Weekly Notes: April 27–May 3, 2026

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  • ♿️ I spent all week in Spokane for the annual linked spring conferences for DSSC (Disability Support Services Council) and WAPED (Washington Association on Postsecondary Education and Disability), two disability in higher education groups I’m part of. Both conference were good, with a good mix of networking, support, and information; many of these are people I see regularly via Zoom and on listservs, and it’s always good to get a chance to connect in person.
  • 😷 Unfortunately, it appears that I let my masking game slip at an inopportune point, and came home from the conference with a cold. So our weekend was a lot of rest, fluids, and trying to kick this out of my system.
  • 🎂 Sunday was my birthday – I’ve successfully made it to 53! This was a pretty low-key birthday (in part due to the aforementioned cold, but also planned that way, as we knew I’d be coming off of a week of travel and conference), but it wasn’t a bad one. Lots of naps, some cake, and a few presents…including the Enterprise-D Lego set that’s been sitting in our basement since it arrived in December!

📸 Photos

Me lit by the setting sun, standing on a bridge over a rushing waterfall, with another bridge and a Spokane park in the background.
I spent one of my evenings in Spokane having a very pleasant walk along the river. I took a bunch of photos, but concentrating on taking care of the cold means that they’re not processed and online yet. I’ll get there….
Me sitting on a chair in our living room, holding the giant box of the Lego Enterprise D and the smaller box of the Onizuka shuttle on my lap.
Me at 53 with two of my most-anticipated birthday presents.
Me sitting on a couch, wearing a shirt that says, 'I've hacked by governor module', assembling Legos.
The shirt was another of my presents. Become ungovernable!

📚 Reading

Two books finished this week, the final two books in a TOS Star Trek trilogy that I started last week:

📺 Watching

While traveling, I watched the first three of the modern Planet of the Apes reboots. Now just need to find some time to watch the latest one.

🎧 Listening

I’ve been on a bit of a Front Line Assembly (and associated projects) kick this week, in part due to the release of the nine-disk Excursions 1992-1998 anthology, focusing on various FLA side projects (Noise Unit, Synæsthesia, Pro>Tech, Equinox, and Delerium).

🔗 Linking

  • Joshua Solorzano at the Kent Reporter: Federal Way man’s Lego legacy includes model of Space Needle: “Hussey said his acme is the 14-foot-tall Lego Space Needle that now sits in the Space Needle gift shop in Seattle for visitors from around the globe to see.”

  • Mike Carson: I Bought Friendster for $30k — Here’s What I’m Doing With It: “…I created an iOS app for Friendster, and I made it so that in order to connect with someone as a friend, you have to actually tap phones together in real life. […] If two friends go a full year without tapping phones, the link between them softens. Not a punishment — a gentle nudge that real friendships are kept alive in person, not online. […] All of this is built around the simple idea that real friendships happen when you actually meet in person.” It’s an interesting idea, but I have more than a few quibbles with the assumption that I don’t have “real friendships” with the many, many people whom I have rarely, if ever, interacted with in person. Or that the friend I’ve had since third grade isn’t a “real” friend because we live 3,000 miles apart and don’t arrange for annual get togethers. It’s a interesting, but for me, somewhat flawed concept.

  • Nataliya Gumenyuk at The Guardian: As a Ukrainian journalist, I’ve covered the US for 20 years. I find it increasingly shocking: “My country has been under occupation, dogged by corruption and war. Yet even I’ve been bewildered by the way the US seems to be fracturing.”

  • Anil Dash: Why are the Artemis II photos on Flickr?: “If you followed along with the recent joyful celebrations of the Artemis cruise around the moon, and took a moment to dive into the photographic archives of the mission, you might have noticed that all of the original images were shared by NASA on the venerable photo sharing service Flickr. What you might not know is… why?” I remember so much of this history — I joined Flickr in September 2004 (here’s my first photo), when it was just seven months old (according to Wikipedia), and while never a “big name”, was around for all of that history. 22 years and 22,192 photos later, I’m glad Flickr’s still doing its thing.

  • Jaron Schneider at PetaPixel: Adobe Has Run Out of Allies: “It is hard to imagine a more widely detested brand among its own users than Adobe. ¶ Adobe is alone, and it has only itself to blame. ¶ Those who once would have thrown themselves in front of oncoming fire to protect the software they loved — loved because of what it allowed them to do — will now do nothing but point and laugh as the company suffers.”

  • Artemis II Photo Timeline: What it says on the tin. Great way to browse through the Artemis II mission.

  • Tom Nardi at Hackaday: The GPS III Rollout is Almost Complete, But What Is It?: “Just last week, the tenth GPS III satellite was placed in orbit by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Once it’s properly configured and operational, it will join its peers to form the first complete “block” of third-generation GPS satellites. Over the next decade, as many as 22 revised GPS III satellites are slated to take their position over the Earth, eventually replacing all of the aging satellites that billions of people currently rely on.”

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