Digest #5: Fall 🍂
Tonight is the Hunters Moon
The seasons flipped overnight here in Northern California from hot hot hot to a cold edge when you wake and shorter days. Tonight, we get the annual Hunters Moon - the brightest super moon all year.
JFran got Lola a rainbow LED collar for night walks. Lola looks a bit wolfish, so tonight we hunt under a full moon with her new boogie nights collar lighting the way. Lola tolerates the collar; I posted a picture of her sporting it on Substack.
Here are highlights of what I wrote the past three months.
Last week SpaceX launched the 5th test flight of Starship, destined for the Moon in 2026. This time they did the impossible, plucking the super heavy supersonic rocket booster out of the sky as it plummeted back to earth. I teased this was coming with Godzilla making the catch. SpaceX calls the 400 foot tower that grabbed the booster Mechazilla. Does this change space math? I also wrote about Boeing’s startling demise:
Ok, that’s interesting, but my favorite piece hands down is this one that goes through the last three years of my life since I left Microsoft. It’s hard not to say retired from Microsoft, but read the article and you’ll see what I mean. Writing this down helped me put the last three years into perspective and figure out what I hope to do in the next ten. I turn 60 next year and that’s, well, that’s something to think about:
I’ve woven stories of my parents into a lot of recent articles and with both my mom and dad passing this year, it’s nice to remember. This piece is anchored in my dad’s infatuation with collecting bicentennial quarters and my infatuation with crypto:
This post is rooted in childhood road trips up the California coast with my big sister Peggy in our big old wood paneled station wagon. You guys helped me out with the new Wirepine Merch design in this one and hopefully everyone who wanted one got a T-shirt with the special purple Peggy logo on the back:
AI couldn’t have come along at a better time. I’ve written about a bunch of tech breakthroughs that were milestone moments in my life; AI was good enough to blow up a couple years ago just as I was getting ready to sit back down at a keyboard. This article starts before distributed computing 50 years ago with phreaks hacking phone systems and ends with a recent AI fueled exploit against Spotify. I used AI to create a podcast of the episode. If you’ve ever wanted to hear two bots going at it analyzing a TechTale, listen to this one:
It’s fun to write these digests and rediscover what I wrote. Here are a few more good ones:
💀 This post highlights my penchant for useless phrases in random languages as well as new tools for real-time translation. We were in Mexico when I published it: Isn't it a pity there are two women in the kitchen?
⚙️ This one documents a campaign to appease my insurance company, leading me down a rabbit hole called The Internet of Things
💎 A dive into an odd and controversial new piece of jewelry err AI wearable necklace.
🍿 This is my latest post that dropped earlier this week. It’s a collaboration with a fellow substacker that has nothing to do with tech and everything to do with why you shouldn’t eat popcorn at a movie theater.
🙊 When I watched the Olympics and the debate back-to-back, I reflected on what I learned after years of public speaking, sharing some tips and tools to help you be a kickass public speaker
📚 I wrote this last one out as a contribution to a nascent writer community on Substack: Libraries and AI
As always, thanks for reading.
best, Andrew
Surely the nearly empty booster weighed more than two tons when captured. :-)