From Secure Scuttlebutt

09/28/2026, 01:38:14 AM

I drove two hours away to what I expected would be the last paddling race of the year, the Long Lake Long Boat Regatta. Before the race started, they announced they were cutting the 10mi option and having everyone do the 5mi option due to wind. Once most of the first wave of people got on the water, they announced it was canceled. Bummer.

I do respect the abundance of caution for peoples' safety, but at the same time, I feel like things probably would have been fine if they just started the race. As it was, several people went for a swim just trying to stay in place and balance near the start due to the breeze, waves, and other boats. It's much easier to stay upright when powering forward.

It was great to see some of the friends I've made over these past few years of paddling. I guess it's alright to get together sometimes and not have to do strenuous physical activity.

Possibly the most dangerous part of the day was everybody trying to get their boats back onto their cars in the wind. Maybe it was best we didn't do that with tired arms.

I saw some of the four person canoes still go out for short practice paddles. The whole drive back I considered the wind and weather at each lake I passed but ultimately decided just to drive home.

image:a sea plane on a sandy beach at the windy Long Lake

09/18/2026, 05:17:53 PM

The spotted lanternfly has arrived in town. :(

image:spotted lanternfly spotted

https://dec.ny.gov/nature/animals-fish-plants/spotted-lanternfly

09/16/2026, 07:27:03 PM

Wake up babe. New emojis just dropped.

image:cracking face

image:leftwards thumb sign

image:rightwards thumb sign

image:monarch butterfly

image:pickle

image:lighthouse

image:metero

image:eraser

image:net with handle

09/16/2026, 12:59:25 PM

Race Report: 2026 Adirondack Canoe Classic (90-miler)

I had so much fun paddling this last weekend. The weather was great, and the people were amazing. I'm happy with my time, though I was hoping to slightly beat last year and ended up slightly behind. No matter. I can't wait for next year. I can see myself making this a regular thing for as long as I'm able to participate.

image:Enjoying some gentle currents on Brown's Tract

image:Getting ready at the start on day 2

image:Day 3 start. I'm in there.

image:Post-race festivities

image:View from the AirBnB on Lake Flower

08/27/2026, 12:18:16 AM

Tilde Friends 0.2026.8 is working its way through the various review processes and release pipelines.

The chess app is the most exciting part to me, though that has been usable since I published it independently weeks ago. It is also very work in progress, but we totally played a game, so there's that.

I've been gradually building up and automating various web-facing things. In addition to the files in the gitea releases, I am publishing deb files, AppImage, and docker container images to a gitea package repository.

The blog link on www.tildefriends.net leads to a bespoke blog app showing my latest #tildefriends posts. I realize I'm not clever enough to maintain a whole separate channel of content, so visitors/scraper/feed readers/what have you will get what I'm already occasionally posting here.

Maybe interesting only to me, but I also got all of my tests running on continuous integration finally, which will hopefully help me stay honest about staying on top of intermittent issues and fixing things.