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[twenty twenty six day one six seven]: adult me, bro

Published June 16, 2026 by centaur
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Adulting is one of the most important, and pernicious, tasks adults are called upon to undertake. The laundry must get done, after all, but if it's a choice between doing the laundry and maintaining your marriage or caring for your children or loved ones, the hamper can just continue to fill.

In this case, adulting is rather simple. My wife and I use the "80-80" rule: a partnership is not a 50-50 proposition, because we're rarely operating at 100% of our capacity. Even if your partner is awesome and pulls off a 90% success rate, if you rely on your partner to do half the work, inevitably that truly awesome partner will only deliver 45% of the needed work, falling short of your expectations.

If, instead, you ASSUME your partner will sometimes fall short, and take on MORE than 50% of the effort - and they do too - then everything is fine. Your partner's turn to toss the compost on the heap, but you're standing in front of it? Toss it. Your turn to fold the laundry, but your partner sees the laundry in the dryer? She does it. And then everything gets done, and you both feel great.

So my wife mentioned that we're out of litter, and I volunteered to go while I was having lunch at Panera in Greenridge, next to a PetSmart that has our two cat litter brands. Since I knew I was going, I asked her to let me know if we were low on anything else, and she pointed out we were low on 2 of the 9 (!) cat dry food brands we use to distract our very finicky cats.

I was there, I got it done, it all worked out great, while she had folded the laundry I had run last night.

80-80 for the win.

-the Centaur

Pictured: the empty bags/cans of the two cat food brands we were low on.

[twenty twenty six day one six six]: i hunger

Published June 15, 2026 by centaur
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As good as I try to be about my weight, sometimes I can't seem to help myself. Especially if I find myself super hungry at the start of a three-hour artist date at Barnes and Noble's cafe, and they've got a lone croissant sitting there with my name on it, waiting to be heated up.

-the Centaur

Picture: um, I said it.

[drawing every day 2026 day one six five]: grawlixes

Published June 14, 2026 by centaur
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A re-draw of the cover of The Lexicon of Comicana by Mort Walker, creator of Beetle Bailey. I picked this up on a trip to San Francisco for the Game Developer's Conference, and drew this in a coffee house attached to a Books Inc (now owned by Barnes and Noble) ... maybe this one. Can't remember if I found this book at that Books Inc or at nearby Russian Hill Bookstore, but I think it was the BI on Van Ness next to the Peet's, where I chose to draw after buying the book.

-the Centaur

[twenty twenty six day one six five]: drawing subtracts from writing

Published June 14, 2026 by centaur
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I started to write "drawing DETRACTS from writing" but that's not true at all: I just finished a couple of drawings for THE LEGACY OF THE EXTRA CREDIT PROJECT that helped me understand my own characters - and now I've drawn all of the core six characters signed up for the Project. So drawing doesn't detract ... but it certainly can subtract from the time you'd spend on another endeavor.

Our heroes Q'yagon and Darina I most recently used Midjourney reference for, but I had previously drawn them myself; but now, without reference, I have drawn sketches of the stoneskin healer Orieos and his birchbark ranger squeeze Berrybelle, as well as Berrybelle's fire mage brother Sapforte and his ice dragon familiar, Frostthorne. All six are now rendered by my own hand!

But, normally, the Drawing Every Day project has relatively simple drawings - several of which have appeared recently, so you can see what I mean. But at the start and finish of every notebook, I do a more detailed drawing of ... SOMETHING ... related to my writing or comics, and those take longer.

Orieos and Berrybelle finished out a DED notebook (this one from Blick art supply, pictured above) and Sapforte and Frostthorne started a new one (not pictured). O&B took an hour; S&F took three.

In that time, I could have written 500 to 1500 words (more, or less, depending on inspiration and orientation to the text) or made progress on the Logical Robotics Harness, or done work on the FROST MOON re-release or the LCATS project.

But even though I could have spent those four hours writing ... I'm happy with the result.

So even though drawing (and blogging!) subtract from writing time, I'm glad I do them.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Just the notebook, as the drawings are for days 250-251, and we're only at DOY 164.

[twenty twenty six day one six four]: vegan food can be tasty and delicious

Published June 13, 2026 by centaur
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Vegan spread trio and vegan foccacia at The 07 on Laurens Road in Greenville. While The 07 is not all vegan, it is one of our most consistent fave vegan-friendly restaurants in Greenville.

And they often have excellent vegan desserts ... as they had at our meal yesterday.

-the Centaur

Pictured: um, I said it; an artichoke panini, and the vegan dessert cake.

[twenty twenty six day one six three]: helpful

Published June 12, 2026 by centaur
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Normally when my wife's in town and we're not throwing a party, the above space in our living room is reserved for one of her art projects. But right now, she's focusing on painting in her studio, so I have set out my vast pile of piles which I have been trying to beat back with a stick.

The cats are helping. This task has seemed Sisyphean, but, actually, some of the piles have returned to the shelves, and others have dissolved into papers for recycling. The above matrix grabs a large amount of stuff which I think will shrink down with "the treatment". I feel like I'm making progress!

I've switched gears now back to the novel, coding, and blogging, but Loki is helping. You can't see him easily right now, so I've provided a reference shot of his helping style above.

Perhaps with that, you can see him helping at my desk.

-the Centaur

Pictured: The piles, exploded; Lily, I think, Loki outside, and Loki behind my monitor.

[twenty twenty six day one six two]: sunrise

Published June 12, 2026 by centaur
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One of the delights of my life are redeye flights. The actual flight itself isn't usually that grand, but I really enjoy having a long day at a conference or vacation destination with nothing to do, followed by breakfast at the airport in the nearly inevitable layover before the final leg to Greenville.

This time, it was New Jersey, and I have never seen an airport with more food options than the New Jersey airport. Seemingly every 5 to 10 gates, there was a collection of restaurants which included a large, clean, well-organized center aisle counter, one or two large restaurants on the sides, and a quirky restaurant tucked away between them with some ethnic food.

All of these were almost certainly served by the same kitchen, as each cluster (except for the ethnic restaurant) had the same menu, and all had QR codes on each seat to order and deliver food directly. But there were still a large number of staff - one of which served me at a counter directly opposite my gate. It was a well-worked out, efficient, and yet still surprisingly human system.

The food was delicious. And so was the sunrise.

-the Centaur

Pictured: two shots of the sunrise that I saw on my way between gates, a smoked salmon flatbread, and a bowl of fresh fruit.

[drawing every day 2026 day one six one]: pen and pencil tests

Published June 12, 2026 by centaur
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I carry a portable art studio - pencils, erasers, and pens, along with a sketchbook and some reference book for drawing - almost everywhere I go. Since this is a "carry it with me" sketchbook, I draw in pencil, then draw over it in pen, so the final drawing doesn't get smudged away by being carried around everywhere for weeks or months at a time.

ERGO, I care a lot about line quality of pens.

Pigma Micron are my current favorites, with 08 being used most frequently for heavy line work, 01-03-05 for interior work, and 10 for exterior lines on "artwork" as opposed to "practice sketches". Derwent Sketching 2B is what I use most frequently to sketch out the drawings I will later ink.

But for drawing one six one for 2026 (actually drawn on day 60, because I try to draw ridiculously far ahead) I was apparently testing out Sharpies, Pigma Brush, and Staedtler Mars Lumograph pens as well as some other Derwent pencils.

I still haven't found a portable brush pen that I like.

-the Centaur
P.S. My math seems off, it lists (30(m+1) +1w + d + 3), but I think that's probably actually m+2.

[twenty twenty six day one six one]: home again home again jiggity jig

Published June 12, 2026 by centaur
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Back from the Embodied AI Workshop! And TIL (today I learned, though not the today of the blogging every day post) that "home again, home again, jiggity jig" isn't originally just a throw-away line from J.F. Sebastian's autonomous creations in Blade Runner, but actually is a centuries-old nursery rhyme called "To Market, To Market": https://poets.org/poem/market-market

To market,
To market,
To buy a fat pig.
Home again,
Home again,
Jiggity jig.

I may be a carnivore, but I find the treatment of animals in a lot of older literature ... disturbing. Regardless, I'm home again, and since another year has passed, that means there's a different car from the Clemson autonomous driving team on display in the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport:

On the theme of dubious autonomous creatures, I've said it before, but now I'll say it here: an autonomous vehicle without a physical steering wheel is a bug, just waiting to turn your car into a one-ton paperweight when the software inevitably bricks. Send an engineer out with a gamepad controller all you want: sooner or later you'll need a tow in an awkward situation (say, for example, an underground parking garage in Palo Alto which is too windy for a tow truck to get into ... yes, I do have personal experience with this, why do you ask?) requiring your new paperweight to be serviced in place.

Pull up your pants, turn your ballcap forward, and install a steering wheel.

-the Centaur

Pictured: A fountain in the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport, and the aforementioned self-driving car. I don't think it had a steering wheel, front or back, but perhaps that was just the angle I could see in.

[twenty twenty six day one six zero]: forget me not

Published June 11, 2026 by centaur
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One of the things they tell writers is "always write your ideas down". The truth is, natural language is so impossibly vast that every sentence we think or say, outside of boilerplate hellos, pleasantries, and goodbyes, could be unique. But our memories are NOT structured to retain unique information; instead, they integrate it into familiar patterns so it can be reconstructed - not exactly retrieved.

So if you hit on a bon mot, you're better off writing it down.

OR, put another way, I forgot to write down what I planned to write in this post, and it's GONE.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Vibe Coffee in Denver, where I am writing this ahead of time, as I will soon (as of this writing) be on a redeye flight, and then (as of this posting) be recovering from said redeye.

P.S. If you got a brief flash of this post on the 9th, ignore it. Wait until the 11th. :-D

[cvpr]: beautiful sights not even counting the mountains

Published June 10, 2026 by centaur
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Denver has impressed me with being clean and beautiful even before getting out of downtown.

The restaurants are great, the streets are clean, and there are many nice walking areas.

Overall it's been a fun place to hang out while attending the CVPR (especially since EAI is over).

And the skies too have been very beautiful ...

... especially the sunsets.

-the Centaur

Pictured: a smoked Old Fashioned at Ocean Prime, Ocean Prime's glowing bar upstairs, Larimer Square, the view from Ocean Prime's patio, the view from nearby Vibe Coffee and Wine, and the sunset I got on the walk from Vibe to Ocean Prime.

[cvpr]: i feel these bookshelves were put here for me

Published June 9, 2026 by taidoka
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"Writing by writers on writing" indeed! From the Capitol Hill Bookstore, one of the many nice bookstores not far from the Colorado Convention Center, such as the Little Blue Pigeon:

Some nice finds, not far from the hotel, and one of the bookstores even had a book reading Sunday by a writer on writing dialogue. Nice ...

-the Centaur

Pictured: um, I said it already.

[cvpr]: this feels like a 70’s bond villain headquarters

Published June 8, 2026 by centaur
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INT SOUNDSTAGE - CUBICLE FARM - LATE AT NIGHT

Programmers scramble about, trying to meet a deadline. CODEFINGER watches as an industrial coding AGENT creeps closer and closer to BOND's vital job functions.

BOND (nervously): Do you expect me to prompt?

CODEFINGER (laughing): No, Mister Bond! I expect your job to die!

The industrial coding AGENT cuts CODEFINGER in half with an industrial grade laser.

BOND (shocked): You killed him!

AGENT: You're right! Let me fix that ...

BOND (untying himself): I'll just show myself out ...

[cvpr]: michael, might i remind you goliath is invulnerable

Published June 7, 2026 by centaur
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"I know, KITT, but let's try to take out his right front tire."

Technically it is possible to swing a stick at CVPR and not hit a self-driving vehicle, but our best VLA robotics foundation models only achieve 38% at this task, and even humans struggle to do it well.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Two companies inadvertently creating a classic scene out of Knight Rider, where KITT goes up against Goliath, a truck armored with the same invulnerable material out that KITT is:

I don't know. I enjoyed the scene as a kid, but I have a hard time thinking that Goliath would have done well in a collision against a barricade of a dozen or so cement mixer trucks, much less an actual tank, which typically weighs two to three times as much as a fully laden truck. Newton's a bitch!

[embodied ai seven]: it’s over!

Published June 6, 2026 by centaur
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You survived the Embodied AI Workshop and all you got was that lousy t-shirt!

I'm promising myself not to over-complicate this post, so here's the short story: it went well! But we were making changes up to the previous day, so between the time that we printed the above poster and the actual talk, two of the speakers had changed - one speaker replaced their own backup, and another speaker who had dropped out was replaced by a volunteer speaker the afternoon before!

As CVPR (our parent conference) said, "Printed materials may be out of date ... check the website!" Which we did keep up to date: https://embodied-ai.org/cvpr2026 ... overall, though, the workshop was well attended. The best attended talk was my buddy Lewis Chiang's, a roboticist at Google DeepMind who I always thought was a superstar and I guess he's well on his way:

Over 70 people attended the talk and at least a dozen people were remote. While there were a few open seats up front, it still created a standing-room-only vibe:

All in all we had nine speakers, two highlight sessions for embodied AI challenges and accepted papers, a poster session, and a concluding debate. The very first picture is me, Lewis and Dinesh, another speaker at the workshop, discussing the nuances and challenges of safety in long-horizon embodied AI - a fancy way of asking "how to keep our agents from killing us if we let them loose."

There's more to say about this - CVPR is huge, so huge that it perhaps it was a mistake to go see the Backrooms movie after wandering around the massive Colorado Convention Center:

But, the long and the short of it is, we survived!

And now it's time to enjoy the rest of the conference ... at a much slower pace.

-the Centaur

Pictured: the final debate, the image of the schedule poster, the schedule poster in action, Lewis's talk, the standing room only audience, the keynote rooms, the expo floor and CVPR's massive collection of posters, the EAI7 dinner, and me in front of the expo proper. Now it's time for a nap.