Saturday was Brooklyn Conservatory of Music’s Open Stages. There were a lot of great musicians playing, plenty of people out and about to listen and the weather was perfect–a great event all around!

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Black and white photo of Dave Brubeck at a piano with text: "SORRY, NERDS 5/4 IS DAVE BRUBECK DAY"

We were in Florida for a few days this week. That is my primary excuse for posting this 6 days late. It wouldn’t be the end of the world to skip a week, but I don’t want to break the chain or miss the opportunity to use this picture of Dave Brubeck.

Before blasting off to the Sunshine State, I made some more progress on the blogroll history graphic. It’s mostly functional now and allows for some filtering and sorting. It could do with some visual design though.


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The weather is getting warmer here in the northeast; sailing season is imminent. People ask if I’m getting ready to put the boat in the water. When they learn that it was sold, their next question is “do you miss it?” My consistent answer is “nope, well, not yet anyway”. It’s complicated.

As a non-boat owning sailor, in April, my thoughts would be on the upcoming season and, maybe, racing. As a boat owner, this is the time to figure out when the requisite, pre-splash work will get done. The clock is ticking and the erratic spring weather can render a well-planned day off useless for outdoor activities like painting. Inevitably, time gets tight and any projects that can happen on the water are postponed (sometimes longer than expected).

All that work happens for a reason though. The thing that keeps a sailor going while sanding, engulfed by a toxic cloud of bottom paint dust, is the promise of the season ahead. Great times and stories are almost guaranteed, and there will be at least a couple, true champagne sails. Is this made just a bit sweeter by having to work for it? Ask me after this season.

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Significant progress was made on the historic blogroll graph. Most of the work was transforming the OPML files that can be rendered with D3. There were also a few anomalies in the data that needed to be handled. The results are on the blogroll page. It needs work, especially from a visual standpoint. Some basic interactivity would also go a long way towards making it more usable.

I made heavy use of Copilot on this, which reduced what might have been a day’s worth of effort (for me) to a couple hours. Watching some random dude on Youtube attempt to vibecode his way into a money-making app was the inspiration for using Copilot. Watching the way he worked for a few minutes changed how I used these LLM tools. Thanks random Youtube influencer!

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US Political Links

This weeknote comes almost a week late because the live, out-of-town jam session threw my timing off.

What a great session it was! Cold, rainy days are good for rocking indoors. And rock we did, and at way louder volumes than I’m used to hearing through my headphones when we use Jamulus. It is great to play in-person verses our normal, remote setup. I hope we get to do it again soon.

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