Updated July 1, 2025

I am working with clients on full stack JavaScript apps. Book a slot on my calendar if you want to discuss working with me (part time) from late 2025 or in early 2026. I'm currently preparing for the arrival of our second child in late August. I am organising and co-hosting EdinburghJS and GlasgowJS meetups for the Scottish JavaScript community, and doing a weekly bulletin of events at scottishtechnology.club. Last update: July 2025

Updated July 1, 2025

Some facts about this website ----------------------------- Kedara is a wiki, digital garden, blog, or, to summarize: a personal website by . At the moment, I’m writing mostly about the following topics: Philosophy (the fundamental questions of life), Personal web (lightweight, fast, personal websites: a.k.a. Indieweb, smallweb), Yoga (practice and philosophy), Sanskrit (Sanskrit texts and the study of the language) and Meditation (the practice of meditative absorption). This website is also available in Dutch – not all content is the same in both languages, so take a look if you’re interested. Kedara: about the name ---------------------- The name ‘Kedara’ is a liberal transcription of the Sanskrit word केदार (kedāra) which has the following definitions:1 1. A field or meadow, especially one (partly) under water. 2. A basin for water around the roots of a tree. 3. A bed in a garden or field. I’ve chosen this name because of its main definition: _a field or meadow_. My last name is _Verweij_ (I was born with the very similar last name _van der Weij_), which literally means ‘of the meadow’ in Dutch. I love the additional definitions of the word as well. If you’re very precise, you might argue that _kedara_ is actually written as केदर in Sanskrit, which means:1 1. Squint-eyed. 2. The name of a plant: either Kedar (_Zingiber zerumbet_) or _Kedarnatha_ (_please contact me if you happen to know what exact type of plant this is!_). Use the following 88x31 banner to link to this website: * * * P.S.: I’d like to add two sections: a mini site guide + the aims/thoughts behind the website. * * * 1. Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary, 1899, page 309. Accessed online at 21-08-2024. ↩︎ ↩︎ * * *

Updated July 1, 2025

River's Den ----------- Home About Weblog Bookmarks Changelog TIL Recipes Now Contacts Guestbook Things I'm currently working on, as of July 1, 2025 🦊🐾 I've been trying to reduce my sugar intake, to manage both glucose levels and weight long-term. It's difficult! This July, I'm intending to start working out, either before or after office hours. That'll depend on how busy the gym is, and what my sleep schedule looks like (it's complicated, lol) I play Helldivers 2 and Elite Dangerous, and in the latter, I travel to Saggitarius A\* on a stock Sidewinder. It's extremely boring, but I'm committed. Hopefully I'll get there before Christmas 😅 I'm documenting the journey on a separate page, Sidewinder Logs. It's an Atom feed by the way, so you can follow along using your newsfeed reader.

Updated July 1, 2025

I’m Seirdy. This page lists my most relevant accounts. A more comprehensive list of my online accounts is available via WebFinger: acct:seirdy@seirdy.one. Any currently-active public account not listed via WebFinger isn’t actually me; please let me know if you find one. I’ve published a version of my OpenPGP key via Web Key Directory; this version has notations containing Ariadne identity proofs for a few more accounts of mine. You can verify those accounts on any Keyoxide instance (requires JavaScript). I hope to migrate identity proofs to something besides OpenPGP in the future. Meat­space persona ------------------ This is the version of me I present to the public offline. I intentionally make very delayed updates to information such as my location. Age 25 Location Somewhere in New England, USA Gender Male Pronouns they/them he/him Time zone America/New\_York (EST, UTC-05:00; or EDT, UTC-04:00 during daylight savings) My preferred forge for personal projects is Sourcehut, but my repositories have remotes for GitHub, GitLab, and Codeberg too. I accept contributions from any of these platforms; use whichever you prefer. Online persona -------------- I go by Seirdy online. I have multiple online personas, but Seirdy is my main one and the only one I feel comfortable associating with my meatspace persona. Seirdy is a bit of an abstract character, a bit less “professional” than my meatspace persona. Location Cyberspace Gender Fluid Pronouns they/them he/him she/her Social (Fediverse) @Seirdy@pleroma.envs.net (primary) @Seirdy@lemmy.ml (Lemmy) Social (centralized) Bluesky (pseudo-centralized) Tildes.net “Seirdy” on Linux Weekly News jstpst Lobsters Reddit (inactive) “Hacker” News Email seirdy@seirdy.one OpenPGP public key `1E892DB2A5F84479` (also available via Web Key Directory) Chat Matrix: @seirdy:envs.net IRC: “Seirdy” on many networks (Liberachat, Snoonet, OFTC, Tilde.Chat, apionet, some others). Mostly inactive now. Software forges Sourcehut (preferred) GitHub GitLab Codeberg If you send me marketing emails or solicit guest posts, I will block you and submit you to third-party blocklists without warning. At least two platforms listed in the “Social (centralized)” category are not endorsed, and I’m trying to wind down my use of them. If you find a “Seirdy” somewhere else and don’t know whether or not it’s me, please contact me and ask instead of assuming that it must be me. I used to have the Matrix ID `@seirdy:seirdy.one`. I no longer use it. If you want to follow me on the Fediverse, read my Fediverse greeting first Selected projects ----------------- Clogstats Analyze WeeChat logs to quantify, graph, forecast, and perform anomaly-detection on IRC channel activity. Written in Python; uses Pandas. MOAC Generate passwords and analyze password strength given physical limits to computing. Based on a weblog/gemlog entry: Becoming physically immune to brute-force attacks. Written in Go. Interests, preferences, et cetera --------------------------------- I ought to come up with more interests than these, but that sounds hard. ### Inclusive design I care a lot about accessibility, resource usage, and compatibility. My Web site may seem simple, but I put almost 20 thousand words of thought into its design in an effort to maximize its inclusivity. This site should work well whether you’re using Lynx, NetSurf, the Tor Browser with a screen reader, or a printout. Many people frame accessibility and compatibility in terms of “percentage of users impacted” to justify ignoring certain demographics. I find that this mindset somewhat discriminatory. I prefer framing concerns in terms of “populations excluded”. I have some skin in the game: I rely on forced colors and use often use screen readers for web browsing. This is a really helpful measure to reduce overstimulation, given my anxiety and ADHD. I encourage others in similar situations to try these measures. ### Collections I like to collect things online! Things I like to collect include: * Custom emotes * 88x31 buttons * Search engines I’m working on additional online collections too. Offline, I also like to collect United States coins by year. I’m not a serious coin collector; I just take them from circulation. ### Health Since 2024 I’ve developed a deep special interest in fitness and nutrition. I may consider a career in this space eventually. It also ties into my interest in veganism. I’ve transformed my health since, putting on significant muscle and improving my diet to massively reduce food noise. I may blog more about this in time. ### Veganism I went vegan in 2024 and haven’t looked back. I’m an ethical vegan, although my views aren’t exactly mainstream. I do support reduciterianism, and don’t believe everyone should be vegan at this time. Perhaps with time things could change. ### Software freedom While I care very much about “free software” (the name is confusing, it refers to freedom rather than price), I don’t share the same perspective as most “fossbros” and organizations like the FSF. Software freedom is important because it gives people agency instead of delegating control to an authority; it’s not valuable in and of itself, and promoting a “FOSS” alternative that has vulnerabilities and accessibility issues is sometimes counterproductive. I think that simply meeting GNU’s definition of free software isn’t enough: it’s one of multiple requirements for software to avoid the possibility of user domestication. ### Other tech stuff Other technology-related interests include security, privacy, and open platforms. I lean towards simplicity; I usually prefer line-mode command-line interfaces that follow the UNIX philosophy. If a piece of software is complex enough to require a funding round, I would rather avoid it. My reasons for preferring simplicity also relate to user autonomy: extremely complex software can’t be forked easily, creating dependence on the vendor. It’s also because I’m a bit paranoid and want to know everything that happens on my system. There are exceptions, of course: I use a Linux distro with Systemd (Fedora), after all. When I use a graphical program, it’s typically for things for which graphics are an inherent requirement or for accessibility reasons (most textual user interfaces don’t play well with screen readers). More information is available in my “uses” page. ### Anime I watch anime. Some of my favorites, in no particular order: * Pluto * Code Geass * Mawaru Penguindrum * No Game No Life: Zero * Darling in the Franxx * Black Lagoon * Serial Experiments Lain * Saga of Tanya the Evil * Attack on Titan * Violet Evergarden * To Your Eternity I think that at least one entry in that list has some problematic messages, but my personal interpretation was a bit unorthodox and it felt wrong to exclude it. ### Music I’ve put together a periodically-updated list of tracks that I’ve rated 8/10 or higher in my mpd stickers database, auto-generated by some of my mpd-scripts. I’m a fan of glitch, trailer music, and symphonic and power metal; I’ve also recently been getting into Japanese rock thanks to a few anime openings. Some of my favorite artists are The Glitch Mob, Pretty Lights, Beats Antique, Hammerfall, Badflower, Celldweller and Scandroid, Helloween, Two Steps from Hell, Nightwish, Mili, and MYTH & ROID.

Updated July 1, 2025

### stephen wan #### july, 2025 * intensively studying ml at the recurse center

Updated July 1, 2025

#### Life updates too intangible for About, but not timely enough for the Blog. Part of the /now community of pagemakers. * * * ### **From my Micro.Blog** * * * ### **July 2025** Hello from beneath the grand dome of the State Library! 📚 I saw Derek Sivers updated NowNowNow.com to be more of a phonebook-style directory, organised by country and region. So I took a look at what fellow Victorian now-ers were doing on their now pages. And they’re all much more “snapshotty” than mine. Curations. Lists. Things consumed. Media engaged in. Milestones achieved. Honestly, it’s a much more sustainable way of going about it. Whenever I sit down and try and write an update (usually at _No Typewriters_), I get caught in the tempest of trying to compress too much complexity and context. All the events of what’s happened since the last time I updated this page, rendered down into something I deem acceptable. My default style of first capturing it is longform narration. But that never matches how I want to read it back to myself—I want clean, elegant, crystalline prose, with a sense of economy and confidence akin to Orwell writing about life on the frontline of a hotel kitchen in early 2oth-century London. What results from that tension, usually, is overwrought failure. I end up approaching updating this page with reluctance and dread, never satisfied with what comes out. So I’m now going to try something a bit different. The first thing I’m gonna try will be speed-writing a paragraph of sentence fragments that capture several of the things I’ve recently done, thought, watched, remembered or otherwise recorded for one reason or another. Non-sequitirs sequenced only in the order they’re thought, linked together for reasons unknown by my own mind. It’s based in no small part on Matthew Dicks’ _**Crash & Burn**_ writing exercise from the book _Storyworthy_. The second thing will be to make the **End of now stats** much more substantial, in line with my fellow Victorian now-ers. A similar postscript listicle was always my favourite part of LiveJournal, where I had a cute little dragon emoji who was always listening to some kind of Scandinavian metal and feeling Very Strong Feelings. So that’s the plan! Alright. Let’s get started… #### **Crash and burn: July 2025 Edition** `Taking the wrong train. The sunset view on Kīlauea, above the clouds and in thin cold air. Observatories. NASA. The 1990s World Wide Web. Poke bowls. Weight loss. The phrase 'food noise' used by GLP-1 Redditors. Post-rock. Wine in Asia. Note-taking apps. Mourning the overuse of the beloved em-dash. Building Chrome extensions. Cursor. AI. AI. AI. AI. AI. AI.` Okay yeah, that was pretty fun. It might not make sense to anyone who reads it (hello if you’re out there), but it makes a heck of a lot of sense to me. Highly recommend! #### **And now for the end of now stats** **Listening to:** I’ve gotten really into the Aussie post-rock group Sleepmakeswaves recently. Ever since their Like a Version cover of Robert Miles’s _Children_ (yes, that song). Turns out their original material is also excellent. **Reading:** Making my way through _e-Boys_ by Randall Stross, who also wrote _The Launchpad_ about the Y-Combinator startup accelerator. He’s a bit of a signal finder, our friend Randall. If you’d read _Launchpad_ when it came out in 2012, you’d learn about younger up-and-comers in tech that would later become household names: Patrick Collison working on a little-known payments company called Stripe (lol) and a certain advisor called Sam Altman (lmao). I’ve decided to check out the rest of Stross’s ouvre, starting with his dishy 1990s book about the founding of Benchmark Capital, which also serves as a behind-the-scenes look at the scaling up of eBay and how other dotcom-era companies like Webvan boomed then busted. **Watching:** Nothing really right now! We’ve shifted our home entertainment setup to up the stairs, making way down below for a treadmill. The second-order consequence of this was that our passive viewing of non-essential content has gone WAY down (this is good!). So things are piling up in my Sequel app, and I’ll get around to them eventually. The Bear, R **Feeling:** Remembering my Classics teacher from high school, Paul Beachman, who I learned out last night had passed away in June. Mr Beachman was truly one of the greats. His passion for Classical History and Ancient History was palpable, especially the Roman Empire (twenty years before talking about it on the daily was cool). He helped me critically analyse works of art, for the first time, which probably led me down the path of doing Art History at in undergrad. I can STILL remember the differences between the busts of Augustus and Commodus. Helping me struggle through _The Aeneid_. Baking my brain with perspective-warping comments like how he views any event that occurred after 1 AD as “modern”. Taking us to see _Gladiator_ and giving us all pistachio nuts instead of popcorn. Teaching us about the Epicureans, the Cult of Isis (no not that one), and the Stoics. An incredible teacher. I really have a lot to thank him for. RIP. * * * ### **September 2024** And just like that, it’s a year later. Yikes. How are you doing, good? Good. I’m good. Things are going well. I travelled to the US for the first time. I gave my first content design talk. I wrote some new blog posts (with more planned and even more started and abandoned). Had some professional breakthroughs. Rediscovered my love of orange hoodies. Changed the colour scheme of this very website to reflect my love of orange hoodies. Had even more inner-critiques about not writing or reading as much as I’d like. So it goes. Otherwise, here’s what else I did. Read some books, drank some wine, cooked some good food, and helped design a whole bunch of design software. Life’s what you make it. Right now I’m sitting in the great hall of the Immigration Museum, at another _No Typewriters No Talking_ event. I’ve come to realise that Jackson’s little project is pretty much the best forcing function I have to actually go and write a thing (even a small thing like this). The only other one being doing it on an airplane between bouts of dozing or watching _Into the Spider-Verse_ for the umpteenth time. And that’s OK. It’s all OK. He’s got a bunch more planned in the coming months so I hope to be sharing more updates here very soon! It was a lot of fun hearing from Derek Sivers, creator of this Now page concept, when he got in touch asking about Australian book distribution. A small, very small, sign that the open web still wants to survive. Oh, another thing. I need to add some secret messages to this website the way Kevin Roose did on his website. BRB. Back. I did it. Let’s see if it works. AI Engine Optimisation, what a time to be alive. Alright, time for me to bounce. Off to apply for Australian citizenship! In the Immigration Museum, no less. How fitting. #### **End of now stats** **Listening to:** Trains rattling along the viaduct, echoing footsteps, a slight scribbling of pens on fine paper **Reading:** Just started _Lords of Strategy_, and about to start _The Gutenberg Parentheses_. **Feeling:** Tense, but also a little thirsty. Thirstense? There’s probably a word for it in German. * * * ### **September 2023** Greetings, Now. I’m writing this post in a dimly-lit workspace, as part of my friend Jackson’s workshop _No Typewriters, No Talking._ There is certainly neither of either. What there is, though, are some striking video projections. The phrase “Sea of names” also appears regularly. Is this a reference to the debut album from _A Perfect Circle_? Who’s to say. I mean, Jackson might. But as stated above, _no talking_. We are in crunch time at work. I refer to it to some colleagues as ‘goblin mode’. It’s simultaneously stressful — some of the most stressed I’ve ever been (my dissertation-era hypochondria from 2010-11 has returned, hello old friend) — combined with some of the most thrilling, interesting, downright _fun_ stuff I never thought in a million years I’d get to work on. On balance, of course, I’m still grateful for the opportunities and experiences. I’m going to be a coach of others very soon! How cool is that!! But, man. I could use a break. Anywho, I’m hoping to get some other self-site stuff done in this short hour I have, so I’m signing off, for now. See you on the other side, September. #### **End of now stats** **Listening to:** The hum of a fan, the soft typing of other people on their laptops. **Reading:** I finished _The Rainforest_! It was a slog. Should’ve just read _The Geography of Genius_ again. I’m wondering if I should check out that Walter Isaacson biography of _Elon Musk_. The Ashlee Vance book from 2016 was pretty good, but John Siracusa’s critique of Isaacson’s _Steve Jobs_ is pretty hard to come back from. I probably will. **Feeling:** Upper hemispheric acceptance, lower hemispheric uncertainty. * * * ### **June 2023** Here’s my first Now post! I’ve been meaning to write one of these for, literally, years. Ever since I saw Owen Williams make one. I love the concept of it, and learning Derek Sivers is behind it is a cool easter egg. With a wonderful trip to France and Switzerland now firmly behind us, life has returned to a wintery routine back in Melbourne. Unfortunately, the natural alarm clock of jet lag — that sweet spot a week in where you’re not crashing out anymore but still waking up bolt upright before dawn — has faded away too. But no matter, the external shock of travel has broken my previous bad habits of late nights and late mornings. At least until there’s another Canva Create to work on. Speaking of work, things are going quite well. I received feedback on my last half year of output, and the biggest callout was that I should invest more time in doing documentation. This is an area I’ve always struggled in, going right back to middle school when my Coca Cola-addicted technology teacher Mr Boot (yes really) said I found journaling “tedious”. Why a technology class required all its attendees to do journaling, I don’t know, though I do recall him monologuing about how a pencil is itself a piece of technology. I think he wanted all us 12 year olds to find that a profound insight. Frankly all we wanted to do was play the first Half Life. Anyway. This overhaul of my personal website is an extension of this newfound push into documenting things more consistently, so here I go. But while I’m pushing into documenting things more on my own web domain, I’m biting the bullet and shuttering my current crop of nascent side hustles. The rest of this paragraph pays tribute to them. Goodbye, **Writehacks**. You were a good idea that was completely supplanted by ChatGPT, which eliminated the need to learn few-shot prompts in the OpenAI playground. To have succeeded you’d have needed to be a daily AI newsletter like Ben’s Bites, or I would have had to become a Twitter threadboi where I had ‘The AI Guy’ in my bio (a fate worse than death). See you later, **Valcontent**. Your words live on in my Blog. I’m also keeping your web domain in case I ever start a freelance content design business. You both join the graveyard of failure, in the same plot row as my humanities-in-tech blog (**The Humanitist**) and many, many, many others. Congratulations **ButteryChardonnays**, you are the last one standing (for now), but let’s reassess when the annual SquareSpace bill rolls around. My recent visits to Bordeaux and Champagne have widened my wine appetite dramatically, so it’s not looking good. Honestly, taking all these half-executed ideas out into a field and putting them out of their misery has been wonderfully freeing. I’m no longer racked with guilt at not spending my off-hours working on them. No longer haunted by ideas of what they could be, but unwilling to put in the effort to have these visions realised. And that’s OK! On a recent episode of one of my favourite podcasts, Sharp Tech, co-host Ben nailed it when he talked about how the key attribute to a successful creator career on the Internet was consistency. I do not have the required consistency. It feels like middle school journalling, which is to say, terribly tedious. Still, one thing that gives me hope is that each time one of these side hustles comes around, they get closer and closer to actually becoming a worthwhile thing. **Writehacks** was getting real traffic and had real people on the mailing list! At this rate, I’ll strike digital gold in 2033. Can’t wait 🙄 #### **End of now stats** **Listening to:** The sound of one of my cats, Daughter, snoring on her new Kmart blanket (it’s a cold Melbourne winter day) **Reading:** Slowly making my way through _The Rainforest_ . Innovation policy as written by a couple of business school stalwarts is not a page turner. _The Geography of Genius_ is a much better approach to the same idea. **Feeling:** A certain kind of peace. * * *

Updated June 30, 2025

If you need to get in touch with me, please reach out via the **Contact** page. Tagline ------- Open Source | DevOps | Kubernetes Contributor | r/devopsish | Disabled Veteran | LEGO | Corgis | Detroit | He/Him | Views solely mine Headshot -------- Chris-Short-Sept-2023-Profile-Pic-Square.jpeg Brief Bio --------- **Chris Short** has been a proponent of open source solutions throughout his 30+ years in various IT disciplines, including systems, security, networks, DevOps management, and cloud native advocacy across the public and private sectors. He is an active Kubernetes contributor and co-leads the Kubernetes Contributor Comms team. Chris is a disabled veteran (US Air Force) living with his wife and son in Metro Detroit. Chris writes about Cloud Native, DevOps, and other topics at ChrisShort.net. Extended Bio ------------ Meet Chris Short, a seasoned professional with a remarkable journey in the Information Technology field beginning in his youth in 1995. His first steps into the tech world were taken during summers and vacations while working for manufacturing and textile companies, where he quickly developed a keen interest in the ever-evolving tech sector. During his senior year in high school, Chris became the webmaster at sandtech.net, a dial-up Internet Service Provider based in Hickory, NC. During this time, he found his passion for Linux, embracing it as an alternative platform in the predominantly Windows-oriented late ’90s tech landscape. In response to changes in the job market from the Dot-com bubble burst, Chris joined the US Air Force as a Tech Controller (3C2X1), displaying a deep sense of dedication and service to others. Over eleven years, he served at four duty stations, including Langley AFB, VA; MacDill AFB, FL; Buckley AFB, CO; and Pope AFB, NC. Throughout his service, Chris participated in various exercises globally and underwent deployments to regions like the Middle East and Central America. During his service, he served under three US Presidents: Clinton, Bush, and Obama, which provided him with new and unique experiences and perspectives. In 2003, Chris encountered an unfortunate injury that affected his neck, spine, and shoulder during a training exercise (right after two deployments to the Middle East). Despite this challenge, he remained resilient and excelled despite continuous pain. His dedication and exceptional performance were recognized when he received the Air Force Communications-Computer Systems Outstanding NCO of the Year for Pope Air Force Base in 2008. Ultimately, in 2010, Chris was medically separated from the Air Force during the drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan, marking the end of a significant chapter in his life. Today, Chris has found his passion in the open source, Linux, Cloud Native (CNCF/Kubernetes), and DevOps domains, where he continues to make valuable contributions. With his home base in the Greater Metro Detroit area, Chris’s Résumé or Curriculum Vitae showcases his extensive knowledge and diverse experiences. His journey is a testament to his commitment to technology and innovation, inspiring others in the tech community through his humility and expertise. Support My Work --------------- * GitHub * PayPal.me