The poster for *Blitz* features a woman and a boy surrounded by floating flowers, with a lone child standing below. My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐½ (3.5/5 stars) Final VerdictNot bad, but a heavy watch. After seeing all the kid went through in this movie, you almost wanted to reach out to him through the TV and say, “Let’s get you home.” If this is a true reflection, it does amaze me how much suffering and damage there is while people try to carry on like nothing is really happening. I am sure there was some truth in...

Public Information Should Be Public

Government public information should be published on public infrastructure first, then shared through open feeds to websites, social platforms, apps, and newsletters, ensuring open standards, wider access, and a more informed public. “Government updates belong in an open feed By Mark Kennedy Founder · via Open RSS Blog Read original post →” I saw this blog post from OpenRSS in my RSS reader, and it interested me in more than one way. I agree wholeheartedly with its sentiment. Government offices, officials and agencies used to seem much more focused on making information publicly accessible. Here in Florida, we even have...

Domains Cost More, Blogs Disappear

I have been noticing a couple of disturbing trends this year outside of the AI/LLM bubble. Has anyone else noticed them? First, domain registrars seem to be raising domain name prices like never before. Every couple of months, I get an email from Porkbun or Cloudflare saying that the registry controlling a domain's TLD is raising prices on such-and-such a date. I can't remember the last time I saw domain name prices decrease. They only seem to go up. That is why I try to renew domains for more than one or two years whenever I can. If my budget...

Share Buttons: Yay or Nay?

“Nobody clicks your share buttons By Derek Hanson Read original post →” I saw this blog post on bubbles.town, and the title caught my attention, so I clicked through to read it. It was also timely because just a few days earlier I had added share buttons to my own site. I don't know if I agree with the conclusion of the post. If share buttons are done tastefully, selectively, and with privacy in mind, I think they're perfectly okay. We're seeing a trend toward making websites personal again, a little like they were in the late 1990s and early...

WordPress Drama: Is It Worth It?

“Automattic confirms Mullenweg has returned as CEO after attempted ouster by board By Sarah Perez Read original post →” I have been holding off on writing about Matt Mullenweg and everything happening around WordPress because I wanted to make sure I wasn't just reacting to the latest round of drama. I don't know Mullenweg personally, just like I don't know Elon Musk. But the more I watch his public actions and statements, the more I see a similar pattern. That pattern is what bothers me. It is the attitude of: I built this, I know what is best, and if...

Beavers built dams that outlasted 130 engineered flood barriers, study finds

Read on thecooldown.com · View original Mastodon post I thought this was interesting when I saw it pop up in my social media feed. In this study, beaver dams outlasted 130 engineered flood barriers. Maybe computers and human engineers should learn a thing or two from them. Nature does seem to do some things better than we do, and we can learn from it and use that knowledge to make better versions of things ourselves. After all, God did give man dominion over the animals and much of nature. Just a thought. It was an interesting read.

Okay, let me tell you about my day. I took today and tomorrow off because I am almost maxed out on my vacation time. That is a separate story and not really important to this one. I went to Costco to get a new pair of glasses. Once I get them, I will finally be finished with everything related to my cataract surgery. I already have a pair of frames from Costco, so I just need new lenses. When I got to the optical department, I had to sign in using the app. There were plenty of workers there, and...

I'm Guilty of Bad Titles Too. Are You?

“Bloggers, can we make better titles for our posts? michaelharley.net By Michael Harley Read original post →” I came across this blog post by Michael Harley. I started following him after I came across some of his blog posts on bubbles.town (I want to call it button.town every time I type it, and I don't know why 😀). But he does have a point, and I am guilty of making bad titles too. In fact, if it were up to me, I probably wouldn't have any titles. But I think most things in writing do deserve titles and subjects. Even...

Another Home for My Writing: Introducing Inkwell.social

I found another independent blogging service in the same general vein as Micro.blog, Scribbles.page, Pika.page and Pagecord.com. It is called Inkwell.social. Inkwell is inspired by the old LiveJournal. I never used LiveJournal myself, but I certainly heard of it. After looking around Inkwell, it feels very much in the spirit of the IndieWeb to me. It is open source, supports ActivityPub, lets you use your own domain, and gives you ways to export your writing. It also has a Founding Member special offering Inkwell Plus for $99 for as long as the service continues to operate. I love being able...

📺 Watched Silo (2023) on Apple TV+

⚠️ SPOILER WARNING: FULL SPOILERS In "Silo" (2023), a gripping psychological thriller, a woman unravels deep secrets within a mysterious government facility, spiraling into a maze of power and truth. My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐½ (4.5/5 stars)** Episodes: 10 | Aired: 07-02-2026 The whole season was fantastic. I was worried about the series after Season 2. Season 2 was necessary, but it was a little slow. Again, Season 3 was fantastic. There are full spoilers below, so if you don't want to know more, please stop reading. You were forewarned. I don't understand why they keep killing people who leave the Silo,...