This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is: “Book Covers Featuring Autumnal Colors (submitted by Wordy Witterings).” This was more difficult than I expected, but I’ve managed to find ten covers featuring shades of orange, gold, brown or dark red. These are all books I’ve read and I’ve provided links to my reviews. 1. The Autumn Throne by Elizabeth Chadwick 2. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson 3. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel 4. Towers in the Mist by…

In the weeks surrounding the UK budget you will hear a great deal about the link between the UK budget deficit and interest rates on UK government debt. [1] Most discussion will be predicated on a simple idea: the way to get interest rates on government debt down is to run smaller budget deficits. There is a bit of truth in this, but not for the reason that many journalists suggest. This post is about this relationship. The first and most important point to note is that the continuing increase…

I recently moved my photo library from iCloud onto a self-hosted Immich instance running on an old MacBook Pro in my living room. Importing the main library went pretty smoothly. The (shared) albums: not so much. The starting point My main library was already in Immich: Around 50,000 photos and videos going back to 2011. I got them in there using Parachute, a Mac app that exports an Apple Photos library to plain files and folders. No proprietary format, just a date-based file tree: Photos…

What song makes you feel like you’re in a dream? I can’t help it. I think ‘dream’ and my brain leaps to ‘dream scene from a movie’. How do YOUR dreams play out when you try and relive them, try and capture them? For a while I tried to keep a dream journal but after just a few weeks I gave up. All I had was some jumbled words and locations. All of which I could easily, rationally, explain away —I’d visited my Mum the same day I went for a swim in the Loch, so obviously she was out there swimming…

This is random smattering of photos that didn’t feel like they deserved their own album for one reason or another. They’re organized roughly by newest first and I’ll keep this up to date as they happen Latest Update# Around Cape Cod# Summer 2023# Views from around the house# New Hampshire# Boston# Philadelphia#

GEONOSIAN WARRIOR (No wings, 2 per box) The Vintage Collection 3 3/4-Inch Hasbro Pulse Exclusive Action Figure Set Item No.: No. G3213 Manufacturer: Hasbro Number: n/a Includes: Sonic Blaster, duplicate figure, 2 additional figures with wings Action Feature: Blaster Retail: $67.99 Availability: September 2026 Appearances: Attack of the Clones Bio: Referred to by clone troopers as “bugs” throughout the franchise, these Geonosian drones first appeared in the second film of the prequel trilogy.…

Don't get me wrong: I love Emacs. After all, which Emacs user doesn't? It's the best thing since sliced bread and, if you use enough (()), you can probably slice your bread with it as well.

Things move slowly on the Ballard and Wantage. It is 1983 and the GE45t that has spent its entire working life on these rails rolls an empty Boston and Maine 40ft car into Clark’s…To the railfan’s delight the light footed switcher means frequent runs between the B&M interchange in Ballard and the yard at Wantage - handling just a few cars each time. At this time of year the usual flour traffic is bolstered by heating oil and road salt at Langford’s…This is equally good news for you, if you’re…

Hi there ULGers, Burberry Brit Woman EdT is probably not something you’ve thought about for years. Unless you’re a fan. Thing is, it’s really good. It’s also available for next to nothing on the discounters. FragranceNet USA has 100ml tester for less than AU$50 (around US$35). It’s one of those easy, spritz and go fragrances. […]

I'm continuing a look at some souvenir Fun Photos from the "Photo & Art Gallery" in Tomorrowland. As I said in the first installment, these souvenir photos were placed in a frame that was also a handy mailer, in case you had friends or loved ones to entertain. Here's one of them!This particular Fun Photo seems to be pretty scarce; a family ("Honored Guests") has been presented with the key to Disneyland, probably by Walt Disney himself. Say, the mom is quite the tomater! Here's another envelope…

Aquamarine (2006)

After a mixed bag of reading for my first day of the #1949Club, I thought I would turn to a book that’s been on Mount TBR for a number of years – since 2020, in fact, when I picked it up through Hive, no doubt stockpiling books during the pandemic. I don’t know where I heard about this one, but it’s apparently considered a pioneering classic of ecology writing, so should have been right up my street. The book is “A Sand County Almanac” by Aldo Leopold, and it was an interesting read, though not…

If it's the second week in October then something new must have appeared in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. And as ever the question is "has someone finally done something decent?" Probably. This is Hold by Tarek Atoui, a musical artwork comprising umpteen specially-constructed instruments. There are pipes and drums and mouthorgans and what look like bells but I think are actually horns, also mechanised mallets that occasionally hit things. There are also a lot of cables and loudspeakers…

I increasingly am downloading YouTube videos I like - using ytdlp - and putting them on my NAS. This is for several reasons: I do not trust that the internet will exist in its current form in several years. It's not that I think the internet will vanish or implode, but that I suspect that Google's relationship to users (and my relationship to Online) will change so much that I won't want to even look at YouTube or Online as much as I currently do. Maybe I'll just want to stay home and watch the…

The Mind of Mr JG Reeder by Edgar Wallace collection of short stories, published 1925 Margaret hardly knew what to expect when she came into the flamboyant foyer of the Orpheum. What was the evening equivalent to the square-topped derby and the tightly-buttoned frock-coat of ancient design which [Mr Reeder] favoured in the hours of business? She would have passed the somewhat elegantly dressed gentleman in the correct pique waistcoat and the perfectly tied butterfly bow, only he claimed her…

Y’know, the classic Japanese tale of horror! Developer: Jorudan Publisher(s): Datam Polystar (Japan), Seta U.S.A. (North America) Release Dates: April 21st, 1992 (Japan), December 1992 (North America) Available On: Super Nintendo Genre(s): 2D Platformer, Action, Horror I’ve been wanting to cover this one for a long time. It was always an obvious pick for an October at some point on this blog, what with the horror theme, but if I’m being honest, the bigger reason is a more selfish one. Look…

I had an opportunity to visit the @vanportstudio.com offices last week. Great view. Even better people! 😎

Last night, after posting yesterday's entry, I spent some time on Threads - Facebook's version of Twitter which, for the longest time was the online equivalent of New York City with three people living in it. Threads is now populated with a lot more people, but it's still not the bustling metropolis that pre-Musk Twitter used to be. A post was being widely recirculated that linked to a blog post by an internet expert who was investigating the claims that right wing bots had disappeared off the…

Josh Wulf has been running a show called Agentic Engineering, and he asked me on. Josh spent ten years at Red Hat, three years as a tech recruiter in Brisbane, and the last year sprinting down the same road I have, sounding a bit crazy to most people around him. We talked for about an hour and a half. He cut it into four parts, and they all dropped today.Here's the gist of all four, written up properly and in order, with chapter links at the bottom if you want to jump to a specific part of the…

In last week’s post, we looked at how public housing authorities in both Britain and the Netherlands dealt with tenants or potential tenants they judged unacceptable by reason of their behaviour or character. In Britain, the task was usually left to housing inspectors, often female, who forced tenants to behave acceptably or risk eviction. A similar regime existed in the Netherlands but the Dutch also adopted a far more rigorous approach in what were called woonschoolen – specially designed and…

Abhinav prompted me to write about nihilism. The reason for this is likely because I end up having an "optimistic" outlook towards most things. I'm an unusually cheerful fella.What I know about nihilism came from the second-hand casual use of the word, rather than what it actually meant as a philosophical position.I initially predicted that I'd look up nihilism and realize that my impressions of it would be completely wrong and that there would be some value to it. Unfortunately, that is not…

I have a lot of digital cross-stitch patterns and until recently they were a mess. My “collection” was a series of several hundred PDFs, disorganised and spread across my disk. Recently, I was looking for a pattern and it took me several minutes to find it. I had a brief moment of panic, thinking that I’d lost it, and the website this pattern came from is long since gone. Fortunately it did turn up, but it was clear I had to organise my pattern collection. Some people would use apps like…

RE: https://www.searchengine.show/vladimir-putins-forkiverse So I had seen the #forkiverse hashtag a while back and didn't really pay attention, then didn't notice it disappear. I had zero clue what it was about, and although once upon a time I kept up with what the latest fedi meme was that time is long behind me now. And then it popped up again, and it turns out that the members of a podcast (or 2 podcasts? I don't care to clarify) decided it would be fun to set up a fediverse server. And now…

Some factors that weigh in a novel’s favor when I’m deciding whether to add it to my TBR, not in any particular order: The blurb sounds fun (aka “is it drugs“) It’s a fairy tale retelling (especially Beauty and the Beast or Hades and Persephone) It’s by an author I already know and like It’s by an author I’ve heard of / seen recommended I read an intriguing / gushing review by someone I respect (e.g. KJ Charles is the source of many a TBR title) It’s recommended (on Reddit or book-y spaces like…

안녕하세요 연예인 운동선수 정치인 의사 변호사 재벌 교수 CEO 삼성맨 이 아닌 일반인입니다.

The timeline for a task I needed to do changed from three days to this afternoon. The only reason for this was so that some sales people could show off the feature during a management meeting. When I tried to complain, my co-workers just told me to give Claude code my initial plan and have it generate the code. After feeding it the required documents and information, Claude got to work. It took about five minutes to generate the code, in which I spent the time skimming over the text it was…

Back in October 2021, we began baking our way through Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan. I’ve done this several books over now, and those first few months with a new one are a bit daunting, knowing that you’ll spend years making all the recipes, but maybe not quite comprehending how many years or how many recipes. Fast forward to today, almost exactly five years and over a hundred recipes later, and we’re closing the book with this Lisbon Chocolate Cake. This cake has…

Since April I have been dipping into the crime fiction reviews of Barzun and Taylor, as collected in A Catalogue of Crime. Working alphabetically, I have looked at authors, A through F, and today I am going to add three more letters, G, H, and I.

Guest Post by: David Tonaszuck A reflection on the Gospel of Matthew 13:24-30 Dear Friends in Christ, There was once a boy, not much older than fourteen, who wandered the dusty back roads near a small farming town at the turn of the century. He was an orphan, left to fend for himself in a … Continue reading Rest for the Weary: Trusting Jesus to Lighten Our Burdens The post Come and Meet Jesus at the Wedding Feast first appeared on The Simple Catholic. The post Come and Meet Jesus at the Wedding…

There's nothing quite as satisfying as coming home to a slow cooker that's been quietly working its magic all day. These Slow Cooker Shredded Beef Tacos are packed with rich, savoury flavour, featuring tender beef brisket cooked low and slow until it practically falls apart at the touch of a fork. A blend of garlic, herbe and smoky chipotle creates a deliciously robust filling that's perfect tucked into warm tortillas and piled high with your favourite toppings.Whether you're feeding a hungry…