iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 25/09/2026

What a waste of good wordplay.

FAQ
Q: Why is it called Buck?
A: The word "buck" is similar to the word "build" and is quick to type. It also has awesome mascot potential.

James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 12/09/2026

It's big, but not obnoxiously so IMO, I dont have a particularly deep desk, but I haven't noticed straining to look at it. Definitely less wide than two regular 16:9 or whatever monitors. These days I have it a little higher up with the macbook in front, using the laptop keyb + trackpad. YMMV tho!

A desk with a wide monitor next to a 14" macbook pro

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 11/09/2026

I bought a tiny travel scale (for weighing myself), and: 1. It is silly small, like the size of a kitchen scale or an A5 sheet of paper, but it does work better than you think it would if you balance on it. 2. It does read ~0.6kg under my usual scale, and I have no way to calibrate either scale.

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 10/09/2026

It's sort silly that it has taken me this long to realize how much impact adding 30-60m of walking a day is. This far in to the year, I've dialed in what I'm eating, and the difference been "excited about progress" and "is going but meh" is like 200-400 calories a day, which is ~30-60m of walking.

A graph showing "iPhone Move Calories" over the year.

There is a very noisy light blue "Daily kcal" line that jumps between 0 and 1000kcal.

There is a red trendline that starts the year at around 100kcal, has some ups and downs between 150-400kcal up to mid-august, and then ramps up to a steady 400kcal starting in late august.

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 10/09/2026

36 weeks into the year: It's still going! Recently bumped up my activity level by trying to consistently walk 30-60m a day, it seems to be helping the progress. One graph of the last 6mo (with variance bars), one graph of the whole year (without). Down a total of 17.9kg/39.4lbs, and 62.9% done.

A graph showing weight over time.

It starts in March, at around 98.3kg, and ends mid-Sept at around 85.5kg.

There is a red trendline that is largely moving downwards, with a somewhat wavy plateau between mid-May and early July.

There are green "variance" bars showing the daily weight measurements being mostly below but sometimes above the trendline.

A similar graph as before, but shows a red trendline that starts at 103.8kg on Jan 1st, and ends at 85.5kg today Sept 10th.

Instead of green variance bars, there is a hard-to-see grey line showing the daily weights. It is much noisier than the red trendline.

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 05/09/2026

[rustdoc waiting room] Me: [chanting] server, server- Rustdoc: server, SERVER Implementors: [pounding their clipboards] SERVER, SERVER, SERVER!

$Screenshot of rustdoc output nprpc::composite Trait Server Source pub trait Server: Server + Server + Server { // Required method fn process_one<'buf>( &mut self, hdr: Header, body: &[u8], output: &'buf mut [u8], ) -> Result<&'buf mut [u8], Error>; } Required Methods Source fn process_one<'buf>( &mut self, hdr: Header, body: &[u8], output: &'buf mut [u8], ) -> Result<&'buf mut [u8], Error> Implementors Source § impl<T> Server for T where T: Server + Server + Server,$

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 17/08/2026

I had to do a double take on this

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 09/08/2026

At this point I don't know if it's actually either or just Inspired By, but it does make excellent mid-week chow.

A big le creuset pot full of a reddish brown looking stew. You can see red peppers, potatoes, mushrooms, carrots, and celery.

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 03/08/2026

Oh yeah, both of my teams already switched automatically, neat!

Data residency: Your data is primarily stored in the EU.

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 30/07/2026

30 weeks into the year: still about 2kg behind, but not *more* behind. Started making good progress again! This one was a bit more like the first ~5 months, though there were some annoying plateau weeks. Down a total of 14.3kg/31.5lbs, and 50.3% done! See you in 6 weeks :)

A chart of weight over time moving generally downward, starting at 103.4, and showing a current trendline ending at 89.1

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 28/07/2026

"We have generic parameters from outer item at home" play.rust-lang.org?version=stab... I feel like I keep re-discovering that this works, and forgetting why it's more limited than I actually want it to be in the general case, but it does print what you'd expect it to print :)

Screenshot of code at the playground link

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 24/07/2026

I had a big drop after coming back from a vacation, then I've been stalled out flat for like the last 2-3 weeks. It finally started tipping over the last few days!

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 18/07/2026

Picture of the bike route, and bonus shout out to Green Go Garage, who fixed a flat tire for Laura 30 minutes before they closed, when she rode over some glass on the street! My favorite on the day: Blueberry Meringue from Hokey Pokey, Laura's favorite: Banana Chocolate Marshmallow from Jones

A GPS track showing a round trip in Berlin. 1h44m, 28.5km, a big oval from Neukölln to Pankow and back

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 18/07/2026

For @lauramunns.bsky.social's birthday weekend, we made a 28.5km bike tour to 10 of the top ice cream places from www.the-berliner.com/food/berlins... All shop names and flavors in the alt text because it's too much :D

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 13/07/2026

TIL Apple Maps has this for Berlin

The Apple Maps "public transport" layer centered on Alexanderplatz, Berlin.

Portrait mode screenshot on an iPhone

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 11/07/2026

Vagabund's lime gose is the perfect post-bike-ride refreshment

A cloudy beer on a wooden table in the sun

Bike ride activity, 38:41 duration, 11.7km, 18.2km/h speed

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 05/07/2026

Which WAGOs do you have over there? The WAGO 221-413 clippy ones are the typical standard here, should work with solid or stranded 12AWG down to 24AWG, and have good clamps I think the push-insert ones are solid-core only, these are the ones I have a whole box of in my workshop, A+ would recommend!

A wago 221-413, clear body, three orange clips

Connection 1
Connection technology CAGE CLAMP®
Actuation type Lever
Connectable conductor materials Copper
Nominal cross-section 4 mm² / 12 AWG
Solid conductor 0.2 … 4 mm² / 24 … 12 AWG
Stranded conductor 0.2 … 4 mm² / 24 … 12 AWG
Fine-stranded conductor 0.14 … 4 mm² / 24 … 12 AWG
Strip length 11 mm / 0.43 inches
Wiring direction Side-entry wiring

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 28/06/2026

Portable A/C (one of those freestanding "hose out the window" types) is: * Loud * Probably not great, energy usage wise * Can definitely keep one room of my house livable when it got to 40C outside. It saved my dog from melting, at least.

Screenshot of temperature sensors:

Living Room : 25.5C
Bathroom: 29.0C
Bedroom: 30.5C
Kitchen: 32.0C

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 26/06/2026

Oh, I got one of these too last week. I ignored it because it looked like (LLM) spam. It was customized to my set of repos. Not sure if it was known this was widespread vs a single targeted attack.

I was reviewing the defmt ecosystem and your work stood out from a slightly different angle than the core maintainer path: defmt transports, postcard, postcard-rpc, bbq-style buffering, and the broader question of how small systems communicate reliably without dragging in assumptions from larger runtimes.

Lua has teams building across Web3, payments, AI and infrastructure. Some of the same engineering shape shows up there: compact protocols, clear failure reporting, runtime limits, safe serialization boundaries and diagnostics that remain useful when the system is already constrained.

This does not need to be a full-time conversation. A focused technical review or advisor-style exchange around embedded-style Rust reliability, protocol design, or no_std communication patterns could already be useful.

Would it be worth a short chat?

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 24/06/2026

Best purchases of the summer: * double walled glass mug, is insulated, doesn't tip over * countertop ice machine, makes crushed ice all day I'm ready for heat wave weekend (I hope)

A double walled glass mug, full of cola and ice, on a slightly messy wooden desk

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 21/06/2026

It's still a week away, so subject to change, but if it really hits 39C (103F) here in Berlin next saturday, that's going to be brutal.

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 19/06/2026

This is goofy and I love it apexdevelopment.github.io/bluesky-lice...

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 18/06/2026

24 weeks into the year: a little behind, and mostly flat (but still down!) This 6 week stretch had a lot of "cheat" weeks: a 1w work trip to the US, family coming to visit me, and 1w+ in Prague (and a lot of Czech food and beer!) Down a total of 11kg/24 lbs, and 38.8% done. About 2kg behind now.

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 14/06/2026

An indictment of walkable European cities in favor of other, different walkable European cities (I'm just on vacation and actually have time to go walk around places)

An apple fitness steps graph, averaging 6103 steps prior to 5 days ago, averaging 13505 steps over the last 5 days

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 09/06/2026

Taking the train is awesome.

A view out of a train window of a river in a shallow valley. It is just outside of Bad Schandau on the border of Germany and Czechia

A view out of a train window of a river in a shallow valley. It is just outside of Bad Schandau on the border of Germany and Czechia.

A little further around a bend in the river from the last photo

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 23/05/2026

I'm honestly kind of surprised that there isn't a "better version of graphviz but in rust", since dot graphs are such a compiler brained tool. I've created my own graphviz spaghetti files too, tbh. Hoping someone corrects me, would love to have a nice crate, or better layout/readability of edges.

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 17/05/2026

Like, look at this silly thing. It's almost easy to confuse with an apple tv. But you can just buy as many $8 mickey mouse plugs as you want for it, and it will give you 200W of low voltage DC, regardless of the country you are in. Oh also everything you travel with needs to be USB powered.

A UGREEN USB supply, with a power cable coming out the back, and 4x USB-C sockets and 2xUSB-A sockets

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 11/05/2026

Berkeley certainly is a pretty place to take a walk. Some photos from in/around Cesar Chavez park.

A somewhat algae-y lake behind a sign that says "City of Berkeley"

A two-groove path between two fences surrounded by tall grasses

A somewhat foggy view of the San Francisco Bay with some greenery in the foreground

A hilly path on the foreground with some water and hills in the background

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 07/05/2026

Here's a couple of my current favorite graphs, and the big silly spreadsheet tracking all of this. Most of the trendlines are smoothing out to pretty consistent numbers in the month-over-month timescale. See you again in 6 more weeks!

A chart labeled "Days Ahead Pace vs Date"

The blue "Days Ahead Pace" line is pretty smooth moving, mostly around 9-10 days, oscillating a bit up and down.

The red "Inst Days Ahead Pace" line is much spikier, centered around 15 days or so, but swinging between 5-30 days.

A chart labeled "Burndown". It shows the date range 2026-01-01 to 2026-05-07, with a "pace" line and a "Trend" line showing current weight.

There are four pairs of lines underneath those: a pair for "Est Weight Apr 1st", a pair for "Est Weight Jul 1st", a pair for "Est Weight Oct 1st", and a pair for "Est Weight Jan 1st".

In each of these pairs, there is a darker line that swings up and down over time, and a lighter line labeled "glacial" that uses a much more aggressive smoothing, and is pretty flat.

The Apr 1st lines intersects with the measurement at around 96kg, the Jul 1st lines are around 88kg, the Oct 1st lines are around 81kg, and the Jan 1st lines are around 73kg.

A chart labeled "First Derivative: Delta Weight (by week)".

There are a bunch of very spiky lines and measurements, with a "Glacial Weekly Loss" smoothed trend line that is holding a pretty constant -0.58kg. The other lines are spiking/oscillating around this smoothed trend line.

A very large google sheets table covering the last 6 weeks of dates. There are a LOT of columns and conditional formatting.

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 07/05/2026

18 weeks into the year: on track. Not too much new to report, it's just going! A year is a long time to pay attention to something every day. Down a total of 10.6kg/23lbs, and 37.3% done. Exercise was down then up: it got cold outside, I got a cold, then it got warm and started doing long rides :D

A chart spanning the first 18 weeks of the year, showing a generally downward trend from 103.4kg to a current trend line of 92.8kg, with the latest daily measurement being at 91.7kg.

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 05/05/2026

I got a cheap stretchy knit nylon watch band for my old citizen watch to try it out for when my pebble time gets here, and it's super comfy. I've never really liked the silicone sport-watch style bands, and I've never found a band with a belt-buckle style clasp that wasn't too tight or too loose.

A citizen eco-drive watch with a dark blue knit band on a tattooed arm

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 02/05/2026

Hit 52km in one day, personal record for me! I might be a little sore now. Still working towards being able to do 50-80km/day to be able to do bike touring type things.

A screenshot of three bike rides:

6m33s 1.4km
1h41m33s 31km
58m58s 19.9km

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 30/04/2026

Update: loljk it's on its way

Delivery in progress
Th, 30.04.2026, 11:12 hours
Recipient:

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 30/04/2026

Well that's a tracking update I hadn't seen before

Th, 30.04.2026, 08:55
Your shipment could unfortunately not be delivered today due to unexpected circumstances such as illness, accident, or overtime. A new delivery attempt will be made on the next business day.

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 25/04/2026

Biked from Neukölln to Teltow to see the TV Asahi cherry blossoms along the Mauerweg. Highest one day distance on the bike so far too :D

Bike App showing two rides, both about an hour long, at 17.3 and 16.2km in length

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 18/04/2026

"I have bad news for our plans for next week"

The Rider-Waite-Smith "Tower" tarot card

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 31/03/2026

I was looking for A4 engineering paper, and of all the companies to offer it, Glock was not one that I would have expected

GLOCK PERFECTION CHECKERED A4 PAPER - 100 SHEETS

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 30/03/2026

It's hard not to feel goofy taking a picture of yourself sitting at your desk, but here's the apples to apples comparison (minus a little crop factor I guess)

James smiling at the camera. The quality is better.

James smiling at the camera. The quality is worse.

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 29/03/2026

Planted a bunch of basil (cut up from the store) and a couple of pothos (propagated from plants around the house). All looking a little worse for wear at the moment, but whatever survives the transplanting will be greening up my office soon! (And a cherry tomato plant for home!)

A bunch of slightly sad looking plants in small plastic planters under a bright light on a shelf

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 28/03/2026

4th gen b/w clickwheel ipod Simple interface, it was a big step up from the minidisc (!!!) player I was using before which was closer to a tape deck than a digital audio player. I got it around when I got my first car, so it was also the soundtrack for when I started driving (fm transmitter style)

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 27/03/2026

There's a bit of "don't dead open inside" going on with the landing page, fwiw. (congrats on the new thing!)

A website screenshot where it looks like the title is:

The AI- communication your
powered software for company

instead of

The AI-powered
communication software for
your company

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 26/03/2026

Anyway, here's the spreadsheet in all its glory, most of the meaningful numbers are shown in the graphs above, the rest of it is mostly just coming up with silly ways of contextualizing trend numbers to help reassure myself through emotional ups and downs. See you again in 6 more weeks :)

A very large table covering the last 6 weeks of dates. There are a LOT of columns and conditional formatting.

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James Munns @jamesmunns.com · 26/03/2026

Another thing I started tracking was "Move Calories", as tracked by my iphone. This includes step counting from the phone, as well as bike rides tracked by the Flow app. You can pretty clearly see when I got my e-bike, which has helped boost the average, tho I'm not totally consistent about it.

A graph labeled "iPhone Move Calories", it's very noisy, from 50-300 calories and centered around 100-150 calories for the first 2/3 of the graph, for the last 1/3 the spikes are much higher up to 625 calories or so, with trendlines between 200-300 calories.

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