You are currently viewing all posts tagged with blogroll.

micro, privacy, blogroll

Geoff Manaugh discusses the deception and misdirection of robot vision.

Starting with the recent Tesla crash caused by the car’s inability to discern the tractor against the bright sky, Geoff discusses how the spread of robots may force us to rebuild our environment – either to support their perceptual systems or hinder them. It’s an interesting idea to ponder, particularly within the context of the rise of drones. Readers of Daniel Suarez can sleep easier at night knowing that razorbacks can probably be defeated with a few mirrors and rubber.

One possible line of defense—among many, of course—would be to redesign your city, even down to the interior of your own home, such that machine vision is constantly confused there. You thus rebuild the world using light-absorbing fabrics and reflective ornament, installing projections and mirrors, screens and smoke. Or “stealth objects” and radar-baffling architectural geometries. A military robot wheeling its way into your home thus simply gets lost there, stuck in a labyrinth of perceptual convolution and reflection-implied rooms that don’t exist.

micro, bushcraft, wilderness, blogroll

The Modern Woodsman as a cross-disciplinary wilderness traveler.

At Wood Trekker Ross introduces his concept of the modern woodsman.

… [T]he modern woodsman is a person who is able to undertake long term trips, deep into the wilderness, only with supplies one could carry and what could be gathered from the surrounding environment… He uses technology, skills and equipment based on efficiency and practicality. He applies modern hunting techniques, modern understanding of nutrition, and modern climbing, mountaineering, and packrafting techniques. His equipment includes tools that are best suited for the task without consideration for nostalgia and sentimentality.

micro, bicycle, blogroll

It's impressive the distances that can be covered on a bicycle.

Jan Heine took a couple days for an impromptu ride from Seattle to Orcas Island and back via Whidbey and the peninsula.

micro, blogroll, crypto, bitcoin, finance

Gwern offers an excellent overview of Silk Road.

In the essay he introduces the website and describes his experience as a user purchasing illegal drugs. It is well worth the read. I’ve spent hours on his website perusing his other works.

micro, bicycle, gear, blogroll

While Out Riding is one of the best bicycle touring blogs around.

Cass Gilbert has been touring regularly for more than a decade. He shares his writing and photography on his blog. This winter he is taking a break in New Mexico, but, if you’re new to his blog, the archives contain much of note. Just recently he posted a gear list for a short trip.

admin, blogroll

A Better Blogroll

The blogroll is a standard feature of most blogs that is conspicuously absent from the current version of this website. In the past I’ve struggled to keep my blogroll up-to-date. In order to be useful, I think the blogroll should contain only blogs that I am currently reading. That list fluctuates frequently, and I have a poor track record of keeping my blogroll in sync with my feed reader. One of the problems is that I regularly read many blogs, but there are very few blogs out there whose every post I enjoy.

But I use microblogging to share links. So, why not just continue with that method? When I created the latest version of this blog I decided to do away with the blogroll entirely. Now, when I read a blog post that I particularly enjoy, I blog about it. Like here or here. When I come across a blog that is full of wonderful posts, I blog about it too – and, chances are, I’ll still end up blogging about individual articles on those websites. All of these microposts are assigned the blogroll tag.

To me this seems like a much more meaningful way to share links. Rather than maintaining a separate page with a list of not-frequently updated links, you have the blogroll tag archive. Links are timestamped and curated, which makes it more useful to my readers. And I think that linking to specific content rather than full domains makes for a more useful and rewarding metric for the owners of the linked blogs.

micro, gear, blogroll

Dane is turning his eye to puffy-layers.

Over at Cold Thistle Dane muses on the appropriate use of a belay jacket. At Cascade Climbers he has an article reviewing various synthetic puffy jackets. (I’ve been using the Rab Xenon for over a year now and am very fond if it – although the Hill People Gear Mountain Serape, which I purchased last December, has replaced the Xenon in some settings.)

micro, blogroll

Vuurwapen Blog is one of the only firearm-centric blogs that I subscribe to.

Andrew’s reviews and analysis are intelligent and refreshingly concise, particularly when some people feel the need to put out 45-minute videos in order to communicate 3 minutes of content. Unfortunately Vuurwapen Blog will no longer concern guns. Fortunately, Andrew will be writing about firearms at LuckyGunner Labs and Vuurwapen will still be around to focus on other topics.