❝ I believe it boils down to the simple fact that IT infrastructure is often being taken for granted. There’s not enough priority and money going to properly maintain the IT infrastructure in various places. It’s not only companies; it’s also a lot of outdated consumer electronics that are going to be attacked. I kind of agree that everything’s moving fast now, and it’s taking a toll on the people who are defending the stuff. At the same time, maybe this is the turning point where we actually…

This is merely a reminder—more to myself than to anyone else—what to consider when adopting a new technology (such as an emerging app/social network/software/platform/anything I use that might trigger a new habit or something I'll spend much of my time on): Does this technology directly support something that I deeply value? This it the only condition on which you should let one of these tools into your life. The fact that it offers some value is irrelevant—the digital minimalist deploys…

Every week, I share something I learned in the previous seven days. I usually find these while I'm putting my weekly newsletter together but somehow, they don't quite fit!This week I learned that the Citroën 2CV was designed to carry a basket of eggs across a freshly ploughed field without breaking one. I drove a red 2CV for a while back in the 90's - it was a very smooth (and slow car). The eggs were the brief, more or less. In the mid 1930s Pierre-Jules Boulanger asked his engineers for a car…

The Medulla Nebula

If you’ve read my post on how to pick the right narrative ending, you’ll notice the ideal outcome is a surprising-and-inevitable ending. In particular, I mentioned in that post: “A narrative conclusion should be both surprising (in the sense that it’s not stereotypical) yet also absolutely necessary, considering the narrative preceding it”. There are two […] The post How to Get a Surprising-and-Inevitable Ending appeared first on Home For Fiction - Blog.

It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for another Six Degrees of Separation, hosted by Kate of Books are my Favourite and Best. The idea is that Kate chooses a book to use as a starting point and then we have to link it to six other books of our choice to form a chain. A book doesn’t have to be connected to all of the others on the list – only to the one next to it in the chain. This month Kate has said that in recognition of Novellas in November, we should start with a…

9735/21654My son is 9 and thus our senses of humour are pretty much at exactly the same level now and I enjoy nothing more than laughing with my boy. I would enjoy laughing with my daughter as much, but she doesn't think I am funny and so I really have to catch her unawares to make her laugh. Do I push the boat out and try and go for the unattainable but more satisfying audience or accept that she's right and that my stuff isn't for anyone over the mental age of 10 and just stick to laughing…

In middle school I could not get through long passages no matter how hard I tried. I would read an entire page and find that nothing had registered, so I started taking notes out of desperation. This was the late 80s, and Tony Buzan's mind maps had just reached Turkey. This led me to produce pages and pages of notes that looked like spiderwebs. Creating those notes have helped me tremendously. I made sense of what I was reading by figuring out which branch they would hang off in my mind maps. I…

ScrivenSpell Posted on 11/7/2026 Tags: Programming, Games Introducing ScrivenSpell, a word game with RPG elements. In ScrivenSpell, make words as quickly as possible to fight monsters. Longer words get additional points. When you defeat a monster, a stronger one takes its place. Unlock Quote Quest for an extra challenge and try to achieve 100% completion! This game is inspired by Up Spell. That game was a lot of fun but unfortunately no longer fits the screen shapes of recent devices. It also…

I have some fascinating photos for you today, courtesy of Lou Perry (who took them) and Sue B. (Lou's daughter, who scanned them). Lou visited a Kissimmee tourist attraction known as a Xanadu House. There were other Xanadu Houses, and they were a series of experimental homes built to showcase examples of computers and automation in the home in the United States. (All of today's info is from a Wikipedia article).There it is, with plenty of organic curves; it has a pleasing look, to my eye…

Buns Of Steel (1987)

As a result of inhabiting a different world than teachers, policymakers make a consequential error. They and a cadre of influentials confuse teachER quality with teachING quality, that is, the personal traits of teachers—dedicated, caring, gregarious, intellectually curious—produce student learning rather than the classroom setting and school structures. Both are important, of course, but policymakers and their influential followers have accentuated personal traits far more than the…

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place as other readers, add six books, and see where it ends up. This month Kate suggested we start with a novella on our reading list, so I chose The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt (2022). It’s a psychological thriller about a rich, young girl navigating her way through the publishing world, and was apparently inspired by Daenerys Targaryen from Game Of Thrones.Read more »

Robert Birming has started Knowember, a November event where bloggers all answer the same few questions so we can get to know each other. This year it's one photo and three questions, so here we go. A photo Name or nickname James! Where in the world I blog from I am based in the UK What my blog is mostly about Whatever I'm mucking around with. That's usually some home server or automation project, like my BirdNET-Pi microphone, or something I've learned how to achieve and wanted to document for…

Soup’s on — it’s time for The Daily Dish! Today, I’m serving up Favorite Femme Fatale – one of my favorite aspects of film noir. There are so many conniving, intelligent, seductive dames from which to select a favorite. You’ll forgive me, I hope, for naming just a few of my top candidates: there’s Kathie Moffat, who was the queen of self-preservation in Out of the Past (1947); Decoy‘s (1946) Margot Shelby (1946), who had a one-track mind if ever I saw one; and Jane Palmer from Too Late for…

They all lost. Every one of them.

One Saturday morning, up early and without stress, I go running along the harbor while the family paints. It is twenty five ºC and humid, the kind of cloudy breezy morning that makes running feel ok. I walk out of Tai Hang down the Fire Dragon path with a bounce, headphones in and happy. This is the kind of life I dreamed of, moving here, if not the specifics of distance running. The new pedestrian pathway that winds under the highway along the north east coast of Hong Kong Island is the type…

Misty wrote recently about how to archive websites locally on your own computer. I've never done this before! I decided to give it a shot!! I downloaded the app she mentioned in her post, Archive Webpage, and used it to archive my own website. It's a manual process - you start a session, click through all the stuff you want to archive by hand, then stop the session. I found this kind of contemplative. (I've yet to try out the crawler she mentioned.) I then saved the archive to my NAS and opened…

This post is inspired by the blogwagon summons on the Prismatic Wasteland blog. Since I’ve been reading and thinking about improvisation recently, I decided to write up some suggestions for being a good player in an improvisational tabletop role-playing game. What do I mean by an “improvisational” tabletop role-playing game? It’s one where there isn’t a pre-planned story or sequence of events. Instead, the game master (GM) may set up antagonists with goals and other challenges, but doesn’t…

Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time, we’ve got ghosts, etiquette, and pub talk. First, some Samuel Smith’s news. Those hoping for a period of post-Humphrey glasnost and perestroika will be disappointed to learn that CAMRA is still unable to get a response from the famously tight-lipped brewery: [Several pubs] currently owned by Sam Smith’s, are listed for sale with Fleurets, and include statements in the listings that the sales are for ‘non-pub…

Most of my favorite musicians have had long careers spanning a few decades. It's not just because I'm getting old. Of course, almost everyone prefers the music from their youth, that certainly plays a role. However, not all of my favorite bands from my youth made the cut to be part of my favorite music today.There are some musicians I was obsessed with 30 years ago who are still active today, but I don't care much about them anymore, despite still loving their music from 30 years ago.Usually,…

Sulun Auslof The Sulun Arms Auslof is a 12-gauge break-action repeating shotgun based on the 1924 Herman Alofs reloading system. I never heard of it before.

*Imagine you’ve been his ardent celebrity-supporter all this time and you’re NOT on this list*That’s gotta hurt*Maybe

I'm intentionally burying the lede here a bit for spoilers, but I beat Final Fantasy Resonance, see that below! I don't know what to play next, my backlog is so long. I want to play Monster Hunter Stories 3 since it's still a this year release, and I have Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown to finish, and Well Dweller as another new Metroidvania. However... Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Yep, we're going back. I think this is my window to play FFVII Rebirth I want to give myself enough time to play…

This old-fashioned Date and Walnut Pudding is the sort of dessert our grandmothers would have been proud to serve. Tender, sweet, and filled with wholesome dates and crunchy walnuts, it bakes up with a rich caramel-like sauce hiding underneath, making every spoonful an absolute delight.Simple ingredients and a touch of kitchen magic come together to create a wonderfully comforting self-saucing pudding that's perfect for family suppers, special gatherings, or any time you're in the mood for a…

50 posts I didn't have time to write yesterday How to watch the Blackheath Fireworks for nothing London's most peripheral bus route Why I'm allowed to drink my tea how I like it not how you'd make it Egg Custard Tarts - an appreciation Banknote dimensions then and now All the Wombles - ranked The last time I saw sunshine Watford's Tea Pavilion celebrates 100 years My kitten Furry Paws Little bottles accumulated from hotel bathrooms Mugs I no longer use Two stations from King's Cross The 600th…

Editor’s Note: Post originally published on November 5, 2019. Growing up, I enjoyed constructing blanket forts in the living room or playing under the deck with my siblings in our dirt-laden bunker. Something about forts invokes nostalgia. Security and strength also are words that immediately come to my mind when I think of fort [and … Continue reading Fortress Mentality—How You Can Keep Negativity Away in Your Life The post Fortress Mentality—How You Can Keep Negativity Away in Your Life first…

I woke up to my mother-in-law’s voice. My partner slept, part of me thinking he was speaking to her on the phone. The dreamer part of me ignored it as a fact of life. As I drifted back to sleep in the dream, I swayed and sank, a sensation I wait for in order to enter a lucid state of dreaming, though fleeting. My instinct this time, as it happened, was not to doubt or analyse, but jump into action. —Yes! —I cheered. I rolled as I have learned to do many times before and ran to the window…

Amp has a new(ish) concept called orbs: Each thread with their coding agent lives inside a virtual machine That machine can run your entire codebase Those machines don't stop running when you close your computer You can view dev servers running inside that machine, or it can send you screenshots/videos They're much better than anything else on the market, and it's baffling to me that Codex and Claude Code haven't made anything to compete. I've completely stopped using local development, both…