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📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → Currently at the Lyon train station. Our departure has been delayed by an hour. Killing time. I love train stations and traveling by train! Follow the trail.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → I’m a big fan of churches and cathedrals, thanks to my late father who was a professional architect. I tend to look at details instead of the whole thing. In this scene, the light was just right. Follow the trail.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → What a strange building, and a controversial one. Français : La tuyauterie extérieure du Centre Pompidou est principalement fonctionnelle, et non décorative : les architectes ont volontairement placé les réseaux techniques à l’extérieur pour libérer de grands espaces à l’intérieur du bâtiment. The exterior piping of the Pompidou Centre is primarily functional rather than decorative. The architects deliberately placed the building’s technical systems on the outside to create large, open interior spaces. Follow the trail.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → While walking down the street, I spotted this little guy on a concrete wall. Its purpose? To hold a window shade in place (while in ‘up’ position like shown on this image). So cute. Follow the trail.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → Picture of a Sake shop on our way to Saint-Louis Island. At first, I wanted to get into the shop for a better view of the display but decided against it when I saw the reflection effect. Follow the trail.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → Another take on lightened windows, late-night theme. I love these because I always wonder about the life going on in those apartments. Follow the trail.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → Here’s another carousel that I came across on our way to see the Notre Dame Cathedral. I think this is the third or fourth one so far, and probably the last. Follow the trail.

I Guess I Should Introduce Myself

I always struggle with if, and how, I should introduce myself. Not just on the internet, but in real life too. Which, as of today, I am finding out even more about why that is. (More on that later). I never really know how much information to give, but I do know that I am limited on energy, so I guess I will just start with giving you what I currently have energy for. I am not one for small talk, so I am just going to dive into the juicy details that would probably be inappropriate for any real-life conversation. In an attempt not to overthink this, I'm just going to rip the band-aid off and dive right in. I am a 39-year-old transgender man. (I was born female and transitioned to male.) I grew up very religious and attended a Christian school from pre-K through high school. My...

📡✨ Ouch!

Just saw Apple’s price increases announcement. I think I’ll return to my vacation and disconnect from the web for now. WTF! 😳😩🫤🫤

Mira Makes YouTube Usable

TL;DR: Mira is a small (5.6 MB), native Mac app that makes YouTube calm and pleasant: no Shorts, no sponsor segments, no recommendation rabbit hole. It folds SponsorBlock, Return YouTube Dislike, searchable transcripts, optional bring-your-own-key AI summaries, Picture-in-Picture, background audio, and a real Focus Mode into one signed app instead of the pile of browser extensions you have to maintain on your on. It collects zero data, has a long free trial and costs $39.99 for a lifetime license (or $2.99/month). If you only want ads gone and you are fine with YouTune in a browser, Brave or the Vinegar + SponsorBlock Safari combo does that for free; if you want YouTube genuinely de-Googled, FreeTube or Yattee are the better pick. For everyone who just wants one quiet, native place to watch, Mira is worth the money. eryone who just wants one quiet, native place to watch, Mira is worth...

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → Took a lunch break at the Samaritaine department store. We add a delicious vegan dish and banana cake. All means to skip the heat is a net plus for us. Follow the trail.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → It was an interesting moment where the clouds added a dramatic touch to the scene of Sacre-Coeur Basilica entrance. Follow the trail.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → A classic from Paris, the gothic / Gaudi metro sign entrance. Follow the trail.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → And this is how many of us are ending the night. What an exhausting and heated day. Follow the trail.

Keeping cool in the woods.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → Recent and modern Batignole buildings. It used to be a place for trains assembly, now full of parks and housing facilities. Very modern and diversified. Follow the trail.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → Can a stair be a masterpiece? Oh yes. Not only is it beautiful, but it is an enjoyable experience to use. Dimensions feel just right, even if today’s people are taller than back then. Jacquemart-André Museum. Follow the trail.

RegexPilot: Regular Expressions for Regular People (and no AI hallucinations)

RegexPilot by developer Kristof Polleunis, is an app designed to protect you and your work from the hallucinations and miscalculations AI can inject into the regular expressions you ask it to build. Not VoodooIt took a while, but I finally realized that regular expressions are not the computer voodoo I always assumed them to be. In 2026, even regular (non-developer) users are managing and searching large data sets of movies and tv shows, music, ebooks or even just collections of documents accumulated over the years. If you do find-and-replace in BBEdit, Nova, or Obsidian; clean up messy CSV exports; build filters in Hazel, Keyboard Maestro, or Alfred; or wrangle a marketing list full of inconsistent phone numbers, you are using regex whether you call it that or not. Regular Expressions for Regular PeopleAlthough RegexPilot was built for people who already know how to build regular expressions, it has turned out...

Mad dog meet midday sun.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → I took this photo while walking toward Les Invalides. It was so hot 🥵. We could barely see any tourists on the streets, except in the parks, under the trees. This heatwave is called an historic one. Follow the trail.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → And this is how today’s photo journey ends, with a view of an enlightened window. Follow the trail.

A Few Good Things - Vol. 23

Slant BoardLast year, when I was dealing with my plantar fasciitis, I tried pretty much everything with exception of a slant board. A slant board is often used in physical therapy to help with stretching of the calves and achilles tendon, and has grown to be used for squats. I've watched as slant boards have dropped in price of the last year, and when I saw one for just over $20 I decided to take to buy one. One of the items I did buy that helped a lot last year was a ProStretch. Heck, I can remember taking it to work and it was the first relief I had for my foot pain. However, the ProStretch always scared me a little. Creating an artificial drop just seemed dangerous and despite keeping it next to the door, I rarely use it. It also doesn't help that you have to wear...

I Don't Know What I'm Doing Here

I was an incredibly shy kid, and the internet was the first place that gave me a voice. Now, I find myself just as frozen on the internet as I did in real life. There is so much going on. The pace is so quick, and everyone is competing for attention and ways to monetize basically everything. I miss the days when we just came on here to find people with similar interests, or just to feel less alone about how we felt. I used to be able to write so freely, without second-guessing myself. I may not have been a "top blogger" back in my day, but it did give me a sense of community and a place to vent my frustrations. Every time I try to write on other platforms: Medium, Substack, etc. I overthink it and freeze. And Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are now just fast-paced video...

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → This is the second carousel I stumbled across since arriving in Paris. I love these as they represent artifacts of the old Paris. I wonder how many of these are still operating today. I wish I could share an audio clip, too, so you could hear the circus-type music. Follow the trail.

ProcessSpy After a Year

Activity Monitor is one of those apps you open when something is wrong and then quietly resent. It tells you a process called java is eating a core and offers you almost nothing else. No version, no path, no command line, no idea which of the four Java apps you have running is the culprit. For a tool that ships on every Mac, it is remarkably bad at answering the one question you actually have: what is this thing and why is it doing that? I've spent the last year using ProcessSpy as my answer to that question, and at this point it has more or less replaced Activity Monitor in my day-to-day. It's the closest thing macOS has to Sysinternals Process Explorer, the tool Windows power users have leaned on for twenty years. That's a real gap on the Mac, and ProcessSpy is the first thing I've found that fills it without feeling like a...

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → Small walk in the neighborhood in the morning. How long before these newspaper stands disappear from the urban landscape in Paris and elsewhere, thanks to the Internet? Follow the trail.

No desk?

I've been wondering about my desk lately, and its purpose. There has also been a fundamental shift for myself on how I think about computers too — what even is a computer these days? Do I have to always sit at my desk? Why does the desk dominate the room with a screen on it, always visible? Should I get a smaller desk? Maybe I can sit on a cushion on the floor where my desk sits now. Perhaps a standing desk, because I don't like being stationary for too long. But no, that is also a desk. Creativity doesn't always strike at my desk either — in fact it is quite the opposite too many times. I do need a desk though. I don't have a laptop, so I am stuck with a big screen — perhaps that's changing soon. Who knows. So, now I am planning. Do I...

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” — John Muir

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → I came across this building entrance, which is a few blocks away from the place where we stay. What a wonderful piece of architecture. I love these so much. Follow the trail.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → People contemplating one of many Calder’s art pieces. The AC was so cold in the museum, this couple had a blanket, which helped make this photo a bit strange. Follow the trail.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → This is how the day went. Exhausted because of the heat, but satisfied by the places we visited. Follow the trail.

SmoothCSV: Finally, a CSV Editor That Doesn't Guess

If you've ever had to search for "how to make Excel quit removing leading zeroes," I have an app for you. SmoothCSV won't turn some random number into a date and then refuse to change it back. In fact, it won't format anything unless you expressly tell it to. It doesn't try to be a lightweight spreadsheet; it's a grid editor, first and foremost. It leaves your data as it is, with no helpful "guesses" at what you might be trying to do. That's the pitch, and it's enough to make this my CSV editor for most tasks. Here to StayThe first version of SmoothCSV shipped in 2011. The current v3 release came out last year; it's a complete rewrite built on Tauri, which is why it weighs in under 80 MB and opens a 100 MB file remarkably fast. The dev claims it's 12x faster than Excel. I can't...

Relax and enjoy the voyage now the Titanic of British governance’s new deckchair rearrangement plans are in place.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → After a surreal stay downtown Paris for the music festival, We are back to our room after a 90 min ordeal in Paris’ public transportation system (too crowded, too hot, many service interruptions). Good to be back at our place. I love those enlightened windows late at night. Follow the trail.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → An impossible and unprocessed self-portrait taken at the Jardin d’Acclimatation, in the Louis Vuitton Foundation museum. I rarely post pictures of me, but this one was a tour de force to get right. 🪄✨🧞‍♂️ Follow the trail.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → Spent a few hours inside the Louis Vuitton museum looking at an impressive collection of Calder. Humans can do great things too. Follow the trail.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → Waiting under a big tree for the entrance to the Louis Vuitton Foundation. First activity of the day. Great place. Not many people because of the heat wave. Follow the trail.

“But there is no should. There is only this: to rise, to touch what is near, to speak what is true enough, to tend to what is falling apart without pretending it can be saved.” — Robert Saltzman, The 21st Century Self

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection. In the main space, a water-based cloud enveloping people. That was super fun and was the occasion to make some great photos. Follow the trail.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → At Jardins du Palais Royal, a young woman reading something on her smartphone under the trees. A great way to escape the heatwave. Follow the trail.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → Data points in any trails must include the weather. 🥵 Follow the trail.

📡✨ I Was There

Paris, France, Summer 2026 → Very impressive, quiet and cool place: Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Follow the trail.