Bullet to Beijing is another Harry Palmer installment of the series that started with The IPCRESS File back in the 1960s. It was the first Palmer film in 30 years.Unfortunately, it’s terrible.It was supposedly filmed for theaters then released direct-to-video because it was so bad. Michael Caine has reported that filming this was the worst experience of his career, and he threatened to retire in the middle of it.Harry is forcibly retired from the service about two minutes into the film, which…

On October 20th Arkham House Ephemera: The Classic Years dived to 13% off, and on October 25th the price just as suddenly returned to the usual retail of $40. You’d think they could have kept that 13% going through Halloween, right? But no.

The excavation of Camphill enclosure in Queen’s Park, Glasgow, in the late summer of 2026 was an exercise in trying to demonstrate that this extensive monument could, just possibly, be Iron Age. A sort of #UrbanPrehistory proof of concept. Yet these investigations, directed by myself and Eddie Stewart and Kieran Manchip (both Archaeology Scotland) ended up finding several objects that could well push back the occupation – or at least the use – of this dominant drumlin position back to into the…

Howlround returns to Copped Hall, Epping Forest for another Dark Tales… event on 31st October. Always the highlight of the year to return to the spookiest of ruined mansion, especially at Hallowe’en, for perhaps our most eerily fitting performance EVER. Plus killer line-up including the magnificent Sarah Angliss, Karina Townsend and much more. Come and help us make some spooky tape loops, audience participation is MANDATORY! Details and tickets here.

I hate star ratings in places like goodre/ads, especially now that they started allowing fraction stars, because you'll have to see the most ridiculous person you've ever met "reviewing" a book "entertaining, not very good" and giving it 3.75 stars just because they're embarrassed of having enjoyed it when they spend so much of their time affecting a high brow book taste that they simply do not have. Also while i'm at it this is not school. You don't need to start your little book opinion with…

Original airdate: October 25, 2026 The premise: In “Bride’s Shed Revisited,” a mysterious backyard shed turns Homer into different men of Springfield every time he goes into it, leaving Marge to choose her ideal new husband. “Dog Boy Afternoon” is a Pet Sematary parody where Homer buries Bart and Santa’s Little Helper in the same grave, and the two come back to life in each other’s bodies. In “Vehicular Dadslaughter,” a teenage Bart and Lisa’s search for their missing father leads them to the…

That time of year.Someone on quxnet had their Gemini capsule listed, so I opened Lagrange for the first time in a while. Gemini space is so calm and consistent! On a whim, I set up my own server. It's at gemini://gemini.baty.net. I'm not going to do any sort of HTML-proxying. Everything there is gemtext only. ✍️ Reply by email

I vibe-coded a pipeline that reads hundreds of job listings a week, out of which only one in a thousand is actually worth applying for.

The previous three post have been part of a series on geometric duality. The traditional but somewhat mysterious terminology is the pole of a line and the polar of a point. As explained here, the terminology was first coined in the context of spherical geometry where the term “pole” makes sense. It was then extended to the plane where the meaning is less obvious. The use of poles and polars is that they preserve certain geometric information, and so they can transform one problem into a dual…

At work, we use Prometheus to monitor our services. Every few seconds, Prometheus scrapes a /metrics endpoint and records the data in a time series database. The metrics are then used to trigger alerts when services aren’t behaving correctly. Recently we had a flapping alert where an overloaded service was intermittently failing. We wanted to silence/adjust the alert until we could fix the service, to avoid alert fatigue, but it would be easy to forget to revert the adjustment once the service…

This bathroom is no ordinarie bathroom. The faucet is made out of white ceramics, which in itself isn't too odd for a bathroom. What is strange is the shape, shaped as a white face, like something out of the milk bar in a clockwork orange. The water coming out through the eyes and down the cheeks, with the temperature of the water turning the face into a shimmering color, depending on the temperature.

Tigressby Jessica MookherjeeGenres: Poetry Pages: 70 Rating: Synopsis: Jessica Mookherjee, highly commended in the 2017 Forward Prizes, presents her second collection of poems, Tigress. Mixing myth, magic and migration, these poems explore the impact of choice upon our lives and concentrate their magnificent, kaleidoscopic imagination on the intricate and often fraught nature of childhood and family, selfhood and womanhood. Fierce, often funny, always charged and revealing, Mookerjee’s acute…

I have been bad again and not blogged for a month. It’s been a busy few weeks, but I’m going to save all that for another post. Instead I’ll kick off again with some photos taken with my new iPhone. I’ve been using an app called No Fusion for a few weeks which gives me better control over the processing and avoids the artificial and over-sharpened look that Apple’s stock app likes to do. So what better subject choice to start with than my kitties, Jasper & Percy: And some random places and…

Back in the spring, I did write a few poems during NaPoWriMo and recently returned to them. They will likely be a zine in the new year and most likely included in the next book length manuscript, TERROIR.

“It seemed to him that whoever understood this river and its secrets would understand much more, many secrets, old secrets.”–Siddhartha, Herman Hesse A magical thing about a swift, clear river is the ability to see plainly the dynamics between stones and current. Swift against still, glass against granite, these interactions can be calm, violent, or a beautifully elegant blend of both. A buried cause, invisible power and surface manifestation all take shape before the eyes: boulder, green flow,…

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Currently listening to Dreamstate 👩🏻 by Kelly Lee Owens while detangling some code and scratching away at photos. Separately: got a huge laugh out of this SNL UK sketch today, would definitely listen regularly if they release it as a single.

I do hang out on typical social media (ig, bsky, x/twitter), but I have been feeling annoyed by the platforms recently so I deleted the apps from my phone. I'll check in from the web browser/ipad only, which feels like intentional check in time) Some specific things I got very annoyed with: I have a newer friend that keeps sending me Fire Emblem Fortune’s Weave reels. I have never liked when people send me videos/memes and try not reply or react to the post at all. I’ve realized one of my…

When she isn’t pretending to be a dragon, my seven-year-old pretends to be a cat. “Mrrrowrrr,” she says when she pounces on me in bed in the morning. “Raawwwrrr,” she purrs when it’s time for her to line up for second grade. “Grrrrrr,” she rumbles at bedtime, her bones suddenly transforming to jelly. If certain “news” articles were to be believed, we’d have a litter box in the bathroom. So, as a surprise, I picked up Cats Knocking Things Off Ledges. Designed by Sen-Foong Lim and David Killing,…

sundry sounds aplenty, the city heaves a tangled mess, headphones cry gravity wells under thick concrete gray sky above, sweaty tunnels below the subway zips a torrent dances upon kiss my lips a stench, an odor, a flinch bracing, hardening, frozen a stampede of steps, a barrage of sound this vessel once empty, now brimming and buzzing compelled to exit, we kick, climb even pulsing and breathing each step strumming atop the stairwell, singing The post Ode to 14St/8Av appeared first on…

In progress…

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Dusty Game Society September game: Professor Layton and the Curious Village for Nintendo DS. Cozy for some. A puzzle-shaped stress test for me.The story keeps stopping for random puzzles. The one about the dog that got run over was where I checked out.TD's Professor Layton video.

I have been using GO Club for two things I already paid attention to: my steps and how much water I drink. Apple Health records steps, and I have used apps dedicated to either activity or hydration. GO Club stays on my iPhone Duo because it puts both habits in one place. Its widgets keep the numbers visible, and I can log water from my Apple Watch without opening my phone.That is a more convincing reason to keep an app than an attractive screenshot. GO Club has plenty of those, and Apple named…

This post expands on a talk I gave at the 5 Prime Sciences Symposium at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) in Montréal on October 20, 2026, titled “Managing an R&D portfolio through the critical value creation period (CVCP).” The slides and a companion guide with full references are available here and here. A PDF copy of this blog, which was created with the help of AI, can be found here. A paradox at the heart of drug R&D Biopharmaceutical R&D does not lack…

A calorie and macro tracker that logs a meal from one photo and adjusts your targets each week.

After a few years under Digital Ocean’s ownership CSS-Tricks has a new owner, Geoff Graham, and is an independent site once again.

Weekly cleaning and home improvement series, with some thoughts in between. Good afternoon, everyone. This is probably the latest I've ever started my cleaning day so far. We had breakfast around 11, and then I immediately went back to Witcher 3 to collect some Gwent cards. Now that my decks are more built out, I'm having more fun playing Gwent against NPCs and no longer rely on Daniel to help me. What I thought would be 5 minutes turned into an hour, and then I had my language exchange call.…

Our recent art trail trip into town was inspired by the announcement of a Banksy exhibition at The Minories gallery in Colchester. I believe this has been the most successful exhibition the gallery has ever held. The gallery is supported by also being a popular cafe. But with no sign of tea and cakes this time, they've had to charge an entrance fee for (I believe) the first time.We had to book in

You've probably spotted some strange signs here and which read ANCIENT LIGHTS such as this one in Newman Passage:I am befuddled as to why the two words are rendered in different letterform – ANCIENT (SANS) / LIGHTS (SERIF)But, what do signs like this signify? A friend suggested that perhaps this was an advertisement for old shop where oil lamps or candles could be purchased. I explained, no, signs like this signify that the owner of the building is aware of a 'right to light' law which prevent…