Author: Kris

  • Links that amused me today

    • Bluesky CEO: imagine a ‘world without Caesars’ – LOLLLLL. I kept seeing photos of that woman on my social feeds but couldn’t figure out why. I knew her shirt looked familiar. That’s bloody genius.
    • Ask Michael Stipe – Somehow I missed this when it was posted many years ago. I like that he consistently rejects people’s attempts to make his work deeper than he intended it to be, but still allows everyone’s interpretations to stand as valid. Incidentally, I’m still annoyed that there were two R.E.M. questions in Pop Culture Jeopardy, and none of the teams got them correct. They were not an obscure band, people!
    • The Capybara Cafe – TIL there’s a cafe in Florida where you can interact with capybaras. And also, you have to cover up your knees because they think they are potatoes. 🥔
  • Heart Warmer Cowl

    Heart Warmer Cowl

    I’m making progress on this cowl, getting through the lace and cable section tonight. I’m pretty sure I somehow inserted a row in the last repeat though, probably due to excitement watching the Shoresy Season 2 finale. I reckon I’ll leave it though…

  • Mini Kegs

    Mini Kegs

    Mr. Snook got rid of a lot of his homebrewing gear before we moved to Germany, and he’s taken his time since we’ve been back deciding what his new setup will be. He finally decided to go all-in on Kegland Mini-Kegs, getting two 5L and a 10L to start. He’s having a lot of fun playing with them already! Next step is to actually fill them with beer… 🍺

    A beardy man sitting at a table with some shiny metal mini beer kegs

  • Happy birthday, Kunaal!

    We joined a few folks for a belated birthday lunch today for my old friend Kunaal. He may be greyer and beardier than he used to be, but he still regaled us all with tales from his amateur cricket triumphs. Happy birthday, buddy!! 🎂❤️

  • Random Links

  • Nine years ago…

    I was doubtful whether my project to import all my old tweets to my blog had any real value. But through them I just remembered that 9 years ago today, I got to meet and teach knitting to women and children in Manila who had been rescued from human trafficking. Canva supported the organisation and a whole group of employees went. It was one of the most worthwhile things I did in my whole tech career, and it had nothing to do with computers. 😭🩷

  • Open Source Knitting Machine

    This is so freaking cool. Someone designed and 3D-printed a knitting machine! 🧶

  • IWD Volunteering – Part 2

    IWD Volunteering – Part 2

    Happy International Women’s Day! Today I spent the whole day at the Girls’ Programming Network event at UTS, where we taught 120+ girls how to code in Python. It was controlled chaos, but everybody had a ton of fun! At the last minute I got roped into giving the lecture on opening and working with files, but I smashed it and it seemed to land well. (I told them repeatedly that computers are dumb, which is always a crowd-pleaser.) I even got a shout out in one of the students’ end of day surveys! I also got to eat an entire Dominoes garlic bread all by myself, so… best day ever. ❤️

    Selfie of sweaty Kris in front of UTS

    A massive pile of pizza boxes

    Selfie of me with a bunch of GPN tutors

  • IWD Volunteering

    IWD Volunteering

    In honour of International Women’s Day, I’m volunteering at a couple different events for women and girls this weekend. The first was today’s Thread Together’s “mobile wardrobe” at the Newtown Community Center. Thread Together receives donations of unsold, new clothing would otherwise go to landfill and distributes it to the community. Today we gave nearly 100 women each a new dress, hat, scarf, sunglasses, and a grab bag of jewellery. I was on hat duty! Everyone had a great time and was so appreciative, and fortunately the weather cooperated. ❤️👗☀️

    Thread Together van and rack of dresses

    Scarves and hats

    Jewellery and sunglasses

  • New skillz

    New skillz

    Learned a new knitting trick today: the German twisted cast-on. Biggest challenge is that the long tail needs to be about twice as long as I normally estimate, so I had to do it twice. But I figured it out!