DARK TROOPER Force Mech Suit Epic World of Action Amazon Exclusive Item No.: No. G1421 Manufacturer: Hasbro Number: n/a Includes: 1 Mech, 1 big blaster, 1 small blaster, 1 figure Action Feature: n/a Retail: $21.99 Availability: October 2025 Appearances: The Mandalorian, probably Bio: Gear up for battle! Open the Star Wars mech suit at the feet and place the Dark Trooper action figure inside. (Taken from the Amazon's web site. Package has no bio.) Image: Adam's photo lab. Availability: Click…

As the news from last week has settled down, it would seem this headline was pretty spot on. The foretold apocalypse didn't eventuate, and there were no internet-destroying outages. In fact, it took days before I could find a single story of PHP2Shell being reliably attributed back to a breach. And I don't think we can say the relatively benign outcome was only achieved because we did take it so seriously either; there's a massive trove of sites out there that have been left to rot and would…

Link from Nature, 15 October 2026.She was especially known for designing the Apollo Guidance Computer to be as reliable as possible — even in the event of human error. A key inspiration came from her daughter, who sometimes accompanied her to the office after hours. One day, when young Lauren pushed a button that crashed a simulator, Hamilton realized the system needed a protocol in case an astronaut did the same thing. Sure enough, during Apollo 8, astronaut Jim Lovell made the very mistake…

The north-western sky as seen from Brisbane at 9:59 AEST on Tuesday 3 November. The moon is obvious above the horizon, but you will need binoculars or a telescope to see Jupiter. The left-hand inset shows the magnified view just as the occultation starts, and the right-hand view is the view as Jupiter comes out from behind the Moon. The north-western sky as seen from Adelaide at 9:50 ACDST on Tuesday 3 November. The moon is obvious above the horizon, but you will need binoculars or a telescope…

To The Joker, Dracula is just a Normal Vampire Developer: Planet Interactive Development Publisher(s): DreamCatcher Interactive (North America), Cryo Interactive (Europe) Release Date(s): October 9th, 2001 (North America), 2001 (Europe) Available On: Game Boy Color Genre(s): Action, Horror The Game Boy Color had quite a few horror-themed games and sometimes even took big swings with them, too. Resident Evil Gaiden, for example, ain’t exactly one of the best entries in its series, but it sure is…

Regular readers may recall the ex Ballard and Wantage RS1, the last survivor of the trio, is now part of the HMLX lease fleet and has been out on hire with Alan Sewell…"#1000 has returned from switching the Laxton branch industries on the Thameside Model Railroad Group layout at the NMRA British Region Convention in Cookham, Berkshire. HMLX's contribution to the weekend was well received and a few photos are attached".Alan Sewell photo.Alan Sewell photo.Alan Sewell photo.Having finished…

I am fucking pissed off right now. In a meeting and after giving valuable feedback to make it make sense. I was told that I forced my opinion on everyone else. Like wtf I stepped up to lead the conversation because no one was taking it. And if you fucking have issues with it just say it instead of being fucking passive aggressive. I really find people who avoid conflict while doing passive aggressive shit very cowardly. And I don't care about needing to shut down because this is the first time…

Note from Patchwork Paladin: From time to time someone will post something on one of the discords that catches my eye, and that person will not have a blog. So, I invite them in for a guest post. Nik, the author of this post, loves making crunchy monsters for 5e, and had a great idea about making boss monsters better. Hi, I’m Nik. One of my absolute favorite things about TTRPGs is creating fun monsters, items, adventures, etc and sharing them with my players. Today, I am going to share one…

Final Fantasy Resonance Alright, I got a good grip of visions and I even got the next level of Magicite to be able to get some of them to level TWO. I made it through the rebel base and cleaned up most of the stuff to the weapons factory. Bahamut, not messing around I don't like fights that you're supposed to lose/cannot win. I think they're a waste of time. Just make it a cutscene. Or prevent me from wasting resources at the very least. I wish there was a way to check what the buff icons meant…

Hi there ULGers, Can we talk about how much I love it when a brand releases 10ml Travel Size bottles? Sure, they cost more per ml BUT which perfumista on earth needs 100ml of a fragrance unless they are going to split 60+ml of it? There are a few fragrances in my collection that I’ve […]

What is a gundalow? It is a flat bottomed cargo barge once common on the Piscataqua River and in the nearby rivers of New Hampshire and Maine. They were popularized in the 1600s, and were still used until the early 1900s. There is no keel on a gundalow, which was useful for mudflats and low tide. The name is thought to have derived from "gondola". Similar flat bottomed boats called "gandelows" ply the waters of the River Shannon in Ireland. Many people with ancestors from New Hampshire and…

Read all the Rocky Horror Picture Show posts in chronological order. Rocky Horror is something special. It’s not because it’s a send-up of B-movies. The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, Hardware Wars, and Kung Fury are all send-ups of B-movies and they haven’t become cultural forces. Plus, while it might have begun life in O’Brien’s head as a send-up, parody is secondary to its centering of sexuality and queerness and flouting of every taboo it thought it could get away with. Those themes were…

Released by Cold Spring on September 4, 2026, this vital boxed set gathers remastered soundtracks from director Andrei Tarkovsky’s oeuvre across five CDs. Their passage from Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov’s orchestral writing to Eduard Artemyev’s electronic interiors opens a fissure that continues to emit productive fumes from deep within the core of the earth to this very day. The individually printed sleeves and accompanying artcards, reproducing Soviet and Japanese posters, return these intimate…

Walter Koenig was more than just Chekov on Star Trek…he was a screenwriter and a playwright, and acted on stage and in many other TV shows and movies. Did you know he wrote the Land of the Lost episode with the first appearance of Enik, the intelligent Sleestak? He certainly did! (In fact, “Enik” had originally been named by Koenig as “Eneg,” a backwards tribute to Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.) While Chekov is of course a beloved character, I think Koenig’s role as the antagonistic telepathic…

Here are two photos showing the iconic entrances to two "lands" that were mere steps from each other, but that took you into completely different worlds. The big wooden gates evoke a frontier fort (and there is the stockade to the right, where a skilled marksman could shoot a fly off of your hat). The "Frontierland" sign could have been made with one wide board, but I've always loved the split, as if they could only source skinny trees out on the plains. The young woman with the red shirt has…

Pavel Etingof, Slava Gerovitch, “Mathematics of the Future“ Timothy Gowers, “How worried should we be about extinction risk from AI?“ Elchanan Mossel, “LLMs, Reasoning and Plagiarism“. (See also this related petition.) nihilunbounded, “Who Watches the Watchmen“ Sung-Jin Oh, “What does it mean for a mathematician to understand? A case study in the age of AI“ Ben Recht, “The World Is Something We Make“ Manuel Luis Rivera, “Raw Mathematics“ Grant Sanderson, “There’s never been a better time to go…

The role is bigger, better paid, and in a city your partner does not want to live in. You have told three friends it is a career decision.It is not. It is a values decision.Growth against Family, both of them yours, which is why all the discussion in the world has led to nothing.Right against wrong gets resolved very quickly. Right against right can take a lot longer.The order is the decisionMost tough career decisions are two of your own values in conflict. They will not resolve because there…

Synchronicity (2015)

Back in July, I made the decision to finally archive File Browser, and I won’t go over it again. In this post I want to address one category of features of File Browser that was the root of many of the security advisories that have been disclosed in the past year: command execution. When you hear that, bells start ringing immediately, since it sounds way too much like “remote code execution”, a very well known category of security vulnerabilities. I’m not a security specialist, so take all my…

They finally did it, they finally pedestrianised Oxford Street. Not all of it, just the middle half from Selfridges to Great Portland Street, but wow, the Mayor finally pushed it through. The big change happened at 8pm on Sunday evening as the last buses barrelled through, barriers emerged and traffic ceased. Ian Visits was there for a final ride, Darryl was watching when the road was sealed off and London Centric took photos all through the night as transformation continued apace. You should…

Listen to this episode here. Further Reading Dark Ages, Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, Under Hollow Hills, 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars Socials John on Bluesky and itch Sam on Bluesky and itch The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com Our logo was designed by sporgory, our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey, and our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer. Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show! Credits Our logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is…

Slop is without a doubt everywhere. Be it in restaurant’s menus, music playlists, or online game storefronts, it is now impossible to escape it. Yet, I’ve never met anyone who was actually looking forward to consuming that. No matter how hard it’s shoved down our throats, the human longing to connect with other people through art still remains. Photo by Raymond Kotewicz They will not let you filter A simple solution would be to have slop filters. Automatically label AI-generated trash, and let…

I have posted about it here before, but I am a big fan of a small bike youtube channel which seems to be run by Canadian college students. Their videos are usually about going bikepacking in the Victoria area... their most recent video is about attempting to bikepack to a wrecked boat with an outboard motor, so that they can rip around on the boat using the motor: It's hard not to like a bike adventure video where everything goes wrong and all the gear is made out of actual garbage. If you like…

From thinking the craft I loved was dead to thinking this is the best time to be a software engineer.

Nostr from First Principles: Protocol, Relays, and Application Galaxies

Of all the doom and gloom that has permeated the game industry in recent times, the closure of Bioware hit particularly hard. This isn’t going to be a post about why Bioware had to shut down, as people who know a lot more than I do about the circumstances have written plenty about it. This is a love letter to a company whose games have left an indelible impact on my life. The first Bioware game I played was Baldur’s Gate II. I played it before I, funnily enough, and I can’t really tell you why…

The Evolution of the Human Hand — From Climbing to Creating! Millions of years of evolution shaped the hands of our ancestors. Early primates had curved fingers well suited for gripping branches, while later hominins developed hands capable of increasingly precise movements. Did you know? Early primates used their hands for climbing and grasping. Homo habilis is associated with early stone-tool traditions. Homo erectus had human-like hands and used stone tools. Homo sapiens can perform…

I was moving toward a point in the last post, but I somehow wrapped it up before getting there. The point is this: My semi-transition from Iphone to Jolla has at least temporarily broken a bunch of phone habits, and rather than attempting to build reconstruct them on the Jolla I will try to let them remain broken and enjoy it while it lasts. Things like the non-need to burn through podcasts. Like the less frequent checking of Mastodon - I managed to stop being a completionist somewhat recently,…

Excerpts from the "Annales Regni Francorum" about the Venetian-Frankish conflict in 806–811, translated by René Seindal.

Last weekend I watched four people desperately trying to get a laptop to connect to a screen. I was happily observing their efforts, with zero intent to join in. But someone nudged me: can't you have a look at it? My reply: "Haha sorry no! My experience is that adding more people will not solve this problem any quicker". I was of course -- indirectly -- reffering to Brooks's Law: "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." It was formulated by computer scientist Frederick P.…