vanderwal.net Off the Top

Somewhere in the past month the site’s ability to receive webmentions became a little faulty.

As I was wrapping things up last night and I had calm travel videos on for ambient background, YouTube offered up something different that I found amazing on many levels.

I’ve been looking at filling in the gaps around the Personal InfoCloud and setting the foundation for it in the four InfoClouds in an Overview of the InfoClouds, but pointing back to a quick framing of the Model of Attraction, mostly leans to the original…

I stumbled onto the the Jungle concert in the Paris Metro - arte.tv late this afternoon after a meeting and have it running in the background in Vision Pro, while I’m in the Mac Virtual Display pulling together many loose ends.

I don’t post about site updates for the Personal InfoCloud Site on that site, as it is just content there.

I have a thing for books, bookshelves, bookstores, and libraries.

Yesterday I did a little updating of the blog analytics and took my data workflow and applied it to data from my Personal InfoCloud site.

If you are on Mac, love Open Source, and are using or have been thinking about using Homebrew: The Package Manager for Everywhere, there is now a Mac app for Homebrew - Homebrew/BrewUI: Homebrew’s official macOS GUI.

A little over a week ago I hit a creative writing stride and knocked out a small scene in about an hour.

Part of the impetus for writing this post has been driven by the updates at A new Observable | Observable, which I recently wrote about Large Observable Update :: Off the Top :: vanderwal.net, and looking at changes in not only Observable, but updates to…

In yesterday’s post (A Rainy Virtual Walk Sparks Reading) I had a couple friends reach out today and comment that there was a new category, Calm :: Category :: vanderwal.net, that appeared.

This weekend trying to get some fiction reading in and wanting a good café, but none reliably close with the vibe I was currently looking for, I resorted to another trick I use.

Burning Questions for Slough House Season 6 Revealed The Spywrite podcast, Barbican Station, is back running with the return of the Slow Horses - Wikipedia series to Apple TV returning.

Around mid-week Observable announced a major update on their blog (A new Observable) and my evenings turned into looking at updates to the Notebooks, charts / data visualization offerings and much more.

This week I fell into two (mostly) enjoyable rabbit holes.

I’ve been a long-time fan of the design apps by Affinity.

The past few weeks I’ve been watching the The Big Deal with Steph McGovern and finding it better than I expected.

Today at my local farmer’s market, one of my favorite stands had sliced raw yellow with red stripe beets out as samples.

Today after some small tweaks I moved the updated category page into the Off the Top blog area.

Today I thought I may be able to tackle 2 of the 6 tasks for features and functionality I want to take care of before moving the Category page in the Lab to the production side.

Little by little I’ve been tackling some of the functional needs for this site.

I have used many different VR headsets at hackathons and studio labs, but the visual quality was less than desirable.

The medium for thinking and consumption is something I continually consider.

Growing up on the West Coast, with a good chunk in Northern California, Apple was always present.

I’m looking back at August 2026 and Blaugust that started with the post Going in on Blaugust on August 1st, which I didn’t intend to be the first post, but it was in August (sort of, but more in a moment on that).

The the rear bumper of August approaches to pass as I realize I still haven’t put in reading time with the Mick Herron’s 6th and 7th books in the Slough House series: Joe Country and Slough House.

I recently posted about the different web browsers I regularly use, My Browser Family, and it makes sense to go through my different apps I use for Markdown in a similar way.

This week I picked up another Humble Bundle collection of tech books (Humble Bundle Book Sales) and this round was for python, Rust, and data.

One of the things that has been bringing enjoyment lately is seeing ZEEF coming back to life.

It may have been some point during the COVID lockdown that I stumbled upon Nebula / Nebula TV, or as a service bundled into Curiosity Stream.

In the past few months I’ve looked at the history of my blog analytically and captured some of it in, Personal Blog Data Analysis - Looking at 25 Years :: Off the Top, and I could see the changes in posts over time.

My recent Four Cornerstones of Development post (which I found the initial blog mention on a March 2001 archive page - Off the Top :: March 2001 and later on mention I’m working on an essay on it, which I somewhat remember having a publication ask me to w…

Sunday I hit a point where my daily automations (which I layout in part here - My Automations Over the Ages and Today’s View in my morning process and weekly process) and placing the outputs into my Daily Dump note sections was really making for a lot of…

In the late 1990s through 2010s when working with development and product teams the four cornerstones of development were always at the tip of the tongue or as a small poster on a wall somewhere.

It is getting to the point where “people” asking to connect or engage bring that uncertainty moment.