How to find the exact location of almost any audio. As an engineer I'm blown away and finds it super exciting. But it also makes me think about every other possible way that this specific technique can be used and the several other techniques possible to track someone or something.

So, I’ve been continually working on VAAK. I think … it’s been around two months now? I don’t know, it’s hard to tell time anymore. Just yesterday I was waking up for school with a running nose and watching the Price is Right on a TV next to my bed. A TV that was about 10 inches horizontally and vertically, with bunny ears antennae and everything. Man, I sure do miss those days. Those days of thinking real hard about what I wanted to do: Go outside and run around, uh, practice drawing things on…

Wifi UpgradesI purchased an Asus router a while back as I wanted native DD-WRT support as well as the ability to use mesh in the future, which Asus AiMesh seemed to have a good name for.In our old place I had the ISP as the router and ran a cable across the floor to my Asus AC3100 as a second AP. In our new place I really wanted it to be wireless. I purchased an Asus AX52 as a secondary node in the Asus AiMesh. For our backyard, which is the highlight of the house for me, we went from constant…

When I was last looking for a job, well over six years ago, I had this interesting phone call. My friend Michelle had referred me to the company she was about to leave. I didn't know what to think about this job opportunity at first but after the phone call I was pretty much sure of what I wanted. When I talked to the potentially new boss, I knew right away that this was someone who understood the value of user experience. More than that: he was convinced that user experience stood above all…

It's once again our favourite season and holiday of the year... prioritisation and planning for the Interop project! Wait, did you think I'd say something else? The Interop project is to allow browser vendors to get input on what they should work on standardising each year. Here's the description I gave when I ranked proposals back in in 2023: The Interop Project is an collaboration across the browser communities to focus on making various web APIs interoperable, standard, and bug-free across…

Finally!

From The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, by Christopher Clark (Harper, 2013), pp. 229-231: It remained unclear how the public opinion within articulate elites with direct access to the press related to the attitudes prevailing among the masses of the population. War scares and jingo campaigns made good newspaper copy, but how socially deep were they? It was a grave mistake, the German consul-general in Moscow warned in December 1912, to assume that the belligerence and…

As a boy, we heard a lot about the so-called "population bomb," a term used to describe apocalyptic predictions that without drastic action to curtail birthrates around the world, we would face mass starvation by the mid-80s. It was a bomb that didn't explode according to predictions as birthrates then declined in what some identify as one of the most significant demographic developments in human history. From the perspective of today, we can see that global population growth peaked at about…

I’ve looked at some fun historical theories of the Templar Knights and even some of their churches in nearby Herefordshire like Welsh Newton and more famously Garway, but wanted to also explore their presence in my own home county of Worcestershire. Starting in a small way with St Michaels church in the very lovely village of Abberley. The site of the church probably is Saxon, dating back to 960 or there abouts, but the current remaining building is a hodge-podge. Originally 12th Century, it…

Three reef fish, from top to bottom, an Ember Parrotfish, Yellow Tang, and Flowery Flounder.

The Ancillary Review of Books publishes reviews and essays with an emphasis on utopian impulses and systemic injustices. ARB seeks to build a community of radical thinkers writing about amazing, speculative, global writing. If you are interested in writing for ARB, please check out our Procedures & Style Guide, and pitch us using the form below! For reviews, here are some titles coming out in February that we’d be interested in covering: Fiction Arboretum by Sarah Tolmie Tomorrow We’ll Be Prey…

As discussed at length here, I'm a man who has developed breasts as a result of Finasteride treatment for an enlarged prostate. My breasts are quite modestly sized, but are still growing. They are large enough to be very noticeable to me when going up and down stairs - they wobble enough to make me very uncomfortable! The solution to this is wearing a bra. Compression vests are horrible things that do very little except make me sweat. Bras are just an item of clothing - but they carry a lot of…

This month was characterized mostly by reading and gaming, with some appreciation for autumn sprinkled in. I wasn't super prolific about posting status updates this month, but here's what my statuslog looks like for October. October 1, 2026 @ 1:48 PM I'm always happy to get a new issue of Unwinnable's Exploits in my inbox, but this month had a piece on Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 from the 1970s that might just be my favorite Exploits piece ever. Now please excuse me while I go listen to Dolly…

Easily the most popular TWSBI release of the past few years, the Pink Lemonade + Bronze ECO Fountain Pen sold out in less than two hours, and we haven’t been able to get more until now. We currently have stock in all nib sizes, though some nibs are running very, very low so if there’s a specific pen you want please don’t wait. We also have additional stock of the popular Rootbeer color. In addition to TWSBI, we just listed a large shipment of sticky notes, page flags, and other annotation…

There's a certain power that comes with having witnesses around you. You become not only the person you think you should be, but also, interestingly, what you think other people think you should be. You sit up straight and sip your drink like somebody who's got it all together when you're in a busy cafe. You pull out your notes when you go to the library and find yourself surrounded by people studying. A little external motivation, if you will. So, I'm here to tell you all today that I am most…

I've been feeling quite terrible lately.Extreme fatiguePersistent muscle weaknessBrain fogInsomniaAnxietyLight-headednessBouts of depressionMuscle and joint painPhysical exhaustion, frequent naps just to make it through the dayI sent a message to my primary care physician asking about these symptoms and asked if I should make an appointment. I still haven't heard back.I sent the same message to my endocrinologist. Within 8 hours I had an appointment scheduled for the very next day. It goes…

I’m irrationally irritated by on-line payment web pages.

We’ve had occasion to write about public perceptions of probity in relation to Shravan Joshi in the past (also see here and scroll down here). Back in February 2025 Local Democracy Reporting Service journalist Ben Lynch took up the baton on this issue in a piece headlined London Council’s Planning Chair Accepted Three Times More ‘Gifts’ Than Sadiq Khan Last Year: Deputy Shravan Joshi Said He Has Been Completely Transparent. After we and Lynch called out Joshi over the hospitality he accepted…

I have a new article out in New Political Science. You can read it here. Here’s the abstract: Legitimacy and ideology both involve explaining controversial action. Discourses of legitimacy emphasize the sense in which these explanations can be genuinely meaningful, while discourses of ideology emphasize the sense in which these explanations are insufficient. It follows … Continue reading Ideology Critique and Its Limits →

AMB and Xbox announced that FSR 4.1 is on its way to Xbox Series X and S consoles. This announcement came a few weeks after Sony announced QSSR upscaling for base PS5 consoles, which is a result of their partnership with AMD. This pair of news stories got me thinking how this is, as far as I can recall, the first home console generation where the launch hardware will be capable of better visual fidelity and performance deep into its lifecycle. My first thought jumped to the Expansion Pak for…

During my long stint as a consultant to organizations large and small, I got to work with, and for, companies and branches throughout the Americas and Europe. Over that time, I observed something that astonished me: workers in the US and UK were, compared to those in the rest of the ‘west’, remarkably, even exceptionally docile and obedient. Under the veneer of first-name-basis casualness, hierarchy was basically never challenged and ‘subordinates’ never dared question what they were told by…

Harry threw me off course in episode 48 of Traction Heroes. At first, I thought was reading from a book about mind mapping. Soon, it became clear it was about something else: how to define a clear vision for a team or organization. Visions are notoriously hard to articulate. Drawing a picture — especially a picture of the whole forest, plus the trees — can help. The passage Harry read from Cameron Herold’s Vivid Vision explores this idea: So to visualize something a little more tangible, think…

Another bit of preparation for the 32” scale bass that I hope to build for myself “at some point”. I’ve had a beautiful, figured maple top in stock for many years, but at 28mm I considered it too thick and therefore too heavy to use. I finally plucked up the courage to re-saw it by hand……….

Postcard From The Past #1: GWR King Class No. 6014 King Henry VII was fitted with a experimental bullet nose casing in 1935, creating one of Britain’s most unusual steam engines.

BATMAN SUPER POWERS (McFARLANE) “As a child, Bruce Wayne watched as his parents were brutally killed in Gotham City’s Crime Alley. Traumatized by their deaths, he devoted his life to becoming the world’s greatest weapon against crime– the Batman.” As prevalent as the character may be in toy form, I don’t actually review *a ton* of Batman figures around here, mostly because I think I’m just largely tapped out on buying new Batman figures these days? McFarlane’s tenure with the DC license has had…

Chip YoungA: There's A Great Day Coming B: Just As You Areboth wr. Joe South, Joe South Music (BMI) Esco 200 CYSept. 1959It seems that the Billboard reviewer sensed insufficient promotion from Esco for this Chip Young record ("could step out with plugs" and "could create interest with exposure"). And he was not wrong, at least regarding a national promotion. The Esco label (and its Escophonic sound proudly printed on all the labels) was the offshoot of Esco Artists, a local booking agency…

I am participating in Prismatic Wasteland's "Blogwagon" on Player Advice. I had some ideas after reading the other responses so far (and you should read them too; linked below), but I scrapped that post in favor of this one based on this last weekend's game. The discussion came up about computers. It went a little like this (paraphrasing to get to the point). Andy (character): "I send Larina the file."Me (GM): "Ok. How?"Andy (laughing): "Oh shit, how did you do it in the 80s?"Me: "On disk.…

The top downloads in the Education category of the United States Mac App Store are Chatbot: Ask Chat AI Assistant, AI Chatbot - Ask AI Anything. and AI Chatbot・Ask AI Anything. Each has expensive weekly, monthly, and yearly subscriptions, as well as a “lifetime” purchase of $100 or $200. Incredible, right? Chatbot: Ask Chat AI Assistant, the #1 download in the Education category, is the #9 download overall in the United States Mac App Store. It’s the #6 download overall in the Ireland Mac App…

We think a lot about games here in the neon pixel halls of Set Side B. You probably already know that three of my personal faves are Rampart, Party House, Balatro and Kirby Air Ride City Trial so I’ll set them aside for this. What else? For me this isn’t a complete list by any means, but there are some games that come to mind, that stick out in my memory. All screenshots from MobyGames. Nethack, of course, because it’s Nethack, and Rogue for similar self-referential reasons. A lot of classic…

49 Carrots