defending my undergraduate honors thesis

“All the most powerful emotions come from chaos -fear,anger,love- especially love. Love is chaos itself. Think about it! Love makes no sense. It shakes you up and spins you around. And then,…

Of the nineteen books James Allen wrote, As a Man Thinketh is considered his most widely recognized classic self-help book. It is concise and eloquent, and it best embodies his idea that thought and…

Near the end of my week of Monday 27 April to Sunday 3 May 2026 I walked past a pub, because I’d just been at one pub and was on my way to see a show. I did get some things done this week,…

I got a new phone number, it’s great! I no longer have to deal with a deluge of political spam from when I donated to a politican 10 years ago! No longer I have pig butchers and cons text me about…

This week started with a 5:30am alarm for an early train to Leeds, where I ran another session of the NHS prototype kit training course . It was our 8th time running it, and I no longer need to do…

Neditor’s note: When I wrote this a few months ago, I really wasn’t sure I was going to publish it. It felt too raw, too personal, and too self-pitying. I shared it with a friend, who…

Where you debut probably decides where you stay

Three years ago today, I was laid off from Shopify. Ever since, Star Wars Day has been an annual reminder of that difficult experience. Legally speaking, I have no opinions about my former employer.…

I tested Claude-SEO (MCP) to audit Writizzy after days of declining traffic. My deep dive into technical optimizations (JSON-LD, E-E-A-T, Nuxt) and the mystery of Google's 'Discovered - Currently Not…

Everyone wants to excel at what they do, but on the other side it's very lonely, especially when they want to vent but there's no one else sharing the same context as them. People want them to stay…

When I was at university, I got interested in public speaking. I had never really done much public speaking then, apart from school project presentations. So when there was a competition organized by…

Learn how to build impactful conference presentations by focusing on storytelling, narrative throughlines, and audience experience rather than just slides.

brynet's donation page, buy me pizza, send me thinkpads, snacks, bitcoin I guess.

What happens when the forward-deployed engineer is the CEO himself. - Seven a.m. Tuesday. Andrew, the CEO of the operations company we’re forward-deployed with, is at his desk, running a forecast…

I watched Mean Girls the night my mom died. I’d been at her house for the entire day (she received in-home hospice care). It was utterly depressing, for obvious reasons and also because a double-wide…

Okay I started going through my photos!! Once I get my film photos back I will write :3c After Mariah and Nick left I brought my film to a different photo shop and their rates are the same as the…

for those who occupy a cherished space alongside me in this wibbly wobbly plane we exist in. vira (the mystical) who knew that someone who you met, face down on a table in a first year elective class…

It is not uncommon to meet people in real life who know this blog. Just the other day I got to talking to someone who had overheard me discussing some compiler thing with a colleague and asked if…

The coolest hammock, a speedy macOS launcher, wrangling your apps, a cheap reusable disposable camera, and a secure/local smart home assistant.

Generally, people don’t work on Saturday and Sunday. So you would think these are the days that, if you try to make plans with other people, would actually yield the highest success, right?

Back in December 2023, I got curious about Steven Bartlett's then-new book The Diary of a CEO: The 33 laws of business and life and ordered a copy for myself. I dived right in. On page 184 this graph…

Graduation, Part 1 My youngest graduated Summa Cum Laude from Chattanooga State Community College on Friday night. I am very proud of all she achieved in the past two years. She performed in four…

Happenings Doesn’t feel like much has happened this week. Took the kids for a walk in the woods yesterday, a bit of cooking today. A new pizza place opened in my small town doing proper…

“What should I do with my life?” Wrong question. Better question: “What gives me energy?” I didn’t leave accounting because I found my passion. I left because I tracked…

There’s nothing wrong with taking a break. You need them. But there’s a difference between a break… and disappearing. Because once you’re out of the mix for too long, everything gets harder. Your…

Felt like my week was overwhelmed by work. Had extended working hours for most of the week due to deadlines and then had some work responsibilities over the weekend too. A big basketball game on…

This post links to a template for a peer observation of teaching activity. It’s been designed for university teaching, but is flexible enough to be applied to other contexts too. Peer…

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you might remember that it wasn’t always just about C++. For years, alongside the language features and investigations, I wrote about careers, feedback,…

My Hermes agent – Saramago – giving me coaching feedback and looking for the ideal flights for an upcoming trip. Another month bites the dust. We've been back in Denmark for the past couple of weeks.…

What I watched, listened to, and read for the week ending 3 May 2026.

Since this is a personal post that mentions health issues, I've decided to exclude it from showing up on the Bear Discovery feed. As I mentioned in my last post, I haven't felt like blogging lately.…

I have been in some kind of slump for a while on several aspects of my life. It makes me feel lethargic, slightly unhappy and unmotivated, all kinds of feelings and states I do not enjoy. Stuck…

A fairly busy week at work, and a mix of getting stuff done across the Open Source world In Renovate: Finished off the ability to make it so Renovate only provides updates to Go modules within your…

I know this isn’t a LisaGUI post and I’m sorry if you were waiting for updates on that. I needed an extended break from the project after working so hard on it for so long. I do plan to get back to…

我不知道自己是如何回到锦帐的。颜嬷嬷正等得心焦，看见我失魂落魄的样子，吓了一跳。她赶上来，接过我手中的帛书：“夫人，你的手怎么这般凉？”她扶我坐下，“我去取些热水来，服侍夫人洗漱。” “别走！”我一把抓住她的衣袖，“别走……只有你能去救他。” 颜嬷嬷愣住了：“我？救谁？” 我深吸一口气，忽然平静下来。 救他。 我能救他。…

Mine is an A6 Plotter binder that recently survived a washing machine. Barely. It pulls double duty as my wallet: stamps, address labels, cash, some loose inbox pages for notes I drop as I go. I keep…

I am thinking of writing a fanfic. I didn't finish my previous and I have news ideas which I am stirring inside my little beautiful mind. Today I went to a lecture about uncertainty and how it is…

I can’t help to note just how nice it is to wake up three days in a row without an alarm.I had a little bit too much beef (the food, not disagreeing with people) on Friday, so obviously I…

Vlad messaged me on Instagram. Eight(!) years I didn't force myself to write because first I sent him away because of something. And then I lived being sure I didn't have the right to ask for peace.…

It's not spoken enough about the experience that when software engineers are interviewing at a company, both technically and interpersonally, they are having judgments applied to them. Especially in…

This week has been busy as hell. I've had 3 concerts and traveled out of town to fix yet another part of my documents for my stay here, as well as changing part of my work at the conservatory. I'm…

A sunny bank holiday weekend. Wahoo . Three gyms. A man reading his phone, one-handed, for an hour on the treadmill. Six and a half hours of Children of Strife left. No statistically significant…

We could not be without a dog for long, so we went and got this goober. He has been a wonderful joy in our lives.

In search for password manager

I haven't done a monthly wrap-up since ... January, but to be fair some of these months felt fuzzy and vague, that it was hard to really put a finger on what happened because I haven't been logging…

Most firms assume their client relationships are healthy because someone would notice if they were not. The assumption is starting to fail.

good morning gamers! april is over and i am deeply burnt out, if i’m being honest. i haven’t been able to make the time in my schedule to do anything creative or to spend time with my friends and…

Rental car insurance is broken in Dubai. After being the victim of a hit and run, I believe there's a business opportunity to make it better. ## Hit and Run I recently rented a car to play host…

Life I spent all of Monday watching telly with my feet up. Ηη (at his request) started Performing Arts Club on Monday and, unsurprisingly, we’ve been able to glean almost nothing about it out of him.…