David Eisinger

Journal > Dispatch #42 (August 2026)

Posted 2026-08-04 under #dispatch

August 2026 marks two big personal anniversaries: 25 years in Durham and 10 years in this house. Who would’ve thought? Certainly not Duke freshman Dave. Couldn’t be happier to be right here right now, though I might have made some different decisions had I known I’d be raising two small children in these increasingly cramped quarters. But that’s not how things work, is it?

In July, we went down to Lake Norman for the Fourth. The highlight was hooking an inflatable raft up to one of the kayaks and towing the kids and their cousin Sully around. Otherwise, laid pretty low: museums, pools, farmers’ markets, Eno River, just classic summertime shit. Work was a bit stressful (tricky client situation) but I think we’re mostly through the woods there. My folks came down at the end of the month to celebrate my mom’s birthday.

A lazy lake flotilla. Two kids making faces on the stairs.

Matching faces at the playground. Family lounge time over coffee, juice, and snacks.

Here’s a new track, called “Asdreno Dreams” (title by my coworker’s young son, who makes fictitious track listings for fun):

Apologies to Claire for having to listen to this on loop for two months while I figured out those bass and lead lines. Thanks for letting me be me.

Decluttering

I finished Adam Savage’s Every Tool’s a Hammer, most of which is a love letter to tools and workshops. That plus a post I read on a knife blog I follow have me itching to overhaul my basement space. The problem is that there is so much crap down here. Just an unbelievable amount of crap.

I started a new book, Decluttering at the Speed of Life (via), which isn’t exactly groundbreaking stuff, but has given me permission to approach a cluttered space with a trash bag and a donation box and start getting stuff out. When I feel guilty about throwing something away, I just have to tell myself: David, it’s already trash. That pile of paint cans that was here when you moved in, and you haven’t looked at since? Already trash. That it’s in your house instead of the dump does not change its trash nature. Get it out.

I still think about this post I read some months ago:

“This is why decluttering is so hard. It’s not really about tidiness. It’s about deciding which past selves get to stay.”

Sure I haven’t ridden my fancy road bike since the kids were born, but it’s so tempting to think that could still be a part of my life if I just prioritized things a bit differently (e.g. became a 5AM guy instead of a 2AM guy). But, let’s face our current (and wonderful!) reality, sell the bike, and if I decide I want to get back into long rides in 2040, buy something new and goddamn incredible.

Eteink XTC Converter

Last month I mentioned my Xteink X3 pocket e-reader and how it uses a custom e-book format (“XTC”). I wasn’t happy with the results generated by my Calibre plugin when I converted the decluttering book. I found this web tool which creates much nicer files (margins, typography, etc.), but I didn’t really want a random, unattributed website as part of my reading workflow.

I pointed Codex at the URL and asked if it could perhaps find the source online. It could not, but it did reveal that the entire conversion process takes place in the browser using WebAssembly. I had it download and analyze the source and then build a command-line version. Then I used Bun to compile a standalone executable and set it up to read my preferred settings from a config file. Now I can just xtcconv /path/to/book.epub.

I can’t in good conscience open source this project, since it’s just stolen code and vibes. But if you’re interested, slap these three paragraphs into your coding agent and I bet you’ll get good results. What a time to be a nerd.

This Month

Reading & Listening

References