The view from here: Amazon.com is fumbling and stumbling

  • April 22, 2026
Categories
In the Track of the Bookworm The Diary of Lupin Pooter ZAMAON.C0M
The existence of a monopoly or near-monopoly is inherently undesirable, even under the best conditions (i.e. if it were managed by perfectly incorruptible, ethical, and competent executives and always delivered the highest quality of goods and services at the lowest possible prices). When the juggernaut begins to develop tics and faults and to malfunction, its […]

“Buy Me a Rocket” is a story which doesn’t exist and which was never written by Alfred Bester.

  • September 11, 2025
Categories
In the Track of the Bookworm Is that the way it is? Questions for the Experts The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Being fed an example of the sort of grammatically correct but completely false word salad that ‘AI’ hypesters tend to dishonestly mischaracterize as a hallucination in hopes of creating a sense of equivalency, in the mind of the listener, between LLM software systems and organic brains through the implication that an LLM is on some level susceptible to the same sorts of derangements as the human mind is irritating. Here, I describe an incident where Google inserted a blob of ‘AI’ garbage atop legitimate search results and this ‘AI’ slop referenced a completely nonexistent science fiction story.

Scanning… Scanning… Deep Scanning… Results may reveal names and aliases!

  • August 22, 2025
Categories
HerpDerp Is that the way it is? The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Have you ever seen a photo of a public figure in the news or somewhere else online and wondered about someone else, apparently an associate or a member of their entourage, also shown in the same image? In the same way that, for example, when you re-watched Pulp Fiction for the first time in years, […]

Howdy! It’s midsummer already, huh?

  • July 22, 2025
Categories
HerpDerp Is that the way it is? The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
That’s quite a bit of condensation inside the polymer flex sections of this gel knee pad, eh? The days are long but the years weeks and months are short. Trite but true. So what happened was… I blinked in May and, when I opened my eyes, July was almost over. Busy as I’ve been, though, […]

SMILES now just $11/L!

  • May 13, 2025
Categories
HerpDerp The Diary of Lupin Pooter
The video clip embedded here was cropped and tweaked from video recorded using a handheld mobile phone, aimed outwards through a vehicle windshield during refueling at an Esso station in Hong Kong and subsequently fixed up with a video stabilization tool called vidstab.

Some Photos (20250315)
[♥ MOSTLY OF MASCOTS (っ◔◡◔)っ ♥]
Meeting Garlic Dracula

  • March 24, 2025
Categories
HerpDerp Spitting Images The Diary of Lupin Pooter
During a recent meander around Tsuen Wan, I snapped some photos. One of the first things that caught my eye was a poster informing the public that two new classes of appliance, dehumidifiers and tumble-style clothes dryers, have been added to the list of REE covered by the WEEE scheme. Imperfect summary: Appliance-makers and retailers […]

A special (and useful) mechanical pencil, from the Faber-Castell exam card pencil set

  • February 28, 2025
Categories
The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS Writing ∧ Drawing Implements 🖉
In photos of tools that I took for the preceding post on this site, to give an idea of the relative sizes of the implements, as a rough scale I included the mechanical pencil that I’d used to mark up the pieces of wood and plywood that I’d cut and drilled.

Crumpling cabinet feet/wheel mounts: jerry-riggin’ a solution

  • February 27, 2025
Categories
Contrivances HerpDerp Makin' stuff and breakin' stuff Mucking About With Things The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
Back in September, I mentioned modding some vintage metal filing cabinets by replacing #3/8-16 screw-on foot pads with M10-bolt stainless steel wheels. That project entailed re-doing the threads in the holes on the footpad mounts by tapping the screw holes. It seemed to work perfectly and, at the time, I was quite pleased with myself.

It’s not called the wheel, it’s not called the carousel, it’s called the donut.
Mister Donut [Japanese relict version] in Hong Kong.

  • December 1, 2024
Categories
Grubbin' HerpDerp Is that the way it is? The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Part of the LED sign outside the recently-opened ‘Mister Donut’ shop in the K11 mall in Tsim Sha Tsui. Starting in young adulthood, my once robust sweet tooth and my propensity for consuming junk food in general (bagged snacks, carbonated sugary drinks, etc.) gradually faded away. A slice of cheesecake or a pint of ice […]

Knock, knock. Winter is coming has come to Hong Kong

  • November 22, 2024
Categories
All My Friends Are Insects HerpDerp Is that the way it is? The Diary of Lupin Pooter
For the majority of the year, Hong Kong weather is sweltering. But there are a couple of months where it gets cool enough that you’d do well to wear a light jacket or a hoodie while out and about. Not very long ago, I was celebrating the arrival of cooler weather. Thirty-ish days later, I’m pleased to report another seasonal step-change. We’re seeing low-60s °F (high-ish teens in °C). Hong Kong’s version of winter has begun.

Messing around with Tapcons and a concrete brick

  • November 12, 2024
Categories
HerpDerp Makin' stuff and breakin' stuff Mucking About With Things Personal Firsts Swarf + Copeaux + Scobs The Diary of Lupin Pooter To see a world in a grain of sand TØØLS
This is a followup to my recent post on concrete fasteners. A large-scale furniture assembly project has been polished off and it’s about time to give anchoring our bookshelves to the walls a go.

Twitter (aka “X” aka “Xitter”) individual tweet (aka “xeet”) page re-title-er (userscript workaround for Twitter broken-ness)

  • November 1, 2024
Categories
Contrivances HerpDerp JavaScript
To those amongst you who are active on Twitter (now known as X and colloquially to some as Xitter), even if you’re simply browsing and not actively posting/tweeting/xeeting, and who use browser bookmarks: today’s post ought to be right up your alley! First, some background. Note: I don’t use smartphone social media apps, so we’re […]