As a child, I recall turning the dials on the TV and adjusting the bunny ear antennas to watch Bob Ross paint. I remember I would copy him with my play set of paints, and imagined myself quite the accomplished artist. I remember it as almost magical. Life went on, though: school, marriage, work, where did that small child go? Occasionally I still wake up with a desire to paint something. I might give it a try for a few minutes, but nothing comes of it. The paint and brush just don’t seem to…

I’ve been browsing a massive list of blogs and personal websites, and I have noticed a pattern in the websites I just gave up on. This is my nerdy exploration of what the owners did wrong (and what some did right). To avoid shaming and general meanness, I took no screenshots and am naming no names. WTF is this? – The front page that fails its one vital job Whatever page a first-time visitor to your website lands on, it needs to do one thing for them. None more so than the front page of your…

By Mountainland GamesSelf PublishedShadowdarkLevel 1 The old northern road was once safe. Now travelers are disappearing—and the bodies that are found are missing their hearts. The trail leads to Blackstone Watchtower, an abandoned fortress that has stood empty for generations. Now strange lights flicker in its windows, goblins haunt the surrounding countryside, and something ancient has begun to stir beneath the stones. The characters are hired to investigate. What begins as a hunt for goblin…

This is the third essay in my series about metagames in tabletop RPGs. This essay is about mini-games and fragmented narratives. I wrote it in preparation for publishing Mousetrap: A cursed game-within-a-game that won't go back into its box.Mini-gamesWhen you think of mini-games, you may think of nested or embedded games that you can play through your characters. In D&D, for example, three-dragon ante is a canonical game nested within The Forgotten Realms with its own set of rules. A deck of…

"Hackensack Record," May 24, 1934, via Newspapers.com20-year-old Arne Gandy of Teaneck, New Jersey, was a restless, adventurous young man who, like so many restless, adventurous sorts throughout history, felt the call of the high seas. After several voyages to South America, in December 1933 he signed on to serve as “messboy” on the “President Harrison.” Gandy carried with him a letter of introduction to Stanley Dollar, president of the ship’s line. After the “President Harrison” arrived in San…

I started the year with this image: Ten months later, things appear to be poised on possibly not going completely wrong at all. I’ve been reflecting the ups and downs in my memes and occasionally collecting them here. I posted the first installment, Happy 2026, in early April, and the second judiciary-only installment, Trump Lost 30 Court Cases in 30 Days, in July. Here’s the rest of April-October, which includes the lead-up to two elections: the Virginia referendum on redistricting (which…

I couldn’t help but feel happy for the passengers who got on the jeep after my girlfriend and me. It was a father, a mother, and three young children in Halloween costumes. Finding a jeep with enough space for an entire family is a miracle in modern commuting. The family settled in front of us. The dad had the youngest in his arms, careful not to wake them up as he reached for his fanny pack to pay the fare. The daughter, dressed as a fairy, sat on her mother's lap. She stared blankly at the…

The Morning StandupPrompt: “Summarize what you worked on yesterday, what you are working on today, and any blockers.”Response: “No thanks. I muted my microphone, turned my camera off to ‘save bandwidth,’ and will send a thumbs-up emoji twenty seconds before this call ends.”The Quick SyncPrompt: “Schedule fifteen minutes between Product and Business Development to align on priorities.”Response: “No thanks. Neither of those teams knows what the other does. You are just scheduling a hostage…

Now that (most of) the clocks in my house (It’s Chris btw) are set to GMT and the leaves are turning orange we’re in a reflective mood at MCQN HQ. So the large whiteboard got pulled out for our planning meeting. It’s useful to look at where the projects on the board are at, and which are priorities going forward. It’s also the time we realise we really should be telling people about the My Bike’s got LED kits for the discerning cyclist looking to be seen this winter. (It was also a time to…

My first time in Jervis Bay, a coastal town a few hours out of Sydney, for a friend’s birthday.

There are some secrets that the twentieth-century refuses to yield, truths that it is very likely that no will ever know either now or in the future, and around them has grown a tsunami of conspiracy theorists fascinated with picking over the ‘evidence’, identifying gaps and inconsistencies and posing alternatives to the official line. But […]

WHAT’S IN THIS ISSUE Senseonics Begins Human Study of Transmitter-Free Eversense CGM Abbott December US Launch for Libre Duo Glucose-Ketone Sensor Mind the Pump: Research on Diabetes Distress in Adolescents Did a Change of Glucagon Derail the Inreda Artificial Pancreas Trial? The Immune System Reboot: Can We Slow Aging?

After last week's unscheduled disappearance when the worldwide PHP issues hit and my almost 24 year old underskirts proved too...

A beautiful piece of small-scale design: That’s a corner masonry pier encasing a steel column. The light-blue things at the top of the photo are canopies shading the storefronts. You can see the storefronts on the left at a very narrow angle, receding into the distance; the door on the far right is part of a recessed entry behind the corner column. This the 1898 Williams Building in Chicago, designed by Holabird & Roche, an early steel-frame skyscraper that is not particularly famous because…

Since 2021, all of the major browser vendors (including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Firefox, and others) have collaborated together on Interop, a coordinated effort to improve global support for new web technologies. This year, the Firefox team has launched a website to allow developers to rank Interop 2027 proposals. These rankings will get used to inform Interop planning with the other browser vendors. Here are my top nine! JavaScript Temporal. I’m dreaming of the day I no longer have to deal…

Over a quarter of a century ago, Joel Spolsky wrote about Netscape’s decision to rewrite its browser from scratch, which later led to Firefox. He called it Things You Should Never Do, Part I.I remember reading that article at the time and fully agreeing with him. As a side note, it is well worth the time to go through the archive of his posts. Even today, a lot of them hold up very well.Reading it back again, I found the following quote, which is really appropriate today:Before Borland’s new…

Newsletter Reminder Social Media Codidact Mini-Server, Part 38 Clearer Licensing, Part 2 Entropy Arbitrage, the Posts Library Updates Next In most of the Mexican-influenced world, today people celebrate (the latter half) of the Day of the Dead, dedicated to remembering family and friends who have died. While I strongly recommend against aping the aesthetic—that slides quickly into the most harmful kinds of misappropriation every single time—it does feel like one of the holidays that every…

나에게는 아빠에게 물려받은 안경이 세 개나 있다. 하나는 독일산, 두 개는 일본산이다. 티타늄이나 메탈이라 가볍지만 쓰고 나가면 “오늘따라 아저씨처럼 보이네요”라는 말을 듣기 딱 좋은 디자인이다. 여건만 된다면 셋 다 렌즈를 바꿔서 쓰고 싶었지만, 렌즈값이 만만치 않기에 2년 전쯤 일본 안경 하나에 렌즈를 맞췄다. “아버님이 좋은 안경을 쓰셨네요. 코받침도 바꿔드릴까요?” 안경사가 말했다. “네, 바꿔주세요.” 나는 별다른 고민 없이 대답했지만 잠시 후 안경에 달린 새하얀 코받침을 보자마자 아차 싶었다. “요즘에는 빈티지다 뭐다 해서 코받침 바꾸지 말라고 하는 분들이 있더라고요.” 안경사는 이해가 안 된다는 듯 이야기했지만, 나는 노랗게 변색됐던 코받침을 벌써 그리워하고 있었다. 아빠의 코에도 닿았을 그 코받침을 왜 아무 생각 없이 바꾸겠다고 말했을까. 아직도 그때의 나를 원망한다. 렌즈를 맞춘 후 나는 아빠의 안경을 쓰고 다녔다. 누군가 ‘긱시크 안경’이니 ‘아재 안경’이니…

As noted by James Cridland, Podnews, one of the podcasts that started it all back in 2004, the Daily Source Code has been restored and is now available for your re-listening. (It is likely a fresh first listen to many, though.) Back then, I’ve just purchased my very first iPod (mini, blue), and I’ve spend many hours just walking anout and listening to Adam Curry, as well as a whole bunch of early podcasters. ~ Link: The Daily Source Code Archive Project, by Christopher Isene

It's time for me to do the cold-weather closet changeover. I dread doing this. It's mentally taxing and physically I'm still very tired these days. But the day are getting colder and I'll need warmer clothes, especially since I'm trying to keep the heating off for as long as I can. It also has the advantage of reducing daily cognitive load for my little hamster brain since outfits have already been planned out. Anyway, I'm going to try to get hopped up on caffeine and make it happen

George’s operation went really well so I breathed a huge sigh of relief at the start of this week. He’s been doing well in recovery and is now home. One more minor operation to go. On Wednesday I went for a couple of cocktails and a lovely catch up with Alice. It’s been too long. Thursday was the Halloween Quiz at work which was a lot of fun despite it initially being planned just to use up the drinks left over from our summer party. Good range of questions and a fun time. Our team came second…

Today is the Feast of All Souls. You might be confused--didn't we just celebrate this holiday yesterday?No, that was All Saints. All Saints was originally designed to honor the saints, those who had been beatified. Official saints, canonized by the Pope.All Souls Day, celebrated the day after All Saints, was designed to honor everyone else who had died.In some traditions, All Saints Day honors all the Christian dead, and All Souls Day honors those who have died in the past year. Those of you…

I'm sitting here at my desk and I have the window shade down on the window to my right, because when the sun comes up it comes up right in that window. I noticed that the shade was a pinkish color, so I stepped outside the sliding glass door to my left with the PEN and shot this. I'm waiting for Brad to go with his truck to pick up our HVAC equipment, but figured I could post this. ✍️ Reply by email Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:42 Monday, 2 November 2026

Daily Drawing 1037

It was half-term last week and our decorator was doing our hallway, stairs, and landing. We decided that keeping three small children away from the central thoroughfares of the house was more hassle than removing them from the house entirely, and so headed off to Scotland for the week. A storm made the journey north slow, and so we skipped our first night’s accommodation in Edinburgh and instead landed at my wife’s parents. The biggest two got left at their grandma and granddad’s as we took the…

October was National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and I was recently asked to provide some commentary for Node4 on how AI is changing the cybersecurity landscape, and what businesses should be doing in response. I’m pleased that some of my comments were picked up by journalists, appearing in articles published by Cybersecurity Insiders and Cyber Protection Magazine. Those articles brought together perspectives from several contributors, so I thought I’d share my original commentary here, in…

The month of Mathober, which takes place during the actual month of October, is an annual celebration of mathematical ideas, art, creativity and general mathsy fun. According to the website at mathober.com, “Mathober is a space for everyone to explore and express creativity. Take a prompt and use any medium to engage with the prompts in your own way. No rules, just have fun and discover. Some people have painted, coded, made cryptic crosswords, videos, poetry, and so much more.” Each day, a…