Three Minutes of Darkness (Weeknotes

Here’s what happened during the week of April 8–14, 2024.

Eclipse Field Trip

🌞 I drove up to my parents’ house in the Cleveland area to see the eclipse and celebrate my dad’s 80th birthday. He’s not getting around all that well right now but he’s on the mend so that’s good.
🤯 Keenan summed up the experience very well in his review .
💕 While I was up there, I enjoyed a delightful visit with one of my parents’ neighbors who I've known as long as I can remember. We walked around the neighborhood and chatted about this and that. I hope I’m half as sharp as she is when I’m 83.

😍 I commissioned another new avatar for my collection from hey hey momo this week. It's a cute, prickly little cactus that enjoys sunshine and warm weather—like me. There are two versions, one with sunglasses and one without. I love it!
📜 Since my avatar collection was on my mind anyway, I decided to publish my avatar history. It shows all the avatars I’ve used on social media as far back as I’m able to go.
📣 I signed up for an EchoFee Pro account. I like that I don’t have to post my posts on Mastodon any more. I’ve also got it set up to post my photos from Flickr, but the challenge there is that every single photo generates a separate Mastodon post. I might need to fiddle with this workflow a bit more. But so far, I’m loving it. Kudos to Robb!

👓 I ordered another pair of eyeglasses from FramesDirect.com . They are so easy to work with and the customer services is great!
⚽ I received a last-minute invitation to see the SheBelieves Cup Final at Lower.com Field here in Columbus. I hate to see games decided on PKs, but then again it was a work night so I’m not too sorry about it. Fun game otherwise!
🧶 I received a new set of ergonomic crochet hooks that I ordered from Woot. I’ll be honest, they were an impulse purchase, but they seem pretty nice.
🐻 I started using Bear a while back as an alternative to Microsoft OneNote, and it's certainly better. But I recently took another look at Apple Notes. Not sure when it happened, but the main features I need (tags, folders, and availability across devices) are all there. So I started (tentatively) switching over. I've still got time on my Bear Pro subscription to change my mind if things don’t work out.
💵 Taxes are done, if a bit late this year. Modest refund coming, so that’s nice.
Finally had nice weather and an opening in my schedule at the same time this week to cut my grass for the first time this season. It was pretty shaggy and took a lot more work than usual. I like that it’s very green this time of year.
🏃‍♂️ Ran (and walked) the Ohio State 4 Miler on Sunday. Blew out my knee in the process. Time again for a trip to the sports medicine clinic.

📈 Dare Obasanjo shared Boeing’s long fall, and how it might recover and he got it exactly right: the stock market rewards short term thinking, leading companies to sabotage themselves
💡 In case you were wondering: Epicureanism and Stoicism: Lessons, Similarities and Differences (Daily Stoic)
📻 The folks over at The Free Press are getting a lot of mileage from this article: “I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.” by Uri Berliner
💀 Hard to believe Stephen King has been at it for 50 years: “Carrie at 50: the bloody history of Stephen King’s audacious debut novel” by Jessie Thompson (The Independent)
📷 “I Stopped Shooting Like This” by Roman Fox, gave me some interesting things to think about in my photography practice.
These stories made me laugh out loud
- 🛳️ “Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever” by Gary Shteyngart (The Atlantic)
- 🧠 “‘This shit’s so expensive’: a note on generative models and software margins” by Baldur Bjarnason
- 🧠 “Pivot to AI: Hallucinations worsen as the money runs out” by David Gerard (Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain)
Other AI-related Stuff
- 🧠 According to “Models All The Way Down” (Knowing Machines), “There are models on top of models, and trainings sets on top of training sets.”
- 🧠 “Again, my position on LLMs is that you absolutely shouldn’t be using them with very, very few exceptions” by Baldur Bjarnason

💰 Started watching season 2 of Loot. Where the heck is this season going? Seems like nowhere.

Have a great week!