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…
I absolutely loved Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy, particularly the first book, Ancillary Justice which blew me away when I first read it. Since then I’ve enjoyed the other books she’s written in the same universe, dealing with the fallout of the events in the original series. Radiant Star is the latest addition to the canon. I think the story falls into the category of planetary romance; the narrative is very much driven by the unique characteristics of the world we find ourselves on. Or…
After writing the last post, I felt a part was missing. What I wanted to underscore from the start - and somehow lost while explaining the background - was how interesting it is to be moving toward the line of understanding. How everything feels uncertain and risky, and even though you believe you are approaching the line you have little idea of how close or far you are, and whether you are approaching in the best way. And then, you suddenly find yourself on the other side of the line, relieved…
Daily Drawing 949
It’s about time. I’ve been running adapted versions of Proxmox on ARM for a few years now–first Pimox on a Raspberry Pi 4, and later on RK3588 boards–and ARM servers have been around for at least as long, so the fact that official support is only arriving now makes me a bit worried about Proxmox’s ability to do off-the-wall things like pve-microvm. But this is proper support, with feature parity across VMs, LXC, clustering, ZFS, Ceph and backups, plus ISO images and package repositories–and it…
The Guardian newspaper website has run an article about how a pop single has been at the top of the UK pop charts for a record breaking 19 weeks, yet a large contingent of people in the UK claim not to have heard it. The single in question is called "Rein Me In" by Sam Fender and Olivia Dean. Its lack of impact on the UK public conbsciousness was noted in the Guardian article which reported how a "swathe" of social media commenters were expressing ignorance of both the track and artists'…
The Guardian newspaper website has run an article about how a pop single has been at the top of the UK pop charts for a record breaking 19 weeks, yet a large contingent of people in the UK claim not to have heard it. The single in question is by Sam Fender and Olivia Dean and is called Rein Me In. I'm one of those people who have not heard this song, so I just fired up YouTube and gave it a listen. It's a pleasant enough, guitar-driven, mid-paced song with impassioned vocals about a breakup or…
I am fuming. Apple have today demonstrated they’re no better than any other big tech company with their enshittification. This morning I had a notification that iOS 18.7.8 was available, so I carefully checked the update, as Apple are constantly trying to force you to upgrade to the crappy iOS 26. As you can see from the screenshot above, it all looks like iOS 18. But it isn’t. Both my iPad and iPhone have upgraded to iOS 26, which I categorically did not want. Liquid Glass is awful. There is…
Something I noticed as a consequence of online culture and platform design, especially on social media: It is very common online to follow an account not for the person behind it, but the way they present and discuss a topic or niche, even if they aren’t doing this with a professional intent or style. Then when the topics shift or we get tired of the person, people try to find someone else that scratches the itch. It’s like we use people online to engage with topics by proxy, and they are…
Photos of parched ground. A note to my future self.
This seems to be the only post I make, so although I don't particularly enjoy writing it I will write it. Truth be told I've been kind of in a mood. Hope it passes soon! Dubliners, by James Joyce. For reasons unclear, likely just coincidence, I've read many book set in or about Ireland and Dublin as a teenager. It has become mythical for me. Incredibly enough, I hadn't read this one yet. I hope sometime soon I find a time and a good excuse to finally visit. About the book I don't have much to…
1943 mystery/thriller, fifth in the Miss Silver series. Laura Fane is newly of age, and in London to take charge of her inheritance. She meets a smashing young man, and all seems promising; but her distant cousin and social butterfly Tanis Lyle seems to regard the chap as her property. Oh, and there will be a murder.
After starting this year’s Women in Translation Month journey in a near-future Japan, today sees us staying in that country, but taking a leap into the past. We’re heading back a hundred years or so to catch up with a woman leading a life less ordinary, one that will see her moving from place to place, and man to man, on a regular basis. It’s a perfect story for #WITMonth, and luckily enough (contrary to my initial expectations), it’s one that all of you will be able to access, too… ***** Chiyo…
I have two 128 GB unified-memory machines on my desk. Day job gear, not mine. One is an ASUS Ascent GX10 — an NVIDIA GB10 Grace Blackwell appliance half the size of a hardback book. The other is an HP ZBook Ultra G1a, a 14" mobile workstation running AMD’s Ryzen AI MAX+ PRO 395 (“Strix Halo”). Both hold an 80B coding model entirely in memory. How do they compare for agentic coding?
Duncan Rawlinson created this image using artificial intelligence and contemporary digital techniques. A flow of red descends through a narrow canyon bordered by textured green walls. Midway down, an orange anvil-shaped form juts into the stream, splitting the fall into twin braided channels that wrap around a wedge of deep blue before reuniting below. Small accents of yellow and violet mark the deflection point. The piece explores color collision and directional interruption within a tall,…
OBI-WAN KENOBI (Utapau) The Vintage Collection 3 3/4-Inch Walmart Exclusive 2-Pack Item No.: No. G3191 Manufacturer: Hasbro Number: #398 Includes: Cloak, lightsaber, hilt, alternat hand Action Feature: n/a Retail: $39.99 Availability: March 2026 Appearances: Revenge of the Sith Bio: On the planet Utapau, General Obi-Wan Kenobi faced General Grievous and his four imposing lightsabers. Upon defeating Grievous, he escaped in the warlord's Stafighter. (Taken from the cardback.) Image: Adam's photo…
When a Roman emperor updated the alphabet – and basically nobody listened to him. A common response to my profuse public pontifications about the history of the alphabet is ‘could we add new letters?’ With the phonemically faulty state of English spelling in mind, the question is one that I enjoy; it’s heartening to see people considering the alphabet not as a fossilised artefact, but rather as a living system, which any present-day generation can update to suit their speech. My answer to the…
My yearly solo city trip has started this morning and I’m sitting in the train, reading up on blogs. The first blog I clicked in the discovery is for the girl who needed a hug today. It’s the words that my head was trying to form but couldn’t (yet). I love when this happens. When an internet stranger somehow writes how something current in my life seems to feel. There have been more heavy hearts lately. This morning was the most recent one. We dropped D off at vacation daycare (she goes there…
Warm tea, wiki edits, and zines sent by a friend that arrived earlier this week welcome me to the morning. Yesterday there was a rain shower more intense than any I have seen for a while; a powerful wind blew through the air. Now, the day is calm: the sky is cloudy and a light breeze sways the leaves on the trees to and fro. Birds call. My tea is empty. I should make another cup.I look around the room and think of how different times bring life to different parts of the place. My guitar sings…
The repeat examination period at Maynooth University has begun. In fact the first papers were sat yesterday (5th August); the period goes on for ten days or so, I will have four different papers to grade, though I’m expecting only one candidate each for three of them. My first is tomorrow (Friday 7th August). A couple of years ago, Maynooth University produced this nice good luck message for those resitting so I’ll repeat it here: Every year at this time I mention the difference between the…
I'm editing blog posts to add to my digital garden, and just found these doodles in a post from 2014. Why did I ever stop making them? They are so joyful!Here is the story about them: back then, I was on bed rest for a while because I fell and hurt my knee, and I used that time to be insanely creative.One of the things I played together was a series of doodles I titled "Lessons from my Bear".I used one of my bears as model for these wonky little drawings. He is an old bear, had him since I was…
Celebrating 25 years of blogging with gratitude, reflection, and a sweet slice of success surrounded by creativity and joy. August 6, 2001, 25 years ago. I started blogging. I had a website made by Microsoft FrontPage and hosted on GTE (now Verizon) in the homepages they offered back in those days for residential customers. In fact, your ISP provided everything for you. You had so much website space and an ISP-provided email, which you lost if you changed providers. That's foreign today. But I…
