Parents in Spielbergian suburb (Anne, Ewan) have two kids (one played young Aubrey Plaza in My Old Ass, the other played young Oscar Isaac in Frankenstein aka the young twins in The Monkey). The girl is really into Carl Sagan – Cosmos came out in 1980, so when the power goes out those flashlight batteries aren’t gonna last long. And the power goes out because their street gets time-warped into the dinosaur age, and dinos start eating their neighbors. “Will you stop being so damn optimistic?…

It is impossible to communicate the schwa sound in written EnglishLet’s say you are trying to communicate /k/क sound in English. You can use k, c, or, if it is guttural, even q to communicate it. But what if you are trying to communicate the most neutral vowel sound known to mankind, the schwa sound /ə/अ? It is impossible to pick the right Latin letter to communicate this. There are 5 vowel letters in English. And each of them can be used to communicate the schwa sound in different words! The a…

Eble, vere, Esperantujo ne devas ekzisti kiel lando sed mi pasas malbonan momenton en la lando kie mi vivas kaj mi bezonas eskapi iomete... êc se sole en mia menso. #lang_eo #esperanto #esperantujo #memes #memeo #meme #memeoj

I think I tossed out all of my old iPods when the boards died, but I’m gonna have to dig through the bins in the basement to see if there’s anything left: there’s a new project promising a modern, easily swappable motherboard for old iPods with Bluetooth, WiFi, 2TB of space and a 40-hour battery for 3G, 4G and Mini models. I had a 3G model at one point, and did try to swap in a new board for it almost ten years ago. That’s a long time to be hanging on to old broken tech, even for me, but…

We have officially hit autumn weather here in Japan, and after a rainy September it was nice to enjoy some sunnier days in October. Summer feels so endless with its heat in Tokyo, but then the pleasant autumn weather always seems to pass by in the blink of an eye so I'm trying to make the most of it! On the blog, I had a good mix of reading, coffee and hiking. Hiking the Northern Alps: Mt Tate and Mt Shirouma I kicked off October with two hikes in Japan's Northern Alps - Mt Tate and Mt…

The 404 page for Road Sign Math is a work of art. 🤩

The postcards I have from Amiens, dating from just after World War One, are interesting: some show the damage the city sustained during the war, some others show the past grandeur of the city.Amiens Station, nicknamed "Gare du Nord" by the locals (I don't need to translate, do I?), was completely destroyed during World War One. It was rebuilt, but destroyed again during World War Two, so the current station is relatively new. The postcard shows what the station looked like before 1914.As for…

Fame isn’t the same as success. Fame is public spotlight. Success is quiet. It’s feeling good with what you do, Feeling you’ve found a purpose, Finding out what you’re here for and doing it every day. It’s working every day, Putting bread in your table, Having a family, Liking what you do, getting paid for some money for it, and feeling at ease with it. That’s a true successful person. A lesson I heard in a Sunday sermon that made me nod in agreement and realize I’m not that far to being…

I've written an article called "Alone Together in the Quake Brutalist Jam" for Eteo Archetypes, a video game world design website / newsletter run by Gregorios Kythreotis and Emma Kent.My article is about Quake Brutalist Jam 3, maybe the most popular Quake-related thing in recent memory -- with more downloads than all the previous installments combined, attention from big YouTubers, and coverage from big mainstream newspapers like The Guardian.In the article I begin with Quake's haunted 1996…

My Makerspace is officially zoned. 🤓

I feel like every month I say how quickly the month has gone. But this month went even faster. A combination of a new contract, fitting in runs, and being down with an ugly cold for a week has left the month in a blur. Website updates I had an urge to redesign the site, but I resisted a total overhaul in favour of some more targeted changes: There’s a new site-wide header, with an ASCII art logo Posts and other content-heavy pages now have a reduced width to aid readability Footnotes now render…

Happy Halloween! This year in addition to candy we are giving out little miniature 3D printed Ghosts to the kids. So far they are a hit! 👻🎃

Final count of trick or treaters!

New update to The Memedex, memes that are new since the last time I built it get fun and funky-fresh frames.

Japan’s in-person service is warm and its software is a maze. From an onsen hotel in Mie prefecture to a ¥9,000 sushi dinner for four, my first post from this trip looks at care, clutter, and life off the beaten track. | Read full post >>

The Saint Charles Quadcon was held today, and it was a superb way to kick off Halloween! Located at the Steel Shop Event Center, the show started at 10AM. There was a crowd lined up and ready to enjoy shopping for comics, toys, Funko Pops, trading cards, movies, and more! The show had a solid mix of vendors and crafters. It was fun catching up with people I knew.An excited crowd ready to enter the show!I saw a number of my friends at the show, including ProfGee Comics, the quality folks of…

Some of my riding students require constant line of sight supervision. I retrieve my rider from the lobby at the beginning of the lesson, and I walk with them–right by their side–back to the lobby at the end of the lesson. If I don’t spot their care provider in the lobby, we go hunting in the parking lot, side by side, hand in hand, until the Responsible Party has accepted the hand off. This can be a little time consuming. In the fifteen minutes between lessons, I might have to get the saddle…

Happy Halloween from our eaves as the sun sinks and night’s creatures emerge!

I have been trying to add more whimsy to my home office lately. In a lot of ways that seems to mean trying to create that seedy nightclub atmosphere that I've always enjoyed. In the aftermath of seeing Wednesday 13 and Lords of Acid on adjacent nights I decided that I should rummage about the hoard of broken toys and see if I could come up with a DNA Lounge-esque flyer display. I took an old TV, Raspberry Pi 3b and whipped up a portrait-mode screen. The installation notes are over in the README…

To get a good reputation in tech companies, you need to work on important projects. However, you need a good reputation first in order to get assigned important projects. Doesn’t that make it impossible to get started? I get a lot of emails from engineers who are struggling with this problem. They go like this: I work with a strong senior engineer. I feel like my manager structures work so that strong engineer always gets the visible work, and the more they do, the more opportunities they get,…

Best decorations in the new neighbourhood.

Title: I'm kind, but not nice. Photo: Ground beef with whole wheat flatbread & apple slices. Body: What I mean by that is I say and do kind things (and genuinely mean them!), but its hard to match my face & body language to the emotions I feel. It gets worse when I'm tired or anxious. I can't maintain the 'socially appropriate' set of behaviours when it comes to being kind or showing gratitude. Luckily, my friends & family are accepting even if they don't understand, and when they feel hurt I…

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The ceremony of innocence is drowned; Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! —… The post The Ultimate Halloween Watch 2026 appeared first on The Time Bum.

Music I’ve bought in October. Huh, I bought more stuff this month than I thought… The Vanishing Twin album is nice, I think, but I’ve only listened to it a couple times yet. Perhaps not as immediate as previous albums? The album from Total Wife is so much fun — I’ve been listening almost exclusively to music from the 90s over the past few weeks, so when I started playing this, my brain totally went “So what My Bloody Valentine album is this?” The 90s are really back — half the new bands are…

After two packed days, we’re back to just the one recording today, starting with the end of Deadly 60 Bites. There’s a trail for The Sarah Jane Adventures. Plus a trail for Trapped: Ever After. Then it’s The Sarah Jane Adventures – The Vault of Secrets, Part 1. It looks like I’ve not got the whole series recorded. This is the second story. A young woman is looking for something, and seems to have alien technology. She’s found by some men who seem to be cosplaying as Agent Smith from the Matrix.…

We are overjoyed to announce that – after many months of work and thanks to you – copies of Sarah Ainslie’s WOMEN AT WORK are now available and we are sending them out. CLICK HERE TO BUY A SIGNED COPY FOR £20 Sarah Ainslie will be giving an illustrated lecture, showing her pictures and telling the stories behind her WOMEN AT WORK project at this year’s Bloomsbury Jamboree on Saturday 14th November at the Art Workers’ Guild, 6 Queen Sq, London WC1N 3AT. CLICK HERE TO BOOK FOR SARAH’S LECTURE We…

The Exorcism of Amy (1983) was broadcast by ITV as part of the Spooky strand of the Dramarama anthology drama series, which was a precursor to the main Dramarama series that was broadcast between 1983 and 1989. Directed by Richard Handford and written by Paula Milne, it is truly terrifyingly malevolently creepy viewing. Watching it is the equivalent of a keyboard maestro playing a church organ who can hit all the right notes, but those notes are every childhood fear you can imagine. Dead…

“a Phil Falcone production” – not the disgraced hedge fund billionaire, but the auteur of a PTSD army drama with Tom Sizemore, and defendant of finance disputes over the first movie in this series. Home-invader Santa carrying an axe is nothing new. “Five years prior” cop finds a decapitated clown in abandoned building, it kills him and takes his head, so the backstory is… Art in various forms of headlessness and disrepair tears some people apart to repair himself? Teen Vic Secret Angel Sienna…

When I decided to create a custom theme for my blog I decided I wanted to take over the share preview images that micro.blog generates by default. I didn’t find any of the options really appealing to me so I decided to build my own cards service that is a lightweight Lambda function that serves preview images exactly how I want them. I quickly realized I could use this for more than just my blog and I could embed custom logic for different sites I wanted to use it for. Today I moved Linking…