One thing I didn’t appreciate growing up in Australia was just how beautiful its birds are. They are such a colourful bunch, especially in comparison to the birds around Tokyo which tend to be in varying shades of brown and black. I was recently down in Sydney for a week visiting my Mum and there was plenty of opportunity for bird-watching, even without leaving her house. First up is this absolutely gorgeous kookaburra. Look how pretty its feathers are! Kooky with a friend Another visitor was…

You know what I'm still irritated about? Video-game companies giving up their offering of physical media as an option. I know a lot of PlayStation and Xbox users go with digital formats, but even having the choice to use a disc--that you own--is good. Physical games help with making it possible to preserve games, rent titles, resell them, and they give consumers a lot more rights than it seems companies want them to have. Sony has already made its intentions clear and Microsoft is going through…

Australia’s Labor governments are a mixed bag when it comes to digital infrastructure and legislation. They introduced the teen “social media” ban that experts warned them would be ineffective and easy to circumvent. They also introduced the National Broadband Network which was a net positive, and floated the idea of mandatory internet filtering by ISPs. It’s hard to keep track of, honestly. Today’s news seems broadly like a good idea: [This legislation] will require social media platforms to…

From Stay Alive! Berlin 1939-1945, by Ian Buruma (Penguin, 2026), pp. 155-57, 181, 191: If things were bad in Berlin, they were far worse on the eastern front, where many soldiers were freezing to death. The people back home caught glimpses of the Russian campaign on the Wochenschau [weekly newsreels]: horse-drawn carriages and tanks bogged down in knee-high snow; soldiers in white camouflage outfits, rather like hooded bathrobes, skiing or plowing their way through the ruins of Russian…

It was hot. 31C every day, which is survivable if you can navigate your way through shaded areas, a bit more of a challenge when you are sitting in a grandstand facing the sun… I would visit Madrid again. It’s a fairly compact city and whilst I didn’t tick off any of the popular tourist spots, I still got to explore a fair bit on foot. Very walkable, with a nice park to get you away from the city centre. I don’t like being a tourist so tend to want to avoid the more tourist-targetted areas,…

"Save the planet" is pure human narcissism. The rock doesn't need saving. Humans are just altering the biosphere to make it toxic for themselves. The Earth will shake us off like a bad case of fleas, wait a few millennia, and grow a new skin. The organism wants to live, so the brain invents a story where the organism is the hero of the cosmos. Savior complex. The mind cannot handle the fact that humanity is just a temporary mold on a wet rock, so it manufactures a grand purpose to avoid the…

Reddit used to be a good source to find real recommendations. Well, not anymore. Years ago, I used to append "reddit" to my search queries to find real discussions about products. If you search for managed Postgres on Reddit, you may stumble on posts like this: If you look at the profile of the person who created it, their posting history is usually private: u/xxx likes to keep their posts hidden, but check out their stats to learn more about them. But when you do some research and look at…

As my blog has developed over time, somehow I ended up writing about reading, videogames and technology above all, but the J in my logo is themed after folded paper for a reason. I love origami! And it was about time I wrote about it some more. My story with it and the like will have to wait for later, at the moment, I just want to focus on the title of this blogpost. On a very lovely email, a reader of my blog asked me this: What’s a model you still enjoy folding even though you’ve long since…

There is a podcast client on Apple's App Store that can automatically skip ads. and "US case law suggests that the behaviour of the app could be considered legal", James Cridland wrote: Automatically skipping the ads in this way means that advertising won’t work, and creators will see lower renewals and unhappier advertisers. Of course, Apple is okay to take a cut from this app's subscription revenue. ~ Link: Apple & Google Making Money from Ad-Blocking Podcast Apps, by James Cridland, Podnews

I keep seeing people talk about herdr, so against my better judgment, I searched up tmux vs. herdr. Search hit: Herdr: One terminal to rule them all (herdr.dev) on Hacker News. I wanted to mention that zmx is a beautiful piece of minimal software that basically has gotten rid of my tmux and zellij use. 🤨 Now searching zmx. Search hit: Zmx: Session Persistence for Terminal Processes (github.com/neurosnap) on Hacker News. If you like this tool, you might also be interested in reptyr, which lets…

A common feature in Linux window managers is the ability to have multiple “workspaces” or “virtual desktops” or whatever you want to call them. From the i3 docs: Workspaces are an easy way to group a set of windows. By default, you are on the first workspace, as the bar on the bottom left indicates. To switch to another workspace, press $mod+num where num is the number of the workspace you want to use. If the workspace does not exist yet, it will be created. The beautiful thing about these…

Herman (of Bear Blog), on reading books: Reading does something that other forms of media, by their nature, can’t do: it allows the reader to see the world through the lens of the author and their characters, creating empathy, where they not only see the actions taken (such as in film), but also understand their perspectives, motivations, thoughts, and feelings. This is partially why I also prefer reading news to watching it. Print journalism is an altogether trickier format than video…

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…

Books I grew up in a house stuffed full of books, with no television, and electricity for only an hour or two per day (while the generator was running). There were shelves full of old science fiction (Asimov and Heinlein), as well as books on history, some good old fantasy, and other smatterings collected from second-hand bookstores over the years. My mother read to us each night when we were children, starting with Dr Seuss, all the way to Harry Potter, where she did the spooky voices during…

I mentioned that I was going to reproduce my article in The Land 37 here. Well, it’s coming right up below (it was published in The Land with the title ‘Rentiers Redux’). The article is essentially a review of Nick Bano’s book Against Landlords, albeit with some wider analysis and context. I’ll probably sketch in a bit more of that context, either in the comments section below or in a follow-up post. Meanwhile, to update another semi-regular feature of this blog, here’s my current/recent…

More proof that these companies knew what they were doing and did not care.

This is an extremely simple meal, but it’s packed with nutrition. Lots of vegetables and good fats. The ingredients listed are for 2 portions, but it’s easy enough to scale to what’s needed. It’ll keep well in the fridge for a week or so.

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

Introduction Sigh, I hadn’t wanted to jump in on this whole saga, but it seems that it’s about time that I got off my arse and said a few things. I’ve been watching lately as Unstory has gone after numerous people in the IndieBlog world, including Brennan, Manton Reece, Gordon McLean, and Korin. I’m sure there are others, but honestly, I’m not invested enough in his style of mockery to make a habit of reading them routinely. However, I think everyone is overcomplicating this situation. The…

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…

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…

In a post a few months ago, Tante wrote that "'AI' exists to disenfranchise labor," and earlier today, Coyote posted a short essay on what data ownership truly means for the IndieWeb when we're subject to genAI scrapers, extractors, and bad-faith actors. On a similar note, maybe your inbox has recently been flooded by iLands genAI agents, as Gordon and cleberg have recently written about. Or maybe you're an administrator for a Mastodon instance that's been flooded with users who turn out to be…

Considering I launched a podcast this past Tuesday, I figured I could use Lyteforce Writes as a platform to share the episodes published over the course of each week.A little shameless cross-promotion.Tuesday, September 15https://share.transistor.fm/s/ddf0dafbAfter reading how Chris Enns was going to create a podcast episode every day of the year (for the most part, which makes the title of the show - Daily(ish) - all sorts of cool), on a "whim" I decided to do something similar. Consider this…

Instagram: scroll and stare. Someone else’s life. Compare. Pause. Take a breath. Create. TikTok: a clip, a trick, a trend. The next swipe’s better. No end. Pause. Take a breath. Create. Threads: a thought, a take Another stranger walking on a rake Pause. Take a breath. Create. Twitter: pick a side. Claim you’re right. Keep going right into the night. Pause. Take a breath. Create. The algorithm: click and stay. Your own ideas wait all day. Pause. Take a breath. Create. Not everything you notice…

Source: YouTube Looks like Bungie used AI to generate the speech - the number of triads and this isn’t x, this is y is now a dead giveaway. However, I don’t like Bungie for their studio head speeches and mea culpas. As long as their games are going to be better, all this can be forgiven and forgotten.

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…

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…

Got an email today that I was added into a cool looking project, pxlarea. Very pretty and creative way to discover some new blogs and websites in the indie/personal web! 10k pixels are available, it says, and 189 are taken at the time of writing this. You can add yourself, or be added :) My this is my pixel. You can set a description, tags and icon too, or if you were added by someone else/the maintainer, you can get an edit link to change the information there that was added for you. I think I…

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