hmm.......Made it to the shop late and I was determined to make something. Even if it was something I didn't need. On the flip side I just had the desire to work with my hands and have something to show for the effort. So a box it is but with a twist. The long sides will be thicker than the ends. I can't remember if I have made a box with different thicknesses of the sides. Not only different thicknesses, the dovetails will be on the teeny side.made a detourWhile I was figuring out the…

Over the weekend, I finished Kyle Conway’s latest book on the Bakken: At Home in the Petromodern Paradox: Landscape and Community in the Bakken Boom (2026). It’s a good read and since I have a special interest in the Bakken, I thought I’d reflect on it (don’t call it a review) in two posts rather than one. You can read the first post from last week here. The second part of the book is where Conway gets some momentum. If the “petromodern paradox” is that the boom creates the cure for the…

This week’s theme. Classic tracks from some of the classic quartets that were mostly together for a time, with a few great random quartet one-offs thrown in for good measure. Featured artists include John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Rouse, Shadow Wilson, Wilbur Ware, Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Joe Morello, Eugene Wright, Norman Bates, Jim Hall, Connie Kaye, Percy Heath, John Lewis, Milt Jackson, Art Pepper, Red Garland, Philly Joe Jones, Paul…

Today’s Revolut outage shows how little its status page actually tells us: only generic wording, no useful details. You have to scour Reddit and other sites for explanations, read about a possible connection to the Google Cloud outage in London (europe-west2), and decide which rumours to believe. We’ve already accepted “bug fixes and performance improvements” as release notes. Now status pages have caught the same disease, which I call boilerplatitis. Saying something without telling us…

★★☆☆: Builds lot of tension without much resolution. Like, it has a sort of unsatisfying ending and then the credits roll, but there's never any explanation or closure. It just sort of stops. FYI: My reviews are scored out of 4. Also, thanks for subscribing to my RSS feed and supporting the indie web!

And lo, I beheld a pale horse, and he who sat upon him was Nathan 90% of the blinks in this movie are Nathan’s [redacted]’s presence takes this from good to incredible can someone really not understand Who’s On First? Nathan’s got big Nosferatu energy Blade Runner 2023 please, for the love of God, stop vibrating when [redacted] is forced to say [redacted] incorrectly it fully took me out, I shrieked I’m so glad I saw this in a theater, I’ve never seen a movie with equal parts laugher and…

“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.” - Ram DassHello friends! It’s warming up this week and my mittens will probably be back in the closet for a bit. How are things where you are?Here are my photo choices for today:Sunrise, October 18, 2026I can hardly believe it, but my hummingbird is STILL here! (13 days past my previous latest date, and counting)Well, hello, big friend! I can only get close to egrets in the dark. I haven’t seen any since the last cold front, so they may have…

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The active four-year period of the Mau Mau Rebellion in British Colonial Kenya wrapped up 70 years ago this week on 21 October 1956 with the capture of wounded Kenya Land and Freedom Army Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi. The 36-year-old revolutionary, whose formal military training amounted to a month “taking the King’s shilling” in 1940 before being discharged for drunkenness, was subsequently tried and hanged. Speaking of taking the schilling… Official period caption: “At the Naivasha Rifle…

As you know by following this page, the original game-changing battleship whose form would dominate all its type moving forward, HMS Dreadnought (00), entered service some 120 years ago, launched at HM Dockyard Portsmouth on 10 February 1906 and commissioned on 2 December. The 18,000-ton juggernaut (21,000 tons deep load) was swathed in as much as 12 inches of Krupp cemented armor produced under license at William Beardmore’s mill in Dalmuir, Scotland. The warship was held together by nearly 2…

Some 110 years ago this week at the New York Navy Yard, Brooklyn, the 15,000-ton, 455-foot USS Maumee (Fuel Ship No. 14) was commissioned. She was not very appealing in profile. USS Maumee (Fuel Ship # 14, later AO-2) photographed circa 1917 in her original configuration with the bridge near the bow. The unusually small smokestack is for her early-model Diesel engines. In both this ship and her near sister Kanawha, the bridge soon had to be moved aft of the foremast. Collection of Hubert C.…

Just last week I hit something of a career milestone: I had a paper accepted for publication that marks #100 for my career.* It’s been a long time coming – I seem to be an eternal optimist, so just as when approaching summit on a mountain trail, I’ve been convinced for years that my 100th […]

He was trusted by Emperor Heraclius to support the emperor's son, Constans II, and he did, even going so far as to eliminate the young emperor's rivals. A few years later, however, Valentinus decided that the power he had used to be "king-maker" could be used to be "king" himself.Valentinus started as an administrative officer in the army. Heraclius had sent him over two million gold solidi to pay to the army to ensure their loyalty. The attempted takeover after Heraclius' death by his…

This one should be right up your street, especially if that is a Victorian terrace in London… Go right back to the beginnings of British film history with this short course devised by the V&A Museum and the BFI and led by Mike Berlin and Bryony Dixon. It is called Living Pictures: Victorians on Film. … Continue reading Book now for Living Pictures: Victorians on Film →

I am getting close to the point where I have to do proper styling, proportion adjustments and other finishing touches for my Endirillia model before actually rigging it and getting it loaded into a 3D engine and hooking it up to my personal assistant. What I learned at this point is that a good reference sheet for a character helps a lot, but due to my rather limited artistic skills I decided to commission the work. My wife is an artist. One of our closest friends is making a living as an…

I turned The system around the code into a video. It's the same argument: AI made writing code cheap, but delivery moves at the speed of its slowest step, and for most teams that step is review.

I turned The system around the code into a video. It's the same argument: AI made writing code cheap, but delivery moves at the speed of its slowest step, and for most teams that step is review.

A classic xkcd comic. ([source](https://xkcd.com/386/)) A while ago, someone was wrong on the Internet, and it got me triggered1. 😄 A LinkedIn post asked whether small PRs are only justified for hotfixes, or if they have broader value, and what the maximum number of changed files should be before a PR gets pushed back for splitting.

A classic xkcd comic. ([source](https://xkcd.com/386/)) A while ago, someone was wrong on the Internet, and I couldn’t let it go1. 😄 A LinkedIn post asked whether small PRs are only justified for hotfixes, or if they have broader value, and what the maximum number of changed files should be before a PR gets pushed back for splitting.

Raspberry Pi Desktop now available for PC and Mac Raspberry Pi Desktop is all updated for Debian Trixie and available now for your PCs and Macs. It even includes a Raspberry Pi Connect client. [ 📌jimcmcdonald ] The Lightbulb Computer: Reimagining Spatial & Ambient Computing with Projectors A new direction for computing: projecting information into the real world to augment it, with a device that combines a projector and computer vision in the shape of a large lightbulb. [ 📌sachaa ]

This is a charming and funny book all about the various ways humans have promoted fake medical cures in exchange for money. Despite the grim (and occasionally distressing) subject matter, the tone remains light and poppy throughout. There are lots of snarky asides (especially about the fake medical practitioners) and a real appreciation for the bizarre. It's fun the whole way through, although sometimes at the expense of people who perhaps didn't know better than to trust charlatans. One thing…

October 20, 2026 Meta is now charging to post links. Business and creator accounts get two free links a month. After that, they need a paid Meta One subscription, with tiers that run up to $499 a month per account. Creators and small business owners are upset, and I get it. They built their audiences organically, and now they're paying to send people to their own websites. This is a reminder of what happens when you don’t own your infrastructure. If you build on Meta’s platform, you’re renting,…

℅ Automattic Design: Figma Tips and Shortcuts I Wish I Knew Earlier The post Figma Tips and Shortcuts appeared first on Jeffrey Zeldman Presents.

A good friend put it simply: accountability goes up, credit goes down. When things go wrong, leaders take accountability. When things go well, credit flows down to the team. One of the clearest signs of bad leadership is when that relationship reverses.

Heather Stewart, and Kalyeena Makortoff writing for the Guardian.In its twice-yearly Global Financial Stability Report, the IMF highlighted the sky-high valuations for AI companies along with their increasing debt pile as one reason that risks in the system are “elevated”.“The consequences of an AI correction could be global,” it warned. Aside from the US, Asian markets would be most exposed, and the UK and euro area potentially more insulated – though investors with US holdings would be…

A few notes from Richard Siken at Bennington (and from a podcast interview). Thank you very much to Michael Dumanis for making this possible. "If you are going to write the same poem over and over, since you have things you can't shake, you need to come up with techniques and strategies to complicate that reality." "When revising a poem don't try to rub more beauty on it but ask where you are losing the reader and where are you grabbing them. You lose them when you give them a false…

Twenty years ago, the wines attracting the most attention and the highest scores were often big, powerful reds, loaded with ripe fruit, oak, and alcohol. But tastes have changed. Certainly many critics and sommeliers but also everyday wine drinkers now place greater value on freshness, elegance, and restraint. Of course, the appetite for powerful reds hasn’t disappeared. There are still plenty of enthusiasts for a 15.5% Cabernet or a lavishly ripe Grenache, and producers continue to make such…

Folk Art Carving of pinup model Bettie Page c. 1955 - 1960 the most famous fetish and pinup model of the 20th century, but this is the only wood carving of her I have ever seen. Bettie Page Folk Art Carving c. 1955 - 1960 Collection Jim Linderman / Dull Tool Dim Bulb

In Episode 24, I chat with Alex, the author of alexsirac.com about, among other things, collective intelligence in public commons, what the IndieWeb can learn from Wikipedia, community in comments, and more. ↬web-weaving.jamesg.blog/24 Huge thanks to James for hosting a conversation with me on his Web Weaving podcast! We were supposed to talk about multilingual blogging, but we got completely sidetracked. Listen (or read the excellent transcript, thanks so much Zachary!) to the episode to hear…

Flying in or out of London over Christmas? The airports keep going, but the trains that usually get you there don’t (as much). Christmas Day has no trains at all, and in 2026 the Heathrow Express and the Elizabeth line to Heathrow are closed for engineering work from Boxing Day until 30 December. There are ways round it. Here’s what runs to Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City, day by day from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day, and what to know if you’re coming by Eurostar. Last…