It's easier and safer than ever to sail the sevens seas for ill-gotten content of all kinds, as long as you know what you're doing. It's not always clear what's safe or reliable, so here's my tried and true years-long self-hosted setup for downloading and consuming multimedia, and where to get the loot.

How would I describe this blog? How would I categorize it? What is it about? I try to participate in various communities around the small web, in things like Blaugust , or Pixel Area , or webrings, or blogrolls. When I sign up for them there is usually a field to describe my blog and say what it is about. What is it about…? I usually end up describing it as a personal website. If there is a discrete list of categories that is ususally the best fitting one. After all, it isn’t dedicated to one…

There's an ad going around in Michigan, nominally in support of Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed, that's generating quite its share of controversy in a race where there's concern that El-Sayed may not be able to lock down support from the normally stalwart-blue Jewish community.The ad comes from Rebellion PAC, which is fronted by left-wing political commentator Cenk Uygur. It depicts a couple in a supermarket saying they cannot afford groceries because they have to set money aside “for…

“A temporary shelter from the static” is the title of a new live set from Thomas Ouf, who has joined the expansive ranks of YouTube modular synth streamers, recording himself playing ambient music out in nature on a portable unit. He situated himself at Le Clos de Sannes near Cucuron, France, and let the video and audio record for just under a quarter of an hour. It’s the first in a planned series of videos where, as Ouf explains: “I set up my modular synthesizer (and more gear) in places I…

What is he doing with his right hand? Last session, the party began its assault on Strahd's domain, hoping to find the last of the items necessary to wormhole out of this hellscape with Trimia's Catalogue. We explored the Larders of Ill Omen (basement) and the parts of the main floor accessible from the front door. We begin this session moving up from the basement into a section of the main floor that's cut off from the others. We open the door and immediately run into a zombie golem, easily…

My son loves 4X4 vehicle. He knows these vehicles so well that he can tell me the model and its history by looking at its side profile. He dreams of restoring an old Defender. I told him that since he already knows what he wants, he should start pursue that dream of owning one. There is nothing wrong to chase after a dream that seems to be far and impossible. What is important is to take one step and followed by another. Sometimes he may have to move away from that dream to get closer to it.…

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week is a Halloween Freebie, so I decided to choose some suitably scary books:Read more »

Swirling seas of milky white twist and twirl like strange and distant galaxies in the far corners of outer space. As you grab a rushed coffee break in the chatty workplace cafeteria or cutlery-clinking dining hall, just stare deeply into your chipped ceramic telescope and enjoy the two-second escape from reality to watch those floating clouds mix and melt deep into the swirling darkness. AWESOME! Ready for more awesome? Get brand-new daily awesome things straight to your inbox: Photo from: here…

So today's review might not fit this year's theme perfectly but I've really been wanting to review Tauraton and I usually have at least one Masters of the Universe toy on the countdown. If you don't keep up to the minute with Masters of the Universe, you might be wondering who this guy is. Fret not; he's actually a new character that's part of the Power of Grayskull subset being sold exclusively through Mattel Creations. Tauraton was created by Axel Gimenez and Roy Juarez for the packaging of…

I wrote something pretty good (that is accessible to you even if you are not a sports fan) over at the Rocker Step. This is part of it: I’m not a Thunder fan — Raptors ‘til I die, baybee — but as a team and as a group of young men, I have long found them impressive and compelling. They are a remorseless killing machine on the court, but off of it they do not conform to an old-school, recalcitrant, emotionally constipated brand of masculinity represented by the worst sports fans you know. They…

Sukkubus, also known as "Sukkubus - den Teufel im Leib" or "Succubus the Devil Inside (in the flesh)" is a German film that has been on my list for a bit. I finally found a copy. The plot, indeed the entire story, is basically the same as Sennentuntschi (2010).Sukkubus (1989) The film is in German, but you almost don't need to know any to follow the movie. Two shepherds and a boy are up in the Alps tending their flock. They are a bad combination of cruel, horny, and overly religious. One night…

first sitches from tonight’s Knit Nite at 1RG.

hii everybody to be honest i just dont really wanna blog today!! i think this is my fault since i should've just done this in the morning... you'd think i'd know how to blog by now, its not like i've been blogging (oversharing on the internet) since xanga was a thing... i just have a headache and i'm dizzy!! okay work rant time, on saturday i finished all my oct project deadlines and thought i could relax!! then that fucker who is always out on leave is out on leave again!!!! i yearn for time…

Bread numbers According to me, including ingredients and electricity, but not my labour, I'm making artisan bread for about $3.86/kg. InputQuantityUnit priceCost Stoneground wheat flour inc delivery500g6.20 kg3.10 Rye flour from Bin Inn for starter80 g4.00 kg0.32 Estimated electricity baking in oven1.3 kWh0.33 kWh0.44 3.86 (Salt is negligible, and I have a sourdough starter which I never bother feeding in between baking so no cost for yeast.) The Warehouse is selling some very, very cheap bread…

Searching for statuses on Mastodon is unreliable. It is nearly impossible to find something you have seen on your timeline some days ago. In the age of vibe-code, I decided to put my natural stupidity to use to solve this problem. Thus, Fedijar is born. Fedijar keeps a private copy of the statuses from your timeline, and statuses that you have liked or bookmarked outside your timeline. You can search through the saved copy, even if the original post is weeks old. Fedijar is a paid service. You…

Generally speaking, email isn't as hard as its reputation would suggest. Yes, big-tech providers will occasionally send my messages to spam... but paying for commercial email doesn't guarantee delivery: emails within a single provider are generally safe, but in my experience, big-tech to other big-tech has a ~75% chance. Because of this, having my own mail server is great for piece of mind: I can be sure that anyone can send me an email without it mysteriously vanishing. My reply might go to…

This article was originally a thread on social media, which is why it is formatted with lots of images and short responses.The text is about the image below that paragraph. Jheronimus Bosch (1450 – 1516), also known as Jeroen Bosch of Hiëronymus Bosch is one of my favourite artists, this review is about ‘The seven deadly sins’: At the top it says something like“These enemies are so short-sighted, they lack any understanding.If they were wise, they would have insight and understand how things…

New visitors curious about my AI-assisted world-building fiction can see the books for sale at the link on Payhip. Cheers, and thanks for stopping by!

The initial draft floating the idea of System-Induced Vulnerability in Human Users of AI described a problem with treating “vulnerable users” as a broad category: it can place too much explanatory weight (and blame) on the person and too little on the interaction and system design. The post also proposed that “all users may be potentially vulnerable, but not equally vulnerable to every harm.” That variation suggests a more specific unit of analysis: the vulnerable state, understood in relation…

St. Patrick’s Closeup – New York, New York As I mentioned yesterday, I also took a picture of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a tourist favorite. This one, however, is a bit different, as you can tell. I might show a more conventional view of the cathedral in a future post, but I like this picture because it’s not the standard view, focusing mostly on the entrance. The added benefit is seeing the glorious architectural detail even better in a closeup. I used a 36mm equivalent on the Leica D-Lux 8, but…

I never really got into writing to make money, doing that requires a level of investment in marketing, influencing, and annoying people far out-reaching the level of actual writing the book in the first place. So for me a strict copyright notice never really fitted what I wanted. So some good news for readers, and for any AI out there reading this too: both of my novels, The Summer of Reasoning trilogy and A Level of Consciousness, are now moving from plain old “all rights reserved” copyright…

Kurupt FM, innit. The rest is irrelevant. After Brentford’s largest pirate radio station has ended, the boys from Kurupt FM find their way to Japan on an epic adventure in search of fortune and fame. A good ending to the story of Kurupt FM and its members. All in all, a good laugh, and although it could have been better, it’s a great entertaining flick. Four popcorns. To see all 12 photos, visit the article page. This article was originally published at:…

I haven't been keeping it a secret--I'm trying to read a story from each issue of Weird Tales, the famed magazine that was the vehicle for some of the most famous work of such giants as H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard and the early work of breakout successes Robert Bloch and Ray Bradbury, as well as the showcase for the writing of many less famous but well-loved members of the speculative fiction community like Edmond Hamilton, Leigh Brackett, Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, and Manly Wade…

Well, so in addition to the larger game project I'm working on, a friend and I decided to try collaborating on some small (jam-sized) games. We needed to pick a "neutral zone" engine or framework, because I didn't wanna use C++ and he didn't really wanna use Rust; after considering FNA, Godot, and Löve2D, we eventually settled on Love. Love's a code-first framework that doesn't have an editor like Godot or GameMaker do. But its ecosystem of tricks and add-ons is fairly massive, and it also has…

I read this post recently: How I got over 300 Tor exit nodes removed and I thought it was interesting that there is a lot of public information you can gather from the Tor network. A lot of it is public due to the nature of the way Tor works. I wanted to see what other information I could gather and how I can use that information to watch for Tor traffic in my own infrastructure. Turns out there’s a lot you can figure out and a lot of cloud providers already take this knowledge into account.…

I want to reiterate that I am putting a lot of work into making the aggregator robust and reliable and I it would be great if those of you who are using it would chip in and support it. New comics Dark Side of the Horse Day by Dave Deep Dark Fears DeFlocked Don Brutus Doodle Town Eek! El Café de Poncho The Elderberries Endtown Eyebeam Farcus Fat Cats FoxTrot Classics FoxTrot en Español Frank and Ernest Fred Basset en Español Freshly Squeezed Frog Applause Funky Winkerbean FurBabies Improved…

(1974) Directed by Terence Fisher; Written by John Elder (aka: Anthony Hinds); Starring: Peter Cushing, Shane Briant, Madeline Smith, David Prowse and John Stratton Available on Blu-Ray and DVD Rating: **** “You’ve had so many monsters by then that at last you say where this monster has come from. He comes from Hell, from Evil, from Frankenstein’s mistaken belief that he is the creator of man, which of course he isn’t, and will never succeed in being.” – Terence Fisher (excerpted from 1975…

I made a little bit of money as a child - allowance, gifts, so on. And I was quite good at avoiding spending on temporary frivolities until I had saved up for something special. While I played video games, I didn't play them often enough to justify using my limited funds on them. I loved reading too, but my parents just bought books for me outright if they could swing it, there was the library, or I could just read things off my computer. No, usually, this saved money went into Dungeons and…

A thought I ponder on every now and again as it relates to our formation in Jesus. It's a rough sketch, an outline of an idea.In quantum entanglement, two atoms are linked to one another across time and space. When one was observed in one location, the other behaved in the exact same way in the exact same moment, regardless of time dilation. It was instantaneous.In his incredible book, Renovation of the Heart, Dallas Willard provides a helpful question to give shape to what following Jesus…

Some more print-on-demand booty from DriveThruRPG arrived for me today. All AD&D2e stuff: a couple of Planescape books, a book of mapped and described city locations, and Chris Pramas' Guide to Hell, which is sure to come in useful.This lot wiped out my PayPal credit that I've been in the habit of using to support my various hobbies, and now that wargiming3d.com isn't paying via PayPal any more, it's unlikely to revive any time soon. It's a pity, as it made things very convenient, but…