Hi, baby. I'm 18 weeks pregnant today. 16 weeks ago, you were a single cell with two nuclei, about to mix it together and make a new human. Look at you now: a tiny baby curled up in a foetal position. Sometimes it feels unreal. I can't grasp how lucky I am to have you in my belly. I think it will be easier when I'll really feel you move. For now, I'm always afraid that you might disappear, even though I feel my uterus stretching to give you room to grow. How does it feel? Are you comfortable?…

From 2020, a random photo I took of a 1931 garage on Lafayette Street: In case you’re wondering, it looked much the same in 1940, although better maintained: Garages, in general, are not great works of architecture. Most of them in Manhattan are very plain and built in the mid-1900s. Some have nice brick facades, and those tend to be converted stables built before 1910. This one is something slightly different: a garage that has a facade that isn’t just a featureless box but was never anything…

John Ottman is one of those filmmakers whose résumé is almost ridiculously varied. As a composer, he’s probably best known for movies like The Usual Suspects, X2: X-Men United, Superman Returns, X-Men: Days of Future Past, The Nice Guys, and Valkyrie. Horror fans will also recognize his work from Apt Pupil, Lake Placid, Eight Legged Freaks, Gothika, Hide and Seek, and Orphan. He even directed Urban Legends: Final Cut. In 2019, Ottman won the Academy Award for Best Film Editing for his work on…

Having spent a week with a holiday group in a foreign country, I've come to realise something that should have been obvious. No-one is looking. No-one is staring No-one is pointing No-one cares Everyone is wrapped up in their own world and they haven't got much headspace for people who don't fit their vague definition of 'slightly outside the expected' Yes, I've got man-boobs and I need to wear a bra for comfort. Get over it! If that's a problem for you, then it's not a problem I'm going to…

I enjoy daily mini-games. I play the New York Times ones (Wordle, Connections, and the mini crossword) and sometimes Clues By Sam if I am feeling extra smart. Recently I...

What have you recently finished reading? I finished two books last night, which I was very pleased with — two very different books, as is my wont, ahaha. One was Brandt & Stein’s Worst Man, which is a fun and ridiculous graphic novel in which one character is trying to make his best friend’s wedding amazing, and the other one is trying to ruin it (only, of course, he changes his mind). I love the art, the faces are so expressive and there’s a lot of comedy that arises from expression and…

In Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro announcement, they almost mentioned in passing that the “Dynamic Island” is now 25% smaller and can now hold 3 live activities. Great leading with the user benefit there, Apple. However, it got me curious how did they achieve it? Apple’s functionalities often combine industrial, mechanical, electrical, optical designs with software innovations that get manufactured at scale. When you dig deep, there are often very few companies that perform those kind of core…

My library in progress #3So happy with this! After playing with the flat version, I decided to apply the logic to individually cloned shelves, about 5 hours later this is the result! #blog #pixels #website #redesignThank you for following my feed! ♥ Leave a reply here.

Ian Holloway has posted about the Ghost Signals book at his Wyrd Britain site: “This, the latest collection of writings from Stephen Prince, the man behind the always excellent ‘A Year in the Country’ blog, takes us on a tour of various obscure televisual gems from ’68 to ’95… he’s a digger extraordinaire so alongside old favourites there are… tantalising treats of programmes I had no idea existed – ‘A Pattern of Roses’, ‘Shades’, ‘The Plant’ – and his analysis are ever cogent, and insightful,…

What’s a song you’ve had on repeat recently? Recently? Ever since I first heard this I can’t listen to it once. Love the flow, the beats, the attitude, the lyrics, just love her voice in this too. Plus it’s only 2:39 long so easily repeatable. Seriously, how catchy is this track? Been 2 years and I still hit that repeat button whenever it comes on. “DENIAL IS A RIVER” by Doechii Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. Listen to Gordon McLean's Apple Music playlist…

thinking cap onStarted to think about this last night at my desk. Chopping the 8 slots for the table clips wasn't that appealing. Thought of gluing a bearer at each corner and then screwing up through it into the top holding it down. Should work, shouldn't it?This is all I got done in the AM session. I had my final chemo cocktail party today and I am now in the monitoring phase. Every 3 months I'll get a CT of the lungs and have it reviewed by the oncologist. Fingers crossed that is a long time…

Stairs on the Galveston, Texas, Seawall lead to the frothing surf of the Gulf of Mexico. The post Froth at the Foot of the Stairs appeared first on 75CentralPhotography.

What am I doing? Not a Masters (NaM) Unit 1: The Stories I Tell Myself The Assignment Technology & Pop Culture vs. the Ancient Archetype — Where has tech and pop culture reshaped or commodified or flattened an ancient archetype? Think about the algorithm, influencer culture, AI, our current branding of “authenticity,” etc. Is anything gained in all this reshaping? Who cares that the Tech Bros have decided that they are the embodied merge of the archetypes Master and Mystic? Who cares that on…

The first Interesting Assemble is a week today. Tickets are still available and still free.And, excitingly, we can now announce a very special guest for Interesting Assemble II - the return of Dave 'Funkypancake' Simpson.Old school interneters will remember Dave's work with enormous affection. He pioneered a genre of noticing the world with a camera which would go on to be a staple on social and algorithmic media. Dave spotted and shared the unregarded and the odd, the quotidian things that…

🔖 Read Seasonal Living Isn’t Just A Wellness Trend — It’s How We Were Designed To Live by Dr. Jaclyn Tolentino (The Good Trade). 🍂 It’s fall according to the light and the temperature is obliging, too. Time for cardigans, sweet potatoes, and days that feel like the golden hour all afternoon.

For Apple, it's time to move on beyond AR demos with iPads, as Joe Rossignol reports for MacRumors: Following renovations, the Apple Park Visitor Center in Cupertino, California no longer features a 3D augmented reality model of the Apple Park campus. ~ Links: Apple Park Visitor Center Just Lost an Attraction Offered Since 2017, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors Apple Park AR Experience, by AppleInsider, YouTube (2017)

Welcome to Vol. 4, issue 11 of Johto Times! In this issue, we spoke to Tiff of Pokémon Desert Shadow, a Pokémon fansite which was online for twelve years between 2005 and 2017. Tiff also discusses the origins of her website and the helpful resources that it featured. As usual, we also have a roundup of the latest Pokémon news. Later this year, Johto Times will be hosting our first awards event, celebrating Pokémon fansites and the wider Pokémon community. This was inspired by fansites of the…

Our interview with Tiff of the Pokémon fansite Pokémon Desert Storm, online between 2005 and 2017.

Mark 2026 down as the year that I stopped thinking my blog stats, the pageviews in particular, mean very much. I still check my stats several times a day as if they do. Habits built on obsession die hard. But for years I treated that number as a kind of badge of honor, of proof of relevance. If Down the Road got more pageviews this year than last year, I took that as evidence that the blog was growing and that more people were reading it. I don’t believe that anymore. I think it’s never been…

Yesterday was a lovely day to go to apple orchards and pumpkin patches. I did look for the farm I didn't buy, the farm on the way to the orchard, which I blogged about in this post yesterday. The house no longer exists, and I'm almost sure that the property has been transformed into a housing development called--wait for it--The Orchards.I bought 3 types of apples, and I'll report on the writing assignment tomorrow. I had a vision of buying Pink Ladies, in honor of my grandmother, and because…

Original 1967 snapshot of Peterson’s Rock Garden in Oregon.Rastus Petersen starting building the place (or thing) in 1935 and it arew into a 4 acre environment! He passed on in 1952 and the family took controluntil selling it in 2003. Despite considerable repairs it closed in 2016, but it was added to the National Registry of Historic places and was repaired and reopened in 2026. So it’s still there. Postcards abound, but this was the first actual snapshot I’ve ever seen. It’s a rock…

Music I will say one thing about 'America: A Tribute To Heroes'. What was Natalie Imbruglia doing singing backing vocals for U2?Net The Brains Trust watches the Internet reach the parts other global information sources cannot reach...Fashion Marks & Spencer's new print campaign featuring a stunning model in lingerie revisits the Wonderbra's 'Hello Boys' series of the early 90s. But you get the feeling they'll need more than this to turn around the fortunes (especially in the present economic…

2026-09-10Hello!I had an incoherent rant to do with statistics and over-optimization, but I realized no one but myself would actually give a crap. Also, I'm not going to become one of those self-help gurus who think they have the answer to life's common problems.Instead, I'd like to talk about the many books on my desk. I want to read them all! Hell, I applied for a new library card on a whim. It was denied, but still!One of the things I'm proud of on this website is how little analytics data I…

The apparent path of the sun crosses the celestial equator southbound at 00:05 UTC today, making this the first day of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere and the first of spring in the Southern. This is the time of harvest, when plans come to fruition; it is also the harbinger of the time of rest, especially for Daughters of Darkness like myself who are exhausted and overstimulated by the long days of summer. But even if you’re not a fan of the growing gloom, I hope you can enjoy the cooler days…

Sometimes you’re so excited that it’s persimmon season in Lawrence County you eat persimmon pudding for breakfast.

“But you are wrong; it is useless to cling to the past. Even before the Overlords came to Earth, the sovereign state was dying. They have merely hastened its end: no one can save it now --- and no one should try.” Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke, 1953

I’m back on schizogram again. The posts are all different, but all the same. A man hides in the bushes from the authorities. A shirtless old woman yells obscenities at her camera. A wild-eyed college burnout shares his discovery that we’re living in a 300,000-year-old simulation. Each video has millions of views, and the comments range from concerned to encouraging. “Keep talking to the AI, it’s working.” “Please get help!” “I think bro is onto something.” In any case, the audience shares a…

People posting AI slop to the internet is annoying, but not as much as people complaining non-stop about AI. I get it, AI companies are shitty, and their reach is menacing. Anyone that knows how technology influence legislation and society can easily understand that. I'm worried about it too. But lately, almost every content creator in the creative space launches into a diatribe against AI halfway through a video. No new arguments, the same thing every time. It's tiring. I'm mostly on your…

Josie (2017)The tension between writing things easily using a computer vs writing them in one of my lovely notebooks never subsides and it is crazy-making. Maybe there could be a document format that displays the author's (human-written) text, but has a hidden AI-generated version or summary. Sort of like how "Alt" text works for images. I'm so tired of reading LLM output, but future readers (and machines) could benefit from the tedious, exhaustive details. Just keep it out of my way until…

In a previous article I wrote about con men. Business owners or artificial authorities who play experts. They try to trick you for simple reasons such as money, popularity, status, power. They often confirm their expertise with each other. It's visible and easy to spot. However, not everyone has their own business or real power. Some people have ideologies. Never unique, never their own. It can be some political view, religion, ecology, economy, or whatever. It's not invented by them. It's…