Today's episode of "Things I See In My Backyard That I'd Never Want To Eat" was written on location here in Swampsville, Florida. (Aka Orlando.) Nope. Noooooope. Because if you can't polish it... ...slap some wings on it?Still nope, by the way. And finally: Thanks to Igor V., Elizabeth C., Nathan D., & Anony M., who informs me she's got dibs on the tail.[Hurk.]*****P.S. Need to hide your eyes *and* listen to music or a good podcast? Then check THESE babies out: Bluetooth Sleep HeadphonesI…
On the morning of August 7, 1890, a 48 year old woman named Anna Månsdotter was led into the courtyard of Kristianstad district jail in southern Sweden and beheaded with an axe. It wasn't the crime itself that made her famous, plenty of people had killed before her. It was everything that came out during the trial. Swedish papers dubbed her Yngsjömörderskan, the Yngsjö Murderess, and the name stuck. Anna Månsdotter remains the last woman ever executed in Sweden, and the case is still one of...
A quick one to let you know about some upcoming gigs where I'm doing visuals, again with Picodevil.On Monday the 17th (so, like a week and a half away), I'll be doing visuals at AlgoLush. The vibes are: nice and chill, some nice grooves. Headlining is Nū, who is over from Australia! You can get tickets here, minimum cost of £6.And on September 16th (which is a Wednesday), I'll be playing at the 17th birthday of TidalCycles, and also really the birthday of that whole family of uzu languages (of…
Photo by Олег Мороз on Unsplash Introduction Michael Harley wrote a piece called How I make my blog posts more resilient a couple of days ago. There are a lot of good ideas and principles that he covers for maintaining a blog, or just about any website. Reading his article made me think back to a situation from nearly ten years ago where I went through a fairly major incident with one of my sites. While I documented the issues broadly at the time, I only partly talked about one of the issues…
Off the back of Adam of OMG.LOL fame 1 tooting this the other day and me responding I wanted to just talk a little about how grateful I am to have to experience diverse cultures and different people throughout my life. Especially whilst growing up. I grew up in Oldham. A town in Greater Manchester in the North West of England. You probably haven’t heard of it. If you have it’s probably for its 15 minutes on the world stage during its race related riots in 2001. Oldham is quite culturally…
Tomorrow (Aug. 8) is Open Wire day – a chance for you to ask any and all woodworking questions and get answers from Chris and me, as well as from your fellow woodworkers. The Open Wire post will be live here on the blog at 8 a.m. tomorrow for you to post questions in the comment section, and we will start answering…as soon as we wake up and log on. I’m sure Chris will also be busy working on a chair tomorrow, and I’ll be working on junk removal from my backyard (my ex-kitchen is stacked up…
A Friday Hodgepodge1. From a news story about the "alien chemistry" found within a meteorite, here's what to do if a meteor strikes your home and you want to help scientific progress:He then immediately preserved and documented the entire scene using disposable gloves and aluminum foil to place the meteorite fragments in glass jars.The surviving rock weighed two pounds and was a rare, and especially interesting type.Well done! 2. At In the Pipeline, Derek Lowe notes that researchers looking to…
July 2026 First long drive This month’s musings are late publishing as we’ve been away. After yet another operation I’ve driven to Dorset, the furthest I’ve been behind the wheel for months. London Appreciation Society I’ve been contacted by the London Appreciation Society to give a talk next year. Astonishingly I had never heard of them, but they’ve been around since 1932 and the organisation is so popular there is a 5 year waiting list to join. Talks are given on a wide-range of subjects…
Last week, many media reported that in January 2025 a US citizen named Sam Tunick, arriving at the international airport in Atlanta, was stopped for questioning and told to hand over his phone. It appears that he gave the border agent a “duress password” – an unlocking code that wiped the phone when the agent typed it in. This feature is included in his phone’s operating system, GrapheneOS. Now he’s being charged with a felony. At the Guardian, Timothy Pratt reports that without his knowledge,…
I got a bigger and better monitor recently, and I’ve been exploring calibrating it on both my Mac and my Linux desktop for the last week or so. It started out as a necessity: at full resolution (3840 x 2160), the text was just too small for me to read. Since I hated the fact that things looked “off” at a lower resolution, and the options for my new external display on the Mac were painfully minimal, I quickly found out about BetterDisplay. A couple of days later I was already reading about the…
Set up a stack of virtualization tools on a Debian host for creating and managing virtual machines (VMs). Start Here Directories Permissions Services Create VM Resize VM guest window Video Acceleration Virsh and virt-clone Resources Start Here KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is built into the Linux kernel and handles the CPU and memory details. QEMU (Quick EMUlator) emulates the various hardware components of a physical machine. Finally, libvirt provides the tools for creating and managing…
This is a lesson that you are never too big to disappear. I remember the arrival of Google Search (when that was all they did) and how it collapsed Yahoo search from the scene. Googling even became a verb. As big and massive as Google Search was, who can say they still go to the Google search site to search, after ever having asked what they are looking for in most AI services today? Even just a year or two ago, most people would have laughed at you if you told them no-one would be actually…
Something is amiss . . .Or maybe something is off or off-center and me, I am somewhere in the middle.Do you understand?I am stuck and looking around at the world that somehow consumes me.There is too much to see and so much to consider and at the same time; I am reminded when I was told, “keep it simple, stupid!”Overthinking can be amazing.or at least, I think so. I am told the first shall be last and the last shall be first.I know and I get that. But wait –I wonder about this and I wonder out…
I was wondering why hare did not seem to be working anymore. I tracked it down to a missing line in /etc/pam.d/sshd. The file is there in this snapshot: [12:24 r730-01 dvl /jails/serpico/.zfs/snapshot] % diff -ruN autosnap_2026-08-04_00:00:18_daily/etc/pam.d/sshd /jails/serpico/etc/pam.d/sshd --- autosnap_2026-08-04_00:00:18_daily/etc/pam.d/sshd 2023-12-03 16:38:51.359135000 +0000 +++ /jails/serpico/etc/pam.d/sshd 2026-06-12 09:42:15.000000000 +0000 @@ -21,4 +21,3 @@ # password #password…
We were on a challenging hike recently, and a few of us got to talking about what a lovely analogy hiking is for life. Source: One step at a time Along the way, you cross paths with all sorts of people, each on their own version of the journey. And the encouraging thing is that almost no one’s in competition. They’re on their path, you’re on yours, and there’s a quiet warmth in the nods you exchange. Source: One step at a time
It’s that time again in FFXIV – Relic Weapon grinds! The newest patch 7.55 brings the final step of the Relic weapon to the game while encouraging a full-on run of everything in Dawntrail all over again.
The CMS engine that drives this site — Grav — has now been updated to version 2.0.18. Kudos to the Grav team for a very smooth process, very well explained. Of course I have a couple of niggles. It warns that there could be a problem with Twig content in a page, and handily flags up pages that might be problematic. But the warning does not take account for stuff that is enclosed in backticks, thus: {{ stuff }}. Also, inexplicably, the old comments plugin brings everything crashing down, so I…
Last month, another of the UK’s globe trotting species hunters came up to Scotland to try to add a few more species to his already impressive tally. Having overtaken my own tally during a recent trip to the US, and closing in on six hundred species at the time, I met up with my mate Donny at St Abbs harbour where he hoped to catch a few “Scottish” species that are much more common up here. I arrived first, and while Donny and his mate Lucas had to wait for a tyre fitter to come and replace a…
There is a whole lot of misinformation out there regarding Donkey Kong 3. There are claims that its commercial failure in North America caused the Donkey Kong series to be shelved for over a decade, even though ports of the arcade games were released for the Famicom and NES following Donkey Kong 3’s release in arcades — including DK3 itself — as well as a trio of original Donkey Kong Game & Watch handhelds. Donkey Kong’s absence from arcades had more to do with Nintendo’s own shift in focus to…
I see that Amazon Prime is coming out with a TV miniseries based on what is happening in the Blade Runner universe in the year 2099. I have watched the trailers and they seem….fine. You can see details on the upcoming series, here. More here and here. Personally I would have liked something more like … Continue reading Blade Runner: 2099 or Blade Runner: 2048?
★★★☆: Tells an ambitious story that I mostly enjoyed. Its non-linear narrative works well to keep everything mysterious while still being engaging. Its high concept world works well as a setting and the architecture of the garden was comforting while everything around it was not. The voice acting was superb, especially when performances were used to differentiate versions of individual characters. There wasn't much gameplay but had some cool ludonarrative cohesion that made it feel unique.The…
★★★★: Does a good job smoothing out the detail while focusing on the big picture. I love the media / "the revolution will be televised" angle and the intergalactic worldbuilding. Growing the ensemble is good and some of the more complex plot threads are coming to fruition. Carl is also less terrible at this point, which is probably for the best. He can't save everyone, but he does really seem like he cares.The audiobook narration continues to be excellent. Jeff Hays is an all-timer. FYI: My…
Just because you feel attacked doesn’t mean someone is attacking you, sometimes that feeling is worth listening to. It may be telling you that something doesn’t fit with how you currently see the world. But a feeling is not a fact. This matters because much political discussion now begins and ends with personal reactions rather than examining the underlying structures. Take the hashtag #stupidindividualism. Many people read it as, “You’re stupid because you’re an individual.” That isn’t what it…
I’ve been off work on a true ‘staycation’ the last couple of weeks. Stayed in Bristol, mainly stayed at home. Relaxed. Even my blood sugar and blood pressure settled down. Tomorrow is 20 weeks since I first went into hospital. Which seems like forever ago but also like yesterday. I had a recent appointment with my lovely Diabetes Nurse and they were happy with my progress but also at pains to remind me that I need to stay vigilant – especially as they are no closer to working out what triggered…
“Please, let me stuff myself full with beauty, drink light for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner - never again take a Tuesday for granted.” - Julia FehrenbacherHello friends! We had a big storm Sunday night that I was not expecting, so my brain isn’t firing on all cylinders as I’m writing this. Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t fix, though!Here are my photo choices for today:August 5, 2026It’s been a really good year for the mallards. So much water! I can see the white duck’s lineage is still…
Every gun nerd knows about the Franchi SPAS-11, LAW-12, and SPAS-12 SPS autoloading shotguns of the 1980s; I mean, they were something of a pop culture fad if nothing else. The SPAS-11 was an upgrade of the Franchi 500 meant for mil/LE sales Meanwhile, the Franchi SPAS-12 SPS is iconic. What you may not have known was the Franchi SPAS-15, which went box mag instead of tubular and was made (and imported) in much fewer numbers. If you are curious, Atlantic has some as C&R SBRs, but be warned,…
Here we see, some 70 years ago this month, two “all-gun” heavy cruisers, vessels which were once common just a decade before but a comparative rarity in August 1956, captured while showing their respective flags aboard. USS Toledo (CA 133) at Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on 4 August 1956, Walter E Frost photo, City of Vancouver Archives, AM1506-S3-3-: CVA 447-8602 Sverdlov-class light cruiser Ordzhonikidze during August 1956 at Copenhagen, Denmark. Note the flag of Admiral A.G. Golovko…
Lyres - The Grotto, New Haven, Connecticut, August 18, 1984RIP to Lyres frontman Jeff “Monoman” Conolly, who passed away last week. As his nickname tells us, this guy was indeed monomaniacal in his quest for garage rock perfection over the decades. Is “garage rock perfection” a possibility? I don’t know — but I do know that this tape of Lyres way back in 1984 in New Haven is a scorcher, overflowing with stabbing Vox Continental keys, snarled vocals and rip-snorting guitars. Perfect! Thanks to…
The Army is getting a newfound interest in jungle warfare. COL Keith W. Benedict and CPT Christian M. Hert have a great article in Line of Departure (How Panama’s Crucible is Yet Again Testing Soldiers’ Mettle) detailing how legendary jungle training has returned to former Fort Sherman, Panama– now a Panamanian aeronaval base, Cristóbal Colón– after more than two decades of hiatus. Before the doors closed in 1999 and the course moved to Hawaii, the Fort Sherman-based “Green Hell” Jungle…
