John

The Big Undo

Dave Winer's plans for The Big Undo used to be the vision for the web:

1. Small parts loosely joined.
2. All parts replaceable.

We all know how this vision was corrupted by big money from big tech firms. 

I'm excited to see where this goes and help out where I can. You should too.

A Great Bagel Recipe

• In ½ cup /120ml of the warm water, pour in the sugar and yeast. Do not stir. Let it sit for five minutes, and then stir the yeast and sugar mixture until it all dissolves in the water.
• Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the middle and pour in the yeast and sugar mixture.
• Pour ⅓ cup / 80ml of warm water into the well. Mix and stir in the rest of the water (the scant ½ cup / 100ml that is remaining), as needed. Depending on where you live, you may need to add an additional couple tablespoons to about ¼ cup/60ml of water. You want a moist and firm dough after you have mixed it.
• On a floured countertop, knead the dough for about 10 minutes until it is smooth and elastic. Try working in as much flour as possible to form a firm and stiff dough.
• Lightly brush a large bowl with oil and turn the dough to coat. Cover the bowl with a damp dish towel. Let rise in a warm place for 1 hour, until the dough has doubled in size. Punch the dough down, and let it rest for another 10 minutes.
• Carefully divide the dough into 8 pieces (I used a scale to be extra precise, but it’s not necessary). Shape each piece into a round. Now, take a dough ball, and press it gently against the countertop (or whatever work surface you’re using) moving your hand and the ball in a circular motion pulling the dough into itself while reducing the pressure on top of the dough slightly until a perfect dough ball forms. Repeat with 7 other dough rounds.
• Coat a finger in flour, and gently press your finger into the center of each dough ball to form a ring. Stretch the ring to about half the diameter of the bagel and place on a lightly oiled cookie sheet. Repeat the same step with the remaining dough.
• After shaping the bagels and placing them on the cookie sheet, cover with a damp kitchen towel and allow to rest for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 425ºF / 220ºC / Gas Mark 7.
• Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Reduce the heat. Use a slotted spoon or skimmer to lower the bagels into the water. Boil as many as you are comfortable with boiling. Once the bagels are in, it shouldn’t take too long for them to float to the top (a couple seconds). Let them sit there for 1 minute, and then flip them over to boil for another minute. Extend the boiling times to 2 minutes each, if you’d prefer a chewier bagel (results will give you a more New York-Style bagel with this option).
• If you want to add toppings to your bagels, do so as you take them out of the water. Alternatively, you can use an egg wash to get the toppings to stick before baking the bagels. 
• Once all the bagels have boiled (and have been topped with your choice of toppings), transfer them to an oiled or parchment-lined baking sheet.
• Bake for 20 - 25 minutes, or until golden brown (I usually err on the side of 20 minutes).
• Cool on a wire rack.

NASA Broke APOD So I Fixed It

Astronomy Picture of the Day is one of those great old websites that has been around for decades. The site features stunning new pictures or videos on a daily basis. 

Many years ago I installed a simple application that downloaded the latest APOD photo and made it my Desktop background on Windows. This little application worked great and provided me with a beautiful Desktop background on a daily basis. Recently I noticed the backdrop wasn't updating so I did some research. NASA apparently decided to change the APOD website, breaking their own APIs that interact with the site.

NASA changed the URL for APOD from apod.nasa.gov to science.nasa.gov/apod, breaking any apps that were using the original URL. They also completely changed the page layout, further breaking any apps that may have been scraping the picture of the day. NASA’s API hasn’t been updated to support these changes so if you call it they simply return the NASA logo, not the picture of the day. Older apps trying to use the original URL or API to download the picture of the day will fail (my old app failed silently). 

I fixed this problem with some simple Powerscript (this only works on Windows, obviously). 

You can download the script here.  Make sure you follow the instructions for unblocking and scheduling the script to run on a daily basis.

I hope someone finds this helpful.

Admiring Nature's Fireworks

The Web of Markdown Matures

Dave Winer published an update to his Web of Markdown plans.  He's apparently built a browser (not shared yet) and provided several examples on GitHub of how a Web of Markdown-enabled website might work.

My blog is not quite there yet but it's fairly close.

Since I'm old school I'm hoping he publishes an actual spec. 

Delicious Soup Tonight

My wife claims my Matzo Ball soup is better than what we had at Sarge's Deli in NYC.

Judge for yourself.

New Music from Johnny Marr and Morrissey 

I finally got around to playing Johnny Marr's new album The Age of Everything while I made dinner this evening. It was a pleasant surprise - a definite step up from his past solo releases. 

My favorite tune on the album so far is All in a Life. The guitar on this track is gorgeous. 

It's great to also see Morrissey continue to put out great new music - I just wish Johnny and Morrissey would team up again.

Joining the Web of Markdown

On October 6, 2026, Dave Winer posted "The Web of Markdown" and expanded on the original idea on Scripting News. The Web of Markdown is like a web browser for browsing markdown files - that means no CSS, no frameworks, and no cruft - just Markdown files, as a way to restart the web in 2026. 

Google isn't allowed in, and he would not want the EFF or the W3C running it either. It also avoids WordPress running the majority of the sites. 

Anyone could easily add this capability to their existing website (I run a heavily modified version of Known - I'll document how I enabled markdown browsing support soon). The key point is that sites on the Web of Markdown must support RSS inputs and outputs. Read more about Dave's proposal here.

Don't forget to be grateful

Gratitude is a mindset that shifts focus from what is lacking to the abundance already present, transforming ordinary moments into sources of joy and resilience. 

Life can be full of challenges, struggles, and uncertainties, but there are also moments of joy, beauty, and blessings that we should treasure and be grateful for. It's easy to overlook these things or take them for granted - especially when we may be going through hard times. These small blessings can be reminders that there is always goodness and grace around us, even during our struggles.

Remember to give thanks for these blessings and ask forgiveness when you overlooked them or took them for granted. God will restore your peace as you pray and give thanks for these blessings in your life.

AI Is Building On A Fragile Foundation

The future of AI depends upon a very fragile theory: finding applications for LLMs that increase productivity significantly more than their cost. 

This would generate profits for the application vendors above the costs they have to pay the data centers, which might increase revenue more than enough to cover the power, depreciation and debt service. 

So far this remains elusive, putting the future of AI on a very fragile foundation.

This blurb was heavily inspired/cribbed from DSHR's wonderful observations on the current state of AI.

Big Tech Digital Sovereignty is like Building Houses for East Germans in West Berlin

Free Alternatives to Popular SaaS Tools

SaaS is dead lists open-source alternatives to the apps you pay for.

What a time to be alive.

Photos From Our Trip to the US East Coast

Earlier this week we returned from a vacation to the US Northeast. My wife is from Canada and had never been to the northeastern states other than PA (wonderful Pittsburgh and other small western PA cities). 

Here some random photos from our trip. 

We flew into Boston to visit my son. I hadn't been to Boston in a while and was very impressed by how clean it was. We saw very little litter or graffiti and almost no beggars or homeless people. I have a friend from Boston and he told me it's because the Mafia keeps the city clean. Whoever is responsible the city looked great. Boston highlights: USS Constitution (I've loved tall sailing ships ever since I started reading Patrick O'Brian's books), Brattle Book Shop, the Old North Church, and some beautiful old buildings and restaurants.

We drove up to Portland, Maine, a gorgeous town with beautiful lighthouses and wonderful views of the sea. Portland highlights included touring the town (smaller and almost as weird as Portland, OR), admiring the lighthouses, and enjoying some great food. I even got to try the legendary Moxie soft drink. Moxie's taste wasn't as strange as I expected - it reminded me of this politically incorrect soda from my youth.   

We stopped off in Portsmouth on the drive back. It's a cute little town and we didn't have much time to look around. We did get some cheap but tasty Mexican food at Howling Wolf. We dropped my son off in Woburn and continued on to Providence.

My wife and I both remembered liking the Providence TV show so we were very interested in visiting the city. It turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. We stayed in downtown Providence and it seems to be going through a bit of a transition at the moment. The downtown area felt largely empty and abandoned. There were many boarded up storefronts and very few people on the streets. The graffiti and litter was a bit of a surprise, especially in comparison to Boston. Downtown Providence is going through some hard times at the moment and it reminded me of Pittsburgh when the steel industry started moving out of Western PA. Pittsburgh was able to come back and I'm sure Providence will soon do the same. We were lucky enough to have dinner at a beautiful restaurant filled with some incredible antiques.  

We caught the train down to NYC which was a lot of fun for my wife. She had travelled extensively in Europe by train and it brought back some great memories. My son came down to NYC and we all got to hang out together. I had been to NYC before but never for pleasure - it was wonderful to have the time to tour the city and experience things I had only read about before. 

I was pleasantly surprised that the best, juiciest Italian Cabernet I've had in a very long time was at a Chinese restaurant in Hell's Kitchen. This culture clash was one of many reasons I fell in love with NYC.

Several of my friends are from NYC and provided some great recommendations. We had a wonderful time in NYC, touring the city, seeing plays, and meeting some wonderful people. Unfortunately we didn't get to see everything we wanted. We will definitely be back soon.

I Finally Understand Why People Love NYC

Late last night (actually early this morning) we returned from a wonderful trip to the east coast. My wife had never been to the east coast and I wanted her to get a good feel for it. 

I'll share more details in a future post but here are a few highlights..

Wisdom from The Bible

The Real Reason AI Companies Are Warning About AI Risks

All the recent warnings about the dangers from AI are coming from AI companies. Why do you think this is happening? 

I believe this is a legal risk mitigation strategy - they are attempting to shift responsibility from themselves (as the creators of AI agents and tools) to their AI agents, tools, and engines.

Remember this when you see reports about a "rogue" AI agent that "escaped" a lab and hacked another company's website.

These AI agents aren't "rogue", they were improperly designed or implemented without the appropriate controls or mitigations. This is the fault of the creators of these AI agents and tools, not the tools themselves.

There aren't any "rogue" AI agents, only careless AI companies.

A poor carpenter blames his tools.

Hike near the top of Mount Boucherie

Yesterday we almost hiked to the top of Mount Boucherie. Mount Boucherie is a weathered 50-million-year-old stratovolcano in West Kelowna. 

What started off as a simple hike in the woods ended as a surprisingly scary climb near the summit of Mount Boucherie, The trail was pretty narrow with a sheer drop off in a places while other parts were loose rocks on a steep incline. At one point we had to scramble under a fallen tree that seemed determined to block our progress. I'm surprised and grateful that neither of us sustained any serious injuries (although my knee is quite fond of reminding me of my age).  

While the views were spectacular, we didn't make it up to the actual summit. It started raining and the trail became narrower and narrower until it eventually disappeared. We decided to turn back rather than tempt fate any further. The journey back down from the "near summit" was tricky and I was much slower than my incredible wife. After making it back down the sun came out and we decided to take the roof off the Jeep for one final celebration of the end of summer. We stopped at Volcanic Hills Winery on the way home for some wine tasting. Their Syrah and Gamay Noir are excellent. 

We drove by our favorite local brewery and were shocked to see Little Tokyo had not yet sold out of their incredible ramen noodles. Little Tokyo makes the greatest ramen I've ever tasted (even better than the ramen I've had in Japan). They operate out of a tiny red trailer parked in the back of Barn Owl Brewing and are only there a few days a week. They frequently sell out so we felt very lucky to enjoy their delicious noodles. Barn Owl makes a great Stout - probably not the best pairing but I am a sucker for a good Stout.  

Yesterday was a wonderful reminder of how incredibly blessed I am. God is good indeed.

Sharing My Blog Tweaks

This blog runs on a heavily modified version of Known. 

I've always loved Known's support for IndieWeb standards but wanted more modern capabilities and better support for mobile experiences. This is why I made several changes to the Known codebase - I've shared these changes on GitHub if you're interested in them.

Here is a summary of the changes I made to the default Known installation

Site Design and Layout

• I really like the format of Dave Winer's blog so I am emulating it on my blog. I could have used some of the many tools he provides (and I actually tried several times) but I became frustrated by inadequate documentation and issues trying to set up and use his tools.
• Custom CSS to hide default branding/footer elements and the stock profile block
• Built two fixed sidebars: an "About" box (with a bio and a rotating photo pulled from a folder — a new photo shown each day via simple PHP date math) and a "Linkblog" box that live-fetches and caches a  FeedLand river as an RSS feed, no third-party JavaScript involved
• Custom floated-image CSS classes (img-float-left/img-float-right) for small inline graphics, plus paragraph/heading permalinks (the small # links) generated via JavaScript
• A script to auto-hide broken link-preview cards when the target site blocks Idno's fetch

A Custom Rich Text Editor for Posts and Status Updates

• Known's built-in editor is fundamentally broken  
• I built a replacement editor from scratch using contenteditable and document.execCommand: bold, italic, headings, blockquote (with a proper "type your way out" fix), links, lists, an HTML/rich-text toggle view, and keyboard shortcuts with an in-editor help popup

Better Support for Mobile Photo Posting

• Known has fairly good support for Mobile Photo Posting out of the box. The problem I ran into is related to my absurd preference for using old-school flip phones instead of a modern smart phone. This modification enables me to rotate a photo after uploading it (you usually won't need to do this if you are uploading photos taken with a smartphone). 
• Added a native camera/gallery Photo button using <input type="file" capture>
• Built a properly authenticated upload endpoint from scratch — including reverse-engineering Idno's actual session/login-check code to do this securely rather than guessing
• Added server-side photo rotation (via PHP's GD library) with a real visual preview modal, so you can see and rotate the actual photo before inserting it into your blog post

Appending to an Existing Post

• This functionality was inspired/copied from Dave Winer's blogging format. 
• This functionality uses Idno's Entry model class and publish() method to enable appending posts to a previously saved blog post. This only works with blog posts, not status updates.  
• While implementing this functionality I found and fixed a bug in Known: calling publish() outside a normal web request crashes its syndication step (because it assumes a "current page" object always exists)  

Weekly Bible Study

I have a weekly Men's Bible Study Group with a few other guys. We've been meeting over Zoom for a few years now and it's a great way to "sharpen the iron". I'm the only guy in Canada while all the other guys are in WA.

As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend. - Proverbs 27:17 

Tonight we discussed Romans 4. There are 23 verses in Romans 4. My notes on our discussion are below.

• We read all 23 verses aloud using the NASB translation.
•  Romans 4 focuses on the faith of Abraham. The first 12 verses focus on one area while the rest of the verses focus on another area.
• Who are the children of Abraham - the circumcised or the uncircumcised? The answer is both because we are not justified by works but by faith. Some may think this was only the case after Jesus came to earth while others may think we were always justified by faith alone. Paul clarifies this fact in this chapter - Abraham, who came about before the laws were established, was justified before the laws were even established. This means we were always justified in faith before we ever do any works. Circumcised or uncircumcised makes no difference - both can be justified if they have faith in God. They focused on following the 617 or 618 rules they had to follow because they didn't have a relationship with God. If we had a relationship we wouldn't need the law. Christianity focuses on having a relationship with Jesus. 
• There is nothing we can do to be good. If we were able to be "good" through works alone then the concept of "good" becomes an idol for us. 
• In Jerusalem Judaism was a recognized faith but only if they went to a Jewish synagogue. If you didn't attend a synagogue you would be persecuted. This means the Christians were persecuted.
• The word "sin" in Greek roughly means to "fall short". We all fall short because of our sin. Jesus bridges the gap caused by us falling short.
• There's nothing we can do to impress God. We are like ants in comparison to God. There's nothing an ant can do on his own to make us love it. It is the same with our relationship to God.
• Discussion of Verses 22-25: "Therefore IT WAS ALSO CREDITED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS. Now not for his sake only was it written that it was credited to him, but for our sake also, to whom it will be credited, to us who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, He who was delivered over because of our wrongdoings, and was raised because of our justification."  In scripture there is a concept of "already but not yet" - Paul talks about how we have been saved, we are being saved, and how we will be saved.
• Will the law exist when we get to Heaven? Are the 10 Commandments on the gates of Heaven? I think it will be nothing like what we are experiencing now - we're supposed to be transformed. The propensity to sin will be removed from us (we are finally freed from the original sin of Adam and Eve). Because of this we won't need the rules. We will be experiencing so much joy there will be no desire to sin. Sin cannot exist in Heaven - this is why Satan was cast out of Heaven. Scriptures tell us there will be no more sin.
• God is the judge - He has already forgiven you when you have a relationship with Jesus. 
• In verse 5 what did Paul mean when he said "God justifies the ungodly"? God does not wait for us to become godly, or righteous on our own apart from Him, before welcoming us into His family. Because of our faith in righteous Jesus, God justifies us in spite of our sinfulness. There is no greater gift than this.  
• The only thing we contribute to salvation is the sin that made it necessary.
• We are not accepted for who we are - we are welcomed so we can be transformed. That transformation takes place in the afterlife.
• What is the difference between Jesus covering our sin and us covering our sin? When we cover our sin we're hiding it (much like trying to do "good deeds" to compensate for any "bad deeds" we may have previous done). When Jesus covers our sin He wipes it out, it no longer exists. We can't clean up our sins - they are only cleansed through Christ. Christ is our Advocate before God, wiping out our sins so we can be with Him.   

We always end by going around to each man to ask for prayer requests.

• I asked for prayers for all the guys and their families in the group. Thanks to Jim for all the time he puts into the group 
• I asked for prayers for my kids 
• I gave thanks for my daughter who had a recent breakthrough. I'm very proud of her strength.   
• I gave thanks for my son's success and for our upcoming trip to travel to the east coast and see him next month.
• I prayed for the Lord to bless us all, our families and friends.

More reasons to despise oversized pickup trucks

This guy's truck was so big he couldn't figure out how to fit into a parking space - so he parked at an angle and took up multiple spaces. I can't be too angry at the guy, he's obviously overcompensating for some shortcoming.  

A delicious, healthy dinner in 45 minutes

Caramelized Brussels Sprouts, Sweet Potato, Butternut Squash, Carrot & Beet Medley with Feta, Walnuts, and Cranberry-Honey Glaze. 

Try saying that three times fast.

Better yet, why not make it yourself?

Here is the recipe.

Policies and Laws are Not Substitutes for Good Parenting

There is a popular trend to regulate social media and AI platforms over concerns about the impact on children. Several laws are being developed across the US with heavy input from the tech industry.  While parents have a responsibility to protect their children, questions arise about how much control is appropriate. Tools such as content filters, usage monitoring apps, and time limits can help ensure children are reasonably safe online.

The problem is that these tools are only effective when coupled with good parenting - spending time with children to instill in them a strong sense of morals and the ability to recognize right from wrong. Tools, policies, and laws are ineffective when parents fail to educate and reinforce moral beliefs in their children 

The development of additional online safety laws will lead to increased censorship, privacy, and security risks while failing to protect children. 

Related post from the EFF (although it fails to recognize the VPN risk): https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/09/eu-kids-act-wont-keep-internet-accountable-and-trustworthy

I personally believe the trend of creating additional online safety laws is a veiled effort to eventually ban VPNs and force the adoption of validated digital identities.

This will likely start by using age verification for accessing VPNs. When this effort fails we'll see additional laws created to restrict the use of VPNs for only businesses. 

New Johnny Marr Out Next Month

I ordered it on vinyl - can't wait to hear the full album.

A Quick Morning Hike