Second post about yesterday's Dedicated Photography Time with Daniel. The photos above are from our visit to Halde Norddeutschland. 359 steps to get up there. (I need some cardio training in my life.) It was pretty windy at the top. Winter is coming. Still enjoyed myself tremendously. 👉 View 6 more images

A friend pointed me to this site whose owner (Josh) has started a petition to close one of 356 subway stations in New York. The station being targeted is the 3rd Avenue stop on the L train that takes commuters from downtown Manhattan into Brooklyn. At least, that's Josh's motivation since he is one of those commuters.He throws out some scary numbers.Evidently, over 1,800 hours per day are "saved" if the L train just skips that one stop. The underlying economic driver is that the 3rd Avenue L…

The Old DiariesI recently unearthed two of my mother’s diaries, one from 1976 and one from 1981. She is gone now, and the diaries are what remain of her daily attention: who came, who left, what was said, where I was.Between them, they recorded two events that stopped me in my tracks.She was precise by nature, a detailed person who wrote things down because she meant them to stay put. I have little reason to doubt her. But I’ll note that a diary is not a camera. It is my mother’s record, shaped…

Doughnuts For Breakfast This morning I woke up feeling tired. I thought I slept well and even enough, but my body just wants to stay in bed and do nothing. Regardless I got up and drank my coffee. I was anxious to get out into the garage and do something as soon as it warmed up enough outside that I could take the plants back outside. We will do something else with them later but with the potential frost I brought our spider plant and palm in and put them just inside the door. That is right…

READING: THE ROUSE, China Mieville (UK) (US+)LISTENING: DRINK: Autumn being here means I made a cherry Negroni for herself and a Godfather with orange and cinnamon bitters for myself last night. MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

My eldest son is 7 and is a lot of different things, but one thing he especially is, possibly above all else, is noisy. Even amongst his peers (and 7-year-old boys is quite the peer group), he stands out as an order of magnitude or two more noisy. It’s not just talking - he walks noisily, he eats noisily, he plays noisily. If there’s a way of doing something, you better believe he’ll be doing it with the decibels turned up. He didn’t speak for a long time as a small child, but then when he…

Yesterday was the first day of the heating season for me. The temp dropped down to freezing (0C) overnight and I set the thermostat at 70F. I don't play with it and I'll leave it set at that until I shut off the heat in may/april next year. I struggled taking the radiator covers off and stowing for the season. Coughed a lot and got short of breath quick too. Got it done albeit at an ninety year old man's pace.need a good cleaningI've been thinking a lot lately about a post by CS at Lost Art…

I wish I could defy age and time but as it is, age and time are always going to be undefeated.Therefore, I had to take a look into my past so that I can spring ahead and move forward.And I get it. I do.This is a contradiction of terms if not a contradiction of what I say to myself when I say, “the past is gone and you and I don’t live there anymore.”But dig it . . .Today is another day above the dirt and therefore, so long as I am above the dirt, I reserve the right to update my thinking. At…

📷 275/365 - Amsterdam marathon finisher medal.

🏃‍♂️ About yesterday. I wasn’t feeling great but I'm happy I tried and how it turned out. Number 6 completed ✅

We have reached the "lawns" unit in the Master Gardener certification class I am taking, and I am only half joking when I say I should ask if I can skip this unit on religious grounds. My religious/spiritual beliefs are pretty amorphous, but I have one opinion approaching dogma, and it is: Turfgrass lawns are an affront to God. If God wanted us to have monoculture turfgrass lawns, monoculture turfgrass lawns would exist in Nature. They do not. Prairies and other grasslands do, but they're…

With last week’s training not going entirely to plan, I’ve come up with less structured approach for this week, hoping that life allows me to follow through with my 30km target. No thresholds factored in this week, simply getting the miles (km/s) in the legs… Current Weight: 214.4lbs (97.25kg) ~22.8% body fat Part of my current goal is to reduce my weight, thereby hopefully decreasing load on my body during runs and also increasing speed. I’m going to include my body weight and body fat…

I started in week 40 with writing a list of five good things for each week, inspired by the #3goodthings I post almost every day (I want every day, but sometimes I forget hehehe) Then I jumped in to write this post just now, and wrote joyful instead of good, and thought to myself: that’s pretty on-brand for me, as I write about joy a LOT. So from now on this weekly series is called five joyful things. My fingers willed it so! Anyway! Let’s head into the list. These are five joyful things about…

I have a doctor's appointment Wednesday in which she will decide if I am ready to go back to work and of course the anxiety is starting to ramp up. 😰

What is this?A weekly note on what I've been up to. Last week's is here.Tuesday: Just a normal guy definitely enjoying the taste of GuinnesstldrPast 1,000km for the year. Doorframes nearly bare. Beth Orton was wonderful. Wrote up where the NHS England work got to. Town dire.Health and runningFour runs, 30.2km. The most in a week since mid-July, the week the TFL went. Tuesday's took the year past 1,000km. Year to date: 1,026.8km. 1,200km looks doable.New gym block from Friday, mostly upper body,…

Welcome back to the Gridiron Deep Dive everybody, where today, we’re going to be doing something new.If you’re new here, please consider subscribing! I write about all kinks of nooks and crannies in NFL history,This is His Day, an offshoot of my His Year series, designed to showcase players who were never able to play at a top level for an entire season, but for one day, played like an all-time great.Today, we’re here to talk about Kelly Holcomb, and his infamous 0.569 EPA/Play performance in…

Tesla turns to 50-year-old stunt as it tries to Roadster again arstechnica.com/cars/2026/10...[image or embed]— Lora Kolodny (@lorak.bsky.social) October 16, 2026 at 5:06 PM Let's get the obvious out of the way. To the extent that a car is defined as a vehicle for personal transportation, what we saw demonstrated last week was a flying car-shaped object (possibly with scare quotes around "flying"). The cold-gas thrusters that kept the "car" aloft for a few seconds didn't have anyone in it,…

I’m emerging from a few months of doing things, art workshops, childcare, days out and other such activities that are easier done than documented. It seems odd to write about this as the leaves outside are already orange and yellow and the cold weather forces me to wrap myself up thoroughly in a cardigan, but here we are. It’s been a mild Autumn so far, so summer is not that far of a distant memory. Everyone and their cat made cyanotypes this summer. I was part of everyone (somehow still not a…

Recipe Sewing, Part 2 Library Updates Next I couldn’t find a holiday for today, but today does mark the 179th anniversary of the release of Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, Charlotte Brontë’s revolutionary novel under the pseudonym Currer Bell with its first-person not-quite-reliable-but-close-enough narrative. And with that, on to the week’s projects. Recipe As suggested last week, I did try turning my attempt at oat milk into yogurt. Combining the rice cooker yogurt instructions with the yogurt…

There's a lot of lose stuff to clear, from the last Sandown, from Peter Evans and from Adrian, and with the next Sandown Park show only three weeks away, I guess, I need to clear the last lot, sharpish! Here's the animal element of the last show's plunder! A miniature set from Rado Industries, with both the Ri Toys tree-logo and a Laurie Toy moniker, having previously seen a Lucky Toy in

I walked out of the community center finance office holding the keys to my seven-year-old’s fall soccer season, and the terms were fantastic. Zero down, zero percent financing for the first thirty-six months, with payments deferred until the spring tournament bracket.A few years ago you paid forty bucks to the parks department, someone handed your kid a mesh pinnie that smelled like basement mildew, and an accountant named Dave stood on the sideline yelling about spacing.The local league was…

A Personal Note from Joanne A quick note to my wonderful Savvy readers. I’ve been in the hospital for the past two days and am still here as I put together this week’s issue. Please forgive any missing links, formatting glitches or other little oversights. I wanted to keep our weekly Savvy Updates coming your way, even if this edition isn’t quite as polished as usual! Thank you for your understanding, your friendship and your continued support.

When I started my research into old skyscrapers, I faced a chicken-and-egg problem. What is a skyscraper? is one of the questions that I was attempting to answer with data about the physical structure of actual buildings, but I didn’t have that data when I started, as that was the point of the research. The only way to deal with a knot like that is to make a decision and later go back and fix it (meaning redoing research as needed) if the early decision turned out to be wrong. My decision was…

Beware: spoilers for a couple of minor plot holes, a twist that annoyed me, and potential queerbaiting. Since I first saw the trailer below 1, I wanted this movie to do really, really well. Women! Working together! Pulling off a complicated, high class heist! What on Earth is there not to like? I have watched this movie multiple times–in fact, I own it in DVD–and every time I watch it, I get angry again that we never got a second one–despite getting decent enough reviews, as good or better than…

Yesterday I made use of the new exit from Kings Cross underground station that runs underneath Euston Road and pops up within the monstrosity they have seen fit to name Belgrove House after destroying the original Belgrove House.If you recall, this pedestrian underpass used to be a simple, straight tunnel accessible via a set of steps within the pavement which was open to the elements until approx 2005 when it was covered with an ugly grey block. The new exit/entrance we have today has been…

Another gig this week: I saw Arab Strap at Heaven with Andy. They played much of their new album, which is really very good, and as dark and witty as ever. Glamour Magick is a new favourite. It was exactly 30 years since their much-loved first single, The First Big Weekend, was released and with which they ended. It felt fitting that Aidan needed the printed lyrics and his glasses. I dragged myself out to London a couple of times this week, and twice did my swimming-sauna-steam health routine…

Happenings Again, this is double entry, so it covers two weeks I think. Most of it was just work though. Had my parents round for TV and video games. My dad was too tired to make progress on his game, so he watched me play Nier: Automata, a game he seemed very impressed by. We bought a cheap record player stand. I had tried to build one myself (more like a riser to sit the turntable on so the amp could go underneath), but, well, it turns out carpentry is hard. Even after making perfect cuts,…

The first week of October 2026 saw me making the long haul up the M1/A1 to Newcastle for my first visit in many a year. Lower league football on Saturday had tempted me in this direction, with plenty of time to explore Tyneside on Thursday and Friday. Not nearly long enough, I quickly found out.After a side-mission to Swalwell Lidl's on instructions to pick up a Bavarian beer box before they all sold out, I made it into the city centre and negotiated the narrow ramps of the Travelodge Central…

I’ve recently gotten into swapping art with people. This is through the Reddit Print Exchange, Postcards from Afar and Postcrossing. In the latter case, quite a few people have requested photos of trams. Well, we have a tram here, so I thought I’d go out, shoot a roll of film and see what I could come up with. The photo above isn’t a technical wonder but it’s the one I keep coming back to for some reason. I wish it had a foot or so more breathing room to the left, but that’s life. I was already…

A desire path is an unofficial route, or trail, worn into the ground by the repeated passage of people or animals. In the urban landscape, a desire path will be worn where a carefully planned, but perhaps convoluted, footpath takes the long way round, and people simply cut that aesthetic route short. Desire paths can occur even where no path exists at all and that is usually true with the paths wild animals create in their landscape. The obvious rhetorical question is why follow that winding…