Last updated: August 9, 2026
Big Updates and Aiden
My parents, brother, his husband, and their kids visited us in May. I took time off from work so we could spend time together. My favourite part was our visit to Mercer Labs, a cute contemporary art museum where every room is a unique audio-visual exhibit. Aiden lost his balance and fell on the floor in a room covered in mirrors. We all learn to be careful in mirror rooms at some point!
I took Aiden to Brendan's house upstate for his first ever overnight trip. He behaved himself and slept well through the night. It seems like he's more interested in cars than in nature, as he kept running around the house from the backyard to the front, trying to reach the road. The follies of raising a city kid.
I've also been trying to take advantage of the warmer weather (while still trying to avoid the extreme heat and sudden thunderstorms that have been hallmarks of this summer) and show Aiden this city on the weekends. I took him to a cat cafe, where he was more interested in playing with the cat toys rather than playing with the cats at first, but eventually he showed some interest in them. I'm glad to know he's not allergic or afraid of them. We visited the Central Park Zoo, which was my first time there as well. He wasn't too interested in most animals but got excited to see the grizzly bears and snow leopards. I also took him to The Vessel with Or. Give Aiden stairs to climb and he'll be happy for hours! If you have suggestions for things we can do together or if you want to join us in our little adventures, get in touch!
Lastly, Aiden figured out just last week how to get out of his crib. That same night he refused to let me go to sleep in my room, so I had to sleep on the guest bed next to him to stop him from escaping. I spent hours the next day converting his crib to a toddler bed, child-proofing his room with the thought of a nocturnally active toddler, and installing a baby gate outside his door. Wish me luck.
Hosting
I didn't do much in terms of hosting since my last update, except for my annual pride month party. Hosting overnight guests is challenging now that Aiden is able to roam around the apartment at night. However, the sofa bed in my living room is still available for those who don't mind being woken up by a hyperactive toddler.
Hobbies
I found out that one of my favourite web comics, Abstruse Goose, has shut down for good. A kind soul saved an archive of all the strips on a GitHub project as a data dump of image files. I took this archive and vibe-coded a new website for the comics with Claude Code, complete with search capability and accessible descriptions that were generated by letting Claude parse the static images. I basically did all of that because I was looking for one particular strip to send to a friend.
I created a weather display for my room, also vibe-coded, using an e-ink panel, a Raspberry Pi, a smart battery component for the Pi, and a 3D-printed frame of my own design. This was a fun challenge and helped me learn a lot about coding with an AI agent, which I need to keep improving on if I hope to remain employed and employable.
Want some nerdy details?
- Nerd level: mild — The hardware setup is a Raspberry Pi 4, a PiSugar 3 Plus (battery-operated power control), and a Pimoroni Inky Impression 7.3" (e-ink display). The code is on GitHub.
- The way it works is that the PiSugar turns on the Pi once an hour, and the Pi then runs the vibe-coded project, which fetches live weather data, lays it out neatly onto an image, and sends it to the e-ink display. It then schedules the next wake-up with the PiSugar and shuts down the Pi.
- Nerd level: spicy — My first attempt used a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, which has a smaller form factor. After I connected the PiSugar, the e-ink display stopped working, even after I disconnected it. I thought that I had fried the e-ink display and ended up ordering a replacement. It turns out that when I disconnected the PiSugar from the setup, I pulled it out with more force than I thought, and some pins between the Pi and the e-ink display weren't touching anymore! The real issue was that the PiSugar 3 Plus is incompatible with the smaller form factor of the Pi Zero, which caused the problem.
- Because I was convinced for a while that the e-ink display is fried, I ordered another one. So now I have an extra one available for other ideas.
- I switched the Pi Zero with an ancient Raspberry Pi Model B (the OG!) that I had lying around. Those are still 32-bit CPUs, and they're really slow. It took about 6 minutes for the wake-up + update + shut-down cycle, and that killed the battery life of the PiSugar.
- So I ordered a Raspberry Pi 4. Now the cycle took just a little over a minute, but occasionally the e-ink would stop its update in the middle, leaving a half-finished image. When it succeeds, the e-ink update cycle takes about 25 seconds. This is relevant:
- Nerd level: epic — this took a long time to debug, and I doubt I would've solved it without Claude Code, or it would have taken me two weeks. The e-ink's driver API code has a
busy_waitfunction that allows up to 40 seconds to update the display before it gives up. That function was written in a way that made it sensitive to the system clock. The Raspberry Pi doesn't have a battery-backed RTC, so when you turn it on, it runs a background service to update the system clock. - The reason for the bug, then, is that sometimes my code would trigger the e-ink update, and before the update could finish, the system clock would be updated — to an hour later! So the
busy_waitcall would immediately bail out (because 1 hour is more than 40 seconds after the start time of the busy wait, duh,) and the driver API code would halt the update. - The solution was easy. Just run the weather service after the system clock update service. This was a one-line change in the service configuration, luckily.
I made improvements for my Wear OS subway app, adding station accessibility information and alerts. Now that I occasionally take Aiden on the subway, I need to know which stations have elevators and whether they're out of service. I also added service alerts to know when the F line runs on the E and the E line runs on the F (iykyk.)
Media
Highlights
- Read Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir after watching the movie and loving it hard. Naturally there were differences between the book and the movie, and I'm happy I got to experience both.
More
let's talk about the bold stuff!
- Books
- The Faith of Beasts / James S.A. Corey
- Movies
- Hoppers
- Stop! That! Train!
- The Devil Wears Prada 2
- Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender
- TV
- Malcolm in the Middle: Life's Still Unfair
- A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
- Bob's Burgers
- Family Guy
- American Dad!
- House of the Dragon
- Silo
- X-Men '97
- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
- Futurama
- The Ark
- Video Games
- A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead
- Theatre
- Chess
Soon
- Driving up to Montréal with Brendan and Aiden for 2 nights
- Flying for the first time with Aiden to Tbilisi, Georgia for the annual family vacation