I loved Rachel Burton’s The Strawberry House, which I read earlier this year, so I was looking forward to reading her new book, Nightingale Hall. Like the previous novel, this one features a house at the heart of the story. The book begins in 1969 with a party being held at Nightingale Hall, home of the baronet Sir Charles Nightingale, to celebrate the moon landing. During the evening, Sir Charles unveils a special painting, Moonlight on Nightingale, which he had commissioned from the artist…

While a few things about “Haven Social” have been promised to be better than your typical proprietary social media app (like the revocable discovery that, even better, you can and should turn off entirely), it is still a silo site. It’s a proprietary and commercial web forum. I think joining up is a bad idea. I didn’t like Cohost either but this does a lot of things even worse than Cohost did when it comes to governance. I’ve said before that I think this kind of product should be illegal—while…

1958 SF/horror, dir. Kurt Neumann, Al (David) Hedison, Patricia Owens: IMDb. Hélène loved her husband. So why did she kill him in a hydraulic press?

It seems astonishing to me now that only a fortnight has passed since I climbed to the roof of Maps Mania Tower and proclaimed to the world that the Age of the Pixel Map had begun. And yet here I stand before you today, bearing the sad news of its demise and announcing, with no little ceremony, that The Era of the Voxel Map Has Arrived.Two weeks ago, I observed that "One notable limitation shared by most of these pixelated maps is their single, fixed perspective." My proposed solution was to…

In which there may or may not be a bit of subterfuge… Photo from the Author’s personal archives, details to follow. Click here to read this story from the beginning… Tupper Ware hit a button on her phone and slipped it into one of her designer, gin-scented pockets, then turned to her friend, Plexi Glass, and her lover, Tinted Glass. “Okay, here’s the deal. Apparently, the only way we can get a software update for Tinted’s undead status is to go find some woman named Granny Mae in Gravy Bucket,…

Quick update: There’s a new report out that I co-wrote alongside Leonie Dorn, Adriana Groh, Amanda Kraley, Paul Sharratt and Powen Shiah: Sovereign Tech Agency: From Feasibility to Implementation. Strengthening Open Digital Infrastructure for Security, Innovation, and Digital Sovereignty. It’s a look back at the work the Sovereign Tech Agency has achieved over the last 5 years, key insights, as well as an outlook for the near future. You can get it in English here:Sovereign Tech Agency: From…

This is the story of three women, each of whom claimed the title of Countess von Blücher. You will need a scorecard to keep track of the three women, so just remember this simple mnemonic:Countess von Blücher #1 had a legitimate claim to the title.Countess von Blücher #2 apparently had no claim to anything, but that wasn’t her fault.Countess von Blücher #3 was a poseur, a procurer and a pestilence in Cincinnati.Our story begins with a real and authentic German general, one Gebhard Leberecht von…

AI has made it much easier to get an interface on screen. I can ask for a component, a prototype or a handful of directions, and have something tangible to react to before I would have finished setting up a file a few years ago. I like that. It removes plenty of tedious work, and it gives us more chances to explore an idea before committing to it. It also makes me pay more attention to the judgement around the work. I still need to understand the problem, decide whether an idea fits the product…

The Heir of Redclyffe by Charlotte M Yonge published 1853 Regular readers will know that I am reading a lot of (not everything by) Charlotte M Yonge, for an upcoming project - tags or searchbox will take you to other posts. This novel was her first big success: the book that everyone read, with massive sales figures. And, honestly, I can quite see why: a good long family saga to immerse yourself in, with all kinds of goings on, and misjudged characters and romantic entanglements. The Heir is…

Every now and then I want a MikroTik Cloud Hosted Router (CHR) running somewhere on the internet. To test something, to learn something, or just to play with it. A cheap VPS is perfect for that. Getting CHR onto it, though, isn’t always as easy as it could be.

a phone without a rubber case just feels like I'm holding a prank. it's a little too thin for human hands. it yearns to plummet. if it is ever tapped by something firmer than a book the entire thing will crumble to dust

Someone feedback to me that they admire my commitment to my business as I am willing to work long hours. I never seem to have a bad day, and I always have motivation to work. Actually, I have bad days all the time and my motivation is fickle. There were many moments that I dread even starting my computer or checking my phone messages. Good days or bad days, I would still get things done. It is the volume of work that changes. Why do I work so hard? I noticed that all my heroes are hard workers.…

For many of those who are paid to write stuff about the budget and have word counts to meet, I guess the answer is obvious. Nevertheless I have found the general lament that a relatively popular budget wasn’t more exciting rather amusing, albeit painfully amusing as it has led to an unusually large amount of nonsense being published. In the US a fascist regime is trying desperately to find ways to neutralise a popular vote against it. In France political stalemate and popular protest may lead…

Did you know that if you visit Ticonderoga, New York you can visit a 17th century fortress that was an important part of the French and Indian War as well as the American Revolution, and then go down the street and see the 23rd century and stand on the bridge of the Enterprise from the 1960s TV series Star Trek? I didn't know this until recently, and we decided to feature this visit as part of my 20th Century American series on this blog. The Original Series Star Trek TV show aired from…

My refurbished adventures continue, thanks to an interesting request from my Dad who was looking for a decently portable laptop for basic tasks on a budget less than $300. I previously purchased and enjoyed my Dell Latitude 5420 very much. While in normal circumstances, such a laptop might have fallen to the $300 mark by now, in the A.I. world we live in today, even a B-grade listed version of the above laptop is at $374 with an A-grade at $449. Considering this is a five-year old laptop with…

One evening in Vienna. I decided to head out onto the street once more. Day or night, the streets of Vienna are beautiful anyway. There is something to see everywhere, from old buildings to horses with carriages riding down the street, to all kinds of striking characters. But in the evening, a city always brings that little bit extra. When the lights are on and the atmosphere settles over the city, something magical happens. Somewhere near the city center, I noticed people standing on a raised…

Alishan is Taiwan’s famous high-altitude mountain region. It’s known for ancient misty forests, high-mountain tea, a historic narrow-gauge railway, and dramatic sunrises over a sea of clouds.During a two-day trip this past weekend, I greatly enjoyed 3 of these 4 things.The best option for exploring as much as possibleMy journey started on Saturday morning, when my partner and I rented a car in Kaohsiung.Despite getting my Taiwan car driver’s license two years ago, and despite having driven a…

Here are two vintage Disneyland paper items - I admit that they are not the greatest, but I scanned them, so you have to look at them. We'll start with this brochure telling you all you need to know about Guided Tours. It is undated, but I would guess that it's from the early 1970s, even though no-one of the pictures show the Haunted Mansion; I would think that the Mansion was such a big deal that they'd include it in all publicity materials. I'm sure that pretty Tour Guide worked there long…

Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves! (1997)

A Hoseiken Seiko Caliber? Developer: C-Lab Publisher: Imagineer Release Date: May 19th, 1987 Available On: Famicom Disk System Genre: Action RPG English Translation by: The Spoony Bard You know, going into this, I expected just another Zelda-like. Everything you can find on the English-speaking side of the Internet says as such and in my own experience, I played one game in particular that I suppose molded my expectations in a certain way. Dandy: Zeuon no Fukkatsu is a Famicom Disk System…

Listen to this episode here. Further Reading Pendragon 6e, The House Edge, Socials Caleb on Bluesky and Haunted Table Seraphina on Bluesky and itch The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show! Credits Our logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey. This episode was edited by Em Acosta. Transcript Sera: Hello and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder.…

I loved these short stories. I haven’t had a lot of luck with GoldSF Books so far (I have Parch Marks lined up, I didn’t like Alston Moor so didn’t review it) but this is a treasure. The author is an astrophysicist (once an astrophysicist, always an astrophysicist, I say) turned professional author. She writes … Continue reading Schrödinger’s Wife (and other possibilities), by Pippa Goldschmidt →

As a very small child, The Dark Crystal was absolutely one of my favorite movies - maybe in my top two, alongside My Neighbor Totoro. It's the Eiffel Tower of puppet media. It's a tremendous human accomplishment, visually fucking nuts, and very deeply strange in a couple of completely unique ways... Strange even in comparison to similar movies like Labyrinth. The movie has so many puppets in it! Some of them are only onscreen for, maybe, three seconds. It has some of the most incredible…

Makes about 5 jars A soft, spreadable chestnut cream, scented with vanilla and lemon. Worth every scratched thumb. Cut a small slit in the ... Continue The post Sweet chestnut jam appeared first on Robin Harford from Eatweeds.

Thank you to blog reader and Ribbons regular Jonathan Davidson for today’s title - a comment he shared on the video when I added it to YouTube last night, really made me smile…Push and pull - switching a HO scale shelf layout - https://youtu.be/UfpNAnTb44INothing special, nothing unusual. Just 25 minutes or so of quiet-ish switching on my nearly 8ft HO scale shelf slice of New Brunswick, gently narrated by myself. As Jonathan found, perfect accompaniment for household chores, even ironing.Click…

As I write this, currently, I don't know if Belmont's Curse is a canon game for me over Metroid Dread. I've struggled, I've gone back and forth, and there's a clear cleavage of why this is such a challenging choice for me. And why do these two clash instead of just having both? Having both on doesn't say anything new about me, they're redundant on the business card. They just say "Hat likes Metroidvanias." So what's the case for either? Is Rose the chosen one? Metroid Dread is deeper and well,…

The RetredsR & T Records RP 660Acton, Massachusetts[listed in RCS, but location unknown]1966DC Hill StudiosVocal by John Hill Black Mona Lisa Johnny Be GoodThe RetredsImage from this blog (The Making Of A Band) written by The Old Dude who was a member of the band. Plenty of recollections there...

Final Fantasy Resonance Nichol rocks. Started the day off by getting Odin and beating down Aether/Cid. The Aether fight was pretty simple and I do feel bad for defeating him so hard. He just misses his family. Grabbed some side quests too, I'll wrap those up and then probably do the next tier of the colosseum if I can. I'm mildly concerned/paranoid about these tablet shards and having to backtrack to find an errant one or two.

Source AI is already used to write books and magazine articles. AI is replacing me. Ever since Google started using AI in its search engine, the number of daily views of my blog have been cut in half. Yes, that sounds ominous. The Google search engine has a new feature that creates images based on any description a user provides. These images are created in seconds. I used this feature to create images for this week’s blog entry and some of them are amazing. I had been using Deviant Art’s image…

St­uttgart branch, Kaufhaus Schocken chain of German department stores.Joseph Berlin (1877-1952) was born in Mogilev Russia/now Belarus. He studied at St Pet­ersburg Academy of Art graduating in 1911, winning sev­eral architectural compet­itions. Berlin then worked in St Pet­er­s­burg, designing 12+ build­ings for various local councils and banks before migrat­ing to British-ruled Palestine with his family in 1921Once settled, he got work as Chief Architect in the Public Works Dept of the…