I read just about every book about Midway as a kid and this is one of, if not, the best.
A totally different view of the typical book about the Battle of Midway. Loved it and great to see the inclusion of the Japanese viewpoints about the battle.
For me the important items were the explanations of Japan’s carrier operations such as how they staged refueled, armed and staged planes. It explained so much.
Been spending quite a bit of time building out a MCP server for the products we build at work. Also; spending time using Claude to build an iOS app. Really fun work.
I did a thing last week. I hiked up a 14er.
A 14er is a mountain whose peak is 14,000 feet or higher from sea level. I decided quite a while ago that I wanted to take this on and then the opportunI expected the hike to be a bit…difficult. It was. The mountain is called ‘Quandray Peak‘ and by most estimations that I have seen it is one of the easiest of the 14er’s and has a total elevation of 14,272 feet.
The hike broke down into 3 parts. The first part was a trail from the parking lot to the tree line. The second was from the tree line to where the summit starts and the third part was the trail to the summit.
I took the East approach and below is an image from the ‘14ers.com‘ web site showing that approach.
The effort that I put in was a lot. From the beginning to the top I was stopping every 5 minutes to rest, sip some water or have a bite to eat. The last part of the hike was just ‘put one foot in front of another’ the rest of the way up.
Coming down was pretty straightforward but I had to be extra careful and watch for loose rocks on the steps which could, and did, cause me to fall…twice. However, I got down the mountain without injury and I’m pretty proud of the accomplishment.
I was impressed by the hikers on the mountain. When they saw me sitting they asked how I was, etc. Very nice community.
Get out and go!
I’ve had a 3D printer for quite awhile.
I haven’t really used it a lot but I did just use it for a project to replace the plastic bushings that are in some lawn furniture. The bushings fit around a metal post and the post spins within the bushing to allow the seat to rotate. In this situation the post had rusted enough that it expanded and stop turning within the bushing.
I used Tinkercad to design the bushing and imported the design into Ultimaker Cura to slice it. The bushing came out great and works really well.
I also came across a post from the ‘Note To Self’ website outlining a bunch of uses for 3D printing they have and in particular the Gridfinity system. Got me rethinking what I can use the printer for.
I have an older (much older!) SnapScan S1300i original made by Fujitsu and now supported by Ricoh.
I upgraded my machine to MacOS 27 (Golden Gate) and had some trouble with scanning. Ricoh fixed it with a beta update that will be finalized in October.
Very nice. Thank you Ricoh!
I thought I would try reading some of the books in this ‘classics’ category. Pretty good. I’m going to have to read it 2-3 times however but…it’s short.
Nice quick book about Cannae. I knew of the battle but not the details such as they are. I find it interesting that Hannibal just hung out in Italy for so long and accomplished…not much other than destroying a few Roman armies.
An interesting book about a crazy set of events. Quick read. Nice overview of the U.S. just before the entry into World War I.
This was an amazing book. Really gives me an understanding of the social environment of the times, the personalities involved and the immense struggle they went through.
I was watching one of Adam Savage’s Tested videos and he mentioned ‘SmarterEveryDay’ (Destin is the host) and the video ‘I Tried To Make Something in America’.
Great video. Check it out here.