This morning while I was doing my morning routine of drinking my coffee. That routine is setting up the weather page for the current day. Sure, I could automate it, but it takes little time to do it by hand, and I’d have to edit the markdown file anyway to put in the summary. I actually do glance at it, and today I glanced at it out of curiosity to see what yesterday’s rain total was. Normally I would have looked at the Ambient app, but I had this page open, so I scrolled down to look. I…

Via Newspapers.comThis account of your basic friendly neighborhood monster appeared in the “Mexico Weekly Ledger,” December 13, 1883:MEXICO, Mo., December 8.--The neighborhood of Hopewell Church, near this city, is much excited over the appearance in the locality of a strange creature, which is thought by the credulous to be a ghost, and which is a puzzle at least to the most skeptical. The apparition is simply that of a lean monster man, between eight and ten feet in height, wearing a long…

I’m not gonna bother with the preamble about how I got to part six in this series1-5. You can read […]

Mexican long-nosed armadillo loping across a field (photo from Wikimedia) 23 September 2026 Three years ago, in April 2023, I wrote that Armadillos Are On Their Way to Pennsylvania. Since arriving in Texas in 1849 they’ve expanded their range north and east in the U.S. nearly ten times faster than the average rate expected for a mammal. In 2023 they were two states away in Indiana. Not anymore! The first documented naturally occurring armadillo was found as roadkill near Oxford, Ohio. video…

1:4 It’s like a curse… on the first matchday after the coach was fired, the guys (finally) scored 2 goals and beat Fortuna Köln at home to nil, only then to concede 3 goals at home against Duisburg within 15 minutes of the first half just 4 days later. OK, MSV is currently at the top of the standings and on a hot streak, but the ease with which they outplayed our defense was shocking. Like a hot knife through butter. Although the 1-3 goal just before halftime and the team’s determination early…

By Close ReaderOriental Mandarin LegendOSELevels 1-2 In order to thank the PC for killing the monsters in his territory, the Boold[sic] Baron invited the players to come to the bright Red castle he built on the Wild Eagle Mountain. This 28 page adventure presents seven-ish rooms in a scripted human sacrifice ceremony dungeon/scene/event. It has both EASL issues and is overly scripted. Disclaimer: I think this is a difficult review to write. I suspect strongly, based on the chinese characters in…

Lucky 13th Sept! A great day out. Maybe another last good day of Summer, although I think we must be into Autumn by now. I decided to visit Saltoun Big Wood again. This time I thought I'd risk the 113 bus and jogged up to Abbeyhill (rather than Carlton Terrace stop) because there is an electronic sign that says when the next bus will be along. (Yes I know there is an app but the built in redundancy of my iPhone can't download it.) Anyway the sign was temporarily fritzed and of no help. However…

I met with a friend yesterday and the conversation got to what the next hype might be after the current bubble pops. We live at the height of the “AI”-hype and bubble, the hype that took over from the short Metaverse hype which in turn came after the crypto bubble. And the main actors are often the same. The same folks who told us crypto was the future now tell us that “AI” is. Tech these days is built less around actual products but hype, less around building actually functional solutions but…

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…

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…

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,…

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)

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

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…

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…