Every week, I share something I learned in the previous seven days. I usually find these while I'm putting my weekly newsletter together but somehow, they don't quite fit! This week I learned about an undersea 'jellyfish' roundabout... some excellent engineering going on here!World first under sea roundaboutTHE NEW GIANT UNDERWATER “JELLYFISH” ROUNDABOUT HAS BECOME THE LATEST FAROE ISLANDS TOURIST ATTRACTION Get better at work. Every Week. One Email. Practical Tools. Real Progress. Get the Mail…
I truly don’t know how DJs used to do it. As a mobile and event DJ, I have to bring all my stuff. There’s no way I would’ve pack all those crates of garbage back then. Somebody told me a long time ago, “If you could perform with your watch, you probably would.” Probably. It’s why I like the MPC Live 1 and 25-key synthesizers. Tight and compact. They just do the job. This weekend I’m doing a gig with a Reloop Mixtour Pro and an iPad. That’s about half a shoebox worth of gear. I may bring my…
Two meetings to briefly reflect on. 12 July, I wasn’t there, as we went to a family gathering in Dulwich Park. A pleasant afternoon, aided by excellent Jamaican food, a strong breeze, and sitting in the shade next to a bed of Maximilian Sunflowers. I gather that five members turned up, failed to run a train, but talked all afternoon. I call that a result. The 15 July was the ESNG AGM. Nine members turned up for this exciting highlight of the year, but it was improved by our early Wednesday…
Few hours stalking carp on The Puddle. And double #10 - summer challenge cracked with a beautiful 12lb 1oz mirror - ace! Plenty of light (and bread) left I kept on wandering round - loosing a tench before banking a chunky 10lb 7oz common. Focusing on the tench, I thought for a second I'd hit a big roach - but a PB hybrid at 1lb 12oz to wrap things up. A Puddle tench next?
Before I get into an update with things, I wanted to share this adorable little guy with you. I found this while using the rain barrel to water the garden from the rain barrel. I had taken the caps off the watering cans, just in case frogs got into the filled cans again. They are … Continue reading Garden first, and a quick run down
You gotta love the internet for bringing sports you've never heard of, to your attention. Here we have, drag racing - on sand! Messy madness!
Whew! About time, too. Guest post by AlphabeticalAnonymous: In the previous post, I made a serious effort to push through and finish the game. The game manual promises "two outdoor areas, each 32 squares by 32 squares" and the previous 58 hours of gameplay sufficed only to explore the first of those. Luckily, I had some hope that as in other games (e.g., Ambermoon) the final world wouldn’t take nearly as long to complete as the game’s primary world. This dream was given form and in this post I…
Here are a few interesting things I came across this week. A read on how a corporation is trying to monopolize berries across the world with a mission of making them available worldwide in all seasons. I love berries and being in Bangalore, I did not have access to them much earlier, and now it is everywhere. So, mixed feelings about this. I thought was GPS only accurate to a few meters, but apparently there is a way called GPS-RTK to use a "base station" to triangulate GPS and make it accurate…
Happy day, happy mail 🙂 More stationery arrived. From Hubman & Chubgirl — great stuff! I’m trying to not buy too much stationery…it’s just one set of journal stickers…this time… Hello Japan
Eight years ago, I wrote my first blog post. I didn’t know what I was doing. After googling “how to get better at coding,” I found start a blog. That’s what I did. By the way, that search inspired Street-Smart Coding, my first coding book. I spent days choosing a Jekyll theme and a name. I turned hours of googling into a post and hit publish. OK, I vomited some words onto a page. That first post is still unedited as a reminder. That’s how I started blogging. Here I am, 816 posts later. 624…
Profile picture, flag overlay. "I stand with them." Them being the dying, somewhere you've never been, in a war you learned about from a fifteen-second clip. Count the bodies since you stood. You don't know the number. You never checked. The stance doesn't need a body count, it needs a color. Now you're against AI. It drinks a bit more power than the app you used to watch the war clip between two ads. Cobalt dug by a kid, in a country you couldn't find on a map. That phone in your hand cost…
Sometimes I post a flurry of nonsense and other times my mind just rattles around, shrugs and says, “I dunno!” The last few days it’s been doing the latter. I can’t say why these things happen when they do–I could probably write a bestselling self-help book if I figured it out–but it’s been persistent, if intermittent, since I was old enough to scribble mostly inside the lines. In celebration of finally posting some nonsense, albeit not a flurry of it, here is, of course, typing cat.
A few weeks ago we went to Shreveport for a work meeting. We stayed at one of the casinos because my husband likes to play blackjack and it's super cheap to play there. I typically like to play slot machines but this time around they were pretty lame. I think half of them were the "buffalo" game and the other half were some flavor of Chinese dragon or gold coins. Now, I like the buffalo game, but I also like the movie themed ones like Wizard of Oz and stuff like that. I will hop from machine to…
Today was the end of the week, and the working hours were spent drilling through invoices and intermittently talking about nothing with my fellow interns. Donut spots, coffee shops. When you're bored, it all trails back to snacks. I've been growing tired of the same old lately, but struggling to pinpoint what exactly needs to change in my routine, and the nothingness of the day gave me just the right amount of time to ruminate. The adjustments began on the subway ride home, where I was chatting…
Big weekend ahead, spending it with my two grandkids. With the smoke from the Candian wildfires lifting in their neck of the woods it sounds like we have a crazy day planned. It’ll be special one.
it's time for you flatter your sevens this failed kayak trip turned out okay all played by ear more significant in the end when you wrote it down stirring the sauce realising three months since the obvious other things said obviate Yesterday :: Friday, 17th July 2026
Day one in the books. We pulled into Forrest City, Arkansas, at 8:30PM CST, so it was 9:30 in Charlottesville. That comes to 14.5 hours of driving, including breaks for gas, food, and other things. Approximately 718 miles, or 1,155 kilometers. We’re both pooped out. This is the longest day of the trip. Tomorrow will be quite a bit shorter but still productive. Good night.
I have been married for more than 20 years. My wife has been with me both good times and bad times. Actually, it is mostly bad times. Money is always tight and she has to tolerate my non-sense. I know she loves a model of premium car. It is not cheap but it is also not expensive. Nevertheless, the car is an overkill as she only drives it to work. We never bought the car and she has never complain about it. Deep down, I know she still wants it. Occasionally, we would still point it out when we…
I’m already really tired of hearing about The Odyssey.
The best excuse I’ve heard lately wasn’t really an excuse so much as an explanation that absolutely nobody asked for. As it turns out, all roads eventually lead to a pineapple. Which is not a sentence I expected to write today. To be fair, I also wasn’t expecting to spend last Saturday at Costco. I try to avoid Costco on Saturdays. Not because I don’t enjoy watching people spend twenty minutes deciding which brand of paper towels will best support their lifestyle choices. I do. It’s just that…
⚠ Partial Outage Dan Alive Work In progress Busyness Elevated Book cancellations 0 incidents in 3650 days Patience Major outages reported Work hours spent writing actual TTRPG stuff instead of performing admin work a chimp could do 15%
It might shock you to know that I put in an order for a retrocomputer earlier this month. Alas, it’s not going as well as one may hope. After saving and searching for this specific machine for months, I eventually tracked one down in serviceable condition on a US store that ran on Shopify. I prefer buying from outside the US thesedays if I can, because their shipping prices are wild. It typically costs half as much to get something from the UK, despite it being further away. But something…
A client recommended the Three Capes Track in Tasmania recently, and it looks stunning. From the Tasmania Parks and Wilderness Service: The 48-kilometre track has been designed as an achievable experience for a wide range of ages and abilities. It has been built to a dry-boot standard from a range of materials, including timbers, stone and gravel and is wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side. The journey begins with walkers checking in at the Port Arthur Historic Site. You will then…
There were a number of sweet family films made in the early 1960s and Safe at Home! is one of them. It was released by Columbia Pictures in 1962. The film was publicized as a light-hearted comedy but there really is very little comedy about it, it is just a simple story of a little boy who wants to see his heroes Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris so he can ask them to visit his little league baseball team. This little boy "Hutch" was admirably played by Bryan Russell (the Bye,Bye, Birdie boy) who…
Maybe a slightly provocative title, but it’s true. I am keeping busy, working in my software testing job, getting Cicada Ink going, packaging and posting orders, tweaking the website, doing Instagram posts, etc., also trying to get my body back in shape a little. I’m not back at karate yet, but I’ve been trying to walk daily, and build up some strength with dumbbells at home. Outside of that I’m not feeling a great sense of wanting to do anything. Oh, I’ve been writing, and knitting socks while…
image by AI; my own prompt Earlier this month, I was looking at my ‘upcoming blog post ideas’ list just before going into my bathroom for my morning shower. I was lamenting that none of the subjects on my list were very interesting, and contemplating skipping a couple of posts until there was something I really wanted to write about. And then, as I was brushing my teeth, not just one, but three interesting new ideas just ‘came into my head’. I raced around for a scrap of paper and pencil to…
On Thursday the state government announced the date of contactless payment 'tap and go' roll-out on Melbourne buses. That date is Sunday 26 July 2026. This is a big deal because tap and go makes payment for bus travel easy for any full fare payer with a credit or debit card. Trains and trams have already been contactless for some weeks prior. Contactless will remove a significant barrier for spontaneous trips. Right now there is a need to find a Myki outlet, buy a card ($6 before any travel),…
Power Cat 2026-07-17
