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.

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…

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

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…

2026-08-09Hello!One of my favorite jokes is to imagine the opposite of a song's lyrics, meaning, or even melody. It only amuses me, I know, but I keep doing it. In this case, it's Here Comes The Sun by the Beatles, which was the first song where I found the joke. The "negative harmony cover" of that song has been created on YouTube and it's clever.The urge to create original photographs has never been stronger, and walking outside to a random area on a whim isn't doing enough for me. A trip to…

Yesterday I reported about how much I despise home repair, how I feel I'm really bad at it, how it sometimes goes terribly wrong for me, and how my work diary had demonstrated that a seeming failure was catually a glorious success. I included this picture of our (formerly!) leaky laundry tub, and it reminded me of something else. When we first moved into the house, more than four years ago now, that black outflow hose was unsecured. If you weren't careful — and sometimes even if you were — it…

An AI agent can use a valid credential, call an approved tool, and still make a change the business never intended. That is the problem I kept coming back to while reading Maria Korolov’s CSO analysis of Okta’s push into AI agent security.The identity argument interests me because agents need access to be useful. An assistant that can investigate a support ticket, retrieve documentation, or change an account has to authenticate somewhere. Someone has to decide which resources it can reach,…

One hundred years ago this month, my late father-in-law arrived back in the United States after touring Europe as a piano player for a "American college jazz band." Edgar James Wood (1903-1986) had been an undergraduate at Tufts University (then Tufts College) until May, 1926, but he didn't graduate because he couldn't pass his last class. This image shows Ed as a member of the Zeta Psi fraternity, in the class of 1926. Ed had fond memories of his time at Tufts and he attended reunions on and…

I don't write code anymore. Maybe an exaggeration... the writer's oldest privilege. The honest version is that I barely write code. And I used to get paid for it. These days I describe what I want in plain English, and a machine builds it. First drafts, reports, double-checking other people's work, meeting notes, the to-do lists that keep a team on schedule: all of it now has AI riding shotgun. My job used to be doing the work. Now it's mostly knowing exactly what I want and being stubborn…

I’m really enjoying Tariq Goddard’s occasional forays at The Quietus; the lad’s got a fine turn of phrase about him. There is a tentative Curtis consensus which allows those who rate him and those who don’t to coalesce round certain qualities inherent in his work that the latter simply don’t attribute as much value to as the former. Tariq Goddard https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/live-reviews/adam-curtis-party-conference-review/ I like to think we could have a very enjoyable chat over a…

Day Eleven in Tokyo. Kagayaki finally lost for the first time this tournament, now 10-1. Hitoshi (8-3) henka’d and drove Kagayaki out, picking up his kachi-koshi. Kayo is the only wrestler at 9-2 in Juryo. Nishikigi looks ready for Makushita. On the flip side, Asahifuji looks ready for Juryo, twisting Meisei down to the ground … Continue reading Aki 2026: Day Eleven

I recently played the Tom Sharkett Edit of LCD Soundsystem's beautiful Home. I ended up playing it several times and dancing around my living room. This then sent me on a bit of a trip down the rabbit hole of LCD alternative mixes, edits, remixes and also Franz Ferdinand covering All My Friends. I'll definitely need to feature this as a cover version of the month in the future.As I listened I made a playlist of my favourites. Expect radical reworkings, prepare to get lost in the music, marvel…

I have been using Typefully for a long time and it is genuinely great, but it supports a fixed set of platforms and I wanted to decide that for myself. So I built my own. Say hello to CogSend, a self-hosted social media scheduler. CogSend is open source under the MIT license and it runs on your own free Cloudflare account. There is no monthly fee and no account with me, and your platform credentials stay in your infrastructure. It currently supports Mastodon, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Threads and X…

Today’s TDC says Invariably I take unintended photos when grabbing my phone or those weird compositions featuring a blurred thumb selfie. Can you make/shae art from an accidental or unntended photo? I usually delete any blurry pics I take, but here’s a long exposure one I took at the weekend by mistake. It was very windy! Windy Findhorn flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license I headed over to Lunapic to artify it Artified Findhorn flickr photo…

It’s Wednesday so here we go again with progress from our members. We start this week with Mark J and another building for his Arnhem project, there will be lots more about that in the coming months. Moving on and Andy has gone from painting small 28mm sci-fi to painting big 28mm sci-fi. Here we have the start of some Konflikt 47 Stahltruppen Heavy Infantry. Sticking with sci-fi and Tony F has painted himself a miniature for his character in a game of Traveller. The last couple of years have…

Stumbling into success. Read here.

Bel AirNikon N90s28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 AF-D NikkorAristaPan 100Bellini Ecofilm 1+12026 This 1953 Chevrolet at a car show had rust spots. Yet it had all of its chrome trim. Is it partially restored, or just a car that had great luck keeping all of its bits across the decades? Get more of my photography in your inbox or reader! Click here to subscribe.

For some reason over the last week, Insta has shown me videos of disabled British people having problems with accessibility, flights, railways, coffee shops. Its appalling that in this day and age accessibility isn't simply the default and should something break alternative arrangements not be made immediately to accommodate people. However - there is one form of discrimination that still pervades society and needs to be stamped out. I speak of discrimination against the tall. I'm 2m tall…

My son's friend just killed himself. He was only 21 years old. My son knew him since high school days. My son is distraught from the news. This friend introduced obstacle racing to him. Given that my son is socially awkward, he really cherished this friendship. He was a popular student; he has multiple interests from culinary to Ninja Warrior. According to the family, this person did not want to die but he kept hearing voices inside his head. Sadly, the voices won. I do not want to speculate…

One of the big non-rules changes I’ve made to Intergalactic, just added in the latest update, is a downgrade of galactic communication. So far it’s been fun to play with, and creates a groundwork that dodges some of the issues with a game with abundant long range communication.CommunicationSpace is not a silent void, but is loud and thick with the stuff of the stars, rippling in the wake of the god-lanterns. This renders wireless communication almost impossible. Short Distance - Wires, Pipes,…

Today’s morning journaling. Recalling a generous free hour given decades ago by a talented business consultant. I was a writer with only one small book in print, the other self-published run of 300 long sold out. I had no assets or entrepreneurial skills. Gushing with Grand Ideas for future books and add-on ‘passive income’ (the new term I'd just discovered), Bob reined me in immediately. [paraphrasing] ‘This will sound like a very odd question to begin with, but it will shape your entire…

2026-09-08Hello! There's still a few weeks left until autumn begins, but I am so ready. Cozy colors and pretty hoodies. My (limited) wardrobe is already prepared.For now, I'm at my backyard garden realizing that I didn't put enough care into this project as I hoped. In fact, I left it to fend for itself for weeks at a time. My suspicion is that animals (squirrels?) burrowed into the soil deep enough to take out tulip bulbs, or to eat up the seed dots that would have grown vegetables.At times, I…

"Hearts on Fire" by Gram Parsons What’s a song you’ve had on repeat recently? Hearts on Fire by Gram Parsons If by recently, if you mean for the last twenty years. View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile

Can a landscape be still and noisy at the same time? There is a wonderful haiku by Matsuo Bashō that plays on this paradox: 'shizukasa ya / iwa ni shimiiru / semi no koe'. The first word means 'stillness' and the cutting word 'ya' suggests that this applies to everything that follows: 'penetrating into the rocks, voices of the cicadas.' We might imagine the poet becoming gradually aware that the constant sound of these insects is permeating everything, even the rocks, even himself. Haiku…

https://www.bram.us/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/show-keystrokes.mp4Recording of the <show-keystrokes> Demo & Playground. ~ When recording screen casts or doing live demos, I typically rely on a native macOS app to visualize my keystrokes on screen. Recently, however, that app got blocked on my work machine by a corporate security policy. Additionally, the keystrokes visualized through that app don’t show up when screen sharing a specific window or tab. Because I needed to demo a…