<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
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<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xml:base="https://chameth.com/">
    <title>Chameth.com - posts like apple-google-aligned-incentives, curse-of-knowledge-blogging but not why-you-should-be-using-https</title>
    <subtitle>Personal homepage of Chris Smith</subtitle>
    <link href="https://chameth.com/feeds/posts/like/apple-google-aligned-incentives,curse-of-knowledge-blogging/unlike/why-you-should-be-using-https/" rel="self"/>
    <link href="https://chameth.com/"/>
    <icon>https://chameth.com/favicon.png</icon>
    <updated>2026-02-01T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <id>https://chameth.com/</id>
    <author>
        <name>Chris Smith</name>
    </author>
    <entry>
        <title>Monthly Meanderings: January 2026</title>
        <link href="https://chameth.com/monthly-meanderings-2026-01/"/>
        <updated>2026-02-01T00:00:00Z</updated>
        <id>https://chameth.com/monthly-meanderings-2026-01/</id>
        <content xml:lang="en" type="html">&lt;p&gt;Welcome to the second edition of my monthly meanderings. For a bit of context, you can check out &lt;a href=&#34;https://chameth.com/monthly-meanderings-2025-12/&#34;&gt;the introduction to the first edition&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;website-updates&#34;&gt;Website updates&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It’s been a pretty busy month for chameth.com. Three blog posts: &lt;a href=&#34;https://chameth.com/the-meaning-of-life/&#34;&gt;The Meaning of Life&lt;/a&gt; — an entry into the &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.jeremiahlee.com/posts/2026-01-indieweb-carnival/&#34;&gt;IndieWeb carnival&lt;/a&gt; where I mostly review a book on Stoicism —  &lt;a href=&#34;https://chameth.com/surge-protectors-marketing-vs-reality/&#34;&gt;Surge Protectors: Marketing vs Reality&lt;/a&gt; which is a dump of a research rabbit hole I fell into, and &lt;a href=&#34;https://chameth.com/tailscale-docker-gotcha/&#34;&gt;An Interesting Tailscale + Docker Gotcha&lt;/a&gt; which documents a fun problem I encountered.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I’ve also made a new &lt;a href=&#34;https://chameth.com/films/&#34;&gt;films&lt;/a&gt; section, which is basically my Letterboxd data but free range instead of cooped up in a silo. I imported my 200-odd reviews, and for the last few I wrote the review on my site and then copied it over to Letterboxd. That’s what the IndieWeb folks call &lt;a href=&#34;https://indieweb.org/POSSE&#34;&gt;POSSE&lt;/a&gt;: publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere. I like the idea that my website is the canonical source of truth for all the public things I generate. I want to expand this to some other areas in the future: music, video games, board games, etc.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I made most of the film components into “shortcodes”, so I can drop them into arbitrary pages or posts, like so:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;a class=&#34;film-list raised-box plain-link&#34; data-title=&#34;Film list&#34; href=&#34;https://chameth.com/films/lists/ranking/&#34;&gt;
  &lt;h3 class=&#34;plain-header&#34;&gt;Watched films ranked&lt;/h3&gt;
  &lt;div class=&#34;poster-stack&#34;&gt;
    &lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/films/265/poster.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Poster of Midsommar&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/films/4/poster.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Poster of Easy A&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/films/97/poster.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Poster of Hackers&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/films/25/poster.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Poster of The Matrix&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/films/202/poster.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Poster of Sinners&#34;/&gt;
  &lt;/div&gt;
  &lt;div class=&#34;description&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Every film I’ve watched since I started logging, ranked.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Obviously super subjective, and subject to change often and arbitrarily.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
  &lt;p class=&#34;count&#34;&gt;264 films&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Finally, I added a new widget to the bottom of most pages: a “nod” button. It’s effectively a “like” or “kudos” button but deliberately does not track how many times it’s been pressed, has no social network connotations, and won’t flood my inbox or hit rate limits if it gets spammed. If you click the button, it simply sends a message to a private IRC channel that says “Someone nodded at $URL”. I’ll probably write a bit more about it in a blog post in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;other-projects&#34;&gt;Other projects&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I only have one small non-chameth.com update: a new project called &lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/csmith/pigeonhole/&#34;&gt;pigeonhole&lt;/a&gt; which provides a really basic web service that lets you leave messages in a named cubby, and retrieve them at a later date. I’m using it to automate adding things to my Obsidian notes from my Apple Watch. There’s lots of reasons why that isn’t as simple as it sounds. I went through a bunch of iterations to try and make it work before just writing code to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I wanted to do this because I’m trying to replace Todoist with just having tasks in &lt;a href=&#34;https://obsidian.md/&#34;&gt;Obsidian&lt;/a&gt;. I already used Obsidian for longer form notes, but I’ve now also started using it for drafting blog posts (I’m typing this in Obsidian right now!), and trying to keep more useful day-to-day notes. I’ll probably write a blog post with more details once I’ve figured everything out.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Finally, I’ve been moving a bunch of projects to a private &lt;a href=&#34;https://forgejo.org/&#34;&gt;Forgejo&lt;/a&gt; instance, with the ultimate goal of having all of my projects live there. I’m going to mirror the contents out to GitHub and maybe other places, but Forgejo will be the single source of truth, and where all the workflows/dependency wrangling/etc happens. I’ve got &lt;a href=&#34;https://renovatebot.com/&#34;&gt;Renovate&lt;/a&gt; configured to do dependency bumps, and I’m very much liking the whole setup so far. I’m saying it a lot but again: I’ll blog about it in more detail when it’s a bit further along.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;entertainment&#34;&gt;Entertainment&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I mentioned last month that I was playing Hogwarts: Legacy. I finished that off, and have been struggling to find something to scratch the same itch. I’ve tried a whole bunch of open world games, and basically none of them work for me. They have cumbersome control schemes (yay console ports), really awkward or sluggish movement, and so on. I think I’m just too fussy, but if I’m going to sink dozens of hours into a game it shouldn’t feel annoying or like a chore!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I did play through &lt;a href=&#34;https://store.steampowered.com/app/2366980/Thank_Goodness_Youre_Here/&#34;&gt;Thank Goodness You’re Here&lt;/a&gt;, which is delightfully funny but sadly only took 3.6 hours to finish with 100% of the achievements. Still highly recommend picking it up, especially when it’s on sale for under ‘10 bob’.
I’ve also started playing through Control, and I’m enjoying the ambience. There’s an insanely sharp difficulty spike for the first boss, though, which nearly made me put it down.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In other entertainment, I’ve been playing a load of turn-based games on &lt;a href=&#34;https://boardgamearena.com/&#34;&gt;Board Game Arena&lt;/a&gt; , and I’ve watched a bunch of films after barely watching any last month. Here’s another of those shortcodes to show them off:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ol class=&#34;watched-films&#34;&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;
    &lt;a class=&#34;plain-link raised-box&#34; href=&#34;https://chameth.com/films/bugonia-2025/&#34;&gt;
      &lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/films/234/poster.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Poster of Bugonia&#34; loading=&#34;lazy&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;time&gt;2026-01-13&lt;/time&gt;
      &lt;div&gt;
&lt;span class=&#34;star-rating&#34;&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Full star&#34; class=&#34;rot-0&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-flat.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Full star&#34; class=&#34;rot-0&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-flat.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Full star&#34; class=&#34;rot-0&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-half.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Half star&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-empty.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Empty star&#34;/&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
    &lt;/a&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;
    &lt;a class=&#34;plain-link raised-box&#34; href=&#34;https://chameth.com/films/arrival-2016/&#34;&gt;
      &lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/films/235/poster.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Poster of Arrival&#34; loading=&#34;lazy&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;time&gt;2026-01-15&lt;/time&gt;
      &lt;div&gt;
&lt;span class=&#34;star-rating&#34;&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-flat.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Full star&#34; class=&#34;rot-1&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-flat.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Full star&#34; class=&#34;rot-1&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Full star&#34; class=&#34;rot-1&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-flat.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Full star&#34; class=&#34;rot-2&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-empty.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Empty star&#34;/&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
    &lt;/a&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;
    &lt;a class=&#34;plain-link raised-box&#34; href=&#34;https://chameth.com/films/ender-s-game-2013/&#34;&gt;
      &lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/films/236/poster.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Poster of Ender&amp;#39;s Game&#34; loading=&#34;lazy&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;time&gt;2026-01-16&lt;/time&gt;
      &lt;div&gt;
&lt;span class=&#34;star-rating&#34;&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Full star&#34; class=&#34;rot-1&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-empty.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Empty star&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-empty.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Empty star&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-empty.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Empty star&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-empty.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Empty star&#34;/&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
    &lt;/a&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;
    &lt;a class=&#34;plain-link raised-box&#34; href=&#34;https://chameth.com/films/bill-ted-s-excellent-adventure-1989/&#34;&gt;
      &lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/films/237/poster.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Poster of Bill &amp;amp; Ted&amp;#39;s Excellent Adventure&#34; loading=&#34;lazy&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;time&gt;2026-01-19&lt;/time&gt;
      &lt;div&gt;
&lt;span class=&#34;star-rating&#34;&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-flat.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Full star&#34; class=&#34;rot-2&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Full star&#34; class=&#34;rot-2&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-flat.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Full star&#34; class=&#34;rot-1&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Full star&#34; class=&#34;rot-1&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-half.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Half star&#34;/&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
    &lt;/a&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;
    &lt;a class=&#34;plain-link raised-box&#34; href=&#34;https://chameth.com/films/upgrade-2018/&#34;&gt;
      &lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/films/238/poster.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Poster of Upgrade&#34; loading=&#34;lazy&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;time&gt;2026-01-20&lt;/time&gt;
      &lt;div&gt;
&lt;span class=&#34;star-rating&#34;&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Full star&#34; class=&#34;rot-2&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-flat.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Full star&#34; class=&#34;rot-1&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Full star&#34; class=&#34;rot-0&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-half.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Half star&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-empty.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Empty star&#34;/&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
    &lt;/a&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;
    &lt;a class=&#34;plain-link raised-box&#34; href=&#34;https://chameth.com/films/blow-the-man-down-2019/&#34;&gt;
      &lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/films/239/poster.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Poster of Blow the Man Down&#34; loading=&#34;lazy&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;time&gt;2026-01-21&lt;/time&gt;
      &lt;div&gt;
&lt;span class=&#34;star-rating&#34;&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Full star&#34; class=&#34;rot-1&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-flat.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Full star&#34; class=&#34;rot-1&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-flat.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Full star&#34; class=&#34;rot-1&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-empty.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Empty star&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-empty.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Empty star&#34;/&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
    &lt;/a&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;
    &lt;a class=&#34;plain-link raised-box&#34; href=&#34;https://chameth.com/films/psych-2-lassie-come-home-2020/&#34;&gt;
      &lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/films/241/poster.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Poster of Psych 2: Lassie Come Home&#34; loading=&#34;lazy&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;time&gt;2026-01-26&lt;/time&gt;
      &lt;div&gt;
&lt;span class=&#34;star-rating&#34;&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-flat.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Full star&#34; class=&#34;rot-1&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-flat.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Full star&#34; class=&#34;rot-1&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-empty.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Empty star&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-empty.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Empty star&#34;/&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/star-empty.png&#34; width=&#34;28&#34; height=&#34;28&#34; alt=&#34;Empty star&#34;/&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
    &lt;/a&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;around-the-web&#34;&gt;Around the web&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&#34;remotely-unlocking-an-encrypted-hard-diskhttpsjyndevremotely-unlocking-an-encrypted-hard-disk&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://jyn.dev/remotely-unlocking-an-encrypted-hard-disk/&#34;&gt;Remotely unlocking an encrypted hard disk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;p&gt;A fun post documenting using Tailscale in a very weird way to solve a relatable problem. Very much my cup of tea.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&#34;i-charged-18000-for-a-static-html-pagehttpsidiallocomblog18000-dollars-static-web-page&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://idiallo.com/blog/18000-dollars-static-web-page&#34;&gt;I charged $18,000 for a static HTML page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This one’s actually from 2019, but it’s the first time I’ve come across it, and it’s a fun story. As a contractor, deciding what to bill for and what not to can be a bit messy. Downtime between meetings? The ten minutes in the shower you spent thinking through a bug? It’s a lot more clear cut if the client wants you to sit in an office, twiddling your thumbs, though.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&#34;oxide-rfd-using-llms-at-oxidehttpsrfdsharedoxidecomputerrfd0576&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/0576&#34;&gt;Oxide RFD: Using LLMs at Oxide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;p&gt;A wonderfully well thought out piece about using LLMs in a respectful, sensible manner. I’d been thinking about writing something similar, but it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as well crafted as this. While I basically agree with it all, the part about LLM-generated text really resonates:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;LLM-generated prose undermines a social contract of sorts: absent LLMs, it is presumed that of the reader and the writer, it is the writer that has undertaken the greater intellectual exertion.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&#34;your-app-subscription-is-now-my-weekend-projecthttpsrselbachcomyour-sub-is-now-my-weekend-project&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://rselbach.com/your-sub-is-now-my-weekend-project&#34;&gt;Your app subscription is now my weekend project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Roberto points out that monthly SaaS subscriptions start looking even less appealing when you can just prompt an alternative into existence. &lt;a href=&#34;https://chameth.com/an-app-can-be-a-ready-meal/&#34;&gt;I talked a bit about using LLMs for one-person software before&lt;/a&gt;, and it becomes even more appealing when the alternative is paying monthly for a service that keeps shoe-horning in features you don’t want, making you agree to share data with 329 “trusted partners”, and/or repeatedly ratcheting up the price.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&#34;ekuls-internet-spacehttpsekulme&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://ekul.me/&#34;&gt;Ekul’s Internet Space&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I love the aesthetics of this personal site, and the data tracking that goes along with it. I’m also slightly aghast at the amount of Monster consumed! Makes me want to track more things and expose them on my own site.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    </entry>
    <entry>
        <title>Monthly Meanderings: December 2025</title>
        <link href="https://chameth.com/monthly-meanderings-2025-12/"/>
        <updated>2026-01-01T00:00:00Z</updated>
        <id>https://chameth.com/monthly-meanderings-2025-12/</id>
        <content xml:lang="en" type="html">&lt;p&gt;For a while I’ve been idly thinking about a way to get smaller bits of content
onto my website without it being too annoying for me, or too hard to consume. Things
like interesting links, small project updates, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I didn’t immediately come up with anything I was happy with, so just sat on it.
Ignoring the problem seems to work surprisingly well for things like this.
I’d been meaning to redesign the &lt;a href=&#34;https://chameth.com/about&#34;&gt;about page&lt;/a&gt; for a while, but wasn’t
sure what to do with all the interests I wanted to list. After ignoring the
problem for a while I came across the &lt;a href=&#34;https://chrisburnell.github.io/interests-directory/&#34;&gt;interests directory&lt;/a&gt;
and realised I could just bundle all those things into their own page.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This seems amazingly obvious in hindsight, but I think I needed a bit
of a push to accept that a page just about my interests was… well…
interesting. Anyway, as the end of December rolled around, I got a similar
dose of inspiration: a flurry of monthly round-up posts from various blogs
I follow. If I bundle up all the small bits and bobs, it’ll make something
vaguely blog post shaped, and writing and consuming those is already a
solved problem. Again, pretty obvious in hindsight, and again I think I
just needed a nudge to shut up the little voice in my head saying “but those
people all have interesting things to say… do you, really?”&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So without further ado, welcome to the inaugural post in my new monthly
meanderings series. If you have any feedback on the format or contents,
please drop me a note with the contact form at the bottom!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;website-updates&#34;&gt;Website updates&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;As already mentioned, I reworked the &lt;a href=&#34;https://chameth.com/about&#34;&gt;about page&lt;/a&gt; and split out
a new &lt;a href=&#34;https://chameth.com/interests&#34;&gt;interests page&lt;/a&gt;. The old about page had a few lists
of interests show up in thought bubbles when you hovered over things,
which was a cool effect on desktop, but barely worked at all on mobile.
The new page gives me a lot more room for waffle, and I do like waffling.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Only a single new blog post this month:
&lt;a href=&#34;https://chameth.com/exposing-game-servers-over-tailscale/&#34;&gt;exposing game servers over Tailscale&lt;/a&gt;.
Just a quick how-to I wrote up, having not found it documented usefully
anywhere before. I have a bunch of ideas for posts I want to write, but
none of them have really sparked joy quite yet, so I’m once again employing
the “sit on them for a bit and maybe inspiration will strike” approach.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;other-projects&#34;&gt;Other projects&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I created a small collection of Docker related projects this month:
&lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/csmith/containuum&#34;&gt;containuum&lt;/a&gt; is a go library that
helps with listing containers, and keeping that list up-to-date. On top
of that I built &lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/csmith/centauri-docker-confd&#34;&gt;centauri-docker-confd&lt;/a&gt;
which generates a config for &lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/csmith/centauri&#34;&gt;centauri&lt;/a&gt;
(my reverse proxy) based on running Docker containers. I already had a
way of doing that, but containuum is designed to be a bit more robust,
and I made it so the config can be passed over a network connection
instead of having to write it to disk and then signal the proxy to reload.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The next project has a bit of backstory: after reading
&lt;a href=&#34;https://blog.jakesaunders.dev/my-server-started-mining-monero-this-morning/&#34;&gt;I got hacked, my server started mining Monero this morning&lt;/a&gt;
[warning: the article is interesting but a bit LLM-sloppy] I realised that I, too, was
running a vulnerable version of Umami. Luckily, as far as I can tell, it wasn’t
exploited. But it got me looking into automated vulnerability scanning. I don’t
put much stock into it normally, as you get so many false alerts, but this is one
case where it would have definitely helped. There didn’t seem to be any
good solution for my “middle-of-the-road” approach to containers (lots of containers,
but not needing Kubernetes), so I wrote &lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/csmith/purser&#34;&gt;purser&lt;/a&gt;.
It takes every image used by a running container, runs them through
&lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/aquasecurity/trivy/&#34;&gt;Trivy&lt;/a&gt;, and generates a combined report.
I’ll add some form of active notifications to it in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;entertainment&#34;&gt;Entertainment&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This month I’ve been playing a lot of Hogwarts: Legacy, after picking it up
for free on Epic Games. I grew up with the Harry Potter books coming out,
and while I’m not a super-fan, it still has a special appeal to me.
Obviously she-who-must-not-be-named is doing her best to out-evil Voldemort,
but I think you can still enjoy the universe despite that. Especially when
you don’t have to contribute any money that might go towards her.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the game is surprisingly fun. They did a really good job of making
it feel like an open world. You &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to walk around from place to place
to see everything, find all the various collectables, and so on. Compared
to Far Cry or Cyberpunk the world is a lot smaller but that means it’s far
more densely packed with stuff to do. I initially didn’t vibe with the
way combat works: it’s pretty heavily reliant on dodging or shielding against
incoming attacks, which reminded me a lot of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Fortunately, it’s a lot more forgiving in Hogwarts: Legacy and I got used
to it after not too long.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It’s been a relatively sedate month for other forms of entertainment.
I saw Fackham Hall and Wicked: For Good at the cinema. The former was
a funny romp, vaguely reminiscent of Airplane or The Naked Gun, as you’d
expect from something penned by Jimmy Carr. Wicked was… fine? I wasn’t
overly enamoured with part one, so it’s not a surprise I didn’t vibe with
the follow-up. If you smushed them into a single normal-length feature I think they
would have made a really good film, but two films both over two hours
long is a bit much for what actually happens.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;around-the-web&#34;&gt;Around the web&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&#34;wikipedia-list-of-citogenesis-incidentshttpsenwikipediaorgwikiwikipedialist-of-citogenesis-incidents&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_incidents&#34;&gt;Wikipedia: List of citogenesis incidents&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;p&gt;A list of incidents where (often false) information on Wikipedia has ended up
becoming its own source. That led to Mark Dominus’ blog post titled
&lt;a href=&#34;https://blog.plover.com/wikipedia/ysolo.html&#34;&gt;Imaginary Albanian eggplant festivals… IN SPACE&lt;/a&gt;
where he discovers that a mountain on Ceres got named after a made-up festival
(and then got it fixed!)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Not relying on Wikipedia as a source was drummed into us at school, but
it feels like this sort of thing is only going to get worse and worse now
LLMs are on the scene. I assume we’re already at the point where LLM
hallucinations are prevalent enough that they’ll find their way into
the training data for future iterations.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&#34;simon-collisons-websitehttpscollycom&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://colly.com/&#34;&gt;Simon Collison’s website&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I really like the design here. Both the homepage and how well every
journal entry is formatted. It makes me feel bad for the many walls of
text that adorn this site. The &lt;a href=&#34;https://colly.com/v4/&#34;&gt;archived v4 design&lt;/a&gt;
is also wonderful.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&#34;my-dinner-with-skinnerhttpswwwyoutubecomwatchvpk-oq8iytva&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk-Oq8iYtVA&#34;&gt;My Dinner with Skinner&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;p&gt;A 43-minute-long feature film that is “just” the Steamed Hams gag from
The Simpsons done in the style of My Dinner with Andre. There’s a (much shorter)
&lt;a href=&#34;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ecg_5r1L1M&#34;&gt;behind-the-scenes video&lt;/a&gt; that
goes over the extreme amount of effort that was put into it, too.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I’m still trying to wrap my head around this. It’s… something.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&#34;delete-spotify-sure-but-dont-just-replace-it-with-another-subscriptionhttpsstephveecablogentertainmentdelete-spotify-sure-but-dont-just-replace-it-with-another-subscription&#34;&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://stephvee.ca/blog/entertainment/delete-spotify-sure-but-dont-just-replace-it-with-another-subscription/&#34;&gt;Delete Spotify? Sure, But Don’t Just Replace it With Another Subscription&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;p&gt;A similar take to my own &lt;a href=&#34;https://chameth.com/escaping-spotify-the-hard-way/&#34;&gt;escaping Spotify the hard way&lt;/a&gt;,
but it avoids getting lost in the technical weeds like I did. (In my defence,
they’re very fun weeds to get lost in.) Stephanie is
also one of the people that does monthly wrap-ups, and I was pleasantly
surprised when &lt;a href=&#34;https://stephvee.ca/blog/rewinds/rewind-dec-2025/&#34;&gt;the latest one&lt;/a&gt;
popped up in my RSS reader and I saw my own site linked.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    </entry>
    <entry>
        <title>Blogging and the Imaginary Quality Bar</title>
        <link href="https://chameth.com/blogging-and-the-imaginary-quality-bar/"/>
        <updated>2025-09-18T00:00:00Z</updated>
        <id>https://chameth.com/blogging-and-the-imaginary-quality-bar/</id>
        <content xml:lang="en" type="html">&lt;p&gt;Recently I realised that I’ve developed a self-imposed quality bar for blog
posts. They need to be a certain length, and have a certain &lt;em&gt;substance&lt;/em&gt; to them.
They need to be generally useful in some way I can’t quite define, to some
imagined future audience. They need to have images to break up the page, and
opengraph data for when they’re linked to on social media. But… maybe they
don’t? Those things all make sense for longer “article” type posts, but not so
much for a personal blog.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I’ve done some fiddling so that I can make posts without all that extra stuff.
We’ll see how it goes. The posts won’t be distinguished on the site (yet?), but
I have set up separate RSS feeds for just &lt;a href=&#34;https://chameth.com/short.xml&#34;&gt;short form posts&lt;/a&gt; and
&lt;a href=&#34;https://chameth.com/long.xml&#34;&gt;long form posts&lt;/a&gt; in case subscribers are radically opposed to one
or the other. Now I can start blogging like it’s 2005 again. But hopefully
with a bit less cringe.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I’ve been staring at this post in my editor for about five minutes. The urge
to make it longer, more thorough, more article-like is really strong. This
entire paragraph is only here as a compromise with myself so I can actually
save and commit the post.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    </entry>
    <entry>
        <title>How tech companies failed to build the Star Trek computer</title>
        <link href="https://chameth.com/how-tech-companies-failed-to-build-the-star-trek-computer/"/>
        <updated>2025-07-16T00:00:00Z</updated>
        <id>https://chameth.com/how-tech-companies-failed-to-build-the-star-trek-computer/</id>
        <content xml:lang="en" type="html">&lt;figure class=&#34;image right&#34;&gt;
  &lt;picture&gt;
      &lt;source srcset=&#34;https://chameth.com/how-tech-companies-failed-to-build-the-star-trek-computer/enterprise-computer-room.avif&#34; type=&#34;image/avif&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;source srcset=&#34;https://chameth.com/how-tech-companies-failed-to-build-the-star-trek-computer/enterprise-computer-room.webp&#34; type=&#34;image/webp&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/how-tech-companies-failed-to-build-the-star-trek-computer/enterprise-computer-room.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Still from an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, with various characters stood around in a computer core room&#34; loading=&#34;lazy&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;376&#34;/&gt;
  &lt;/picture&gt;
  &lt;figcaption&gt;&lt;p&gt;A computer core room on the Enterprise-D&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/figcaption&gt;
&lt;/figure&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In most Star Trek series, the ship or station computer is ever-present in the
background, waiting to be called on by the main characters&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:1&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:1&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;. It nearly
always does exactly the right thing, and there’s little limit to the functions
it can perform. Take this mundane example from DS9:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;KIRA: Computer, establish link with the Bajoran Medical Index for the Northwestern District. &lt;br/&gt;
COMPUTER: Link established. &lt;br/&gt;
KIRA: Access all information on Doctor Surmak Ren. &lt;br/&gt;
COMPUTER: There are no records matching that name. &lt;br/&gt;
KIRA: Try the Northeastern District, same search. &lt;br/&gt;
COMPUTER: Doctor Surmak Ren, currently serving as Chief Administrator of the Ilvian Medical Complex. &lt;br/&gt;
KIRA: Computer, open a channel to the Ilvian Medical Complex. Administrator’s office.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The computer is doing some kind of networking to a database only identified by
name. It does a search and summarises the lack of results. It then repeats the
process with another database, and succinctly announces the results. Finally,
it opens a communication channel to a specific room in a facility, based only
on its name.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This whole interaction is remarkably boring&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:2&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:2&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;. Kira doesn’t have to know
any URLs or API endpoints, or what protocol she wants to use. She doesn’t have
to open a specific app and then login and then try the query again. She just
says what she wants and the computer does it.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It seems like this should be one of the most easily obtainable bits of sci-fi
wizardry with our current technology. We have multiple massive companies
throwing lots of money at digital assistants, LLMs that are improving at an
insane rate, but we’re somehow not even close to the usability or usefulness of
the Trek computers. What gives?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;boring-is-well-boring&#34;&gt;Boring is, well, boring.&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Larry Page once said something that might help explain it:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The Star Trek computer doesn’t seem that interesting. They ask it random
questions, it thinks for a while. I think we can do better than that.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This is the same Larry Page that founded Google, whose mission statement is
“to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and
useful”. Of all people, surely he should find an omnipresent computer that can
answer ‘random questions’ interesting?! It seems like it should be the epitome
of Google’s mission!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;!--more--&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Google’s “better than that” seems to have been to stuff LLMs into every product
they can, even when you don’t want them there. Even when they’re worse than the
normal content they displace. These things look &lt;em&gt;exciting&lt;/em&gt; when they’re part of
a scripted demo at Google I/O, but they fall flat and just get in the way when
they’re exposed to the reality of day-to-day use.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The Star Trek computer is the opposite: it isn’t snazzy, but it is genuinely
useful. That means it’s not an attractive target for the company execs who want
marketing opportunities, and it’s not appealing for engineers who need to
demonstrate “impact”. But even if Google did try to make the Trek computer,
there are other problems…&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;assistants-need-to-be-free&#34;&gt;Assistants need to be free&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;A significant amount of tech companies’ business models currently revolves
around trapping users in walled gardens. They want you using &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; ecosystem;
that way they get more data from you, and you’re more likely to spend more money
on their other offerings that work together. There’s barely any incentive to
allow any kind of interoperability with other platforms outside carefully
contracted integrations.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I remember trying to help a family member move their photos from iCloud to
Google Photos. At one point they turned around and said, exasperated, “why is
this so hard? Aren’t they both in the cloud?!”. It’s easy to dismiss that as
someone who hasn’t quite grasped the fundamental idea that “the cloud” is just
someone else’s computers, but that’s not the whole story. There’s no reason why
there shouldn’t be a quick and easy transfer: both services already allow
uploading and downloading, there’s just no incentive for the companies involved
to make it so&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:3&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:3&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;These kinds of misaligned incentives and walled garden business models cause
even more problems when it comes to digital assistants. Siri is basically never
going to be able to interact with, say, your Google Drive; &lt;del&gt;Bard&lt;/del&gt; Gemini
is never going to be able to send a message via iMessage. Even when there are
appropriately blessed interactions, they’re so clunky. Can you imagine Captain
Picard saying “Computer, ask the turbolift skill to take me to deck 5”?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;someone-elses-computer&#34;&gt;Someone else’s computer&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Software issues aside, there’s still a key difference between the Star Trek
computers and our current batch of digital assistants: where they run. The
Trek computers are all housed within the ship or station they serve; they can
connect elsewhere to gather information, but they run entirely independently.
If they go wrong, a local engineer can go in and fix things. While some of our
assistants may have physical hardware in your home, they don’t work without
a vast cloud apparatus behind them. If your Internet connection fails, they
become paperweights. If the company running them decide to remove some
functionality you depend on, you have no recourse.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;That kind of helplessness isn’t limited to assistants, either. There’s a rapidly
growing trend of being unable to modify or repair hardware you fully own and
control. Part of this is just that they’re becoming more complex: it’s a lot
harder to replace a microchip than a gear, but companies are also going out
of their way to make it more difficult for users through draconian DRM
regimes&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:4&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:4&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; and aggressive intellectual property enforcement. If the US Navy
can’t repair their own equipment because a corporation says so, what hope do
consumers have?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We’re approaching a point where you don’t actually own anything. Software
is cloud and subscription based, hardware is unrepairable. Even cars can
be remotely updated and have features added or removed. The Federation wouldn’t
allow a third party control over their ships&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:5&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:5&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;, so why are we so happy to
put up with it in everything we consume?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;a-small-ray-of-hope&#34;&gt;A small ray of hope?&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The most promising way of tackling all of these problems is through legislation.
The EU’s &lt;a href=&#34;https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/index_en&#34;&gt;Digital Market Act&lt;/a&gt;
is an attempt to force ‘gatekeepers’ like Google, Apple and Meta, to allow
third-party access to their services. It seems like a pretty reasonable
approach, but the tech companies are unsurprisingly resisting it. Apple in
particular have gone out of their way to refuse to comply, and when forced to
do so have limited the functionality to people in Europe.
Still, the DMA is a promising start, and if similar legislation is introduced
(and robustly enforced) elsewhere it might start forcing companies to behave a
bit better.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;There are also smaller companies that actually do the right thing.
&lt;a href=&#34;https://frame.work/gb/en&#34;&gt;Framework&lt;/a&gt; make laptops that are user-serviceable;
&lt;a href=&#34;https://www.fairphone.com/&#34;&gt;Fairphone&lt;/a&gt; do the same for mobile phones. Smaller
software companies provide useful, open APIs. The average person on the street
will probably have never heard of these, unfortunately, but they do still
exist. Maybe as the bigger tech companies tighten the screws more, people will
turn to alternatives like this? Or maybe we’ll just keep accepting that our
computers work for everyone but us?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div class=&#34;footnotes&#34; role=&#34;doc-endnotes&#34;&gt;
&lt;hr/&gt;
&lt;ol&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:1&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Unless, of course, the computer is playing the role of the episode’s
MacGuffin and has contracted space-computer-COVID or something, then it’s a lot
less in-the-background. &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:1&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:2&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It’s almost like it only exists to move the plot along. &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:2&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:3&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;You can generally export your data, thanks to a combination of legislation
and efforts like Google’s “Data Liberation Front”, but I’ve never seen an export
format that could then just be imported into an equivalent commercial product. &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:3&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:4&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Oh, you’ve changed the screen on your iPhone? Better hope it can do the
secret handshake with the Apple hardware. &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:4&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:5&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I think there might actually have been an episode where that did in fact
happen. We’ll just ignore that as a plot contrivance. &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:5&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
</content>
    </entry>
    <entry>
        <title>If all you have is a hammer…</title>
        <link href="https://chameth.com/if-all-you-have-is-a-hammer/"/>
        <updated>2025-06-18T00:00:00Z</updated>
        <id>https://chameth.com/if-all-you-have-is-a-hammer/</id>
        <content xml:lang="en" type="html">&lt;figure class=&#34;image right&#34;&gt;
  &lt;picture&gt;
      &lt;source srcset=&#34;https://chameth.com/if-all-you-have-is-a-hammer/hammer.avif&#34; type=&#34;image/avif&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;source srcset=&#34;https://chameth.com/if-all-you-have-is-a-hammer/hammer.webp&#34; type=&#34;image/webp&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/if-all-you-have-is-a-hammer/hammer.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;Closeup photo of a well-used hammer with a wooden handle&#34; loading=&#34;lazy&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;411&#34;/&gt;
  &lt;/picture&gt;
  &lt;figcaption&gt;&lt;p&gt;This, dear reader, is a hammer. It is almost entirely irrelevant to the article. Enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/figcaption&gt;
&lt;/figure&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I presume everyone is familiar with the idiom “if all you have is a hammer,
everything looks like a nail”. If not, well, there it is. It’s generally
used pejoratively about being single-minded, but I think it also gives a glimpse
into something more interesting: mental and perceptual sets.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Before I explain, let me tell you a story about a person who bought a 3D printer&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:1&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:1&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.
When they were first thinking about getting one, they weren’t sure if it was
worth it. They could print a few board game accessories, but then what? After
they got it, though, a whole new world opened up: everywhere they looked there
were opportunities to improve things by adding 3D printed plastic. Broken
appliances were repaired with 3D printed parts, all sorts of shelves,
organisers, hooks and other things were made. But when they talked about this
to other people, most often the response was “That’s nice, but I don’t think
I’d use one”. How could they not see the truth in all its glorious layer lines?!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The answer is in the concept of a ‘set’&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:2&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:2&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;, and instead of trying to explain it,
I’m just going to quote &lt;a href=&#34;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_(psychology)&#34;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In psychology, a set is a group of expectations that shape experience by making
people especially sensitive to specific kinds of information. A perceptual set,
also called perceptual expectancy, is a predisposition to perceive things in a
certain way. […] A mental set is a framework for thinking about a problem.
It can be shaped by habit or by desire. Mental sets can make it easy to solve
a class of problem, but attachment to the wrong mental set can inhibit
problem-solving and creativity.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This perfectly captures what happened. They’d developed a ‘3D printing mental set’:
a predisposition to see problems that can be solved with their &lt;del&gt;hammer&lt;/del&gt; 3D
printer. Once I started noticing this pattern, I started seeing it all over
the place.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;!--more--&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;sets-at-work&#34;&gt;Sets at work&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Aside from the “could this be improved with some 3D printed plastic” perceptual
set, I’ve noticed a couple of other sets: DIY, and writing puzzles.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;DIY is probably the most obvious one. Once you become a little familiar with the
basics of what you can fix and how, it seems like you start noticing the
opportunities more. Before, you might have ignored that loose door handle, but
now you notice it and realise with a screwdriver and a sex bolt&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:3&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:3&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; you can
fix it and stop it coming loose again anytime soon.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;As you do more things, you build up your set of mental sets as well. You learn
how to attach things to different types of walls, how to safely work with
electricity, and so on, and suddenly installing a new outside light goes from
a seemingly complex job to just exercising some of those concepts you’re already
familiar with.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This works across ‘disciplines’ as well: I wanted to automatically cool
a room down, using a fan in the window to blow in cool air. The 3D printing
mental set gave me a way to make it physically go where I wanted it to, the
home automation set gave me a plan for how to automate it, and the electricity
set helped me figure out how to wire in the relay. It sounds a bit stilted when
I spell it out like that, but the catch is I didn’t have to sit down and work
any of this out. I was already primed to think in a certain way. I had a whole
selection of hammers, and could pick the right combination of them to beat
this particular nail&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:4&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:4&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Puzzles are a bit different. I enjoy taking part in puzzle hunts&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:5&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:5&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;, and at
first I was bewildered at how the authors came up with all the puzzles. After
I started thinking about writing some myself, though, I began to notice all
kinds of things that could maybe be turned into a puzzle: a specialised
database, or a song with repetitive lyrics, or set of things with unique ID
numbers. Writing the actual puzzles is still tricky, but once you’ve equipped
the “look out for puzzle material” perceptual set it’s much easier to gather
a range of ideas.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For example, one puzzle I wrote came about because I stumbled upon
&lt;a href=&#34;https://archive.org/details/patrick-stewarts-cowboy-classic-sampler&#34;&gt;Sir Patrick Stewart’s Cowboy Classic Sampler&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:6&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:6&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.
I think everyone will agree that it’s a fairly unique collection. I tied some
samples of the songs together with some screen captures of Sir Patrick as Picard
in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and puzzlers had to find the season and
episode numbers of the pictures, then use those numbers to select a track and a
word from that track in the audio mix. Those words spell out a question, and the
answer to that question is the answer to the puzzle.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;There were other hints mixed in to point you in the right direction, it wasn’t
quite as opaque as it might sound! But the point is without being in that
“puzzle finding” mindset when I came across the album, there’s no way I could
have come up with that puzzle. Like with the fan, I was primed to think a
certain way, and managed to create something I otherwise would have struggled
with.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;the-curse-of-noticing-things&#34;&gt;The curse of noticing things&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Figuring out how to make stuff isn’t the only place sets appear, though.
Perceptual sets are about how we perceive things. When you read something
with lots of bullet points, em-dashes, and the word “delve” do you automatically
think it’s LLM generated?&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:7&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:7&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; Then you have an LLM text perceptual set! It’s
kind of annoying, as it’s difficult to “turn off” and stop noticing these
things once you’ve seen them. Similarly, I think I have a “bad grammar” set.
I know it doesn’t bother a lot of people, but if I’m reading a book and there’s
a rogue apostrophe it will throw me right out of the moment. It’s like tripping
up when walking and being torn out of a daydream. There’s some use to these —
being able to notice grammar errors easily helps with my writing — but for
the most part they’re a negative input: they point out things are broken or
bad.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The “edge case set” takes this to another level. After about 20 years of writing
software&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:8&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:8&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; I have a finely honed ability to spot problems. Give me something to
implement and my brain will immediately rattle off all the different edge cases
and under-specified parts. Then some other bit of my brain gets the job of
deciding which we actually care about, which are worth raising, and so on.
It’s definitely useful to spot them up-front, rather than when you’re deep in
the weeds implementing something, and tends to make everything go a lot smoother
if you can hammer the major ones out when planning work. It doesn’t turn off
after work though; it comes up when reading board game rule books, or
descriptions of the magic system in fantasy novels, or news reports, and so on.
It’s a lot less useful then.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Speaking of news reports, here’s a fun one: Gell-Mann amnesia is a cognitive
bias where even when you critically assess media reports about something you’re
knowledgeable about (say, technology), you continue to trust similar reporting
in other areas (say, medicine). But once you know about Gell-Mann amnesia, you
might start to actively notice when it happens. You scoff at the article about
how the Internet is a “series of tubes” and then start reading the next one
about a cancer treatment, but — wait a minute — your Gell-Mann amnesia set
kicks in. I’m not sure what you then do with this information. Dismiss basically
all the media and news as useless? It’s honestly pretty annoying.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;the-meta-set&#34;&gt;The meta set&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I’ve had this blog post on my ideas list since I first noticed the “3D printing
mindset”. I didn’t know sets were an actual thing, and I didn’t have most of
the examples I do now. As time went on with this idea rattling around in the
back of my head, I started noticing the patterns come up more and more. There’s
lots of more examples I didn’t include because I didn’t want to just write a
listicle of mental patterns. But the fact that I noticed them all seems to mean
that I’ve developed a set set, or a meta-set, if you will. It’s fascinating
to think about how all this happens inside our mushy bag of neurons, but
also a bit terrifying. If thought processes are that malleable, what stops you
accidentally breaking them? Actually, thinking about things like Q-Anon, flat
earthers, and a lot of contemporary “politics”, maybe that’s quite easy to do?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr/&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;image-credits&#34;&gt;Image credits&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;table&gt;
&lt;thead&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Photo&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Creator&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Licence&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Source&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/thead&gt;
&lt;tbody&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Hammer&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://unsplash.com/@iantalmacs&#34;&gt;Ian Talmacs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Unsplash License&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://unsplash.com/photos/a-close-up-of-a-hammer-with-a-black-background-4kuAvNfHEzI&#34;&gt;Unsplash&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;
&lt;div class=&#34;footnotes&#34; role=&#34;doc-endnotes&#34;&gt;
&lt;hr/&gt;
&lt;ol&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:1&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Surprise! I am that person. Bet you didn’t see that coming! &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:1&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:2&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I feel like they should have consulted the mathematicians and/or computer scientists before they picked a name. &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:2&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:3&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Yes, that’s a real thing. No, I won’t ever use any of the alternative names for it. &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:3&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:4&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;OK, I’ve strained the metaphor enough. I’m sorry. I’ll stop. &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:4&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:5&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If you’re not familiar, a puzzle hunt is a competition where you try to solve puzzles faster than other teams. The sort of puzzles involved are perfectly described by this quote from Mike Develin: “Imagine a word search. Now imagine you aren’t told what words to look for. Now imagine you aren’t told it’s a word search. Now imagine it isn’t a word search.” &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:5&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:6&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Go and give it a listen. I’ll wait. &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:6&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:7&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I hereby certify all my em-dashes are hand-crafted. Relatedly, Claude Code keeps writing comments that use hyphens when they should actually be em-dashes. Maybe they’ve trained it to avoid them? &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:7&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:8&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I just made myself sad by working this out. I still feel young at heart! … Or maybe that’s cholesterol? &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:8&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
</content>
    </entry>
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