Not a bad day but a cold wind still. Gave the moped a good clean. Cleaned drive chain with parrafin and re oiled it. The gang came about 4.30. Went to pub. Got £2 for bus seat.
Hopefully, by this evening, we’ll all have seen the worst of the heat wave. It has been so unbearably hot here in the valley, last night the worst. I’m tired - exhausted from the day then not sleeping, roll on next week; I’m sure many of you feel the same…Whilst that is an almost breathless introduction, there has been some uplifting news this week as my copy of the re-release of Iain Rice’s ‘Creating Cameo Layouts’ has arrived. As I’ve spoken about previously, I had a hand in making this a…
Sad news indeed. I traded emails with Om many years ago, it was no doubt on the topic of the nascent blogging boom that was happening at the time, and whilst I don’t recall the specifics, I do remember the kind consideration. Always a sensible voice, there was a balance to his writing, a gentle worldliness, that I always enjoyed. My thoughts are with his friends and family. Thanks for reading and keeping RSS alive. Visit my site for more.
The saying ‘this is the coolest summer for the rest of your life’ seems to have stood the test of time. This year certainly ... Continue The post Herbal Drinks For Heatwaves appeared first on Robin Harford from Eatweeds.
Trying to break a Guinness World Record? Really? Yup, you read that right. We recently had the opportunity to break a world record… wait for it… “Most People Performing CPR in 12 Hours” using hands-only CPR (chest compression-only, no rescue breaths). Whew… that’s a mouthful. According to KSNV, “The event, organized by the Las Vegas Raiders, Intermountain Health, and West Henderson Hospital, involved hundreds of participants cycling through CPR mannequins, each completing 30 seconds of chest…
“The unthinkable” by Nikita Tretyakov on his Telegram channelSergey Lavrov:“I don’t even want to suspect that Alaska, like the European actions, was conceived to buy time for the Kyiv regime to re-arm itself. I don’t even want to think about it, but in reality, it turned out the way it did.”**How can one disagree with Mr. Lavrov? There are many things that are difficult, and I’d absolutely hate to think about, for example:I don’t even want to suspect that instead of a carefully calculated and…
A huge digest update to the Commodore 64 archive this month with some major recoveries for you that you may have missed. 1) Arcade Wizzard (U.S. Gold) found at last! 2) Full Void game recovered and added to the archives 3) Aussie Games (Australian release) prototype added 4) Two early obscure titles (including one earlier prototype) preserved 5) 3 more new entries added: Bad Max, Danger – High Surf, Zorro 6) 14 updates added: City Warriors, Dungeons and Magic, Hagar The Horrible, International…
A recent comment (Hi Andrew!) asked how I got started with PostScript. Note that this is not a recommendation on how you should get started with PostScript, but it worked for me.
Color Book (2024) • View trailer4.5 stars (out of five); rated R, for occasional profanityAvailable via: NetflixBy Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.28.26Writer/director David Fortune’s sensitively assembled little film completely erases the divide between viewer and screen; from the very first frame, it feels more like eavesdropping on two actual people. Although this day begins with the excitement of attending an Atlanta Braves baseballgame, the journey for Mason (Jeremiah…
I recently stumbled upon a treasure trove of free online science fiction short stories while browsing Greg Egan's website. I have read very little of his stuff, but I plan on reviewing several of his stories - especially after coming across his Works Online page. That page lists all of his stories that are available online, and while several of them are complete some of them are excerpts only. The list, which includes the popular winner of the 1999 Hugo Award for Best Novella "Oceanic", also…
This post first ran in the early days of the pandemic. There are some parts of the silence that I miss. But today, I am working in the back room of an elementary school as the “adult on site” during a camp run by high school students. There is singing and shrieking and laughter and the sound of small feet running down a concrete hallway. I brought my noise-cancelling headphones, but I’ve hardly used them: I don’t want to miss this. * People who have come to visit say that it is quiet here. Now…
I aim to improve my Chinese reading through regular practice. This video represents a point on that journey. Text: Friend’s Tea - Chapter 8 (我要回家了) Source: Du Chinese Level: Elementary
Interviewed by The Tech Lounge Podcast. Mike McQuaid discusses OSS Resistance: doing small amounts of open source work on company time, the risks involved and why it may help sustainability. Show transcript welcome to the tech lounge with me christian chiller in this episode i have mike mcquade back now previously he was on to talk about his work with homebrew and workbrew but now he's actually back with something a little different called oss resistance open source software resistance a sort…
On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. “I reject the idea that we have to be slaves to surveillance capitalism in order to participate in the modern economy.” —Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew, after rejecting a 350-acre data centre outside of Winnipeg, via @Dulce Maria “When I first encountered a word processor, decades ago now, it was as if my writing and my mind were suddenly liberated from the…
This was one of my most anticipated new releases of the year, having loved first Katherine Arden’s Winternight trilogy and then her standalone novel, The Warm Hands of Ghosts. The Unicorn Hunters promised the same blend of history, fantasy and folklore and sounded just as fascinating. The novel is set in 15th century Brittany, at that time an independent duchy. Following the death of Duke Francis II, his daughter, Anne, has succeeded him as Duchess of Brittany. She believes she will be able to…
[The other Neville Morley, Supreme President In Chief of Ex University on Earth 2, has a further bulletin.] Earlier this year we introduced a new training course in Corporate Conscience, compulsory for anyone we thought had the potential to cause us trouble. I am aware that some of the more idealistic and naive among you expressed disquiet then at the way that the implications of “loss of reputation” were characterised solely in terms of reduced student recruitment increasing job insecurity,…
I Am Frankelda (2025) • View trailer3.5 stars (out of five); rated PG, for dramatic intensity, scary images and fantasy violenceAvailable via: NetflixBy Derrick BangThe imagination, craft and world-building in this fantasy — Mexico’s very first stop-motion animated feature — are off the chart. I wish similar attention had been paid to the story. After allowing her conscious self to be transported to Topus Terrentus (the Realm ofTerrors), Frankelda hopes that her lurid imagination will be enough…
They like their hops, up in the northern latitudes of Europe. By way of demonstration, today I've got three beers from three different Nordic brewers, all in the double IPA style.The first is by a new brewery to me, Friends Co. of Helsingborg in Sweden. It's called All Citra DDH IPA, expanding on that by telling us there's 20g per litre of the titular American hop. There's also an instruction to "roll and flip the can to mix well before use" (I didn't), so this is a beer unashamed of its…
My troubles with record identifiers starts with a web site I developed, Eksi Sozluk. It's been one of the most popular Turkish web sites in the world for the last quarter century. When I first wrote it in 1999, I had to run it on a remote hosting service with no way to install external tools. All I had access to was their FTP server. So, I improvised and decided to keep every record in a single text file. Yeah, bad idea, but it worked at the beginning.There were no record identifiers, only…
Anybody who has been following this series will be aware that in England in the Early Modern Period, mathematical and scientific instruments played a central role in the world of practical mathematics. As we have seen from small beginnings in the middle of the sixteenth century the business of instrument making expanded to become a significant factor in the mathematical community by the middle of the seventeenth century. Of course, scientific and mathematical instruments had been in existence…
For some reason, the Address Book tab/pane on Thunderbird’s menu bar had gone missing, and I struggled to find out how to get it back. So, for future me, what resolved it was: Ctrl + Shift + b
June 26, 2026 Her experiment of packing just teal and white was so much fun, she decided to try the same idea with a different accent color. Her painting inspiration is this: She had always had the persimmon/berry color in mind; this is her color palette so far: She’s taking the same six pieces of white clothing, but she’s changed up some of her silver accessories for gold things. These small changes can feel like they make a huge difference! necklace – BaubleBar; earrings – Joiana Jewelry;…
So I was happy to discover the other day that I, in fact, did not give up all my copies of Dark Horse Presents to the store when I opened back in 2014, but kept them in what remains of the Vast Mikester Comic Archives. In particular, I was happy because I had a sudden urge to reread the short Concrete stories that appeared therein, inspired by the release of the new series. Amongst my DHP collection was issue #24 from 1988, notable for containing an early Aliens story: Now, I had rid myself of…
It's Friday, and that means that I have a pair of above-average scans for you, to start off your weekend on a high note. This first one is undated, but I believe it is from the early 1970s (or late 1960s?); it's a very nice view of the entrance area to Tomorrowland, with the curved track for the Peoplemover overhead, along with two trains. Did they do "rope drop" back then? Tomorrowland appears to be roped-off, and other than a few cast members, it's devoid of people, I'm not sure how else this…
In my #DallowayDay post on Mark Hussey’s biography of the book, I mentioned that I’d been intrigued to learn that Virginia Woolf had written an introduction to the US Modern Library edition of “Mrs Dalloway”; and I was even more pleased to learn that I had this in “The Mrs Dalloway Reader”, a volume I’d picked up many years ago (2015!!) but somehow never read. Truth be told, I was a little wary of it; I’d read vaguely troubling reviews about some of the content and so I checked out what was…
Complex systems evolve from simpler systems. The ones that thrive do so because they’ve adapted to real-world conditions — and not because they were designed to address all possibilities. In systems thinking, this principle was best articulated by John Gall: A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple…
Sometimes I stumble upon a game and fall in love with the idea of it so hard I have to drop everything to play it. Escalator Action is the latest game to stir such a strong reaction in me, the pun title—a play on Taito’s arcade classic Elevator Action—both genuinely funny and also implying there’s a fun and fundamental stair-based twist on a famous game waiting within. Which is all very cute, but does this old doujin game have anything more to offer than a clever name? Er, yes, actually. Quite…
As I write this, it's been about a month since my unemployment ran out. The upshot to this, I suppose, is that I don't have to spent each and every day scanning job boards, cranking out variants of my resume 1, and applying for jobs, because when you're on unemployment you have to track the positions you applied for, when, and what the end result was. 2 Unfortunately, this means that a certain amount of spray and pray is required. The job market being what it is today it amounted to sweet fuck…
A tree-lined sidewalk on a four lane street. 歩道 4車線の道路沿いに木々が立ち並ぶ歩道だ。
I've started reading Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. The book is, to quote The Guardian, 'an endlessly controversial high-wire act' about how a twelve-year-old girl is lusted after by Humbert Humbert, an adult man. People agree that the book is controversial, to which I agree, but not on the point of why the book is controversial. Some believe it's a pedophile's excuse. Some think the book is sarcasm, an illusory story based on sarcasm and irony. Some see the book as an erotic novel from a…
