My wife’s great-great-aunt is the late Agnes Meyer Driscoll, a renowned cryptanalyst who played a central role in deciphering Japanese and German Navy codes in the 1920s and 30s.
Known as Madame X, she co-developed the “Communications Machine”, which became a standard enciphering device for the Navy for most of the 1920s, and was later considered the “first lady of naval cryptology”.
We were gifted some of her restricted-access Navy crypto assignments from the 1930s.
Fourteen years ago I made a mix CD for my wife as a little stocking stuffer at Christmas time. Just a few of our favorite songs from that year to listen to while she’s in the car.
I also know enough Photoshop to be dangerous, so I made a silly cover to go with it (she’s a big Beatles fan).
The following year, I kept it going, and what was initially just a gag gift became an annual tradition: Photoshopping her into a favorite album’s artwork. I don’t even make the mix CD anymore (we have no way to play it!), but every year she still gets a new cover.
These are a few of my favorites… I don’t aim for perfection, the quality varies a lot from year to year, but I will say that I am unreasonably proudof how the G N’ R Lies cover turned out.
What can be written about Gotham that hasn’t already been published? The typeface, commissioned by GQ Magazine in the early 2000s, is now so ubiquitous it has become part of the visual landscape and can be seen all over the world from Manhattan to Melbourne, Bangkok to Buenos Aires.
This was my first time at the Bearsville Theater, which is lovely. Good sound, easy parking, and a sweet lounge area with tons of seating and a view of the stage.
From Nancy Drew to Animal Crackers to The Maltese Falcon, 1930’s greatest works enter the U.S. public domain on January 1, 2026. Expect celebration, confusion, and at least one Betty Boop slasher film. Sorry in advance.
Little-by-little, over the last 10 years, my kids and I have built a small town in Minecraft.
It started unintentionally. My son, Tommy, came home from kindergarten one day excitedly talking about this new game he had heard about. Within a few days I was up to my elbows in redstone tutorials and modpacks.
We created a new world for our experiments, and called it simply, “Town”. We added some houses. He built a grocery store. I added a church.
A couple of years later his sister, Maggie, joined the fun and built a pet shop.
And from there, Town just kept growing. Over the years we’ve added a community pool, library, elementary school with working elevator, police and fire departments, hospital with helicopter and landing pad, clothing store, apartment building, gas station, arcade, renaissance faire, ice cream stand, working subway system, and more. Even a hydroelectric power plant!
The kids are getting older, and our construction crew doesn’t work as often these days. But we keep a running list of ideas to build and—usually when the weather gets cold—still come back together to take on a new project.
We just broke ground on an airport.
One more building, one more season, one more reason to sit next to each other and make something together.
Recently I set up an old iPad as a sort-of HUD and control panel that sits on my desk, with quick access to: 1) location for my wife and each kid1, 2) Homekit/Shortcuts buttons to control office lights and climate, 3) my Aranet CO₂ sensor, 4) this week’s weather forecast, and 5) my personal to-do lists.
A few of the home automation buttons integrate Sensibo, which is an awesome device that replaces your mini-split’s default “dumb” remote with a wifi-enabled “smart” device instead. It enables a ton of features that many mini-splits lack, like thermostat-style scheduling, Apple Homekit/Siri integration, filter status, etc.
I highly recommend Sensibo, but in trying to realize my control-panel-powered future I did run into some limitations with their Apple Homekit support, and thought I’d share how I worked around them.
There are two primary gaps in Sensibo’s Homekit integration:
Fan speed isn’t exposed to HomeKit. You can change the temperature, but cannot set the fan level (low, medium, high, auto).
There is no HomeKit-friendly way to adjust temperature up or down, instead you have to set a specific temperature each time, which is tedious. I wanted two simple buttons: “make it warmer” and “make it cooler.” Sensibo actually offers these in a widget but only on their premium plan, which I don’t otherwise need. I’m not paying $5/month for a button.
Even though these features aren’t available through Sensibo’s built-in Apple integration, we can recreate them using the Sensibo API and Apple Shortcuts.
Note: many AC units show temperatures in Fahrenheit even though they store the values in Celsius. This can cause temperature adjustments to jump in slightly uneven increments rather than a precise 1 degree.
Your Sensibo device ID (so Sensibo knows which unit to control if you have more than one). To retrieve your device ID(s), first get your API key, then go to this URL with your API key appended to the end: https://home.sensibo.com/api/v2/users/me/pods/?apiKey=PUT API KEY HERE
Once you have retrieved those, simply download and open the shortcut, paste your API key and deviceID in the Text fields where indicated, and save the Shortcut.
Once those values are filled in, you can run the Shortcut—it should immediately work.
I work from home, it’s nice to know if someone else is around to let the dog out when I’m on the phone 😅
Worse is better (also called the New Jersey style) is a term conceived by Richard P. Gabriel in a 1989 essay to describe the dynamics of software acceptance. It refers to the argument that software quality does not necessarily increase with functionality: that there is a point where less functionality (“worse”) is a preferable option (“better”) in terms of practicality and usability. Software that is limited, but simple to use, may be more appealing to the user and market than the reverse.
Apparently called the New Jersey style (in part, at least) as a reference to systems like Unix and C (“worse”), both developed in New Jersey at Bell Labs.
A broad assortment of delicacies, including some 800 types of cheese and various breads to go with them, covered the ground floor. One flight up was an array of cookware. A small cafe was later added next door. Zabar’s also operates a thriving mail-order business through its website and catalogs, shipping its lox, bagels and gift baskets far and wide.
About a decade ago our town bought an old New York State prison that had been recently shuttered. They turned it into an amazing park with a loop for walkers and runners, and some light business use on the edges.
Though I have to question some of the planning… one of those “light” businesses is Green Thumb Industries, a cannabis manufacturer operating out of what looks like an Amazon warehouse. It’s a huge building, and reeks of weed.
I hadn’t realized that was the case the other day and took a jog by to check things out, only to come away with a contact high instead of a runner’s high 😛
If you happen to live in an older or historic home as we do (1880), and have access to digitized local newspaper archives (our library is, literally, the best), try searching for your address and see what comes up.
I found this sweet tribute to song birds written by a previous owner of our house (song birds are still, many years later, perennialhouse guests here).
Dear Editor,
Wonder how many others have been cheered by the beauty and the number of the birds during this period of snow and wind. Greater numbers than ever before of grosbeaks and song sparrows and cardinals, which this week began his lovely spring song. All winter he whistles us up in the morning.
We had the purple finches at our feeder for the first time, although others have had them before. The chickadees are still with us, so friendly and grateful for the sunflower seed, but soon as the weather warms, they will leave us, and so will the grosbeaks, but then will come the robins and wrens and catbirds and many others.
Let us be thankful that our song birds are again increasing in numbers. However with the new buildings here we have lost our Bob Whites, Mourning Doves and Pheasants who ate under our feeders. We miss them.
Driving the Hawks Nest, a serpentine stretch of road built in to the cliffs high above the Delaware river, a little north of Port Jervis, NY (and Montague, NJ, where I grew up). It’s a popular scenic drive, with a few spots to stop and take in the view.
There used to be a restaurant overhanging the cliffs that we went to a lot as kids, but it burned down in 2002. I remember sharing a dish of pistachio ice cream there with my grandpa ♥️.
I also don’t usually make it a priority to report typos to brands, but with time to kill before my flight, I sent a quick note to their customer service team. They were appreciative, of course, and even sent me some thank-you swag.
Lesson learned: if you see something, say something!
I noted at the time that, “when he died, a Yahoo Group was setup for his many friends to share their Big Ed stories. Because everyone has a Big Ed story.”
Yahoo Groups shut down 5 years after I wrote that post, but before it did I grabbed an export of all of the Remembering Big Ed memorial group messages and pictures so these cherished memories wouldn’t be lost.
It took another five years but, with the help of AI, I have finally cleaned up all of those messages and have made them all available so Ed’s many friends and family can read these stories and memories once again.
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