If you use WordPress and like keyboard shortcuts, my plugin Shorty was just updated. It’s been hardened to work better in more situations. It’s free.

I first encountered de Bodard’s Xuya Universe through a short story I read in one of my SFF magazines. A science fiction world based on Vietnamese culture was fascinating. But what sucked me in was the way that de Bodard writes her characters. The emotional interplay between characters is key to the stories. Like some other SF universes, the Xuya universe (and this book in particular) have the concept of mind-ships; ships controlled by an entity that is a fusion of biological and mechanical…

Every once in a while, we all wonder whether we should even bother with what people think and say about us. People have a great deal to say, and it’s usually something we’re uncomfortable hearing. Most people only end up disappointing us. So it’s natural to question whether seeking the world’s opinion is worth the trouble at all. One approach is to stop seeking anyone’s opinion altogether, a blanket ban on every kind of opinion. There’s a catch, though: not all opinions are negative. Some…

Warning: boring homeowner awning post. The valance on my awning had come off the runner and was hanging out the end of the awning casing so I need to get the endcaps off. The instructions that came with it don’t mention the valance or end caps at all, and everything I saw online suggested there should be screws holding them in but there wasn’t. I extended the awning slightly and shoved my phone camera in there to see what was going on and it turns out on full cassette awnings, the endcaps are…

Recently I started exploring and building things for Ubunbu Touch, and I intend to test a couple other mobile systems in the upcoming months. Gonçalo Valério dethos@s.ovalerio.net Just got my first mobile device migrated from Android to Ubuntu Touch. I was expecting this Sunday project to take a few hours, but it didn't take even one. Let's see what it has to offer and how it holds up in the coming weeks. #ubuntu #ubuntutouch #mobile #mobileos #alternatives August 30, 2026, 19:40 1 boosts 2…

Es ist doch immer wieder erstaunlich, dass es auch in trubeligen Millionenstädten die ein und andere kulinarische Oase gibt. Vor allem, wenn neben tollem Essen auch noch das Ambiente stimmt. Eine solche Genussoase ist ohne… Der Beitrag Genussoase in der Domstadt: Haus Müller erschien zuerst auf Sternestulle.

A mural of a woman by James Haunt, Los Angeles, Calif., 2026. For more photographs, follow my Instagram.About I My Book | Consulting I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Email

This is one of those long posts… because I didn’t quite know what to do here, so this took me months and months. Join me on a journey… of… something totally trivial: Adding a front to that red box up there, which has the keyboard to my stereo system on top, and some vinyl thingies and CDs inside. (Or skip to the end to see the stunning result.) In there I’ve got like — a 7″ “holey” adaptor, a clamp for unruly records and a brush. And then some CD box sets — when I buy new albums, I always rip…

I’m not going to bother carving a pumpkin this year once again but in absence I wanted to re-share the pumpkin that my wife did a couple of years ago. I submitted this one to my work’s pumpkin competition and obviously won. Hails! Reply by email

It's true -- I've started to journal. I doubt it will go down in history as an insightful document of daily life, but I'm enjoying the process, mostly! Back in August 2025, I lamented about wanting to Journal but I just could not put my finger on the how, why, when, what! I even showcased some of my notebooks. I love keeping notes and scribbling ideas down. I later learned that this is, what those in the know, call Common Place note-booking! Fast forward to more recently, and I was chatting to…

There is a good reason I have chosen October 25 as the date for this post. It marks the series finale of Lost Girl on this day in 2015. One might expect me to go with the premiere anniversary for something like this, but the finale feels more appropriate for what I want to talk about here. For one thing, by the time Lost Girl was over, we had a clear view of what Bo had put behind her and what she had achieved. Lost Girl (2010-2015)Bo, Anna Silk’s character in Lost Girl, discovers she is a…

How do we design stations that don't suck?All too often, the stations on US public transit, well, suck.Either they're far too overbuilt, leading to high costs, project overruns, and visibly unused station areas, or they're completely minimal to the point of nonexistence, or they're just plain inefficient and ineffective.So how do we make stations that don't suck?Well, of course, some good advice might come from the rest of the world--and from our own past practice.1. Label ClearlyWhether you…

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades. If you’ve never played The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess then you probably won’t understand much of anything going on in this five-minute animatic, and even though I have played through it I still found it difficult to follow, but it’s well-made and entertaining. By the way, how about the song? I misidentified it as from The Beatles until I looked it up….

On 25 October 1961, Britain’s top satirical magazine was launched from Willie Rushton’s mothers home in Scarsdale Villas. The publication of corny text, printed on yellow paper would develop into Private Eye, which today has a circulation of over ¼ million for its bi-weekly editions. Still published in London it has been edited since 1986 by Ian Hislop and today is better known for its investigative journalism into under-reported scandals. On 25 October 1400 Geoffrey Chaucer author of…

I’ve updated the correspondent section of The Visitor’s News site after some clarifying questions from some friends.

Because another fact many wish to ignore is that gatekeepers’ influence is at an all-time low. Book reviews and awards have shrinking influence on sales every year. Self-publishing, in various forms, is enormous. Some gatekeepers (like Big 5 publishers) are still powerful, yes, but they are increasingly reacting to public taste rather than the shapers of it. Of Course It’s The Screens Related 🗨️ being popular is what causes you to become unpopular 🌰 social networks are designed to make…

Nicholas Magand on the unshakable attraction of the kitchen as the social hub of a party: To summarise, the living room was the familiar place to sit and chat with people you already knew: it was a great way to spend time with friends. The kitchen was the crowded space to talk and meet new, weird, interesting people: it was the social network lubricant. Both rooms managed to coexist, and in many ways were codependent. Our house has been in my wife’s family for its entire existence, and was, for…

Flying for the first time since July, to Chicago. To vote. In the Serbian parliamentary elections. Lily Lynch has a good writeup of why these are really really really really important. There are no absentee ballots in Serbia: if you are away from home you either have to haul your behind back, or register to vote abroad. The number of Serbs in Denver being too small to open a polling place there — not that there would be one even if there were more of us, as the soon-to-be former Serbian…

Gosh, we’re getting into the final stretch of the year. And I have now secured a trip home for late December: I’m really looking forward to some catch-ups! People have been very complimentary about the photos taken last weekend, thank-you. Grammar has been, well, tough this week. Allegedly my grammar is now at a beginner N3 level, but I don’t agree with this assessment、それに、俺の日本語力もまだちょっと低いともう。 This week marked the inaugural two meetings of the burger club. Both interesting in their own ways.…

When I was growing up (around like 12 or 14 maybe?) I listened to a lot of Nu Metal. I played in a band in a friend's garage that covered Slipknot and KoRn and System of a Down, and I generally positioned my own teenage difficulties inside that ultra-specific USA-masculinist-performative malaise (a lot of hip hop from this period was confulent with Nu Metal). When I got older (around 18/19), I went to art school and started meeting people from way outside my lower middle class networks; kids my…

these John H. Howe pieces and many more, are at Wright20 My first reaction to the 25 pieces of instantly recognizable Frank Lloyd Wright furniture being sold in Chicago without a single mention of FLW was trademark outrage. The “Private Midwest Commission” they came from was probably a FLW house, I imagined, that’d been stripped of its original furnishings, and in 1980 a dutiful owner was trying to make things right. And all of that might still be true. Also. John. H. Howe was Wright’s chief…

12:36 - We each had 6.5 pancakes. Is that too many pancakes? (Don't answer that.)

Last time I posted here it was almost two months ago and I said "My post break-up spiral seems to finally be leveling out" and it was true, for like two days, and then I spiraled right back down. Am I better now? somewhat. I've been trying really hard to pull myself up. So I thought I'd look back at the last posts and see what I did, what I didn't and so on. Mostly cause I need to put some order in my bain and I don't know where to start. THIS POST IS GONNA BE LONG AND CHAOTIC Here's the plan:…

Another Noita session with music improvisation. I used RealityRipple’s Home-Made Emote Wall for this one and it worked : )

I found this and wanted to share it on because I thought it was a good point to make and its the way most 90s and 2000s website were Source

The night before last, on Gardeners' World, the estimable Monty Don was talking about the beautiful and fragrant shrub Myrtle, which reminded me that I really must get a bush for the garden – and also reminded me of one of those Browning poems with an instantly memorable first line, 'The Patriot'. The first line I remembered was 'It was roses, roses, all the way', but wasn't there something about myrtle too? There was indeed, as I discovered when I reread the poem (after many years, I think). I…

Funny, definitely unexpected in some scenes… But the finale is too much! Rating: 😳Hey, thanks for reading my blog via the RSS feed! Feel welcome to get in touch!