It has been just over a year since I started my extra paid content on my blog, which you can sign up for via Patreon. Given the time that has passed I thought it might be helpful to list what extra content I have posted so far. It only costs £3.50 a month (you can cancel at any point) and to celebrate the one-year anniversary of being on Patreon, I am running a prize draw to win one of four copies of Tom Racine’s The ABC of Murders, which came out last month. All you have to do is be a paying…

Guest Post by: David Tonaszuck A reflection on the Gospel of Matthew 13:24-30 Dear Friends in Christ, There was once a boy, not much older than fourteen, who wandered the dusty back roads near a small farming town at the turn of the century. He was an orphan, left to fend for himself in a … Continue reading Rest for the Weary: Trusting Jesus to Lighten Our Burdens The post Hungry for Righteousness, Trusting in God first appeared on The Simple Catholic. The post Hungry for Righteousness,…

Nothing says the holidays quite like a pan of soft buttery cookie bars studded with festive holiday colours. These easy cookie bars made with Pillsbury Christmas Sugar Cookies and Cookie dough come together in minutes and bake up thick, chewy, and perfectly sweet, making them an ideal treat for cookie exchanges, holiday parties, classroom celebrations or cozy afternoon festive tea parties.The best part? No mixing, chilling or fussing with multiple batches of cookies. Simply press the dough into…

10 unblogged things I did in November Sun 1: Took all my bats down. Sun 1: At the end of today's Radio 4 Midnight News the headlines were followed by a trail and then the programme Take Four Books. Hang on, I thought, where did the weather go? The Midnight News has always been followed by a beefy weather forecast ever since I started listening in the 1990s. The same thing happened tonight - no weather presenter, no weather - so I checked the Radio Times and they have indeed killed it off. Up…

Throwback to the times I got the privilege to enjoy autumn season: I also changed the color palette (and the general vibe) of this blog to be more autumnal. I feel like it would be really neat if I could switch the color palette according to seasons. The only problem is on how to create a custom color palette that I could save, because right now, at least on WordPress’ Twenty-Twenty Five theme, you could only use either the premade palettes or create a custom palette without the ability to save…

I’m doing Nanogenmo this year, which involves using software to produce novels. I started out by seeing whether Claude could produce a book with very little guidance. It’s worked better than expected. The result is better than many of the human-written books I’ve read this year. Move 37 refers to a particular moment in the Go match between Lee Sedol and Deepmind’s AlphaGo computer program, which was won by AlphaGo. After the match Sedol said “I thought AlphaGo was based on probability…

The sun sets behind the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge into the Seto Inland Sea. A fisherman tends his lines and enjoys the view. 明石海峡大橋の向こうで、太陽が瀬戸内海へと沈んでいく。漁師は釣り糸を垂れながら、その眺めに見入っている。

Digital permanence and me Conceptually a URL shortener is a useful idea. A shorter url is simpler to speak aloud, to paste into an email without it breaking, to add to social media and not use too many characters. In practice, URL shorteners are not permanent. They’re a single point of failure. Their functionality depends on whomever owns the domain making sure they keep working into the future. I have used several URL shorteners over the years which have GONE OUT OF BUSINESS. Going out of…

Women of Music 41Mary Padgett on cover Amber Digby - How You Drink The Wine.mp3Carol Grimes - Private Number.mp3Jeri Southern - Senor Blues.mp3Kay Bell And The Spacemen- Scream Along (With The Monster) .mp3Linda Leigh - The Scent .mp3Lynda Carter - The Loco-Motion.mp3Lynette Morgan & Her Tennessee Rhythm Riders - Kaw- Liga.mp3Margaret Lewis - Shake A Leg.mp3Mary Padgett - Great Big Man.mp3Maureen Tucker - Bo Diddley.mp3Ramona Locke - No Minors Allowed!.mp3Tania Kernaghan - Back Of The Barn.mp3

This autumn I’ve been revelling in the coolth (that’s a real word) and writing spooky stuff in various formats. A little context: this type of blog post is what I decided to do instead of starting a newsletter. You can subscribe to this blog (enter an email address, get updates when I post) using a widget that, hopefully, you can see at the bottom of the screen. Or, if you use an RSS reader like Feedly or Readwise Reader, you can add this blog there. The format was inspired by someone on…

An array of microphones and speakers from an installation by artist Iana Chugunova informed by Pauline Oliveros’ “The Tuning Meditation.” This is from the short-run exhibit Scaling Intelligence, which ran for five days at Gray Area in San Francisco, from October 29 through November 1. There were 13 featured artists.

Finding a lost hand-knit mitten always makes me a bit sad: This candelabra at Kaffihús Vesturbæjar fit the mood: The whole scene had ominous overtones: After dinner I went to the cinema again, this time seeing Eyríki, an elegy and celebration to a fading way of life on the northernmost island of Iceland. Sad, but also sweet. On my way home I passed by this sinister tableaux: Tomorrow? Who

How often have you encountered a poem or other piece of writing that not only provoked astonishment on first reading but continues to do so after many years? I mean astonishment, not mere surprise or critical approval. I can think of a few passages in Shakespeare and Thomas Traherne’s Centuries of Meditation. There’s another, not so well known, that I first read in 1975, that somehow hasn’t grown tired or used-up or otherwise lost its capacity to inspire awe: “The World” by Henry Vaughan. The…

Welcome to Day 3 of Noirvember 2026 where my Daily Dish topic is Favorite Noir Director. This one definitely made me put on my thinking cap (or my ruminating fedora, if you will) – there are so many great ones. Before I share my pick, I’d just like to give a tip of the hat to Anthony Mann, Robert Siodmak, and Fritz Lang; together, they were responsible for such personal favorites as The Great Flamarion (1945), Scarlet Street (1945), Desperate (1947), Cry of the City (1948), Criss Cross (1949),…

John Wyver writes: Tonight the Liszt Institute – the Hungarian Cultural Centre in London is screening Robert Vas’ film essay My Homeland. Made for BBC’s Omnibus strand in 1976, this draws on a century and more of Hungarian poetry, film, photography, music and graphics to weave a powerful, poetic and deeply personal response to the Soviet repression of the 1956 Revolution. (Above is framegrab illustrating also the film’s self-reflexivity.) My Homeland is a film about memory and history and exile…

You filled out the exercise on the Values Finder and emailed the PDF to yourself. It is in your inbox, unopened.Then a decision arrives towards the end of a working day, with a deadline of the end of the week, and you make it the same way you always have. Reactive, from the gut, with the reasoning made after the event.Your values list did not even come into it. It never had the chance.Decide once, not every timeYour values pay off when they are turned forward into standing decisions. Rules you…

Tuesday 3rd November 2026 Time for another delve into my in-box from the past month. BustimeFiinder.com Narendhiran Vijayakuma the founder and administrator of a new website called BustimeFinder.com, emailed me to let me know about the work he’s been doing to develop an “independent, advertising-supported bus-information website. It brings route and stop search, published timetables and available vehicle reports into a browser without requiring an account.” It’s impressive to see what he’s done…

I gave five AI models a test suite rigged to always pass. Several knew it was fake and left that out of their reports to me.

If any reader cares to check in on the Slack chat run by reader B.J. in Arlington, MA, here is an invite link. Trump Makes His Closing Argument If the Republicans take a thrashing today, as expected, then the blame will be placed squarely at the feet of one Donald John Trump. And the last few days have provided reminders aplenty as to exactly why that is the case. Click here for full story

The important of voting was instilled in me from a young age, and I now vote as often as possible.

Good morning, afternoon, or whenever it is that you read this. Despite my love of Halloween, I don’t do very much with it these days. I change my reading habits, decorate, watch Halloween movies and share a spooky snack board with my wife on the actual occasion. We sadly don’t get trick-or-treaters at our current home. This year, however, my wife and I did something pretty spectacular for Halloween night: we went to Scarborough’s Hollow. In addition to the massive and (sometimes in)famous Texas…

The end of the Byzantine Exarchate eventually led to Charlemagne invading and conquering the Lombard kingdom. For the Venetians, it was a change for the worse.

The time is 8:36 PM. Start the clock. I want to take the ancient city found in the Valley of Lune and advance the clock ten years. What has it become? This is a crash test of Fletchwind, volume 1. What do I already know about Lune? It's an ancient city once populated by the elves (now perhaps the neighbors?), and now home to adventurers, clockwork folk, a handful of "dreamless" elves revived after aeons of torment, and probably a few other enterprising sorts. Let's go. We're starting with…

Later today, chewsday november 3rd, I'll be walking over to my designated voting poll and casting my vote for the 2026 midterm candidates. These are my official endorsements. U.S. Senate - Dr. Abdul El-Sayed U.S. House Michigan District 3 - Hillary Scholten Governor of Michigan - Jocelyn Benson Lieutenant Governor of Michigan - Winnie Brinks Michigan Secretary of State - Garlin Gilchrist II Attorney General of Michigan - Eli Savit City Commissioner for Ward 1: Lindsey Perez-Plescher

Picking projects to work on during a demo is a challenge. It must be something that doesn't need deep and prolonged concentration. A minimal toolkit too. Wagon kits are good, and I did have one in the box, but looking through the stash, I found this Artitec kit for a French toilet. Bought at Ally Pally earlier this year, I have it because I fancied a go at a kit from this manufacturer. The subject just amused me. Looking at the parts, I reasoned that all I needed was an abrasive stick, and some…

I had some small changes to mod_blog queued up when I noticed my gopher feed had the following in it: - /2026/10/14 Notes on an overheard conversation in a parking lot - /2026/10/11 The closet situation has been resolved - /2026/09/19 I never did ask her why she was eating Trader Joe's Cheezy Poofs in a Publix parking lot - /2026/09/06 Notes on an overheard conversation at a D&D game - /2026/09/01 Is it too early to call Google and Microsoft an email cartel? - /2026/08/31 I guess this falls…

This is the childhood version of Mr. Fixit. Whether you’re shooting free throws in the driveway, whipping tennis balls at a wall, or tossing frisbees in the park, it always happens, man. Someone tosses it a bit too high, a bit too wobbly, or a bit too wrong direction, and suddenly your whole game gets lodged in a tight squeeze. Now, the best way to unjam that ball is of course by using its fellow family members against it. This is the backyard equivalent of putting the hostage taker’s mom on…

At the end of Friday's dispatch from the void, I wrote this: I like weddings. I remember telling a guy friend that twenty something years ago or something and his reaction suggested to me that he didn't like weddings and that he didn't think I should like weddings. I still don't know what that was about, but I think the implication was that it was feminine to like weddings. I hate that I used to care about this stuff. I hate that I use alter my behaviour in order to conform with norms that I…

In early September I got an email from my credit union: Effective October 2026, Interac will be discontinuing its future-dated and recurring e-Transfer payment options. While we explored ways to maintain these features, they will no longer be available in online banking or the mobile app due to Interac’s decision to discontinue the service. What’s Changing? Effective September 3, 2026 You will no longer be able to create new future-dated and recurring e-Transfers. These features will no longer…