Horseshoe Bend: you’ve seen it before and there are only so ways you can photograph it from near sunset. These two images are nearly the same but were made in very different ways.
The first, with the sunset, is made as a pano on my iPhone 15 Max. The iPhone does a great job, though this image is a little distorted.
Our trip to Utah and Arizona stretched over 23 days making 6 stops. Page was the last one. I have a beautiful 16MM Zeiss lens for my Nikon D800E, but it has a problem. It’s heavy and that’s only a part of what I need to make the picture. The whole camera bag with a range of lenses, filters, and other equipment weighs 25 pounds. So I decided not to take it on the trip and instead brought my Sony RX10 IV wtih it’s 24mm to 600mm zoom lens.
To make the panorama with the RX10 IV, I brought my tripod with a ball head that made it easy to take three vertical pictures in quick succession, moving from left to right. Then Lighroom does a great job of merging the three originals into the panorama.
The city of Page does a good job of handling the crowd that gathers every evening to watch the sunset. There’s plenty of parking available for $5. The five minute walk to the edge is easy and everyone is in a great mood.
Would you take medical advice from an AI? It turns out that a lot of people are doing just that and I gave it a try. I have a problem with both my ring fingers where the tendon catches something and the finger get’s stuck temporarily: it’s called trigger-finger. My massage therapist, Chris Howard, has been helping with cupping, but I thought an AI consultation would be a good next step. A few months ago I raised the issue with ChatGPT, but didn’t get much help. Now, it’s August 2026, so time to try again. Here’s my prompt:
I have a problem with trigger-finger in both hands. I have a wrist brace that I’ve used for wrist pain caused by computer use, but that doesn’t help because it doesn’t extend to the fingers. I’ve found that placing my hand flat under the pillow gives me less pain in the morning. Can you research and find an appropriate wrist brace, particularly for my right hand. I’m thinking that at worst, a baseball sliding glove might help, but the medical profession must make something better.
I’ll paste Claude’s response below. The answer was pretty good. I bought the cheaper Featol brace and it helps. I also bought the Oval-8 Finger Splits and they work very well and I can wear them much more often. So far – So good. A solid improvement and the tendons in my fingers are getting a chance to heal.
Here’s Claude’s (Opus 5) answer:
Your instinct is right, and so is the pillow trick — it’s actually the mechanism behind the standard treatment.
Why your wrist brace does nothing
Trigger finger is the flexor tendon catching as it passes through a tight pulley at the base of the finger (in the palm, not the wrist). A wrist brace immobilizes the wrong joint entirely. The pillow helps because during sleep your hand curls into a loose fist, which is precisely the position that aggravates the tendon and explains why mornings feel worst. The American Society for Surgery of the Hand also notes that when you lie down, fluid pools in the hands, and that swelling makes locking more likely overnight. Flat under the pillow keeps the tendon extended and lightly compressed. You’ve been improvising a night splint. Dr. ArthritisMedical News Today
For nights: a resting hand splint (this is the pillow, engineered)
This is the category you want if multiple fingers are involved in both hands. It’s a padded pan that holds the wrist and knuckles in neutral with the fingers laid out flat.
Specific options, roughly cheapest to nicest:
OTC 2385 Soft Resting Hand Splint (~$30–40) — rigid molded plastic shell with a washable fabric cover; it holds fingers, wrist, and thumb in a functional position and is sold in left/right versions.
The Comforter Splint (3-Point Products, ~$60–70) — this is the one hand therapists actually reach for. It supports the wrist and MCP knuckles in neutral with adjustable stays, while the finger joints stay free. Softly padded, which matters when you’re wearing it eight hours a night for two months.
Amazon has a swarm of near-identical Featol / BraceAbility / Fanwer resting splints in the $25–35 range. They’re stroke-rehab products repurposed for this, and they work, but the padding is hit-or-miss.
For days at the keyboard: a small finger splint, not a hand brace
A resting splint makes typing impossible. Here the evidence has shifted toward the smallest effective splint:
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The Oval-8 is a thin figure-eight plastic ring worn at the middle knuckle. A randomized trial comparing it against a custom MCP-blocking splint found pain reduction in both groups, but greater with the PIP (Oval-8) splint, along with better function scores — largely because patients could tolerate wearing it far longer during the day. The older, larger MCP-blocking splint (a palm-based piece with a ring around the finger base) still has good data behind it — 77% of subjects got at least partial relief — but it blocks intrinsic grasp and people take it off.
Practical note: Oval-8s are sized per finger, and fingers swell. Buy the Sizing Kit or a multi-size pack rather than guessing a single size; each splint also rotates 180° to gain a half size.
On the baseball sliding glove
Not useful. Sliding mitts are padded for impact protection but exert no extension force — they let the fingers curl freely, which is the exact motion you need to stop. Good thinking, wrong physics.
How to actually use it
Nightly wear is where the value is, and the course is longer than most people expect: typically six to ten weeks of consistent nightly use, with some improvement showing at two to three weeks. Taper gradually rather than stopping cold. Half-hearted intermittent use is the main reason splinting “fails.”
Two things worth flagging
When ordering, resting hand splints are hand-specific — confirm you’re getting Right and check the sizing chart against your palm circumference, since these run small and a too-tight splint at night is worse than none.
More importantly: bilateral trigger fingers at 70 is worth an actual evaluation rather than self-management alone. A certified hand therapist can fabricate a custom MCP-blocking splint molded to your hand in one visit (usually covered by insurance), and a hand surgeon can offer a corticosteroid injection, which has a considerably higher success rate than splinting for cases that have progressed to locking rather than just clicking. Splinting is the right first move and costs $30 instead of several hundred — but if six to eight weeks of disciplined nightly wear doesn’t move the needle, that’s the signal to escalate. I’m not a physician, and multiple digits involved on both sides is the kind of pattern a hand specialist should look at directly.
[TL;DR] Positive news about AI in science, engineering, medicine, and math deserves attention. An early morning idea turned into a ChatGPT Site in 90 minutes.
Nova Scotia kind of defines quaint. It’s rugged coastline, tidy fishing villages, and the tides of the Bay of Fundy are a site to see. All-in-all not so different from the rugged coastline of Maine, but different enough to make it interesting and fun. The scallops and lobster make it worth the trip. These photos gather a few moments from our trip around the western half of the province.
Here’s how Claude described this gallery: “Peggy’s Cove is one of Nova Scotia’s most iconic seaside villages, famous for its historic lighthouse perched on the wave-worn granite of St. Margaret’s Bay.” Kind of cliche, isn’t it. Cliche is kind of what Peggy’s Cove is like. It’s full of tourists who are supplied with plenty of places to park, lots of shops to get a bite to eat or a souvenir, and view points to paint quaint pictures or take photographs. I thought I was in a Disney theme park. It was still fun to be there.
July 4th is one of my favorite holidays. This year we’re celebrating in small town style with the Sudbury town parade and barbeque / lobster in the backyard with friends.
We enjoyed the Sudbury Parade with the theme “We the People of 01776”. Sudbury enjoys the 01776 zip code. I’m sure the battle over that was fierce.
I turn 70 this July. I’ve wound down the consulting work that kept me busy for years. My wife, Ulli, and I have a stable home, family, and retirement plan, giving me the opportunity to explore new ideas. In recent years I’ve paid attention to my health and developed an exercise program. Golf and photography are still enjoyable hobbies. I still love computers and computer programming, so learning AI and AI programming is a natural fit for my interests and a wide open area for exploration.
There’s freedom in learning something purely because it interests you, with no client and no deadline. Right now, understanding AI and using it is that thing for me. We’re at the start of a monumental technological revolution and I want to be part of it. I’ve been doing the learning and using AI for coding. One of the primary purposes of this site is to help any one who’s interested, learn what I’ve learned. It should also keep me on track as it forces me to think about how I can explain the choices I make along the way.
There other things going on in my retiree life: family, exercise, golf, photography, reading, and maintaining a house. This is going to be a place to discuss all of them.
There’s no grand plan. I have curiosity and some time. That’s enough to start. I hope some of what I share is useful, or at least entertaining.
I used to have a lot of work files. These were mostly sample databases that I had constructed to use in testing various SQL Server storage management techniques on the home server that I used to have in the basement.
[TL;DR] I watched rocket launches as a kid and wanted to be an astronaut. SPCX is expensive but still might go up. Buying was an emotional decision: YOLO!
On May 5, 1961 when Alan Shepard took his 15 minute ride into space, starting at 9:34 AM, I was four and at home with Mom and two siblings. At 9:47 AM, February 20, 1962, when John Glenn went to orbit, I was five and in kindergarten, but in the afternoon session. I’m pretty sure Mom had the TV on to both broadcasts and I was able to watch at least some of them. Those early memories are fuzzy but later launches stuck. I recall distinctly a Saturday morning watching one of the Gemini launches in my sisters’ room because one of them was sick. Dad moved a TV into the room and we played on the floor while riding out the “ground holds”. I was around eight at the time. What an adventure, I wanted to be on the top of that rocket launching into space. I also wanted to be a Cowboy and the second baseman for the New York Mets, like Ron Hunt.
When SpaceX announced its IPO my investor instincts kicked in. The share price is as astronomical as the rockets. As a prudent investor buying into an IPO at 95 times revenue didn’t seem a good choice. I spent some time with ChatGPT analyzing the dynamics of the next few months with the smallish float and SPCX being included in the indexes very quickly possibly causing a sneeze. But! Shares will be coming onto the market unusually quickly. They could thread the needle and manage a smooth liftoff. Or! They could blow up like some of last year’s Starship launches or the New Glenn’s gigantic explosion on the test stand last week. The Move-Fast-and-Break-Things ethos that SpaceX brought to rocketry from Silicon Valley requires breaking things.
Peter Diamandis, of XPrize fame, is as optimistic about the future as possible. Here’s his take:
“People are trying to price SpaceX like a normal tech company. It isn’t one. It’s three converging businesses—the launch monopoly, the Starlink cash engine, and an AI frontier lab—wrapped around a single thesis: We’re in the Singularity. You’re not buying revenue. You’re buying into humanity’s future economy.” – Peter Diamandis
In the end, it was an emotional decision. How could I not buy at least a little SpaceX? It’s the premiere company of the space age that we’re so lucky to be living through. Kind of like being in on the first days of the railroads in the 1850s. Or maybe it’s like investing in the Dutch East India Company in 1602.
I put in for two hundred shares, hoping to get at least a few. Kudos to Fidelity for managing what must have been a lot of interest. I ended up with a hundred shares. I’ll hold on to them for a long time.
Below are the rockets I’ve watched take astronauts into space.
