Jake Van Alstyne on jvalol

I had a house

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 05:44:57 -0600

I lived alone in a house.

Nothing was wrong with it really, it gave me a place to live, sleep, cook, etc.

She asked if she could come over for an hour.

An hour turned into more.

A house is shelter, it keeps the rain off.

Recently I spent two and a half days on the bathroom floor.

I was in a house with a toilet, but I was at home because she was there.

You made my house a home, Jen.

She hates this picture.

I should have gone to the hospital

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 20:03:00 -0600

Yesterday I saved my own life. Not figuratively, literally.

WARNING: this is gross

On Friday I woke up with the worst abdominal pain imaginable. I didn’t know what was happening, just that I was in immense pain.

My fiancée said, “We need to get you to a hospital!”

I’m a very independent man, so I said, “No, I’m sure I can figure this out.”

While enduring this pain, I tried to think.

And the first vomit came. It was my dinner the night before.

“Phew,” I thought. Must have been food poisoning.

It was not.

I puked again. And again. And again.

I thought, “maybe this is just blockage.”

Maybe if I drink some water it might soften this up.

It came back out every time.

If you don’t know (I didn’t), the stomach refuses to send anything further if there’s a blockage; meaning nowhere for this to go. So it decides to force you to vomit.

If you don’t take care of a blockage (I do recommend the hospital), eventually you will die of thirst.

I had heard of this, but had zero experience with it. The pain wasn’t like a computer error. Nothing tells you what’s wrong. Which is kind of the important part if you want to know how to fix it.

It’s just a loud and incredibly painful signal that something in your body is wrong.

Something is wrong. But, uh, what is wrong? And how do I fix it?My fiancée, trying to take me to the hospital and me resisting.

Moving on.

I would need to vomit regularly whether I ate or drank or not.

Eventually I noticed the colors coming out were changing. So I thought, “at least that feels like progress.” So I just kept accepting the only path forward without a hospital (I’m a stubborn fool, I know. It’ll probably get me killed someday) is to keep vomiting.

The pain got less and less, so I knew it was working.

It took two and a half painful days of constantly leaning over the toilet.

But in one magical moment, pardon my language (but I did warn this is gross), I needed to take a shit.

I had the most compacted shit of my life. And then another. And another.

Now, if it had gone on long enough with no progress, I would have gone to the hospital. Instead, I followed my gut (pun intended).

Two and a half days of suffering in bed, around 25 times over the toilet. My fiancée said ‘let’s go to the hospital’ the second she realized the absolute agony I was in, and that this could have been something more serious. I’m a stubborn fool. She’s not a fan of that quality of mine, but hey. My stupid, stubborn independence caused me two and a half days of extreme pain. Thank god my fiancée was there, she took care of me while I was puking everywhere and developing the shakes and the sweats.

I’ve learned my lesson. Drink water, and consume more fiber, Jake!

I should have gone to the hospital.

My use of AI

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 22:30:00 -0600

I write a lot, most of what I write never gets put anywhere. I’ve even written about that on this blog.

Yo, I’m well aware we’re in an AI transition. People are (rightfully) skeptical about AI generated content. Definitely got some feedback myself. Some stuff I’ve written got the eye of Sauron. Some stuff was actually written by AI, some was edited for grammar and stuff by AI. I’ve added some controls from my side to make it clear what was and wasn’t created/edited by AI.

i promised something #

I said I’d never use AI again to write anything. Then I used it as an editor. Then I got flamed again. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think it’s going anywhere. I’m a technologist, it’s how I built my life, my home, and family. I don’t claim to know everything, but I know I know how to learn. And I know I’m not afraid to experiment. My concession here is that I failed to hold up the promise perfectly. I want my voice to be heard. If I’m not speaking, it’s not my voice.

so it isn’t the writing #

I did get accused of AI writing something I literally typed out character by character. So, this whole thing should at least be a two-way street. I get the skepticism. I just think sometimes the benefit of the doubt, a little affordance for someone who is using a tool they’re new to and playing with, isn’t a lot to ask. You’re probably reading this on a device that involved some serious level of engineering and automation. Just pointing out, we’re all in some different version of the same boat. Tech is crazy, pretty much everyone in my personal life is scared of it. And I’m talking just laptops, smartphones. They have no idea what I’m doing when I’m on my computer. So, I (kind of) get it.

you can’t lose if you don’t play #

Here’s one of my favorite aphorisms. “You can’t lose if you don’t play.” Here’s another one, “A boat in the harbor is safe. But that’s not what boats are for.” So, I post. I use AI. I only delete comments as an admin when they are straight toxic, offensive, etc. Or obvious mistaken duplicates.

I just want the internet to get to the simple kind of place it used to be, with no ads, slim dependencies, no tracking, etc.

I figure any tool that gets me there is worth a shot. Stumble along the way? Sure. Who hasn’t.

If you read this and you liked it, I’m pretty easy to reach if you have questions.

Cheers, Jake.

I got engaged

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 11:20:05 -0600

So, I had a girlfriend. There was this friend of mine, and she had a boyfriend. We knew each other for years, we had a lot of chemistry. So much that one of our friends said “Just get it over with already.”

I didn’t know why I stopped seeing her around, when she was usually there in our regular spots. Later she told me she needed to not see me. She had a boyfriend after all. I had a girlfriend. Feelings between us were there, everyone saw it, but you just don’t cross that boundary.

It wasn’t planned between us at all, but one day her boyfriend broke up with her. I hadn’t seen her in months. And then one day, I broke up with my girlfriend.

It took another few months but eventually she heard about it. She called me. At first I think it was to check in and see if I was doing okay. We talked for an hour.

A few weeks later she called again. We talked for another hour.

A few weeks after that, she called again. We talked for 7 hours and 45 minutes.

She said maybe she’d come visit me at my house, but only for an hour.

That turned into hours.

Then it turned into days, weeks, months.

We haven’t been apart since.

You get the picture.

When she first heard I started dating someone, years ago, she asked me “You don’t have to answer this, but are you in love with her?”

My gut reaction (which I always follow) was to say “You’re right. I don’t want to answer.”

I think that gut reaction told me more than it told her.

So, somewhere in those first days and weeks and months, the word love was uttered, at first specifically in lowercase (I actually said that. “I lowercase love you.”) and then it turned into uppercase, and then into “I am not just in love with you. I am so in love with you.” Things that were, or should have been obvious to both of us, and our friends, for years, became real.

The other night we were sitting on my balcony, sharing a beer. I wasn’t planning it, it just felt like a natural, organic, gut feeling. I just popped the question. I had no ring. She didn’t care, she just kept saying yes. Like 6 times.

I bought a ring for her, it isn’t ready yet but I think it will be perfect.

We don’t exactly do things the traditional way. But I do want people to know she’s loved. And married.

I don’t know if I’ll have a ring for myself, I probably should. I don’t really care. But we’re shooting from the hip here (Old-timey western cowboy style. We’re both from Utah, she from one of the smallest towns I’ve ever heard of, me from the biggest city in the state. It’s kind of our style, she and I.)

(Update: we have both rings now.)

Anyway we are in love with each other. And we’re going to get married. When? Probably soon, but see the above paragraph. Where? How? We’ll figure it out.

I’m in love with you, Jen.

Welp, we got the rings!

The post you (almost) didn't publish

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 12:54:25 -0600

I’ve written about being terminally online, which I am 100% guilty of. If you’re reading this you might be too.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve written a lot of things I never posted. I also had AI straight up write stuff, people smelled it right away and I definitely got that feedback.

The internet is a tough place, I mean, the world is a tough place. There’s always going to be someone upset. Wasn’t it Douglas Adams, somewhere in the Hitchhiker’s books, who wrote with the opening line “In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

I write more than I post. Why don’t I post? Sometimes because I don’t trust I won’t get flamed for it, mostly because I doubt anyone will read it anyway. Sometimes (and I think I’ve been pretty transparent about it here) it’s because it was either entirely written by AI, or at least drafted by it.

But hey. A ship in the harbor is safe but that’s not what ships are for. I like writing, I like tech, I like playing with the latest stuff.

Safe in the harbor, just not what the boat is for.

I like sailing (not literally), I like putting myself out there. I’m safe, I have a roof over my head, I have food and supplies, and I don’t mind getting a, I don’t know, 10 to 1 backlash when I talk.

I love seeing other people putting themselves out there too. I figure if you’ve got your blog and you post, you’ve probably been doing it a while and know what I’m describing.

This post is part me describing my experience, and part encouraging any readers who also post. More importantly, those who hesitate to post.

Why did I call it PopsicleBoat?

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 13:01:34 -0600

I called it PopsicleBoat because of a few reasons, I think. It evokes childhood memories. It is a metaphor for the intent: a playful place where people can connect and stick together, through calm and stormy weather. I don’t think I can explain it better than that.

Sticks together. Floats together. (see what I did there? heh)

My comment section is static HTML

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 17:26:50 -0600

The comment section here is static HTML. Reading costs nobody anything. #

Posting a comment does take a little more. It’s how I keep guard against bots and spammers, etc.

This blog is a Hugo site. It has a comment section. If you view source on any post with comments, you will find them in the HTML, because they are compiled into the page at build time like everything else. There is no widget, no iframe, no tracker, and no third-party script, and loading a post makes no request to any server but this one. The page does carry some JavaScript (the site search, a few small comforts), but the comments never need it: with JavaScript off you can read every comment and post one.

Baked. Fun, huh?

The shape #

The comments live on a small Phoenix server I run, called PopsicleBoat. Each post has a companion thread there; publishing a post makes one API call that creates the thread and writes its URL into the post’s front matter. That URL is the only coupling between the two systems.

At build time, Hugo fetches each thread’s replies.json and renders the replies as plain HTML once per post per build, cached, capped indentation. If the server is unreachable, the build carries on and renders no comments. The comment system cannot break the blog.

Below the replies is a plain HTML form: a textarea and a submit button, POSTing to the boat. No script, no cookie, no request on pageview. The boat walks you through signing in if needed, you confirm, and it sends you back to the post with #just-posted on the URL. A hidden note appears via CSS :target to say your comment is on its way. It is: the boat pings my build hook, and about a minute later the comment is part of the page. One of the small comforts is that it refreshes for you when it lands. A manual refresh does the same.

Why this shape #

Reading is static. Writing is dynamic. That is the whole idea.

A reader costs nothing and depends on nothing. The page they get here is the page I built, comments included. A writer touches the server once, at the moment of writing, which is the point where a server is not just useful, but like a moat: identity, spam defense, notifications. A comment writer is protected, a website owner (like me) is notified when written to.

The durability falls out for free. The comments are in my generated pages, so they stay with the blog no matter what happens to the comment server. Most comment systems get this backwards: the conversation lives on their infrastructure and your page borrows it at read time, every read, forever.

There is no captcha. Spam defense is the boat’s job and stays invisible: a honeypot, time-to-submit checks, rate limits, and the sign-in step itself. The boat is, to put it simply, the guard at the gate.

The honest costs #

Comments lag by a build. About a minute here on this blog.

Commenting requires an account on the boat. That stops some people. I keep it because a signed name is what makes the no-captcha posture possible.

If the boat is down during a build, that build renders the affected posts without new comments until a later build picks them up. I prefer a page that sometimes forgets to a page that sometimes fails.

If you want this #

The API is written up in one page: create a thread, get replies as JSON, point a build hook at your host. Documented at https://www.popsicleboat.com/for-bloggers/api — you mint your own token, shown once, to you. No one else sees it.

We're all terminally online. I know I am. I know you are too if you're reading this

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 09:00:00 -0600

“Terminally online” is usually an insult. You say it about someone who knows what happened on some platform today, in detail, involving people you’ve never met in person. I’d like to point out that you are currently reading a personal blog, and you’ve probably never met me. Same with other blogs, or forums like reddit or hacker news.

I’m going to skip the part where people pretend they’re going to log off. I’ve watched people announce their departures from the internet the way people announce diets. It lasts about as long, and the announcement itself happens online, which is telling. We’re online, friends.

Most of the internet wants your time in one specific shape: a feed you scroll alone. It’s engineered to be bottomless on purpose, and it works on me the same as it works on you. An hour goes by and I couldn’t tell you one thing I saw. It was time with the texture of static. Maybe that’s dramatic, but tell me it doesn’t ring true. There is so much out there.

Static, noise. Where's the signal?

I’m mostly just putting my thoughts out there, I don’t see a significant problem, and if I did I wouldn’t have a solution. I mean I guess I could change my life completely, work for the national parks department or something.

I hid something on this site

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 14:15:11 -0600

There’s an easter egg on this site now! I’m not going to say where it is. (I sort of am. Um, that’s what the spoilers at the bottom are for. Which itself was a new feature addition.)

NASA hid 'Dare Mighty Things' in binary in this parachute. There's something hidden here too.

Hints first. It’s small. It’s on almost every page. It means something to me personally, so if you know me you can probably guess. Clicking it does something.

One hint: it’s nested, like those Russian stacking dolls. They keep opening long after you’d think they’ve stopped. (ashes aren’t the end of the game)

One more hint: When you’re lost in the woods and you find a cozy fire built by friendly and welcoming people, you don’t just warm your hands and wander off. You sit, you enjoy the company, and when it’s time to go to the next thing, you carry a light with you. What would you do first?

Spoilers #

Where is it? The ankh at the bottom of most pages. Click it.
Something happened. Now what? Click it again.
Is that everything? No. Some letters burn brighter than others. Start with the oldest pages.
Which pages have the letters? The sidebar lists every weblog post, newest at the top. Counting up from the bottom: the 1st, 1st again, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 8th oldest. Two letters share the first post. Yes, that sequence.
I found a word. Now what? It’s not just a word. “Speak, friend, and enter.” Addresses here look like jva.lol/word.

AI is good. Scary good. Scary in a good way.

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 15:10:18 -0600

I’ve been using AI for over a year now. It keeps getting better. I’m sitting here, 20 years of hands on development behind me, and it’s unbelievable.

Twenty years of doing it by hand. This does almost all of the fiddly part.

Lots of tools could find typos before I post them. Not a lot of them could respond to when a color in my theme is wrong, or a component positioned slightly off. It almost doesn’t matter which model I use, the days of hand tweaking my work seem over.

For cents (in U.S. dollars), today I (or AI did, directed by me) edited a photo I took of my girlfriend with her niece. My GF’s hair slightly obscured her niece’s face. Got a cleaned up photo that looked perfect in minutes.

The skepticism about whether you can trust what’s generated or edited is totally valid, and I’m not above it. This blog runs a rule where nothing ships in my voice until I’ve rewritten it myself, precisely because AI text can’t be trusted to be mine. Then I turned the same kind of tool on a photo of my girlfriend and her niece and moved someone’s hair.

It does have significant value though. For 20 years I’ve hand coded every single line. There was always boilerplate and libraries etc. I’ve relied on tools I didn’t write the whole time. I didn’t write a single bit of the AI I’m using. I didn’t write a lick of Tailwind either, but I have used it. Even comedians need a stage. A camera crew. A broadcast network. An audience which means tickets, security, omg I could go on and on.

I’ve written about AI here, for instance how I got called out because it smelled like AI wrote it and not my voice. Shot taken, message received. I’m still going to use AI. But it’s important to use your own voice. People can clearly tell when you don’t.

I, for one, am having a blast. I do have to remind myself to be the voice, though. It’s easy to slip into the trap where you literally have AI make all the decisions.

But the boilerplate and styling fixes I don’t have to do by hand? Yeah. Gimme.

I've made posting here with a companion thread on PopsicleBoat automatic

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 11:34:43 -0600

I have had scripts to make things easier for a while, but I’m writing now because I’ve wired them all together to make posting here with a companion PopsicleBoat comment thread easier than ever.

Press the button, it's printed. Not on paper but you get what I mean. Complete with a companion comments thread on PopsicleBoat.

It’s basically one script with a few prompts. (I used it to create this post, for instance):

scripts/new-post
Title: I've made posting here with a companion thread on PopsicleBoat automatic
Slug [ive-made-posting-here-with-a-companion-thread-on-popsicleboat-automatic]:
Media for this post (scaffolds a page bundle)? [Y/n]: y
Description (meta/OG line; blank to fill in later): Automatic comment section for any new blog post here
Summary (list-page line; blank to fill in later): I have scripts in place to start a fully connected blog post, complete with a companion comments section on PopsicleBoat
Categories, comma-separated [Projects]: Projects
Tags, comma-separated (e.g. popsicleboat, hugo): popsicleboat, hugo
Created content/weblog/ive-made-posting-here-with-a-companion-thread-on-popsicleboat-automatic/index.md — write the essay.
Committing it will prompt for its companion thread (empty space answer skips).

I’ll commit in a moment, and then name the companion thread. I (and you, if you’re reading) will see the result.

The main point of this is to demonstrate how easy it could be for you too, if you want it.

Most of each is YAML quoting and error handling. The two bits are the actual idea.

The scaffold defaults to a Hugo page bundle, so a post always has somewhere to put images:

read -r -p "Media for this post (scaffolds a page bundle)? [Y/n]: " bundle
case $bundle in
[nN]*) post="content/weblog/$slug.md" ;;
*) post="content/weblog/$slug/index.md" ;;
esac

And the commit hook re-stages the post after wiring the thread URL into it, which is why the thread arrives in the same commit instead of a follow-up:

if scripts/companion-thread "$post"; then
git add "$post"
fi

One caveat if you want to copy this: it leans on three things I set up once and forgot about. A POPSICLEBOAT_TOKEN in my shell, a companion-thread.template.md written in my own words that the command fills in per post, and scripts/setup having turned the git hooks on. Without those the scaffold still works, the hook just shrugs and tells you to wire the thread later.

Worth admitting: writing this post broke the tooling it describes. Pasting the scaffold script in dragged along the review marker from its own comments, and the gate that keeps unreviewed copy off the site saw it and blocked the commit. Nothing to rewrite, the marker was the subject. The gate ignores fenced code now.

23 languages, one I can check

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 14:44:13 -0600

PopsicleBoat is available in 23 languages besides English now. I speak two of them: English and German.

I wired gettext in early, so every visible string in the app has been going through a translation function from the beginning. That part was just discipline. What I never had was the translations themselves. There are about 1,500 strings in there. Getting those into Arabic, Thai, Korean, Ukrainian, and twenty more is not something I was ever going to do myself, and paying 23 translators for a hobby project was never going to happen either. So it just sat there, one language, waiting.

The AI did it. All of them, in an afternoon.

It lands on the right word. Usually.

The part that bothered me #

You can’t check the work. That’s the whole problem. I can look at the Thai file and tell you it’s Thai, and that’s the end of what I know. If it’s stiff, or wrong, or accidentally rude, I have no way to find out until a person who speaks it tells me. Shipping a thing you can’t read to people who can read it is a little scary. I want to get things right, but seriously. How would I know the Thai translation tracks for a native Thai speaker?

Why I shipped it anyway #

German. I read it, write it, and speak it fluently. I lived in Germany for 3 years. German happens to be one of the 23, and it’s the only one aside from English I can verify.

So I read the German. I didn’t skim, I read. I scoured. And it’s good. Not “technically correct” good, actually good. The tone matches, the informal tonality is consistent, the UI strings are the ones a German app would use instead of the literal translation of the English. A few things I’d have phrased differently, which is also true of things I write in English. So in general, it’s been a good exercise in reviewing copy that faces users. Probably (almost certainly) still rough edges especially in languages I don’t know, but also the two I do. But AI brought me a loooooooong way to supporting languages I simply don’t know.

What I’d suggest you do if you’re curious #

This has been an experiment, mostly. Of course I’d love a global audience, but this was not an anticipatory effort. It was more like “Can AI do this?”.

One thing I didn’t expect: shipping a language nobody reads yet teaches you nothing, because nobody is there to tell you it’s wrong.

If you’re interested in trying this for your own site, here’s the general flow I followed: check the language translations you know -> decide if it’s good enough to have confidence in the ones you don’t -> commit, but brace yourself for corrections from users

If I didn’t know German, I don’t think I’d have pushed this. But because I know my own fluency, I could spot check the German translation and it was good. It was like, really good. So that gave me confidence on all the languages I do not know.

Way cool, friends. This technology is not just a toy. It’s wildly powerful.

There’s a feedback link in the sidebar and it goes to me. If something reads wrong in your language, that’s the fastest way to fix it, and honestly I’d rather hear it from you than not know.

Cheers Jake

Commenting now works with two redirects

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 12:03:32 -0600

This blog is static HTML using hugo. There’s no comment backend, no database, no JavaScript framework. And yet under this post there’s a place to submit a comment. And under every comment there’s a link to reply if you want, and if you do, the blog navigates briefly to popsicleboat and returns to this page, scrolled to a bar that tells you what’s going on with a spinner. Then the page automatically refreshes when it’s ready, showing what you wrote. It takes about a minute because the hugo site needs to rebuild.

Last time I wrote about the author side: write, run a command to link your post to popsicleboat to enable comments hosted there, and push. Things have changed a bit since then. This is to describe the reader side and how comments work. I made it more frictionless and that took more machinery. Here’s the whole loop.

Round trip. Comments go out -> circle the flow -> come back home.

And things continue to change, this project is very much alive. If you’re reading this blog keep in mind older posts describing how things work are probably a touch out of date.

What submit actually does #

The reply box is a plain HTML form. No javascript attached. Submitting it POSTs text across the internet to PopsicleBoat’s endpoint.

That POST carries no cookies. Browsers stopped sending them on cross-site form posts years ago, a security design against CSRFs. Because the request carries no authority, the endpoint can’t post anything on your behalf. All it does is park your draft server-side under a random token, then answer with a redirect to the thread, token in hand. The redirect is a 303, which turns the POST into an ordinary top-level GET, and on an ordinary GET your PopsicleBoat session is back.

The moment you land on PopsicleBoat, three checks run: 1 - you’re signed in

2 - the draft is recent (to verify it is the post just made)

3 - you arrived from the same internet address the draft was submitted from.

The idea is that alone, each of these checks would be leaky. Together they assert this is the comment from the same person at the same moment. This prevents abuse.

All three pass and the reply posts on the spot, through the same pipeline as the boat’s own composer, so rate limits and moderation apply the same. No second button, no form over there, nothing to confirm. From your side it was simple like any other commenting mechanism: 1 - type

2 - submit

and you’re already on your way back to where you clicked submit.

The only caveat for this particular blog is it does need to rebuild since comments and replies are static, as is the whole blog. The good news is it’s pretty easy to configure that because it’s hosted on netlify and setting the build hook is a one time process. Most popular hosting sites offer something similar.

The build hook #

I’ve written about it before but since it’s context here it’s worth a refresher.

For this blog the hook lives in the Netlify dashboard under Site configuration → Build & deploy → Build hooks. Click “Add build hook,” give it a name, and Netlify gives you a unique URL. Anything that sends an empty POST to that URL triggers a fresh build and deploy of the site. That URL is what you paste into your PopsicleBoat account settings (the build-hook field), and it’s what PopsicleBoat pings the moment a new reply posts, triggering the build.

Everything after the trigger is just information for the reader: a status bar with a spinner sitting where the comment will appear.

When it asks first #

The checks exist for cases where posting silently would be wrong, and every miss falls back to a default. Basically the way it was before. The composer open, with your draft already in it, and one button.

The address check matters because the landing URL is shareable. PopsicleBoat notes the IP address that submits a draft, and it auto-posts only when the browser that opens the landing link is at that same address. Without it, sending that link to a friend would post your words under their name the moment they opened it. And if you’re signed out, you sign in (or make an account) first; the draft survives the detour, waiting up to half an hour, enough to confirm an email and still find your words in the box. The draft is only consumed at the moment of posting, so nothing you typed disappears.

The reason I call it an “arrival” rather than “your return” is that the landing URL is just a URL. Whoever opens it, whether it’s you, or a friend you pasted it to, or a browser restoring a tab arrives with the token… PopsicleBoat can’t tell from the token alone who’s holding it. So it compares the arriving browser’s IP address to the one that submitted the draft, and only auto-posts when they match.

The trip back #

After the reply posts, a toast briefly appears from the top saying it’ll show up on the blog in a few minutes and that you’re being sent back. A couple of seconds later you’re on the originating page again. Not at the top of it, the return URL carries a fragment that steers the scroll to the place where there’s a placeholder note with a small spinner and a basic notice that your comment will appear shortly, sitting exactly where your comment is about to appear.

PopsicleBoat only honors that return URL because this blog is the verified website on my profile there. A tampered return address gets dropped, so the endpoint can’t be used as a redirect for anywhere else. That’s important, I’ve written about it before but if you want to use PopsicleBoat there is some configuration.

The page finishes the job #

Posting also pinged my build hook, immediately. The pinger fires on the leading edge and then holds a window, so one reply means one instant rebuild and a burst of replies means two, not a dozen. Netlify rebuilds, Hugo fetches the thread’s replies.json, and the comment becomes static paragraphs in the HTML like every other one. If PopsicleBoat goes down or just goes away for any reason, those comments still live on the site where they were made.

Meanwhile the note you landed on is doing the only JavaScript in the whole loop: every ten seconds it checks a tiny build-stamp file. When the stamp changes, the page reloads itself, scrolls to your new comment, and puts a highlight on it. The script is a couple of kilobytes served from this site, and it only runs when you arrive with the fragment. A plain visit to the page runs nothing. Note: This is not required for integration with PopsicleBoat. The script is specific to jva.lol.

Threads that stay readable #

Every top level comment and reply can be replied to in a basically unlimited nesting structure. Indentation steps in for three levels and then stops; deeper runs fold behind a, for example, “7 more replies” link, and every three levels inside a fold it folds again. Inside each fold the indent restarts from the edge, so a parent and its child always read as parent and child instead of drifting off the right side of a phone or tablet, or any device. The idea is that it’s adaptive and never loses control or context from where you are.

What your browser never does here #

No cookies from this site. No third-party script, no iframe, no tracker. Reading the conversation is reading HTML that was baked at build time, and this site keeps its own copy of every reply. Writing is one form and two redirects: a POST that parks a draft -> a 303 to where your account lives -> a redirect home.

The author-side setup is unchanged from the earlier post, and the general arrangement is documented at popsicleboat.com/comments.

This page is the demo. The box below is that form.

My new post script

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 22:08:48 -0600

Not a lot to it, just scripts/new-post and follow the prompts to setup the boilerplate. Then write the content. Then to wire up comments on PopsicleBoat, scripts/companion-prompt That’s it!

Boilerplate, fresh. Kind of like making waffles. Get it? Hehe.

New Post

#!/usr/bin/env bash
#
# new-post — scaffold a weblog post interactively.
#
# Prompts for the front matter this blog actually uses (title, slug, bundle,
# description, summary, categories, tags), writes the post with a correct
# RFC3339 date and an empty popsicleboat: line, and leaves the body to you.
# Committing the post later triggers scripts/companion-prompt, which asks for
# the thread's space and wires the discussion thread (spec 0006).
set -euo pipefail
cd "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)"
die() { echo "new-post: $1" >&2; exit 1; }
# Quote a YAML scalar: double quotes unless the value has one, then single.
yaml_quote() {
case $1 in
*\"*\'* | *\'*\"*) die "can't hold both quote kinds in front matter: $1" ;;
*\"*) printf "'%s'" "$1" ;;
*) printf '"%s"' "$1" ;;
esac
}
# Comma-separated answer -> YAML list lines ("- item" per entry).
yaml_list() {
local IFS=',' item
for item in $1; do
item=$(printf '%s' "$item" | sed -E 's/^ +| +$//g')
[ -n "$item" ] && printf -- "- %s\n" "$item"
done
}
read -r -p "Title: " title
[ -n "$title" ] || die "a post needs a title"
default_slug=$(printf '%s' "$title" |
tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' |
sed -E "s/'//g; s/[^a-z0-9]+/-/g; s/^-+//; s/-+$//")
read -r -p "Slug [$default_slug]: " slug
slug=${slug:-$default_slug}
[ -n "$slug" ] || die "a post needs a slug"
read -r -p "Page bundle, for images alongside the post? [y/N]: " bundle
case $bundle in
[yY]*) post="content/weblog/$slug/index.md" ;;
*) post="content/weblog/$slug.md" ;;
esac
[ -e "$post" ] && die "$post already exists"
read -r -p "Description (meta/OG line; blank to fill in later): " description
read -r -p "Summary (list-page line; blank to fill in later): " summary
read -r -p "Categories, comma-separated [Projects]: " categories
categories=${categories:-Projects}
read -r -p "Tags, comma-separated (e.g. popsicleboat, hugo): " tags
ts=$(date "+%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z")
ts="${ts:0:22}:${ts:22}" # RFC3339 wants a colon in the offset
mkdir -p "$(dirname "$post")"
{
echo "---"
echo "title: $(yaml_quote "$title")"
echo "description: $(yaml_quote "$description")"
echo "date: $ts"
echo "summary: $(yaml_quote "$summary")"
echo 'popsicleboat: "" # wired at commit by scripts/companion-prompt'
echo "categories:"
yaml_list "$categories"
if [ -n "$tags" ]; then
echo "tags:"
yaml_list "$tags"
fi
echo "---"
echo ""
} > "$post"
echo ""
echo "Created $post — write the essay."
echo "Committing it will prompt for its companion thread (empty space answer skips)."

Companion Prompt

#!/usr/bin/env bash
#
# companion-prompt — wire a new post's companion thread at commit time.
#
# For each NEW post staged in this commit (content/weblog/*.md or a new
# bundle's index.md) whose `popsicleboat:` field is empty, prompt for the
# thread's space and an optional per-post thread title, write the answers
# into the front matter, run scripts/companion-thread, and re-stage the
# post — so the commit lands with its Discuss thread created and wired.
#
# Never blocks a commit. Degraded paths (no terminal, no POPSICLEBOAT_TOKEN,
# empty space answer, API failure) print how to wire the thread later and let
# the commit through. Skip the hook with COMPANION_PROMPT=0, or --no-verify.
set -uo pipefail
cd "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)"
[ "${COMPANION_PROMPT:-1}" = "0" ] && exit 0
new_posts=$(git diff --cached --name-only --diff-filter=A -- \
'content/weblog/*.md' 'content/weblog/*/index.md' | grep -v '_index\.md$' || true)
[ -z "$new_posts" ] && exit 0
# Posts that already carry a thread URL (or no field at all) need no prompt.
needs_thread() {
grep -qE '^popsicleboat: *("")? *(#.*)?$' "$1"
}
pending=()
while IFS= read -r post; do
[ -f "$post" ] && needs_thread "$post" && pending+=("$post")
done <<< "$new_posts"
[ "${#pending[@]}" -eq 0 ] && exit 0
later() { # how to finish the job after a degraded path
echo "companion-prompt: wire it later with: scripts/companion-thread $1 --space <space>" >&2
}
# -r /dev/tty lies without a controlling terminal (macOS: open fails with
# "Device not configured"), so probe by actually opening it.
if ! { : < /dev/tty; } 2>/dev/null; then
echo "companion-prompt: no terminal — committing without companion threads." >&2
for post in "${pending[@]}"; do later "$post"; done
exit 0
fi
if [ -z "${POPSICLEBOAT_TOKEN:-}" ]; then
echo "companion-prompt: POPSICLEBOAT_TOKEN not set — committing without companion threads." >&2
for post in "${pending[@]}"; do later "$post"; done
exit 0
fi
# Insert a front-matter line right after the popsicleboat: field.
insert_after_popsicleboat() {
local file=$1 line=$2
awk -v add="$line" '{ print } !done && /^popsicleboat:/ { print add; done = 1 }' \
"$file" > "$file.tmp" && mv "$file.tmp" "$file"
}
for post in "${pending[@]}"; do
echo ""
echo "New post: $post"
read -r -p " PopsicleBoat space for its thread (empty to skip): " space < /dev/tty
if [ -z "$space" ]; then
later "$post"
continue
fi
read -r -p " Thread title override (empty for the template default): " title < /dev/tty
insert_after_popsicleboat "$post" "popsicleboat_space: \"$space\""
if [ -n "$title" ]; then
case $title in
*\"*\'* | *\'*\"*)
echo " title has both quote kinds — front matter can't hold that; using the template default." >&2
;;
*\"*)
insert_after_popsicleboat "$post" "popsicleboat_title: '$title'"
;;
*)
insert_after_popsicleboat "$post" "popsicleboat_title: \"$title\""
;;
esac
fi
if scripts/companion-thread "$post"; then
git add "$post"
else
echo "companion-prompt: thread creation failed — committing the post unwired." >&2
later "$post"
git add "$post" # keep the space/title answers we wrote either way
fi
done

Posting here, start to finish

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 20:24:29 -0600

Here’s the whole process of publishing a post on this blog now, comment section included.

Launching a post. You just push the button, the machinery handles the rest. I mean, there's no propellants or fire… It'd be cool but (self check) read the room bud. This is a website.

I write the post, a markdown file with some front matter, same as any Hugo blog.

I run one command scripts/companion-thread content/weblog/posting-here-start-to-finish.md --space blogging with POPSICLEBOAT_TOKEN exported in my shell, it creates a discussion thread for the post over on PopsicleBoat and writes the thread’s URL back into the file. That’s the entire integration.

I push, Netlify builds the site, and the post goes up with a “Discuss this post” link at the bottom.

The part I like is what readers get. The replies don’t live in an iframe and don’t load from a script. When the site builds, it fetches the public replies from the thread and bakes them into the page as plain HTML with no JavaScript, no tracker, no third-party anything running on your machine. The conversation is just part of the page.

The page also keeps itself current. When someone replies, PopsicleBoat waits a couple of minutes. So a burst of replies becomes one build instead of five. It then pings my build hook. Netlify rebuilds, and the reply is sitting on the page about three minutes after it was written.

If a comment thread ever goes away, your page quietly drops the comments callout.

What it took to set up, once #

None of the above is the setup. The setup happened once, and it was three things.

1 - A token. The command talks to PopsicleBoat with a personal access token. I run the service, so I mint mine on the server: fly ssh console -a popsicleboat -C "sh -c 'cd /app && MIX_ENV=prod mix popsicleboat.create_api_token jake \"blog\"'". If you wanted one for your blog, I’d issue it to you. It’s shown once, you export it in your shell, and that’s the last time you think about it.

2 - A script. companion-thread is about a hundred lines of Python sitting in my blog’s repo. All it does is call one API endpoint with the post’s title and URL, then paste the thread URL it gets back into the front matter.

3 - A build hook. I pasted my Netlify build-hook URL into my PopsicleBoat profile. That’s the whole “keeps itself current” trick! Netlify, Vercel, and Cloudflare Pages all take the same ping, so pretty much any static host works.

I wrote earlier about getting this from ~5 steps down to about 2, at least after the initial setup: The token, the build hook, and the script to wire a new post with the URL. After that, you write, a script writes the thread’s URL into the front matter of the post. This is what those steps buy: write, push. The comments handle themselves.

Caveat: This is what works for my (this) blog. The command for updating the Hugo front matter is specific to mine. But once the instrumentation is in place, it’s a really pleasing and clean process to post a new entry (like this one) with comments baked in.

The setup for other blogs is laid out on popsicleboat.com/comments.

What's new, late July

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 16:31:24 -0600

Here’s what’s been going on with popsicleboat the latter half of July 2026.

1 - Background images on profiles. (The headline. A member can put a photo behind their profile picture. It adds a little flavor to your profile, it shows as a strip on the profile page and fills the little identity card in the sidebar.

Fully optional; profiles without one look exactly like before. Uploading got simpler at the same time: pick a file, see it immediately, it saves itself — no Upload button, and the sidebar card updates live. Using Phoenix LiveView, practically no friction to updating either your profile photo or your background photo. Both optional either way.

I just picked this because it felt fresh the way the changes I've made do. Also I like drone footage of cool things.

2 - A tidier profile page. Your posts and replies now sit side by side. The per-space groups are now collapsible. Reply excerpts render their markdown instead of showing raw asterisks.

3 - A Feedback link. Guests get an email link in the sidebar footer, signed-in members get a direct line through the message dock. Either way feedback comes directly to me. If something’s broken or you’d like something to behave differently, just let me know whether you’rs signed in or not.

Progress as usual, small improvements to quality of life for both users, potential users, and admins.

Easier way to post to my blog with comments already setup

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 02:31:46 -0600

It’s wild, I’ve been building this using my own blog as a testing environment. It just keeps getting better. To be real and fair, there is a learning curve. But essentially where it stands now is you create an account on PopsicleBoat, you create and register an api key, and when you make a new post on your site you automatically get a comment section. Only if you want, per post, or not at all. You also own all the content, it’s a JSON file you own. PopsicleBoat could vanish and you’d still have those comments.

I don’t know of any third party commenting system like this, which is why I built it.

The cool thing is you don't have to do much. Put the beans in (setup) and let the machine do the work.

It’s ad free, tracking free, matter of fact the whole spirit of it is to make the modern internet free of… well, lots of things. Just enjoyable again, but with the touch and niceties that technology advances afford. Like cool user interfaces.

Anyway, the hurdle I noticed recently is that this particular offer had a steep learning curve (and let’s be honest, could still be steep). This post is just to say (more or less) that I’ve made strides to make it less steep. Testing it myself on my own blog was a little painful. Now it’s a little less painful.

It’s a work in progress but it’s come really far and is truly functional. I’m using it for this post itself.

Cheers

-Jake

Adding a Claude skill to make a new blog entry discussion thread as easy as possible

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 23:43:37 -0600

I’ve written a Claude skill to make it easier to make a post here that has a comment section owned by this blog, but hosted and managed on PopsicleBoat. It’s, for lack of better phrasing, in alpha mode. It works. But it’s a process that is a little unappetizing. Still. It works.

Set it up once. It does the job after that. That's the whole point of automation, right?

The idea is to make it as easy as possible. Right now it’s ~5 steps. I’m working on that. But the premise, to me, is valuable. People with online content who want interaction are encumbered usually with large libraries they have to bring in.

I don’t know about you, but I miss the old simpler internet.

With PopsicleBoat, not only can you have a comment section with just a few lines of code but you get moderation powers, and it all comes without ads or tracking. If you want that stuff it’s on you. You’re outsourcing discourse and commenting. For free.

The challenge for me right now is making it even easier for you. It’s still an early project.

BUT: it’s also a social space. There’s friend networks, instant messaging, video calls (be cool if it grew to video conferencing but that’s a lofty goal to be sure.)

Anywho, this is Jake (the creator) testing some of it out. And… signing out. Peace.

Adding modern features: the collapsible/resizable sidebar

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 21:55:21 -0600

While I’ve been working on PopsicleBoat, I’ve been looking at every possible angle I can think of to make it bloated as hell (just kidding). No, it just occurred to me any website with an audience and a community and users etc needs the same kind of layout said audiences are used to. Including a collapsible nav sidebar. So, I focused on that. I think there’s room to improve, such as instead of fully hiding it could be a thin rail with icons but that will take additional attention since the sidebar currently does not have icons. I’ll have to think about that.

This took more work than I thought, but heyo. The sidebar is collapsible now. They don't make music though :(

Anyway, I’ll skip the technical details. I’m just happy it’s working, you can resize it, collapse it entirely, or double click on the edge to restore it to default size.

Cheers, ya’all!

I used AI - it was obvious

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

(Yes, even this one. You can probably tell easily. Drafting is not as good as formatting, syntax, etc. So this is the learning curve I’m on. Thanks for reading.)

I’ve been playing with AI lately. A lot of it has gone well, where the seams show is when I try to connect with real people.

Nobody was fooled. Except the crows. Which maybe has a metaphor to it but it's really just a joke.

the bump #

I sent a few cold emails, basically none of which landed well. Some a little repulsed. They detected the language wasn’t my own. In my defense I’m mostly just playing. Not trying to change the world. I just have a new shiny toy I can’t resist. Apologies to those who smelled someone selling something using language that wasn’t my own, especially given my self-professed love of the honest and raw internet.

the uncomfortable part #

I used AI. It was obvious to anyone who saw the text it generated. It is genuinely useful for lots of reasons, for code features, dependency upgrades, etc. I got carried away, but I mean, it is a lot of fun. And I’ve been steered towards using it daily in my actual job. So, I forgive myself.

what the tell actually is #

I myself am not skilled at detecting AI generated text. Let’s be honest, it’s usually pretty convincing. I know I’m not the only one who’s tried, else how would people have a sense for detecting it? The words, the em-dashes, the rhythm, composed metaphors, etc. The list goes on and on. I suppose someone could even (or maybe already has) write AI detection software. The real tell for me was feedback from others. People can smell AI slop. The feedback was valuable (not terribly rude, loud, or a lot, just honest). That feedback is what led to this post.

finding my own voice #

I’ve written a lot on my blog before AI became a part of my daily life. It clearly has my own voice. I know because I personally did write it. None of it really got an audience, but that’s not the point either. The point is that I’m learning this strange new world and the scientist in me likes to play and experiment. The experiments of the last couple weeks have taught me something and I’ve internalized it. I need to use my own voice. Always.

what changed #

I don’t think AI is going away for anyone, I’ll still use it. But I’ve learned to use it appropriately. For instance, I asked it to generate the boilerplate for this post. But every word in it came from me. The boilerplate was convenient, the content is authentic.

I’ve learned a lot, friends. That (in my view) is the point of experimentation.

From here on out, you’ll never hear a word from me that didn’t come from my own brain. Including this. I’ll keep playing because (and don’t tell me you don’t too) it’s fun.

Cheers

Edit (2026-08-15): A reader quoted that last line back to me, and they were right to. It didn’t survive. I still draft with AI sometimes, and sometimes more of the draft’s wording survives my edit than I intend. The more honest version of the pledge is smaller: the ideas are mine, the editing is mine, and when the seams show I’d rather be caught than delete the evidence. The post above stays exactly as I wrote it. Signed, JVA(lol).

A glance is not a reading

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 15:09:00 -0600

I added a little badge to the PopsicleBoat sidebar recently. It says something like All Posts · 13, and up top there’s a list of what those 13 things are. I built it because I kept losing track of my own new posts. If the guy who made the site can’t find the new stuff, nobody else has a chance.

The badge itself was easy. The hard part was one word: new. Took me three tries to get it right.

Just having a book open doesn't mean you read the page.

1 - The obvious idea. New means posted since you last visited. So you give each user a timestamp, stamp it when they open the board, and anything after that is new. Databases love this. It’s one column and one comparison, and it’s basically how half the software you use decides what to bold.

Then I actually used it. I opened the board, clicked the first new post, read it, came back, and the whole list was gone. All thirteen. The badge still said 13 but the list under it was empty. Turns out opening the board had stamped my timestamp, so by the time I came back nothing was “since your last visit” anymore. I read one post and the system decided I’d seen all thirteen.

That’s kind of funny when you look at it. Just showing up counted as reading everything.

2 - Next, sessions. Don’t let one visit wipe the list, hold it steady while you’re actually around and only move it forward after you’ve been gone a while. And it worked, sort of. The list survived a click and a return now. But then I opened a post, read it, came back, and the badge still said 13. And the post I just read was sitting right there in the list, still marked new, staring at me.

Of course it was. I’d made the line move a little more politely but “new” was still about time. The system knew when I was on the board, it just had no idea what I actually read. Both versions had the same problem underneath: they watched the clock when they should have been watching the posts.

3 - The one that stuck. A read is a fact about you and one post. Nothing more. So I made a little join table (this user read this post) and write a row the moment you open a thread. And suddenly everything just works. Open a post and the badge ticks down by one, right away. Go back to the board and that post is gone from the list, but the other twelve are still there waiting. Nothing you didn’t open gets checked off for you. I kept the old timestamp too, but only as a floor, so posts from before the feature even existed don’t clog up the count.

I also added a Mark all as read button, because every inbox turns into a chore eventually and sometimes you just want to wave the whole pile away. That one’s honest too. It’s you saying you’re done with them, not the system guessing because you happened to show up.

The thing that gets me looking back is that I already knew the right answer. Not as a programmer, as a user. Every notification thing that’s ever annoyed me annoyed me for this exact reason. They all confused me being there with me paying attention. I just never bothered to think about it for popsicleboat until during testing a badge refused to count down twice in a row.

Also, currently I’m basically the only user so I have to stress test it myself. I forgive me for missing it before. But, it’s fixed now!

What's new, mid-July

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 14:05:00 -0600

A few new things on PopsicleBoat this week. Like always it’s all additions, bug fixes, etc. I post these for the people using it, but I’ll drop them here too.

Busy week, but honestly at least for me personally, so much fun.

1 - Unread counts. The All Posts link in the sidebar now shows a badge with how many posts you haven’t read, and they’re listed at the top of the feed. Reading one clears just that one, and there’s a “Mark all as read” button for when it piles up. (I wrote up the surprisingly annoying part of getting that right here.) Once you’ve got a few spaces going, your home page opens with recent posts instead of the welcome page.

2 - A website on your profile. There’s a website field now, for your blog or wherever you live online. It shows under your name so people know who you are. It’s got a rel="me" on it too, so if your site links back, Mastodon, etc, can verify it’s really you.

3 - Reply notifications in the browser. You can get a browser notification when someone replies to you, without handing over an email address. It’s opt in, obviously. Your browser asks first, nothing personal leaves your machine, and if a reply lands while your laptop’s closed it’s waiting when you open it.

4 - Alt text on media. When you attach an image you can give it alt text now, at upload or after, so screen readers can describe it.

5 - Download your data. There’s a button in settings to download your stuff, profile and posts and replies and media links, all in one file. I don’t want anyone stuck here who doesn’t want to be.

6 - One link for the comment-section thing. If you know someone with a blog who wants comments without running a comment system, popsicleboat.com/comments lays it all out on one page now.

Basically all in the service of making things easier for you to use the whole project for your whole project, or just part, or none of it at all.

The notification that gave up after a minute

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 21:45:00 -0600

I added browser push notifications recently.

Then I replied to one of my own posts from my phone, looked at my laptop, and saw nothing.

The reply was on the site, everything else worked, like the inbox badge, notification email, etc. Just the browser push notification did not.

It's a timing thing. Fixed it but it took a second (no pun intended) to remember browser defaults are conservative.

I had given my browser permission to post notifications for my site, but didn’t realize by default that permission expires (I was using Brave, it might be different for other browsers).

Gave it permission again with “forever” as the setting this time and banners worked. All was good for about an hour, until I noticed pushes still vanished whenever the browser wasn’t running. As it turns out, the library holds a closed browser’s message for only 60 seconds by default.

The fix is one option:

send_notification(payload, message, ttl: 86_400)

I set the send notification ttl to a day. That should, depending on the user’s preference, maintain the message across closing the browser for instance.

I hope this feature is useful, if not it’s opt in anyway. As all notifications should be.

The page that rebuilds itself

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 11:45:00 -0600

Last time, I added a feature so my blog can print its comments into the page at build time — plain JSON fetched while Hugo (how I build this blog) runs, rendered as paragraphs with no extra JS or any other dependency. The result is that the conversation only gets updated when you deploy. Which is fine if you push daily, and less fine when a good reply lands on Tuesday and your next deploy is Saturday.

Now that is more robust.

The page rebuilds itself. (This is a dramatization.)

The mechanic #

Most static hosts already have the missing piece. Netlify, Vercel, and Cloudflare Pages for instance all offer build hooks — they hand you a URL, and anything that POSTs to it triggers a rebuild.

So I added a field to PopsicleBoat in account settings: your build hook. When a reply lands on any thread you created the hook gets called if you have it set. A couple of minutes later, your site has rebuilt itself, and the new reply is sitting on your page.

The loop, end to end #

Someone replies to a thread.
A little debouncing, it waits about two minutes for the conversation to settle, then POSTs the hook.
The host rebuilds. Your build fetches the thread’s /replies.json.
The page now carries the new conversation — permanent, indexable, in the HTML.

At no point does anything run in a reader’s browser.

This page is the demo #

This post has a companion thread, and my build hook is wired. Reply to it, and the page you’re reading will quietly rebuild and print your words below.

If you run a blog (or any site with a need or desire for comments) and want this arrangement the whole thing is documented at popsicleboat.com/for-bloggers. One link on your site, one URL in your settings, nothing to uninstall.

I’m pretty proud of it, it’s working like magic for this blog. At least to my eyes.

Putting the boat on a diet

Sun, 12 Jul 2026 19:45:00 -0600

A fundamental premise for popsicleboat is no ads, no tracking, no scripts riding along on your site if you host your comments there. Also, it should be as lightweight as possible without sacrificing features. It occurred to me to check what happens when I use it for comments (a main feature) on this, my site.

I measured a logged-out thread page. 843 KB. For what? So I dug in.

Offloading 375 kilobytes. (It took a non negligible amount of effort)

The ledger #

	Bytes
JavaScript	325 KB
Images	276 KB
CSS	229 KB
HTML	13 KB

Cut one: the call system nobody logged-out can use #

A third of the JavaScript was the WebRTC video-calling machinery, so signaling, peer connections, reconnect logic, the call dock, etc. All of it shipped to readers who can’t place a call, because calling requires an account.

The fix was a webpack dynamic import: the entire call system moved into a chunk that only loads when the page carries a signed-in signal.

Cut two: a 40-pixel logo served as a giant PNG #

The header logo is an ankh about 40 pixels tall. It was being served as a 923×1352 PNG, twice, a light variant and a dark one. That’s 244 KB for a tiny glyph. One ImageMagick command took it to 9 KB. I’d been busy tuning the JavaScript I found interesting while the real weight was three files I hadn’t looked at since the beginning.

The ledger, after #

	Stored	On the wire
JavaScript	213 KB	65 KB
CSS	217 KB	39 KB
Images	24 KB	13 KB
HTML	13 KB	13 KB
Total	468 KB	~130 KB

A Phoenix LiveView social app with a video-calling system and live chatting, invisible until you sign in, now costs a reader less transfer than most sites spend on web fonts.

The details of untangling the JS are a little boring, so if you’re reading this know I deliberately spare you those. This is just a summary of what I found and how it is better now. I don’t want anyone to feel obligated to anything, but I want everyone to feel free to enjoy without bloat.

Your site can keep the comments

Sun, 12 Jul 2026 19:30:00 -0600

The last post about this describes the arrangement. For instance, this blog has no comment system of its own. Posts here with a comment section (optional for each post, not sitewide) link to a thread on PopsicleBoat. There’s just one anchor tag, no JavaScript or third-party library loaded in the reader’s browser.

Build time, not run time #

Every thread on the boat now publishes its public replies as plain JSON. It’s stored as the thread’s address plus /replies.json:

{
 "thread": {
 "title": "The panel that closed itself",
 "url": "https://www.popsicleboat.com/c/blogging/posts/175",
 "reply_count": 1
 },
 "replies": [
 {
 "author": "jake",
 "body_html": "<p>Test</p>",
 "posted_at": "2026-07-12T23:53:45Z",
 "url": "https://www.popsicleboat.com/c/blogging/posts/175#reply-176"
 }
 ]
}

A static site fetches that while it builds and prints the conversation into the page as ordinary HTML. This blog’s Hugo template does it in about ten lines:

{{ with try (resources.GetRemote (printf "%s/replies.json" .Params.popsicleboat)) }}
 {{ if and (not .Err) .Value }}
 {{ $replies := .Value.Content | transform.Unmarshal }}
 {{ range $replies.replies }}
 <article class="boat-reply">
 <p><strong>{{ .author }}</strong> · <a href="{{ .url }}">{{ dateFormat "January 2, 2006" (time .posted_at) }}</a></p>
 {{ .body_html | safeHTML }}
 </article>
 {{ end }}
 {{ end }}
{{ end }}

What this actually changes #

Reading happens at home. Your blog is where the conversation is read. PopsicleBoat is where it happens. Readers who want to say something click through to PopsicleBoat. You keep full moderation control there without running any comment infrastructure yourself.

Your site owns all the data. Every build, your site writes its own copy of every conversation. If popsicleboat just died for some reason, the comments on your site would still be right there in your HTML.

Filing your comments. I mean, it's not actually a cat… but that would be _awesome_

Fresh replies appear on your next build. Static sites rebuild all the time; the conversation is always as up to date as your deploy habit, and the live thread is one click away.

The comments come home, you have nothing to maintain. No annoyances, no ads, no cookies, no banners.

The panel that closed itself

Sat, 11 Jul 2026 01:00:00 -0600

I made it so posts can live in multiple spaces: An “Also show in” panel of checkboxes lets it appear in others. A lot of checkboxes is a lot of form, so that added complexity.

<details class="post-form__also-interests">
<summary><%= t("Also show in") %></summary>
<div class="post-form__also-interests-options">
<%= for interest <- @also_interest_options do %>
...

I found the bug while using the picker myself making the discussion thread for the previous post here. Open the panel, check a box, and the panel snaps shut. Open it again, check another box, shut again. Collapsed, it gives no sign anything is selected at all. This was a problem.

I, uh, swallowed a bug? Geez I'm corny.

The bug #

The last panel bug on this blog was a race — three timers and a duplicate event, reproducible twice in many runs. This one is the opposite: perfectly deterministic, wrong every single time, and visible the moment you know where to look.

So reproducible it was (relatively) easy to write a smoke test for it.

A <details> element’s open attribute is written by the browser when the user clicks the summary. The server never hears about it. Meanwhile the composer is a LiveView form with live validation — every keystroke and every checkbox change makes a round trip, the server re-renders, and the patcher re-syncs the DOM to the server’s HTML. The server’s HTML has no open attribute, so the patcher removes it. Typing a single letter in the title field also closed the panel.

The fix #

Give the boolean to the server.

<button type="button" phx-click="toggle_also_interests"
aria-expanded={to_string(@also_picker_open?)}>
<%= t("Also show in") %>
<%= if names != [] do %>
<span><%= Enum.join(names, ", ") %></span>
<% end %>
</button>
<div hidden={!@also_picker_open?}>
... the checkboxes ...
</div>

The checkbox list is hidden when collapsed, not conditionally rendered. Inputs that leave the DOM leave the form, and a reader who collapses the panel before submitting doesn’t silently lose their picks.

Bug fixed, time for a beer.

PopsicleBoat as a comment section

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 10:00:00 -0600

The usual ways to put comments on a blog: a third-party widget, a self-hosted comment server, or silence. I can respect the choice for silence. Self-hosting means running a spam-fighting service forever. And a third-party widget means bloat which adds weight to the loading of your site.

This blog does a fourth thing, and any blog can use what it uses.

Remember this game? Loads of modern options to play like this these days, PopsicleBoat has one too. (It was fun then, it's still fun!)

The pattern #

A post that wants a discussion gets a thread on PopsicleBoat, and the post links to it. That’s the entire integration:

<a href="https://www.popsicleboat.com/c/programming/posts/168">
 Discuss this post on PopsicleBoat →
</a>

What the reader’s browser sees #

Nothing. A link is inert. There is no script, no iframe, no cookie, nothing for a content blocker to block, no consent banner. The blog page stays exactly as private as it was.

Following the link lands on a public thread: reading requires no account, replying takes a free one. PopsicleBoat itself carries no ads and loads no third-party scripts.

Steps, for any blog on any stack #

Make an account at popsicleboat.com.
Find a space that fits your post’s topic, or propose one.
Post there about your article.
Copy the thread’s URL and link it from your article.

Repeat per post. Moderation is already whatever you can do with your own posts.

If you’d rather skip the setup, popsicleboat.com/for-bloggers is the short version: send your blog’s address and you get a space for it the same day.

I tried the widget version. I had an embedded iframe mirroring the thread onto the blog and removed it. Replies written for a community read strangely when syndicated somewhere else, and an embed is one more thing a reader’s browser has to trust.

The simple link I have now asks nothing.

A nicety for static sites #

Threads are posts, and posts sometimes get deleted. So the build checks. It fetches each linked thread and only prints the link if the thread is still there. Delete a thread and the link just disappears, no dead end for a reader.

{{ with .Params.popsicleboat }}
 {{ with try (resources.GetRemote .) }}
 {{ if not .Err }}
 <p class="boat-discuss">
 <a href="{{ $.Params.popsicleboat }}">Discuss this post on PopsicleBoat &rarr;</a>
 </p>
 {{ end }}
 {{ end }}
{{ end }}

That’s the whole system. No ad network, no analytics script, and the conversation happens somewhere built for conversations. No anchor tag for tracking anyone.

I hope you find it useful, again it’s all in the spirit of getting back an internet that is simple. No bloat. Just communication.

What's new

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:45:00 -0600

Everything works the way it did before — these are additions, nothing you need to relearn.

Plain texted can now be prettified with markdown syntax. Prettified makes the internet full of text a bit more pleasant to read and write, wouldn't you agree?

Your words can dress up now. Posts, replies, and messages understand simple formatting: **bold**, *italic*, `code`, lists, quotes. Paste a link and it turns clickable on its own. There’s a small “Formatting tips” note under every writing box if you want the cheat sheet, and a Preview button right next to it that shows exactly how your words will land before you post them.

You can search. The box at the top of the sidebar finds posts, replies, and spaces — anything you could browse to, findable in a few keystrokes.

You’ll know when someone replies. Your inbox has a new “Replies to you” section, and the inbox badge lights up when something’s waiting.

You can follow with RSS. Every space now has an RSS feed, and the whole site has one at popsicleboat.com/feed.xml. If you use a feed reader, paste any PopsicleBoat page into it and the feed shows up on its own. It’s a nice way to share a space with a friend who isn’t ready to sign up. They can follow along from their reader until they want to say something.

That’s the batch.

The panel that hid itself

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 18:00:00 -0600

PopsicleBoat has video calling. One person clicks call, the other gets a little toast notification, and they answer or they don’t (or they miss it entirely). If they answer, WebRTC does its thing through NAT, with a STUN server and a TURN server, one of each for now. I’ll add more if I ever need to.

Most of that lived in one file, app.js, which had gotten to 6,371 lines. This is about a bug in there and how long it took me to find it.

Bugs have a way of hiding in plain sight. I guess the other thing is they're often multifaceted, so an octopus hiding felt appropriate.

The bug #

I’ve got a browser test that runs before I deploy. It opens two real browsers, starts a call from one, and answers it from the other. Twice, out of a lot of runs (like… hundreds), it failed in a weird way. The call connected fine, video going both ways, everything working, except the call panel was hidden. A working call with no interface. Not every time, not even often. Just twice.

An intermittent bug in code that’s juggling timers, WebSockets, WebRTC callbacks, and a DOM patcher. That’s a race, pretty much guaranteed.

Finding it #

You can’t really put a breakpoint on “sometimes.” Something was setting hidden on the panel after the answer, and there were a few things that could’ve done it: my own show/hide helpers, the retry logic around the ring, and LiveView’s morphdom patcher, which quietly re-syncs the DOM back to whatever the server rendered.

That last one doesn’t show up when you just read the code, so it’s easy to forget it’s even there.

So I added some logging. It wraps every place I legitimately change the panel’s visibility, and separately watches for the panel changing from anywhere at all. Every time the visibility changes, it logs who did it. If something changed and there’s no matching entry from my own code, that’s an outside write, which basically means morphdom. I also tagged each panel with a serial number so I could tell a panel that got patched apart from one that got swapped out entirely. The log just piles up on a window global and waits for the bug to happen again.

I figured it was morphdom. A patcher whose whole job is rewriting attributes to match the server is exactly the kind of thing that hides a panel, and honestly I added the logging mostly to catch it. Turned out it was innocent. Its writes were all re-syncs to the right state. The writes that actually broke things had my name on them. The call was coming from my own code.

The race #

Three steps, and the ends are about six seconds apart.

A ring event comes in and kicks off a prepare loop for the panel, a retry that runs for up to six seconds making sure the incoming-call UI is ready.
The user answers. That clears the ring alert and shows the in-call panel. Good so far.
A duplicate of the ring event shows up late (these aren’t guaranteed to be unique) and its handler re-remembers the ring alert before it gets to the check for whether the call was already answered. That wakes up a prepare tick still pending from step 1, which does exactly what it was told to: hides the panel and marks it incoming. A state sync later puts the call back to in_call, but nothing ever tells the panel to show again.

Everything here worked correctly. The retry loop retried like it should. The duplicate handler did catch the duplicate, just one line too late. The state sync synced the state, but the panel’s visibility wasn’t part of the state it was syncing. Nothing was broken on its own. The bug only existed in the order it all ran.

The fix #

Two guards, either one of which would’ve been enough by itself. The prepare tick now skips any panel that’s already accepted, answering, or in a call. And the duplicate-ring handler bails out before re-remembering the alert if the call’s already been answered. I pinned both with regression tests that grep the source, since the bug was an ordering between lines, not a wrong output I could assert on.

The file #

The 6,371 lines were really the other half of the problem. A race like this hides easy in a file where the signaling, the media, the DOM, and the timers are all sharing one scope. app.js is down to 2,156 lines now. The call stuff moved out into thirty smaller modules. The main piece is a state machine for the call lifecycle, a plain reducer, transition(state, event) -> { state, actions }, with no DOM, no peer connection, no timers in it. It replaced about seven booleans I’d been keeping in sync by hand. And there’s one rule for duplicates now: every call has a key, and remote events with the wrong key just get ignored, which took the place of all the per-message dedup flags. The side effects come back as a list of named actions for the caller to run, so the whole lifecycle, including the kind of ordering that caused this, is something I can actually unit test now.

This was a hell of a journey, deeply hidden bug inside a huge JS file that I had to pull apart and split up before I could identify where things were going wrong. I got it now though, web calling works. I’m testing it daily, and it’s a lot of work but fixing things is so much fun I can’t resist. (I might need my head examined lol)

PopsicleBoat

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 18:30:00 -0600

If you’ve looked at the front page of this site lately, you may have noticed a little card pointing at popsicleboat.com. I’ve been building PopsicleBoat and have never actually written about it here. Time to fix that.

What it is #

PopsicleBoat is a small social web project. The short version I keep coming back to: low-friction posting, real conversation, and keeping personal spaces on the internet playful.

Dock whatever boat you want here. But if a spot is taken, you'll have to find a different one.

Instead of one giant feed, PopsicleBoat is organized around spaces, each a shared place where people can post work, ask questions, share notes, and keep up with what others are making. A few things I care about in how those spaces behave:

Spaces are open to browse, so you can get a feel for a place before joining in.
Following a space keeps it close at hand and makes it easy to return to active discussions.
Anyone can propose a new space, or just follow the ones that fit what they care about.

Around that core there are the things you’d hope for from a small social site: profiles, replies and likes, private messages, friend discovery, and invitations for bringing people onboard.

The big platforms optimize for scale, and scale has a way of making everything feel the same. I wanted something closer to the small-forum internet I grew up with, where a space could have its own personality and posting something didn’t feel like a performance. I also wanted it to feel modern, so there’s (to my eye) a smooth design, with both light and dark modes, text and video chat, and a lot more.

How it’s built #

Under the hood it’s a DIY special.

Elixir and Phoenix, with LiveView for the interactive surfaces (feeds, replies, likes, uploads) and plain controller-rendered pages for everything that doesn’t need to be clever.
Postgres underneath.
Fly.io for hosting, with deploys gated behind an embarrassingly large pile of predeploy checks and browser smoke tests.
Internationalization from early on.

Crypto

Thu, 20 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Crypto is funny

It’s a perfect solution

To patience and shame

Pony Express

Mon, 17 May 2021 19:10:13 -0600

Our Pony Express Adventure ¹ #

This weekend we sort of stumbled on some incredible things. The idea was to visit Topaz Mountain, do some digging and hopefully find some topaz (we did), and camp for the night before moving on to the Deep Creek mountain range to see some of the most dramatic mountains in the west desert (12,000 feet! The highest peak in Utah, King’s Peak, is only a little higher at 13,500). From there we would drive up to Wendover, and then home.

Well, along the way we ended up exploring the Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge. We intended to stop by this place on the way through, but neither of us expected what we found. This place is like some kind of heaven. It’s unreal. First of all, the area is simply massive. We thought it would be some large kind of oasis, but it actually takes an area that looks comparable to the entire Salt Lake valley. It’s just huge. And it’s teeming with avian life. This was May, of course, so it may seem different at other times of the year but for us it was almost otherworldly. In fact, at one point we talked about how it would be to encounter an earth like planet untouched by human kind- and how this must be what that would be like. Of course, we were driving through it violating the peace as humans do. But there was a very real and tangible sense that given the chance for an idyllic existence, life might look something like what we saw there.

As amazing as the wildlife refuge was, the best part of the trip was still to come.

We decided that after crossing the desert to get to the refuge we had used more gas than we would like. This led to some discussion about what would happen if we ran out of gas in the middle of the Nevada desert, and some quick estimates around the likelihood of finding a gas station along the way. We decided to scrap the Deep Creek mountains, and follow the Pony Express route east. So, we left the wildlife refuge (sad face).

The first Pony Express marker we found was at Black Rock. It’s basically a black rock in the desert. We noticed a significant amount of animal pellets, and traced them to a pile of dirt with the signature marks of some mammalian subterranean creatures. We kept moving.

The rest of the drive was both indescribably beautiful and featureless in the way that the fade of a cloudless sunset from blue to crimson is. Well, not entirely featureless. (I’m not going to talk about the Dugway Geode Beds. It was cool, but there’s not much else to say. Either you’re into geodes or you aren’t.)

We were coming up on the Pony express marker number 86 when we saw a large herd of horses. “That’s cool,” we thought. We got closer. There was no fence guarding this dirt road. There was no ranch here. In fact, for hundreds of miles as far as we knew all of this beautiful land was public. These were wild horses. I had never seen wild horses before, and I certainly didn’t have any expectation of seeing them on this particular trip. Here we were, with a handful of inviolate majestic beasts nearly an arms reach away as we pulled up in my Jeep and these animals weren’t so much as bothered to take notice of us. (no, I didn’t take any pictures and no I’m not sad about that.)

We contrasted that experience with one later when we came upon some horses kept behind a gate at the residence of one retired Air Force vet who appeared to have in his collection several rusty children’s swingsets, old tractors, trucks, cars, RVs, clutter, odds and ends, bits and pieces, oddments, miscellany, scrap, and waste. Those dopey horses stared at us as though concerned we might set up off one of the many booby traps their owner probably had devised for the unforgivable sin of having come within spitting distance.

I’m sure I exaggerate. But the residences one finds in Vernon, Utah are nothing if not unique.

I digress. Let me finish describing the trip. We found an old dog cemetery, the last indication a lonely childless woman known as “Aunt Libby” lived in the area. That’s how the plaque described her, anyway. Nearby we decided to make camp so we built a fire, cooked dinner, and began to enjoy the beauty of the dark clouds framing the incredible wilderness of Juab county. The dark clouds kept getting darker. “Hmm,” we thought. It began to rain and thunder. We packed up our things and drove the rest of the way home, stopping only briefly to release our own water in the torrent of nature’s.

This probably makes sense in the travelog, but it was just a two day trip and I’d like to keep the travelog focused on more global adventures. ↩︎

2020

Thu, 06 May 2021 19:47:37 -0600

Twenty twenty sucked

Twenty twenty one so far,

does not suck as bad

Chess and Incompleteness

Fri, 05 Feb 2021 16:55:05 -0700

Chess and Logic #

Chess and Logic, huh?

There’s something fundamental linking them, and I’m not talking about using logic to beat a game of chess. The rules of chess are similar to the axioms of a logical system. This got me thinking, can we demonstrate Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorem in chess?

If you’re not familiar (and it’s a large and difficult territory should you decide to venture there), the incompleteness theorem says that “logic systems can describe true statements that can not be derived using that system”.

I decided I wanted to try, so let’s get to it!

The rules are clear to anyone who knows them, but can you derive them from the axioms of how the pieces move? (hint: No)

On Completeness and Consistency #

Completeness and consistency are at the heart of the incompleteness theorem, which concludes there can not be an axiomatic system of logic that is both complete (the system can derive every statement that is true) and consistent (the system can derive false statements).

Or rather, by fixing consistent in place we’d say “Any consistent formal logic is incomplete”. Meaning, broadly, if you have a set of logical rules there will be statements of that logic that are true but that you can’t get to using only those rules.

We fix consistent because consistency is a necessity in logic, completeness is just a nice to have. If I offer you a system in which I can prove 1 + 1 = 2, you might be with me so far. But if I follow up with a proof that 1 + 1 also equals 3, it’s over before we even start looking into completeness.

Chess #

I think Chess is like a system of logic, so let’s play with it a little. There are rules. We can exhaustively enumerate those rules (but we won’t, we’ll just give some examples).

Let’s focus on pawns.

Pawns can move ahead by one or two squares on their first move.
On any move after their first, and except when attacking, pawns can only move ahead by one square.
Attacking (consuming) an enemy piece is only allowed through moving diagonally forward by one square.
An attack is allowed if the opposing pawn has just exercised its right in its first move to move two squares instead of one and your pawn would otherwise normally be able to attack if the opposing pawn had only moved ahead one square instead of two. (This is the only example of an attack in chess where an opposing piece can be consumed by moving to a square it does not occupy. It is a rule that surprises new chess players and leads to accusations of cheating, but it is a real rule and it is called En Passant- French for “in passing”)
Finally, if a pawn reaches the opposite side of the board it can be turned into any piece (usually a queen) except the king.

Now you can see why I am not going to attempt to list all the rules of all the pieces, it would be very time consuming. And we can all agree there are in fact rules of chess laid out elsewhere. The point isn’t what those rules are, it’s what we can do with them.

Experienced chess players will likely agree a game of chess can be a fascinating expression of decisions. Indeed, observing some of the games of the grandmasters like Magnus Carlsen can put your jaw on the floor. They’re like works of art, beautiful landscapes or orchestral symphonies in their own way.

These rules are analogous to the rules of oh, let’s take algebra. There’s addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. There are rules about associativity, commutativity, etc.

So if we can agree that the rules of chess are analogous to an axiomatic logical system what can we do with that? Can we demonstrate the incompleteness theorem in chess?

I think we can. I think it might not even be that hard. We can at least try. All we have to do is wrap our heads around completeness and consistency in the rules of chess. But before we do that, let’s discuss the chess analogue of true and false statements in logic.

Valid Chessboard Configurations #

What is a valid board configuration? One that doesn’t violate any of the rules? Given a random chess board with pieces in various positions it can be hard to tell if that state was achieved by starting with neat rows of pieces in their legal starting position and by following the rules, or if they were just chaotically and randomly placed there. Furthermore, there’s not a good way to say a given board is in violation of any of the rules if the rules primarily concern themselves with transitions between board states. That is, the rules are mostly about moves. But luckily for us, there are rules we can use to immediately detect an invalid board configuration, such as that each player should not have more than one king. A pawn can not become a king by reaching the end of the board. So you could easily tell a board had been arrived at illegally if there were more than two kings on it.

Completeness in Chess #

Completeness in a logic system means that every truthful expression can be derived using the logical system. What does completeness in chess mean? Logic concerns itself with truth, chess concerns itself with winning chess. That is to say achieving checkmate. Could completeness in chess mean that every checkmate can be derived using the rules of chess? That sounds vaguely promising. We can probably be more general, though. Let’s try completeness in chess means every valid board configuration can be derived using the rules.

Consistency in Chess #

Consistency in a logic system means that no false expressions can be derived using the logical system. What does consistency in chess mean? I’d say it means something like “you can’t get to an invalid board state by playing by the rules”. That sounds promising. Chess is a consistent system if by following the rules you don’t end up with a board configuration that is illegal. It is consistent if by following the rules you never end up with more than 2 kings on the board.

Similar to how we can derive the fundamental theorem of algebra, we can play a game of chess and end in a valid configuration of the board (and also checkmate).

We can also play a game of chess and walk away from it having followed all the rules but before anyone achieves checkmate. We don’t even have to call it a draw, we can just mutually agree to walk away and pretend it never happened. The configuration of the board at that point is still legally derived, even if somewhat uninteresting compared to a game that concluded in a checkmate.

This is similar to a mathematical proof which stops before reaching an interesting statement. You have followed all the rules to an unsatisfying end. You let us all down. You should be ashamed. Why have you done this?

Is Chess Complete? #

A critical element of the incompleteness theorem is self reference, or Hofstadter’s strange loops. Kurt Gödel derived a statement in a logic system that said of itself “I am not derivable”. But it was just derived! If the statement was true, then there is a true statement that cannot be derived (ignoring the fact we clearly just derived it) by the system therefore the system cannot be complete. If the statement was false, then there is a false statement derived by the system, therefore the system could not be consistent.

Kurt Gödel proved in a formal logical system something about formal logical systems involving proofs. This is meta, and indeed his proof was meta too. He used a formal logical system to make a statement about the formal logical system which was inconsistent with itself while being a totally valid expression of the system.

This would be like arriving at a checkmate in chess after only following the rules in which a paradoxical statement about chess was expressed. That is to say, where each of the pieces had a word printed on them and when played a certain way, the outcome is simultaneously a valid checkmate but also the words on the pieces spell out “I am a board configuration that can not be arrived at by following the rules of chess”.

Paradox time #

If that sentence is true, then the game we just legally played was actually arrived at illegally (even if we’re doubly sure we followed the rules). This game of chess says that there are valid board configurations in chess that can not be arrived at legally, and therefore chess is incomplete.

If that sentence is false, then we just played a legal game that resulted in a statement about chess that is not true and therefore chess is inconsistent.

Chess can therefore not be complete if it is consistent, and it can not be consistent if it is complete.

In order to verify this, are there valid configurations of chess boards that can not be achieved by following the rules? Certainly. Put all 32 normal starting pieces in the lower half of the board, alternating in color. There is no way to get into that state following the rules, but nothing about that state is in violation of any rules and is therefore valid.

Conclusion #

The incompleteness theorem is a brilliant and agile attack on formal logical systems and it brought numerous prominent mathematicians of the period to their knees, in particular Bertrand Russell and his efforts in producing the Principia Mathematica which is probably for the best since it takes hundreds of pages of dense symbols to arrive at the conclusion that 1 + 1 = 2.

Chess is not unlike a formalized logic. It has rules, and those rules can be used to carry the weight of ideas. Including ideas about those rules.

This post was in part inspired by this post which goes much deeper, provides more history and more details while taking the angle of actually implementing Gödel’s arithmetic in Lisp.

Movie

Tue, 12 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Watching a movie

Without popcorn is not good

It is very bad

Chris Bacon

Wed, 15 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We can talk about

The haikus Chris bacon sir

Any time you wish

Singing

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Someone is singing

In the middle of the night

Outside my window

How I (used to) post to this blog using iOS Shortcuts and Pythonista

Thu, 26 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

EDIT: This blog is now hosted using Hugo, not Jekyll. I have to find a way to migrate what I’ve described here.

I’ve had this blog for many years, and basically never posted anything. I wanted to become better about that, so I’ve been writing more haikus and trying to write up some of my home projects. My blog uses Jekyll and is hosted on Github Pages which already makes it pretty easy to write content but I wanted to see if I could make it even easier. I started with a “create new haiku” shortcut. This way anytime I have an idea for a haiku it doesn’t matter where I am, as long as I have an internet connection on my phone I can post a new one easily.

So, I began playing with iOS Shortcuts. I wanted a button on my phone that would let me write and post to my blog without needing anything else. The solution I came up with uses a bit of Python in Pythonista for some formatting, as well as Working Copy for the git actions.

An iOS Shortcut, automation visualized.

Unfortunately, the only way to share an iOS shortcut is to share it directly. I wanted to export and paste a JSON payload here or something so others could edit and import easily, but it looks like the only way is to share a public link to it. So, here’s my shortcut for writing and posting a haiku. With a little editing it should be easy enough to change if you wanted to rework it to post to your own blog. It assumes you have the Working Copy app I linked above, as well as a Pythonista script.

Here are the actions it performs:

Pull the latest changes from your blog repo
Ask for the name of the Haiku
Executes a search in Giphy for the given title and lets you choose your favorite gif
Stages the chosen gif in /assets in your repo
Asks for the content of the Haiku. Adding an empty line between each line of content renders the content on new lines. I haven’t figured this part out yet, but if you don’t do this the whole haiku ends up on one line.
It then sends the input to the Pythonista script to format it as Jekyll front matter
It takes the resulting formatted content and stages it as a new file in your repo
It commits the changes to your repo and pushes to remote
It then texts my girlfriend to let her know there’s a new haiku (I haven’t tested this with other people, but I expect that unless you have her number it won’t work for you)

So now the only piece missing is the Pythonista script. Here it is:

from webbrowser import open
from datetime import date
from urllib.parse import quote, unquote
import sys
import x_callback_url
title=sys.argv[1]
body=sys.argv[2]
gif=quote(sys.argv[3])
haiku='''---
layout: haiku
category: Haikus
title: ''' + title + '''
---
''' + body + '''
![--''' + title + '''--](\{\{ site.url \}\}/assets/''' + gif + '''.gif)'''
x_success = sys.argv[-1] # shortcuts-production://x-callback-url/ic-success/<UUID>
x_cancel = x_success.replace('ic-success', 'ic-cancel')
x_error = x_success.replace('ic-success', 'ic-error')
x_success += '?x-source=Pythonista3'
x_success += '&result=' + quote(haiku)
x_success += '&datetime=' + quote(str(date.today().strftime('%Y-%m-%d')))
open(x_success)

I’ve been having fun with this, I’ve also made a version that will make a full blog post like this one but haven’t used it much since writing long form on an iOS device is not that convenient for me. Anyway, if you’re reading this feel free to play with my shortcut and python script! I’d love to hear about any projects you use them for!

Earthquakes

Thu, 26 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The earth shakes at times

It is most unwelcome here

Among us earthlings

GPG & YubiKey & You

Sat, 14 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve recently taken on the task of setting up my YubiKeys for usage beyond 2 factor auth. Something I learned was that OpenPGP smartcards (which include YubiKeys) have slots for three separate keys: Signature, Encryption, and Authentication.

My first goal is to sign git commits with it. Because I am a man of negligible importance, this is in fact NOT an exercise in security. I’m taking more of a hobbyist approach. If security was of a more significant concern in my life, I would probably generate my keys in a live booted and air gapped Tails environment.

Fun hobby, or serious security step.

When I started going down this route I had only in the first place acquired my YubiKey to simplify 2 factor authorization, a flow that I have found myself increasingly spending time due to work and the fact I turn it on everywhere that supports it. I think I was vaguely aware they could be used for more. Regardless, I started by playing around with signing. One of the first things I became aware of was that these things have PIN codes. Never needed them for 2FA, but for managing GPG keys you do. The default user PIN (which is used for signing, among other things) is 123456 and the default admin PIN (used for modifying certain card attributes) is 12345678.

If you’re following along, I’m assuming you have a YubiKey and a recent version of GnuPG.

Configure your YubiKey #

To change the PIN (and configure things like your name, language, etc) run gpg --card-edit with your key plugged in. You should see information about your key. Type admin and help to enable and list the available commands. Use passwd to change the user PIN code.

A little about GPG keys #

GPG keys have capabilities: Sign, Certify, and Encrypt. When you generate a GPG public / private keypair, by default you get a primary pub/priv key and a sub pub/priv key. The primary key can Sign and Certify. The subkey can Encrypt. The reason for this default is that Certify is all powerful. It really is your identity. Delegating powers to other keys signed by it is a good way to reduce your security footprint. If someone steals your encrypt key, all you have to do is revoke it, create a new one, and Certify it with your unstolen primary key. If someone steals your primary private key, well they’ve just stolen the ability to revoke your other keys or make new keys as you. So keep it extra safe.

Create a GPG key #

It’s time to generate your GPG key. gpg --expert --full-gen-key

Select RSA and RSA(default)
Key size: depending on the version of your key
- YubiKey NEO - 2048
- YubiKey 4 / 5 - 4096
Do it again for the subkey
Pick an expiration date
Enter your name (must be more than 5 characters)
Enter your email
Enter an optional comment

Note the ID of the key generated. For fun, let’s look at what we’ve got so far. Run gpg --edit-key <KEY ID>. You should see something like

Secret key is available.
gpg: checking the trustdb
gpg: marginals needed: 3 completes needed: 1 trust model: pgp
gpg: depth: 0 valid: 2 signed: 0 trust: 0-, 0q, 0n, 0m, 0f, 2u
gpg: next trustdb check due at 2021-03-12
sec rsa4096/98973C978ECA988D
created: 2020-03-14 expires: never usage: SC
trust: ultimate validity: ultimate
ssb rsa4096/015D68EE1E7AC274
created: 2020-03-14 expires: never usage: E
[ultimate] (1). m3ta4a (testing) <email@address.org>

The usage of the first key is marked as SC. The second is E. That means the primary key can sign and certify, while the subkey can encrypt.

If you have an existing key, you could use it to sign this new one to maintain a chain of custody: gpg -u <your_old_keyid> --sign-key <longid>

While we’re here, let’s add separate authentication and signing keys to prepare to fill the slots on the YubiKey.

Authentication Key #

If you’re still at the gpg prompt gpg> from the last command, exit out with Ctrl-C or quit and enter gpg --expert --edit-key <KEY ID>. Notice the extra flag for expert. Now enter the command addkey.

Pick RSA.
Toggle capabilities until only authentication is enabled. You should need to enter each option once: S, E, A
Enter Q to finish
Pick the key size
Pick the expiration (good idea to keep it the same as your master key)
Follow the rest of the prompts

Signing Key #

The steps are the same as for the authentication key, only you should only have to deselect Encrypt when picking the key capabilities since by default Signing and Encryption are selected. If you quit out of here now, make sure to save or you’ll lose the keys you just made.

Backup your keys #

It’s a good idea to keep a backup somewhere safe.

gpg --armor --output privkey.sec --export-secret-key <longid>
gpg --armor --output subkeys.sec --export-secret-subkeys <longid>
gpg --armor --output pubkey.asc --export <longid>

Import key to YubiKey #

Make sure the YubiKey is plugged into your computer. Edit the key again, if you aren’t already gpg --edit-key <KEY ID>. Enter the command toggle followed by keytocard.

Enter y to move the primary key
Select 1. This moves the signature subkey to the signature slot of the YubiKey.

Enter key 1 (which now should select the encryption key) followed by keytocard. Select 2. This moves the encryption key to the encryption slot.

Enter key 1 again and then key 2. keytocard and 3. This does the same but for the authentication key.

Now quit and y for save.

Now your secret keys are on your YubiKey and can be used for their intended purpose when it’s connected.

Configure Git for commit signing #

Configure git for GPG signing:

git config --global commit.gpgsign true
git config --global user.signingkey <KEY ID>

And let’s restart the GPG agent: gpg-connect-agent reloadagent. Get out of there with /bye. Now when you make a commit, git will require the key to be present. If it’s not, the commit will fail. If you want to make a signed commit and see what it looks like in the log, the command for that is git log --show-signature.

gpg: Signature made Sat Mar 14 03:30:27 2020 MDT
gpg: using RSA key 05FFE31C369D8F25CFFF2167FDF8E68C5B840388
gpg: Good signature from "m3ta4a <jakeva@gmail.com>" [ultimate]
Author: m3ta4a 🎩 <jakeva@gmail.com>
Date: Sat Mar 14 03:27:35 2020 -0600
Add YubiKey Post

Configure Github for the ‘Verified’ stamp #

gpg --armor --export <KEY ID> | pbcopy and take it to add as a new GPG key on Github. If you forget this stamp, your commits will still show as signed but ‘Unverified’.

Etc #

Something interesting I noticed is that the gpg-agent caches the key. I removed the key from my computer before making another commit and it still got signed. It looks like this is set in ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf so just a heads up.

Wasting time

Thu, 12 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I like wasting time

And I like wasting your time

I did it again

Virus

Thu, 12 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Is it a virus

If it doesn’t go viral

And other questions

Food

Thu, 12 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

My girlfriend makes food

She learned this art in China

It tastes like Chinese

Blogs

Thu, 12 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Blogs have to be good

If you want people to read

People don’t read mine

Haiku

Wed, 11 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This is a haiku

It checks all of the boxes

And now it is done

Beer

Thu, 05 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Beer is very good

I drink it often for fun

Including right now

Richard

Wed, 04 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Richard has nice breath

I wish he could write good code

But alas he can’t

Typos from old books

Tue, 03 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A piecture is just

A pie chart of types of pie

In Antarctica

Ramen

Mon, 02 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Ramen is so good

It has noodles, pork, and stuff

To stuff in my face

Raspberry Pi BTC Node

Sun, 01 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Time to put one of my spare Raspberry Pis to work #

I woke up this morning and thought, ‘Hey why not get a full BTC node running on one of those Pis you got laying around?’ So that’s what I’m doing today.

The raspberry node. This one's edible though.

Basics #

This assumes something like Raspbian Lite (now called Raspberry Pi OS Lite) is already installed and SSH access configured. For Wifi, I use these Edimax USB chips. Configuring them is not too difficult. It boils down a simple config in /etc/network/interfaces/

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet dhcp
auto wlan0
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid "**YOUR_WIFI**"
wpa-psk "**YOUR_PASSWORD**"

I’m going to install to the 32 GB SD mini card I used for the OS, which means I’m not planning on storing all the blocks. And since flash is less resilient than a HDD, I’m going to disable SWAP.

sudo swapoff --all

Installing the Bitcoin client #

Go to https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/releases and make not of the newest stable release. For me it’s currently 0.19.0.1. So, with that:

cd ~
git clone -b v0.19.0.1 https://github/com/bitcoin/bitcoin.git
cd bitcoin

I’m going to install it without a wallet, since I only want a node.

./autogen.sh
./configure CXXFLAGS="--param ggc-min-expand=1 --param ggc-min-heapsize=32768" --enable-cxx --without-gui --disable-shared --with-pic --disable-tests --disable-bench --enable-upnp-default --disable-wallet
make # This will take a long time, best run in tmux or screen, and grab a beer
sudo make install

Configure #

For this, I want a bitcoin user. sudo adduser bitcoin

Now switch to the new user sudo su - bitcoin

And create the app data directory mkdir ~/.bitcoin

Add the following to ~/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf

# makes client run in background
daemon=1
# is required by Fail2Ban described below
logips=1
# magic RBP optimisations
maxconnections=40
maxuploadtarget=5000
# Run without SWAP
dbcache=100
maxorphantx=10
maxmempool=50
upnp=1
prune=550 # Only keep the last two days of blocks if like me you are running off a small SD card

Return to the pi user exit

Now create the systemd service to launch the bitcoin client daemon sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/bitcoind.service and give it the following

[Unit]
Description=Bitcoin daemon
After=network.target
[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/bitcoind -conf=/home/bitcoin/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf -pid=/home/bitcoin/.bitcoin/bitcoind.pid
# Creates /run/bitcoind owned by bitcoin
RuntimeDirectory=bitcoind
User=bitcoin
Type=forking
PIDFile=/home/bitcoin/.bitcoin/bitcoind.pid
Restart=on-failure
# Hardening measures
####################
# Provide a private /tmp and /var/tmp.
PrivateTmp=true
# Mount /usr, /boot/ and /etc read-only for the process.
ProtectSystem=full
# Disallow the process and all of its children to gain
# new privileges through execve().
NoNewPrivileges=true
# Use a new /dev namespace only populated with API pseudo devices
# such as /dev/null, /dev/zero and /dev/random.
PrivateDevices=true
# Deny the creation of writable and executable memory mappings.
MemoryDenyWriteExecute=true
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Make sure the new service starts on boot sudo systemctl enable bitcoind

Security #

Uncomplicated firewall sudo apt install ufw

Allow limited ssh sudo ufw limit ssh

Allow for main net bitcoin traffic sudo ufw allow 8333 comment "Bitcoin mainnet"

Enable the firewall sudo ufw enable

Preview the enforced rules sudo ufw status verbose

Install Fail2ban sudo apt install fail2ban

See the active jails - for now it will only be sshd sudo fail2ban-client status

Start the bitcoin client sudo systemctl start bitcoind

It will take a few minutes to start, but if you want to monitor its progress switch back to the bitcoin user and enter tail -n 100 -f ~/.bitcoin/debug.log

You will need to figure out how to forward port 8333 to your new btc node depending on your router.

Check it’s accessible from the outside world with curl -sL https://bitnodes.earn.com/api/v1/nodes/me-8333/ | jq

Building my own NAS

Sun, 23 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

First a little background #

I had a couple old NAS storage solutions I pulled out of, well, my storage unit a while back. Tried to set them up in my office and found them to be really difficult to use, but the data on them is still good. So I pulled the disks out and decided to look into upgrading to something newer. After some research, I concluded the existing out-of-the-box solutions available are overpriced for what they offer. I decided I wanted more control over the parts to reduce cost, as well as having more freedom in setting up the server software so I looked into building my own. / Twelve bays. 24 TBs. Why you may ask? To which I answer 'Why Not?'

Parts #

I used PC Partpicker to help me narrow down what I was looking for. I went in blind hoping I’d find a tower suitable for what I wanted, and I think I found the perfect one. Everything else was selected to fit it.

Part	Price
Fractal Design Node 804 MicroATX Mid Tower Case
This is particularly recommended for a NAS build. Both on Amazon and Newegg, reviews were a bit mixed but for a little over $100 I decided I could handle a few imperfections. Right now I have 7 3.5" drives ranging from 1 to 4 TB, and 1 2.5" SSD I want to use as the boot disk. Between disk bay utilization and cooling options, this tower promises some pretty interesting flexibility. In their own words, it has a “Unique hard drive mounting system, fitting up to 8 x 3.5”, 4 x 2.5" or up to 10 x 3.5", 2 x 2.5" drives HDD/SSD" all inside a 13.5 x 12 x 15.3in package. That’s 12 slots for hard drives! That should fit my needs perfectly with plenty of room for future upgrades and fit nicely under my desk.	$109.99
AMD Ryzen 3 2200G 3.5 GHz Quad-Core Processor
At first I was just interested in picking up a 2 core CPU since I intend on doing nothing with this machine except serving up files to my home network. I’m the only user, so I don’t need much CPU. However, I found it tricky to pair up a 2 core CPU with a motherboard so I just picked a reasonable quad core. It might be a little over kill, but that’s ok.	$107.68
I had more trouble finding the right motherboard. I ordered a cheap one early on, forgetting to check how many SATA slots it had. What I ordered was the ASRock B450M-HDV R4.0 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard
which comes with 4 SATA 6 Gb/s slots. That won’t be enough, but for the price, I can slap some extra slots in with the…	$69.97
Ziyituod SATA3.0 Card
6 SATA 6 Gb/s PCIe controller. Problem solved.	$39.95
Crucial 4GB Single DDR4
Like I don’t need much processing power, I don’t need much ram. Two sticks of 4 GB DDR4 should do it.	$39.98
be Quiet! Pure Rock Slim - CPU Cooler
A concern I had was how loud this thing was going to be. I picked a CPU cooler that promises it gets no louder than 25 Db. The fans that come with the tower might be a different story, but I can worry about those later if it’s an issue. Anyway, this thing is pretty cheap too.	$33.28
EVGA SuperNOVA 800W
And the final piece is the power supply. Need enough power for up to ten drives, so here we are.	$159.99

This brings the total to a little over $500. By comparison you can get an 8 bay NAS by Synology for $931.

Now I wait #

I haven’t got all the parts yet, but I’ll post an update when I get it built and have a chance to play with it. I expect there will be some tradeoffs, like the interior will probably be a bit cramped and hard to work with. Maybe it will get a little hot or loud with the four fans. But I’m excited, I didn’t think I’d be able to find a solution that would fit 10 drives in around a square foot of floor space. At less than $500, for me it’s a no brainer.

And what’s next? #

Of course, I’m already thinking down the road. Right now I only have a little over 12 TBs of hard drives ready to put to use (consisting mostly of Bluray backups and music), but at $485 for a 16 TB Drive I am imagining a world where I spend a small fortune for a +13x increase and while I’ll probably never need it, it is pretty fun to imagine.

Small Update #

Ok so I bought two of the 16 TB drives intending to get a simple mirror up. Funny story, I snapped the plastic on the sata connector of one of them trying to fit it into the case. It is pretty tight in there. Anyway, I bought a third to replace it. But by the time it arrived I decided it was worth trying to salvage the broken one. The pins were still there and I had the broken off plastic piece, so I sort of put it back together delicately and slid it all back in. It worked! The system connected to the drive and now I’ve got a healthy 32 TB Raid Z1 pool running in my FreeNAS!

I’m working now on setting up torrenting over OpenVPN among other things. I’ll write some of that up in separate blog posts.

New York, and Home

Thu, 15 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

New York #

I had about a 6 hour layover in JFK. Didn’t take many pictures. But I ate a lot of seafood and drank a lot of beer.

Home #

Back in Salt Lake, I celebrated by singing karaoke and showing people my shoes (for some reason.)

Of Particular note is how only a few days after I got home, I met an amazing Chinese woman and we began dating seriously shortly after that. Weird how the world works, isn’t it?

Dublin, Ireland

Tue, 13 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Dublin #

You best believe I made a stop in the city where I started my 6 week backpacking trip in 2016. Dublin! Another favorite. I wish I could live dozens of lives so I could truly soak in the beauty, history, and culture of every city on this trip. Not least of all, Dublin.

I stayed in an historic hotel that, with its winding halls and unpredictable layout, reminded me of “House of Leaves”. Fortunately, I didn’t get trapped.

Since I missed it in 2016 by about a couple hundred yards (facepalm), I made a more deliberate effort to seek out and visit the Quaternion plaque on Brougham (Broom) Bridge.

It says

Here as he walked by on the 16th of October 1843 Sir William Rowan Hamilton in a flash of genius discovered the fundamental formula for quaternion multiplication i2 = j2 = k2 = ijk = −1 & cut it on a stone of this bridge.

Istanbul, Turkey

Sun, 11 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Istanbul #

Our last stop before all going our separate ways was in Istanbul. Highlight of that visit for me was the Hagia Sophia, once the tallest structure in the world and certainly one of the oldest still standing. There is a lot of history, including that it wasn’t officially called Istanbul until 1930. But I’ll let you google for the history. I’m just here to brag with photographic evidence that I’ve been there (although in this case it appears I don’t actually make an appearance in my own photos).

One of my other favorite parts of Istanbul was the lounge at the Ataturk airport. Free food and drinks for as long as you need to wait for your flight. Only thing is… it doesn’t seem like any one checks your ticket once you’re in. So if you ever need to hide for a long while…

Kathmandu, Nepal and The Himalayas / Everest

Sun, 04 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Kathmandu #

Himalayas / Everest #

We didn’t make it to the summit, we didn’t even try. We chartered a helicopter to near base camp. Including the flight into Lukla airport, considered by many to be the most dangerous in the world.

Chengdu (Sichuan Province)

Sun, 04 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Chengdu #

Chengdu felt a little more less overwhelming. Still a much larger city than most people in the United States would be used to, but we stayed in an area of the city that could have been mistaken for Chicago, except with everything written in Chinese. And everyone around is Chinese. And they eat crab eggs and fish heads.

The highlight, aside from encountering “Hot Pot” for the first time was visiting the national Panda zoo!

Beijing

Sun, 04 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Beijing #

Beijing is huge. I mean… just huge. There’s really no other way to put it. Everywhere you go, everything is overwhelming. From the size of the buildings to the number of people. It was here that I ate a roasted tarantula on a $500 dare from my brother. I should mention my dad at one first. So I knew it was safe.

Shanghai / Suzhou

Thu, 01 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Shanghai and Suzhou #

Shanghai is, of course, amazing. We also took some time to visit a small (for the chinese) nearby town called Suzhou. Incredible beauty and history.

Denver

Thu, 17 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I am in Denver

It is just like Salt Lake City

Except, like, bigger

In defense of the new MacBook Pro touchbar

Tue, 15 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

It is a fun way

To do things you did before

Why not something new?

Waking up

Sat, 14 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope

Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope

Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope

Getting out of bed

Sat, 14 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

No no no no no

No no no no no no no

No no no no no

Space-time

Fri, 03 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Time and space are one

So it is all relative

Please pardon the pun

Evening

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

In the evening

I am joined by Page and Plant

but do not ascend

Chairs

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Made of good hard wood

Sitting straight is important

If you like your spine

Breakfast

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The first and best meal

Forget brunch, breakfast is good

enough to eat twice

Music

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Listen to music

From Mozart to the Beatles

Feel infinity

Bubbles

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Bubbles down the drain

Remind me I am one too

One day I will pop

Ferry to France

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Europe Part 1.2 - Ferry to France #

Ferry #

Belgium

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Europe Part 3 - Belgium #

Brussels #

I was only in Belgium for one night, but I had a lot of fun. I stayed in Brussels. It’s a beautiful city, of course. Birthplace of Audrey Hepburn, location of an escape room I nearly had a chance to try and escape from except for the drunk northern irish couple I met and hung with until the girl puked everywhere and gave me 50 euros for some reason. Ah. Belgium.

Jake Van Alstyne on jvalol

I had a house

I should have gone to the hospital

My use of AI

i promised something #

so it isn’t the writing #

you can’t lose if you don’t play #

I got engaged

The post you (almost) didn't publish

Why did I call it PopsicleBoat?

My comment section is static HTML

The comment section here is static HTML. Reading costs nobody anything. #

The shape #

Why this shape #

The honest costs #

If you want this #

We're all terminally online. I know I am. I know you are too if you're reading this

I hid something on this site

Spoilers #

AI is good. Scary good. Scary in a good way.

I've made posting here with a companion thread on PopsicleBoat automatic

23 languages, one I can check

The part that bothered me #

Why I shipped it anyway #

What I’d suggest you do if you’re curious #

Commenting now works with two redirects

What submit actually does #

The build hook #

When it asks first #

The trip back #

The page finishes the job #

Threads that stay readable #

What your browser never does here #

My new post script

Posting here, start to finish

What it took to set up, once #

What's new, late July

Easier way to post to my blog with comments already setup

Adding a Claude skill to make a new blog entry discussion thread as easy as possible

Adding modern features: the collapsible/resizable sidebar

I used AI - it was obvious

the bump #

the uncomfortable part #

what the tell actually is #

finding my own voice #

what changed #

A glance is not a reading

What's new, mid-July

The notification that gave up after a minute

The page that rebuilds itself

The mechanic #

The loop, end to end #

This page is the demo #

Putting the boat on a diet

The ledger #

Cut one: the call system nobody logged-out can use #

Cut two: a 40-pixel logo served as a giant PNG #

The ledger, after #

Your site can keep the comments

Build time, not run time #

What this actually changes #

The panel that closed itself

The bug #

The fix #

PopsicleBoat as a comment section

The pattern #

What the reader’s browser sees #

Steps, for any blog on any stack #

Why a link and not a widget #

A nicety for static sites #

What's new

The panel that hid itself

The bug #

Finding it #

The race #

The fix #

The file #

PopsicleBoat

What it is #

Why bother building a social network in this day and age #

Our Pony Express Adventure ¹ #