Innbundet

Bear's discovery feed improvements and a call for feedback

A case for planting more trees in urban areas.

The new/old way of keeping a digital journal

The long, dark decent of the digital commons

A proposed addition to the HTML spec.

My abandoned webcomic

Modern self-driving technology still has a way to go before it becomes generally safe, and useful enough for broader adoption. While I do believe that at some point in my lifetime I'll be able to hail an eTaxi, it'll really depend on where I am, the road infrastructure, and the local laws and regulations. Fully independent autonomous vehicles have a few other shortcomings (assuming we get the tech right). The first...

It's 2024 and LLMs are still the "hot new thing". Looking back on 2023, I'm surprised how quickly I went from, "Wow! My computer is speaking to me in fluent and comprehensible English," to, "Eh, that could have been phrased/executed/generated better." Back in the early 2010s, my mother created and ran a non-profit project called Dr Math. This used volunteer students from the University of Pretoria as math tutors via...

I (finally) received my Playdate, after about a year and a half of waiting. To be honest, I'd kinda forgotten that I'd ordered it and was pleasantly surprised when it showed up. For those who don't know, the Playdate is a niche handheld gaming console, similar to a Gameboy. It has a black and white screen, and an odd crank on the side. This crank isn't a dynamo for charging the device, or anything like that....

There are two kinds of writing. Writing for yourself, and writing for others. Both of these can, naturally, be broken down into various subcategories. For example: Personal Journaling Note-taking Poetry (although this can be public) Public Blogging Academic papers Letter writing Book writing I've written rather extensively on the idea of keeping a daily journal (personal). But while I have written a decent number...

2024 has arrived and with it aspirations to "do better". That isn't to say 2023 wasn't a good year. Not by any means. But the earth has reached the specific point in its trajectory around the sun where we define the year as "new" again, and so we arbitrarily decide that it's the time to do certain things. I like that. There's a lot of hate for New Years Resolutions™. Why choose this time of year to make a change?...

Bear Blog has a few design constraints for speed, efficiency, and stability. There are many great open-source, privacy-focussed analytics platforms out there, but I wanted to build one native to Bear. tldr; One of my constraints for Bear is to not use client-side javascript. This applies to the analytics system as well. Client-side javascript can be tweaked to determine the authenticity of traffic to a page and...

Why teaching taxation in school is important for society.

Working solo has its difficulties. For one, my income is somewhat tied to my productivity, and my productivity highly correlates to my state of mind. This is combined with a lack of co-workers. Comrades in the trenches, if you will. And finally there's the ability to not do anything, which can be quite nebulous and dangerous if not managed. One nice thing about being employed is when you wake up, you know what...

Since I moved out of the startup world I've exclusively worked on small projects. Niche, simple tools packed with love and attention to detail. I've written about my approach to building, and how it impacts my life and outlook. Today, however, I want to write about a less-obvious benefit of building small: The agency to be more creative. I used to frequent game-jams back in the day. At the beginning of a jam teams...

I've been engaged in an ongoing war with spammers. Because Bear is free-to-use it's naturally the target of backlink farmers, credit card phishers, illegal drug sellers, online casino advertisers, and crypto shillers. I won't go into too much detail on the causes. I've written about them twice before. In brief: the barrier to entry is low (easy signup to a free service) which leads to bad actors trying to exploit...

I love street art. Walking around Cape Town, whether it be to grab my morning coffee, or to pick up groceries, feels more delightful because of the organic gallery that is my city. Especially when a new piece of art pops up on a previously unremarkable stretch of street. What a cheeky surprise! Street art has the magical ability to turn a dingy industrial district into a hyperlocal gallery. Like the philosopher's...