Category: Life

  • Daring Duo: In Pursuit of Altered Items

    As the girls grew older they didn’t relate to the adventures of Monkey and Ferret sisters any more. So I wrote this one with the daring duo as the protagonists. The story was influenced a lot by what I was reading at the time. I am sure the bike that made horse sounds came from…

  • What I learned from being on a sinking ship?

    I had a varied career. I have been lucky that my interests led me to opportunities in cutting edge of technology and business. I worked as a researcher/professor in universities on three continents, worked as a data scientist supporting a major R&D department, finally I led the cybersecurity efforts in a scale-up in critical infrastructure.…

  • Could AI Act Be Used to Put an End to Social Media Madness?

    As I get older, I become more cranky. What used to excite me now frustrates me. Chief among these frustrations is social media. Once I poked my friends mercilessly on Facebook, now I can’t stand TikTok or Instagram. I no longer have any social media, and it makes life hard, as everything from poetry slams…

  • Stories for Kids: Adventures of Monkey Girl and Ferret Girl

    I have two kids, and since they were born I have been telling them stories about Monkey Girl and Ferret Girl. Over the years, the stories evolved to include myself and our friends and neighbors. After my divorce from their mother, I started writing them in little notebooks. I plan to put some of them…

  • Danes

    The inuit have 100 words for snow. The Danes have 100 words for cake.

  • New Keyboard: Welcome Charybdis

    After building the dactyl, I took a long break from building keyboards. In that time I noticed, no matter how awesome dactyl was, I still needed to lift my hand up to use the mouse. So I started dreaming about a keyboard with an integrated trackball. My dreams came true when I ran into Charybdis.

  • Making Mailing Lists “Great” Again

    A lot has been written on social media, polarization, radicalization, fake news, and propaganda. I myself have developed a module on the same and been part of some (stalled) research on it. These days I don’t have any social media presence, but being disconnected is not really a solution. How does one stay up to…

  • My Trials with Danish

    I have been taking Danish lessons for almost two years now. I turn on the Danish news every once in a while to see what I understand, as my Czech friends would put it “Rozumim hovno”. “Alright” I say to myself, “no worries, you will understand it some day.” No need to freak out, learning…

  • Making A Glow In The Dark Poster

    In 2013 for a brief moment in time you could purchase Clinton Reno’s “I Want You To Hit Me As Hard As You Can”. It went on sale for $30 and was sold out the same day. According to this Reddit post only 40 were ever made. The poster became a sort of obsession for…

  • Poor Man’s Ambient Lightning Made Easy

    I have always liked how Philips Ambilight looked but didn’t want to replace my carefully selected gaming monitor just yet. The other after market solutions were too expensive and too clunky (a camera pointed at the screen? really?). Last time I checked (back in USA) there wasn’t a good solution for this. A week ago,…