I’ve written three novels in the last couple of years and started a fourth over the weekend. Based on how things are going, I suspect the fifth will be the first one that’s readable by people other than me.

It’s been a fun journey. I’ve heard it’s common to have three to six efore the pieces really start coming together.

The first novel has an interesting story, but the structure is a mess. The dialogue is clunky, the plot meanders, and the protagonist lacks a strong redemption arc.
The second is better. The dialogue improved, and the pacing works, but the main villain is still a cardboard cutout, and the story leans hard on tropes. Still, progress is progress.

The third is good enough that I’ve reread it twice after getting it bound and printed. The dialogue feels realistic, and the pacing is solid. It’s almost purely character-driven, though, and the plot probably wouldn’t interest anyone but me. It’s also the first story over 100k words I've genuinely liked.

The fourth is only about 5,000 words in. I’m deliberately trying to apply everything I’ve learned from the earlier attempts and put it all together this time.

I’m no stranger to multi-year projects that stretch my abilities, and I love this kind of challenge.

Using the BYOK for this one. We'll see how it works for me once I get into multiple chapters.

I’ve always been a materially content person. I rather like our humble home, even though I can afford much more. But I could get used to a gathering room like this.

I’ve lost track of how many summers in a row I’ve read this book. I’m guessing it’s in the high teens. Blows me away every time.

Make letters and postcards great again.

I've always wanted an open toolchain FPGA development board with at least 40 5V-tolerant I/O pins.
Since I've been on a PCB design kick lately (I did 3 boards in June), I decided to design one.

Pro tip: surround yourself with hopeful, imaginative people who are always learning and growing. You’ll have a lot better chance of making it in life.

I didn't realize how affordable SMD assembly is at @JLCPCB

I'm back on the VIC-20 VIC chip FPGA drop-in replacement project.

The software for my Siglent oscilloscope runs on Windows, and I want to use it on Linux/Mac, so I wrote a web server interface for it and am serving it on my @Tailscale network. Happy Thursday!

Sent my second PCB design off to get a couple of test boards made. Pretty fun stuff.

I'd really prefer a world where I could get 512GB of RAM for a reasonable price and just run the models I want myself.

I tried to give an overview of early computing from the perspective of interactive computing (ie, not early batch processing monsters):
obsolescence.dev/interactive-co…

The EconoPET by @danlehen is a terrific Commodore PET replacement board or standalone PET replica.
#commodore #retrocomputing
youtu.be/WmQEAnL_CM4?si… via @YouTube

My custom "real" RNG boards arrived. Now to assemble and test them.

Ever been asked what your favorite movie is?

I'd have a hard time whittling it down to a top 50.

Song?

I'd have to spend days getting it down to 100, and then probably feel like it wasn't right 23 seconds later.

So... what's your favorite movie and song, and why? ;-)

All of my friends are writing software with LLMs and I can’t get excited about any of it.

Turns out I have always only cared about the people behind the things they make and this new direction takes away too much of that.