Last year I spoke at MK Geek Night about my personal reflections on how, after years of chasing IndieWeb perfection, I just accepted my imperfect website. I finally sat down to transcribe it and post it here. The base of this post was a transcript of my presentation but some editing is now present for added clarity, blog context instead of presentation and correction of grammatical mistakes. This a ramble about what a safe personal online space focused on creativity, community, and…
Dandelion seed heads, or blowballs, spotted in a lawn in McKinney, Texas. Each sphere is made of dozens of seeds attached to a pappus—a bristled structure that catches the wind and carries the seed away. The post Blowballs appeared first on 75CentralPhotography.
I didn't forgetMade a test rabbet to ensure the fit was ok. This is the plywood I intend to use. Lowes sells 1/2 sheets (48 x48) but it is something that I don't see that often in stock. If not I'll buy a full sheet and have it sawn in half.doneAdjusting the plunge router is/was a ROYAL PITA. It was stiff, uncooperative, and damn near impossible to nudge up/down a frog hair. It took me a bazillion years to get it to the depth I needed. I left it set on it so I can rout the top and bottom…
be my invisible mirror that opens when i write. with words, wonder; hope, dreaming. be my literary pillow; bear the brunt of the i (eyes) the questions, of self. be the messy middle of my mind on paper, that speaks of life. blank, until it is not. Inspired by Tim Kiely's prompt. Tim Kiely's prompt
Anthony Kenny, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Oxford, well-known for his work on the philosophy of mind and history of philosophy, has died. Professor Kenny wrote widely on the philosophy of mind, history of philosophy, and philosophy of religion. He is especially recognized for his work on Wittgenstein, Thomas Aquinas, and Descartes, including his critique of Cartesian dualism. Professor Kenny is the author of numerous articles and books. Some of his more well-known…
Get the information you need right at your fingertips with Lost Art Press pocket books – and right now, you can get all six for the special price of just $99. Though our pocket books are small in size – just 4″ x 6-1/2″ – each one is full of expert guidance on a given topic. Here is what comes in the complete set of six books: “Woodworker’s Pocket Book”Edited by the great Charles H. Hayward and first published in 1949, “Woodworker’s Pocket Book” is a guide to everything from finishing recipes…
Congratulations! You’ve just inherited £100,000 from Great Uncle Bertie. Good old Bertie. Always liked him. Naturally, you’re going to invest this for your future financial well-being. The pleasantly unexciting Vanguard LifeStrategy 60 will do nicely. Your tax allowances are already spoken for. So, at least for now, you’ll need to resign yourself to paying tax on your gains in a General Investment Account (GIA). You also know that investing everything ASAP is statistically the best approach.…
Over the years, I've bought a lot of tech. Some good, some bad, but not a whole lot that I've been crazy about. I've spent countless days researching, pouring over reviews, videos, and the like only to buy a piece of equipment that ultimately ends up collecting dust (I'm looking at you RetroPocket 2S and Y1 Mp3 Player). You know, pieces of tech that I convinced myself would be daily uses and fill some strange gap in my day. Yet, outside of my phone, iPad, MacBook, Xbox and Playstation, nothing…
Submission for AuguStory 2026. I thought I'd make several posts for AuguStory. Not sure if they will all take place this month, because I assume there will be another AuguStory next year and I don't want to run out of ideas.* * Though I do think Chloe's prompts will keep me covered for a while.In this introductory post, I'll cover these questions that Robert asks. ✎ Story timeHow did you first start blogging (what got you into it)? The timeline and details are all a blur, but I believe I…
english feels simple and comfortable, i have to translate some phrases in my head before speaking out. it feels so weird! i am spending a lot of time with my russian-speaking friend this week, and i found myself slow in expressing some things. it feels... bizzare. not negative or positive, just bizzare. i guess since i never really speak russian for prolonged periods of time anymore, it makes sense that i never had to face this. at the same time, russian feels more emotional, russian humor is…
A selection of street portraits taken on Portra 400. Grassmarket, Edinburgh, July 2026.
A lot of my time is spent in reading technical blogs and news. Mostly from my RSS feeds and Hacker News, Lobsters, and Reddit. My browser has dozens of open tabs of articles I want to read, but think they’re too deep for just a quick scan. A lot of these texts require some further research on the subject or new concepts I’ve never heard before. So I realized that taking notes of these articles is the best way of understanding it, along with the further links I’ll follow, improving my chances of…
Heather Williams on covertracklistAbbie Neal & Her Ranch Girls - Newton's Law.mp3 Babe Wayne - Dance The Whiz Wosh.mp3 Barbara Compton - Mining Men.mp3 Bonnie Bombshell Lee - My Rock And Roll Man.mp3 Choo Choo Collins - Baby's Gone.mp3 Dusty Springfield - La Bamba.mp3 Heather Williams - Celebration.mp3 Lady Nell - Loving Daddy.mp3 Marva Allen - I'm Thru With You.mp3 Mona Kerry - Don't Hang Around My Door.mp3 Peggy Phillips (& The Patterns) - Is That So.mp3 Tanya Day - His Lips Get In The…
When I was about to park my car for a house inspection, all the spots were taken. I asked the homeowner if it was ok to park on the lawn. She didn't mind, and then added: "We need to be a little flexible in life." Imagine how many of our so-called problems would vanish with a little flexibility. Simply adapting to the current situation instead of resisting it. We might even make some new and interesting discoveries by being open-minded and curious instead of stiff and stubborn. — I'll have the…
When you see a text a second or third time you recognise it, and that feeling of recognition is easily mistaken for actual understanding. This is the fluency illusion: the ease of processing something gets read as a measure of how well you know it. Rereading and highlighting raise how easy something feels right now (retrieval strength), but they barely build the deeper storage that remains once the text is no longer in front of you (storage strength). Take the source away, and the illusion of…
I've been going down lots of rabbit holes on finding new blogs last day or so - mostly tech as that’s what there is, some accessibility (in tech), some books (about tech) etc etc. Today I was met with this. Look I know I know only too well this is a result of ridiculous UK Internet law. I know its a problem brought about by various streams of idiotic, tech illiterate, hateful UK political parties... but please please if you're a blogger and you want things to be accessible to the UK audience,…
You know how it goes. August means guests. So I have not been as idle as it relates to the beer reading and the beer writing. These are pastimes which demand a special type of slacking. One cannot succeed as a dedicated beer scribbler without setting aside the time to be inordinately idle, what in any other pursuit appears to be the disfunctions of a wastetrel.* Plus, when not hosting I have spent much of the week working with the twine and the secaturs. That right there? That was my view…
In honour of Stockholm Pride, I want to share some good shows on the subject. Watching LGBTQ+ characters on the screen has given me courage to live more openly. I hope these gems can inspire you as much as they've inspired me. Or, at the very least, start a meaningful discussion with friends and family. Happy Pride and enjoy watching! Pride momentsSoap operas and teen dramas paved the way for LGBTQ+ representation in the mainstream media. First, there was the Dawson's Creek gay kiss in 2000,…
My most reliable random name generator works completely without any electricity and is attached to our fridge as a set of magnetic letters. Every other day, a new name appears. It’s like magic.I wonder how this works. 🤔 Reply by email
During the month of August I will be participating in Blaugust, a month long blogging challenge. Today’s TDC asks us to: Place the word Madagascar somewhere in the response in a way that makes no sense As I web searched for Madagascar I noticed that images of lemurs featured heavily in the results, and that gave me an idea. I stole an image from this web page and edited it slightly. I am sure nobody will notice that I added a little cat to it. Madagascar flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared…
This is an irregular column that rewinds the clock back some years to see what was on the taps at certain pubs. Too many of these will no doubt be from my local, The Great Northern Railway Tavern (GNRT), in North London that has been a tremendous pub over the years for its beer selection.…
I’ve read a lot of Greek mythology but very little British mythology, so when I came across No Fair Maidens on NetGalley it seemed like a good opportunity to rectify that. However, I don’t think I read the description of the book properly as it wasn’t quite the exploration of British goddesses that I’d expected but more of a memoir of the author’s own personal journey. Looking at other reviews, it seems a lot of people made the same mistake, but I think as long as you know what kind of book it…
by Gertrud U. Rey This article marks my 100th contribution to Virology Blog since I published my first post on March 1, 2018. Above all, I have learned that nature does not recognize the boundaries humans use to organize scientific disciplines. My host Vincent Racaniello and the treasure trove of information on the MicrobeTV network […]
Maxwell’s equations describe the behaviour of electric fields and magnetic fields; a more detailed introduction appears in post 25.12. Equations (1)-(4) (highlighted above) are Maxwell’s equations in vector notation. Here E is an electric field, B is a magnetic field, ∇ is the vector operator del, q is charge, ε0 is the permittivity of free space, ∂/∂t denotes partial differentiation with respect to time, μ0 is the permeability of free space and J is current density. Equations (1) and (2) are…
Yesterday was a delightful day. Today will be delightful too, although it's a full day on campus, so it will be a different kind of delightful. And I've been awake since 2, so I do worry about how tired I'll be by late afternoon.My brain started churning at 2, churning with all sorts of worries and plans. I need to sit down with a calendar and old syllabi and make some loose plans--or maybe weekly plans--at least that's what my brain was telling me when I couldn't go back to sleep. My brain…
I never mentioned it here, but we had a death in the family about a month ago. Most of you know that we have two dogs in our family, but each dog had only one master that they answered to. I have a yellow lab named Maley, who just turned eleven in June. Her name […]
I had a wonderful idea the other day to mod my cheap Kmart digicam to take C mount camera lenses because that sounds really fun. It certainly wasn't going to improve the quality of the sensor because it is already a shitty 1/6" 720p mess. But it so far has been very fun. Specifically it is an Anko Digital Video Recorder JLR-80051. I opened it up and looked at the sensor, it seems to be some M5 ish sensor and lens module as the lens just screwed off after a bit of hacking at some epoxy. And the…
My Mom, Daisy Schwartz Burk (1919-1981), was born a few minutes after her twin sister, Dorothy Schwartz (1919-2001). Their mother made most of their clothes and usually dressed them alike, as shown in this photo taken at their elementary school in the Bronx, New York. Dorothy is on the left, slightly taller and bigger than Daisy, standing on the right.The girls were told they were fraternal twins, but they sure looked a lot--a lot!--alike.Fast-forward to my Mom's first-born children, me and my…
You’ve probably run into some Obsidian evangelist espousing some convoluted system of organizing all their notes, and building some knowledge base. Heck, I was just involved in a conversation about Personal Knowledge Management. This isn’t that article. My personal use of Obsidian tends to be simple. I build into it the tools that I need to get things done, to make things easier. There is a saying (which I can’t locate, so I’ll paraphrase) that a system should only be as complicated as needed,…
