Over the last week, I worked pretty consistently on our paper for the annual CHAT meeting in Innsbruck at the end of the month. In fact, I’ve passed it on to my wife, who is my writing partner in this project, for fact checking, revision, and images. I posted the first part of the paper last week, and I then shifted to the final two sections. I’m happy enough with it as a first attempt to narrate (and, in a modest way) analyze the post-war small town. I’m getting increasingly keen to refine and…

Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies from 1833 to 1954, profiling a different ship each week. These ships have a life and a tale all their own, sometimes taking them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!” Warship Wednesday 14 October 2026: The…

Unsettled is out. It’s an escape game hidden in an ordinary-looking phone: a blank screen, a mail icon with one unread message, and every message from Unsettled Corp is a lock that gives up a number. There are no instructions, and no clue is given for free. The puzzles use the phone itself. You’ll turn it, shake it, lay it face down, knock on the back, go offline, or go for a walk. Some clues aren’t in the app at all. There are three chapters and thirty-five locks. Chapter two arrives a day…

TN3179: During testing, you might want to reset your program’s Local Network privilege to the undetermined state. Your options for this vary by platform. On iOS, the easiest option is to delete your app. Alternatively, if you don’t want to delete your app for some reason, reset the entire privacy subsystem using Settings > General > Transfer or Reset > Reset > Reset Location & Privacy. On macOS, the list in System Settings > Privacy & Security > Local Network has add (+) and remove (-) buttons.…

In the late nineteenth century, visitors to Maine observed something strange: French-Canadian lumberjacks who, at the slightest stimulus, seemed to jump, strike out with their limbs, or mimic languages they could not speak. Ross Bullen introduces us to these so-called “Jumping Frenchmen” and to their greatest investigator, George M. Beard, who saw a link in their behavior between religious frenzy and neurasthenia.

Doing... I hand-delivered the final drawing for St Jude this morning and we're almost halfway through Inktober — I am furious to confirm that practicing actually works and does indeed improve your skills. Some of the art I've done in the past month I'm properly proud of. Jim loved his so much, he framed it. The Knightlings have been ill on and off for the past month while the weather can't make it's mind up. We've had a couple of hospital visits as well — one for scary breathing-related things…

Sometimes, all you have to go off of is a name and some box art. Sure, you could look up more details or even watch some gameplay clips, but my tendency to go in relatively uninformed sometimes leaves me in a state of “what even is this?” Such is the case of Chew Man Fu.Arriving on the Turbografx-16 in 1990, Chew Man Fu — sometimes stylized as Chew-Man-Fu — was Now Production's first release on NEC and Hudson's console. And unlike many of Now Production's works from the era, which were in…

Peter Brown, "The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity," Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971) 80-101 (at 88): When little girls played games in fourth-century Syria, they played at monks and demons: one, dressed in rags, would put her little friends into stitches of laughter by exorcising them.105 105 H.R. 1384 H.R. 1384 = Theodoret, Historia Religiosa, in Patrologia Graeca vol. 82, col. 1384 (see Clavis Patrum Graecorum 6221). A more recent edition is Théodoret de Cyr, Histoire…

Twelve years ago, I was complaining that IoT devices were too expensive. Last week I bought a colour changing Zigbee lighbulb for £4. Not a typo - less than a fiver. While the aipocalypse is devouring RAM with its insatiable appetite, Moore's Law appears to be keeping up its end of the bargain when it comes to domestic gadgetry. This blog posts compares today's prices with those from a little over a decade ago. Some of the changes are startling, others less so. I'm basing the prices on what a…

When you watch this video about a fascinating but somehow almost forgotten bit of post-war era scientific history featuring perhaps the last interview with the famous (101 at the time) researcher behind the project.I want to keep spoilers to a minimum but it's a story worth hearing for:What they were trying to do...The tech they used to accomplish it...The remarkable extent to which they succeeded...And the reason why they failed. "I promise this story about microwaves is interesting."

Bare-throated bellbird, calling (photo from Wikimedia) 14 October 2026 Which birds are the loudest on Earth? For many years the white bellbird (Procnias albus) of South America held that title as the only bird louder than 120 decibels. At close range his voice is beyond the human pain threshold (110 decibels) and is as loud as jackhammers and chainsaws. Take off your headphones! and see what you think. video embedded from Guardian News on YouTube Last month two other South American birds joined…

From her wonderful book The Writing Life

The population of rats exploded along the front lines of World War I. The miserable muddy trenches provided a tremendous amount of food and excellent habitat for rodents that evolved to live alongside humans. Soldiers, busy avoiding incoming artillery shells and dodging bullets, didn’t have time to dispose of their garbage. Rats swarmed over the discarded food. Soldiers also didn’t always have the time to dispose of dead bodies and body parts blown to bits during explosions, and the rats…

[1979]The power pop party that never stops! Bringing you more non hits and non memories from long lost nobodies from nowhere.Todays region for our unknown legends of power-pop is Lincoln Nebraska. [Baby] It's You really doesn't have new wave-ification so it's not your typical power-pop sound for 1979. Just the classic crunchy variety of crunchy classic. 70s guitar pop gold with hooks galore. The best.

I've been looking for answers. To a question I don't even know the words to. Or have too many words for. Too many questions. What kind of exercise can I commit to? How can I get a job I like? How do I make friends? How do I live on my own? I know the answer to these. I just haven't let myself sit in the discomforting quiet long enough for the answers to become clear. My version or flavour of discomforting quiet is writing with that spark of spite, rage, heat, passion. The small flickering flame…

John Gruber of Daring Fireball fame is back on X/Twitter. This isn't particularly interesting in itself, but there does seem to be a trend of notable people, who abandoned the platform post-Musk, returning.And I can’t blame anyone. The only network that compares to X, size-wise, is Threads — but Threads’s algorithm is weirder than X’s now, and the content I see there is relatively boring. My Threads timeline is full of engagement bait without being engaging. And if you want to judge a platform…

Via Newspapers.comTreasure hunting and ghosts seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly. As an example, peruse this story from the “Bartlesville Examiner,” February 13, 1927:OKMULGEE, Okla. - (AP) -Snake Creek, in Okmulgee county, still believes in her six lively ghosts and sets back to laugh at outsiders when they invade the playground of the spirits. Investigation has failed to disprove fantastic stories of phantom hailstones, eerie lights and wailing cries about a wooded section where…

Dan Hartland What’s a conversation for? It’s an important question for this column, since its whole schtick is putting two things next to each other and listening to what they say. So let’s try and think it through a bit. One obvious—and for that reason, though bear with me, maybe insufficient—answer is “the exchange of information”: data, stories, points of view. In the best kinds of conversation, maybe each party learns something—about the other conversant, the topic under consideration, even…

Apple finally announced their smart home control hub (dubbed HomeView) yesterday. It's a whopping $299 and an amalgamation of their technologies in an attempt to reinvigorate their home strategy. Later in the day, Marques Brownlee's impressions video dropped and he said he doesn't really know who the product is for: "But whenever we see a new product, whenever I think about a new product, I always want to think about the target demographic that they think it's best for, that they're aiming this…

medienbaecker.com has become my personal site. It’s a place where I talk about topics that are important to me, not strictly limited to web stuff. Read more

G. D. Chakerian [1] discovered the following generalization of the Pythagorean theorem. Take any triangle and attach squares to each side. From each triangle vertex, extend a line perpendicular to the opposite side and extend the line through the square, as shown in the figure below. Then the areas of the rectangles with the same labels are equal. It’s not clear at first why this is a generalization of the Pythagorean theorem, but if we make our triangle closer to a right triangle it’s easier…

By Tyler McIntoshTable Rock Independent PressOSRLevels 4-6 AN ANCIENT EVIL FALLS FROM THE HEAVENS ONTO GOAT HILL AND ALL THAT STANDS IN ITS WAY IS A RAGTAG GROUP OF HOBO ADVENTURERS. This 36 page adventure present a two level dungeon with about fifty rooms, a coupl of factions and THE END OF THE WORLD. It is trying to present a changing environment, over the adventure timeline, and has some new terrifying creatures, The descriptive style is hard to manage and the timeline elements is not…

I think Deep Data Security (DDS) is one of the most promising additions to Oracle 26ai. The idea is straightforward: describe who may read or change which data with SQL, and let the database enforce it.

If you picked up your phone to get one specific thing done, and you’ve done it, put it down. And just let your mind wander. It’s hard at first. The pull to open it back up is strong, to keep scrolling for one more hit, that small comforting feeling of having checked everything there is to check. Let your mind wander instead. There’s nothing more you will learn from picking up that phone or that next scroll.

October 14, 2026 It always tugs at my heartstrings when I see an injured animal. This morning, we discovered an injured yearling deer in the yard with both front legs broken. When I went over to check her out, she just calmly stared at me, which surprised me. Usually, when an injured animal sees a human, it will start thrashing in an attempt to get away. Not this one. I covered her with a towel to keep her calm. I learned that trick from a previous incident with an injured deer. The SPCA…

14 October 2026 Anniversary of the Battle of Hastings * Looking at a great work of medieval sequential art * The Bayeux Tapestry, as convention requires we call the embroidery currently on show at the British Museum, is a familiar thing. It is so familiar that it is difficult to look at it and and think about it afresh. It is the stuff of a thousand book plate illustrations. Indeed, it is almost impossible to buy a book about Norman history without those figures on the cover. * The Tapestry…

I'm a Linux user. I am a huge fan of free and open source software in general. For the most part, FOSS is all I use and it's all I want to use (with a few rare exceptions). I also have empathy and a solid theory of mind. Sadly, I can't say the same for many of my fellow Linux users.Allow me to explain.YouTube ReactionsI posted a video on my YouTube and PeerTube channels this week. In it, I reacted to Corridor Crew's "Free Software" challenge. Four visual effects artists had to use free (as in…

A minor example of a common trail for building research: Starting with a Wurts Brothers photo of a street… Note the stone slab sidewalk on the right. The old cars are nice, but I know nothing about cars. The writing at the bottom is legible if you’re patient (or, like me, can pretend to be patient): “Christ P.E. Church N.W. Cor 71st St @ Broadway. N.Y.C. Looking West at section of street in front of Easterly Entrance to Church. Oct 13 [or maybe 18] 1925. 11-25. AM”. Okay, the first thing I did…

Stream of consciousness rambles that beat screaming into a pillow. (Though I might do that after this.) For the past weeks, I've been sleeping later (around 2:00) and waking up at 9:30. I get out of bed around 11:00. If I'm lucky, I'll eat breakfast and continue on with my day. If I'm not, I'll be riddled with an intense fatigue and retreat to the bed and sleep another 2 hours or more. I tell myself I should get to bed earlier so I can wake up earlier. But why? What's the point of waking up…

Out for coffee this morning with my wife, as is our Wednesday morning routine, and this little guy came to sit with us. Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email, or leave a comment.