2026-06-23Back at the car show...Hello! First, a technical note: I've blocked AI bots from scraping this website. The arms race will continue, but hopefully I can be sure that humans are the only ones reading this.For the past week, I've been on an unofficial hiatus as I pry myself away from the photography world (a bit) and get some work on spring cleaning.Today's photo is a simple one. It's the front of a car. I checked it against some references online and it seems to be a Chrysler Newport…
Review yesterday, giveaway today! I enjoyed the Uni Kuru Toga Metal in Orange, but it won’t be my primary Kuru Toga, so let’s give it away! This is my review model Uni Kuru Toga in Orange, with an 0.5 mm mechanism. If you are interested, read the rules below and enter away! Uni Kuru Toga Metal Mechanical Pencil Giveaway
I didn't do anything special for solstice this year. It's fairly hot in south west England - 24° C - and it'll only get hotter this week with highs of 34°. I had a quiet day in, cooking and cleaning. I've been struggling with feeling stuck in a rut lately, which led me to experiment with a manifesto against ruminating, inspired by (but unrelated to because it is not about games) seeing entries [(1)] to manifesto jam 2026. As a nod to the solstice I decided to watch some folk horror, A Warning…
Have you heard of the Croquembouche [CROCK-you-EAM-butchy]? It's a French thing.Well, if not, here's what it's supposed to look like: So kinda like old, cobweb-wrapped monkey bread. But in a yummy way. Well, a certain anonymous person - who shall remain unnamed to protect her anonymity - found this gem at a wedding which she may or may not have anonymously attended: I believe her exact words were, "it looks like some kind of primitive jungle cake being attacked by a swarm of lactating…
A requirement for staying sane while working in public as an open source maintainer is realizing that every issue, PR, and piece of feedback is a present, not an obligation. You can accept it, ignore it, and use it partially or not at all. Except… For years, as lead of the Go Security team at the time,1 I’ve told new team members that it doesn’t apply to vulnerability reports. No, vulnerability reports are special. Security researchers are doing us a favor by reporting things confidentially…
Responding To My Former Web Host TOC: Part One Part Two Part Three I got an email yesterday that was somewhat unexpected. My former hosting service asked me to send an email about why I had closed out my account. This is something I haven't experienced before… A company that wants an actual email, they don't just want some form or survey filled out. They want to actually hear everything that I have to say… Well, I decided that I would take them up on it. And now, I am presenting this email to…
There’s the more modern Shanghai, beautiful lanes full of expensive yoga studios or artisan coffee shops, lined with the London Plane Tree (法国梧桐) and the Wukang Mansion (武康大楼), and renovated parks like the North Bund (北外滩) and West Bund (西岸). There’s also the Shanghai as the international metropolis and a symbol of China’s rising economic […] The post Cake and Timepieces appeared first on Jaap Grolleman.
For no particularly good reason, here, have some pictures of flowers and plants from around my house that I’ve taken in the last couple of days, which I then photoedited to look dramatic and possibly gothy. In order: Dahlia, Gooseneck Loosestrife, Sempervivum, Day Lily, and a bunch of peaches which now look like alien eggs. Don’t get too close, there’s a surprise inside! — JS
America, I need to address you like this again, hopeful and hopeless and frustrated with those who wave their fist and scream for justice and anarchy or for whatever else comes in-between. I see them often too, those who call themselves the political justice warriors, and I see how they scream for our government to do their job.I think about this.I think about this the same way I thought about how the dog peed on the floor and rather than clean it, I pretended not to see it so Mom would notice…
Although Charlemagne is a famous name, and we know a lot about him, his descendants and the events of the Carolingian era are not well-documented. There are a handful of chronicles written by various people, as seen yesterday, and Regino of Prüm was one of those chroniclers.We know for certain that he was a Benedictine—probably at Prüm (in modern Trier, Germany)—and became abbot of Prüm from 892 to 899. Later he was abbot of St. Martin's Abbey. He became abbot at Prüm when his predecessor…
Juvie on the “runway” at 62nd Street Bridge, 20 June 2026 (photo by Jeff Cieslak) 23 June 2026 Halfway into the 2026 Peregrine Season I thought our region would have lower than usual nesting success because we had fewer active sites than last year. But peregrines always surprise me. This month observers found fledglings at two bridges that weren’t on the list: 62nd Street Bridge and the Rt. 40 Bridge at West Brownsville. This adds two nests and 4 young to our regional total. Woo hoo! 62nd…
Inland, they have a red warning for heat up to 40°C. We only have an amber warning. It’s 24°C where I am.
"The Road Goes On Forever" by Robert Earl Keen Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. Describe the perfect song for a road trip and why it works. - The Road Goes on Forever by Robert Earl Keen The song is basically Texas outlaw mythology compressed into four minutes. Sonny and Sherry are not heroes in any moral sense, but Keen writes them with enough speed, grit, and sympathy that I just lean into it. It is kin to “Pancho and Lefty,” “Me and Bobby McGee,” and old…
Open source web application for learning to play piano that listens to your MIDI instrument input while you play to songs displayed as sheet music or falling notes, both with extra notation to help beginners such as named notes (alphabetical and fixed do) and colors (Settings icon on top-right → Display → Visualizer ). You can also free play, choosing different instruments, and record your own performance into a MIDI file to use later in your DAW, or load custom ones.
i really vibed with his music. have not watched any of his interviews before a couple of days ago, but now that i have, i feel even sadder. i don't like many people or many musicians, and it's sad that he's gone. his music was a quiet presence in my life for many years, his art has supported me throughout some hard times. i don't really have much else to say, other than that. he seemed to value freedom, honesty, and the connection between people. i treasure that as well. stupid fucking…
This section of a great interview with Magic Tuber Stringband in the June 2026 copy of The Wire really struck me. It relates to the influence band member Courtney Werner’s field recording work on a former nuclear weapons production site in South Carolina had on the band’s Heavy Water album. “Werner’s field recordings appear on every Magic Tuber Stringband recording, sometimes as a textural element added after the music was played. But on Heavy Water, found sounds are used in a more interactive…
In April, Jonathan Pike, a professor of philosophy at Open University, submitted a formal complaint about the appointment of his colleague, professor of philosophy Sophie Grace Chappell, a trans woman, to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2029 subpanel for philosophy. [Detail of cover of Transfigured by Sophie Grace Chappell]That complaint has now been dismissed, according to Professor Chappell, who, in an email and also on Facebook, wrote: “On June 15th… UKRI’s independent adjudicator…
While I ran websites and newsletters before, I've only been blogging for almost 2 years. By coincidence I found Bear, and I immediately got drawn to it. Not only did it look like a good platform, it also hosted a great community. So while I got started, I got to know other bloggers and learned from them.I enjoyed my blogging experience. And my blog grew. I added snapshots, app reviews, ... And the more I published, the more visibility I gained. People started to reach out to me. People linked…
Learn how Expressive can improve a Laravel application by keeping Eloquent as the database layer while moving business logic to fully typed objects. Read more
Always fun to update this collection of Hawkgirl/Hawkwoman pics from time to time. Hawkgirl truly is an iconic character with a rich history. Hawkgirl's History
Your monthly hit of all the things that are fit to print without a better place to live. Today is election day here in New York City, so again a reminder that if you are a registered Democrat and live in NY-12 today is the final day to vote for Alex Bores for Congress, and as per my argument yesterday that this matters a lot for ensuring we have a sensible Congressional response to AI. RIP FiveThirtyEight ABC and Disney completely take down FiveThirtyEight and all its articles, after telling…
We constantly see different variations of "just build it, you can make it better later" on LinkedIn and other places dedicated to recycling cliches. Normally, the writer is a CLUMS (short for cliche-loving, unimaginative, mindless soul) who labels the opposite approach as perfectionist and rejects it on that grounds. In practice, what CLUMS has in mind and rejects is not perfect, but only well-built (perfection goes well beyond their imagination). Of course, CLUMS is not suggesting that sloppy…
The ethics of fly fishing for bull trout are nebulous. They’re also a bit ephemeral, depending on where you’re fishing and your intent. The endangered char of the Northwest is protected by law in both the United States and Canada, but fishing for them throughout most of their native range is legal, so long as they’re released unharmed.
As a man, the opportunities available to us to cry, progressively decrease. A part of adulting as a man is to forgo emotion, to be detached. To avail the cry ticket, there are but a few opportunities: Your parents' death. Wedding. Childbirth. That 3AM night. To cry is to put yourself out there, to reveal yourself in what, one might argue, is the most vulnerable position. Yet, each tear holds something. A beckon to something, a release of a held emotion, an opportunity to embrace that…
The papacy, people say, counts in centuries, and perhaps never even thinks of counting, because its goal is eternity.1 It has been a pleasure every few months to buy the latest volume in the new translation of À la recherche du temps perdu. I've now read the third, by Peter Bush. The Oxford World's Classics paperbacks are affordable, easy to hold open and, while the typeface is small, it's not too small. Overall, this is the ideal edition for those planning to read Proust in English for the…
I mentioned this before but I thought I’d expand on this a little. I head to Madrid for the Grand Prix in September. That’s not what this post is about but is what, by happenstance, gave me a focus. I need goals I look back at my athletic achievements (wow, that’s an odd phrase to even think about, let alone write) and they are all usually something I’ve had to plan for, something I’ve signed up for in the future knowing it will push me to exercise and give me a focus. Regardless of the reason…
“Evil itself may be relentless. I will grant you that, but love is relentless, too. Friendship is a relentless force…the human spirit is relentless.” - Dean Koontz, “Relentless”Hello friends! It’s officially summer, but it felt wonderfully like spring today. It’s not often I have the windows open at the end of June! It appears the brown booby departed from her Kansas City location about the time my post went out yesterday, but I heard the painted bunting still today. You never know!Here are my…
TRAVELER’S Notebooks are more popular than ever, and we have a fresh shipment that arrived yesterday. Currently we have Passport-size Starter Kits in Black and Blue, and Standard-size Starter Kits in Olive, as well as most refills and accessories with more on the way for those items that are currently sold out. If you prefer full A5-size notebooks, we’ve also received a fresh restock of handmade OnionBrand leather covers. OnionBrand is a local Nashville maker specializing in leather, and I’m…
I discovered Harris when looking up who played the delicate, beautiful piano part in Yusef Lateef’s performance of Love Theme From Spartacus and then found this series of videos put together by pianist and teacher Frans Elsen. A wonderful resource.
For some reason, people are buying my book – and I wish they’d stop, at least for a while. This one, I mean: The Scientist’s Guide to Writing. I’ve written two others, and if you’d like to buy one of those, go right ahead! Charles Darwin’s Barnacle and David Bowie’s Spider is “more fun than […]
