Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, computer triumphs, computer woes, persistence, Thoughts on August 27, 2025| Leave a Comment »
For whatever reason, today has been filled with technical and other issues. I’ve spent the last few hours troubleshooting a number of different problems, but happily have found my way through most of them.
The lesson? Even if you’ve tried everything, step back, reassess, and try again. You never know when conditions may have changed and that thing you tried half a dozen times will suddenly work.
Hooray!
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Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, creativity, Thoughts, Writers on August 21, 2025| Leave a Comment »
“Beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living within that way of life.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, AI, technology, Thoughts, tips&tricks on August 20, 2025| Leave a Comment »
I don’t usually curse, and when I do I try to pick my moments. Now that we’re in the AI era, here’s one such moment:
“Just give me the f***ing links!”—Cursing disables Google’s AI overviews
If you search Google for a way to turn off the company’s AI-powered search results, you may well get an AI Overview telling you that AI Overviews can’t be directly disabled in Google Search. But if you instead ask Google how to turn off “f***ing Google AI results,” you’ll get a standard set of useful web suggestions without any AI Overview at the top. (asterisks added to protect delicate reader sensibilities)
Seems to work with DuckDuckGo too. A handy tip for the modern age!
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, inspiration, quoteandaprettypicture, Thoughts on August 19, 2025| Leave a Comment »
“Whatever may be the tensions and the stresses of a particular day, there is always lurking close at hand the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace.”
― Howard Thurman
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, quoteandaprettypicture, Thoughts on August 18, 2025| Leave a Comment »
“To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson
I’m interpreting this in the best possible light, of course. I mean, I can be a bit of a procrastinator, but my goal is not to be the best procrastinator I possibly can. I try to choose my targets wisely!
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, art, creativity, invention, silly fun on August 17, 2025| Leave a Comment »
I have a soft spot for wacky and fun inventions, and this one is right up there.
Watch This Guy’s Interactive Wooden Pixel Machine Make Art in Real Time
Sitting in my office in NYC, I sent a CNC machine in a guy’s workshop in Wisconsin a 40 by 25 pixel drawing and watched it flip hand painted wooden blocks across a grid, one by one, until the glorious smiling 404 Media logo appeared—then watched it slowly erase, like a giant Etch A Sketch, moving on to the next drawing.
For more on the why and the how and the seriously?, see I spent 6 years building a ridiculous wooden pixel display.
Want to play (and have a Bluesky account)? Vist kilopixel and submit your art!
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, history on August 16, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Just leaving this up here for my fellow fans:
The CIA used a Star Wars fan website to secretly communicate with spies | TechSpot
The internet has seen its fair share of weird, but a Star Wars fan site secretly run by the CIA to communicate with overseas spies might top the list.
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Posted in Food and..., Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, Socrates, Thoughts on August 15, 2025| Leave a Comment »
If you, like me, are the sort of person to go out on a summer’s day and admire the pretty, harmless-looking white flowers at the side of a path and think to yourself, “Didn’t my mom tell me that this was Queen Anne’s Lace, and that the roots are edible and taste a lot like carrots?” then this helpful and informative post may be for you.
Because some plants look harmless but are very much not. Poison hemlock is one such plant.
Beware Poison Hemlock, A Queen Anne’s Lace Look-Alike
Poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) is an invasive, toxic plant. It is native to the United States but has naturalized in many places. Its flowers look strikingly like those of Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota) because both are umbellifers belonging to the carrot family. However, the resemblances end right there.
I have a lot of fun identifying all of the edible plants around us, most of which have been categorized as weeds by Big Lawn™ but are fabulous in their own right. That said, it very much pays to know whether you’re looking at an underrated food source for pollinators and people, or the plant that killed Socrates.
Unsure? I recommend what I think of as my mushroom rule: If you aren’t 1000% certain, move on.
Just in case!
(Honestly, I never pick mushrooms. They’re both fascinating and scary, and 1000% is a lot of percents. And thanks to Nomadic Noesis for the idea!)
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, artists, quotes, Thoughts on August 14, 2025| Leave a Comment »
“The transformation of the heart is a wondrous thing, no matter how you land there.”
— Patti Smith
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Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, exercise, Thoughts, Writers on August 13, 2025| Leave a Comment »
We all know we should be exercising more, especially those of us whose work requires a lot of computer time. (Hello, fellow writers!)
This is a pretty fun way of thinking about it, though.
How exercise may be the ‘most potent medical intervention ever known’ | PBS News
One of the things I regularly tell my patients — I’m a cardiologist — is that one minute of exercise buys you five minutes of extra life, which means you definitely have time to exercise, because, even if you exercise even a little bit higher intensity, you get seven or eight minutes of extra life.
So you definitely have time to make in your day to exercise. — Euan Ashley, professor of cardiovascular medicine and genetics at Stanford University
It’s like compound interest but for health. Invest a little, get a lot.
I’ll remind myself of this the next time I’m tempted to sleep in instead of work out:)
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J.R. Johnson 
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