Cornell George Hopley Woolrich was born in New York City on December 4, 1903, almost exactly eleven months after his parents Genaro and Claire had wed at the Church of the Archangel in Harlem. In the type of foreboding calamity that occurred all to frequently in Cornell's books, the church burned down to the ground into cinders and ashes shortly before Cornell was born. Call it Black Archangel, if you will.For around four years after Cornell's birth the little family of father, mother and son…
Temples and Yew TreesThere was simply too much inspiration in section 2 of Jonathan Meades Travels with Pevsner. The main topic was Georgian Pershore but how could I ignore "the most momentous building in Worcestershire".This is the Temple of Theseus. Built in 1758 by Lord Lyttleton, so he could look out over the Malvern Hills. It is the first example of neo-classical architecture in Europe.There's a lot going on at Wychbury Hill. I have already told the tale of "Who put Bella in the Wych…
Asahifuji’s winning streak came to an end tonight against Nabatame. He was defeated by a steady stream of tsuppari, and a clever arm grab. Asahifuji appeared ready to charge forward but Nabatame seized his left arm and yanked him forward. That forced Asahifuji to pull back while Nabatame kept up his tsuppari and drove him … Continue reading Nagoya 2026: Day Nine
Still trying to catch up with some stuff that’s been painted for a while! I’m taking advantage of the fact that it’s World Cup final night so I’m typing this while watching Spain beat Argentina beat Spain! Having painted up some Martian flyers I thought it was about time my Earth forces got some conventional flying machines of their own. Shown above is a 3D-printed AD Scout, a prototype British WW1 fighter that I’d never heard of before I saw it on Ebay! The largest scale I could get it in was…
CCC: Merry Clipped-Out Marxes, Bouncing Baby Sandy, Dapper Offscreen Harold, and Comedies Gone Till NowKEEPSAKE MARXES --- Clippings, shavings, call these fragments what we will, but this was collecting on clowns before there was public access to posters, stills, lobby cards, wells into which much money is presently pumped by those who seek Marx Bros. artifacts long gone from theatre fronts and shop windows. Show of hands for those willing to give five thousand for an original Duck Soup 11X14,…
It’s that time of the year again when the schools have let the children free and we adults have to deal with them for six weeks or more. It’s the time when we can collectively – this includes parents and child-free adults – moan about them clogging up the road and public transport, making too…
I know you can’t please everyone, but when I plan a singing workshop I try to make sure I won’t be teaching anything that any of the singers already know. An impossible task, but I have a low boredom threshold and feel I need to keep singers interested. I have so many new songs I’m dying to teach that I’m always introducing brand new repertoire. But singers often want something familiar. They want to feel comfortable and not be learning all the time. Sometimes they just want to have a good…
A handful of my cameras are go-to choices when I want to quickly head out — ones that I feel confident are going to just work. My Pentax Spotmatic F is among them. It was owned by an ex-Pentax employee who probably barely used it, and before it came to me, it was treated to a CLA. I brought it with me over a couple weeks as I roamed Indiana. Here are my favorite photos from the roll of Fujicolor 200 I loaded. I play a never-ending game of balance between using the 50 or so cameras I already…
The cartonnage of Gautseshenu, ca. 945–712 B.C.E. Image by the Brooklyn Museum. In the Egyptian wing of the Brooklyn Museum my young son stands before a beautiful coffin containing the body of woman named Gautseshenu. Her name means “bouquet of lotuses,” though neither of us can pronounce it. After a couple bumbling tries we stop, me out of embarrassment and him because her name is not the point, and the whole idea here is still so very, very strange. How old? he asks again. Almost 3,000 years,…
Content warning: Major spoilers for First, Do No Harm. Discussion of self-harm, suicidal thoughts, sexual assault, transphobia, body dysphoria and serious bodily injury A friend recommended First, Do No Harm to me and said it was perfect for me. I trusted him enough that I went in completely blind He was right The play touched on self-harm, trans issues, feeling like you are in the wrong body, medical control and hating your body enough that you want to destroy it. It was almost perfectly…
➜ on Monday D’s 6 week summer break from school officially started and I felt like I needed a plan to fill our days at home together. so I got a subscription to thelittleartistsroom (which I wanted to try for years already!). ➜ we also filled our days with making puzzles, making mango cheesecake and drawing. ➜ after getting a thousand advertisements about the clothing brand halara and filling my cart in their shop at least 5 times (and always clicking it away again because I kept thinking ‘do I…
Paolo Lazzarotti (Italy), “Complete Rainbow” Good morning sinners. My problem, apparently, is that I’m interested in too many things. In fact, someone made a point of writing to my office a few weeks ago specifically to tell me that my interests aren’t interesting. I never had a problem with being a generalist – it’s a big world and it’s been around a long time and I want to learn as much about it as I can. But, these days, to get ahead you have to niche down hard, to become a trusted expert in…
Personal notes for week 30 of 2026
The Glider is a modern marvel. Belfast's metro-like bus-with-notions runs transversely across the city, from west to east, passing plenty of the city's beer destinations on the way. A new curiosity has arrived at the eastern G1 terminus in Dundonald. As has been reported far and wide, Lidl NI has chosen to open a fully-operational pub in the same building as their supermarket, to subvert local licensing restrictions. I went up to have a look.Knowing, presumably, how much of a curiosity The…
A heavy thunder storm last night. Burnt a lot of stuff today. Started to cut privet hedge. Did some mopping in the office. Started to rain about 4.30.
i walked past a blooming golden wattle tree i was thinking about all the things i have left to do in life switching between doomscrolling on my phone and scrolling through possibilities in my brain of everything i don't have or will never have or have now lost before i even found it but the way the the smell of the wattles filled my breath it changed my mind i instantly smiled i turned back and saw admired the bloom i like to think that the scent of these flowers went through my nose through my…
Cannibalising my work week notes for this one. Forgive me, but life is tough in the content mines… A reflection: how I write has changed. My current work project has thrown that into focus for me. I’m working in a small crew (two other full time, two half-time) to write a report for a government department. Working out what it should say is a blended activity. Sometimes it’s conversational. Sometimes it’s a workshop. Sometimes it involves noodling on other people’s writing. Sometimes it…
…Well, I was working on a new installment of the Final ’90s Countdown and I’m like a third of the way through the proposed entry and I just looked at the time. Eep! So, I’ll finish it up Monday night and have it out for Tuesday. Sorry about that, pals. Apparently I had a surprising amount to say about this particular comic, and I didn’t want to rush through the entry just for the sake of getting it out “on time.” Thanks for your patience, pals!
The Swiss Family Treehouse in Adventureland is one of those attractions that I always looked forward to, growing up. When it morphed into Tarzan's Treehouse, I liked (but didn't love) it, though I was glad that it was changed and not removed. Now the Swiss family is back, and the attraction is pretty different. They have so much free time on their bountiful island that they are able to build things like orreries, or nutty music machines. There's definitely more "fantasy" than there used to be,…
I’m cautiously creeping through an old mansion on a stormy night in search of three pieces of a magical urn, the comforting warm glow of a match my only guide. A vampire bat appears close by, snuffing out the light as it chases me across the room. I have no way to fight back, and in this unplanned murk every path to safety is suddenly lost to the shadows. I’m going to die here, desperately feeling around for an exit in the dark. This intense scenario isn’t found in some legendary survival…
I had an email from one of my former students, Will Ross, the other day. It was short and sweet (which was surprising considering the reams he used to write for classwork just, I suspect, to extend my marking misery). Regardless, he moved on to pastures (and professorial victims) new and I thought I’d seen the back of him. But oh no – he just had to share his latest video with me because “I remembered that Welsh people have a sense of humour too”. I should refer him to something widely but…
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Hey!You’re on this list because you give a damn about the written word. So I’ll skip the warm-up and tell you the news.SELF has relaunched.SELF is my studio for turning technical founders and builders into public thinkers. Essays, keynote narratives, messaging, founder voice. One senior operator - me, JA Westenberg - doing the work directly.No handoffs, no account managers, no coordination tax, etc.Here’s why it exists:The best builders // makers often have sharper ideas than anyone in their…
Today, I made my way to Sapporo to see my friends Dave and April and their kids. A quick refresher in case you don’t know: Sapporo is on the island of Hokkaido while Tokyo, of course, is on the island of Honshu. There is a train that connects the islands, but I opted for a flight — one that happens to leave from the Haneda Airport in Tokyo at 8:00am. Since the subway doesn’t open until 5:00am, I was worried about making it early enough in case I took the wrong one, etc., but I didn’t want to…
Or shall I say soccer because I was raised in the US? I'm writing this because I need to. The sport was such a long chapter in my life, and thanks to my newfound unemployment, I've been able to watch by far the greatest number of World Cup matches ever in my adulthood. So, I'll start from the beginning. I think I was around six years old when my parents enrolled me in ballet and gymnastics courses. I was never any good, and I still recall never being able to advance past some arbitrary level…
I swear I’ll have the post and photos soon. It’s kind of weird how busy I can get doing things I don’t particularly enjoy. In the meantime, here’s as preview, with two of the photos I took. Photo 1, the pond at Iona Beach, looking all windswept at 16:9 ratio: Framing! And because we went to Iona Beach and Terra Nova, I took about 10,000 shots of planes landing and taking off. Here’s one of them, a Westjet jet taking off against a cloudy backdrop: Flying still terrifies me. In the birding post…
A while back I decided to use a picker and go out and occasionally pick up the bits of litter around our condo complex. One of those “If you want something done, do it yourself” things that has become a primary philosophy of mine. I usually do every Sunday and other days as needed, covering most of the complex and the sidewalks. Today’s haul looked like this: Not visible: About a thousand cigarette butts I also watered some of the trees in the heritage courtyard this afternoon using a hose with…
It's always a thrill to fit strings to a new guitar for the first time. This one will sit in its case for a week or so before I attend to final action and intonation adjustments. The search for its new home can then begin in earnest.Glamour shots to follow.Cheers, Pete.
OpenWeird ⇦ Indieseek.xyz Directory OpenWeird is a random website portal and directory for finding weird websites when you are bored. It collects strange internet toys, pointless pages, funny web experiences, odd browser experiments, and nostalgic corners of the web that feel hard to explain. → WAY TO GO Way to Go is an interactive experience for human beings between 5 and 105 years old. Maybe it lasts six minutes; maybe it lasts forever. 👏
This week was actually really nice! Low key - but like, still felt really good! Last week I mentioned taking smaller notes and this week I actually followed through with it! I fell down a little rabbit hole looking into notebooks - I almost bought myself a Hobonichi Techo w a July Start1 to use as my own personal notebook, "to give it a bit more of a ritual" vs my current work notebook. But I ended up retrofitting and tweaking my work notebook to have BOTH my personal notes and my work notes in…
