Om Malik, whose techy blog I’ve followed forever and whose articles have appeared here repeatedly, died Thursday. He was born one year before me, and I’m just 58. He died way too soon. Here is his site if you want to learn from him. Here is a lovely remembrance of the man by someone he counted as a friend. I am saddened by this loss. My writing elsewhere ▷ When you’re not paid as well as most software developers, you might not have a lot of sympathy for the grief they’re feeling over how their…
We stayed for 3 more days. It was already clear for everyone that they won't allow us to fly from this position, but the command still won't let us out. We needed to evacuate the equipment. We expected to have an NRK at the morning of the first day to load and move the equipment, but it failed to arrive. We had few close fpv hits this day and 1 round of artillery(3-4 shots). Patience of my comrade was out of the building. We were lying low. Although we had visitors looking for not occupied…
A nice sunny day but wind still cold. Cleaned big rose bed and top borders. The gang came for dinner. Went home 7.30pm. Had a nice play with little Jane.
A short list of things I want to do more often. Always carry a notebook. Learn more new things. Practice more. Prioritize sleep. Listen more than you speak. Write to think. Be useful. Be smart. Create space to think. Read more books. Look at the sky more. Exercise more.
Gifting can be fulfilling. The gifting person almost always gains something as much as the receiver of our present. Many of our actions are driven by motivation. Gifting is also one of them. Seeing the other person happy or showing them how much we care rewards us enough to put effort into the gift. If we remove ourselves from the equation, the gift loses its purpose. We want the receiver to know that we made the effort to show our appreciation. Anonymous gifts don't hold the same weight. We…
In preparation for running my equipment from a mixture of power stations and mains power, I’ve been investigating automatic transfer switches. My last post looked at two types of EARU switches which performed quite differently. This time, I decided to give the similar-looking, but slightly cheaper, TOMZN Night Light Series TOQ7-125/2P switch a try. Unboxing The unit arrives in a cardboard box with blue, white and teal colours. Interestingly, the product tagline implores the user to “open the…
At the mid-point of the year, asking how the #City26 challenge is coming along. On a pure stats, it is not bad - --% of total hex-count for the year achieved with 50% of the time gone. I have not gotten any of this to table but it has proved a nice distraction during travel of all things. Recall the 'rhythm' of the weekly tasks of this challenge with this guide from Pete of Garblag Games. So far I have been all over the place - I tend to do these as one ward in a sitting, with time in between…
"My Back Pages" by The Byrds Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. What song feels like a personal anthem right now? - My Back Pages, written by Bob Dylan, performed by The Byrds One of the greatest lines Dylan ever wrote “I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now.” As someone who has changed so much, decade by decade, personally, spiritually, politically, this songs feels like an autobiography. View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile
2024 science fiction novella, first of a trilogy. Ada Lamarr is a salvager, but there's a hole in the side of her ship and her suit air supply is running low. Hope that rescuer responds soon…
The following article appeared in The New York Times, June 8, 2026. Mr. Polakow-Suransky is President of the Bank Street College of Education in New York City Last year, I visited a seventh-grade math classroom in a public school in the Bronx. Twenty students sat bent over laptops, working with an A.I. tutor on story problems about converting fractions to decimals. A teacher moved around the room, checking a dashboard that tracked how many tries each student needed to reach the right answer. On…
Not many photos exist of Catcott after the line closed on 6 March 1966 with the rest of the former S&DJR apart from a couple of stubs. But here we are at the end of June 1967 as a demolition train waits patiently at the crossing for the gates to be opened. Sadly, there’s no longer a crossing keeper employed to perform that little luxury. Instead, Waving Wally has taken charge. Progress may be slow, though, for as many will know he’s been waving continuously since birth and doesn’t appear to…
Murder in Purple and Gold – Lindsey Davis Flavia Albia investigates the murder of a promising young charioteer and we learn about Roman chariot racing: the teams, the fame and the fans. Parallels with Formula 1 and Premier League Football, right down to the celebrity girlfriends. Author page: Murder in Purple and Gold – Lindsey Davis
One day last week I decided to return to the beaver swamp to see if I could get some better shots of the rose pogonia orchids that grow there. It was a very windy and changeable day with clouds and sun, and rain possible in the afternoon. The waterlilies didn’t mind. There were many hundreds of them blossoming. As soon as I got out of the car the first thing I saw was a small butterfly on a daisy. It wasn’t sipping from the daisy, it was just sitting on it and looking around, turning this way…
I almost burned out recently. I didn’t! But I almost did. It’s wild how after a little time pulling myself out of that mindset and clearing some things off of my plate, I suddenly want to blog again, make more videos again, and code again. Luckily (?), because I’ve burnt out before (which I’ve written about), I can identify the signs when it’s coming. I usually start caring about things less, being shorter with conversations, and really just think about sleeping and survival all the time. It’s…
Daily Drawing 909
Obviously all any of us can talk about is the heatwave. Oooof! I am very grateful for aircon in the office, and just about surviving the nights (even Hargreaves the cat has decided that sleeping under the duvet, on my legs, is no longer appropriate). But maybe a book, a blog post, and a link will help cool you down… 1.) The book – I just happened to google Michael Cunningham, to see if there was another book on the way. I didn’t have much hope but, excitingly, there is a memoir coming out in…
We are advertising a 3 year postdoctoral position at the University of Western Australia to work at the interface of finite geometry and Ramsey theory. The project is led by John Bamberg at UWA, Sam Mattheus at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and me. It includes funds for extended research visits to both TU Delft and VUB. More details, including the application link, can be found here: https://external.jobs.uwa.edu.au/en/job/523511/postdoctoral-research-associate-pure-mathematics Closing date:…
I recently scanned a batch of slides from Florida's Magic Kingdom, date-stamped "November, 1982" - over 40 years old! - and while they are a little bit on the dark side, it gives them a certain dramatic atmosphere that I find to be visually interesting. Let's begin with this photo in Fantasyland, with It's a Small World right in front of us. That taller building definitely echoes medieval architecture that you might see in Yurp. I'm assuming that a dark ride is near us to the left, any idea…
Little Women (1933)
Beasts, chevrons, and scrollsI apologise to any readers who have been frustrated at my previous post, which illustrates a notable Norman church but discusses the flowers in the churchyard. If that’s a little perverse for an architecture blog, I’d argue that a building’s context is often as important as the building itself. However, as St Mary’s, Kirkburn, is a Norman churches with some memorable carvings, I’m not going to let it pass without a few words, and a couple of pictures, of its…
I recently showed you Carcassonne's Castle and briefly introduced the city:Carcassonne CastleYou may have already heard of Carcassonne, located in the Southwest region of France. In short, it’s a walled medieval city that became important during the Albigensian Crusade and remained so for the rest of the Middle Ages, until the southern border of France moved south to the PyrénéesHowever, the castle is just a small part of the fortifications that protected the medieval town for centuries. The…
AbominationYear is only about halfway done and I'll say it: Adrian Chiarella's Leviticus is the best horror of the year. I mean-- something better might come in October (Eggers' Werwulf comes out December), but can't imagine what that might be, or how it can be.And yes I can see the pic's DNA-- Chiarella borrows freely from David Robert Mitchell's It Follows, from the cursed teens to the relentless pursuit to the industrial wasteland that serves as backdrop to the chase. Crucial difference: the…
Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time, we’ve got fruit lager, TV ads and AK. We don’t often put product launches in this top slot which we reserve for news but this piece about Brixton Brewery (Heineken) launching a fruit lager highlights a trend: “Flavoured lager is the fastest growing category in the on-trade, delivering 30% volume growth in 2025, and now accounting for more than 2% of all lager sales in the off-trade.” The thing is, we haven’t…
Source Still shot of a Bald Eagle capturing a Heron for its lunch in Glenwood, NS. Wow, I didn’t know they would do this. Hopefully, not fake.
@simonmaechling wrote: We don't have an information problem. We have a scientific literacy and trust problem. I agree. Kids learn science as a set of established facts, formulas, and historical discoveries. Best case is they come away from high school aware of some sequence of wrong theories eventually replaced by the correct one. Atoms were indivisible solid spheres, then we discovered they contained electrons, then protons and neutrons, and finally quantum mechanics revealed "what atoms…
An end of week recap “The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” – J.R.R. Tolkien Helen Keller Day (today) honours the woman who transformed isolation into insight and became a lifelong champion of human dignity. Additionally, it is Global Smurf Day – a cheerful splash of blue amidst some of the more solemn commemorations. Among the literary…
The thought that some sort of sword would make a fun eraser stamp had been bubbling in the background in my brain for awhile. I kept imagining completely different swords. This is the one that materialized when I sat down to draw one up. The tip in the ground and the flower came into the vision pretty early on. In fact, they influenced the final form of this sword.The blade on the original version was a lot more complicated. It was too odd, and I simplified it to this.I have had trouble with…
London has seven rainbow plaques, the vivacious alternative to blue that commemorates significant people and places in LGBTQIA+ history. The most recent was unveiled last week remembering broadcaster, comedian, drag queen, dog lover and national treasure Paul O'Grady. Should you want to track down all seven this Pride month🏳️🌈, here's where they all are. [8 photos] 🌈 Victoria Mansions - South Lambeth Road, Vauxhall Paul O'Grady's plaque appears on a mansion block in Vauxhall, informally known…
When doing maintenance for this static generated website I found myself in a situation where I wanted to find a YAML (YAML Ain’t Markup Language) key within the front matter of all published Markdown based posts that is undefined or has a value of null. In my experience I’ve found this easier to achieve using a software program that is designed to process structured data like YAML. Therefore, I decided to use the program called “yq”. Since there will be multiple files the output needs to…
