Dysmorphia

My photo shows a museum display with colourful Minoan pottery cups arranged on three clear shelves, one above the other. These cups, known as Kamares Ware, are from Phaistos, Crete. They were made in palace workshops, c. 1800-1700 BC. The cups range in shape and size from conic and cylindrical cups (top and middle shelves) to hemispherical and carinated shaped cups (bottom shelf). They are decorated with multi-coloured geometric motifs; with spirals and swirls painted in red and white pigment on black.

Sipping my coffee ☕️ and thinking about these marvellous Minoan cups!

They look so modern it’s incredible to think they were made during the Bronze Age some 3,800 years ago!

Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Crete. 📷 by me

#Archaeology

I thought for a moment today is Friday and I have tomorrow off, but then I realized it’s Thursday and I do have to work tomorrow. At least it will be Friday.

Also I think it’ll be a fun qualifying and GP. Everyone is figuring out their new cars. It’ll be unpredictable. The time difference is such that the races are in the evening of the day before for me, so I’ll be able to watch live, and that’s more fun.

I’m watching F1 practice for the Australian GP, first race weekend of the 2026 season. It’s kind of soothing, like all these cars with their humming noises and new livery are returning migratory birds after a long winter, with familiar calls and bright breeding plumage.

Maybe (probably) it’s foolish to try to learn 2 languages at once. But it’s not like I’m trying to pass a class or get certified. I just like to talk to people.

It’s easy to understand shop Spanish. Lots of context, lots of cognates, and 20 years in San Francisco hand me a lot of clues. But what to _say_ is another thing.

My experiment with learning Japanese (still going) has made me decide to start learning a little Spanish. Today I ordered my pan dulce in Spanish & apparently did well enough that the lady at the shop just kept on. So I need to learn a little more so I can decline more politely if eg offered coffee

Actually I think my heuristic is if the output is for people to directly consume, then “average” is probably not OK. If it’s communicating with humans the least you can do is the curtesy of writing anything you expect others to read. But automating machine tasks, average is OK.

That is the pattern, yes. It gets you to average. If you can’t do it at all maybe average is helpful. I think that for coding, average is actually perfectly fine in many situations. If the code that connects my 3 spreadsheets to an internal reporting page is average, that’s OK.

(A basic rice cooker actually did change my life. When I was poor, it was a big deal to burn my rice and potentially ruin a pan. With a rice cooker it was never a problem. This is no longer a metaphor. Electric auto shutoff kettle is also very important in my personal history.)

Yep, and to your other thought, I bet your deep background in CS makes you much better at getting the most out of the new tools. It’s probably hard for you to know how much you implicitly know, but from the outside I see how people use code agents differently depending on their background.

To strain my metaphor further, this rice cooker, no matter how fancy, will not necessarily even work for every kind of rice. Yes, a rice cooker will change _the rice cooking part_ of your life especially if you weren’t that good at cooking rice and caused some small fires previously.

If ChatGPT was like a toaster, Claude Code is like a high end rice cooker. If you want to make rice, porridge, steamed vegetables, Japanese pancakes and that kind of thing? So versatile. Does much more than you can imagine. But if you try to use it to bake a pizza it’ll suck.

Also, to get AI outputs to “mid” for the writing part of tech writing, it takes so much effort that it is actually much faster for me to write. And, as I said, when I write, it will be much better than mid.

This is it. As a tech writer, I am finding Claude Code amazing for coding tasks which I previously would have struggled to do or had to beg and borrow eng resources to do.

For writing tasks, it is mid, at best. I am much better than mid. That is why I have my job.

Stylised cityscape painting in shades of blue.

City. Ink on watercolour paper.

I made it for the first time last year and I’m determined to get into no recipe needed territory by cooking it so often. Then I want to cook it for all my friends (who eat beef)

A bumblebee approaches an orange poppy

A bumblebee rolling around inside an orange California poppy like a drunk maniac

From last summer. You have to zoom in but this bumblebee is absolutely rolling around in the poppy. Maybe it’s just no nectar and only pollen because its legs are covered in pollen.

A bumblebee approaches an orange poppy

A bumblebee rolling around inside an orange California poppy like a drunk maniac

From last summer. You have to zoom in but this bumblebee is absolutely rolling around in the poppy. Maybe it’s just no nectar and only pollen because its legs are covered in pollen.

That is so reassuring. I’m going to keep up my messy native plant garden project and feel a sense of righteousness every time I see a bumblebee drunk inside a California poppy (which apparently aren’t a pollinated by bees? But bumblebees hang out inside them for some reason) or a weird bee on yarrow

I was inspired by this thread to also cook beef bourguignon. I made it for Thanksgiving and it was easier and better than turkey and the only reason it was hard was because I was making a lot of sides at the same time. So that’s the Sunday project.

Is this true all over the US? I’m in San Francisco and felt like I probably should get a beehive but it seemed too much work for now so just started working on more native flowering plants in my yard, slowly replacing the yard.

Knowing I could do it for the rest of my life and keep learning new things is a big part of what I enjoy about watercolor. There’s formal technique training and learning materials and tools and then there’s also the things you learn about your self through engaging with the process.

I overworked the shadow a little. Maybe it’ll look better dry. It’s dioz violet which is staining though so it may just be like that.

The positive is that it motivates me to paint very quickly so I avoid overthinking it. Like, I’m quite happy with the under-sketch. If I can get that spontaneous feeling in the colors and shadows, too, I’ll be very happy. I think it’ll come with practice. I keep being surprised how much does.

A watercolor painting of a croissant on a blue plate next to a coffee in an orange cup and saucer.

In front, a watercolor painting of a croissant on a blue plate next to a coffee in an orange cup and saucer. Behind it the plate and cup but the croissant has been eaten and the coffee has been drunk.

A preliminary sketch in light brown for a watercolor painting of a croissant on a blue plate next to a coffee in an orange cup and saucer. The subjects are in the background.

One of these days I’m going to paint the croissant, too, I kept thinking. Today was that day. I deliberately went a bit loose and interpretive rather than trying to get the contours perfectly. Croissants are hard to paint but fun. Hard not to eat them before the painting is done. #watercolor

Abstracted Sometimes watercolor doodles become their own thing

I pulled some of my recent watercolor abstractions into a blog post.

rinsemiddlebliss.com/posts/2026-0...

I have a friend who almost always comes to parties between 15 minutes early and on the dot. Also least judgmental person I have ever met, so he gets a pass. And sometimes an assignment to help with final party prep.

Yes! And for situations like parties where there is a wide window, the start time is like, the soonest you should arrive. Half an hour late is much better than half an hour early.

Unless you’re here to help me clean. Maybe.

(I sense the original post is more about appointments)

Realistically, the limiting factor is time, not money spent on watercolor paper. I would have to get stupidly wasteful before it made a difference.