It’s a while since I featured any of the regular Renard arrivals on the Ramblings, but they continue to pop through the letterbox (as part of my subscription with them) and each book is a little gem. So I thought I would share a few recent incomings, which were wonderful to dip into when I needed a little distraction. One thing I love about Renard is the variety of the titles they issue, and these three volumes reflect that. The Werewolf by Clemence Housman One of Renard’s strengths is the…

Nothing bad could ever happen inside the remnants of a giant battleship left wedged in a magical nest of demons, could it? Unlike the previous Game Boy Sakura Wars game, which was a sort of raising sim with me playing the role of a little ticket-clipping newbie in training, this time I’m sent off on an intriguing RPG adventure through the bowels of the Mikasa’s wreckage (and beyond), with the cast fighting by my side. Whether I perform this task as my hardworking ticket-clipper or a completely…

Darkly Bright Press's new Arthur Machen collection, The Guide, is a 260+ page compilation of "eighty-two works originally published across twenty-seven periodicals and spanning nearly three decades," to quote from editor Christopher Tompkins's "A Brief Introduction." It is subtitled "A Collection of Rare & Unknown Work"--for "rare" we can read it to mean as uncollected from

We need them now so badly, Mr. President! Can somebody, please... call the guy who created it?!? How truly blessed we will all be once they spring into action to solve this Iran debacle (and when the smoke clears... maybe take a look at that nasty pool)!

a quick little update about my week... ➜ on Tuesday I visited Fleur to get my new tattoo. she took her time adjusting the design perfectly to my arm and started tattooing. it's 2/3 done and I have to go one more time to finish it. it was a lovely experience, because we seem to have so much things in common! we had a great chat and I felt so at home with her and in her studio ♡ it was a very valuable day for me in more ways than one. oh and of course I LOVE my tattoo! ♡ ➜ we are in the midst of…

- "If you talk to me, I'll punch you in the face, are you ok with talking with me?" - "Nods in agreement." - "Proceeds to punch the man in the face." That's how I feel whenever I hear the Miranda rights being read. It was designed specifically to scare anyone being read to, into silence. Don't incriminate yourself. If you are like me, guilty of watching those police bodycams videos on youtube, then you know that people proceed to talk right after they are read their rights, as if they heard…

In honor of Father’s Day, I wanted to add to the two quotes from my Dad’s obituary, “Seven days without chicken made one weak.” and “If you fail at raising your children, nothing else mattered.” with another saying he had. Ain’t no hill for a stepper. If you’d like to learn more about this, check out this part of the A Way with Words podcast, and apparently, it might have come from the musician John Gaar.

In the previous post, we learned how to get started with managing and building a Haskell project with Nix. In this post, we learn how to easily create statically-linked executables for Haskell projects with Nix. This post was originally published on abhinavsarkar.net. This post is a part of the series: Nix for Haskell. Getting Started Static Builds 👈 ContentsStatic BuildsEnabling Static Builds in GHCConfiguring the ApplicationRooting Static Build DependenciesFinaleBonus: Building a Docker…

I love vertical tabs. Given the -- frankly concerning -- amount of tabs I tend to open, they're a must for me. Thing is, none of the native, non-Chromium options quite fit me. Between Zen & Firefox lacking tree-style tabs, and Waterfox lacking container-synced workspaces, all of the options are a little too lackluster for my needs... So I did the only thing a linux user could -- I kitbashed together a solution. :) I started with Firefox (because Chromium is for traitors), onto which I installed…

I was crying in the operating room before the surgery started Not because I thought I was going to die Not because the procedure was especially dangerous Not because the staff were cruel to me I was crying because I was lying there in a hospital gown while my body was being moved around underneath me. I was staring at the ceiling unable to really see what was happening while people around me touched and arranged my body Everything was medically normal but it struck a painful part of my brain…

“God of War,” is a long-running game series. The earlier ones were extremely over the top and followed a protagonist named Kratos as he killed a bunch of Gods who had wronged him. The series restarted its numbering for a new thematic era but kept the continuity, focusing on Kratos and a young son, Arterus, whom he had later in life. Those games also involved Kratos mourning the death of his wife (and Mother of their child), Faye. All the GOW games are extremely popular (especially the more…

When I’m travelling in another country and meet a fellow Canadian, there is a feeling like we can relax and relate. With anyone else, there is a bit of barrier, even if we’re trying hard to be friendly. Now that I’ve had a chance to spend a few days on Gander, a Canadian social media app just out of private testing, I have that same feeling of being with my peeps. We can all just sort of chill with each other. Gander isn’t restricted to Canadians, but it would be tricky for a non-Canadian to…

I was listening to Late Night Linux 390 during my evening walking with the pooches tonight, and they were talking about (among other things) Kagi search. I've tried Kagi myself, but ultimately cancelled my subscription as I didn't really see the point in paying for it when I could get similar results with DuckDuckGo. This isn't because DDG or Kagi are inherently bad, it's because no matter which service you use, the web has been SEO'd to within an inch of its life, so we're fucked either way.…

I joined Crucial Tracks, a site where you can post about one song per day. (And browse people’s public posts to discover music.)

Recently, I got an email from a reader who noted that I hadn't published anything in a little while, and he said he hopes I'm doing well. The truth is, some days I am and some days I'm not. I want to share a little bit about what's been going on, and what the future looks like. This is a pretty vulnerable post, so here's the deal. I'm going to tell you this, but it's just between you and me, okay? And there's one condition: you don't reach out to me to say "I'm so sorry!" When people share…

I believe in preparing for things, which manifests in ways like making a 150-row spreadsheet of songs I have done or might like to do at karaoke, each notated with their highest note, subjective difficulty, and availability in common karaoke systems. This does not appear to be common practice, but I've gotten a lot of mileage out of it. A few of the commonly available songs on the Pareto frontier between "comfy song everybody can sing along to" to "exciting performance to questionably show off…

"Do good, without expecting gratitude, or looking at who." 09h03 from Berlin / Germany

Great mysteries of archaeology: an ancient Amazonian world revealed from the sky A good review article on the Amazonian archaeology and the lidar revolution.

Good morning y'all. I saw that the Knicks won the NBA Championship. Rachelle and I actually watched part of games 3 and 4 mostly because Rachelle likes Mamdani. It's the first time I've really watched NBA basketball since Michael Jordan retired from the Bulls. Since I'm now an expert on the modern NBA game after having watched two partial games, I thought I'd share my impressions. I was surprised by how physical the players were being. I'm unsure if that's just the way the games are being…

I talked in last week’s weeknote about how I was struggling with getting my Miniflux reader situation under control, and what I was attempting to identify the problem. Today, I came across this blog post from Michał Sapka (via this Fediverse post) talking about the exact feeling, and choosing to entirely drop RSS and rely on manually checking up on bookmarks instead. I think that was quite saddening to read, that the thing they had switched to as a way to get out of mindless algorithmic…

The Brooklyn Bridge most New Yorkers know is a slender wonder of steel wires, stone towers, and sweeping views. But there’s a less visible part of the bridge at ground level. These are the anchorages—the masonry structures on both the Manhattan and Brooklyn sides that secure the cables supporting the bridge while also carrying approach roads. Completed seven years before the bridge opened in May 1883, the anchorages are as stunning as the span itself, with their romanesque arches and rusticated…

Gordon’s note caught my attention, then I disagreed with most of his points. Here are my thoughts on his five minor peeves with “many websites.” Comments are good, add them. Yes, I know it opens up things like spam but if you are posting to spark a conversation then why not have them? (and if you aren’t open to conversation, in public, don’t post??). I’ve written on this before, but the gist is: I (and many others!) write for ourselves first and foremost. I welcome email commentary, and…

A short note on why I built TinyClaw and where it is going.

Blue light passes through the edges of the black-out blinds as I lie holding a pillow, dreaming. I have been watching Frasier, one of my comfort television shows. I am on the episode where Frasier asks his brother, Niles, if he is happy. Am I happy? I have been asking myself this question a lot lately. I think the answer is mostly yes. (Although if my anxiety could go away, that would be nice!)When I look back on my choice to study art history, I feel delighted. This year I have been pushed in…

I think I've posted about this a little in the past, but when I started identifying plants on iNat, I decided to get really into identifying plants that were hard to wrongly identify. One of the plants in Southern California that it was hardest for me to get wrong is Cleomella arborea, commonly known as "bladderpod". It's pretty visually distinctive: Those weird hanging sacs are hard to confuse with anything else. These plants just look weird, too, so they're kind of fun to be able to show to…

Biking the Kettle Valley Rail Trail may result in you falling in love with a place….actually in love with many places along its route. It is a place where humans are kinder to each other along the way….where nature is more alive than in other places….a place where history comes alive. You might even fall in love with an entire REGION! At over 500 kilometers in length, the Kettle Valley Rail Trail is the longest rail trail network in British Columbia. It stretches from Midway (mile 0) all the…

abadidea @0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange just got insulted by a particularly offensive dark pattern: I went to the first online character counter I could find to check the length of something I’d written in a web form, and aside from the character count, it popped up this brazen lie that my completely handwritten post was “obviously” AI-generated. But don’t worry, they can automatically “remove AI” and make it “100% human”! By which they mean charge me for an LLM to continuously rewrite it in…

Perfume PosseGuerlain Ambre Samar We’re moving into another heatwave, probably be hotter than the last one. Sigh. Towards 30 degrees Celsius with it feeling like 37, according to the weather report. So, around 97 Fahrenheit – and humid. Last week I had yet another… Continue Reading → Perfume PosseGuerlain Ambre Samar

Check out Instagram.com/simonreynoldswriter/ for the latest news about the bookPerceptive Observer review of Still In A Dream by Kitty Empire - pictured aboveKieran Press-Reynolds chats with his dad for GQMy Baker's Dozen on reinvention of the guitar at The QuietusMoonbuilding - lovely review by Neil Mason (scroll down a ways)Shoegaze Special for Zakia's Sewell's

The years tick themselves off. Nine years ago, every Monday morning, I accompanied Pat the Salt, then 92y.o., to the Tramore Community Centre and Wheels-on-Wheels hub for sessions of The Heritage Club. The Big Room at the TCC looked out over a steep fall of trees and shrubs between Pond Road and Upper Branch Road. That woodland was making its +10-year transformation into the Lafcadio Hearn Japanese Gardens.On 8th June this year, we were down among The Great and The Good [aka The Olds] of…