Brett Kosinski

By day I'm a software product manager. By night I'm a programmer, knitter, skier, cyclist, cook, guitarist(ish), and a dozen other things besides. He/him.

2024 Enbridge Tour Alberta for Cancer Campaign: https://support.touralbertaforcancer.ca/fundraiser/4834510

Blog: https://b-ark.ca
Code: https://github.com/fancypantalons
Knitting: https://www.ravelry.com/people/fancypantalons
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/brettk.indieweb.social.ap.brid.gy

Last Notes

2026-05-28 21:55:38 UTC

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You have me wondering what your answer is! 😆

2026-05-18 15:08:34 UTC

You little bastards... I just caught a flock of house sparrows eating the still-forming blossoms on my apple tree. I've had pretty uneven crops the last couple of years and chalked it up to boom/bust cycling due to stress, but now I'm starting to wonder... #birds #gardening #edmonton #alberta

2025-10-19 23:39:01 UTC

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As an aside, the fruit was harvested from city trees in the green space behind our house, so shout out to #yeg for planting fruit trees instead of just boring ornamentals!

2025-10-19 23:37:50 UTC

Now that’s a lot of crabapple jelly…
#cooking #canning #fall
(https://b-ark.ca/mmOyAW)
https://cdn.masto.host/indiewebsocial/media_attachments/files/115/403/460/973/204/253/original/b1009aaa78eec879.jpeg

2025-08-12 23:20:30 UTC

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Lol yeah, in my case they did a factory reset on the modem and I'll bet that included a firmware upgrade that fixed some issue that was introduced during a network change. So back to normal here except resetting the modem reset the network numbering and some hell broke loose for a bit...

2025-08-06 13:31:15 UTC

So #yeg, anyone else having #telus residential fiber issues? I'm seeing 2-4 kb/s down near Castledowns which I haven't seen since my 2400 baud modem days...

2025-06-04 23:53:23 UTC

Warning to folks in #yeg on #telus broadband who host services at home: Telus has apparently started silently deploying CGNAT in the region which means any IPv4 hosted services on your home network will be toast. At this point I think I'm just going to set up my own tunnel to a VPS I rent that has static IPs so I never have to deal with something like this again...

2025-03-13 23:24:58 UTC

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Could be worse, she could have been Marco Rubio appearing on Fox on Ash Wednesday...
https://cdn.masto.host/indiewebsocial/media_attachments/files/114/157/702/051/443/684/original/a56376a7e851cd4c.png

2025-02-28 18:54:19 UTC

Watching #CNN claim there was a "shouting match" between Trump and Zelenskyy when it was, in fact, Trump and Vance dogpiling on Zelenskyy while he tried to calmly get at least a few words in edgewise, is one of the most blatant examples of false both-sides spin I've seen from them yet. Truly truly shameful.
I do not suggest watching the clip if you value your sanity. The behaviour of Trump and Vance was despicable and genuinely hard to watch. #ukraine #uspol

2024-12-20 16:49:35 UTC

Man, corporations really want to put a stop to libraries:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-library-e-books-queues-1.7414060?cmp=rss
"Depending on the title, public libraries may pay two or three times more for an e-book than they pay for its print edition. In some cases, the e-book may be up to six times the price, librarians told CBC."
"Those publishers ... will often license copies of e-books for just 12 or 24 months. Once that licence expires, libraries must repurchase access to the same book." #canada #cdnpoli #books

2024-12-08 22:49:40 UTC

Yeah, okay, no disrespect to the folks running the #AdventOfCode, but the description for day 8 was... just okay. Part 2, in particular, was very confusing to me, and I ended up having to guess (fortunately correctly) what they meant.

2024-10-18 16:49:26 UTC

Who needs your fancy Cities: Skylines or SimCity 4 when you can play the classic SimCity SNES port on the #MiyooA30? #retrogaming
https://cdn.masto.host/indiewebsocial/media_attachments/files/113/329/449/399/441/172/original/cb426a27a226a37f.jpg

2024-09-10 17:09:55 UTC

So I finally finished Sonic CD on my #MiyooA30 and man I love this thing.
Does it get warm while playing? Yup! Is the battery life only 4-5 hours? Yup!
Yet for me it's damn near perfect: great design/form factor (so pocketable!), nice screen, fantastic controls (the d-pad is far superior to the one on my Steam Deck), and all at a very reasonable price.
Next up, S3&K, which I never played!
Though I feel bad for Jedi: Fallen Order, which I've left half played...
#retrogaming #gaming

2024-09-02 03:05:03 UTC

Man, 30 years later and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is still a banger. While I remembered the game having amazing level design, when you consider the context at the time, what they did in that game was really remarkable. And damn that soundtrack is great!
And it played great on the Miyoo A30 I picked up in a lark. For the price it’s a great little device to carry around!
#retrogaming
(https://b-ark.ca/AisEau)

2024-08-29 17:50:10 UTC

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Oh and here's their (yes, absolutely slanted!) coverage of the ruling: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/08/29/third-circuits-section-230-tiktok-ruling-deliberately-ignores-precedent-defies-logic/

2024-08-29 17:47:31 UTC

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This piece is pretty slanted. I'd recommend some counterbalancing coverage from, say, Mick Masnick (who is unabashedly a big tech booster): https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/
The situation around 230 is complicated. Does it protect X and Tiktok and give them an out for failing to police dangerous stuff on their platforms? Absolutely!
But without it there'd also be no Mastodon as every admin could become legally liable for the speech of the users on their instance.
So. Yeah. Messy.

2024-08-20 04:34:46 UTC

Over twenty years ago, now, I played a small role in the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 hacking community by reverse engineering the level data compression algorithm used in the game. I figured it was about time I wrote my side of that story, so, here it is!
#hacking #retrogaming: https://b-ark.ca/2024/08/19/on-sonic-2-compression.html