Tag: subway

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Photo of snow covered trees and the Meadowport Arch in Prospect Park, Brooklyn."

The last (full) week of 2025 is in the books. That means a wrap for the 2025 weeknotes. There are enough year end review type write-ups in the world—no need to include one here. Looking forward, I hope the coming year brings some ever so slightly less interesting times. I’m not sure what that would look like. Trump and the rest of his corrupt administration out of office and in permanent exile somewhere would be a great start.

As is often the case, it is pretty quite around here since so many people are out of town. We did get a nice coating of snow just after Christmas. it was pretty good timing (unless it derailed your travel plans). All weekend felt like an extended snow day. Warmer temperatures and rain are in the forecast, so it may turn out to be the be the best sort of snow—one that melts before it gets too grimy.

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Photo taken from a NYC Subway 2 train of an 8 train across the platform.
8 train?

Aboard a downtown 2 train, I looked up and saw this 8 train across the platform. What the? I had just enough time to snap this picture before we left the station. I shouldn’t have been too surprised, there have been a few 8 lines over the years and the MTA includes an “8” on the roll signs. While this particular sign was an error, there may be 8 trains on the rails in the future.

Recently, I received the renewal notice for vintagesailors.com domain. It is an oft forgotten ecommerce site that sells t-shirts and other goods emblazoned with old sailboat logos. The site’s existence can be chalked up to me wanting a Pearson Ensign t-shirt and not being able to find one I liked.

It wasn’t much of a leap from making one t-shirt to thinking “Hey, I like this, wouldn’t everybody want one?” Of course, everybody absolutely doesn’t want one. But, a few people did, despite an almost total lack of marketing.

I say all of this because I’m going to let the domain expire and I feel like it is worthy of marking the occasion. Plus, there’s still time left to get a hat if you want one! As of 2025-12-28, the site is shut down, I can still get you a hat if you want one, just let me know.

The jukebox project is coming along. I made some good progress this week on a couple utility type things that make managing the music library much less cumbersome. I also learned a bit more about what it’s going to take to interface with vintage hardware. There’s a short write-up here: Jukebox Title Strips (and more).

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Photo of a sourdough, whole wheat sandwich on a wooden cutting board from above.

My Low Effort Sourdough Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread recipe has been updated with with two techniques that have greatly improved the quality and consistency of these loaves recently: 1) Final proof in the fridge overnight and 2) Bake in a preheated, covered dutch oven. Still not pro quality, but a tasty bread nonetheless.

I hoped to make some progress on the jukebox project this week. However, an initially productive vibe configuration session led me to a dead end as can happen with vibe configuring and vibe coding. Actually, dead ends aren’t uncommon with old fashioned configuration and coding. Perhaps the LLM makes one encounter the brick wall faster. That’s progress, right?

All was not lost though. I learned a couple things in the process and rethought what I was working towards initially. Now, I’m moving forward with a slightly different plan. I’ll post a progress report when I have a little more to show for the effort.

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Photo of a NYC Halloween Voter sticker with a drawing of a pigeon wearing a witch's hat carrying a jack-o-lantern candy pumpkin in its beak. Silhouettes of bats and a witch also appear. The text reads "HALLOWEEN VOTER 2025". There are also small white ghosts and Vote NYC logos.

Voted early again this year but didn’t make the rookie mistake of not voting on Halloween this time. Sure, they give stickers to all voters, but none can match the cool factor of the coveted Halloween sticker!

I realized that it was a year ago this week when I loaded my former sailboat on a trailer. While I miss sailing as frequently as I did when i had my own boat, it was wonderful not having to think about hauling a boat out this fall.

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Photo of a very skinny house, not much wider than the front door. The house is overgrown with vines, the stoop is falling apart and the door is very weather beaten. The rear end of an abandoned car is visible on the left.
A very skinny house on Stillwell Avenue in Brooklyn.

Programming note: The notification email has been resurrected after many years. If you subscribed ten years ago and this email comes as total surprise, sorry—no hard feelings if you unsubscribe.

I’ve wanted to check out the MTA’s annual pop-up shop, but always find out about it after the fact. My luck changed this this year, I read about Debi Mazar’s subway shopping spree while the event was still on. By the time I got there, things were somewhat picked over, but they still had a lot on offer. It was mostly signs, but there were also some other items, such as air gauges and other random train parts. I walked away empty-handed, but it was worth the price of admission if only to see the excitement of the people coming out and posing for photos with their loot.

Since I was in the area, I walked down to Coney Island. On the way I saw this incredibly skinny house on Stillwell Avenue. Despite its compact size, the owners have a difficult time with upkeep.

Coney Island is quiet in the off season, but a couple of the places on the boardwalk are open. There were a surprising number of tourists milling about, confused about he ordering system at Nathan’s. Strange to see them so far from the more popular attractions. Good on them for exploring, even if the subway ride is more exiting than the destination this time of year.

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