L, formerly known here as Earthgirl (that's new Shakey), asked me to again go to No Kings with her tomorrow and of course I said yes. Unlike the previous two, the nearest one won't be on the Strathmore Music Hall campus - they refused to allow it - No Kings is from 11am to 1pm - since the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is performing a treacly motherfucking Tchaikovsky (today in redundancy) symphony at 8pm, the fuck? Tchaikovsky? Kill me. Will be at the White Flint metro station - locals know the…

Aura Triolo has assembled her IGF recommendations list here. These aren't necessarily the games Aura voted to win IGF awards - they are instead the games from this year's crop of submissions that she thinks are particularly worth playing. I have already bought a game off of one of her recommendations here! I bought Echo Weaver and played a bunch of it last night. It's really good!! Anyway, Aura's blog is a great follow if you're interested in periodic indie game recommendation lists from both…

Lair of the Lamb is 0-level survival horror adventure released by Arnold K in April of 2020 under Creative Commons SA NC 3.0. The original versions (4/13/2020 and 4/24/2020 [Final] are available on his blog, Goblin Punch. Both versions are great. I have been running Lair of the Lamb as a one-shot for several years. What I run has a little bit from both versions and my own house rules and twist. In true spirit to the original work, I’ve released two versions. The first could be considered a…

The calmest of evenings yesterday on Forked Creek off the Magothy River, followed by a bouncy crossing of the Bay this morning with wind on the stern and waves rolling up in the beam Now is Rock Hall for laundry, etc and to wait out some weather.All of the above follow a couple great days in Baltimore as the tall ships gathered for The Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race. Should be sailing on Sunday with plans to enjoy the Chester River for a week or so.

## Item! ## My number finally came up on the bowel cancer screening lottery and the vial with instructions appeared in the post this week. Pretty simple stuff, except I’ve can’t remember the last time I had to catch my poop before it hit the toilet water. A rather strange experience I’m not keen to repeat any time soon. ## Item! ## Speaking of butts, we’ve had sufficient rain over the last couple of weeks that the water butts I installed last month are over half full. I took the big ruler out…

I killed a man for card games Shot him from behind His brains and hand were blown away I was caught and tried Trial, then I waited for Verdict on my crimes And in that moment whores were angels, looking down from High Innocent, theyd say So innocent, Im free and took a horse to run away before they'd come for to me With a rope around my neck I wondered How I was ever dealt this hand I guess dying's the life you lead when youre a gambling man

There’s something about October 15, indeed, it being the “approximate” date of my grandmother’s birthday… in 1905. I have pretty much blogged this same story before so more or less a repost, but the way she tells it in her own voice is something special. The featured photo are scans of old images, on the left 1955 (at 50) in the family home on Ridgewood Avenue in Baltimore that I barely remember as we moved when I was 2. The photo on the right was one I took the last time I saw her in a care…

This is the second half of the third part (I, II IIIa) of our long-delayed series looking at the theory of history advanced by Paradox Interactive’s Hearts of Iron IV, one of the most popular strategy games today. This part (both halves together) is fundamentally about politics and policy and the implications that HoI4‘s choices – and its chosen omissions – have on the vision it presents of the history of the 1930s and 1940s. Last time, we looked at HoI4‘s political simulation and concludes…

John Wyver writes: I was today ridiculously late in visiting the Towner Eastbourne’s revelatory Comrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism exhibition — it has been open since May and now you have only until Sunday to catch it. Which, needless to say, you should, in part because it features a host of fascinating and little-known artworks, as well as a wealth of associated contextual photos, diaries, catalogues, posters and the like, but also because it lays out an alternative history of…

One of Mason's thoughts on engagement is how Bonnie, the main child of Toy Story 5, used her imagination to create a story through hands-on play with her physical toys. With how being offline is currently an online trend, you could surely look down on every other child no-lifing the same game, chat, and social media feed on their fictional iPad equivalents. However, I believe those children could tap into the same creative skills that Bonnie practiced, but through their own tools of choice.…

Andros Fenollosa on why we want small systems instead of decentralized ones when talking about online communities. There are no commercial interests and people know each other. It’s like a shoe shop in a small town. The shop can only serve a few customers because there is little space, you know the owner’s name (maybe even his wife’s) and the shelves don’t offer much variety; and yet you know you will be well served and the owner wants you to leave with what is best for you.

New to the ongoing blog series called STQK "Would you like to know more?" Disclaimer: Episodes 11-15 will be using an oracle system I am developing for solo players; you can see it in action here. Once I am happy with the way the oracle plays it will be available for the community. Hello there, We continue with the next episode in the Dragon Quest SPI System. (Content Warning: Violence, Traumatic Events) Scene 11 Greetings were introduced again as the two adventurers were hushed away with the…

Squire Trevenyan (Peter Cushing), a magistrate in 18th century Cornwall becomes entangled with a dangerous gang of shipwreckers led by the brutal Black John (Bernard Lee). In attempting to stop the wreckers one evening, his son Christopher (John Fraser) kills one of the men. He feels that his testimony to their actions is enough to put the whole gang in chains, yet his father is reluctant to do so and instead ushers his son away to London. Black John has a hold over the squire that he is…

THE STORY: Wayne Schofield is planning a house party for his friends at his estate in Wilmington, Delaware. But business takes precedence and he heads to Philadephia leaving his friends to set up and instruct the servants on what to do. Little does Wayne know that two of the servants hired are imposters, thieves looking to rob the guests when time is appropriate. Also, among his closest friends two marriages are on the rocks and philandering lovers are in attendance providing ample opportunity…

I finally got to see Sting live. Most artists of his vintage would tour with a bigger band and have other players cover much of their instrumental parts. Not Sting! Three-piece band, all the amazing bass playing was Sting’s, and I’m not sure how he has kept his voice so good. Much like Peter Gabriel on the latter point. Highly recommended if you have a chance to see the Sting 3.0 tour. How to read a painting. Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page and click Start reading. Did you know…

21:10 - Just realized choir rehearsal is on Sunday not tomorrow. I spent all evening prepping my lunch. I hope it'll last until then. 😭

I wrote something down recently, and later I couldn't find it. If you know me, you know why; I put my notes into too many different apps. Once in a while I declare loudly that "I'm using only this app, from now on! I mean it!" and then change my mind a month later. It's just the way I am. This most recent failure was the last straw and finally forced me to deal with it properly. Instead of fixing myself, I built a software crutch. I spent today vibe-coding an indexer and search engine for all…

Another cracking autumn day at Fromebridge with the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust. Last scheduled day in the small end meadow that isn’t cattle grazed. We’ve been doing this for a few weeks now, and it was almost done. The grass was pretty long so needed a couple of cuts to get it short enough for the winter. As well as the brushcutter, we had a power scythe which was pretty effective at cutting low to the ground. I helped with the raking, of which there was a mountain of arisings. These were…

I guess this post can be seen as an epilogue of sorts to my posts about the John Byrne reboot of the Superman titles in the mid-1980s. Essentially, I came across this 1988 issue of Superman from near the tail end of Byrne’s run: …where you might see this oddly-formatted blurb in the corner: Now around this time, DC Comics was making a big promotional push to let folks know the series was about to be released on a biweekly basis. To wit: Amazing Heroes #133 (the “Preview Special”) from earlier…

Winter Hey Lane Winter Hey Lane II

A spectacular bakery near us seems to have retired their previous “funky” scone in favor of a Raisin Bran scone. I miss the old one (strawberry Earl Grey!) but am a big fan of the new one. I’d like to make them at home, with the primary goal of devising a fiber vehicle that we all actually like and keeps well for a few days. My secondary goal is eventually repurposing this to reduce the food waste generated from AB’s endless barely-touched bowls of Grape Nuts. It’s like a comfort blanket but in…

Because I cannot warn thee every week about the risks of using generative AI (well, I could, but I won’t), let’s return to the other type of futile warning I insist on giving, namely the one against trying to flee from authorities by jumping into bodies of water. As I have said many times, trying this will almost certainly fail. It will dramatically reduce your mobility, making you even easier to catch, as well as posing a non-zero risk of death by water or things in it that would be pleased to…

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) was born in Nth Shropshire, learning at Shrewsbury Technical School. He went to Birkenhead Institute Liverpool & Shrewsbury Technical College, then worked as a pupil-teacher in a poor rural parish. So he had to start teaching in Bordeaux to earn money, just as war broke out in mid-1914.He enlisted in the British Army in 1915 and by Jan 1916 he saw active service in the trenches on the Western Front. Owen wrote poetry during this time, and his work was heavily influenced…

We now know how the seeds of the NIST elliptic curves were generated: they’re not the hash of some saucy sentence, but the output of drand48 seeded with the time, which was indeed in 1997–98. John Wood, Henry de Valence, Ava Howell, Zack Voase, Lucy Sweet, Amir Omidi, Paul Crowley, Iain McGinniss, Nicholas Carlini, and Steve Weis from Anthropic solved the riddle and on October 15th, 2026, at 01:07:51 UTC, claimed the full bounty I announced three years ago. They chose to donate the prize to…

I upgraded my Apple Watch this week from the Series 7 (2021) to the new Series 12. My old watch battery just didn’t last any more, especially on days with long workouts. The screen seems surprisingly bigger for +1mm, and it messed up the fit of the wristband. Also, black « blue. Sad face.

I first heard of Australian children’s publisher Starfish Bay Publishing (SBP) in 2024, thanks to a question from an author about the advisability of investing in SBP’s Author Supported Traditional Publishing Programme. Implemented, SBP’s website explained, because of “the severe effect the pandemic had on our publishing business”, this program–despite using the word traditional–required authors to come up with a “temporary loan” of AU$6,000. Here’s how SBP’s website described the Author…

A Garden Of Spheres by Linnea Sterte is one of the best things I have read all year, and I've had a pretty good year of reading things. It is my favorite ever graphic novel. It is a near wordless science-fantasy journey across realms and generations, and has a story but you really shouldn't read for one. It is self-evidently one of the most beautiful things I've laid eyes on.

The morning started out with thick clouds that hung around here until shortly after lunchtime. Around then the clouds began thinning and breaking up. It quickly became mostly clear by early this afternoon It warmed up in the lower 80s with bright sunshine most of the afternoon. It was nice to relax on the patio and get some sun. Late this afternoon we decided to walk over to Harvey’s BBQ for supper. Storms were popping on radar else we would have thought about eating outside over there. We got…

Aaron Worth (editor)British Library From the peaks of Eryri to hidden valleys and haunted mines, the storied landscapes of Wales have inspired centuries of myth and folklore. Over time, these tales of the unexplained and the Otherworld have formed a unique strain of weird fiction. Continuing the British Library's 'Gilded Nightmares' series of lavish hardbacks is this rather fabulous collection of stories exploring the darker side of Wales. One only needs to glance at the Welsh flag to…

It’s New Music Friday, and my queue on Record Club keeps growing…