mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06Profile for NantucketLit.com, making the best ebooks on the planet and collectible limited-edition chapbooks. https://nantucketlit.com #pivotfromvideo
I co-maintain the Harlan Ellison Directory with @atgonzalez@mastodon.social: https://NDHFilms.com/ellison
John Green talks about his brother Hank Green's "AI" dustup. I thought John Green's response was very thoughtful.
I was pleased to hear John say that he doesn't use "AI" in his work, and doesn't see a need to. It's good to see a writer as popular as John Green take a public stance like that.
I made some improvements to my Commodore 64 bitmap-loading program.
Previously, I was loading the pixel data from a binary file straight to memory, and the color information from a sequential text file.
Now, I can load both from binaries. In BASIC, the program loads a 320x200 image in just under 25 seconds.
Man this is fun to share :)
A high school teacher in my area discovered a set of tracks from a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
"I've got a dream, too, but it's about singing and dancing, and making people happy. That's the kind of dream that gets better the more people you share it with. Well, I found a whole bunch of friends who have the same dream. And... that kind of makes us like a family."
:'-)
Searching for some images on Wikimedia Commons.
Here's a nice one. Right click, go to 'Copy Link'--
Wait, 'Copy CLEAN Link'? Wikimedia Commons has *un*clean links, like YouTube? What's that about?
Yesterday's Denver Zine Fest went very well. I met a lot of like-minded people there, which was very positive.
I have too many thoughts about it right now, but I don't want to wait too long to write a blog post. I'll try to work on one tonight.
Singapore is paying people to read. https://lite.cnn.com/2026/09/15/asia/singapore-reading-campaign-intl-hnk-dst
New blog post: Today, I visited the hotel where some of this Nantucket Lit project first started.
https://nantucketlit.com/blog/2026/09/2026-09-09_a_day_to_reflect.html
Back when I was sketching SVG icon ideas on graph paper, I had no idea how many kind, talented, wonderful people I'd meet because of this project. Thank you.
https://nantucketlit.com/blog/2026/09/2026-09-13_defy_ai_workshop_at_books_on_main.html
New blog post: I had a great time hosting my #DefyAI writing workshop in Fort Morgan, Colorado on Saturday!
I got to enjoy their lovely bookstore, Books on Main, where I got to talk about human creativity and the perils of "AI".
Tomorrow, I'll be hosting a #DefyAI writing workshop at Books on Main in Fort Morgan, Colorado.
I talk about the places human creativity comes from, and the perils of relying on "AI".
https://youtube.com/shorts/oDFkz_ghWbU
If you're interested in updates about these workshops, you may email me at njb@nantucketlit.com
https://youtu.be/niZY_-e9OI0 A couple videos for today.
I saw a statistic that a quarter of people alive today were born after 9/11. A few years ago, I had an intern who asked me about the Iraq war--for a class history report.
I thought I'd take a moment to commit my memories of that day to tape. I was ten years old at the time. Hard to believe.
I wanted to convey the sense of uncertainty and panic from that morning. I think I underplayed it in this video.
ffmpeg is a good way to convert audio files from one format to another. https://www.linux.org/threads/using-ffmpeg-to-convert-audio-files.54583/
A friend and I were discussing LLMs today. He mentioned a recent news story about Claude making headway on a famous unsolved math problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobian_conjecture
If there is anyone in the math(s) field who has heard about this, I'd like to try to understand what's going on. It is difficult to find any information about this news that isn't from the "AI" hype crowd.
I am going to post a big "L" here. I hope I can save someone else from this embarrassment.
Beurre de barratte is *not* cheese. It's a butter. I am still learning French, and boy do I know what 'beurre de barratte' means now.
I don't know why it was put in the cheese section.
When I was a kid, 25+ years ago, I remember science books saying that one symptom of global warming would be more freak weather events.
We had a very mild winter here in Colorado, and now... a snowstorm in May?
I've updated my page for First-Class Fiction, with a list of all the postcards mailed out so far. https://nantucketlit.com/postcards
You can also sign up or subscribe on that page.
It looks like gtkpod isn't being maintained anymore. Since I upgraded to Trisquel 12, it's no longer in apt. I could compile it from source... maybe...
For now, Rhythmbox is a good way to get songs onto my old iPod. Now I can continue listening to these Redwall audiobooks.
Redwall! Woodland critters! Cozy cooking! Murder!
I'm having trouble finding a TV stand big enough for my 36-inch CRT, so I thought I'd use a coffee table.
Several people told me it wouldn't be sturdy enough.
The CRT is back on my moving cart for now.
A few options: find the actual stand for this TV, build my own stand, or keep it on the cart.
https://nantucketlit.com/blog/2026/05/2026-05-06_improved_support_for_gempub.html New blog post: I have improved my support for the #gempub format, thanks to the work of Sloum (https://sloum.colorfield.space/about.html) He has developed *two* Gempub ereader programs that I can use for testing.
This has been exciting to work on. I can finally give this excellent format the attention it deserves.
It was snowing in the Denver area today, so I guess it was a day to learn some handiwork. In addition to the bicycle restoration:
- Mended some jeans, poorly.
- Replaced the center console armrest in my car. The original one acquired an odd ripple defect early on. Replacing it was straightforward.
Redwall is interesting. It's partly cozy fantasy because it's about mice and other whimsical creatures who enjoy lavish feasts and the ol' nut brown ale. Then there's a hare who feels like he came out of a cartoon. At the same time, there's siege warfare, some straight-up cold-blooded murder, and other gnarly deaths.
You may guess what book I am currently reading. It is from a popular YA novel, before 'YA' was even a marketing term. No cheating by feeding this into a search engine!
"Never. Never in all the food, all the hamburgers and malts, all the fries or meals at home, never in all the candy or pies or cakes, never in all the roasts or steaks or pizzas, never in all the submarine sandwiches, never never never had he tasted anything as fine as that first bite.
First Meat."
RE: @lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social
Wait... LQF has finally stumped me. I had read that Galileo did indeed go blind from staring directly into the sun too often, as part of his astronomical observations. (not the heliocentric part)
I remember reading it in the book A World Lit Only By Fire by William Manchester. Granted, that book has a *lot* of bull in it, and shouldn't be taken as good history. Maybe that was one of the bull facts in the book?
@amin@polymaths.social You ever feel like adding a marquee to Readable.css?
X-D
People get very misty about the way the web used to be, but I remember that too many website had nonsense like this.
I finished watching the first season of Blue Eye Samurai tonight. I highly recommend it. It's some good samurai revenge drama, with very memorable characters and creative action, and a top-notch villain.
How good is this show? Let me put it this way: every time I finished an episode, I thought "Dammit, I have to watch the next one!" It was 11 PM, then it it was 12 midnight, then it was 1 AM... you get the idea.
A review of Led Zeppelin's very first concert in North America. It happened in Denver, Colorado, on December 26, 1968. The concert venue is now the Ellie Caulkins Opera House.
Some of today's work:
- I captured the video footage from last weekend's trip to Delta H Con in Houston. Yes, you can still capture MiniDV on Linux in 2026.
- I stained the inside of the back yard fence. That was a lot of paint, but it looks very nice now.
- I tried putting my giant CRT television on a coffee table, but I was warned against doing this.
- I continued my refresher study of algebra. So far, I'm up to long division of polynomials.
Cool line from the 2004 version of I, Robot:
"Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the earth make you go crazy? Because if so, maybe I am."