After six or so blog posts about 1920s speculative fiction, let's peek in on the mid-century with Judith Merril and read three more stories she recommended in the back of her fifth Year's Best anthology under the heading "Honorable Mentions." We started the "H"s last time, like a month ago, when we read stories by Harry Harrison, Laurence M. Janifer (working undercover as "Larry M. Harris"), W. T. Haggert, and Jim Harmon. Today we'll finish up the "H"s with three stories. Merril also gave the…

Back to Gothenburg and the endless stream of great indiepop bands. Today I want to check out on a duo called Honeymoon Over! that was active back in the mid 2000s, releasing an EP in 2007. I remember them a little bit from Myspace. But thanks to a post from my friend David Chalé I found out that the band has reissued that EP a few years ago, digitally. The EP was re-released by Fallible Records from Sweden in 2023. The idea was to make the five songs from the EP available on all streaming…

I linked to Cozy journal back in May, and I've been very happily using it since, ditching Day One completely. I like that it's Markdown, local, and not junked up with new AI “features” constantly. I LOVE that it works with files I've created with Keyboard Maestro, and Hazel. I spent some time hacking together a couple of little Keyboard Maestro macros. One automatically populates my art journal in Cozy with my daily drawing, and the other creates a fresh journal entry set to my chosen location…

We rarely have those Philip J. Fry "Shut up and take my money!" moments, but when Firewalla opened pre-orders for the Firewalla Switch SE beta in early summer 2026, we did exactly that. Managed switches are one of the biggest pain points for people who are not network engineers, because the terminology gets technical fast. We had been watching the community boards for a switch that works natively with Firewalla, so we jumped at the chance to join the early release list. Our unmanaged switch…

I’m not sure why I have such warm and fuzzy feelings about British actor Alfred

Last week I saw a post with a few likes on Bluesky by Alex Harvey, author of Forgotten Vikings: New Approaches to the Viking Age, who was justifiably pissed off about “an AI-‘written’ complete copy of my own book … on Amazon; same title, more-or-less the same blurb, and exactly the same impetus”. I took up his challenge to “absolutely dive-bomb this plagiaristic piece of shit” by posting a review, which Amazon rejected because I’d quoted the phrase “plagiaristic piece of shit”. By then I’d…

The Valuable News weekly series is dedicated to provide summary about news, articles and other interesting stuff mostly but not always related to the UNIX/BSD/Linux systems. Whenever I stumble upon something worth mentioning on the Internet I just put it here. Today the amount information that we get using various information streams is at massive overload. Thus one needs to focus only on what is important without the need to grep(1) the Internet everyday. Hence the idea of providing such…

What is this?A weekly note on what I've been up to. Last week's is here.tldrWithin touching distance of running 1,000km for the year. Time out on Tuesday with the bestie. Digitalism two nights running, Manchester then Hackney. Sunday funday. Doorframes stripped. Town lose again.Ticking overOnly two runs in the week, for 10.34km. Still cautious, with the TFL rehab in mind. The left knee felt wobbly a kilometre into the first one, so I stretched it off and stayed on laps of the park. The second…

So yesterday the UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced that he was informed that there was Russian interference in the UK's disastrous 2016 Brexit referendum - where just a sliver over half of the votes were in favour of the UK leaving the European Union. In 2019, a report was commissioned to investigate Russian interference in UK politics. When the investigation was concluded, the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson basically sat on the report. At that point there was an election looming and…

I started this list earlier in the year to think through the impact that different books had on my life. I wanted to put together a top 10 or 15 list but it is hard to whittle this list down. I have starred the ones that I feel have had a greater impact. Basic Christianity (introduction) by John Stott (1987) More Than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell (1987) The Search for Significance by Robert McGee (1988) Trusting God* by Jerry Bridges (1989) – I have read this one four different times (1989,…

Thinking about my running goals and races that I have booked into the calendar (listed here), I have come up with a plan (with the help of the Coros app) for the upcoming week… My running has been slacking lately, so I don’t want to destroy my legs this week and cause any issues, so easing myself back in is certainly the sensible route. My plan is currently: Tuesday, 8km at below threshold pace1 Wednesday, 5km at below threshold pace Friday, 5km at around threshold pace Sunday, 12km at below…

I’d been thinking about my running goals and races that I have booked into the calendar (listed here), I have come up with a plan (with the help of the Coros app) for the upcoming week… My running has been slacking lately, so I don’t want to destroy my legs this week and cause any issues, so easing myself back in is certainly the sensible route. My plan is currently: Tuesday, 8km at below threshold pace1 Wednesday, 5km at below threshold pace Friday, 5km at around threshold pace Sunday, 12km at…

The link. The paragraph: The brewery is still in the original location behind my house. The commute is fantastic. The Brewery is a 1 bbl hot side and 2 bbl cold side system with four fermenters and one bright tank. It’s a small operation but it does the trick.

There's been a lot of discourse about the small web self selecting for AI and Tech and that being the bulk of the content. E.g the very good post here from Hakker in response to this (also very good) post from Gordon I have my own thoughts on this, so thought I'd try an experiment. All using Kagi Small web search, which I believe is designed to focus on blogs and smaller websites. In fact - this is what Kagi say; "To begin with, while there is no single definition, "small web" typically refers…

A few days ago I wrote about topological models of modal logic. If you find general topology more familiar than modal logic, this correspondence could be helpful. If you think the motivation for general topology is evident but the motivation for modal logic is suspect, the correspondence between the two fields might relieve some of your suspicion of the latter. Topological models, however, are quite limited. You can’t model provability logic, for example, by the usual approach to constructing…

Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees – Halloween Special #1C Peach Momoko Variant Release: Oct 07, 2026Cover: Oct 2026 Creators WriterJames Tynion IV | Jared CullumArtistJared Cullum | Dave WachterCover ArtistPeach MomokoColoristPatrick HorvathLettererHassan Otsmane-Elhaou “Spooky Season” doesn’t really mean much to me. For the most part, I like autumn more than the other seasons, I suppose, but while I do occasionally indulge in some horror – particularly in comics – it’s not really the genre I…

Things I have recently discovered that tango is "like"1: Tango is like... improvising music You're moving within the freedom of a framework, and attempting to make yourself transparent and predictable to your partner while simultaneously bringing out the beauty in your movements. It's about precision, but also about compromise. It's about training your muscle memory enough that you can turn off your brain and just flow, because that's where the art appears. For the past few years I've been…

Two weeks ago a new version of Sobelow was released. Sobelow is a static code analysis tool focused on security and these days it is a de facto standard for providing a minimal security measures to Elixir projects. I am mentioning this release because it contains one feature suggested and developed by me: Github Workflow commands formatter. The strory behind this feature is relatively simple and may sound familiar. When you have Sobelow check added as a Githb Aciton on your PR and the code…

The Leonardo Momento Zero has been a long-time favorite in the fountain pen world, and on this blog. We have reviewed several Leonardo models since their launch in 2017, and they consistently rate as some of the best on the market. So why, if the Momento Zero has been reviewed many times already, is it worth spilling a few words on again? The market changed, and the Leonardo Momento Zero is an even better option now than it was a few years ago. One of the topics I want to focus on in the coming…

I got a box of the old metal warriors of the dead for more than I'd have paid for the plastic kit... but it came with the king of the dead. I haven't painted him yet because he was the only mini in the set that was already painted, so he spent a few days having his original paint stripped off. He will however be painted basically the same way these fine fellows were painted. These minis from Games Workshop's Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game are perhaps some of the easiest minis to paint.…

Spanish garlic chicken is a wild take on the classic pollo al ajillo, but this recipe is geared for pheasants and other game birds. Spanish Garlic Pheasant is the latest post on Hunter Angler Gardener Cook.

“¿Donde están las velas?” I asked, eyes darting back and forth. The grocery store employee paused long enough for me to look at him. Then, he peered down at me, cocked his head, and said a simple, “Hola.” “Oh my gosh. Lo siento, señor. Hola. Buena. Las velas, por favor.” He smiled and proceeded to walk me toward the aisle where the candles were. And that is the moment I began thinking about greetings, who uses them, and when. My friend who is a student priest in Ifá tradition taught me about…

A few of you remarked on my use of the word "spoopy" on Epbot, so I'd just like to point out that's totally a thing people say and/or write on cakes: See?However.Like all fun new lingo we youngin's use [WHAT I'M YOUNG], this may confuse some of the less hip, less "with it," less "I have a Tumblr account and I know how to use it" crowd. So just to be clear, bakers, "spoopy" is something you SAY, not something you try to illustrate: o.0And you thought having a birthday near a major holiday was…

2026-10-12Hello! I hate the color in this image!Why do museums and exhibitions have such awful lighting? To my untrained eye, the color of this beige machine looks ugly. In person, it was fine. In the end, I caved and let a preset do the work of recoloring this image.And the display! Modern displays have advanced so far, so I didn't know how to deal with the strobe display of this Macintosh device. It has no smoothing whatsoever, and I could see the flicker in person.I would have needed to take…

Well, I've finally done it. I set myself up a newsletter on Substack and I've written my first few articles (only the first is currently live), but this was enough to make me realise what I wanted to use the newsletter for. Aside from a more professional outlet for my frustration around my 9-5 than this blog is, I wanted to be able to encourage myself to explore my creative voice and how creativity is used to combat fear. I've spoken about the courage that comes from creativity before in this…

[Designed at MIT and manufactured in the U.S.A.] What began as a project for MIT’s “Product Engineering Processes” class has become a product patients with tremors have described as life-changing. That’s pretty great.Link: https://news.mit.edu/2026/mit-class-project-turns-into-fda-cleared-treatment-for-tremors-1002

"There's nowhere good to eat in Newington Green", nobody ever says. You'd think a part of town that already hosted Parilla, Jolene, Cadet and Primeur not to mention the dozens of top-quality ocakbasi and Eritrean/Ethiopian spots up and down Green Lanes, wouldn't need yet another notable spot, and yet here we are. I'm sorry if I sound like a stuck record, but as a Battersea resident yes of course I appreciate what Ploussard are doing, but I shouldn't have to rely on one (admittedly excellent)…

There was a wild afternoon from my early to mid teens, which I remember oddly and somewhat funny of course, and yet I cannot say that I remember much of what happened at all.No, this was one of those wild afternoons that I took a few extra steps to secure with a n 8-hour trip on a substance known as Lysergic Acid Diethylamide.Yes. This was ‘the girl,” or also known as “lucy in the skies with diamonds.”But what the hell, right?I was young and crazy and longhaired and fit to be tied. Nothing…

Ah, London! London! Our delight, / Great flower that opens but at night, / Great City of the midnight sun, / Whose day begins when day is done. Richard La Gallienne (1866-1947)

This is an operation I had prepared to cap my Delta Green campaign with. Though I liked it, I ended up not wanting to go along with it and killed the game first. Also the whole thing ended up being way too wordy, this is NOT a simple drop-in scenario. Hopefully you can do with it more than I did. The whole thing is inspired by the videogame Night in the Woods and, very obviously, Twin Peaks. Content warnings: Kidnapping, sexual violence, opiates. Table of Contents The Situation Places The Mine…