This year I’ve been doing adult ed classes on archaeology, after a lifetime’s fascination with old stuff: wanting to be a palaeontologist at the age of nine (like so many other nine-year-olds); studying Late British History at sixteen; wanting to take first-year history at uni, but missing out because it clashed with first-year maths; and soaking in the sights of Britain, to say nothing of the rest of the world, for half my life. The last few years of revisiting the Scottish highlands and…

... what a fabulous afternoon. Stuffed to capacity, well played Robert and band, we had an amazing reception, great conversations afterwards. More tomorrow (I'm so tired!)

Unplanned Ten Week HiatusI’m back! Well, technically I haven’t left my internet home; it’s just my weeknotes that went into intermission. It was likely triggered as a respite from Blaugust1 and also time spent on migrating my secondary site from WordPress to Quartz2. It feels like there has been a fair amount that happened in the last ten weeks. I have an inkling that the proverbial page in my life has turned—or perhaps even a new chapter has begun. The unrelenting heat and humidity has also…

Hi Old Deptford History, I was born in the old St. Alfages hospital in Greenwich in 1950.Apparently I was not thriving as I should as my Mum was terrified of the ward sister which caused problems with feeding me. My Dad decided to kidnap us both and we came home to the family residence at 39 St. Donatts Road, New Cross.39 St Donatts Road.I went to school at St. James's in the road of the same name, New Cross and later went to Addey and Stanhope grammar school (known by us as Study and No…

Does the world need another Tolkien biography? Well yes, if it is as refreshing, broadly scoped and interestingly written as this one. To be fair, it isn’t a biography in the Humphrey Carpenter sense, still less a hagiography. It does cover Tolkien’s life, but that is only a third of the book. It also takes a much more, shall we say, sceptical look at his life, for example, the influence of the Inklings both on the wider world and on Tolkien himself. We also see how little there is of Tolkien’s…

The fourth part of a series about bare-metal programming for x86 PC-type computers, using Linux for development. This article gives some general guidance on how a Linux developer can make EFI development bearable.

As we prepare for Wednesday’s one-day strike, I am reminded that academics at Nottingham University are participating in industrial action for the whole term. The “strategy” the “leadership” there is pursuing targets particle physics, theoretical physics and astronomy for job cuts. Why this is the case I have no idea. I don’t think the “leadership” at Nottingham knows either, as the plan was not written by them by a disreputable company called PA Consulting. For the full story, see this blog…

JUBILEE GENERATION X (TOY BIZ) “Jubilation Lee spent lots of time in the malls of Southern California before she first displayed her mutant powers. It was her time spent as an X-Man, however, that may have spoiled Jubilee – now that she’s just another student at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. But considering her studies will include how to fully develop her ability to create explosive plasma ‘fireworks’, there’s bound to be plenty of excitement.” The cast of Generation X, which spun out…

by John Boston The big news in the November Amazing is . . . the return of Richard S. Shaver, perpetrator with Ray Palmer of the “Shaver Mystery” in Amazing during the late 1940s, and last seen in the magazine in October 1957 with an article, or "article": "The History of the Saucers." This time … Continue reading [October 12, 1971] A Little Shaver (the November 1971 Amazing) → The post [October 12, 1971] A Little Shaver (the November 1971 <i>Amazing</i>) appeared first on Galactic Journey.

Is X good again? That's probably the wrong question. The right one: Are we past the era when a single social network needs to be everything to everyone?I don’t know about you, but I simply don’t have time to devote to every single social network. I don’t have the energy to post to Threads and Instagram and TikTok. I would much rather post a couple places I know are worth my time and then focus my energy elsewhere.But if your job is watching the zeitgeist as a blogger like myself presumably…

Agentic iOS development changes a lot once your coding agent can see and measure the app it’s building. Without that, an agent writes code, hopes it works, and asks you to run the app. With the right tools, it navigates the app itself, reads the accessibility tree, and checks performance with evidence. I’ve been building … → The post Agentic iOS Development with RocketSim and RocketTrace appeared first on SwiftLee.

Kevin Kelly's The Inevitable articulates a handful of macro technological trends and follows them to their logical conclusions. It's an insightful read -- I highly recommend it. One decade later, here are some AI-related excerpts from the book: "By 2026, Google’s main product will not be search but AI." "oligarchy of two or three large, general-purpose cloud-based commercial intelligences" "The AI on the horizon looks more like Amazon Web Services" "The bulk of AI will be special purpose…

I had the good fortune to attend an Archiving the Black Web meeting last week. The main focus of the few days in St Louis was for fellows to share stories of web archiving work that they had been involved with. A few themes emerged for me while listening to these presentations. We weren’t using Chatham House Rules, but I didn’t ask anyone if I could write about their work here, so these are broad strokes. Fellows were often trying to contact website creators to negotiate consent. This process…

A series of articles about bare-metal programming for x86 PC-type computers, using Linux for development.

Is Peacock's doc on the cover-ups and countersuits in McCurtain County, OK worth the spilled ink?

As many of you know, I started an algorithmic auditing firm ten years ago, after publishing a book called Weapons of Math Destruction: how big data increases inequality and threatens democracy. I saw how algorithms and AI were infiltrating every human bureaucracy, making important if not life-altering decisions about our daily lives, and I wanted to set better standards in algorithmic auditing than what I’d seen during the financial crisis, where investment banks essentially bought AAA ratings…

As heard at the NIH IRB retreat, which I sadly had to miss: “For the incredible gift of looking at the most chaotic study designs and effortlessly deciphering their hidden meaning, this goes to Milos Miljkovic!” Not into sharing accolades here, but I’m super-proud of this one.

A throwback to 2019. I can't wait to be immersed in the soundscapes of Japanese everyday life again. Filed under scraps with tags: Japan Reply by email Add an emoji reaction: 🥕 🚲 🐾 💜

We had a great conversation with Tom Adams talking about the latest AI news. It’s spicy! Apple Spotify YouTube

Okay, that’s probably an exaggeration. But, dear reader, I present to you a challenge: how many apps do you have on your phone? Is it less than 50? I know people who may even have 100 or more apps, and most of them are completely useless. Ten apps for restaurants they never visit anymore. 15 apps that came with the phone, which they have never opened. Three apps they needed a year ago and just never deleted. Folders and folders of apps, and they couldn’t name half of them. Myself, I have 33.…

AI conversations; Captain Ahab's evil brother Derek. Read here.

Andy rounds up last weekend’s Society meeting. This week, let’s go in increasing order of model size. First up Peter put on a 2mm Ancients game using Strength & Honour rules, Rome vs the Germanic Hordes. The Germanic hordes close on the Roman Legions Three Roman Legions, some with skirmishers, and a cavalry Ala engage four Germanic warbands The Vangiones approach the 7th Legion Staying in the Ancient world, but going up in size we have a mixed 6mm vs 15mm Field of Glory game between Hellenistic…

Appearing on Spanish bookshelves this month is Los mitos de Cthulhu, a 576-page story collection which I spent the first six half of this year illustrating. This is my third illustrated Lovecraft for Editorial Alma, with an introduction by ST Joshi and translations by Jesús Cañadas, and is easily the biggest to date in both size and page count. The book is a hardback with an obi strip, and includes a feature which Alma have been applying to other titles in this series, with a single…

Bertelsmann has taken over as champion in the annual contest to nominate the world’s largest publisher. Publishers Weekly gives us the exciting news. Last year ThomsonReuters held first place. They are now third. Simon & Schuster do not figure in the list, for the simple reason that they have not disclosed revenue since 2023 when they were acquired by the private equity firm KKR. What’s knocking my socks off is the presence in that list of Cambridge University Press (but no Oxford). Presumably…

Dark mode I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had read Preethi Sam’s article, Embracing Dark Mode: A User’s Perspective on Accessibility. I wanted to take into account the perspectives that Preethi shared about using light mode and try to align a design with that perspective. I decided to start with a recent project to update the dark color scheme with what I had learned from the article. I chose the True Woman ’27 conference microsite. I have been working on some updates for it recently…

So, let me first say that LibreWolf is a very decent browser. Maybe it’s just old, crotchety me stuck in his Netscape Navigator ways (OK, thats not totally true since a lot of features I rely on now where not around in Netscape), but things did pop up that have led me back to Brave… for now. So the pro’s are still there: The install on Debian 13 was simple, it is clean, familiar and renders sites with minimal issues. Bookmark import from Brave was a piece of cake and setting up a default…

So, let me first say that LibreWolf is a very decent browser. Maybe it’s just old, crotchety me stuck in his Netscape Navigator ways (OK, thats not totally true since a lot of features I rely on now where not around in Netscape), but things did pop up that have led me back to Brave… for now. So the pro’s are still there: The install on Debian 13 was simple, it is clean, familiar and renders sites with minimal issues. Bookmark import from Brave was a piece of cake and setting up a default…

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #43 (1986)Art by Rod Whigham and Andy Mushynsky•This issue's cover by Mike Zeck and John Beatty is an interesting one, as it is maybe the first "symbolic" cover of the series so far, depicting a hooded skeleton with a machinegun blasting away (And, in that respect, looks a little like one that might have appeared on an old issue of DC's Weird War Tales, which regularly featured skeletons).Having now read the issue, I see that the skeletal figure above is meant to…

Just got my Flu and Covid shot for the season. Posting this as a gentle reminder for you to do the same. Herd immunity works.