Kevin Boyd (he/him) 🇨🇦

Software Developer, Photographer, Sailing Enthusiast. (he/him)

Victoria, BC, Canada

Blog: https://whateverthing.com
Photos: https://www.kevinboyd.ca
Flickr: https://flickr.com/photos/beryllium
Signal: kboyd.01

Public Key

npub1sm7zudplraf8jq027sdneqw450tq3y69gw8ftev69zglt77pnlxqecv54w

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsgdlpwxsl375neq840gxeus82684sgjdz58r54ukdz3y04l0qelnqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dskrwqe9

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1sm7zudplraf8jq027sdneqw450tq3y69gw8ftev69zglt77pnlxqecv54w

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Last Notes

2026-05-08 18:30:08 UTC

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The winner of the 1st #HangTrek poll was "E".
There are 4 Es.
_ E _ _ _ _ _ _ _ E / _ _ _ _ _ E _ _ _ _ E
Wrong guesses: <none>

2026-04-29 22:10:23 UTC

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yeah, but it's a skill I want (coastal nav) in addition to often being a requirement for bareboat chartering. Just looking to see if there are proven resources for learning it for real, not just to satisfy an exam.

2026-04-28 17:29:09 UTC

@npub1w4d…cxnw One of my goals for this year involves getting my SailCan coastal navigation + intermediate cruising certifications. Do any of you folks have advice on resources for learning the coastal nav stuff? I've heard that the "official" book & test is a bit of a mess. Incorrect info, incorrect *answers*. Looking for an improvement over that.
#sailing

2026-04-17 19:26:10 UTC

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This morning I saw a car with a bumper sticker that said "Fuck Cancer", with the CK being the ribbon. Immediately wanted one, even though I don't bumper sticker my car.
Best wishes for your friend's recovery!

2026-03-24 21:45:12 UTC

"They Drank Our Milkshakes"
A post I've written about AI scraping swarms and how they negatively impact hobby developers such as myself.
https://whateverthing.com/blog/2026/03/23/they-drank-our-milkshakes/

2026-03-22 19:02:09 UTC

I have an older APC UPS with dead lead-acid batteries. Is there any way to replace them with something safer and longer-lived, or would that require a completely new UPS?
(I assume it would require a new one, I'm asking in the hopes of being able to save it from the recycler.)

2026-03-19 05:40:03 UTC

Does anyone know where I can find a list of all the brands owned by ultracorporations? (Unilever, nestle, P&G, etc)
Or better yet, a downloadable database that I could work with.

2026-03-10 16:47:24 UTC

RE: https://mstdn.chrisalemany.ca/@chris/116205770661191992
Yowzers. I hope this isn't a sign of a systemic issue in the Canadian Coast Guard. #sailing
#note129q…735t

2026-03-04 02:00:35 UTC

Sooooo ... does the timezone America/Vancouver mean Vancouver BC or Vancouver WA?
This may become a relevant question in November. Heh.

2026-02-19 20:11:54 UTC

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Well, it is unethical to do so while ignoring the robots file. And it's unethical to do so at such a pace that it cripples the site being scanned. And it is unethical to repackage that content as a new creation; search engines provide a value to the sites they scan, by directing traffic to them. AI scrapers extract value with nothing in return, voiding the social contract.

2026-02-13 00:08:32 UTC

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*runs it in my head* oh hey that's nice and simple. Conceptually similar to the approach I use for displaying "friendly" byte sizes.

2026-01-29 16:47:32 UTC

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This annoys me immensely, too. That and multi-page logins. Having worked on modern auth systems (as I'm sure you have, too - SSO and OIDC and all that stuff) I know there are "reasons" for it. But that doesn't mean I like it. Not one bit.

2026-01-24 17:36:11 UTC

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Huge pressure, indeed! Unfairly so.
Example: Earlier this week I made a 100% claude code PR at work.
A coworker caught a massive security vulnerability that claude had "assured" me would not be present.
(I absolutely should have caught it myself, but I was in a rush & haven't yet developed enough applied-paranoia practices around this workflow, since it was my first time using Claude Code.)
AI Assurances mean diddly squat if there aren't tests to enforce & prove them.

2026-01-08 03:00:55 UTC

One of my goals for 2026 is to write more. My first blog post of the year is now live:
"The Future Is Cooperative"
https://whateverthing.com/blog/2026/01/05/the-future-is-cooperative/
Wherein I discuss the co-op model as an alternative to corporations/startups, and share my experiences so far with some of the co-ops I am involved with.
#writingGoals #blog #cooperatives

2026-01-05 04:39:27 UTC

Having an oil industry makes you a target of United States imperialism.
Ditching fossil fuels is a national security and sovereignty imperative.

2026-01-02 04:49:04 UTC

It is 1996. I am cursing at Microsoft for making things so much more annoying than they need to be.
It is 2006. I am cursing at Microsoft for making things so much more annoying than they need to be.
It is 2026. I am cursing at Microsoft for making things so much more annoying than they need to be.

2025-12-30 17:28:57 UTC

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Yes, they are selling it via their larger merch store ... a bit of a weird experience, even for me (as someone who knows very much what dropout and D20 are). But it worked fine, and didn't require payment info.

2025-12-30 06:38:48 UTC

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Thanks for the link! I watched that season of D20, it was a fun one. Your weyland-yutani misadventure sounds fun! Like a darker Starstruck, with a very sensible crew.

2025-12-19 00:23:02 UTC

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Very interesting! There's a harbour nearby that I'd like to try this with. The article doesn't say which beam width you were on, but I assume it was the widest beam?

2025-12-15 04:38:19 UTC

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I have to take a ferry to have that Apple Store experience.
That's an indictment of Apple Stores.

2025-11-15 18:59:26 UTC

Anyone happen to know why my "home" and "end" keys seem to be ignored by Firefox on macOS?

2025-10-27 03:11:05 UTC

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Yikes :( And yeah, I hear you on the current state of tech. It's pretty vile.

2025-10-23 16:59:22 UTC

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Aww. I was considering going sailing near race rocks tomorrow.
Forecast for tomorrow isn't looking that bad actually.... 🤔

2025-10-21 00:45:37 UTC

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I'm hoping I can find a non-corporate approach to this soon. Something that is in some way enshittification-proof.

2025-10-04 18:42:48 UTC

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I'm in, sign me up.
I am currently the membership director of a non-profit co-op ( @npub10qx…cche ) and pretty busy with all my hobby projects, but some of those projects are related to co-ops in general, and some of them are related to video production in general, so this is of great interest to me & I'd be happy to help with founding.

2025-10-02 17:30:48 UTC

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Most of the assholes I know are fairly well-read. And while I don't know what their reading list looks like, in terms of novels vs nonfiction, I expect it leans toward nonfiction.
Hey assholes: post what you've read lately!

2025-10-01 15:43:19 UTC

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around, as in the ocean side? Worth it to be cautious, if so, but one should never completely rule out an adventure ...

2025-09-23 17:24:47 UTC

Has anyone else had to deal with character encoding issues when reading from/importing into Digital Ocean Managed Databases (MySQL)?
I've had two nights of head-scratching over my scenario, and none of my experimental remedies have borne fruit.
(latin1 vs utf8mb4, corrupting emojis, that sort of thing)

2025-09-14 17:24:30 UTC

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Yep. Just be prepared for that math to stop mathing, and quickly. Both from GH rotting and from the other offerings improving.

2025-09-14 15:42:35 UTC

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I feel like I should care, because GH is part of a machine that serves incompatible interests. In the long run, I think it's a good idea to move away from it - not just for moral reasons, but because it's slowly going to become deleterious to keep using it. Particularly for OSS.
I don't think there needs to be a rush, but it should likely be put on a roadmap somewhere. So in that sense, I "don't care" about urgency.

2025-09-02 15:34:48 UTC

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hmm, my suggestions would probably not be profitable enough at smaller scale (super reliable object storage, email service provisioning a la Iterable, event/meetup coordination tooling)

2025-09-01 16:40:35 UTC

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in my case, this doesn't hold true for my hobby programming projects. Starting is easy. Finishing is impossible.

2025-08-20 22:12:06 UTC

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Celeron 300A with a Banshee?

2025-07-29 05:41:17 UTC

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yes, but it should have started with the murdery one.

2025-07-06 19:27:03 UTC

#SilentSunday
https://media.phpc.social/media_attachments/files/114/807/932/163/994/710/original/3ffd47ffe50616f0.jpeg

2025-06-27 16:18:05 UTC

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Would the clean windows machine show ads?

2025-06-01 06:25:58 UTC

A view of the 2025 Swiftsure yacht race off of Victoria, BC, Canada (with the olympic mountains in the background) #sailing #sailboat #swiftsure #yyj #victoriaBC #flickr
https://flic.kr/p/2r8fJea
https://media.phpc.social/media_attachments/files/114/606/679/884/153/352/original/84ac9d83ec0b5d50.png

2025-06-01 03:53:50 UTC

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how about "kerflumpt"? It's like verklempt, but overcome with exhaustion rather than emotion. (And no, it isn't real. But we could make it real!)

2025-05-21 19:53:03 UTC

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Password managers often rely on the copy-paste buffer / clipboard. When the operating system maker decides to violate trust by constantly recording apps, why wouldn't they also record clipboard contents?
The entire operating system is suspect.

2025-05-15 15:30:24 UTC

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I heart interac email transfers. And I can deposit paper cheques by my credit union's app.
But you're not wrong at all. :)

2025-04-25 16:52:13 UTC

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this is one of the reasons i haven't started migrating away from digital ocean

2025-03-10 15:59:09 UTC

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nice! I wonder if it has any deep caves or hollow lava tubes ......

2025-03-05 00:58:24 UTC

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Ah, so they are not Ferrero Roche chocolates as i first thought

2025-02-25 05:06:50 UTC

"the wreck of the tai pan"
#yyj #victoriaBC #sailboat #sailing #shipwreck #photography
https://flic.kr/p/2qNCV4b
https://media.phpc.social/media_attachments/files/114/062/786/952/513/415/original/fedb67f607f3f4c4.png

2025-02-11 03:32:55 UTC

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One reason I tend to avoid street photography is because of the pickiness/pretentiousness of the other practitioners ... I just want to take photos that I like.

2025-02-06 19:15:36 UTC

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they say both depending on which page you are on. One of the things that makes me wary, as well.

2025-02-05 20:27:31 UTC

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one I heard about yesterday is FullHost, but I haven't tried it yet. https://www.fullhost.com/

2025-02-01 09:18:38 UTC

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yeah, it's not a good feeling to see this happening. And to know that in that election, dem votes were so much lower than GOP ones.
Some people say that the EC means that the election was lost by only 250K votes. But that discounts the turnout problem. Fact is, people who didn't vote have spoken & said that they are okay with what is currently happening.
They couldn't be arsed to stop it. So that's way more than half that are okay with it.

2025-01-21 06:59:42 UTC

"not to scale"
https://media.phpc.social/media_attachments/files/113/865/049/921/415/681/original/640945d8e567ecc4.jpeg

2025-01-14 05:08:02 UTC

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now someone needs to remix it & autotune it 😂

2025-01-08 04:48:27 UTC

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(honestly, a snowball fight would be really funny)

2025-01-08 04:43:44 UTC

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i hope Greenland's forces were able to repel him

2025-01-06 23:50:08 UTC

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unfortunately, i don't think they have any topic of substance that they are "for", so they'll probably stick with their tired old whinge:
Noun. Verb. Justin Trudeau.

2024-12-08 22:29:32 UTC

thetis lake in fog
#victoriaBC #yyj #photography #flickr #silentSunday
https://flic.kr/p/2qyKD25
https://media.phpc.social/media_attachments/files/113/619/564/500/001/030/original/17f13b284946d8ce.png

2024-12-07 19:16:57 UTC

This could be useful - a tool for finding ocean-friendly cleaning products for boats, and checking the toxicity of products you might already own.
https://cheknews.ca/charting-a-path-for-boaters-to-clean-up-toxic-ocean-impacts-1228037/
#sailboat #sailing #boats #environment

2024-10-29 19:11:39 UTC

Soooo... "unauthorized photography" might end up making a comeback at some point in the future. We could be headed for a time when photography is illegal & we can only use generative ai to make digital approximations. And the inputs would be monitored by the state.
I hope that doesn't come to pass.
https://petapixel.com/2024/10/29/four-year-investigation-uncovers-photographer-who-died-taking-700-images-of-nazi-occupied-france-raoul-minot/

2024-10-08 00:17:42 UTC

New band name just dropped
https://media.phpc.social/media_attachments/files/113/268/926/580/039/593/original/4c615d17b05f7832.jpeg

2024-09-13 23:53:13 UTC

Anyone in #yyj #victoriaBC want an all-weather ebike? RideTheGlide is having a forklift sale. (Because of the time a dude smashed their front entrance in with a forklift and stole some bikes.)
https://media.phpc.social/media_attachments/files/113/132/934/857/821/439/original/3cb7daeaad5004c3.jpeg

2024-09-09 00:31:24 UTC

Lost my wallet this afternoon in Sidney BC. If this were twitter-of-old, I could reasonably tag this with where I lost it ( #Sidney #SidneyBC #yyj #VictoriaBC) and hope that someone might see it and reconnect me with it. But, sadly, I don't think fediverse has quite the same level of reach. And I'm certainly not signing up to facebook or whatever to try asking there.
Hopefully someone found it and did something reasonable, like dropping it in the post.

2024-09-04 21:35:51 UTC

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i will admit to being curious about why momoa is dressed as some kind of undercover/offbrand 80s he-man, though.

2024-09-04 21:24:53 UTC

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all the same problems as the Borderlands movie, I fear. Plus some new ones.

2024-08-28 17:47:02 UTC

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I suppose it's like any service, if the service is good enough & the market can bear it, they can charge what they want.
https://media.phpc.social/media_attachments/files/113/040/897/979/864/063/original/8d1076efd2f95e6d.mp4

2024-08-27 01:32:27 UTC

If you were to explain mergers/acquisitions/consolidation in terms of entropy, how would you approach that? Would you say that in a supposedly free market, businesses, as a rule, lose entropy to the point where there can only ever be a very few super-conglomerations?

2024-08-13 23:39:48 UTC

Ooh, here are some neat new UX improvements on Flickr: https://blog.flickr.net/en/2024/08/13/managing-your-albums-on-flickr-just-got-easier/ #flickr

2024-07-30 03:22:12 UTC

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this olympics *also* features measles and dengue, so ... yes.