For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement. Driving my Droschky (10.09.13) In 2006 Stuart Pessok, Managing Editor of the trade’s biggest-selling newspaper Taxi ran a series entitled ‘We Speak Your Language’ in which he invited readers to submit examples of cab slang in an…

Death by Upholstery - by JA Westenberg Curtain Fever (n.): Lavishing care on the décor of a life while the life goes unattended. “She spent three weeks on the logo for a company she hasn’t started. Total curtain fever.” ✍️ Reply by email

The rain made the cool winds a little colder this morning. I must have closed my eyes or maybe I failed to pay attention. But either way, the clock is ticking.October is on its way to a quick finish and moving like a bullet about to shoot from the barrel and explode and be gone. November is right around the corner and moving fast. Either way, I know that you and I are one day closer to an answer.And whether the answer pulls us closer together or sets us farther apart, remains to be seen. All I…

I love chats with my father. There are stories, old memories he dusts off and shares, that make me think. Today he told me about a teacher at his high school. It was a prestigious school. Korea’s first “government” school founded by the Royal Court. His Korean teacher was part of an underground movement that fought to keep Korean alive during the Japanese occupation. Unfortunately he was discovered and tortured. They put bamboo shards under his nails but still he didn’t give up his friends. He…

“The first week in any wet shaving group feels like walking into a conversation halfway through. Somebody posts an SOTD with a three-piece OC and a croap, somebody else asks whether a G5 knot will splay too much for face lathering, and a third person admits their SAD is out of control and announces a 3017. Everyone is being helpful. Almost none of it is in English yet. This almanac is the map. It walks the whole territory in the order you will meet it: the gear, the lather, the shave itself,…

FINALLYI tried to get the belt on with the rod but got nowhere. I got a teeny bit of the belt on the big pulley and that was it. The belt would not cooperate at all and after 30 frustrating minutes I removed the rod. I felt like I had given birth when I got the belt partially on both pulleys then.blurry pic matches my moodI couldn't get the belt to fully engage on either pulley. I did manage to get about 3/4 of the belt onto to the bottom pulley and then I stalled. Even though I got 3/4 of the…

Aren't we happy to be fed. A powerful corporation has turned its gaze upon us.I went to Whitefield to attend OpenAI DevDay. It was at the convention center in Sheraton hotel. I can't remember how I got the invite, but I probably filled a form somewhere. It was an enjoyable metro ride. The light rain formed little streaks on the window that showed overcast sky of outer Bangalore. The soft hum, rain sounds and fuzziness of the station announcements was calming.Everyone in the compartment had…

I’ve been thinking about an approach to the internet I’ve been calling hermit mode. Social media was never a big habit for me, so cutting that wasn’t much of a difference. But I used to spend real time catching up on news, soccer especially, which has always been a weak spot for me. Over time, I pared general news down to a single AI-generated morning brief. That still left the soccer habit untouched. Over the past three weeks, I’ve stopped that too. Now my only engagement with the internet is…

In case the dead silence hasn’t been enough of a clue, I’ll spell it out: it has been a rough week at Casa Aztec, though things are finally looking up (among other things, it’s finally fucking Friday! YAY!) ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ A bike update: I mentioned at the end of this post that the rear tire exploded–as I was riding at a good 13mph too–a couple of weeks ago. A few days after the fact, I realized a bit of metal had embedded itself into the tire–ergo, explosion: I am not sure the image conveys the…

Rain flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA 2.0) license Today’s TDC says Where do YOU stand? Share a six-word story about your place or location (and maybe we can even guess where it is?!) Feel free to add art or be creative with your six word story. I wrote one about the city I call home: Rain always near: dear green place The image at the top is taken through my study window looking out at my garden on a typical Glasgow morning

3:0 English weeks in the 3rd Bundesliga. Away at Ingolstadt on Sunday, at home against Aachen on Wednesday, and away again in Regensburg on Saturday. The new manager, Jochen Seitz, seems to have made really good use of the long international break, as the team was already 2 goals ahead in Ingolstadt, then conceded an own goal and a counter-attack, before scoring two more goals in the last minutes to make the final score 2:4. Hats off to that mental strength! On Wednesday, Alemannia came to…

The long way round Chris5156 Sat, 17/10/2026 - 09:53 When a road is closed, why isn't the diversion route just the quickest way past the closure? https://roadsorguk.substack.com/p/the-long-way-round?r=63d189&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

I’ve never liked the idea of giving my instruments a name other than one that describes it, i.e. parlour guitar, twin-point mandolin etc. Clearly, the different instruments must have some means of reference, especially as all enquiries for my instruments come via email and a prospective client needs to communicate their needs. You would probably have seen my previous “New Model Mandolin” build series: I called that instrument “New Model” as, at the time I was undecided on a suitable name.…

Revisiting Twilight recently has been a bit of a slog. It can be a slow series and, especially when you near the final movies, sometimes it feels like very little happens at all. As a teenager my interest in this series was heavily carried by the angsty soundtracks and my closeted desire to see Taylor Lautner take his shirt off again. With a number of years of separation since I last experienced it, I didn't remember a lot about Breaking Dawn. The main thing I remember is the absolutely…

Soon I will put the last of my stuff in the car. Sunrise comes later this much further north (at 7:57), so I'm not going to leave until 6:30 or 7. Gone are the days when I would leave at 4 a.m.; driving that many hours in the dark is just too tiring. Is this a sign of getting older or just a sign of being more cautious? Part of it is wanting to linger in a lovely hotel room a bit longer, which is always balanced by knowing how much driving lies ahead and wanting to get that over with.I've been…

8716/21635This morning there was a ghost in our kitchen. I put a milk bottle on the counter and didn't properly put the lid on. And then about every 20 seconds a ghost tried (and failed) to take the lid off. I filmed it, so no one can deny it happened. Explain that science. (see Substack for video evidence) I have a couple of social media pet peeves to talk about today. Sorry, make that three. I also hate it when people refer to something they don't like as a pet peeve.They are more social…

What caught my eye this week. Weekend Reading – featuring the week’s best money and investing articles from around the web – can be read by any logged-in Monevator member. Alternatively please subscribe to our free email newsletter to get future editions direct to your inbox. The post Weekend reading: Knocking the covers off appeared first on Monevator.

I already briefly mentioned it in this daily, but I wanted to expand a little on those times when we’d get up in the middle of the night, drive to the Apple Store, and wait for hours for it to open, all just to get our hands on the new iPhone on release day. Even though we arrived four hours early (the store opened at 8 AM), we were never the first in line. In fact, we were sometimes late enough to worry that we might not get an iPhone at all. I don't remember whether preorders weren't a thing…

Hey Albertans. UK resident here. I understand you're thinking of leaving Canada, or something. We sort of did the same thing 10 years ago when 17% of the UK population voted for us to leave the European Union. They called it Brexit. Brexit was sold to us as "taking back control" and "sovereignty". Brexit would mean we could determine our own laws, instead of those pesky Germans and Frenchies (the "establishment") telling us what to do. We could control who came into the country, stopping all…

Frost again but nice warm day later. Did all the mowing. The gang came for tea. Never went out. Watched the telly. No other visitors.

There's only a few places I get to take visiting friends to in Liberec. Sadly at the moment almost all of them are out of service. The city dam, Harcovská přehrada, is one of them. A fraction of the size of a neighboring Mšeno, it's set close to the middle of the city and is a wonderful walk/running place, despite only half having a foot path. In the autumn of 2022, a full reconstruction finally began, a mere century after the dam was built. Quite a massive operation, with 26,000 cubic meters…

Walk Score provides address-level walkability scores, neighborhood maps, transit reports, and bike scores for virtually every city, town, and neighborhood in the U.S. and Canada. Integrated into real estate platforms such as Redfin, it is well-known and widely used across North American real estate markets. Unfortunately, its coverage outside North America is patchy.This is why Raian Pollock decided to create Walkably. Walkably maps walkability across 31 European countries, giving every street…

One thing I have learned over my career is that nothing is new and for this post that's technically correct, but equally, it's not often that I end up doing a double take with a piece of design. My second post from my summer trip to Vienna.My first post from Vienna looked at the city's first cycle street.For this post, I was on Taborstraße to the north of the city in the area between the River Danube and the Danube Canal where I was off to find a breakfast pastry in a local super market with my…

After reading the book ‘The Art of Street Photography’ (see here), and soaking in the gorgeous colour work of Joshua K. Jackson, I have been inspired to shoot in non-monochrome for a while at least. Frustratingly, whilst taking these photos I kept tangling with security guards insisting that I could not photograph in the building without a permit, because I was using a “professional level camera”. Meanwhile people all about me were taking selfies and video on their smarphones. This is fair…

Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time, we’ve got light Czech beer, 19th century ale and Zoigl. First, a bit of news about the revival of an old brewing brand: Allsopp’s IPA is a cask ale apparently ‘inspired’ (yes, we know) by an 1822 recipe. There’s something romantic about these old brands – names you know from tin signs in museums and perhaps the occasional stained-glass window in a well-preserved pub. Allsopp’s has the advantage of the…

Hard Luck (2006)

This year's Stirling Prize for architecture has just been awarded to a project in London, way down south in Coulsdon off Lion Green Road. Previously the site was a large car park, but housing needs are tight so they've shrunk that to a really small car park and replaced the rest with mixed housing. It's understatedly impressive. [RIBA video] This is a well connected site, close to the shops and the station, but also a challenging site being on a noticeable slope. The original plan was to…

There’s a particular kind of December panic that ends with you in a shop at closing time, holding a scented candle and wondering whether “they like candles” counts as knowing someone. Here’s the alternative: make the present yourself, with someone who actually knows what they’re doing standing next to you. The workshop supplies the materials, the kit and the patience. You supply the idea of who it’s for. And you get an afternoon out of it, which is more than the shop at closing time ever gave…

I’m down in Uckfield this weekend for the exhibition and will be enjoying sharing Coalbridge Street with you all…Yet I don’t like hotel stays on my own - so on the road I like to take some trains with me… set up last night with a beverage was my N scale GWR branch line!I build ‘serious’ models but I love the simplicity and honesty of this little train. My first electric locomotive was a Pannier tank, this little N gauge re-incarnation rolls round the Kato circle with a mix of new - and old…

X is bad. Obviously. Davey hits the nail on the head here: People return to X just want followers in the strictest sense of the word. Sycophants that will just click like and subscribe on their posts without calling them out on anything. Much like the companies they cover, they just want to see number go up. Couple of interesting game projects. The first, PS2 games in the browser with WebAssembly. Secondly, someone ported a bunch of N64 games to Miyoo Mini and a there was asecond project just…