2025-08-19 06:29:00
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet. Sometimes themed, often not.
1️⃣ Remember that wild painting in the final episode of Severance season 2? Well, now it’s an amazing real-life (and massive mural) in L.A.). [🔗 9to5mac.com]
2️⃣ This neat project by Avi Bagla keeps track of when every word in the dictionary has been used in a Bluesky post. [🔗 avibagla.com]
3️⃣ Robert Birming responded to my post about not posting with his thoughts on different motivations for blogging. [🔗 birming.com]
4️⃣ Herman’s got some really good, human tips for dealing with email. [🔗 herman.bearblog.dev]
5️⃣ McSweeney’s does it again, nailing these AI-assisted wedding vows with satire that I fear will become only too true. [🔗 mcsweeneys.net]
6️⃣ A throwback to a throwback. A couple of years ago, Parker Ortolani made a concept of modern apple.com showing off pre-iPhone products. Honestly, still looks great. I’m curious if their website will soon get a Liquid Glass makeover. [🔗 x.com]
7️⃣ Pratik gets it when it comes to taxes. [🔗 writing.desipundit.com]
Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.
HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts, shortcuts, wallpapers, scripts, or anything — please consider leaving a tip, checking out my store, or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated!
I’m always happy to hear from you on social, or by good ol' email.
2025-08-10 11:38:00
So I’m simply not going to do it, and you can’t make me. 😜
This is post #9/31 for Blaugust 2025.
HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts, shortcuts, wallpapers, scripts, or anything — please consider leaving a tip, checking out my store, or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated!
I’m always happy to hear from you on social, or by good ol' email.
2025-08-09 08:20:00
So I just typed into ChatGPT, “I need an easy prompt for a Blaugust post.” Here’s what I got: What’s one small habit or tool that’s made your life noticeably better in the past year? Alright, I’ll take it and turn it.
When contemplating a Yearly Theme for 2025, I decided to follow CGP Grey’s lead from 2024 and go with the Year of Small Improvements. The idea being that instead of letting small annoyances stack up and continuously bother me, I’d make an effort to deploy small fixes and reap the stacked up benefits instead. At first, I kept a list of these small improvements, but I kind of fell of that habit. But I’ll share one of my favorites that I truly appreciate every day.
The problem: Our silverware holder slid all over the drawer.
Every time we’d open the silverware/utensils drawer, it would slide around the drawer. For someone who likes things to be in the right place, and also to not push the cooking utensils around so that they block the drawer opening correctly, this was pretty annoying.
Attempted fixes:
The final fix:
It took quite a few attempts, but we got there in the end. And every time I open the drawer now, the drawer stays firmly in place and I’m a little happier. 😮💨
This is post #8/31 for Blaugust 2025.
HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts, shortcuts, wallpapers, scripts, or anything — please consider leaving a tip, checking out my store, or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated!
I’m always happy to hear from you on social, or by good ol' email.
2025-08-08 10:29:00
The extreme preciousness of time is the point of this video by the To Scale: channel, but I hope you’ll spend 10 minutes of yours to watch it and marvel at the vast scale of the history of the universe, and our fleeting portion of it.
Amazing vision, effort, production, and payoff on this project.
This is post #7/31 for Blaugust 2025.
HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts, shortcuts, wallpapers, scripts, or anything — please consider leaving a tip, checking out my store, or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated!
I’m always happy to hear from you on social, or by good ol' email.
2025-08-07 11:24:00
Here I am, again, blogging past 11pm to try to keep up with my Blaugust goal. Although I am typically a night owl, this week I’ve been both night owl and early bird and it’s catching up with me.
Tomorrow, I have to wake up at 4:30am (in just five and half hours — yikes!) to be at a local trailhead ready to start hiking at 6am. It’ll be a long day of hiking and climbing up the Trap Dike — a very distinctive slot and slab that rises from the lake a the bottom of the Mt. Colden to its summit — with I think about 12 miles round-trip with several thousand feet of elevation gain, guiding clients on a rope system up through the steep and exposed terrain.
This is after a long day of personal climbing today, in which I was out from 10:30am until 9pm climbing at various crags in the area, culminating in a challenging route that I put up for ADK Climb Club.
Which was after a big day of guiding climbing yesterday from 8:30am till 4pm, and then a 5+ mile trail run up a mountain after work for ADK Run Club.
Which was after a big day on Monday of guiding climbing in the morning, and then doing personal climbing until after dark.
Which was after a day of canoeing with my wife in which we checked out a route that spits us out into the lake near our house.
And then on Friday I’ll have a big day of guiding a long hike (13 miles) up Gothics mountain with some clients that I took rock climbing on Monday.
Which will be followed by three days of canoe camping with my wife over the weekend.
Which will be followed by an afternoon of guiding rock climbing.
Which will be followed by — hopefully! — a rest day. 😮💨
To be clear, this is in no way a complaint. I love doing all these activities. I feel so fortunate to live and work in a place with such access to my favorite outdoor activities, and a great community of friends (and clients) to share it all with.
It’s just that I feel, sometimes, lately, a bit worn thin. I know I need to take more time to recover so that I can perform at my best. But. There’s so much that I want to do, and any day of good weather feels like a gift that I shouldn’t squander.
These lyrics from Hamilton’s “Non-Stop” come to mind:
How do you write like you’re running out of time?
Write day and night like you’re running out of time?Every day you fight like you’re running out of time
Like you’re running out of time
Are you running out of time?
This is post #6/31 for Blaugust 2025.
HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts, shortcuts, wallpapers, scripts, or anything — please consider leaving a tip, checking out my store, or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated!
I’m always happy to hear from you on social, or by good ol' email.
2025-08-06 11:59:00
My wonderful wife approached me in a tizzy yesterday. She had that look in her eye that told me she had a technology rant built up and me — the tech guy — was going to hear about it.
Sure enough, she needed to inform me that she was not happy with the lineup of Kindles that Amazon sells today. She’s been a longtime user of the original Kindle Oasis. In fact, when she smashed the screen of her first one, she bought a used version of the same model to replace it instead of purchasing a new (bigger, aluminum, 2nd-gen) one. She would have been well-reasoned to do so; her Kindle is her most-used device and it’s not even close.
What does she love about that original Oasis? All the same things I did. Namely, its ultra-portable size and weight, its flip cover with extra battery built in, its physical page-turn buttons, and its waterproofing.
All those features are missing from today’s Kindle lineup. The Oasis is no more. The plain Kindle and the Paperwhite don’t have physical page-turn buttons, and are therefore non-starters. There are two Colorsoft versions — an adult and kid model — which also don’t have the buttons, and are feature inferior screens. The Scribe is too big and bulky for her read everywhere lifestyle.
She looked alternatives like the Kobo and Boox devices. The Kobo would be a pain to manage with her massive Kindle library and Kindle Unlimited subscription. The Boox Page almost ticks all the boxes for physical buttons and Kindle app…but it doesn’t have waterproofing and she’s a beachside and in-pool reader.
“When did Amazon stop caring about power readers when it came to making Kindles?” she demanded of me.
I didn’t have an answer.
In the meantime, she’s bought another used Kindle Oasis on eBay in hopes that it’ll last long enough for either Amazon to get their Kindle house back in order, or for Boox to add waterproofing to their eReaders.
My money’s on the latter happening first.
This is post #5/31 for Blaugust 2025.
HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts, shortcuts, wallpapers, scripts, or anything — please consider leaving a tip, checking out my store, or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated!
I’m always happy to hear from you on social, or by good ol' email.