A little less than six years ago, I started looking at moving from Doggcatcher to Podcast Republic. 24 Hours later I was pretty happy with my choice. Time and technology march on and, while looking at some software on Flathub, I discovered there was a not-quite-1.0 bit of podcasting software out there called Pinepods. It seems to bring together a few things that could lead it to becoming my new way to listen to podcasts. However, it isn’t currently without issues.

I can’t say for certain that this will be my last AI post for a bit, but last night just before bed Stella asked me to ask the AIs about boba tea. I decided to indulge her and was surprised to see that, after doing such a horrible job on summarizing the Percy Jackson book or Snow Crash, it did a great job with boba tea. Based on what I know the models got little-to-none of the answer wrong. ALSO, I actually got an answer from Qwen! Now, I don’t know how long it took because after it was running for an hour I had to go to bed myself and didn’t check the output until the next day, but not only did it get past its reasoning phase, but it gave an answer!

After spending 2 posts talking about how badly these local AI models are doing on my machine (here and here ), I did want to show a example of the model performing surprisingly well. Using qwen 3.5 I asked it to describe the following image:

Here is the description that qwen wrote after about a few minutes:

A few days ago I mentioned playing around with local AI models, despite having low strength hardware for the task. Yesterday I was trying our some new models - tinyllama and smollm2 - and I asked each model the same question to compare the answers. After doing this for a few questions, I had the same feeling I always have when I’m doing a repetitious task: computers would excel at this!

As an 80s kid, I recently got a couple dice sets that spoke to my childhood. First up is this set from 1985 games:

I saw this set one or two years ago on the 1985 Games site. I put it on my wishlist for a while because I loved the item for nostalgia, but I already have a lot of dice so I was hoping someone would get it for me. When it was recently on sale for half off, it was a no-brainer to get them. When I was a kid I remember the blank VHS tapes that we would buy to tape stuff off of TV would come in cases exactly like this one (and the other ones in their collection). I even associate some of the colors with Walgreens and others with Circuit City. But these dice aren’t only a nostalgia buy - they are also very sparkly and VERY sharp.

This pair of short stories by Dragonsteel employees Dan Wells (who is also an author in his own right) and Isaac Stewart (the illustrator of many Cosmere books and head of art at Dragonsteel) was originally created for the Sanderson convention. (Nexus? I think) The first story is about Jasnah and fills us in on what happened to her between when she was on the ship with Shallan and when we see her next in the main books. While it does have some character growth for Jasnah, it was not my favorite short story. A lot of action happens off screen (which is played for laughs), but almost achieves the platonic ideal of journey over destination. It’s so much about the journey that we mostly only see her while journeying after having done some cool stuff in some city (which we hear snippets of). It left me with the feeling of seeing a scene that was cut from a movie after which I would say, “Yeah…that didn’t need to be in the movie.”

I used to love the Pocast Go Time, especially when they would venture into general tech topics. A couple years ago, the podcast ended and some of the hosts formed a new podcast called Fallthrough. They have covered AI extensively over the past few months in a very logical, thought-out manner. These episodes have been transformative in my understanding of how those of us in the tech world should be thinking about AI. The hosts themselves have changed their opinion from completely dismissing AI in programming to using it extensively in their careers. Each host and/or guest on the show has been very thoughtful in the way they use the technology, recognizing its benefits and pitfalls. I highly recommend the episode with Bill Kennedy as one of the most influential episodes in changing how I understand how to use AI when programming. Combining what I’ve heard in those episodes with what I learned in a class I took on TalkPython Training, I’ve been trying to think through how I can make use of AI to make my life better - the same way I solve problems in my life through writing my own programs, bash scripts, etc. (This is not to ignore the issues with AI, including data center power/space/cooling/water issues, but there are many things I use in the world that have problematic issues - such as technology or clothing that is probably at least somewhere in the supply chain involving slave labor or other unsavory practices or environmental issues)

It’s pretty rare for me to find an anthology in which I love every story, but this one really hit it out of the park! Here are my per-story reviews:

Intro: Getting Martha Wells to write the intro is an amazing get! She also does a great job pointing out what we are saying about ourselves (humanity) with our AI/robot stories. (Mostly related to slavery) It reminds me A LOT about recent discourse about alien invasion narratives and what that says about collective guilt about colonialism. Brilliant intro and it resonates even more in 2026.

Free TTRPG Day Experience

This was my second year participating in Free TTRPG day. Last year I was in New York at the time and visited a shop in Brooklyn. This time I was home and decided to visit on of my local shops, Games and Stuff. The line had been long in 2025, but the shop in New York was tiny so I assumed the line, if one manifest would move rather quickly.

Our Game

How did things go?

The party started off by trying to hack into the charging station from the lobby. There weren’t really any ports there for them to interface with. They then wanted to go up the elevator, but the warning about the effects of the Aballon Sun up there deterred them. Satisfied that they had taken all the precations possible, they entered the main area. There they were greeted by Shalalamula (a seksevariak) artist who enjoys using mind-altering substances to enhance his worship of Triune. Nitpick, the hacker witchwarper of the group attempted to cobble together an interface between his comm unit and the professor’s plinth, but it was unsuccessful. He went outside and bought a dongle to convert the different interfaces. Nitpick’s hacking skills failed him and Jadaena was able to help gain access. From there the party was able to learn about Tierny’s suspicions and the fact that someone else had attempted to gain access to his backups. After that, Nitpick opened the chamber and they discovered Tierny’s body and note. After distributing the contents of the commercial null chamber, they did some more investigating. Nitpick tried to hack into the cameras in the room and once again needed Jadaena’s help. They were able to see Tierny enter, but after that the image was glitched.