Clouds reflected in Osawa Pond at Daikaku-ji Temple, and cherry leaves turning red. 大覚寺の大沢池に映る雲と、赤く色づいた桜の葉。

This past Sunday, I ran my second ever marathon. Just like last year, it was in Lausanne. I’m happy to report that I not only started for the second time, but also finished it for the second time. And I improved my PB by over 5 minutes, from last year’s 4:18:01 to 4:12:25. Which means I unfortunately didn’t hit my goal of running a sub-4-hour marathon. In retrospect, I’m actually glad that it wasn’t even close; I think that would have felt worse emotionally. What I’m happy about though is that…

Today I’m working on snapshot replication for OpenZFS Mastery. While some environments require backups be dumped to offline media, others find online backups sufficient, or use online backups for warm spares. Lucas assumes that every system he controls will simultaneously betray him, so he uses both. Jude does something that he’s gonna fill in here. Backups that must be run manually are not backups. You won’t do them. Sure, you’ll do them once or twice, but one day the coffee pot will break and…

David Lammy let 60,000 Sudanese civilians die and no one cares.The game of politics is built on people who can abstract that number until it's fucking meaningless. Who can decide that protecting a political ally (in this case the UAE who provide weapons to the RSF) is of more interest than the souls of 60,000 innocents. This is moderate politics under liberalism. The depressing part is how little attention is really paid to this in the first place, the death of one is a tragedy, the death of a…

Middle of the night. 0300. I wake up shivering and aching, the surreal images of fever dreams lingering in the dark. I stumble into the kitchen and down a couple of ibuprofen. I shuffle to the other side of the house and check on my son. He’s breathing and his skin is clammy, but he’s not feverish. I think he might be over the worst of it. Mei stares at me from her spot on the ottoman. Even she knows it’s a ridiculous hour to be awake, so she graces me with a dramatic cat yawn and is soon…

1 gall of juice. Not a bad day but a bit cooler. Washed H.B1 cars making 165 to date. Cleared all lab bins. Got some ivy and creeper for girls to do the dance room with.

Desire II This is a cross-post from my Sound Club music club, where I regularly share an album for listening and discussion. Check out the club here. Amidst all the bigger shifts in 00s alternative and electronic music — nu rave, the resurgence of post punk, electroclash, Ed Banger and the impact of French touch — there was something much subtler happening a little further behind the scenes. Based out of Portland and West Hollywood, a record label called Italians Do It Better was quietly…

So, Bioware's dead then. Honestly, I don't think anyone is surprised that EA made the decision to shutter the company - I think it's more that we were robbed of any kind of catharsis. We've had this slow, stumbling collapse of a company that basically redefined and modernised two completely separate subgenres of RPG with Baldur's Gate (later Dragon Age) and Mass Effect. They should have crashed out in a blaze of glory caused by hubris and untenable targets, but instead they got chipped at by…

I was kvetching about AI-generated comments the other day — for some reason or other, Akismet anti-spam doesn’t seem to recognise them, so I have to manually mark them as spam, which is annoying. What makes the AI comment spammers especially annoying is that the first few times you see them, you don’t realise that it’s spam, because the comments will respond to what you’ve written in your blog post. So it’s not some generic, general text, like we’re used to recognising. (As an example, above we…

Unless you are from Spain (or a fan of Spanish music), the name “Presuntos Implicados” tells you nothing. I can’t blame you, since not only is this band from Spain, it’s also a (mostly) 90s band. Analog art, then; but I use this term metaphorically – after all, a Presuntos Implicados song was, ironically enough, […] The post Analog Art: a Presuntos Implicados Appreciation Post appeared first on Home For Fiction - Blog.

Yesterday I visited the Night Maps exhibition at the Warburg Institute, which explores the history of celestial maps and globes, and how mapping the heavens has shaped our understanding of the world. Which might account for why I was so blown away by TripGeo Space - a brand new collection of space and sci-fi development projects.Currently, TripGeo Space consists of two interstellar space tours:Solar TripCosmic Trip I'm not sure how accurately either tour represents the cosmos, or even whether…

To be read in conjunction with the astrophiz podcast #245https://astrophiz.com/2026/10/29/astrophiz-245-november-sky-guide-a-daylight-occultation-of-jupiter-mars-and-jupiter-close-together-uranus-at-opposition-and-the-leonid-storms-to-come/ North-Eastern horizon on the morning of Tuesday, November 3 as seen from Adelaide at 4:52 ACDST (90 minutes before sunrise, click to embiggen). Saturn is just above the western horizon. Mars forms a line with Jupiter and the bright star Regulus. The pair…

I’ve been meaning to re-read this classic children’s fantasy novel for a long time and was motivated to move it further up the TBR pile after reading a wonderful review by Chris of Calmgrove Books earlier this year. I first read it at the age of about nine or ten – or rather, it was read by a lovely teacher who used to read aloud to us at the end of the day. I enjoyed it so much I got my own copy to read for myself a few years later. Elidor was published in 1965 and has a strong 1960s feel…

all the slave wants is to be the master. cause he doesn’t know any other way today you are not a slave anymore. at least physically. but maybe mentally slave mentality entails basing your value on society caring too much what others think not believing what is in front of you thinking you have to do something wanting to keep others down be free you lovely human being. get rid of the shackles you’ve put on yourself h/t rex eloquens and wes cecil (youtube)

On October 14th, Formlabs launched Form Studio 1. It’s a professional resin 3D printer that starts at $699. You can learn to print on it in ten minutes, and most jobs finish in under two hours. Max Lobovsky said why this matters so much in the launch announcement: “We started Formlabs to build the Form 1 and make professional resin printing accessible to more people. Form Studio 1 takes that ambition to the next level. Affordability matters, but so does getting great parts without hours of…

The wizards and witches of Worcestershire already featured in these little nuggets of local gibberish, surely only serve one master. Old Nick, the Devil himself (herself?). Worcestershire it appears has quite the assortment of locations named after Lucifer. The Devils Den is near Stanford-on-Teme. I walked there this time of year a few years ago when, unconnected to the Devil and more connected to a woman called Karen (no seriously), a number of things in mine and my friends life were going to…

Hello, all! In this Thursday Pressing Concerns, we have two new albums coming out tomorrow (October 30th) from Charlie Kaplan and Aluminum, an LP from 2nd Grade that comes out physically tomorrow (and digitally in December), and a new EP from Lydia Loveless that also comes out tomorrow. Check them out below, and if you missed Monday’s blog post (featuring Pet Fox, Female Gaze, Porcelain, and Paper Jam), check that out too. If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory…

I’ve been at the new, full-time, in-office job for a month now. Most of my career I’ve worked in small, young companies — founded no more than ten years or so ago, with anywhere from a couple dozen to a couple hundred employees. This one got its start in 1978 and has a couple thousand employees. There’s a lot of history here, and a lot of leaders in the mix. I need to be patient while I learn why things work as they do, and who really has power here, before I start trying to change things. I’ve…

I still love Essen SPIEL. So I went back.

The onboarding for Marco Arment’s new app, Fineliner is beautiful and will make you smile. Long live beautiful app design!

What a week! Voting seems to be the trend these days. There was Alberta’s referendum, then British Columbians gave the boot, Brazil didn’t, Serbia did, Ontario’s municipals were a bootfest and the tie of some sort in Israel in the books with the world waiting for the results of the US mid-terms before next Thursday. Change or at least progress seems to be a theme so far. Progress is a handy phrase given its meaninglessness. Sorta like IPA. On the bigger picture, the other theme might be the…

Last week I wrote about a security incident with Railway. Some secrets may have been leaked. It is unfortant, but not acceptable. As such, I have migrated the server component of the workflow to Digital Ocean. The tradeoff is that I’m responsible for all of the server, setup mainteme, security and everything else.

This is test 1 of Migrating off Railway.

Recently, I was getting Codex to debug a problem with the official OpenClaw client repeatedly freezing on my PC. After a day of not getting anywhere, I asked, “Why don’t you make me a new app, same concept, though my needs are much simpler.” Before AI, I never imagined that I would be writing Windows apps. AI opens up many possibilities and opportunities. In this case, it is helping me write Windows programs. From the above prompt, I had a working prototype app running in less than 10 minutes.…

A new album of music and songs is about to arrive at a point of your choosing here on earth. It all comes from the brain and industry of Mr NL apparently. Click on the pic to make any easy pre-order purchase sort of thing. It should despatched to you via the post. Nice art work too. All reasonably priced.

I love creating models of locomotives and rolling stock. Whilst most aspects of railway modelling appeal, it is the story telling through lead actors that is my favourite pastime…This has, over the years, led to an eclectic mix of scales, gauges and prototypes. The latest is Canadian N scale and here, I’m reminded of my early H0 exploits 30 years ago - taking ‘standard’ American models and making them more distinctly Canadian with a smattering of details and fresh paint.Dawson Creek, ex NAR,…

4:30pm on a Thursday and Siri is drunk. 🔗

★★★★ Nothing like a short book to get you out of a reading slump. This is only the third book I've read this year! A friend lent me her copy last month and I just now got around to reading it. A quick read like the others, took three sittings. Book 4 closes the arc that started in All Systems Red and sees Murderbot dealing with the consequences of his actions from all the way back to the beginning and coming to terms with his existence as a rogue SecUnit. Still a fun quick read and this time…