Warning I am not a medical professional. These notes are based on personal research and personal experience. They are not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. I suffer from nocturnal bruxism. That is, at night, I excessively clench my jaw and grind my teeth. Humans have an average bite force of 830-1100 kPA, and people with bruxism often build these muscles and will exert that force directly into their teeth, gums, bones, and jaw. In 2026, my bruxism has…

You have heard of Mr William Shakespeare right? A rather popular playwright who have quite a few plays across different genres? Apparently, he has a new play out now, and everyone will need to update their Complete Works of Shakespeare collection now. On a slightly more serious note: my favorite Shakespeare’s play is Macbeth. I am not familiar with this Edward III play, but I doubt I will change my favourite soon. To me, these works take a long time to absorb and appreciate. Four hundred years…

I only read 5 books this month. Don't get me wrong. Five books in a month is fine. But I have a minimum of 15 books I want to read before the end of the year, and if I only read 5 a month I won't even finish those. Woe is me.However, with the exception of one book I was very happy with my reading for the month. And the one book I did not enjoy was on my classics list and was a worthwhile read, so I cannot complain too much about that.Here are the five books I read in August:NonfictionCount Them…

The Indieweb is exciting. Especially for a newbie like myself. So many cool links, styling options, blogroolols, directories, webrings, and such. Yet I want to stay true to my core. Which is about creating my art, poetry and writing in general. It can be easy to run around online doing all manner of things. But writing and putting my art out there is important to me. This is sort of a self reminder to stay on course, to stay in my own lane. And not go about chasing every shiny…

I want to shift my relationship with movement. Even the word 'exercise' makes it all sound so drab and not fun. I'm the sort of person who enjoys things being fun. It's a way of romanticising all that I do. Focusing on movement, pleasurable sensations, the feeling of freedom after moving or stretching, and the feel-good factor. Takes the heavy energy out of exercise. I'm even tuned out when I watch workout videos where there's all the gym equipment in the background. Where the instructor is…

Shout out to the thieves who attempted to use my Amex number to buy $300 of golf gear from TaylorMade. Your first mistake was buying golf gear. Amex was like: “This guy has never bought anything golf related in his LIFE” and declined it with prejudice But also to buy it under my email address, in my best friend’s name? Now that’s just goofy

I didn't manage to buy anything from the Elsecar show. OK, that's not quite true; there are a couple of goodies for future Garden Rail articles, but nothing for me personally. We came close, but I have more than enough projects knocking around at the moment.This isn't to say my wallet escaped unscathed. You see, the venue is home to a couple of antique centres, craft stalls, and a beer shop. From the latter, I bought piña colada cider, and from the craft shops, some Christmas presents. In the…

Today’s Music Monday concerns one of my favourite lyrics of all time: “Kathy, I’m lost”, I said; Though I knew she was sleeping. I also thought a “New Jersey Turnpike” was a fish until recently. This draft post was originally written on the 14th of April 2021. I just got around to posting it. Wow, that was more than five years ago. By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-10-19.

Ready for another Universal Monsters themed Hot Wheels car? Today I'm checking out the last of the cars from this series that I'll probably be reviewing this year: The Bride of Frankenstein's '40 Ford. This is a very classy coupe and it looks perfect for the Bride to cruise around in. Likely on a moonlit night without any lightning, though, as the roof is down on this one. Ready to check out the classiest car in this series? Then join me after the break...The Facts:Length: 3 inchesNon-Scalper…

Well, as foretold, I ended up going back into my mechanical keyboard firmware and setting up a mirrorboard implementation that’ll work on any computer. (This sounds impressive, but a lot of the functionality I needed was already sitting there dormant; it was mostly a matter of figuring out how to wire it together and getting the feel right.) It’ll even theoretically work for the right hand, but it’s gonna be a while til I can test that. 💀 I also took the opportunity to improve some of my…

Every now and then you come across some incredible engineering that you just have to share. This is one of those videos. Strap in and enjoy.

I have a hard time resting. Rockies Front Range That’s not to say that I am very productive, I am not. I just can’t seem to get rest when I feel like I could be doing things (even fun things). I was able to convince myself to not chase light during golden hour and find an interesting foreground for the mountains. I’m lucky to have this mountain view for the next few days and with the weather always changing the chances for epic sunsets are always present. But balancing the need to rest (I’m…

Howdy, y’all. As you may have noticed by the pictures up here, The Book of Awesome was recently made available for pre-order. I’m massively pumped about it and wanted to share my stories and my excitement with you this week. Now, over the past year, many folks have mentioned how much reading about Awesome Things has meant to them. Of course, writing about them has meant an enormous amount to me, too. Part of the reason I wanted to write the book was because I know there are lots of folks who…

This is from The Intersection column that appears every other Monday in Mint. If you are a company raising capital it is in your interests to hustle investors into signing cheques to buy into the idea that whoever gets to artificial general intelligence (AGI) first will have an eternal global monopoly. If you are country whose economy depends on such companies, your might see it in your interests to declare that AI is indeed a race. Or if you derive prestige by demonstrating that you have…

Paladins of the West Kingdom is a title from Garphill Games. They make many good heavy strategy games, and they have a certain style to their games, both in art direction and in gameplay. In Paladins of the West Kingdom, you need to protect your medieval city from foreign attacks. You need to build walls, defeat attackers, maybe convert them. The stars of the show are the

Update Oct 2025 - These biohazard trigger mittens are inexpensive, waterproof, and light at 1 oz a pair. Over time, I found they work surprisingly well for rain. Read More ... Continue reading Rain Mitt #3 – Biohazard mitts UPDATE OCT 2026 at PMags.com.

A cartoon coded in CSS from comiCSS.

The past three Saturdays I have run a fantasy adventure game for five rambunctious kids, ages 9 to 11, one of whom is my son (aka, the Ringleader). Now I hear there is a player advice blogwagon, and I took over this ongoing 5e game with three basic ground rules for my young players:Be kind to all.Try not to talk over each other, or me. Share the spotlight.To which was quickly added a fourth rule (after Someone (hereafter, the Grandstander) decided to argue with me over the price of a room in…

If a GM runs systems where they call for specific skill checks (e.g., “give me a Computer Use check”), my experience — from both sides of the table — is that they’ll often develop biases in the skills they call for. Sometimes this will just be a natural consequence of skill design (Spot Hidden in Call of Cthulhu has a far more universal application than Geology), but often it’s just familiarity and comfort: They habitually reach for Field Medicine, even though Cybernetics or Pathology might be…

If you’re a regular, you know that I often write about niche topics ranging from electronic circuit theory to snowblower maintenance. For the past several weeks, I’ve been also trying to cover a bit of geek-adjacent philosophy: formal logic and its paradoxes, the question of sentient machines, a critique of scientific materialism, and the nature of truth.The challenge is how do I keep it interesting: similarly to mathematics, philosophy is one of the disciplines most people learn to tune out.…

Three times this week I went looking for something and found it already in hand. Wednesday it was a state. I've been projecting into Locale 1 for a year or two and calling it something else, and the aspect that finally sorted them was the exit. A felt pull-back, a transit, a click into the body, awake on arrival. Dreams simply end, always.

Arnold has been sick recently and has been admitted to the hospital for observation and tests. Because of that, he is currently offline and regrets that he is not able to read or respond to email or comments here for the time being.

Recently I wrote about this brilliant KVM that lets me use my BSD and Linux desktop alongside my MacBooks. I only had one quibble with the design, which this photo illustrates: The IR transceiver for the mouse connects neatly, but the keyboard cable is another story. It frustrated me that it has to chuck a uey and wrap back around behind the KVM, rather than connecting to the back where it could be hidden neatly away. This leaves a ring of cable that’s (a) ugly, and (2) catches on things. The…

Started playing open mic nights again. Really love the one at the jig and real in particular. Though I keep screwing up with the finesse of my ability to socialize and embarrassed myself pretty bad last time. First, a few weeks ago had a performance that went particularly well. And felt pressure to perform well this last time. I did ok but kind of phoned it in. I said an awkward joke which I think was aimed at myself… where at the end of the of the performance I said “you are about to watch…

Project ghosts, monsters, or old horror films right onto your windows with a hundred dollars and an hour. You will also need a molecule of confidence. If you have those things you can create a Halloween window projection like this. I first tried this last Halloween and it turned out to be one of those...Read More

We started attending Tucson Meet Yourself three years ago—before we even decided to move to Tucson. This year was the 51st annual celebration of Meet Yourself. Dozens of ethnicities and nationalities celebrate their parts in the history and present day of Tucson. We gravitate to our favorites but always find something new to learn about and experience. Long lines form for the fry bread made by the local natives, the O'odham Ladies. This is not the most heart-healthy food that a person could…

There is not one second of action or violence in The Russia House. It’s a very slow burn, mostly full of people talking, but I loved it.Set in the late 1980s, just as glasnost and perestroika were taking hold, Sean Connery plays Barley Blair, a drunken book publisher with a thing for Russia. A woman tries to pass him a manuscript containing nuclear secrets, but it ends up in the hands of British and American intelligence. They use Blair to figure out if the writer is legitimate and if he has…

Last night we heard some music coming from a nearby street corner. It sounded great, so we checked it out and was blown away by the size of the crowd. It was an unofficial rock show on the sidewalk at 16th and Valencia, with a couple hundred folks (mostly teens) in attendance. Here’s some footage featuring a band called [algoslave]: Watching the video again, one thing that stands out is that the crowd is hanging out. The only phone in site is mine The show was also put on without the city’s…

This last Saturday afternoon, the sun was weak in the battle against the chill of the shady side of the flea market, and J and I prefer more chic silhouettes for jackets than warm ones. In the great battle to do anything but work for the class that is hated by most everyone in our program, we window shopped under the guise of gift shopping. Both of us left empty-handed, save for a Shakespeare-themed light switch cover that I swear my friend will get a kick out of for her upcoming birthday. A…

Mamma Mia! – New York, New York We are hoping to continue a tradition we started in 2025 when we saw Mamma Mia! on Broadway. Every time we go to NYC, we want to see a Broadway show. I already went to New York this year, and we successfully continued the tradition. I won’t reveal the show just yet. Perhaps in a future blog post. We walked through the Times Square area to get to the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway between 50th and 51st Streets. The drama and electricity of Times Square were…