Kids' shows get some of the cutest cakes, you guys. I don't even have kids, and I had a blast looking for these!Just look at this adorable Doc McStuffins cake: [By Valentina Pollicino in Italy]Squee! When I Googled the most popular kids' shows of 2018, I was amazed to see Pokémon still on the list. Good thing, though, since that means I get to show you this jaw-dropping Pikachu: [By Le Delizie di Kicca in Italy]The shading makes it look more like a ceramic sculpture than a cake! Also loving all…

While I have enjoyed much of what Bogost has to say about stopping to enjoy the physical experiences of the little things that happen to you every day1 it's easy to fall into an idealized memory of the past2, often a past that didn't really exist. Foreverism talks specifically about this, our societal tendency to look back to the ideal past and keep it in our current conversation as something we should be striving for today3. This ideal physical past when we all interacted with the machines…

We’re wrapping up an incredible week watching the grandkids who have so much on their minds, including the approaching Halloween festivities, so Sunday Morning Reading is taking another hiatus. Sunday Morning Reading will return next week. Hope to see you then. Thanks for reading. Feel free to subscribe if you want. It’s free. If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more…

Closed the long weekend and opened the short week with a reunion lunch in Nakame including references to Se7en and what we suspect was Froyo, before heading to see band club play live. They were pretty great! Remember to bring hearing protection lxds. Leant on some of my CliftonStrengths™ mid-week to pull a plan out of many loose strands for a new assignment. That was particularly enjoyable. Meetings are getting easier to follow, but are still incredibly hard. This is to say that grammar study…

The first leg of our campervan life from Sydney to Hunter Valley ✒️ Written by: Abbie We flew from Perth to Sydney overnight, leaving behind our base with family in Fremantle and ready to take on a whole new adventure: eight weeks in a campervan. While we saved one night of accommodation costs by travelling overnight across the entire country, we ultimately paid for it over the next three days in Sydney as we walked around feeling like zombies. Neither of us slept on that hot, uncomfortable…

clean up timePut all the tools away except for the allen wrenches. Buttoning up the lunchbox was next on the menu. I had planned to go to the tool repair on Jefferson but it didn't happen today. I was getting the directions when I noticed that it isn't open on saturday. Saved me some time and gas on that one. It opens on monday at 0830 and I'll head that way after breakfast at Johnny's Chalet.neat and tidyThis is all I got done today and this took a bazillion hours to get done. I woke up…

This is a world where people stare blankly, waiting, in their boredom, for you to tap dance. Here's the thing. I'll tap dance on a dime. I'll tap dance if you ask unrudely. In fact, I'll tap dance even when there's no one's there at all, on the chance someone might pass by. Not to show off, or to compile credit, but merely to add my piece to the puzzle—which, in my reckoning, is the entire part of this corroborative art project. I tap dance just to tap dance. In fact, the only thing that can…

It's that time again for my weekly update, which includes a short collection of noteworthy finds, posts that inspire, as well as a few reflections from the past week or two. I'll aim to land these in your inbox by the weekend, in time to pair with your morning coffee (or your preferred cup of inspiration).The Latest Drippings ☕️Forget Billionaire Algorithms. I've been following Ron Gilbert for as long as I can remember; Monkey Island, released in 1990, is still one of my favorite games of all…

This blog post is a weekly update of my journey in Djangonaut Space, an 8-week mentoring program for future open source developers in the Django ecosystem. Series: 3… 2… 1… becoming a Djangonaut Djangonaut Log 1: Lift-off and first week in Djangonaut Space (you are here) I shared last week that I was accepted to Djangonaut Space and last week was the prep week before the lift-off: we got to know each other, had a lot of fun discussions and I even got myself into making my first contributions.…

1st July / 3.30PM I’m sat in a cemetary park in Brussels praying for good 5G. I joined the digital ticket queue at 10AM, as soon as I came out the Eurostar terminal. Tens of thousands of punters in e-front of me, est queueing time UNKNOWN. Now it’s five hours later and the queue robot’s emailing me to say it’s my turn to hand over the cash. Ha ha ha ha, this is quite funny. Easier to get Beyonce tickets, isn’t it. 3rd October / 7PM I am leading my Mum through Bloomsbury at a clip. We duck down…

What's been happeningThe week started with Sydney amping up the grill to max — we got a taste of how our summer might be when the temperature shot up to 36 degrees out here in Western Sydney.I’m not looking forward to it. Thankfully, the rest of the week was pretty wet and cold - not great from a humidity point of view.A round of thanks to Rushabh who asked me why I haven't written the weekly notes in a while - it turns out that the www version of my site was still pointed to the older Hugo…

Waiting at the ruby diadem of the traffic light, scarfing down a bread roll so soaked in industrial-grade butter I can feel it insta-coat the inside of my mouth, a sudden film of fat across the entire tooth-studded half-sphere, and this doubling of sensation—the meaty, constellated texture of my inner cheek, now coupled with this cow-jolted, oiled, palatable surface—forces a vivid realization, that I am just a thing with many openings. Holes, you could say. A hole for dirty looks, another for…

An apartment house in Greenwich Village, looking rather outer-boroughish: Something funny at the corner…oh, it’s a whole bunch of cell phone antennas painted to be look brick: The population density in Manhattan means a lot of cell antennas are needed. Given the lack of interest on the part of the phone companies to spend money unnecessarily, the two choices seem to be this kind of fake facade, or a crown of white rectangles on the roof.

Sunday Asides #117 So, the Apple Homeview looks cute, and I want one for my desk to replace my 10-year-old Google Home, but what do you mean it doesn't play video yet? Maybe I should just get the new HomePod mini instead. It would be cheaper, and the new version comes in green! Sonic is currently selling a banana dirty Dr. Pepper, and I just want to know what the fuck is going on in here on this day. "That Neptune square Mars" song hits a little too close to home because I have Neptune square…

I think most of us in the world of nature observation have tales to tell of dodgy identifications from the various apps. The Merlin is great if you sort of know what you’re listening to, but it can throw you off course and suggest birds that would be pretty much impossible. Sometimes it will claim to have heard such-and-such a species, an Eider Duck, say, far inland, when you can definitely tell that the sound it’s picking up was actually some farm machinery. And, it’s notorious at…

Went to Konsztrukting Soundz last night, for what turned out to be an abbreviated session. Here’s Lev Dudas, the creator and organiser, finishing the setup for what he did not expect to be a ninety-minute evening. The first set, with Lev and Lawrence Casserley, was incredibly good, and later in the event Viv Corringham did a frankly magnificent vocal improv. Going offline aside from messaging apps for the rest of the day, as I have lots of house stuff to do. And then Monday begins another very…

Following my previous post, about my running plan for this week, I thought I’d write a follow up and explain how my training went… Monday - Planned Rest Day Tuesday - 0km RunI actually felt rather ill on Tuesday and had a headache that I just couldn’t shift. I made the decision to leave today’s 8km run and see how I felt the following day. Wednesday - 8km @ 5’53” /kmWoke up this morning feeling much better and opted to do yesterday’s 8km run, rather than the planned 5km.In the evening I had my…

I wish people would stop using the G-slur (g**fball) already. the proper term is "person of ridiculous demeanor"

Yesterday was a fairly easy travel day, a pleasant surprise. I decided to go the way my phone directed me, which took me across I 40, the 2 lane part that's under construction. It's much easier early in the morning going from east to west. But I focused on breathing and staying focused on the patch of pavement ahead of me, not the drop off to my right. I was glad I was in my small Prius.I stopped along the way at an Artisan's Center in Berea, KY. I had stopped on my way up, but I was trying to…

Who woke the dogs up?

I hear a lot of GMs on various forums say “I wish my players would give me feedback,” and a lot of players saying, “I wish I could give my GM feedback.” Generally what holds people back from giving feedback is the fear that they will wound the other party. Players by and large hold their GMs in deep affection even when they dislike some aspect of the game – sometimes to the point of being willing to leave the game without ever speaking to the GM about it. That’s how deeply they fear the wound…

📷 I’ve taken a few days out to walk the coast. It was… well, you can see for yourself what it was. This might explain why my writing here has been even slower than usual. But now I’m back, and normal service will resume shortly.

We’re off on our first airplane trip in ten-ish years, so of course this is a perfect moment to make lists. I call myself a chronic listmaker, because I have to be honest with myself. I have lists in Keep for my husband and me (he’s an Android guy and hates every other app I showed him), in Obsidian for my blog and writing, and in Coteditor, the app I use for coding, for website ideas, colour codes, tips and tricks etc. And I have lists in my Filofax, mostly so I have the most important things…

I may have unlocked promotional god mode. Since I started posting on instagram more regularly just a handful of days ago (especially with the reels), orders for THE SOLAR GRID hardback(at a conversion rate of about 10%) have been pouring in and my follower count made a 5% jump (And so many applicants for the producer job). The danger of course is getting too swept up by social media sinkholes. We are after all, only human, and it is exactly the seductive lure of social media sinkholes that…

8717/21636It's Catie's birthday this week and so to celebrate that and because we thought it would be fun for the family we went to the Petit Chef interactive restaurant experience in London.It's a neat idea which involves your table and plates being projector screens and a tiny French chef (maybe the little cook from Big Cook, Little Cook who hasn't been on TV for a while) who runs around the table and tells you the history of the tomato.

What do you do when you have no big material desires left? When you already have a monetary safety net that will serve you in case of an emergency? Your bank balance will grow, but most of it will only go towards your retirement plan. Retirement and emergencies are both future possibilities. You will save your money for a possibility. This will definitely ease your mind. A minimum amount of security and safety is essential in order to not feel anxious about the future. So let's say you have…

Via Kottke: Your 10-minute radius matters more than almost anything else about where you live: Think about what you can get to in ten minutes without making it a whole thing. ↬ ∙ Tagged in Advice.

Oliver Burkeman: To return to information overload: this means treating your “to read” pile like a river (a stream that flows past you, and from which you pluck a few choice items, here and there) instead of a bucket (which demands that you empty it). Makes me feel better as I look over my overflowing queues of books/articles/media/etc… ↬ ∙ Tagged in Knowledge Management.

It's an easy enough mistake to make. We've all been there. Don't let it bring you down. It never was spaghetti. Good news: you can own a copy of the original artwork (as above) quite easily but I'm not going to tell you how to do it. Frustration is good for the soul, so they say. Success in life requires determination, patience and treachery.

Foggy first thing but not cold. Did K car. Moved a lot of boxes out of the office in the library and cleared silage lab again. Went for half gallon of juice.