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• Post #4138879

  I am going to post a big "L" here. I hope I can save someone else from this embarrassment. Beurre de barratte is *not* cheese. It's a butter. I am still learning French, and boy do I know what 'beurre de barratte' means now. I don't know why it was put in the cheese section.

• Post #4138878

  I'm having trouble finding a TV stand big enough for my 36-inch CRT, so I thought I'd use a coffee table. Several people told me it wouldn't be sturdy enough. The CRT is back on my moving cart for now. A few options: find the actual stand for this TV, build my own stand, or keep it on the cart.

• Post #4138877

  A friend and I were discussing LLMs today. He mentioned a recent news story about Claude making headway on a famous unsolved math problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobian_conjecture If there is anyone in the math(s) field who has heard about this, I'd like to try to understand what's going on. It is difficult to find any information about this news that isn't from the "AI" hype crowd.

• Post #4138876

  Some of today's work: - I captured the video footage from last weekend's trip to Delta H Con in Houston. Yes, you can still capture MiniDV on Linux in 2026. - I stained the inside of the back yard fence. That was a lot of paint, but it looks very nice now. - I tried putting my giant CRT television on a coffee table, but I was warned against doing this. - I continued my refresher study of algebra. So far, I'm up to long division of polynomials.

• Post #4138875

  I finished watching the first season of Blue Eye Samurai tonight. I highly recommend it. It's some good samurai revenge drama, with very memorable characters and creative action, and a top-notch villain. How good is this show? Let me put it this way: every time I finished an episode, I thought "Dammit, I have to watch the next one!" It was 11 PM, then it it was 12 midnight, then it was 1 AM... you get the idea.

• Post #4138872

  ffmpeg is a good way to convert audio files from one format to another. https://www.linux.org/threads/using-ffmpeg-to-convert-audio-files.54583/

• Post #4138871

  It looks like gtkpod isn't being maintained anymore. Since I upgraded to Trisquel 12, it's no longer in apt. I could compile it from source... maybe... For now, Rhythmbox is a good way to get songs onto my old iPod. Now I can continue listening to these Redwall audiobooks. Redwall! Woodland critters! Cozy cooking! Murder!

• Post #2293004

  Something good from today: I had a medical appointment where I decided to be a little bit emotionally vulnerable. The medical people were decent enough to accommodate me, and it made the appointment a lot easier. As Uncle Iroh put it, "It is good to believe in oneself, but a little help from others can be a great blessing!"

• Post #2293003

  They say if you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it. In the same way, if you have to ask if the social event is going to be like Eyes Wide Shut... maybe think twice about going.

• Post #2293002

  It was snowing in the Denver area today, so I guess it was a day to learn some handiwork. In addition to the bicycle restoration: - Mended some jeans, poorly. - Replaced the center console armrest in my car. The original one acquired an odd ripple defect early on. Replacing it was straightforward.

• Post #2293001

  When I was a kid, 25+ years ago, I remember science books saying that one symptom of global warming would be more freak weather events. We had a very mild winter here in Colorado, and now... a snowstorm in May?

• Post #2293000

  https://nantucketlit.com/blog/2026/05/2026-05-06_improved_support_for_gempub.html New blog post: I have improved my support for the #gempub format, thanks to the work of Sloum (https://sloum.colorfield.space/about.html) He has developed *two* Gempub ereader programs that I can use for testing. This has been exciting to work on. I can finally give this excellent format the attention it deserves.

• Post #2292999

  RE: https://mstdn.social/@lowqualityfacts/116528735893363590 Wait... LQF has finally stumped me. I had read that Galileo did indeed go blind from staring directly into the sun too often, as part of his astronomical observations. (not the heliocentric part) I remember reading it in the book A World Lit Only By Fire by William Manchester. Granted, that book has a *lot* of bull in it, and shouldn't be taken as good history. Maybe that was one of the bull facts in the book?

• Post #2292998

  I've updated my page for First-Class Fiction, with a list of all the postcards mailed out so far. https://nantucketlit.com/postcards You can also sign up or subscribe on that page.

• Post #2292997

  You may guess what book I am currently reading. It is from a popular YA novel, before 'YA' was even a marketing term. No cheating by feeding this into a search engine! "Never. Never in all the food, all the hamburgers and malts, all the fries or meals at home, never in all the candy or pies or cakes, never in all the roasts or steaks or pizzas, never in all the submarine sandwiches, never never never had he tasted anything as fine as that first bite. First Meat.&qu...

• Post #2292996

  @amin has written about a number of movies he hasn't seen. I will try to put myself out there in the book department. I had never read the novel Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen, until tonight. You might ask how I can be a 90s kid and never read Hatchet, and I'll take your jabs. When I was young I didn't follow a lot of trends, for good and for bad. I very much enjoyed the book. It's a short book, but by Crom is it a page-turner. You really get a sense of survival thro...

• Post #2292995

  Redwall is interesting. It's partly cozy fantasy because it's about mice and other whimsical creatures who enjoy lavish feasts and the ol' nut brown ale. Then there's a hare who feels like he came out of a cartoon. At the same time, there's siege warfare, some straight-up cold-blooded murder, and other gnarly deaths.

• Post #2105155

  Today, I mailed out the first postcards for #FirstClassFiction. Over the course of a year, I'll be sending out 25 postcards, each with a unique story or poem. Each postcard is individually numbered, and has a serialized sticker. Some writers for these stories/poems will include @atgonzalez, @amin, @asakiyume, and @superball. The first postcard has a poem by @NylaWoethief You can subscribe at https://nantucketlit.com/postcards.html #nantucketLit #postcards #physicalMedia

• Post #1884795

  Galapagos Larvae is now on sale at Trident Booksellers in Boulder, Colorado. This is a fun, macabre tale of #monster horror by @atgonzalez. Featuring full-color illustrations by Ty Blyth, and signed by the author. Trident is on the Pearl Street Mall's west end in Boulder. Find it in the zines section, and get your copy of Galapagos from one of Colorado's finest bookstores. Learn more at https://nantucketlit.com/galapagos

• Post #1884793

  I am dipping my toes into "skewing" graphics on the Apple II. It will be fun to see if it works.

• Post #1884790

  I wanted to take a moment today (as I try to from time to time) to recognize Christine Lemmer-Webber. We all owe her many thanks for her work on ActivityPub, which is, in part, why we're all here on Mastodon. More specific to me, it was this short essay that encouraged me to make my e-book work a free-software project: https://dustycloud.org/blog/why-i-am-pro-gpl/ (Why I Am Pro-GPL) So, thank you, @cwebber

• Post #1884789

  New blog post: The first part of an interview with writer @atgonzalez, author of Galapagos Larvae. Gonzalez has also written for my publications Quarter Up and First-Class Fiction, and was published in my anthology Overscan. We talk about writing and some of his favorite authors. If you have enjoyed his work, here's your chance to learn more about him. https://nantucketlit.com/blog/2026/03/2026-03-09_an_interview_with_at_gonzalez,_part_1.html #NantucketLit #interview

• Post #1884788

  Tomorrow, I'll be publishing the next postcard for First-Class Fiction. The story for this card is Warmth by @atgonzalez. The art is Red Sun by Arthur Dove, painted in 1935. If you're interested in receiving this postcard in the mail for free, you may sign up at https://nantucketlit.com/postcards

• Post #1884787

  A preview of the progress on my #AppleII typesetting. The text is from @atgonzalez's Galapagos Larvae, shared with their permission. Here, you can see the following features: justified text, mixed case, proportional fonts, smart curly quotes and italic text. Because of the way the Apple II displays color, white lines on a color TV have a distinct rainbow effect on them. It looks fine on a black-and-white monitor. I'll take a look at my other color options. #NantucketLit #retroC...

• Post #1884786

  Postcard #5 of the year went out last week! This postcard's story is Warmth by @atgonzalez, and the art is Red Sun by Arthur Dove. Each postcard is numbered and date-stamped at the post office. If you'd like to receive a free postcard in the mail, sign up at https://nantucketlit.com/postcards #physicalMedia #NantucketLit

• Post #1884785

  New blog post: More of my interview with writer @atgonzalez. In addition to his work on Galapagos Larvae and Overscan, AT and I run the Harlan Ellison Directory. Harlan Ellison was known as the Dark Prince of American Letters, and the two of us are preserving his work. https://nantucketlit.com/blog/2026/03/2026-03-14_an_interview_with_at_gonzalez,_part_2.html In this part of the interview, AT shares his experience as an Ellison reader, and his work on the pinball newsletter Quarter Up.

• Post #1884782

  Last night, I hosted a #DefyAI writing workshop at Sandy's Coffee and Tea in Longmont, Colorado. The night's featured artist was Javier Robles. He was generous enough to share his art, and let us use it to learn where human creativity comes from. Everyone enjoyed free tea, courtesy of the coffee shop. Thank you to everyone who attended and shared their work. If you are interested in upcoming workshops, visit https://nantucketlit.com/workshops Find Javier's art at http...

• Post #1810348

  RE: https://dair-community.social/@timnitGebru/116477949716199030 The author of this article should be commended. It is not easy to admit this, but it's important. AI Psychosis is what gets me really angry about LLMs. I know someone who's been affected by this. It's why, beyond weighing pros and cons, on a visceral, gut level, I oppose this technology. When people I care about get hurt, it makes arguments about 'use cases' or 'that's jus...

• Post #1548088

  Some postcard news! Next Saturday (04/25), I will be at the Best of Spring Bazaar in Brighton, Colorado. I'll be at the Adams County Fairgrounds with postcards and chapbooks. The job I worked at those fairgrounds a few years ago is what got me interested in old printing methods, and informed a lot of my software.

• Post #1548087

  I recently learned that my bicycle's gear shifters are called "friction shifters" or "down-tube shifters". Apparently these are not very common. I pulled this bicycle out of a dumpster when I was living in the mountains a couple years ago. I replaced the bike chain and got a new cassette for it. I love zipping around town with it.