iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 17/10/2026

After a bit of a literary detour - including a false start on Jane Austen - I'm finally getting around to my reread of @DanielSuarez 's "Daemon". I remember it blowing me away a decade ago. I imagine it has even more to say today.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

A challenging day has unfolded MUCH saner than I had any reason to expect it to, and I caught myself doing The Tyrion Dance just now.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

I picked a GREAT week to double-down on Rocket Lab! (/s) In all seriousness, while the stock is down significantly, the recent announcement of the Neutron delay is a good signal in my book, because it shows that the company is taking its engineering seriously […] [Original post on omgwars.com]

Rocket Lab stock chart down almost 12% on news that the new Neutron rocket won't be launching in 2026.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 12/10/2026

If I have Siri disabled, why the hell do I have to go into individual apps and STILL disable it on a one-by-one basis? Didn't discover this until Siri suggesting calendar events that were already on the calendar. #Apple #StupidAI

Apparently disabling Siri at the global level doesn't keep it from still "learning" (e.g. spying) on you using your apps and injecting itself into them, as in the case of Mail and Calendar.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026

Not a lot better ways to spend a day than a horror film marathon. Just finished 1965's "The Skull" starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. #AlamoDrafthouse #HorrorFilms

Dismember the Alamo intermission screen.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026

How I'm spending my Saturday morning. It will be a full decade since I started doing this. If you care about free and fair elections, there's no substitute for working your own local area and making sure that YOUR elections meet that bar. #Election2026 #Chicago

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 09/10/2026

Was playing with customizing the Apple Mail send message window toolbar and discovered that "CONTRAST" is apparently a dirty word in Cupertino these days. #BadUX

Hard to read "Send" button if you just select text icons in the latest Mac OS X.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 06/10/2026

Finally getting around to listening to the recording of last week's Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds concert. It sounds GREAT. It's basically a new 3-hour album for me to enjoy. I need to follow @atomicpoet's example and create a 3-CD set of it to give to […] [Original post on omgwars.com]

Files from the Johnny Blue Skies concert at Chicago's United Center on Sept. 29, 2026 playing in Feishin.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 06/10/2026

Was delighted to get home at 1am last night to discover that the Transformers comics I bought from @trashbandy showed up after USPS took their sweet time with them. I'm not a big Transformers comics collector, but these are key issues for me, esp. #17, The […] [Original post on omgwars.com]

Marvel US's Transformers #3 (the one with a black suit Spider-Man), #5 (the Shockwave "All Are Dead" cover), and #17 (the one with the most heroic Autobot ever, Scrounge).

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026

The facade of the Hollywood Theatre in Portland is pretty magnificent. #HollywoodTheatre #Portland #HPLFF

Marquee of the Hollywood Theatre in Portland, Oregon hosting the HP Lovecraft Film Festival this weekend.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

@plwt - First of all, thank you for your work on the browser. Secondly, thank you for providing a method to back out of the changes. That all said, what actual problems are "Current, but not generic. Warm, but still precise." actually solving? When it comes to […] [Original post on omgwars.com]

In about:config, set browser.nova.enabled to be false to revert the UI changes.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 30/09/2026

Waiting for my MeshCore repeater to HACK THE PLANET. #MeshCore #Leetspeak

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 30/09/2026

Enjoyed a pretty brain-melting set from Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds last night at Chicago's United Center. Sitting next to the sound board paid off, as the music sounded GREAT (if a bit on the louder side). Probably spent most of my time with my eyes […] [Original post on omgwars.com]

Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds at Chicago's United Center on Sept. 29, 2026.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 26/09/2026

The Jellyfin will be feasting VERY well this weekend. #Jellyfin #SelfHosted

Stack of DVDs and Blurays, including Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Top Gun, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, X-Men: Apocalypse, all 3 Captain America films, D3: The Mighty Ducks, Ronin, Next of Kin, The Cider House Rules, and The Cowboy Way.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 25/09/2026

Top Shelf Friday is when we pull an issue out of our collections that we treasure and share it with everyone else. Vinson Loves Comics started it on Bluesky, and I'm shamelessly copying him and importing that Friday tradition here. Today, mine is Gou Tanabe's […] [Original post on omgwars.com]

The Shadow Out of Time cover, drawn by Gou Tanabe, featuring a scholastic Yithian.

Signed interior page. "Chris" isn't a common name in Japan, and it took a little work to get it spelled properly. (I was fine with the misspelling, but his translator INSISTED on fixing it.)

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 20/09/2026

(Soft) deployed my FIRST homemade Station G3 node yesterday. We still have a couple more things to do before it's at 100% (fix outdoor outlet, install a filter, more weatherproofing), but it's routing traffic now. Learned a TON (and picked up a TON of tooling) […] [Original post on omgwars.com]

I wanted to use a ribbon cable to mount the Pi and Station boards next to each other, but that refused to work.

Investigating.

Pi mounted directly to the Station board (with a 40 pin spacer). Power comes in from the side via a USB-C PD adapter. Top antenna mount ended up being an SMA-RP, a deviation from N antenna I planned to use (and may be a counterfeit).

"Cuyler" sitting in the window looking over Southside Chicago. It will be moved outdoors on a balcony once we get the outlet working.

Cuyler with Burnham Harbor and Soldier Field* in the background.

* (I keep deploying nodes overlooking Chicago's pro fields. Just need to add Cominsky to the collection and smuggle in a node to the United Center.)

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 19/09/2026

I sometimes have Imposter Syndrome building MeshCore nodes, just assembling kits. 3 Amazon orders, and an extended journey out to ACE Hardware, Micro Center, and Home Depot for the "final" bits I need to finish my first self-designed builds later, I'm not […] [Original post on omgwars.com]

Bag full of GPIO ribbon cable sex changers, drill bits, heat-shrink, and one Ubiquiti security camera.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 18/09/2026

Received the first of a few enclosures I ordered earlier this week to get some of the 1W MeshCore boards out the door (2x PiMesh 1W, 2x Station G3). Larger enclosures should arrive tomorrow. While the pictured enclosure is SLIGHTLY too small for its original […] [Original post on omgwars.com]

Makerle 5.9"×3.9"×2.7" plastic weatherproof enclosure for a MeshCore build.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 18/09/2026

My Home Assistant installation now has a voice (after much trial and error). #HomeAssistant #GLaDOS #Portal #VoiceAssistant #LocalAI

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 17/09/2026

Hell yeah. I have Channel Zero loaded into my Jellyfin server now. #ChannelZero #Jellyfin #SelfHosted #CreepyPasta

All 4 seasons of Channel Zero loaded into my Jellyfin server.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 15/09/2026

That final scene from "Requiem for a Dream", but with Alito and Thomas, and Alito's flagpole, please. Glad to see that some vestiges of the Purcell Principle survive into our blighted times. #SCOTUS #Elections #MailInVoting

Alito and Thomas maintaining their unbroken record of being total tools.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 14/09/2026

A Public Service Announcement for my pals over at Bluesky reading this: I can't read your posts or follow you if you have not yet bridged your account. Head over to fed.brid.gy to do that. It's pretty simple. You don't need to be a Jeopardy champion to do it (even if one already has).

Knowing is half the battle. Red and blue lasers are the rest.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 14/09/2026

My favorite thing the Vintage Computing Festival Midwest this weekend was this hand-built modified Harvard (not von Neumann) architecture computer that was controlling a robot off-screen. This was built by the Dayton Microcomputer Association. I'm kicking […] [Original post on omgwars.com]

Relay and crystal computer with a spinning electric motor (bottom-right) serving as the clock running around 2 Hz.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 13/09/2026

@glitterbean - It will remind me of the best scene in "Watchmen" when the heroes try and figure how much time they have to stop the catastrophe, only to be informed that it already happened.

Ozymandias informing the Watchmen that it's too late to stop him.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 13/09/2026

Tired: Climbing up and reaching into my rack to unplug a Home Assistant Yellow box to power-cycle it. Wired: Cutting and restoring the power via a PoE switch remotely from a browser. #HomeLab #HomeAssistant #Ubiquiti #PoE

Cutting and restoring power at the PoE switch for Home Assistant.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 13/09/2026

Had no idea that my favorite Doctor, Peter Capaldi spent some time in a Ken Russell film, "Lair of the White Work" (based on the Bram Stoker story). #LairOfTheWhiteWorm #KenRussell #PeterCapaldi #BramStoker

Peter Capaldi and Sammi Davis in "Lair of the White Worm".

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 13/09/2026

Made it out of the Vintage Computer Festival Midwest having purchased ONLY one "new" machine: a Lenovo ThinkCentre that will serve at the Jellyfin host of a Christmas gift I'm assembling. #VCFMW #VCFMW21 #VCFMW2026 #Lenovo #Jellyfin

Lenovo ThinkCentre with a Core i5 processor and 16 GB of RAM.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 12/09/2026

Been VERY impressed with the battery life of the T096 paired to my mobile phone all day as a companion device. This *definitely* has me contemplating building a solar node with one of these chips to replace a couple of solar repeaters I deployed earlier this […] [Original post on omgwars.com]

Battery bar on a mobile Heltec T096 after a day of hanging out and meshing without being recharged.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 11/09/2026

Found it (and a fresh Muzi whip antenna).

All the pieces needed to assemble a decent T096 MeshCore companion node.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 11/09/2026

Getting a kit together for a pal to build her first companion node, and I've somehow misplaced the IPEX-to-SMA pigtail. #MeshCore #FirstWorldProblems

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 11/09/2026

Oblig. MeshCore node testing in a local diner pic. #MeshCore #Heltec #T096

T096 next to the salt and pepper shakers.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 11/09/2026

Put together my first T096 companion node. It's SMOL. #MeshCore #Heltec #T096 #LoRa

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 10/09/2026

I'm watching this video on AI coding and one of the points that the presenter makes is that the programming jobs of the future will belong to those who can craft "air-tight" specifications that the AI will turn into code. Isn't another phrase for "air-tight […] [Original post on omgwars.com]

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2026

Nailed it. (I promise that I didn't peek beforehand.)

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2026

These days, my "everyday" phone is a 2024 moto razr+ with a Clicks keyboard and adjustable stand on the MagSafe port that Clicks included as part of their case. Might be my favorite mobile device ever.

moto razr+ 2024 with Clicks keyboard and stand.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2026

Since the Word of the Day is Duo, here is mine at the local diner running some of my earliest Reticulum tests on the original Surface Duo running Sideband last year. (I couldn't find a photo of the custom skin it has, which is the cover of the issue of […] [Original post on omgwars.com]

Microsoft Surface Duo running Sideband hooked up to my big honkin' battery charger.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2026

Like Silent Hills in the horror genre, Centralias in mine disasters, Apple will always have a Jo(h)ny to talk about materials and hinges in a phone. #Apple #Johny #Jony #AppleEvent

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2026

Apple didn't just rip off the name of the Surface Duo, but also the dimensions. Innovation! #SurfaceDuo #iPhoneDuo

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 08/09/2026

Just finished @pluralistic's "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI", and I'll be giving this out to folks who need to read it. It's a sober and grounded take on the weird AI times we find ourselves in, with some great actionable advice for folks who want […] [Original post on omgwars.com]

"If all this stuff turned up as new features for existing products-superior text-to-speech for your phone, a better Google Translate, cool new filters for your camera— we'd be pleasantly surprised and find lots of ways to improve our lives with it in ways small and large. Programmers would work the stuff into their coding workflow, treating it as just another tool that automates a few boring tasks and serves as an error-checking backup that highlights possible mistakes."

"It's because this all arrived as part of an investment bubble that was inflated by attacking workers of all kinds, and that stands to destroy the planet and the economy, that we are forced to take sides as either 'anti-AI' or 'pro-AI.'"

"It's fine to be 'anti-Al bubble,' but it's pretty silly to be 'anti-statistical analysis' and 'anti-machine learning' and 'anti-automated inference.' Long after the bubble is gone, many of these tools will recede to the status of boring utilities, nurtured by open-source weirdos and a few ambitious startups."

From "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI" by Cory Doctorow

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 07/09/2026

After MUCH more compiling than I care to admit, I have the iMac G5 running WindowMaker/GNUStep with some decent performance. I need to get more software installed (more compiling - YAY), but the foundation to work from is pretty solid. #iMac #G5 #PowerPC […] [Original post on omgwars.com]

iMac G5 running freshly-compiled Linux kernel running X11 with the WindowMaker environment.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 06/09/2026

Breakfast meshing. The T1000-E is my porthole into the local Meshtastic network. The Wio Tracker is my gateway to our MeshCore network. I left the T-LoRa Pager I use on Reticulum at home. #Reticulum #Meshtastic #MeshCore #LoRa

T-1000E Meshtastic card tracker and Wio tracker MeshCore radio.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 04/09/2026

Happy to have gotten Ratchet to add to my Singing Transformers band. #Transformers #Blockees

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 04/09/2026

This is the second time I've seen the "zzz" token pop up in these LLM hacks. I first encountered it working with a university researcher on a reinforcement learning project and he would sprinkle it EVERYWHERE. Thought it was a personal tic or a convention in […] [Original post on omgwars.com]

" June 19: The agents notice that a moderator has been deleting pages in alphabetical order, and start creating ZZZ prefixed backup copies—one of them posts NOTICE: wiki cleanup/deletion sweep appears active alphabetically as of external 14:04 UTC. If this page vanishes, try [[ZZZDataUSAConstructionWageLive]]. "

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 04/09/2026

@bekopharm - Let me know if you see any promising anime Mastodon instances I might be able to set up as a relay. My interests go off in so many different directions that it's hard to find folks talking about something overlapping that I can use to discover new […] [Original post on omgwars.com]

JIE STAR Macross SDF-1 block kit assembled.

It transforms!

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 03/09/2026

You'd think that if it was in danger of running out of disk, NPM would clear its own cache to free up space. Instead, I see 25GB of old packages just hanging out in a .npm directory hanging off my home directory. #NPM

NPM running out of space because it apparently doesn't manage its own cache.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 02/09/2026

Nah, dawg. As someone who cut my teeth on C, and still deal with contexts where random values for unassigned variables is still a thing, I'm gonna initialize that variable. #OldProgrammerHabits

eslint complaining about me initializing a variable with a value that won't be used.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 02/09/2026

@stripey - Finally, the protocol acknowledges that not everyone is on fat bandwidth pipes and we *should* be writing services that acklnowledges and respects that.

The Bandwidth Fallacy

The Zen of Reticulum requires the realization that *5 bits per second is a valid speed*.

To a modern developer, this sounds like paralysis. But there is a profound freedom in limits: When you have a gigabit connection, you can be incredibly sloppy. You can be wasteful. You can push your problems onto the infrastructure. *“It’s slow? Get a faster router”*.

But on a high-latency, low-bandwidth link (be it a noisy HF radio channel or a tenuous LoRa hop) you cannot push problems anywhere. You must solve them. The network does not negotiate with waste.

This forces a shift from consumption to interaction. You are no longer, then, consuming a service provided by a fat pipe; you are engaging in a careful negotiation with the physical medium. The medium becomes a partner in the conversation, not just a dumb conduit. You suddenly need to *understand the world to be in it*.

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Chris J. Karr @chris.omgwars.com.ap.brid.gy · 02/09/2026

The Matrix screensaver is never going to be not sexy, even when running with plain terminal fonts. (This is of the iMac G5 I'm currently bringing back with Gentoo Linux. Still working to get X running quickly enough...) #TheMatrix #Screensavers #CMatrix #iMacG5 #GentooLinux

iMac G5 running CMatrix in terminal mode while recompiling code to adjust to a change in the Nvidia graphic card configuration.

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