As I was working on new tools for my personal assistant this week, I ended up adding web search and thereby getting the content of a website to the toolbox. Automating anything web related in 2026 is a pretty annoying experience, and with good reason. It is understandable that website owners add scraping safeguards, considering the state of the web. Luckily, when you build tools to behave well, things are manageable.
Valve announced the Steam Machine and its price(s), causing much unrest online. Some saw it coming, some are disappointed, some have a more realistic view that this is the price of non-subsidized hardware in 2026. I think the price is fine for what you get, but you should not be paying it if you are comfortable building a computer yourself.
There are good ideas, bad ideas and the ideas I get when sitting on a couch holding the paw of my dog for two weeks (while she is recovering from surgery). One thing I am really not a fan of is the current landscape of CalDav servers. So what better to do than read some RFCs while a coding agent bootstraps a “kind of not working but close enough” skeleton that I can make actually work in between treats, all the pets required for recovery and "who is the best girl?! YOU ARE THE BEST GIRL!".
Sometimes I wonder why things are more complicated than they have to be. I have donated to Gamers Outreach in the past, multiple times, so I obviously receive their newsletter. I also follow some VTubers, some are great musicians, some voice actors, some are just entertaining and happen to play the niche of games I enjoy watching on the side. Some are, according to my wife, "absolutely unhinged and need to be kept away from children" (one of them she said that about is a mother of four). (Note from wife: I do not remember saying that, but he does indeed enjoy his vtubers on the slightly unhinged side!)
It has been nearly 6 years since I last made any significant changes to my video call and conference setup. Back then I ditched the Logitech Brio (which sometimes showed odd behavior on macOS) and got an HDMI-USB adapter and a Canon DLSR camera. While this setup might be a bit overkill, it worked really well and the video quality was great.