So Long, and Thanks for All the HITs

Amazon Mechanical Turk is shutting down soon. I came up with an idea for a small project to say goodbye. I was getting pretty excited to build this, but I just discovered that Amazon has stopped allowing new Mechanical Turk (MTurk) requester signups. Since I don’t already have an account, I cannot execute this idea. So I’m going to offer it up to anyone who’d like to take it and run with it.

The idea is to use MTurk itself to help the people who worked on HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks) to share their memories. I was thinking of starting with a small HIT asking folks to fill in the blank:

Mechanical Turk was .

I was going to test that HIT to see what actually happened, but I hoped to hear things like:

Mechanical Turk was how I paid for groceries when money was tight.

Mechanical Turk was weird little jobs at 2 a.m.

Mechanical Turk was the reason I could stay home with my kid.

Mechanical Turk was tedious and strangely addictive.

For this hit I planned to pay a few cents, collect 1,000 responses, and then put those answers onto a slowly scrolling page at onefinalhit.com (yes, the domain name is available). I was hoping it could be a real-time feed as answers came in.

I was considering a second HIT that asked a little more:

What is the most interesting or memorable HIT you ever worked on?

For this one I was hoping for some longer stories around these sorts of scenarios:

I transcribed an audio diary from someone describing the first months after losing their spouse, and I still think about the way they talked about ordinary mornings.

I reviewed handwritten postcards people had sent to their grandparents. It was repetitive work, but every once in a while one would feel like being allowed into a tiny part of someone’s life.

I labeled photos for a project and realized halfway through that they were family photos documenting someone’s childhood. By the end, I felt like I knew the people in them.

It would have been awesome to collect stories about especially weird, tedious, funny, meaningful, or unexpectedly lucrative work. I imagined these longer stories would live in a separate section. The interface in my head was a single story on the page and a swipe to go to the next story.

I know there are rules around anonymity on MTurk, but I hoped to credit the stories based on first name or something similar. The HITs would make clear that answers would be shared in a public archive designed to be a remembrance of the work real people did on the service.

Once MTurk shut down, I planned to convert the site into a static site that could be served indefinitely.

So if anyone out there has an existing requester account and a couple hundred dollars burning a hole in their pocket, please feel free to take this idea and run with it. And let me know when you put it online!

In the back of my mind I’ve always wanted to do some sort of goofy Amazon Mechanical Turk project. I guess it’s now or never. But I don’t have any ideas…

An astounding performance by Cory Wong, Joshua Redman, and more:

Competition’s Good

A friend let me know about Olly’s recent blog post. Olly owns and operates Pagecord, a very nice blogging service running in the same world as Pika. It sounds like another indie blogging developer accused Olly of plagiarism, and that makes me sad. I’ve had a couple conversations with Olly, and he sure seems like a nice guy who just wants to build the blogging software he wants to use. He offers it for a fair price for others to use if they have the same attitude toward blogging that he does. It’s a very familiar story to me!

Olly shared that he doesn’t read the blogs or socials of competitors. I’ll admit that I do check in on the blogs of other indie blogging services, as well as the blogs of their creators. The primary reason is that I’m a geek about blogging, so naturally I find it interesting. Reading the personal blogs of the creators also makes sense because we have something pretty big in common.

Olly also mentioned that the news from other blog builders doesn’t make him feel good, and I’ll also admit that at times I feel that way. If someone else builds something cool, after the cool wears off, of course I’m a bit disappointed in myself.

I was having an email conversation with Tom recently, and he brought up the subtle difference between when a group/network/piece of writing is more aspirational than inspirational. Keeping up with competition feels like something that should inspire me to build my own cool stuff. Yet it seems pretty self-evident that reading about the things competitors have built is much more likely to make me feel like I need to keep up with them, or, worse, disappointed in myself. Perhaps I should limit myself to the creators’ personal blogs?

At the end of Olly’s post (go read it before reading this!), he says:

The more people who want to blog, the better it is for all of us! We need to support each other’s work and focus on the greater goal of getting people blogging again.

I’ve most certainly written this sort of thing before as well. I’m not saying that Olly is copying me, though! This is a very natural conclusion. WordPress powers like 40% of the internet. I’m sure there’s some stupid-high percent of people that use social media. The more people know that there are alternatives to these options for self-expression, the more likely it is that they’ll learn about each of our indie blogging services. And that’s a very good thing!

Boston

We went to Boston the first week of August. The planning for this was unique as the first step was securing tickets to watch these young men perform in one of three cities. See, the closest city to us in which they are performing is Chicago, but the timing of those shows did not work for our schedule. Boston (well, Foxborough) won out, and that was a good thing because there’s very a lot of things to see in the area!

We made our home base Salem for the first few nights. At least three of our group were excited for the witchy, ghosty experience. Two of our group could take it or leave it, but that didn’t matter because Salem was also filled with history (they had their quatercentenary parade [!] on the day we arrived) and good eats. We were pleasantly surprised by how much we enjoyed being in Salem. It was more of a destination and less of an “interesting place to homebase” than we expected.

Parking for a Concert at Gillette Stadium

Parking a vehicle for a concert at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, is quite a challenge. Before heading to the BTS concerts this past week I did some research, even asking Chat GPT about how to handle parking. To its credit, with my hints about what I wanted, it ended up putting us at a pretty good spot in someone’s yard. The spot was a 25-minute walk from the stadium.

We were staying at a hotel about four miles south of the stadium. Our tickets provided us free parking in the general parking lot across US-1, but I was skeptical. A bit of reading said you could end up waiting in that lot for quite a while after a concert. After day one, we talked to some folks who parked there and discovered they had literally not moved their car in the lot for about two hours. Not waiting in line, but literally just sitting in their car unable to move into a line.

It’s been a hot minute. Time for a Barry update!

Last week we spent some time by the lake at a rental property. Lots of relaxing and a few activities.

Part of the location choice was because our youngest took part in a five-day goalie camp nearby. Goalies are very much under coached in youth soccer, so she really enjoyed getting specific goalie training by world class coaches. Though she was also completely worn out after the week. They kept the kids working the whole time!

It was also awesome to have both my and Jesse’s parents along for the trip. We’re thankful that we all get along for week-long trips like this. And we’re even more grateful for the time we get to spend together!

This past week was filled with July 4th, a lovely visit from family, and lots of music.

The music in this case took the form of drum and bugle corps, of which me and my family are big fans. To the outsider, it’s like paying money to go watch marching bands. The whole concept is likely alien to them. I contend if you put almost anyone in a seat up high on the fifty yard line, they would be absolutely blown away.

The Madison Scouts Drum & Bugle Corps performs a field show in a stadium under the lights, with musicians spread across the football field, pit percussion at the front sideline, and spectators watching from the stands. — The Madison Scouts

I also saw Disclosure Day. It didn’t click for me. It sounds like a lot of people weren’t quite sure what they thought of it.

We have collectively been recovering from a physically and emotionally draining two weeks of marching band. We all were caught napping at some point throughout the early days of this week! It’s been nice to have activities wind down this week, and we’ll have a bit of relaxation for a few weeks going forward.

It’s been raining a lot around here. No flooding in our area, but I think there’s been some within an hour or two of us. We’re hoping our annual July 4th festivities are not washed out this year.

My brother and his family are visiting today. We only get to see them once or twice a year, so we’re excited to hang for, well, 24 hours or so. 🙂

Time to get cooking in preparation for all of this. Cole slaw, cucumber salad, some desserts, and more. Let’s go!

I saw this screenshot and a lot of memories came flooding back. I had totally forgotten about this game!

Screenshot of the retro *Spy vs. Spy* video game showing split-screen rooms for the white spy and black spy, with inventory panels and countdown timers on the right.

For whatever reason it immediately made me think of these two games:

Screenshot of a retro top-down motorcycle arcade game showing small bikes racing through a maze-like track, with a score, fuel gauge, radar map, and round indicator on the right side of the screen.

Screenshot of a retro side-scrolling fantasy arcade game showing a small armored knight attacking a large red dragon that is breathing fire, with a rocky cave background and game status bars along the top and bottom.

The past two weeks have been full of marching band. We’ve been following our kids attending parades for eight or nine years now, chaperoning for most of those. It’s a fast and furious summer competitive parade season, and they’ve had a blast with it. Jesse and I marched when we grew up. All of our kids have marched. We are a marching band people.

Marching band members perform in a street parade while a construction worker in a hard hat and high-visibility vest stands in the foreground directing them. — The youngest even has a tuba solo!

As a result of the above, our summers don’t really get started until July, and I’m getting older, so the amount of tired I am right now is pretty notable. Upcoming we have some nice time with family as well as relaxing time next to a lake on the schedule.

Pika has been humming along very nicely, with our biggest update in a long time, The Pika Pulse, arriving this week. It has definitely been fun to read all kinds of different blog posts being written on Pika. There’s a fascinating diversity of writing going on there. 😻

I’m also trying my best to shift down a gear on work for the summer. I, and we, have been pushing pretty hard in 2026. For the rest of the summer I’d like to close the laptop a little earlier, and take some Fridays off to catch up on all the other things life demands.

Do We Need Billionaires?

A significant portion of the population in the USA still thinks of Reaganomics as certified fact rather than a largely discredited theory. By this mindset the engine of our economy requires people to strive for a ton of money. A rising tide lifts all boats and all that.

First, I got to wondering, were US billionaires even a thing at the end of Reagan’s term? As a tween at the time, I couldn’t really remember. Turns out, yes:

Sam Walton • $6.7 billion • Wal-Mart Stores
John Kluge • $3.2 billion • Metromedia
Ross Perot • $3.0 billion • Electronic Data Systems
Donald Newhouse • $2.6 billion • Publishing
Samuel Newhouse Jr. • $2.6 billion • Publishing
Henry Hillman • $2.5 billion • Industrialist
Lester Crown • $2.3 billion • Inheritance / investments
Anne Cox Chambers • $2.25 billion • Inheritance / Cox Enterprises
Barbara Cox Anthony • $2.25 billion • Inheritance / Cox Enterprises
Warren Buffett • $2.2 billion • Stock market

Then, I needed some context for the difference between a million and a billion dollars. It kind of sounds like a similar thing, yes? Well, a clever internet person said, “The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is approximately a billion dollars.” In reality there’s a big difference between a million and a billion dollars, and I think it’s hard to understand it. Here are some comparisons between a million and a billion of something. Maybe one of these comparisons will help to register the vastness of the difference for you:

A million seconds is 11.57 days. A billion seconds is 31.71 years.
A million marbles fills a bedroom closet. A billion marbles fills over one hundred 12 × 12 × 8 foot bedrooms.
Flying a million miles will have you circling the earth 40 times. Flying a billion miles circles the earth 40,000 times.
A million miles gets you two round trips to the moon. A billion miles gets you 2,000 round trips.
A million dollars in a stack of $100 bills is 3.6 feet tall. A billion dollars in $100 bills is almost ¾ of a mile tall.
A million dollar bills laid end-to-end would stretch 97 miles. A billion dollar bills laid end-to-end would circle the earth nearly four times.
If you spend $1,000 a day, a million dollars would last 2.7 years. A billion dollars would last 2,740 years.
If you spend $1,000,000 a day, a million dollars would last one day. A billion dollars would last 2.7 years.

Wow!

Happy Anniversary

It’s our 26th anniversary today. We had a nice lunch at Jesse's favorite restaurant. Very nice meal.

I've never had a banana split and have been trying to get Jesse to share one with me for a couple of years. So we walked to the ice cream shop and they had it on the menu.

We were too deep into it when we discovered that no one working had ever made a banana split before, so we got what you see in the picture complete with bruised banana, no whipped cream, and no cherry.

We went outside to eat at the sidewalk seating. Then construction workers started jack hammering the decorative rock the city installed just a couple years ago. We have no idea why.

Thankfully the wasps in the wasp nest that was at eye level about 18 inches from our faces didn't sting us. And the ice cream part of the banana split was good! 🤣

Jesse and I eating at a sidewalk table, with a mobile jackhammer and broken up rock strewn across the sidewalk.

The biggest event of the past week? Ava’s college graduation! Truth be told, she graduated last December, but the ceremony was last weekend and it was a great time. Quite a few family were able to make it to Des Moines to spend a fun weekend celebrating.

I got a little sidetracked early this week when I discovered there is an account that is basically using Pika as a nice dashboard for their company blog. They write posts on Pika and their company blog reads the Pika RSS feed to publish the posts on their company site. This isn’t a big deal, but their implementation (that I assume was vibe-coded) was hitting Pika with 100,000-150,000 requests every day. Woof!

Sometimes the national anthem at high school track meets can be a bit painful to listen to, but we were fortunate to hear a fantastic one by a high school junior this week.

I must say the effects at Harry Potter and the Cursed Child were fantastic. The play was good for those of us who are steeped in the lore. I imagine it was inaccessible for those who aren’t.

Stage preshow at Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Why am I thinking about dipping back into Mastodon and Bluesky? I’ve been away for six or seven (!) months and it’s been good. I feel a bit like I’d like I’m curious if I could do it in a way that would only be a fifteen-minute commitment each week. I have doubts, but I suppose then I could just eject again.

Hmm…I think I’ll resist a bit more.

How Everest Has Changed Since Into Thin Air (archive):

When I climbed to the summit of Everest in May 1996, I was only the 621st person to arrive there since the mountain was first summited, in May 1953. During the 30 years following my ascent, Everest was climbed approximately 13,000 times.

Sometimes a political cartoon hits so hard and direct that it brings a tear to your eye in more ways than one.

Spent this morning at Minnebar. This year was the 20th anniversary. I’ve had several posts about Minnebar on this blog through the years. I’ve only been able to go a couple times over the past ten years and it was good to see many familiar faces. (Even some Minnesota expats. 👋, Luke!)

(Oh, and I left my conference shirt in a room at some point and it was no longer there when I returned. If you have no conference shirt can you even say you were there?)

I called TRUNCATE on a Postgres database table in production for the first time. That was nerve wracking!

I did some wood work for the first time in a while. I’m working on a loft for Emma. I don’t know whether it’s time away from woodworking or just the type of project, but this felt a lot more like work and a lot less like hobby. Part of it might also be because it’s such a physically big project and that is a lot for my older body.

Four loft legs, each in an ‘L’ shape, each clamped with 5 woodworking clamps. — You can never have too many clamps

I’m way behind, but I just learned that Songkick was purchased by Suno. Did I know what Suno was before I learned that? No, but it sounds pretty ick. From their own home page:

Make any song you can imagine
Start with a simple prompt or dive into our pro editing tools, your next track is just a step away.

Yeah, ick. Time to migrate to Bandsintown? Something else? Give up?

I just finished the excellent Fela Kuti: Fear No Man podcast by Jad Abumrad and team. Highly recommended.

I think I might become an Onion paper subscriber. Anyone else going back to paper?

Discovered NOT A HOTEL. A man can dream.

An absurd home that I can’t describe on a mountain in Hokkaido, Japan.

This is a fun brainstorm about snail mail sign-ups. I’ve been trying some snail mail things to thank a handful of Pika customers. Unfortunately it hasn’t been very effective. There’s been almost a complete lack of response. I’m not even entirely sure if most people received my mail. So I think snail mail sign-up would effectively be no sign-up. Still this could be fun for a personal project or an art project experiment.

Drake Relays sunset over the track — Drake Relays

We’ve been working hard on Pika Pulse for a number of weeks. We keep hitting blockers, many in the form of our own lack of confidence in what we’ve built. With most things I’m a ship-fast-and-adjust sort of person, but this is one that really has us being cautious. This is not due to concerns about the specifics of anything, but more the general shape of Pulse. Being completely honest, we are also very aware of the possible lasting impact Pulse could have on the day-to-day working experience of our team of two.

A Dynamic Now Page with Pika

Since building Pika I’ve wanted to incorporate a “now and then” sort of now page with dynamic history. With the recent flurry of updates to Pika variables, I realized that my dream could now be made reality. It turns out that my recent habit of writing Friday posts is effectively me writing what I’m doing/seeing/thinking, well, now(ish).

So now my now page is no longer chronically stale! If you happen to write a “general state of things” post every week or month, you can do the same thing on your own Pika site.

The page is pretty simple. First I wrote “Now” as my title. Then in the page body:

{{ posts_in_stream tag: “Friday” with_excerpts: no limit: 1 }}

### Then

Here’s to now pages past:

{{ posts tag: “Friday” skip: 1 }}

I put the body text above in a code block and wrote it as Markdown to avoid variables rendering on this post here. You may or may not be able to copy-paste the above variables into your Pika editor.

And that’s it. You may notice that my “Then” pages are linked dates without any titles. AI helped me with some wild CSS to modify Pika’s default output to what you see there. If you want something similar, you’re welcome to look at the CSS in my now page’s source to get started. Just look for .post-link in the page source.

The HomePod Can Hear Alarms

Did you know that the Apple HomePod can recognize alarms in your home and alert you about them?

We discovered this a few weeks ago while we were vacationing in Phoenix. While relaxing in the sun, every member of our household received an alert on their phones. I cannot remember exactly what it said, but it was in notification center and said something to the effect of, “An alarm is sounding in your home.”

This certainly got our adrenaline pumping! We quickly checked the other smart device we have in our home: Nest smoke detectors. There were no alerts, neither of the smoke nor carbon monoxide variety, coming from those devices.

I was a bit confused at this point as tapping the notification center alert took me to Apple Home, but I could not see any alerts on the screen it took me to, nor could I find any notifications within the app. Perhaps this is because “The notification remains in the Home app until the alarm sound stops”? That seems like an odd implementation.

It’s a weird state to be in with my work feeling like a vocation. I love doing it, I love making progress on Pika, and I’m super grateful to be in this position. Yet there are some things I enjoy in life that I can’t seem to find time to do these days. I see movies, but not as many as I’d like. I’d like to spin some records and just listen. Ironically I’m having trouble finding time to blog. Etc.

I wonder if I should start a blogging series about watching all of, say, the AFI 100 movies or maybe Ebert’s The Great Movies since I have his first book on my shelf? But…the idea of such a blogging series makes me want to build an integrated movie posting/collection feature into Pika. 🤔

Try to deliver your tech-job application in person, I dare you!

Could you leave your application at the loading bay? Behind the building, where the trucks bring things... because that's where physical things go...