Scribbles and ditherings

In Memoriam

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 08:52:36 -0700

I messed up the obituary, he was not survived by a sister. But otherwise it does a decent job with so few words. I spoke at length at the memorial service, like I did at Mom’s. Probably too long but how do you put it all into something you can convey quickly? I am sure I went too long at the service and I just kept thinking about all the stuff I left out as soon as it was finished. Like dad’s incredibaly quick way with wordplay. He could come up with incredible puns off the cuff.

Still Here

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 21:33:42 -0700

I think a lot about Theoden. For a lot of reasons but the one thing that comes to my mind the most is, “No parent should have to bury their child.”

I think of this for a few reasons. First is that nothing puts fear in my heart more than the thought of something happening to my children. I want them to have good, fruitful lives more than anything I care for myself.

The End of All Things

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 21:57:57 -0700

I ran through all these and by the time I was reading “The Human Division”, the new book was out. I had a signed copy sitting in my living room. So I was a little motivated to get to the end and dig in.

I was also experiencing something I’ve run into in the past when I go back and re-read something that was originally spread out over a long time frame. Everything hits harder when you are into it over a much more compact time frame. You ‘know’ everyone a little bit better and the world just feels a bit more concrete.

The Human Division

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 15:34:40 -0700

I can’t get Hungarian covers for all the books. It makes me sad I don’t live in Hugary any more, so don’t give me grief about it.

As mentioned previously, The Last Colony/Zoe’s Tale was the end of an arc. The Human Division is the start of the next. Now as Forrest Gump said, “I am not a amart man.”, I’m not. In writing up my thoughts about the read through, I find myself realizing things I’m sure everyone else got the first time around. And The Human Division, as the title of a military sci-fi book has always made me think about just one definition of Division. I completely missed the more obvious one.

Zoes Tale

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 21:01:49 -0700

I have to come clean - I read the rest of the series, and the new books without writing the rest of the posts. So now I’m going back and trying to remember. I feel bad. But not too bad. Life got busy and I needed to finish the series so I could get to my new book. Ok - so my conscience is clear. Here we go.

Zoe’s Tale is the end of an arc. And it is apparently Mr. Scalzi’s favorite. I heard him say this at a book signing, and he mentioned he’d said it before - so feel free to check - it made sense. He was writing about the kind of person his daughter might become at the time. ( If I remember right, apologies if I messed that up.) Regardless, I think a person may see it differently and I’d like to speak to what are possible objections to the book.

The Last Colony

Sat, 20 Sep 2025 21:08:08 -0700

The Last Colony is of course, awesome. It’s also a considerable shift. Is this military sci-fi? I would say no. Old Man’s War and The Ghost Brigades are very much military sci-fi, but as we close the first arc of the Old Man’s war books, we shift to something different.

Szilard is back, which made me really happy. And so much I love about Scalzi is here. The humor, the relatable characters, the really creative story telling, and the emotional payoff. He knows how to start, develop and finish a story. Based on a lot of what I’ve read, not a lot of author’s can do all that well. I think it’s a huge part of why he’s been so successful. There are some author’s I love who can create amazing worlds and problems - but to be frank, they struggle to stick the landing.

The Ghost Brigades

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 14:08:08 -0700

It’s been a long time since I last read these books. I remember the broad strokes but I had forgotten so many particulars. As I said in the Old Man’s War post, I’m really, really enjoying it.

Pretty much everything I said about the first book is true of this sophomore effort. Solid action, great story, hits you in the feels on the regular.

But here is the thing that really hit me hard with this one. I’ve got to give a little context.

Old Man's War

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 21:08:08 -0700

Many years ago I was writing book reviews pretty regularly and I became aware of author I had not heard of. He’d written some military sci-fi ( I’m interested ) that was said to be in the vein of Starship Troopers. ( I’m VERY interested )

I read it, I liked it. I started reading Whatever. I read Agent to the Stars ( It’s free - but so good! ) and here were are, he’s my favorite. So why am I talking about this old book now?

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

Wed, 11 Dec 2024 21:08:08 -0700

I started playing table top role playing games in junior high. Let’s go with 1982. I got the reading bug early and by that time I was tearing through the librarie’s scif-fi and fantasy sections like there was no tomorrow. Junior High and High School would be the years I read like no other. I would never have that amount of time again to just read and read. ( At the cost of my grades a lot of the time, but I’m not sure that was a bad trade off. )

Consistency or the lack thereof

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 09:45:51 +0600

I’m not gonna lie, I think this is kind of funny. I finally have what I’ve wanted for a long time and I can self host. But my workflow for posting here was all around pushing updates to Digital Ocean and it took me this long to set up things so that I could push them from here to the computer in the other room. Unreal, right?

We Link Part 1

Sat, 24 Aug 2024 14:11:52 +0100

When someone rings our doorbell, I answer. I don’t want to usually but you just never know.

A few weeks ago the guy at my door said he was working for a new ISP that is providing fiber. Then he said I’d need an antenna on my roof. I asked some questions and found out what he’s selling is “Wireless Fiber” which is egregious in my mind, but whatever. It’s still supposed to be faster than Cox and cheaper. So I asked some more questions.

The future is now

Mon, 19 Aug 2024 00:50:37 -0700

Current Projects

I’ve got a few things cooking. What are they you ask?

I’m writing a ttrpg for children. It will be foss, under a creative commons license. The fact that it’s for fun and wont be sold really frees me up to just have fun with it. I am trying to do it well though.

I’m working on learning Django. I want to build a secret santa site for my family. We will all sign up, get assigned a family member and then we will each be able to create a list of the things we would like.

Slip Slidin' Away

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 00:50:37 -0700

It’s so silly to get nostalgic or maudlin. I fight it but sometimes it gets me a bit. Music does it the most, sometimes pictures or a smell.

I need to post more. I’ve said this countless times over countless years. :) We’ll see what happens.

This is just another placeholder. See you again soon. Maybe.

Glory Days

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 00:50:37 -0700

I was listening to Glory Days and thinking about it. I’m hitting the age now where it’s starting to become more relatable than ever.

But I also know, that back in the “Glory Days” I didn’t feel like they were that great. I mean it was pretty much like life now. So how do they get rosy looking back.

I thought maybe we forget the bad, and just remember the good. But I don’t think that’s it. In fact there is some really awful stuff back in those “Glory Days” and I have no desire to relive any of that. And the theory I’m going with right now, is that back then, just like now, most stuff works out. We don’t know it will right now - but if we are around to think back to then, well probably most of that stuff we were so worried about, all worked out.

I'm Hub McCann

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 23:34:51 -0700

I was born in the northern cold and raised in the Sonoran heat. I’ve tread the Peralta, swum in the Supai falls, walked Tito’s halls. I’ve launched fire and death in the ice of the Bering and scorching heat of the Persian. I’ve been initiated into the mysteries of the deep, walked the lands of my forefathers and forged the bonds of brotherhood from Budapest to Tirana. I’ve seen the sun go down over Addis and rise over Pretoria, seen the lightning flash over the Tanganyika. Known the joy of a woman unparalleled in mind and spirit and the love of my God who carried me through it all. And He is not done with me yet.

Why Is Espn Plus So Bad?

Sat, 27 Jan 2024 08:38:58 -0700

The NHL chose to make ESPN+ the only way for me to see more of their games. They chose the worst streaming service I’ve ever used. It’s laggy, the interface is awful and there is really no reason for it. It’s 2024. I get reliably good content delivery from a wide array of platforms. This is a solved problem.

If you are thinking about purchasing ESPN+ just realize, it’s going to be trash to watch.

Andor

Thu, 02 Mar 2023 19:40:57 -0700

I am of the opinion that Andor is the best Star Wars story I have seen in my life. I should write up details - but baby steps.

It's Been A While

Wed, 05 Oct 2022 09:11:52 +0100

I’ve been thinking a lot about trying to create and generate instead of just consuming. Going to take another run here at more regularly posting - we’ll see.

I used to to have a volume of output that kept multiple sites going, I’ll see now if I can just keep one getting new content with some regularity.

Starlightcoke

Sat, 02 Apr 2022 13:09:26 -0700

Starlight coke tastes like windmill cookies.

Android 12 Notifications

Mon, 15 Nov 2021 22:09:03 -0700

I have to wonder when someone thinks it’s a good idea to have something take up twice as much space while showing half as much information.

A Tech Support Tale Deux

Sat, 18 Sep 2021 10:53:11 -0700

OK so part one gives the rundown on the situation. Part two is mildly more technical. But there’s nothing I did that is difficult. In fact maybe you have an issue with your mac and you are at a loss as what to do. This might provide you with an option.

This is a list of startup commands for a Intel based Macs. The one I’m interested in is the first, recovery mode. It allows you to start up your machine running a basic operating system on it. I’m not sure how basic - it can do a lot of stuff. Most importantly it can provide you with a bash shell.

A Tech Support Tale

Tue, 14 Sep 2021 20:56:43 -0700

I was gonna make this one long post but there are two parts that just don’t necessarily fit all that well together. Plus I have a hard time getting anything written down so if I keep it short I figure the odds are better.

So here is the setup. My daughters both have MacBook Air computers they’ve been using since high school and well into university. They’ve been phenomenal machines and I’m really happy with them. My MacBook Pro that I’m using to write this is a 2013 and it runs great. But stuff can happen.

Changes

Sat, 11 Sep 2021 08:29:41 -0700

I haven’t posted in a long time but life has been a whirlwind. We knew we’d be moving to the USA this summer. The plan was to live in Orlando for a year, working at the world headquarters of our organization, and then we’d use the year to sort out what would be next.

Instead an opportunity popped up, we looked into it, I was offered a position in Phoenix and now we live here. Since then it’s been a wild ride. So many of our plans had all been built around living in Orlando, having a place all ready for us there. In a couple of weeks we found a place to live, got new jobs, and got our son to his university so that he could start school. We still don’t have our stuff, international shipping is a mess after the pandemic.

When I Get Home

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 22:13:25 -0400

I flew from Budapest to Orlando yesterday. Couple small observations. First off - the 6 hour time change is a lot easier to manage than when we do 9 going straight to AZ.

The second is more complicated. I constantly catch myself thinking about the trip back to Hungary. Then I remember there isn’t one.

The Roots the Roots

Sat, 15 May 2021 12:23:40 +0200

Last night I was cooking a big dinner for 14 people. It was pretty simple and I had some help. I cooked potatoes (with onion and bacon. I cook the bacon and onion then add cubed boiled potatoes to the frying pan and cook it all up), green beans (whole with bacon and onion - one batch without bacon), plates of fresh vegetables ( radishes, celery, carrots and little tomatoes), grilled peppers, grilled onion and a bunch of grilled meat.

Heaven's River

Sun, 24 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I came to the Bobiverse late in the series. I found the series recommended online (probably reddit - but not sure) and once I started reading the books I was hooked. Heaven’s River is the first book in the series to be published since I got into the series. So I’d been able to power through the first three books pretty quickly.

When this book came out I had some time between reading the first three and getting to this one. I was eager to get to another book in Taylor’s Bob universe. It did not disappoint.

Get Out of My Dreams

Sat, 24 Apr 2021 17:09:15 +0200

Sit Down

Mon, 12 Apr 2021 13:59:41 +0200

I’ve been enjoying the televison show “For All Mankind” quite a bit. Today is the 60th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s flight that made him the first human in space. The show is fiction, and I’ve always been incredibly interested in space and the history of our work to get there - but it all feels more immediate in some way as I’ve been watching the show.

It took a lot of guts to go up on Korolev’s rocket and to make it back alive. I’m glad the Soviet Union fell but it did do some amazing things. (This is an interesting aspect of history. Many of our favorite sites and tourists attractions all around the world are the result of human suffering. I wont go into it at length now but on some level we have to be able to sort that out.)

Floating in the Summer Sky

Sun, 11 Apr 2021 17:49:35 +0200

Ing and I took a walk on the rakpart today. It’s usually a road that is full of fast moving traffic (or sometimes due to volume not fast - but then it’s lots and lots of cars). Right now it’s closed to cars and so it’s full of people walking, biking, rollerblading, etc.

It’s strange to be in Budapest on a cool April Sunday and for their to be very few people around. Ingrid noted the lack of boat traffic as well - I hadn’t even noticed but she was right. Without the Danube cruise ships and the tour boats it was so quiet out there. We parked near Elizabeth bridge and walked all over on the Pest side. We saw the George Bush statue for the first time and spent a good while just taking in the parliament building. It really is so incredible that even after all these years I can’t look at it without it just pausing my thoughts. It’s beautiful.

Scaled and Icy

Thu, 08 Apr 2021 13:25:18 +0200

The Cost of My Desire

Sat, 03 Apr 2021 00:20:08 +0200

I’ve started using spotify. It wasn’t available in Hungary for a long time and I was able to put together good playlists on youtube. So most of my music listening happened with youtube open in a tab so I could listen in the background. I had google music as well though that’s ended and been pushed over into youtube. Which was fine as long as I’m functioning around a desktop/laptop. But from mobile devices it doesn’t work well.

Cause the Future Is Here

Tue, 30 Mar 2021 15:06:48 +0200

As a nerd in the 80’s I got to watch a lot of cool things happen and participate in a small way. When I say nerd I’m not kidding. Like a lot of kids I had quite a few posters up in my room - including a couple of developers from Electronic Arts. I spent a lot of time on my Vic-20 at home and the Apple IIe’s at school. As a teen I remember seeing my first CD and I was reading better and better books that gave me glimpses of what was coming. I was fully on board.

New Theme

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 10:04:34 -0700

I’ve been using the Blackburn theme for this site for a while. I’ve made some small changes and I’ve struggled a little to know where I should make those changes - in the theme or in the core of my site. Probably this struggle is more an issue of my getting my head around Hugo but it also comes from the fact that while separating content from how it is displayed is an awesome idea, it’s never as easy as it seems to completely keep the two apart all the time.

A Star Ship

Mon, 01 Jun 2020 14:11:52 +0100

I was reading Hacker News and I came across this post. It’s about a blender plugin that procedurally builds space ships. I have never used blender but I thought it looked cool. I downloaded blender, I needed to download a fork of the plugin that would work on the latest version of blender and then I started playing with making ships.

It was fun and frustrating. Blender is a tool that can do amazing stuff which means it’s not trivial to use. Yet with google, and just poking around in a few hours I could get it to generate a ship, move it around and then render an image based on a view that I liked. Once I could do that I sucked it into Gimp (where I am much more comfortable) and I took my ship and put it into space. This gimp tutorial on youtube was critical to my success.

And the wind that brought me down

Thu, 23 Jan 2020 00:10:29 +0100

Making things takes work and I feel myself wanting to make something but unable to focus long enough to do the work. I have so many ideas and I stumble on execution. I feel like if I could turn the corner on that I could make something of this last quarter.

My Current Stack Part 1

Mon, 30 Dec 2019 16:56:28 +0100

For years I ran a bog standard setup. I changed hosting companies a couple of times but it was all pretty much the same. Shared hosting that provided PHP and MySQL running Wordpress sites for the most part. I dabbled with Drupal and maybe some other CMS packages but that was about it.

Some time, I don’t know how long ago, I decided I wanted more flexibility. I wanted access to the OS and the ability to try out things outside whatever box the shared hosting put me in. I did some looking around and landed on Digital Ocean. I think I was drawn to them over the other options based primarily on 2 or 3 things.

Building and Deploying the Blog

Mon, 30 Dec 2019 14:32:20 +0100

I use sourcehut for version control and storing my code. That includes this blog.

My workflow until today was pretty simple. I make changes to the blog, commit and push those changes to the remote repo and then I would build the blog and use rsync to copy changes over to my host. I have everything set up to do this on the two main machines I use. It’s really pretty easy.

Boldog Karácsonyt

Wed, 25 Dec 2019 13:33:35 +0100

We are blessed to have our whole family back together this Christmas. Our girls were able to fly in from the states and we all have some special time to spend together. I hope this Christmas as wonderful and full of love for you as it is for us.

ipad

Thu, 05 Dec 2019 14:18:55 +0100

“Replacing a general purpose computer with a jacked-up surveillance sensor package is not my idea of solving the problem of mobile computing.” - Stanley Lieber on trying to use an ipad pro to replace his laptop.

Budapest

Sun, 01 Dec 2019 17:45:59 +0100

I spent time last night and this afternoon in Budapest with family and friends. We don’t get downtown as much as we should. I think this every time I am there.

Winter weather has finally arrived and it feels cold out but the atmosphere this time of year is so great. We visited some of the Christmas markets and just had a fun time walking around. We helped some tourists find a place they were trying to get to, enjoyed the beautiful architecture and art of the city and just had a good time.

Movement

Sun, 17 Nov 2019 17:29:52 +0100

For a long time I’ve done things the old way. I know how to work with a server, move files, set up Apache, etc. I’ve not been too current for sure.

I did move off shared hosting a while back to a VPS but then I’ve just basically treated it like the old shared hosting account, just without cpanel. I ssh in, set up my stuff, run my updates, etc. It’s Fedora, same as my desktop so pretty nice. The motivation was two fold. I save money using Digital Ocean over what I paid Blue Host. And I have more control so I can mess around with different things I want to try.

Poetry

Thu, 07 Nov 2019 19:31:38 +0100

I started writing poetry for myself in high school. Like many things that I had the time for back then, as I got older and life got busier, it dropped by the side for the most part. It’s been in my head, fragments of things, but not much put to paper.

I really enjoyed reading poetry in school and would write things to emulate the poetry I really liked. My junior year I wrote a pretty long poem about the crucifixion of Christ and I did a whole gloss with scriptural references, sort of like what I’d seen with “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. That was probably the longest and most disciplined poetry I’ve every written. A lot of the rest was typical teen angst written in a song lyric kind of format.

Music and Books

Sun, 03 Nov 2019 21:32:37 +0100

Friday was All Saints day and that meant a 3 day weekend. I was reasonably productive in terms of some projects around the house. But some of the best parts were spent with the new Jimmy Eat World album and the Foreigner Saga by C.J. Cherryh.

I really enjoy the new album. The books I had started back in the 90s when the series was new. I had dropped off after the second book I think. I don’t remember for sure. But I started over a while back and I’ve been enjoying it very much. I just started “Conspirator” the 10th book. I’ve always enjoyed Cherryh’s writing. I don’t remember what I read of his first. I want to say it was the Chanur books. But it could been Union Alliance or some other work of hers.

Friends

Sun, 27 Oct 2019 21:06:55 +0100

I really like this picture. I think it looks pretty cool but more importantly it reminds me of a pretty special evening.

It was a time of saying goodbye which is something we do a lot in our line of work. I don’t know if it’s more or less than more traditional careers or ways of living, but being expats and missionaries it feels like people come and go at a more rapid pace than when we lived in the US with “normal” jobs.

Back at it

Sat, 19 Oct 2019 01:49:16 +0100

I’m going to try to be more regular here. I just need to build a habit.

I spent the last couple days working on getting my Hugo setup working again. There have been big changes in the software and the theme changed a lot - but I had customized some things. Only the new versions took more work to fix.

With wordpress I’d do a child theme. In this case I’m not sure what is the best way to go about it. I really want the changes I make but I also want the updates that come from the regular development of the theme. We’ll see what happens.

Going Static

Sun, 20 Jan 2019 12:21:00 +0100

For years I used shared hosting for my sites. But I hit a point where I wanted to do a lot of things that were difficult to do in shared hosting. (Running my own code on different platforms, Let’s Encrypt, etc.) At the same time I realized that there were a ton of new, low cost options out there that would let me run my own “box” and do all those things while saving money at the same time.

Site Theme

Thu, 17 Jan 2019 15:23:00 +0200

I’ve been thinking about setting up a new blog that didn’t depend on an RDBMS for a while. I tried out a number of options and struggled with Hugo, my choice for a bit. One of my big issues was getting something that looked the way I wanted.

There are lots of Hugo themes available. The problem was a combination of two things.

First Hugo is being developed and improved at a rapid pace. This is awesome. But it means that some themes that caught my eye didn’t really work well because they were a little old. Someone who really knows what they are doing could probably fix those issues quickly but that’s issue number two.

Firstofmine

Thu, 17 Jan 2019 09:45:51 +0200

This is my first go at my own post and sorting my front matter.

About

Thu, 17 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I’m just this guy, you know?

This is the website of JR Peck, nerd at large.

If you would like to get in touch with me, drop me a line at bittercode@gmail.com

This is my second blog, my first using a static site generator. (Hugo)

I am a hobbyist programmer, a technology leader and a follower of Christ. I hope you enjoy the site.

Privacy Policy

Thu, 17 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This site does not use analytics or store personally identifiable information for any kind of marketing or business use. The web server does track IP addresses for identifying hostile activity and banning traffic from those addresses. This is a completely automated process using the software fail2ban and the data is never used for any other purpose than security.

This site is a purely personal hobby site. The opinion expressed are my own, they have nothing to do with my employer or any other group I’m affiliated with and so I have no reason or desire to collect or store personal data from any visitor other than what is mentioned above for security.