Recently, I've gone somewhere, done something, or seen something amazing I've shared in these pages. Here, you'll find my most recent posts, covering a wide range of topics that pique my interest. Whether you're passionate about travel, captivated by photography, enchanted by music, or intrigued by computer programming, there's likely to be something here for everyone!

Dive in and explore the latest insights, stories, and adventures that I have to share. Enjoy your stay!

Two Doors to Every App

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 4/2/2026		Page Views: 42
Hashtags: #Programming #AI #CLI #CommandLine #UserInterface #SoftwareDesign
Why every modern app should have both a graphical interface for humans and a command-line interface for AI.
Estimated reading time: 5 minute(s) (1048 words)

This is advice for programmers, but if you're a regular person who's savvy enough to create a desktop shortcut that does something specific—and you'd be surprised how easy that is—you'll find something useful here too.

Sweatin' With The Oldies

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 4/1/2026		Page Views: 92
Hashtags: #Sweating #Thermoregulation #HotSprings #Florida #AgingGratefully
A lifelong aversion to sweating, and the surprisingly logical reason our bodies make it feel so awful.
Estimated reading time: 4 minute(s) (845 words)

In fifth grade at Cathedral Parish School in Panama City, Florida, first period was P.E. It was already muggy by 8 AM in late spring, and I'd just walked a couple of blocks from home after a nice big bowl of Cheerios with banana. Sister took attendance, and we headed across the parking lot to the old Lyceum building, where Coach Drozd promptly got us out of his hair by sending us on a morning run. Down the street we went—right past my house, which I could see but not escape to—and back again. And with the heat, and the running, and the sweating, I threw up the Cheerios and bananas on the sidewalk in front of God and everybody. I also hate throwing up. But not as much as I hate sweating.

And When I Die

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 3/31/2026		Page Views: 123
Hashtags: #Spirituality #Reincarnation #Philosophy #Death #Afterlife #Heaven #Theology
Exploring humanity's diverse beliefs about death and the afterlife: Christian Heaven, ancient Greek underworld, reincarnation, simulation theory, and the void.
Estimated reading time: 11 minute(s) (2421 words)

What happens when I close my eyes for the last time? Humanity has spent millennia arguing about that question, and we're no closer to an answer. What we have is a remarkable collection of theories, beliefs, hopes, and fears—some contradictory, all unprovable, most unfalsifiable.

See Pappy's CPAP

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 3/30/2026		Page Views: 166
Hashtags: #Autobiography #Aging #Health #CPAP #SleepApnea #MedicalDevices
A history of CPAP technology, a personal journey through sleep apnea, and a look at what might replace the mask.
Estimated reading time: 5 minute(s) (1119 words)

From Jay Kyser's frank advice about CPAPs and dates to my own middle-of-the-night gasping, I've had an intimate relationship with sleep apnea for a quarter century—and the technology has changed almost as much as I have.

CommandLineArgs

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 3/29/2026		Page Views: 84
Hashtags: #Organizica #VisualBasic #VBNET #ClassLibrary #OrganizicaLib #CommandLine #CommandLineArgs #Arguments #Parser
A command-line argument parser that maps positional files and named parameters into a case-insensitive dictionary.
Estimated reading time: 5 minute(s) (1044 words)

Every command-line tool needs to turn that messy array of strings into something useful, and CommandLineArgs does exactly that. It parses positional file paths, named parameters, and boolean flags into a single case-insensitive dictionary--so your tool can focus on its actual job instead of string-splitting.

LookHere

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 3/29/2026		Page Views: 62
Hashtags: #Windows #Claude #MCP #NET #Win32 #LookHere #Screenshot #Grayscale #JPEG #PrintWindow
A lightweight .NET command-line tool that captures any Windows application window as a compact grayscale JPEG screenshot for Claude.
Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s) (671 words)

LookHere is a lightweight .NET command-line utility that captures any Windows application window as a compact grayscale JPEG screenshot. I built it specifically so that Claude, working through the AI-Bridge MCP server, could actually see what's happening on my screen--something that turns out to be surprisingly tricky to do well within the constraints of MCP tool results.

Three Minds

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 3/29/2026		Page Views: 172
Hashtags: #ArtificialIntelligence #Cognition #Dogs #NeuralNetworks
How AI actually thinks, compared to the human mind and the mind of a dog.
Estimated reading time: 10 minute(s) (2259 words)

People ask me how AI "thinks." The honest answer is: a lot more like us humans than you'd expect—and a lot more like our dogs, too. All three of us—human, canine, and artificial—are pattern matchers at heart. We just run on different hardware.

The Sleeping Prophet's Report Card

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 3/29/2026		Page Views: 85
Hashtags: #Autobiography #Aging #Health #Spiritualism #EdgarCayce #Holistic #CastorOil #Almonds #Alkaline #Osteopathy
Grading Edgar Cayce's health predictions against what modern science has found, fifty years after I first encountered his work.
Estimated reading time: 8 minute(s) (1694 words)

In 1970, in the Spiritualist camp of Cassadaga, Florida, I met a woman named Marguerite Card. She was a medium, a teacher, and the first person who ever handed me a book about Edgar Cayce. I was 19, and open to anything that did not require me to sit in a pew. I read the book in two days. Then I read another one. Then I started ordering the actual readings from the Association for Research and Enlightenment in Virginia Beach. I have been studying Cayce's work, off and on, for over fifty years now. Long enough, I think, to offer a report card.

Organizica: SqueezePanel control

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 3/28/2026		Page Views: 9
Hashtags: #Organizica #OrganizicaExplorer #UserControl
Creating the basic SqueezePanel user control and tying it into the SqueezeBox container.
Estimated reading time: 9 minute(s) (2020 words)

Now that we have the basic SqueezeBox control working (and no, we aren't done with it, yet), we are going to create a minimal, special control to reside within it. This control, called the SqueezePanel, is not a general-purpose control--That is, because of its specialization, there's truly no reason why anyone would ever want to use it in a stand-alone fashion. And, therefore, we don't want it to show up in the Toolbox--in fact, we'll want the SqueezeBox to create these panels automatically, when the SqueezeBox itself is deposited onto a form (or another container control). And the easiest way to make this happen, is to create the new control as a class member of SqueezeBox!.

Attack of the Subspecies

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 3/28/2026		Page Views: 129
Hashtags: #Science #ScientificMethod #Neanderthals #Evolution #CriticalThinking #Epistemology #Vaccines #Supplements
From bathtub experiments to birch tar distillation, a look at how science became science—and why some brains handle it better than others.
Estimated reading time: 13 minute(s) (3010 words)

The pattern looks like this: You learn a little about something—vaccines, nutrition, climate, whatever—and your confidence shoots up. You've read an article! You watched a documentary! You feel like an expert. This is the peak of Mount Stupid, and we have all stood on its summit at one time or another, gazing out over the landscape of our own ignorance and mistaking it for mastery.

Organizica: Percentage class

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 3/28/2026		Page Views: 74
Hashtags: #Organizica #OrganizicaExplorer #VBNET #Percentageclass #ObjectOrientedProgramming
A general purpose class for easily calculating percentages and values without bothering with all that math stuff.
Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s) (495 words)

I have dyslexia, and as a partial consequence I can never get the equation for calculating percentages right on the first try. Which side does the 100 go on, and is it divide or multiply? And so, for me at least, it makes sense to get it right once...in a reusable function (or, better yet, object) that I can reference by name when needed? And thus is born the Percentage class.