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When I was cleaning out my basement, I found my talking Ed Grimley doll, a very old toy from the 80s with a pull string. When you pull the string, it says something that Martin Short’s character would say like “I’m totally mental I must say!”. Today, thirty-some years later, it still works. It talks a little fast, but overall it works. The same goes for my Talking Buzz Lightyear from 1995. It’s actually fully functional thirty-one years later. This made me think about the connected toys my kids have had: those toys that use the internet, an app, or some type of forced login in order to deliver their full value. ...

There’s a big problem with the way that I see people use AI in their design work. A lot of times people treat AI as an answering machine, meaning you ask it a question or you tell it to do something and it just gives you something back. I have seen student designers overly rely on it. I’ve seen student designers dismiss it entirely. I have seen professional designers over-rely as well as dismiss it. In reality, neither side of that spectrum is useful to understanding how AI can help in a design practice. ...

Updated 3/2026 In this tutorial, we’ll export Publii data and put it into basic Markdown for use in Jekyll (or any flat file CMS like Hugo). About a year ago, I stopped using my home grown blog engine and switched to using Publii. I’ve been relatively happy with that tool but found limitations that blocked me: local install made it difficult using it on multiple machines lack of hooks to create my own writing tools, for example, on the go no support for mobile SFTP just didn’t work when I switched servers and required a ssh key. I tried Grav but my server’s file permissions didn’t want to work with it. I considered going back to my own software but decided to try Jekyll. Jekyll is a flat CMS that uses markdown and renders it to a simple HTML site. ...

I got rid of the barber’s chair as my desk chair. It was much too heavy.

I’ve always wanted to control my social media from my main website and send messages out from there. I recently read about POSSE, which Google says is: > POSSE (Publish on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) in the context of the Fediverse refers to the strategy of posting content on a personal, self-hosted website (like WordPress or Hugo) and then automatically sharing it to decentralized platforms, such as Mastodon or PixelFed, via protocols like ActivityPub. This approach ensures you own your data while still reaching audiences in the federated, decentralized network. I first read out it on the Indie Web site on their creatively titled article POSSE. I’d love to figure out how to pop things I put here out to Bluesky and Mastodon. I’ll probably keep my Instagram and Flickr where they are. ...

This is an automated post? Maybe.

In this video, I layout my process for designing clothes including looking at historic garments, developing stories, and lots of sketching and prototyping. The entire fashion show can be found on Youtube.

Goal In this post, I’ll show you how to get a Libre Computer La Frite SBC ready for using with OctoPrint. Introduction During the pandemic, I was looking for a web camera in order to outfit my family’s new work from home requirements. Somehow I stumbled onto the Linux Plumbers Conference Presenter’s kit at some online store. It included a 1080 Web Cam, two usb lights, a usb headset, a four-port USB hub, and a Libre Computer AML-S805X-AC (La Frite) 1Gb Single Board Computer all for $20. ...

In order to run a reflective design discussion, we need to approach each problem as a unique case. The wrong problem is often identified by the students and we need to discover the features of the problematic situation. The problem is almost always a framing problem and not a solution problem. teacher gives an “artistic” performance of the complex knowledge and inventory and reframing. The process goes as follows listen to the student ideas, help reframe the problem, discuss a new frame for the problem, allow the student to make discoveries, and then allow the student present their ideas again and repeat this loop as necessary. ...