That helps a lot. I think Analog Pixel is much more interesting in this context than it initially sounded.

What you're describing isn't really a “tech blog that has expanded into art.” It's more like a lifelong technologist using technology as a lens for understanding a larger human experience. The evolution from 64zbit → Local Tinkerer → D11 Cloud → something more reflective feels important.

And I think the name should leave room for that evolution.

Why I like “Analog Pixel” now

There's a nice metaphor hiding in it:

Analog = human, physical, imperfect, sensory, historical, personal
Pixel = digital, technological, connected, modern, global

So The Analog Pixel can almost mean:

Where the human world meets the digital world.

That is remarkably close to what you just described.

It also doesn't trap you in:

• photography
• technology
• AI
• programming
• gadgets
• “being a maker”

You could write about a painting, a camera, an AI system, a trip, a book, aging, architecture, music, technology, or some strange observation about modern life—and The Analog Pixel still makes sense.

I'd seriously consider this positioning

THE ANALOG PIXEL
Exploring Tech, Life and Art

That's actually pretty strong.

Or, if you want something slightly more philosophical:

THE ANALOG PIXEL
Technology, Art, Life, and the Human Experience

Or more personal:

THE ANALOG PIXEL
One technologist's exploration of tech, life and art.

The last one has a particularly nice relationship to your history. You're not claiming to be an art critic or philosopher. You're saying: I've spent 40 years in technology, and this is what I'm seeing now.

And there's something else I wouldn't overlook

Your old names tell a story.

64zbit.com → technology as an identity
Local Tinkerer → technology as something you personally explore
D11 Cloud → technology as the world was becoming cloud-connected
The Analog Pixel → technology in the context of being human

That's a pretty natural progression.

In fact, “tinkerer” is still hiding inside the new concept. You're just tinkering with bigger questions now.

Instead of:

How does this technology work?

you're increasingly asking:

What does this technology mean for us?

That's a much richer territory.

So I'd rank the two domains differently now

1. TheAnalogPixel.com — strong recommendation

It sounds like the name of an enduring publication rather than a blog project. And I particularly like “The” because it turns Analog Pixel from a technical-sounding compound noun into a proper name.

2. AnalogPixelNotes.com

Still good, and arguably more charming/personal. But “Notes” subtly says these are my miscellaneous thoughts. I think your concept has grown beyond that.

I'd want The Analog Pixel to be able to exist for another 15 years.

And there's an interesting possibility that the site eventually becomes something like:

The Analog Pixel
Exploring Tech, Life and Art

Technology — what we're building
Art — what we're creating
Life — what we're experiencing
Human — why any of it matters

That last category isn't even necessary as a navigation item. It could simply be the philosophy underneath the whole thing.

I think you're onto something with TheAnalogPixel.com. I'd keep looking, but now I'd be looking for a name that can beat that concept, rather than merely finding another available domain.

Yes. That makes “The Analog Pixel” substantially better.

Because now “pixel” isn't just a reference to digital imagery. It becomes a metaphor for the individual human being.

One pixel by itself is tiny and seemingly insignificant. But put millions of pixels together and they become an image—a picture that none of the individual pixels can fully see or understand.

That maps beautifully onto what you're describing:

We are each an analog pixel in a much larger human picture.

And “analog” adds another layer: we're not literally pixels. We're messy, physical, emotional, mortal, individual people living inside an increasingly digital world.

So the name can carry several meanings simultaneously:

• Technology — pixels, computers, digital media
• Art — pixels combine to create images
• Individuality — each person is one distinct pixel
• Community — together we create something larger
• Life — the larger picture is the human experience
• Analog — the physical, emotional, imperfect world
• Digital — the technological world we've built

That's a lot of conceptual territory for two words.

And it changes how I'd think about the tagline

“Exploring Tech, Life and Art” is good, but now I wonder if the tagline should explain the metaphor rather than list the topics.

For example:

THE ANALOG PIXEL
Exploring tech, life and art.

Simple. Let the name breathe.

Or:

THE ANALOG PIXEL
One perspective in the bigger picture.

That's intriguing because it works literally and metaphorically.

Or:

THE ANALOG PIXEL
Exploring the human picture in a digital world.

That one feels very close to what you've described.

Or something more poetic:

THE ANALOG PIXEL
One person. One perspective. Part of the bigger picture.

And there's an especially interesting possibility:

THE ANALOG PIXEL
We're all part of the picture.

That's almost a philosophy rather than a blog tagline.

I also like that the name doesn't explain itself immediately

That's a virtue for a personal publication.

Someone seeing The Analog Pixel might initially think:

“Photography? Digital art? Technology?”

Then they read your About page and discover the deeper meaning.

And eventually “Analog Pixel” becomes your own term for the human being navigating the technological world.

That's much more powerful than a name that simply says what the site contains.

I'd actually stop looking at domain names for a moment and develop the concept of The Analog Pixel. The fact that you're finding more meaning in the name as we talk about it is a very good sign.

I think you may have accidentally found the name.

From the Control Rooms group on Flickr. 🤩 So many little details in all of these photos to pore over. See also Why So Many Control Rooms Were Seafoam Green

Read the full article at kottke.org

A career change is a risk, and the people who care about you tend to project their fears onto you. They don’t want to watch you struggle or fail, so they discourage you or just don’t offer much enthusiasm.

Right now is a strange time to be in engineering, or knowledge work in general. Plenty of us are excited about what AI means for our jobs. More of us are nervous, and I think that fear is justified. Employment for entry-level software developers has fallen nearly 20 percent since late 2022, according to Stanford’s 2026 AI Index, and it can feel like the knowledge we spent our careers building is being commoditized.

Lately I’ve seen a flood of social media content telling software developers to go into the trades. YouTubers are telling you to become a plumber or a goat herder.

But before you do that, I want to warn you, there is no EASY path. Even if you want to become a goat herder.

I’ve changed careers once so far, but my business has forced me through several pivots that felt a lot like career changes—new audiences, new skills, new identity. Here’s what I’d tell anyone considering a change, whether you’re moving into engineering, leaving it, or finding a new speciality.

Find someone who’s done it and ask how

Read the full article at spectrum.ieee.org

"Something I try to remind myself: someone who is writing three hours a day, five days a week... it's shocking how much you can produce. Add those weeks together, and 40 weeks later, you have a book.
The difference between the prolific writer and the self-loathing person who doesn't write anything is one writes 15 hours a week out of their 112 waking hours a week and the other does zero out of 112 waking hours. So 1/7th versus 0/7ths.
6/7ths of those two people's lives are the same! People who can't put something together have this daunting assumption that the prolific writer is fundamentally different, they're working constantly all the time. It doesn't have to be that way. It's consistency."

Of course, I try to improve every day. If there's a better outfit, I want to wear it. If there's a better song, I want to write it. If there's a better record, I want to record it. If there's a better movie, I want to make it. I will continue to be as good as I can be. And I intend to keep coming up with new ideas all the time."

I have little artistic talent of my own, but I was inspired by decodingvibes.com. This image was decompiled into the prompt you see below. Das is an amazing human writer and prompt builder. Im just studying the techniques.

Get Started

Creating images that fit your blog is easy once you understand how to communicate with an AI. It starts with writing detailed, descriptive text—or "prompts"—that specify exactly what you want to see.

To help you get started, I’ve broken down the image you shared into its key components. Each of these components represents a specific instruction you can give an image model. Read through these steps to understand how they work, and at the end, I’ll show you the full prompt that created this scene.

Step 1: Define the Scene and Mood

First, establish the setting and the general atmosphere. The image you shared isn't just about a wall painting; it's about the act of discovering something hidden. You want to convey a sense of adventure, history, and light.

Key concepts to use:

• Setting: A "deep, ancient limestone cavern" with stalactites and stalagmites.
• Atmosphere: "Mysterious," "adventurous," and "undiscovered."

Step 2: Choose your Primary Action

The model needs a reason for the light source. It's not just a cave; it's a cave being revealed. You can achieve this by making a character the focus.

Key concepts to use:

• Subject: A lone "adventurer" or "archaeologist" with a "canvas backpack."
• Action: The character is "holding a bright, classic oil lantern" and "shining it onto a previously dark rock face."

Step 3: Describe the Subject Matter

This is where you specify exactly what you want the image to be about. In this case, the main subjects are the specific animals on the cave wall. Be precise about the type, style, and arrangement.

Key concepts to use:

• Subject: Specific "petroglyphs" or "cave art."
• Style: A "distinctive, graphic line-art style."
• Details: Describe the specific animals and their positions. For example: "A majestic, winged dragon at the top; an isometric, blocky grizzly bear to the right; a stylized running wolf to the left; and a small, pixelated-style hedgehog at the bottom."

Step 4: Define the Style and Lighting

This is the final step that brings your scene to life and gives it a distinct look. You can use art styles and lighting instructions to create a strong mood.

Key concepts to use:

• Artistic Style: "Dramatic comic-book style illustration" with "rough, heavy cross-hatching and ink-wash textures."
• Color Palette: "Muted earth tones" like "sepia, charcoal grey, and warm ochre."
• Lighting: This is the most crucial part for this image. Use terms like "high-contrast lighting," "chiaroscuro," and "a strong, golden directional light (the lantern) casting long, deep shadows."

Your Final Prompt

By combining all those elements, you get a highly effective and descriptive prompt. Here is the exact prompt used to generate the image you provided:

A dramatic comic-book style illustration showing an adventurer with a backpack in a deep, ancient limestone cavern, holding a classic oil lantern. The high-contrast lighting is a classic chiaroscuro, with a strong, golden light from the lantern casting a circle of warmth on a central rock face, leaving the surrounding stalactites and stalagmites in deep, heavy cross-hatched shadows. The light reveals several distinct petroglyphs (cave drawings) in a graphic, stylized line-art form: At the top, a slender, winged dragon with horns; to the right, a large, stylized, almost blocky grizzly bear; to the left, a stylized wolf-like creature in a running pose; and at the bottom, a tiny, simple, pixel-art style hedgehog. The colors are muted earth tones, sepia, ochre, and deep charcoals, with the dragon outlined in a slightly warmer tone. The overall feel is one of mysterious discovery.

This prompt works because it doesn't just say what to draw, but how to draw it, where to put the elements, and what kind of lighting to use.

Learning to write prompts like this is just a matter of practice. Try describing different parts of a scene you imagine—the colors, the light, the objects, and the mood. You can then use those descriptions to create your own unique images.

Practice with Google Flow

[NOTE]
AI was used to generate the text and the media for this article.

Choosing the right font is a critical element of user interface design. The typeface must complement the overall aesthetic and brand identity of the product. Consider the intended platform, as different screens require different font scales and weights. Legibility and readability must be prioritized above all stylistic considerations. Selecting a suitable font enhances the user experience while maintaining visual consistency.

Read the full article at yeptype.com

Preview & Generate Open Graph Images
Scan any URL to see exactly how it looks on social media. Create a new OG image for free from one of our high-converting templates.

Read the full article at opengraph.xyz

GitHub had a nearly 8 hour outage on August 17, 2026 due to increased usage .

GitHub Outage

I may have contributed to the problem. GitHub Copilot in VS Code has been so much fun!

NASA The Grand Tour Posters

ZORK I: The Great Underground Empire
Copyright (c) 1981, 1982, 1983 Infocom, Inc. All rights reserved.
ZORK is a registered trademark of Infocom, Inc.
Revision 88 / Serial number 840726

West of House
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.

Read the full article and play the game at eblong.com

You're at a coffee shop. A song comes on. It's right on the tip of your tongue. You pull out your phone, tap a button, and it tells you what it is in a few seconds.

How does a phone listen to a few seconds of music through a noisy room and instantly match it against millions of songs?

Your first instinct might be that the phone is listening to the melody or recognizing the lyrics. It's neither of those. What it's actually doing is far more clever.

Reverse Engineering Sound

TL;DR
Your phone captures sound as a waveform using a very thin membrane. This waveform is not useful for song identification, so a process called the Fast Fourier Transform is used to convert it into a three-dimensional representation of sound called a spectrogram.
Your phone's microphone uses an extremely thin membrane called a diaphragm to measure the vibrations in the air caused by sound. Those vibrations are converted into an electrical signal, which is digitized into a waveform: a sequence of numbers representing air pressure at each instant in time.

This is similar to how your eardrum catches those same pressure waves, but while your brain turns them into sound, your phone turns them into a sequence of numbers.

Read the full article at perthirtysix.com

A complete walkthrough of how large language models like ChatGPT are built — from raw internet text to a conversational assistant. Based on Andrej Karpathy's technical deep dive.

Read the full article at ynarwal.github.io

The more I read the #LOTR the more I love it. Found this great post about Tom Bombadil.

Tom Bombadil is one of the greatest characters in the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. He is the oldest being in Middle-earth, completely immune to the Ring’s power, and — unfortunately — overlooked by a huge swathe of readers.

“Readers” is indeed the right word to use here, since Tom Bombadil is so confounding that Peter Jackson cut him out of the films entirely: if you’ve never read the books, you’ve likely never heard of him. But despite the enigma that he is, Bombadil plays an incredibly important role in deciphering the world of Tolkien’s Middle-earth.

Today, we explore what the mysterious character of Tom Bombadil reveals not only about the world Tolkien created, but about the author’s own worldview as well. For in the words of Tolkien himself, Bombadil “represents something that I feel [is] important” — which is an understatement if there ever were one.

So what does Bombadil represent about the underlying ethics of Middle-earth and the key to overcoming evil? Keep reading to find out…

Read the full article at The Culturist

Favicons are small, customized icons that represent a website in browser tabs and bookmarks. They serve as a crucial visual identifier, enhancing a site's brand recognition immediately. Implementing a favicon improves the user experience by providing clear visual anchors. Developers can easily generate or source these small images using various online tools. Having a consistent and appealing favicon helps solidify a brand's digital presence.

Read the full article at favicons.rknight.me

Diddit is a simple application designed for logging daily activities. It functions as a digital logbook, making it easy to record memories. The app is optimized for a shareable and user-friendly experience. Being built for iPhone, it leverages mobile compatibility. It provides a straightforward way for users to document their lives.

Read the full article at didditapp.com

XCancel is an instance of Nitter. Nitter is a free and open source alternative Twitter front-end focused on privacy and performance. The source is available on GitHub at github.com/zedeus/nitter [...] Using an instance of Nitter (hosted on a VPS

Read the full article at daringfireball.net

I look at all of this, and the only thing I can think is: why take that risk? I know that my ideas and my words are my own; I find plagiarism fundamentally repulsive as a practice, and the only reason I show up to work is that I enjoy my craft. But if I ever let GenAI near my writing, I’m exposing myself to risk from plagiarism accusations—whether or not the GenAI tool smuggles in something that does, actually, constitute plagiarism. If somebody comes to me in 20 years and says “Are these your original ideas and words?” about even a single sentence of my writing, I need to be able to answer yes—no reservations, no loopholes, no room for error.
Here’s the biggest problem.

Academic writing is a collaborative venture, and in my experience, very few researchers have a comprehensive conversation about GenAI use before they collaborate. Everyone tends to think that their practices are normal, well-reasoned, and probably pretty similar to where other people they respect have landed on AI—whether that’s abstaining from it altogether, just using it to code, or wholly embracing it across your workflow.

That means that all of us have the ability to end each other’s career. This has always been true—on the 100+ papers I’ve written in my career, I’ve trusted every single coauthor (and they’ve trusted me) not to introduce a single sentence that will detonate our lives somewhere between journal submission and retirement. We don’t usually think about this as a problem, because we trust the other people we work with. But GenAI adds back the possibility that other people will introduce writing into your paper that can be credibly accused of plagiarism.

Read the full article at carlsonlab.bio

This article discusses the transition in how Apple handles the storage of recovery keys. It highlights Apple's stated commitment to user privacy throughout this change. The focus is on emphasizing the new security measures and protocols. These changes aim to make recovery key storage more obscure and secure for users. Overall, the transition reflects Apple's dedication to protecting user data.

Read the full article at sixcolors.com