Ashwin Nanjappa 🐘

Started the first non-work day of the year with some yak-shaving on my website: learnt how to use local web fonts, picked one (Literata), changed some colors and removed the Google Programmable Search Engine and Google Analytics.

Webpages are now pure HTML/CSS (zero JS) and literally a few hundred bytes in size total.

https://codeyarns.com/tech/2026-01-01-how-to-self-host-google-fonts.html

#webfonts #googlefonts

Kurt Vonnegut can write or what?! In his debut 1952 novel Player Piano, all jobs have been automated in the future and talented-but-jobless people are frustrated. In this rollercoaster ride of a book, Vonnegut both shines a light on serious social issues of automation and AI, but also entertains in spades.

My rating: ★★★★☆

My review: https://codeyarns.com/personal/2025-01-18-player-piano.html

#KurtVonnegut #PlayerPiano #books #bookstodon

The evolutionary tree of the bread tag (occlupanid). This entire website is dedicated to its taxonomy, with detailed descriptions of each species of bread tag!

https://www.horg.com/horg/?page_id=921

#occlupanid

There are folks who are seriously collecting different types of bread tags - called Occlupanid. They have even been given latin names and classified and studied in a family tree like living organisms! And the tree continues to evolve as more varieties are found.

https://www.tiktok.com/@horgotchi/video/7443860126450093354?lang=en

#TikTok #occlupanid

@benfulton @carnage4life Correct, the real beginning is Facemash. IIRC it even appears in The Social Network movie.

2003 report from Harvard's student newspaper:

"The site was created entirely by Zuckerberg over the last week in October, after a friend gave him the idea. The website used photos compiled from the online facebooks of nine Houses, placing two next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the “hotter” person."

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creator-survives-ad-board-the/

#Facemash #Facebook

"The Vulcan Centaur is the first rocket developed by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing. […] The first stage, Vulcan, is powered by engines developed by Blue Origin. The second stage, Centaur, is the latest revamp of a design that has been flying since the days of Apollo."

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/01/09/an-american-rocket-has-a-fine-debut-not-so-the-moon-lander-on-board

#TheEconomist #VulcanCentaur #NASA #ULA

Getting a single universal remote to replace all the remotes in the living room turned out to be a game changer. I highly recommend getting one.

I was able to download the codes for all the devices, no manual programming was necessary!

I find that I am actually enjoying watching stuff on the TV in the living room now. It seems like having to switch between remotes or remote apps on phone had affected my enjoyment subconsciously.

https://codeyarns.com/tech/2023-07-24-sofabaton-u2.html

#UniversalRemote #SofaBaton

Biology research now focuses on "holobionts", the symbiotic union of a multicellular host organism (like human) and its microbiome.

#TheEconomist #holobiont

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2023/06/14/the-idea-of-holobionts-represents-a-paradigm-shift-in-biology

My TikTok feed is filled with hundreds of videos of people in Seattle struggling to walk and drive on their frozen streets and it's incredibly funny. 😂 (Their city rarely gets the winter freeze apparently.) #SeattleIce