I’m on the ferry. It’s enormous yet there seem to be few passengers as of yet. I arrived at the passenger terminal at 18:00 and they don’t let you bring the bike inside and there was a vending machine to give me calories but no cafe, no shop. I had expected to wait 4 hours before boarding but I was able to board at 19:00 with almost no waiting. I seem to be the only cyclist. I have a cabin and have showered and am now typing this with a pizza and a beer which was poured for me by a man with an…

Mr BW writes: Oh ye of little faith. Who said I couldn't leave the 'phone' alone for a week for...

Back in July 2025 I made a list of bus routes and operators following the commencement of new contracts on many routes. But two things have changed since then. Firstly some new routes have been added (and some deleted) and Kinetic has taken over Dysons routes. Route and operator list Below is a list of routes and operators for all regular (ie non-Night Network / non-school) fixed bus routes in metropolitan Melbourne: Route Route name Operator (as of October 2026)140a Rockbank Station - Mt…

I was a little apprehensive when I made my way early this morning to Maynooth University Campus because I wasn’t sure how strong the turnout would be on the picket line for today’s one-day strike. I needn’t have worried, actually, because the attendance was very good at all the locations where pickets were stationed and everyone was in good spirits. It was a bit breezy, which made for some difficulties with flags and placards, but it was a very enjoyable day all round, with a real sense of…

Like me, you may have to teach about the economy and ecology of Late Imperial China. It is hard to make that lively. Poetry would help. Students love poetry. Thankfully, you don’t have to go looking for poems on the environment, Mark Elvin has found some for you.1 If you want something on irrigation (pg. 438) Forth comes the Yellow River, out from its Dragon Gates, And endless, endless, are the miles it flows with furious waves! Now – to train its traveling surges not to overspill their course,…

I am bassist in a Grateful Dead cover band. I do a lot of DJing. I'm a utility guy in a variety show (that sadly ends this month). And I also do synths and drum programming in an '80s-style band. It feels like a lot, and it feels like it should = me as a middling generalist, but that's not at all the case. It all seems to be going somewhere, and I don't know where, and I'm real good with that. I think I'm doing a good job in all aspects, and if I wasn't, I'd quit the band, whichever situation…

Day 2 of not daily journal writing and actually writing my book and... ... darn it, no natural image to accompany 'The Aviary' on my https://legs.bearblog.dev/ blog. I literally drew a blank, but heard birdsong. And this idea flew in which makes possible the other thought I've blogged about before - sharing sound. Thanks to https://icyti.me/ emailing me some good advice on how to upload tracks, and taking the plunge and creating a Soundcloud Account, I've created a slash/sound page where the…

For most of human history, astronomy meant looking. Eyes, then lenses, then mirrors, then glass plates bolted to bigger mirrors. The instruments got magnificent. The band never moved. We surveyed the entire universe through a slot roughly three hundred nanometres wide, declared the catalogue essentially complete, and settled in to argue about the decimal places. The universe, meanwhile, was doing nearly all of its interesting work somewhere else. The sky was never quiet, we wereIn 1932 Karl…

This September, my wife and I started viewing houses to buy for our first home. This’s been a long time coming—for the past 5 years, we’ve been saving aggressively and safely investing our savings in index funds, which have performed remarkably well. We genuinely thought it’d take us at least a few months to find a house that we’d want to put an offer in for just because our budget is tight and we’re looking in one of the least affordable places in Canada (the Greater Toronto Area), but, as…

A few people have asked how the scoring works, and one or two have asked, a bit pointedly, why their pin 40 km from Lagos only got half marks. Here’s the longer version of the info box: how to play, how the points add up, and where it all comes from. The basics Every day you get 5 cities. For each one you drop a pin on a map with no labels: no names, no roads, just coastlines, borders, rivers and lakes. Then you answer 3 multiple-choice questions about the city. Pin first, then questions. It’s…

What is it that I'm looking for?The world has shifted from hourly slaving the VA to loops and automations, and I bet I can handle those tasks as well, but I clearly still lack the experience. So I'm looking for a lucrative yet very specific problem to solve.The thing is, that is still quite a vague search... So I don't think that's what I'm looking for. Maybe it's the community that comes along with something like that? An ecosystem, a market, a place to grow in as a collaborator, a cocreator.…

Town Crier appointments are sometimes many weeks apart but this November is going to be a bit different for me. The diary is looking pretty full. On the 8th November we have Remembrance Sunday. I never make any proclamations on this sombre day. This year as usual I will be at the Windsor ceremony. I feel it is important to be there and a real honour to play a part in the ceremony. Then on the 11th I will be at Daniel of Windsor on Peascod Street for their late night shopping event and the…

You can't choose how you're born, but you can choose how you die.— Tamaru Kenichi, 1Q84I wonder if tripping on acid makes the world feel as surreal as mine has become. If so, I imagine the chief difference is that the experience eventually wears off.Starting last week, I had to get used to driving my love's jalopy to work. Before my first trip, however, we had to get the car a new battery. Again. You can read the story of the previous one, which managed to outlive its warranty by a matter of…

Gremlin and I were discussing the art of housecleaning, which Gremlin admits never explicitly learning. I (being A Girl) was explicitly taught, but later in life I learned that a lot of the things I was taught were inefficient or just plain wrong. So I had to unlearn and relearn how to clean my house. Gremlin, meanwhile, was...surprised? to learn that I schedule one block of time to clean my house per week. "Oh, so that's what you meant when you said the house was going to be a mess this week,"…

Gina Trapani Recently at a community gathering I was asked to give a 5-minute lightning talk about something I’m into. I landed on the physical activity that is making me feel my best these days. Here’s my talk transcript. Hi everyone. I’m Gina and I’m here to talk about the joy of lifting heavy objects. And by that I mean weightlifting. My endocrinologist Dr. S is the best doctor I’ve ever had. I’ve seen her twice-annually for thyroid stuff for about 8 years. The first 6 years, at every…

Greetings, everyone!I hope you’re having a lovely October. I’m personally enjoying the fall colors and crisp weather here!ALTSouth Minneapolis, Minnesota in the FallWe have a few updates for you all!Askbox closes at end of day Sunday, Oct 18, 2026We once again, need time to catch up on the plethora of asks we have received. We will close the inbox around 11:59 p.m. Central time on Sunday, Oct 18. Re-opening date TBD.We thank you for your patience with the issues with the askbox not working well…

We arrived back from Brighton on Monday afternoon, and I proposed that we take the 381 bus that conveniently goes from London Bridge station to the end of our road. It’s a little slower than taking the Jubilee line and walking, but it’s cheaper and we had baggage. After waiting for 20 minutes, the bus turned up, only to terminate short at Southwark Park. We stepped off and waited some time for the next bus, only to find that that one was terminating there as well. Finally, a C10 bus (also a…

Pictures from some rather restrained Halloween decor.It must be Halloween because my Halloween village is up (complete with creepy new "Cemetery" gate!)Hopefully I can go all out for Christmas!

I’m “every time you favorite music acts from your teen and college years come to town you buy the ticket because they’re all 10-20 years older than you and it very well could be your last chance” years old.

Short notice, I know. Homegrown National Park, the organization focused on bringing nature home, is hosting a free live panel discussion today of The Extraordinary Caterpillar, the 60-minute documentary film about the hidden world of caterpillars. In spring 2026, Homegrown National Park hosted a screening of the film. Now they’ve organized a live panel discussion featuring experts from the film, including: Dr. Doug Tallamy Caterpillar Lab director Sam Jaffe Botanist Laura Reeves What to Know…

I am extremely sorry that I shall not be able to use the music of Thamos, but this piece … is now among the rejected works which are no longer performed. For the sake of the music alone it might possibly be given again, but that is not likely. Certainly it is a pity! — Mozart writing to his father Leopold in 1783, nine years after the first performance of Thamos, King of Egypt I’ve seen the end of the game. I wouldn’t say I “finished” exactly as you’ll see in a moment. My previous posts on…

First of all, I'm OK. Last week I wrote about feeling overwhelmed, and haven't written anything since. I really am OK; this past weekend was Thanksgiving in Canada and I had to do a lot of driving, other than spending time with my wife's family. But I have been up to some things, so here's a bit of a mishmash of what I've been doing. It's almost a thoughts post but not quite. Life While driving home Monday, I passed a couple of cars and "had" to get up to ~127 km/h to do so. Immediately after,…

Because the UCI Word Road Championships were happening in Montreal, it wasn’t strange to see cycling fans around the city. While there I had an Opus card loaded up and got around using the Metro and a bus or two. For everywhere we wanted to go there were convenient stations. It was a little dark in the station and the train on the opposite side was approaching so I didn’t have much time to stop, compose and focus perfectly. I saw these two sitting in the two centre seats across the tracks from…

17:41 - Time for a quick honk shoo.

#coffeeneuring2026 No. 1 16.3km round-trip The Coffeeneuring Challenge 2026 kicked off a few days ago, and after dithering last year, this year I’m resolved to give it a go. So, between now and 25 November eight rides to seven (or eight) beverage-serving locations, no more than two a week, and despite clocking the first ride today, I’m saying the week started on Monday 12 October. One reason I didn’t participate last time was because it really is no big deal getting an excellent coffee here in…

https://sting.com/ery excited to see Sting tonight. I’ve seen every time The Police toured the US and almost every time Sting has toured solo. Excited to add one more to the list. We’re all getting older and I don’t know how many more chances I’ll get.