Routine Revelations

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 13:22:09 -0400

In my opinion, SCOTUS' decision in Louisiana v Callais is based on two flawed beliefs. First is that it is ok to make voting districts for partisan reasons, in other words, allow a majority party to create districts that favor their party winning seats. Second is the belief that racial discrimination is a thing of the past. I also have qualms with the idea that a majority can be discriminated against.

The refusal of seeing partisan gerrymandering and lobbying and very large campaign donations as wrong is evidence of a system functioning as desired by those in power.

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:40:49 -0400

A few days back I asked the question, does Apple really need to have an AI product? In this video Nate Jones reads the tea leaves of Apple’s impending re-org suggesting that Apple’s strategy towards AI may be the same as it’s strategy about personal computing 50 years ago. I think it’s the right move by Apple. However, I do wonder about what might be the relationship between local models and personal computer operating systems.

Pitching Is Hurting The Cubs

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 11:49:24 -0400

While acknowledging this as probably too much of a generalization, I think baseball games are won (or lost) by either pitching or hitting. Based on earned run average, I think that when a MLB pitching staff gives up more than four runs it did not do its job. During the Cub’s recent ten game winning streak their pitchers gave up more than four runs only once. Now the Cubs have lost three in a row, and in every one the pitchers gave up more than four runs. Worse, they have given up six or more runs in each game, therefore not giving their hitting much of a chance to win.

The Cubs do currently have a winning 17-12 record due to the fact that of the 24 games played in April, Cub pitchers held opponents to four are fewer runs in 16 games. It appears to be the case that the huge number of their pitchers on IL is catching up to the Cubs.

If the pitching trend continues and given how well the other teams in the NL Central are playing, the Cubs will end up with a losing record for the season and not make the playoffs.

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 12:25:01 -0400

I can’t help but notice that in his blog post about the value of RAM for AI and how Apple’s unified architecture has proven to be an advantage, Om does not mention the Neo. Om’s point in this post, Memory Is The Machine, is the reason why think users are going wish their first generation Neos have more RAM. Heck, my M4 MacBook Pro’s 16 GB of RAM might not be enough in three years.

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 12:26:15 -0400

Our fears about artificial intelligence are a projection of the fears about ourselves. The human ego desires to control the world, and AI is probably the biggest threat to human control we have created to date. We know that we are incomplete yet our ego insists on turning to ourselves to resolve what ails us rather than changing our mind to follow the path of Jesus.

Personal Programming

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 11:39:50 -0400

I am old enough to remember a time when there were no personal computers. While computers existed throughout my life time (I was born in 1966), personal computers didn’t exist until 1975 (the Altair 8800) and back then they weren’t very useful because one had to program these computers for them to do anything.

In the 1970s there were no stores for one to go to and buy software needed to make the PC do something useful, instead one wrote their own programs. Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800, which enabled one to write their own programs, and ironically that led to the formation of Microsoft and the personal computer software industry.

The need to write programs limited the market for PCs to hobbyists who were willing to spend the time to learn and tinker and share their code with others. To most hobbyists the idea of selling programs was abhorrent as they saw them as art to be freely shared, and with this point of view the animosity toward Microsoft was born.

History shows Gates and Allen were right and commercial software was necessary for the growth of personal computing. Most people did not want to write programs to make PCs useful, but they were willing to buy spreadsheet and word processor programs that did so.

What was lost in the turnover the programming of computers to third parties is making the programs that do exactly what one wants. Have you ever used an app and wished it had that one feature that would make it so much better? You can submit the idea as a suggestion to the developer but whether it ever gets incorporated completely depends on the developer. More likely your idea will never become part of the app.

Of course, if you wrote the app then you could simply add the idea yourself and it would be done as fast as you can do the programming. My experience with working with Claude Code to write my Personal Assistant app reminds me of the beginning of personal computing as I have described.

Since the 1970s college degrees and an entire profession of creating computer software came in to existence. The profession has grown so large that it exists in nearly ever single corporation around the world. In many ways automobile manufacturers, banks, insurance companies, and more are software companies that just happen to make cars, save and transact money, and provide financial protection for catastrophic events.

Right now I see most of the reaction to the latest incredible developments with artificial intelligence coming from the computer software profession because AI is the profession’s disruptor. Ironic given how the profession has been a disruptor of so many other professions.

AI like Claude Code can and will replace people who have computer science degrees. I personally think that humans should know and understand all of the programs sold to and used by corporations, particularly ones that are critical to life and a functioning society, but I fear that the sheer quantity of code that can be produced by AI will quickly outrun the pace at which humans can understand it.

I do think that AI will have a positive affect on how people use personal computers for their own needs. Dare I say it might even put the “personal” back in to personal computing?

The Personal Assistant app that Claude Code as developed for me meets my needs perfectly because I have specified every function it provides. Claude has done all of the programming using Python, Flask, and SQL Lite. I don’t know if Claude has written the best, most efficient app and I don’t even know whether the tools it has used are the right ones, but they work. I know Python well enough to read it and I understand from past training and experience the fundamental concepts Claude has employed, but I don’t know if I could debug the code it has written. Is this bad?

I don’t yet know whether this AI is a good or bad thing. Like the Internet before it, this new AI technology has tremendous potential for good and bad, just like we humans. I think better self awareness and liberal arts education would better equip us in resisting the bad and maximizing the good. In the mean time, I can’t help but chuckle over how the greatest advancement in computer software to date enables us to go backwards in time if we choose.

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 11:22:24 -0400

I was struck by how bright these white blossoms were in the morning sun.

Building My Personal Assistant App

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 11:57:10 -0400

To learn more about AI I decided to obtain a monthly subscription to Claude Pro, which includes Claude Code and Claude Cowork. I came across a YouTube video describing how to use Claude Code as an alternative to using any of the available Personal Knowledge Management apps and I decided to try using Claude Code in the manner described in that video to develop a system that might work best for me.

I’ve been incrementally building an app to manage the information important to me and below is a screenshot of the app with the main sections listed in the left. Note what you don’t see, Events or Tasks, which are part of the app but not the main focus of the app.

The first thing that came to mind when I asked myself what is it I wanted to keep track of in retirement were the Topics of Interest, which are subjects that I either want to learn more about or focus more on. Another item are Ideas, which are basically things that come to mind that I want to do. Ideas sound like tasks, and they become tasks, but the point is to capture them and then do more with them in the future.

Projects are what you would expect, a grouping of two or more tasks for the purpose of an outcome. Regulars are recurring tasks, which you would think of as habits or routines. Contacts is an address book, Journal is a daily record, Knowledge Base is for information and Files is a listing of files stored in two directories: Owner’s Inbox, which is where AI agents store results for research that I ask for, each that is in a markdown file that I can click and open in Typora; Team Inbox is where I put files for the AI agents to process.

What makes the app unique to me is how I link items together. The linkage was added as I thought about how I will use the app. For example, Knowledge Base items related to a Topic of Interest are linked to the Topic and vice versa. When I enter an Idea I review whether it relates to a Topic of Interest and select one.

For example, do any of the ideas I have relate to a Topic Of Interest? When I create an Idea the dialog in the app has a drop-down field for me to select a Topic. When I open the details page for a topic I can see the related Ideas and click them to open that particular Idea. The screenshot below shows what is linked to a Topic.

In the process of creating the linkage between sections I decided that I should have goals that tie everything together and answer the question, what is it I want to do with my time? The goals here are truly my goals and not the goals imposed on me by somone other than myself, which come to think of it is a good a definition or retirement. My goals might have a target date like the one shown in the screenshot below. I have the ability to write a progress report, but the number of linked Topics, Ideas, and Projects really provide an overview of just how I am achieving the goal.

Claude Code has done all of the development of the app, which is just for myself and I have no intent on ever providing it for others. In fact, the app only runs on my Macbook although I can access it via other computers on my home network while the Macbook is running.

The “development” process has been iterative, as I think of things I want done I add them to the PKM App project in the database. Having this experience in directing AI to write software, I have thoughts/questions about my computer science profession that I will write more about in a future post.

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 11:30:04 -0400

Everyone seems to think Apple must have an AI product. Why should that be true? A problem many companies have is constantly chasing the next big thing at the expense of doing their own thing very well. The problem I see for Apple is that it is a hardware company and AI is software. Apple probably should focus on making sure it’s hardware runs AI the best and it could focus on sandboxing AI in a way to protects privacy, but these are not AI products.

XTEInk X4

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 14:06:48 -0400

The XTEInk X4 is a small open eReader that has a 4.3" screen and costs $69. It is based on the ESP32-C3 micro controller, which is becoming popular amongst makers because it is more affordable than Single Board Computers like the Raspberry Pi. I had seen ads for it on my socials but after Rui Carmo posted about it and and learning there is an active community using and supporting it, I decided to buy one.

Upon recommendation from the community I flashed the CrossPoint Reader software on the device. CrossPoint provides more options, like additional fonts and being able to read in landscape, than the default software.

Despite having a small screen, I find one can read very comfortably even with the smallest font size, although I am using the medium size font. Above is a screenshot of how the text looks with the medium font. The display does not have a front light, so requires a well lit room and will work very well outdoors in the sun.

Reading on the X4 reminds me of before smartphones using a Pocket PC to read books. Back then, before there were larger screen eReaders like the Kindles, we could read books using an app called Mobi Reader, which had it’s own file format that was later acquired by Amazon. I remember reading several books during the time that I used Pocket PCs.

You cannot read eBooks that are protected with Digital Rights Management (DRM) like those sold by Amazon. You can read books that are in the EPUB format and to find books to read search for “EPUB books.” The lack of support for DRM means you probably won’t be able to read the latest on the New York Times best sellers list but you will find many classics.

Right now I do not know how I will use the X4, I bought it mostly to tinker. For reading, I am thinking short stories or poetry might be more useful than novels. An idea I have is to use it for review of the highlights I create while reading books that I have stored in Obsidian via Readwise.

Notes in Obsidian are in markdown, so I searched for a way to generate EPUB files from markdown and found md_to_epub, which is a Python app that is very straight forward to use. The script uses pandoc to create the EPUB version of the file, so it needs to be installed on the computer. I cloned the repo, created a virtual environment and ran the installation.

To transfer files from my Macbook to the X4 turn on the Hotspot feature on the X4, connect the Macbook to the Crosspoint Reader network and then use a web browser to open the page using the IP address provided on the device. When I exit the Hotspot mode on the X4 the Macbook reconnects to my home network.

I can connect the X4 to my home Wifi and then browse to the IP addressed assigned to it, but I have found that connectivity to be slower and less stable, which is why I am using the hotspot.

Everything is stored on the micro SD card in the X4 and I can pop that out and put that in a card reader to copy files, but the network method is more convenient. What I wish I could do is connect the X4 to the Macbook with USB and mount the storage card so that I could simply copy files using the Finder but Claude tells me that is not possible because the ESP32-C3 chip lacks native USB hardware.

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 14:16:56 -0400

It’s a damp and increasing cold day for the start of lap 61.

Time As A Retiree

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 12:16:58 -0400

I’ve learned over the years the best way for me to change is through small habits or routines. In 2019 I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and I found the best way for me to manage my blood sugar was by taking a ten to twenty minute walk after eating a meal. My walks are so much a part of my day that it feels very abnormal when I am not doing them.

So, when considering all this time I now have for myself, I began considering what it is I want to be doing each day. There were the obvious things like reading more and learning more, but I also realized that I could be doing a better job of helping to keep the house clean. Rather than doing all the cleaning all at once I broke down these tasks down into 15 minute items, one per day during week days.

Being the geek I am, I began to look for software to help in keeping track of these habits and I found two: Grocy and Brite. Grocy is a self hosted web app for managing a household, particularly grocery shopping and meal planning, and it includes chore tracking. Brite is a mobile (iOS and Android) and desktop (MacOS and web) app that has the traditional calendar and to-do lists but also has sections for Habits, Projects, and Goals. Brite is probably the most extensible “personal digital assistant” app I’ve found.

I have been using both, but neither is a perfect solution. Grocy has components we just won’t use and while Brite is better aligned it too has more than I need.

Most PDA apps are designed around a work day in an office and primarily serve for scheduling meetings and managing tasks. Appointments and tasks are still in life as a retiree but they are not the main things and so I started thinking about what is that is now important.

The first item I identified were the Topics Of Interest to me that I want to learn more about, AI is one of those topics, Anthropology is another. Another item are Ideas, which are mostly things I want to do that I want to remember. An Idea might be a topic for a blog post or what I want to do for my birthday.

Working on an idea is a Project, which is something to be accomplished in two or more tasks. I don’t stop having tasks in retirement but I might be less concerned about due dates. I am thinking of due dates as more about reminders than deadlines.

Having thought through Topics, Ideas, and Projects I realized what should tie these all together are Goals and Goals answer the question, what is it that I want to do with my time. As I fleshed out what I want to document and track my goals I came to the realization they are more meaningful to me now in retirement.

I think one of the most performative parts of working in corporate America is yearly goals or objectives. Employees are given the illusion they have influence on those goals but in reality they are dictated and in the end there is really just one goal, make money so that the top level of the company and its shareholders get rich.

My 37 year career was spent on someone else’s goals, and in that time I really had one goal, remain employed to make money to pay the bills and save for retirement. Accomplishing that one goal while part of corporate America enables me to now have real goals for the time in my life.

Michigan Central

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 12:53:40 -0400

The Michigan Central train station closed in 1988, one year before Ruth and I moved to the Detroit area. I can think of no better symbol for the fall and rise of Detroit than this historic building. Built by the Vanderbilts and opened in 1914, it is a sibling to Grand Central station in New York.

After its abandonment by Amtrak it became a well known eye sore, and as a ruin it became used as a set for movies like Batman vs. Superman. Unlike the locals, our memories of this once glorious building is of a haunting structure with blown out windows.

Reports of its restoration and re-use surfaced throughout the years, but never became real until Ford purchased the building in 2018. It finally re-opened in 2024 and ever since I have wanted to go see it, which we finally did yesterday. The building, like Detroit, has survived the decline of the 90s and early 2000s to be the most prominent physical manifestation of Detroit’s motto: “We hope for better things; it will rise from the ashes.”

See the results of the labor of so many to restore this building to its original beauty in the pictures that I took. I envy those who get to work in this building, one with the personality afforded by wood, limestone, and granite. Designed when architecture emphasized materials of the earth over materials made from the earth.

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 11:49:52 -0400

I use Lillihub developed by Loura as my primary micro.blog web app. The app’s existence is a testament to the open nature of micro.blog, ironically it has all of the things that Dave Winer has been promoting about Wordpress.

If you are a micro.blog member and haven’t tried Lillihub, I recommend you check it out. Loura has recently made some UI improvements that have a fresher and more appealing layout. I also appreciate her prompt response to my feedback for making dark/light mode a toggle and adding keyboard shortcuts. The shortcuts greatly speed the ability to move through the timeline.

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 12:04:29 -0400

Dave Rogers: “The tech-bros are building slaves.” I had not thought of AI this way, but it makes some sense.

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:25:07 -0400

Finished reading: Hostile Takeover A Jessica Warne Spy Novel by Cheri Baker 📚

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:07:30 -0400

I think this MIT Technology Review article, noting a gap in knowing what is going on with AI between experts and non-experts, asks the wrong question and reaches the wrong conclusion. The gap is about trust rather than knowledge and it is a lack in trust of the humans making/using AI more so than the AI itself. Non-experts having lived with the Internet and seeing the corrosive effects of an addictive social network fueled by greedy humans have no reason to trust nor believe any claims of new technology for altruistic reasons.

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 12:51:33 -0400

I think North Side Baseball provides an explanation on the Chicago Cubs that as good as any other and I would summarize it thusly, they have no margin for error. Without any big bats in the lineup prone to hit home runs they need the entire lineup to be hitting, and the probability of that happening consistently is low. For me it all comes back to how this team has been constructed around good but budget friendly players.

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 12:23:26 -0400

Well, that was a shock. Down arrow-ing through my morning bookmarks and hit lillihub.com to find a complete UI overhaul, most prominently being dark mode. I don’t see a way to turn dark mode off and usually such web sites mess up my eyes, but for some reason that is not the case. Perhaps it’s because the text is not in bright white but either an off-white or another shade.

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 12:07:15 -0400

Spring has come.

Retirement First Quarter Report

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 12:15:40 -0400

At the beginning of April I passed the first three month milestone of retirement and I want to write down some thoughts about this new phase of life. Am I glad that I retired? Absolutely, but I would be lying if I did not admit feeling some fear caused by the fact that our retirement income is tied to the market that reacts to the whims of the President of the United States.

The market, and my reaction to it, is emotional and so the challenge is in managing those emotions. Uncertainty is a reality that always exists and my technique for living with uncertainty is to focus on, to the extent possible, what I know. For example, if all of our savings were to disappear, which is a very unlikely scenario, I have had these three months of life lived to my schedule whereas I could be still working, still have the savings disappear, and not have had that time.

Retirement for me is about savoring the most precious gift of time, which always passing and often only appreciated via hindsight. The best way to face uncertainty is in gratitude for the current moment. I have reasons to be grateful simply to be alive to experience this moment, but I confess that in the later years of my career I grew frustrated with having the precious time of my life controlled by a corporation that simply did not know nor care about me.

I’ve been working since I was 12 years old. When I define work in the context of my life, I broadly include in it all the requirements placed on my time by others, school and employers. Forty seven years, almost non-stop, of waking up to an alarm clock dictated by somebody else, and when I became more aware that my remaining time in life is shorter than the past life I have lived I grew more irritated with having to share that remaining time with a lifeless corporate entity.

Had you asked me what I planned to do in my retirement I would have simply answered, not work! Loveboy’s Working For The Weekend has been on loop in the soundtrack of my life these past 47 years. I retired so that there were no more stressful Sunday nights as my mind and body gave up the brief bit of relaxation it started experiencing the prior Friday evening.

Mission accomplished! I have even found on a few occasions that I forgot the day of the week, feeling as though it were a weekend.

Same Ole Cubs

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 11:24:22 -0400

Every year it seems the problems with the Chicago Cubs is the same, they struggle to hit with runners in scoring position because they have poor hitters. When the same issues keep appearing that indicates to me there is a systemic problem, which is not something fixable through signing one or two players. The evaluation of talent and construction of the roster is producing the same results we see year after year.

Getting the Cubs to the World Series after a century of losing is turning out to be easier than getting them back a decade after. It’s easy to get a talented team when you tank seasons and trade away what experienced players you have for prospects. The core of the 2016 team were those prospects lead by experienced veterans, but veterans who were in the later half of their careers.

Obviously, fans are not going to allow such a heavy rebuild. Seems to me that if you aren’t able to load up on prospects you have change your approach to obtaining MLB players. Every free agent signing the Cubs have made since 2016 are of players who are in the back end of their careers. Signing Alex Bregman this year is no different than signing Dansby Swanson, players who have won championships but who are not in their prime and therefore seem less capable of hitting consistently over a season.

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 13:12:41 -0400

Read Joan Westenberg’s essay, Optimism Is Not A Personality Flaw. Christians actively working to initiate armageddon are the most dangerous of the pessimists that Westenberg describes.

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 16:51:16 -0400

Finished reading: Before Religion by Brent Nongbri 📚

Stay Awake

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:02:18 -0400

The intended effects of social networks for the sake of wealth ought to be the lens through which we look at AI. At their beginning we were told of all the good things social networks provide, and they did do that for a while, but then the wealth generation went in to hyper drive. We have no reason to believe the motivations towards more and more AI is not the same wealth generation. And since there can only be one most wealthiest person on earth, that leads to not caring about the negative impacts on the rest of the world.

A potentially helpful question to ponder when thinking about where all this AI “stuff” is going. Think of the songs that you have heard in your life, do those songs stand out because they sound good and are entertaining or do they stand out because you connect to the lyrics and relate what they convey? Perhaps that connection has also leads to feeling like you know the song writer, or better yet that the song writer knows you.

Bob Nystrom’s blog post, The Value of Things, inspired the question. Perhaps a way to combat the nihilism of AI is consciousness. Most times we are unconscious, which is like hearing music and simply enjoying the sound, while times we are conscious enough to hear and relate to the words. The risk of AI is the decrease in the amount of time that we are conscious, so perhaps working on our own consciousness is a method to combating the affects of AI.