Saturday  27 Jan 2024           comment?

A few years ago, a woodworker in town showed me some cabinets he'd made. I asked if I could pull a drawer out. He immediately told me the joints he used to attach the fronts of the drawers were every bit as durable as dovetails would be. I had no reason to doubt him. I liked how he knew what I was checking for.

A few days ago I was showing a different woodworker the workbench my dad made around 70 years ago, which has drawers. The first thing he did was pull a drawer out to look for dovetail joints (which it has).

Thursday  25 Jan 2024           comment?

Thursday  18 Jan 2024           1 comment

I'm grateful to Inner City Press and Erica Orden for their extensive coverage of the ongoing Carroll v. Trump trial. From yesterday: UTC is a curious acronym. It's quite forgiveable to not know just what it stands for. Its sequence of letters comes neither from English (Coordinated Universal Time) nor French (Temps Universel Coordonné), "to avoid appearing to favor any particular language" (per the NIST).

Wednesday  17 Jan 2024           comment?

Back in 2016, I wrote about the history of an antiviral medicine I've taken. When the drug was approved in 2001, its manufacturer (Gilead) already knew there was room for improvement in the drug's formulation. They started testing a variant that would have fewer side effects, then shelved that work for about seven years while they waited for their patent on the original drug to run out.

Some patients are suing Gilead over this. The suit addresses the difficult question of whether a company can be found negligent for not having improved a product that they knew to be deficient. A California appeals court ruled last week that the suit can go forward.

Sunday  14 Jan 2024           1 comment

A sticker that came with an Intel CPU I got 3.5 years ago included these terms:

Intel reserves the right to tell you to stop using the logo label if the processor has been materially altered or if the system does not meet the quality and performance standards customary in the industry.

Whereas a sticker that came with an Intel CPU I got this year includes these terms (the change is in italics):

Intel reserves the right to ask you to stop using the logo label if the processor has been materially altered or if the system does not meet the quality and performance standards customary in the industry.

And well you may.

Saturday  13 Jan 2024           1 comment

An owl this evening. I love their sound.

Wednesday  10 Jan 2024           comment?

The guy who made my marimba bars recognized on his own why I have minortriad.com but most people don't. From a phone call today with a math teacher I had in high school:

teacher:	Why is minortriad in your email address?
Tommy:	My last name is a-c-e.
teacher:	A musical thing. That's funny. You are one weird dude.

He likes music and he's smart. I think if I'd asked him to think about it for a bit, he would've gotten it.

Tuesday  09 Jan 2024           comment?

Tuesday  02 Jan 2024           comment?

Monday  01 Jan 2024           comment?

I used to change the look of this page (e.g. font, color, patterns on the right edge, ...) every January 1 but I went a few years recently without a refresh.

With this year (actually, as of about a week ago) the repeating pattern on the right edge of the page is rendered in more detail, of most benefit to readers with high pixel density displays (Apple Retina or similar) but should look a little better anywhere.

For those who enjoy tech details: the image resolution is increased (the PNG file's pixel width and height are each doubled) while the depth is halved (2 bits per pixel instead of 4). The file is thus about twice as large as it used to be. I've been including high‑res images for most pictures I post for a while now but browser support for 2x background images (via image‑set) is a more recent development.

Happy New Year, everyone.