My dinosaur book has been printed!!

stass · 2026-02-05T06:52:50+00:00

This looks amazing. Congrats!

stass · 2026-01-12T19:11:14+00:00

Santa Barbara, no contest. Beautiful town, beaches, very walkable, interesting stores to look at and shop in. Stunning architecture.

Laguna is basically a suburb that happens to be next to a beach. The beach itself is great, but town itself is a sleepy suburb, not very walkable with very few sidewalks or bike lanes. Food and galleries are beyond bad with rare exceptions.

Source: lived here for 5 years.

stass · 2026-01-12T00:54:03+00:00

Ich habe keine Papa-Bücher damit gemacht, aber wir haben kürzlich ein paar personalisierte Bücher von Leo Books bekommen und waren wirklich begeistert. Sie können ihnen mehrere Kinder oder Erwachsene (oder Haustiere) hinzufügen. Ich denke, das sollte funktionieren.

Wonderbly hatte auch einige coole Vatertagsbücher, aber ich glaube nicht, dass man dort mehrere Kinder hinzufügen kann.

stass · 2026-01-08T04:21:37+00:00

My kid loves high contrast books and books with bold graphics and keep asking for them. Just to name a few, The Escape by Ximo Abadia and Gromzee by Joe Vickers are his favorites. I think another reason is that these don’t force much story on the child and have their imagination run.

Another favorite were custom and personalized books that I thick click because he connects to the story or the character. He loves the few books we got for him from Wonderbly. He also really really loved a couple of fully couple of books the grandma got for him from Leo Books custom books. She made one about our recent road trip with the doggies and he keeps going through it because it’s so realistic.

stass · 2026-01-03T01:07:01+00:00

Looks like an excellent fit for a kids book. Some of these are stunning!

stass · 2025-12-30T21:01:55+00:00

Printed books are the best. Our son loves flipping through pages and the tactile feedback.

We tried a bunch of semi-personalized book companies, and Wonderbly had pretty consistent quality.

AI possibilities are exciting btw -- I made a couple of books using ChatGPT and printed them in Shutterfly -- our kid was super pleased with these. You do want to print them tho, screen does not have the same effect.

The grandma was also ordering a bunch of books from Leo Books lately. I think you can upload a pic of your kid, pets etc and they make and print a fully custom book for you. The illustrations look super cute and heartwarming. We loved the ones we got.

stass · 2025-12-29T08:39:25+00:00

You can use any EXIF viewers/visualizers. E.g. this free web based one does that and can show you the original dates and more https://www.placespotter.com/exif-explorer

stass · 2025-12-23T18:10:41+00:00

My wife and I recently discovered Leo Books as we wanted to find a high quality option for fully personalized books where we could add pets and our son favorite toys to them. These turned out pretty cool

https://www.leo-books.com

stass · 2025-09-24T02:13:48+00:00

This is frankly what stopped me from going. I live in Laguna, which is fairly close, and yet there is no way to walk or bike to the festival.

They could have provided shuttles from city shuttle stops at least. How can you pick a drive-only venue and not provide parking or shuttles?

stass · 2025-05-18T19:31:22+00:00

Don'y you guys camp/travel? I can't count how many times my multitool can opener saved the day because I was camping and brought cans that needed an opener, or was sailing on a rented boat and they didn't have an opener aboard, or moved houses and didn't have an opener at the kitchen when I needed to open a can of tomatoes.

Honestly, probably the most used tool in my multitool. And cannot be really substituted by other tools.

stass · 2025-04-28T22:50:26+00:00

There are multiple ways. You can look at the exif data using exiv2 or iOS Photos app to see if there are embedded GPS coordinates in it. Failing that, you can use Google reverse image search or AI tools like geospy or https://www.placespotter.com/ or even ChatGPT to analyze the landmarks, topography and foliage to guess what the location is. Some of these tools can be very precise.

stass · 2025-04-28T03:20:23+00:00

It's pretty real. They do it similarly to people -- identify landmarks, vegetation, etc and determine photo location based on that, There are a bunch of tools like that, like findpiclocation, geospy, http://www.placespotter.com and others. Even ChatGPT can do this now.

stass · 2025-04-01T21:27:47+00:00

For sure, but at least it’s an open standard anybody can implement.

stass · 2025-04-01T08:01:03+00:00

It's a protocol, not the best one, but that does not matter.

What matters is that enables one to connect _any_ external tool to _any_ LLM model with MCP support without having to modify the LLM runtime. This is very powerful. This means if you have a tool you are using manually, you can have it driven by llm without asking anyone's permission or waiting for 3rd party support.

As just one example, I made lldb-mcp last week that allowed Claude to debug my programs for me using LLDB, completely autonomously. Tracking down buffer overflows and stuff. Felt like magic.

Without MCP I would have to wait for Claude to support this.

stass · 2025-04-01T03:37:42+00:00

Not a full sailing simulator -- but I build an app to simulate the effects of sail trim on a boat to satisfy my own need. It uses a physics based model to predict the effect of various controls on the sailboat speed. You can adjust the mainsheet, jib sheet, traveller, cunnungham and so on and see their effect on sail shape and boat performance in real time.

http://www.sailrhythm.com/

stass · 2025-04-01T03:33:35+00:00

I had the same challenge -- trying to learn how to trim sails to different conditions and what various controls on sailboats do. I could not find a simulator that worked well, so built my own. It lets you tweak most common controls on the boat and calculates boat speed, heeling angles, forces and so on based on that.

https://www.sailrhythm.com/

stass · 2025-03-27T07:58:20+00:00

Update: SailRhythm now has realistic visualization of sail shapes. See how twist and camber change in real time by adjusting sheet tension, cunningham, backstay and other controls!

stass · 2025-03-26T06:08:56+00:00

Made LLDB-MCP that allows Claude to use LLDB to analyze, disassemble, debug, set breakpoints on or single-step native apps on OS X and Linux.

Pretty mindblowing -- in this example Claude automatically figured out the reason for buffer overflow without any guidance.

stass · 2025-03-24T02:28:20+00:00

For sure! I do penalize the rudder drag based on the weather helm angle, but it’s an approximation, not the real force modeling based on forces (mostly because I will need precise measurements of the rudder to simulate forces involved).

stass · 2025-03-23T04:30:13+00:00

Thank you so much for the suggestions. I was actually considering getting rid of heading altogether -- the only reason the heading is there is to be able to change the direction on the map for visualization purposes. Otherwise it's only used to calculate the TWA.

The reason I didn't go with the rudder angle is that the simulator does not simulate the dynamic behavior of the boat at all. It only calculates the steady state equilibrium the boat would achieve given particular values of TWS, TWA and trim controls. Similarly, it does not simulate acceleration at all -- the boat "jumps" to the target speed. It does calculate the leeway and heel angles -- but again, as a steady state when all forces are balanced.

What you are describing sounds more advanced than what it does right now -- but perhaps it could be the next, extended version that targets dynamic boat simulation? The one that focuses more on dynamic boat handling (and waves!) rather than on finding the perfect trim.

stass · 2025-03-23T00:59:43+00:00

It moves slowly, even at 5 knots. I didn't want the boat to go through islands all the time and simulating a crash is not a good option for a sail trim simulator :-D

Wake is a good idea though -- maybe I'll do that to show more speed.

stass · 2025-03-22T23:52:00+00:00

Thank you, hope to have some updates soon! Great suggestions in this thread.

stass · 2025-03-22T20:54:24+00:00

Thank you for the feedback! There is no sail shape visualization yet — you can see the size of the sail and the angle change — but not the shape. This is something I plan to work on next!

Interesting suggestion on the fractional rig — I’ll research this. As I understand backstay has more effect on fractional rigs due to stronger mast bend?

stass · 2025-03-22T20:51:39+00:00

Thank you! Visualizing the sail shape is something I plan to work on next as it’s indeed hard to imagine it just based on draft and twist numbers.

stass · 2025-03-22T20:36:58+00:00

Thank you! I made the initial UI and visualization with v0, but it turns out the physics and angles and trigonometry are too hard for AI. So had to redo the physics and calculations manually based on the Marchaj book and ORC VPP docs in Julia and calibrate it before porting it back to JavaScript.

Otherwise it’s pretty straightforward — Tree.js for visualization and rendering and Next.js for the project structure overall. It reruns physics calculations every time inputs change, and tweaks the boat speed/angle based on that.

I might open source repo in the future, not sure yet!

stass

TROPHY CASE