Invisible Parade

Physical writing envy

2026-07-24T00:00:00Z

I sure wish I could commit to writing with pen and paper. There are very compelling arguments for why one should write by hand. It’s good for your brain! Science proves it! I’ve been in meetings with people who enter the room with a pen and notebook. They seem so much more attentive and engaged than the people typing something in their laptops.

I’ve tried. I wrote in a journal for an entire year, and then a few weeks into the second, before I let the habit fade away.

At the root of it, I feel that if I put that much effort into writing something down, I want the result to be accessible. Mostly, that means searchable. I want to be able to do something with it later.

If I write something down in a notebook, I’m probably not going to look at it again. And if I am going to look at it again, like that nice recipe for lemon pasta I found, I want it somewhere that’s easy to find – not buried in the middle of a notebook from 2024, or was it 2023?

For some people there’s an immediate therapeutic value in getting thoughts into writing, and there I think the act of writing itself is tangible. I don’t feel this, though, so writing for the sake of writing feel too much like busywork.

Punch Yourself in the Face with Reality

2026-07-15T10:42:15+09:00

I know you want to use AI as an escape. It is so tempting. You get to sit in your bubble and imagine everything and see it come to life and your agent buddy will keep cheering you on while you get nothing done with your life. And I think that’s the biggest danger of AI. You convince yourself that you are doing something useful when you are not.

The Tower Keeps Rising

2026-07-15T09:53:34+09:00

There is the appealing idea that AI-assisted programming means better tools which lets us build more ambitious software. That is certainly true at the level of the individual and without doubt a developer with an agent will be dramatically more capable of changing a codebase. But large software projects have never been limited only by how quickly an individual can produce code. They are limited by how well people can coordinate their understanding of the system they are changing.

Task Paralysis & AI

2026-05-13T00:00:00Z

This post by Daniel Gilbert immediately resonated with me, because I struggle with procrastination and have found AI tools to be surprisingly helpful in overcoming it.

I have a stale task waiting to be done, but I just can’t bring myself to get started working on it. All I really have to do is pull up my AI agent and say “Hey I gotta do this thing”.

The peppy AI will immediately respond with Hey sounds good, want me to do XXX for you? or What do you think about YYY, should we work through that together?

And I’ll either say Yeah that’s what I was thinking or No, I want to do this instead or Actually I’m not too sure, what about…

And it almost doesn’t matter at all what the AI actually says. What it has given me is momentum. Because now my head is in the game, my fingers are working, and I’ve already taken the first step without even realizing it.

Just like that, it’s now so much easier for me to keep working and make real progress. Getting started is the hardest part, but the AI will just charge through, trepidation be damned. Repeat this over the course of the day whenever I want to switch over to a new thing, and I actually have a good shot at leading a productive day.

Local AI Needs to be the Norm

2026-05-11T12:34:03+09:00

Local AI shines when the model’s job is transforming user-owned data, not acting as a search engine for the universe.

Creating a Color Palette from an Image

2026-05-11T12:03:39+09:00

Spectrimage takes a photograph, visualizes the color information pixel-by-pixel, and builds a palette.

Great writeup of techniques to extract a good set of colors from any image.

OKpalette – Best in Class Color Extraction

2026-05-11T12:02:04+09:00

A lovely web app to extract color palettes from images. Simple, but really impressive set of features.

Generative AI lets you consume Creation

2026-03-02T13:45:00+09:00

Consumption versus Creation.

I’ve long been conscious of two contrasting categories of pastimes – those that consume, and those that create.

Consumption is fast. Consumption is passive.
Consumption is easy.

Consumption in today’s world is limitless, as there are an infinite number of sources that each provide an infinite amount of content. It’s easy to blow this into a dystopian image of people who never leave their couch, but in many cases consumption as a hobby is harmless. People learn about the world, are exposed to new ideas, feel delight or shock or compassion or curiosity or anything, really, at whatever they encounter. And that’s fine.

But consumption is, I think, fulfilling only on a superficial level.

Creation is slow. Creation is active.
Creation is hard.

There are far fewer creators than consumers, because it is demanding of time and effort. Creation is technically limited by your ability, although in reality there is so much that you can accomplish with only the slightest amount of skill if you allow yourself the challenge.

Creation can be fulfilling on a truly deep level, proportional to the amount of time and effort you pour into it. I think this can be felt by others, too, because there is a feeling of awe that is evoked when interacting with a work that is full of care.

I’ve always taken pride in being a creator, in my own humble way. I’ve tried to be conscious of the amount of time I spend consuming versus creating, because it is easy to slip into habits of excessive consumption. I’ve learned that I tend to be happiest when I am able to devote time to creative pastimes.

Generative AI changes things

Of the many things that generative AI is changing about our world, one is allowing people to consume the process of creation.

Type some words, hit a button, and something novel and interesting comes out. This is consumption. It generates an infinite number of things that can be consumed, each one tailored specifically for you and what you desire. It take minimal effort, and you can interact with it to your heart’s content. This is a consumer’s dream.

The novel twist is that it also feels an awful lot like creation. You imagined something, put in some set amount of effort, and now the thing exists. Because you willed it to be so. You can show it to people, and explain that it is yours.

It strips away the slow, active, hard parts of creation, and serves it to you in a fast, passive, and easy way. You are consuming the experience of creation.

How do I feel about all this?

I’m really not sure.

I’m not writing this from a high moral position. I use generative AI at work and in my daily life, and these insights came from recognizing the dynamic at play within myself.

I feel like I should feel appalled. That the experience of creation is cheapened and commodified. That I am selling my (limited) skills as a creator short, and jumping into an exo-suit that will only serve to atrophy my muscles. That too many people will start to assume that creation is, or should be, fast and easy, leading to a sharp decline in craftsmanship and overall quality of a technological life.

But I have to admit that it is so much fun. I can generate useful tools that provide real value to me and my family. These productions can feel great to use, and my pride of them does feel justified, because it is a good solution to a problem that I recognized, and I did put attention to the details that matter to me.

I feel empowered as a creator like I haven’t been since I was learning HTML/CSS for my GeoCities site. Small chops for a small world. The world is so much bigger now, and these big AI chops are so satisfying.

Modern CSS Code Snippets

2026-02-16T10:42:19+09:00

Modern CSS code snippets, side by side with the old hacks they replace. Every technique you still Google has a clean, native replacement now.

There are really useful new CSS features that I’m embarrassed to say I knew nothing about.

Anchorhead

2026-01-27T11:02:00+09:00

This looks like a pretty neat interactive fiction game, by Michael Gentry. Excited to give it a shot.

This is a pretty enormous game. There are lots of rooms to explore and lots things to mess with, and they don’t all necessarily contribute directly to solving the game. Don’t be daunted. Don’t spend too much time banging your head against a locked door – many of the keys only come to you in the course of time, as the story develops. If you’re at a loss for what to do next, wander around to the places you’ve already been – they may have changed since the last time you visited. Don’t forget to look ‘under’ and ‘behind’ things, as well as ‘in’ and ‘at’ them. And hang on to your umbrella.