The Secure Scuttlebutt

05/09/2026, 09:23:30 PM

Race Report: 2026 'Round the Mountain

This is a lovely 10 mile paddling race around lakes that circle Dewey Mountain in Saranac Lake. I walked about two miles from where I was staying near the finish, to the start, to do the race and also to close the big loop.

The weather was perfect. A bit chilly but perfect for staying active. It was sunny much of the time with only one windy bit where we had to fight a little to keep from going sideways.

We did this race in the racing canoe as our last big workout before the General Clinton 70-miler.

My primary goal was to not fall in. Up to this point, we've fallen in about once per trip on average. The boat is a lot tipper than the one I'm used to using. Goal achieved: we didn't fall in. The start was incredibly dicey, but I convinced the other paddler to stay out of the way of the chaos and just hold back until things smoothed out and there was room to pass. This worked well.

My secondary goal was to go a little bit fast. I knew some people in the race that it would have been nice to beat, but mainly I wanted to beat my solo time from the previous year, and if it were possible to beat the the pair my crew-mate was in the previous year, that would be ideal, too. This was a great success. We went about ten minutes faster than I did solo and faster than all the times/people I had my eye on. So I'm happy about all of that. I'm not usually determined to go fast, but in this case I've been frustrated that having two people in a racing boat hasn't been overwhelmingly speedy up to this point.

Finally, this was the first time we've been out canoeing that I didn't feel like my arms were going to immediately fall off. I think it's a combination of getting in slightly better shape and improving my form somewhat.

image:'Round the Mountain 2026 wave 1 start - a bunch of canoes and kayaks in a lake, just off the beach, ready to go

The place we're staying is one of our favorites. I particularly enjoy watching all the vehicles with canoes arrive in the morning at leave throughout the day with the lake in the background. I feel like I could thoroughly enjoy living in this sort of place.

image:Saranac Lake cure porch overlooking Lake Flower. I might be on a laptop writing this post

05/07/2026, 12:27:01 AM

Inspired by https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2026/03/15/one-hundred-curl-graphs/, I want to do something with Tilde Friends and graphs. I haven't gotten very far, but I wrote a script to gnuplot this graph from git.

I assume the big jumps are mostly dependencies, though some of the trends are consequences of my own actions.

I haven't decided what I'm going to do with this. Maybe I'll just make a dashboard web page that is updated periodically. Maybe I'll make an account like @SecureScuttlebuttDevelopmentActivity that posts these occasionally. I sort of like that, because I like these sorts of things shoved in my face.

📈️

image:Tilde Friends lines of code vs. time

05/06/2026, 11:37:28 PM

This is a test post. (it worked)

05/03/2026, 11:40:00 PM

I drilled 96 holes this weekend. More pegs and shelves pending.

image:jumbo pegboard wall above a headboard

05/03/2026, 01:48:02 PM

I got a report of Tilde Friends not working on Android 8.1. I long ago made sure it compiles and runs that far back, but apparently the Android System WebView that ships with that OS doesn't support a number of modern JS features.

I believe it's possible to update the WebView in that situation to make it work, but it raises questions.

Can I continue to avoid transpiling? I could conceivably make enough of the core interface work on some old JS version, but apps will always be the wild west, and I do not want any build process / conversion step to be required.

Is detecting JS features and showing an error the right thing to do? How do I do that?