Patrick Rothfuss writes on Terry Pratchett’s passing - and interestingly, he’s writing as a fan, not a “fellow writer”: Odds are, if you know much anything about me, you know I’ve been a fan of Pratchett for years. If you follow me on goodreads you’ve seen me write reviews so gushy that they border on the inarticulate. I didn’t know him. Honestly, I didn’t even know too much about him. I saw him speak once at a convention in Madison, and got to meet him very briefly. I wrote about it on the blog. ...

Yesterday, the NYSE went down for a couple of hours, and the fascinating thing was while it was out, stocks rallied… as soon as it came back, it plunged. Well, I guess “fascinating” is a word I can use because I’m not invested in the American market in any meaningful way, but for those involved, this kind of weird stock market behaviour makes for wondering as to what on earth is going on in the American market. ...

A collection of photos from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, including the Buran shuttle from the Russian space program that never flew. Only mildly disappointed that the outside doesn’t look like Destiny.

Blind test: can you hear the difference between uncompressed WAV, 320kbps MP3 and 128kbps MP3? I got an awful 2 of 6 for picking the WAV, though thankfully I never picked the 128kbps MP3… but it’s a close run thing.

https://vimeo.com/87342468 Sometimes I wish it snowed here so I could see what these things look like up close, and then I remember I hate the cold. Snowflakes are still pretty cool, though.