A song that reminds you of one of your favorite places. I had been there many years ago, I think. My childhood was largely built around parks and gardens, walks in forests and shopping centres. I always loved being outdoors. So I presume I’d been to this place before Becca took me there. It fit the bill, country walks among the trees along well-trodden paths. Quiet, but accessible, secluded but not hidden. We walked and talked as the dogs ran ahead, following trails through towering pines,…

As web developers, we’re constantly working with websites with different types of content and ways to craft that content. Whether it’s a handcrafted blog, a WordPress site or a web app, these days you likely have a bunch of images out there: some decorative, others with meaningful messages. I built Alt text debugging bookmarklet (ATDB among friends as it rolls off the tongue nicely), a quick tool for website developers and authors to check the status of alt texts of images on a site. I use it…

The riverbanks of Paris are magical. On a sunny afternoon when they fill up with people, they're among the most beautiful urban public spaces I know. I made this copperplate engraving, "Quai des Célestins", at Imprimerie ARTE, using a combination of line etching and aquatint. The view is from one of my favorite spots on the Right Bank, looking across the river toward Île Saint-Louis. Signed and numbered prints are available from my website and from Galerie Maeght. Their gallery on rue du Bac…

I genuinely enjoyed being part of Head in the Cloud by mittwald this year. Now they released the video of my talk (it’s in German, sorry), which was titled “Weniger Slides. Mehr Austausch.” (something like “Fewer slides. More interaction.”). Next to this, I gave a couple of interviews. One of them dealt with the how people these days see events and what is important for them. I proposed that it could work to run an event with even fewer talks than at beyond tellerrand, but more tome to chat and…

October 14, 2026 Our last heroine, but NEVER the least! In my next life, I’m going to major in French, and make my living translating arcane French documents buried in the Bibliotheque Nationale… And I will use this painting as my inspiration, just as our current historical architecture expert does: When she left for her autumn term teaching in Paris, she had this wardrobe. I suspect that she packed everything – 40 garments isn’t insane for 4 months if you’re in one place, and can unpack, hang…

Yes, they have.. I begin with a history of how policy elites defined “success” in school reform between the late 19th century and mid-20th century. In those years, classrooms, schools, and districts that practiced “efficiency” in expanding access for students to public schooling, following scientifically designed procedures in creating appropriate curricula for each level in age-graded schools, and using public funds parsimoniously and wisely were labeled “successes” (see here) Using scientific…

So a little while back, comics artist Steve Lieber posted to his Bluesky account a piece of work of such shocking significance to the artform — nay, to the world — that I could not help but message him and ask how I could acquire this immortal piece. Alas, quoth Steve, the illustration existed only in digital form, but he would be happy to reproduce it upon physical media, the nigh-mythical “ink” and “paper” treasured by our forebears, and send it to me via the postal mails with all haste. And…

KBF on GDB! Let's go. This is a random selection of slide scans. First up is this shot of Seldom Seen Slim, who used to be sort of an unofficial mascot of Knott's. The prospector with his trusty burro, wandering the west looking for gold. Gooooooold! It makes me sad that Slim and his burro (I call him "Biscuit") have been removed, it seems unbelievable that there wasn't room for this statue anymore. Slim was based on a real person named Charles Ferge. I'm unclear as to when the SSS statue…

Never Say Never Again (1983)

Photo: © Stan B.Do we have to see and hear? Witness and endure? 30,573 lies in his first term alone- a record he's easily surpassed midway through his second term untethered by the constraints of a semi-rational admin. But how much more can any of us endure? Vandals wrecking the reflecting pool; Iran purposely killing their own school children; Ukraine starting the current war with Russia; personally ending eight wars; vowing not to touch "a single brick of the East Wing;" claiming Renee Good…

This unique weathervane was photographed in Duxbury, MassachusettsWhilst wandering around Duxbury, Massachusetts to visit the historical sites associated with Captain Myles Standish of the Mayflower we saw several very interesting weathervanes on homes. This one caught our eye because of the colors and the intricate masts and rigging.Duxbury is a sea side town, and Myles Standish lived on The Nook peninsula, overlooking Duxbury and Kingston Bay. There are some lovely homes here, all traditional…

Returned to number one for two more weeks from 16th July 1988Here's what was going on lower down the charts across those two weeks.Week One6. Chumbawamba - Smash Clause 28! (Agit Prop)Peak position: 4Clause 28 was such a contentious Government Bill in 1988 that besides the national press, just about every music magazine – including Smash Hits – covered it. It stated that Local Authorities should “not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting…

(And then in October you will pace me at the Munich Marathon, right?) (January 29, 2026)Almost every year since my first marathon I get asked if I’d be running the marathon in Munich. Every year I say, “No, the Munich Marathon doesn’t enthrall me.” The route is boring, yet challenging to run, and there is hardly any support from spectators. In summary, I consider it too big to die and too small to be spectacular. There are bigger fall marathons to run.This year, my friend Tina entered the chat.…

After a couple of mixed days with 1949, I was a bit uncertain where to go next. I was definitely having slight commitment issues, with a number of chunky and heavier volumes staring at me, and I felt a slight lack of confidence in my ability to choose something good! However, rescue was at hand thanks to lovely Liz from Adventures in reading, running and working from home! Whilst browsing her local bookshop, where the friendly owner had put aside some 1949 publications for perusal, she came…

For the next 30 days, a few billion of you will get an extra header in honor of Eric Binnion. The code in Nginx to do this is poetic: add_header X-Remembering "Eric Binnion <https://friendsofericbinnion.wordpress.com/>" always; Our design team will make that less AI and more humane in the coming days. Automattic.com will have a mourning band for 30 days. Eric was the 21st recipient of the Distinguished Janitor Award, Automattic’s highest honor, and in our hangs the last few months we’ve been…

For reasons, I recently went into a part of the city known for particularly confusing and bad parking signs and photographed a bunch of them. Los Angeles has uniquely terrible parking signs. Sometimes you'll see a pole with four or so different panels on it, each outlining a different set of rules which must be compared and overlapped. Parking is the worst in areas where district parking permits overlap with public infrastructure like schools, hospitals, police stations, and commercial loading…

Why Kolibri Matters

Tab grouping and auto-tiling aren’t new by any means, but zooming to a subset of windows is very, very neat. It isn’t worth paying a subscription fee for (and if it proves to be really productive it might get Sherlocked within a couple of years, depending on whether Apple manages to shrug off the mess that is Stage Manager), and is likely to have three open-source clones tomorrow, so I’ll let the hype settle and give the concept a try once I find an implementation I can hack.

Title is the title of a (1978) paper by Leigh van Valen one of the late great maverick evolutionary theorists of the late 20thC. I am happy to bring this back into discourse and Hats Off to University of Oslo Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES) for archiving the journal Evolutionary Theory. It was agreeably clattered out on a manual fixed-width-font typewriter with blank spaces left to paste in pictures and diagrams and presumably, like our own contemporaneous Carnivore…

Spouse was away. The boys are happy doing their own thing. That means I could be out again at the weekend for another 200. The 2025 - 2026 audax season ends in October so most likely this will was the last long ride I do until November. Distance Elevation Gain Max Grade Moving Time Elevation Loss Min Grade 207.7 km 2,700 m 21.7% 10:06 hr 2,699 m -18.7 % It was another great route. Second time I have done it. Hills and hedgerows on the way out offer protection against the wind. A couple of short…

4 days i guess i was inspired a lot by the trip! then again, it really doesn't take much to get me thinking about the sky in the first place. hoyis rayquaza samanlooyk (print) "rayquaza used outrage"! it's been a long time since i've done much fanart at all, but i felt compelled suddenly to do some formline pokemon takes. i have a few other sketches in the loadout like luxray and torracat, and i hope to do even more like maybe reshiram and zekrom. i intentionally painted rayquaza a bit darker…

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have developed an AI scientist capable of generating scientific hypotheses, designing experiments and interpreting results. Making new biological discoveries with minimal human intervention is an important advance in self-driving laboratories. AI scientist autonomously generates and validates new biological discoveries

Last Saturday, 20261010, I had my usual extended afternoon meditation and immersive altered-state session. This time around I decided it was absolutely worthwhile to revisit the earlier tapes of The Gateway Experience. Instead of starting over with Wave I and making my way back up to where I left off, right before the Voyager series, I began at Wave III. I remember having trouble with this specific set, so it feels like the correct place to pick it all back up.

Editor’s note: Our guest contributor is based in Australia, so some spelling and usage reflect Australian English. Let’s have lunch. Let’s pack up. And let’s go to bed. I have twin toddlers, so I say some version of that all day, and a good share of it comes back declined. By about the fourth round … Continue reading What St. Thomas Aquinas Teaches Us About Anger The post What St. Thomas Aquinas Teaches Us About Anger first appeared on The Simple Catholic. The post What St. Thomas Aquinas…

Looking for an easy biscuit recipe? These Buttermilk drop biscuits are light, fluffy, buttery, and incredibly simple to make. No kneading or rolling required, just simple homemade comfort in every bite.Perfect for breakfast, supper, or served alongside your favourite soups and stews. Easy, dependable and delicious, this is the kind of recipe you'll find yourself reaching for again and again. I adore biscuits and by that I mean North American Biscuits. Not cookies. There is always some confusion…

It’s not easy to get organised for a year-long project. I made a catalog of ideas for each category, some of them already outdated or no longer relevant, and I cross them as I go along. But I don’t have a list for 52*3 photos yet. I. Body The beard I’ve had a beard since I was 16. In high school, kids that didn’t know me thought I was a teacher in the corridors. I don’t know why, I’ve always thought it was something I wanted to have, even when it was weird or unfashionable. This one is by far…

C. E. Ward appears as a man who has stepped out of a different time and from another world. And because of that, his ghost stories are always welcome. Ward writes as great authors once did. His love of the English language and its grammar is manifest in every paragraph. His artful use of parts of speech and syntax are refreshing in an era in which adjectives have become endangered species and

Today is the 960th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. To celebrate I've been out in search of every London property numbered 1066. And I've found four, maybe two more, maybe forty-seven. You might be surprised to see that some London streets have over 1000 houses. But they do, as you can see, in a few key locations. What you need is a long road, generally arterial, all of which has been numbered consecutively without being renamed midway. Often these are old and important, possibly even…

Guilfoyle Gets Run Ever since the news broke that Kimberly Guilfoyle tried to use her Trump family connections to shake down a Republican donor for $100,000, it certainly seemed like she was a dead woman walking. And yesterday, the axe was finally swung, as the White House asked for, and received, her resignation as United States Ambassador to Greece. Click here for full story

This morning I got a GitHub notification. It was on an issue about Brushes app drawing files. It’s this comment: I realise this is a very old thread, but thought this might be of interest to some of you. Someone asked us recently about recovering paintings from the original Brushes app. We’d worked with Brushes files before, so decided to see if we could build something from scratch to get the older files opening and exporting again. We’ve had some success so far, including exporting…