This recipe’s based on this one, but making it I realized something was missing. A bread pudding is good by itself, with sugar and cinnamon and bourbon sauce it’s very good. What threw me, though were the raisins and hazelnuts in the originals. I have nothing against raisins, but I felt they didn’t belong with… Continue reading Southern Bread Pudding
Wordle Solver
Here’s the code For the last few months I’ve been trying out a solver for the popular web game Wordle, hosted by the New York Times. The game is a guessing game for a five-letter dictionary word, where your guesses also have to be valid words and feedback comes from colored feedback from each letter:… Continue reading Wordle Solver
Classical Education : the Major-General’s Song (part 1)
Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera The Pirates of Penzance is best-remembered for its patter song, sung by Major General Stanley, near the end of the first act: This is an excellent song, and a great demonstration of a classical education. So, why not learn what he’s singing about! # Line Category 1 I am the… Continue reading Classical Education : the Major-General’s Song (part 1)
How I Approach Personal Finance
Hey! This is another one of those “for future reference” lists of resources for advice to give out. I’ve got no professional certifications and am not your financial planner, but I’ve been working for people that have those certifications. I think the terms of my employment say I’m not supposed to give specific advice to… Continue reading How I Approach Personal Finance
JohnCre.ws now hosts XMPP!
That’s right, after much wrangling this site’s WordPress server also hosts an XMPP channel, powered by Prosody! If you don’t know what XMPP is, it’s an XML-based messaging protocol used in lots of commercial and government communication systems. I decided to use the Prosody source in particular since it’s well-regarded from my research. I’ve enabled… Continue reading JohnCre.ws now hosts XMPP!
Liberland: Planning for Emergent Order
There’s some land between Croatia and Serbia that neither country wants. It’s a very long story, this picture explains it best: The Danube river was once the largest part of the northern border of the Roman Empire. Marcus Aurelius crossed it to beat up the Marcomanni and Quadi, and during these battles he wrote his… Continue reading Liberland: Planning for Emergent Order
Go Watch: Legend of the Galactic Heroes
I’m recommending this show/OVA/book series to lots of people, so I’m putting all of my words here so I can link it to them later. If you want a one-sentence recommendation, it’s Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War set in space, told in a manner that would be at home to fans of Leo Tolstoy,… Continue reading Go Watch: Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Utilitarianism, Virtue Ethics, and Limited Knowledge
The Deity does not regard the human race collectively. He surveys at one glance and severally all the beings of whom mankind is composed, and he discerns in each man the resemblances which assimilate him to all his fellows, and the differences which distinguish him from them. God, therefore, stands in no need of general… Continue reading Utilitarianism, Virtue Ethics, and Limited Knowledge
Free Bad Album Artwork
Here, have a high-res version of the default iTunes album art: I corrected the colors to make the note more pronounced and filtered it a little to give it a hand-painted look using the open-source GNU Image Manipulation Program. I did that to prevent artifacts from scaling up poorly after scaling up a version with… Continue reading Free Bad Album Artwork
Mississippi Flag Submissions
Mississippi needs a new flag. For posterity, here are my thrown-together ideas: These first two draw from the 1876 seal of Mississippi, and include a flag with 20 stripes, since it was the 20th state admitted to the Union. In the first it’s bound to the flag by the 13th stripe as a symbol of… Continue reading Mississippi Flag Submissions