As has become a tradition, I decided to start off our latest club reading week with some crime novels, and 1949 was certainly a bumper year for those. I mentioned some in my post last week on previous reads, and came up with a good number of possibilities. However, I decided to skip Christie this time round and instead went for two other favourite authors – Simenon and Gladys Mitchell! My Friend Maigret by Simenon (translated by Nigel Ryan) 1949 was a heck of a year for fans of Maigret, as his…

Unfortunately, as overseas publishers become ever more reluctant to send books all the way to Australia, the ‘flow’ of review copies has dried up somewhat over the past couple of years, so when one does end up in my letter box, especially when it’s completely unexpected, it brightens up my day a little. That’s especially true when the book is by a writer whose work I’ve tried, and enjoyed, on several occasions, as is the case with today’s choice. This one takes us on another vicarious journey…

It’s time for the #1949Club, hosted by StuckinaBook and Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, in which bloggers are invited to read and review books that were published in a chosen year. When I first started reading Georgette Heyer’s books I was about 13 and most identified with her younger heroines and now that I am older, I usually recommend Frederica, Venetia, The Masqueraders or Devil’s Cub to first time readers. However, Arabella, and its ingenue heroine, continues to be one of my favorites.The…

It’s almost inevitable, isn’t it? Any time a post-Super Mario Kart series or character becomes popular, they eventually get their own cutesy racing game to go with their success. Sonic. Diddy Kong. Crash. Konami. Even Mortal Kombat, if bonus modes count. In spite of their inescapable presence, too many of these games make the same mistake: They stick a few favourite characters in some colourful vehicles, throw in a few themed power ups, and call it a day. The characters are in karts, therefore…

In the previous article we found out that the kernel makes all the memory feel like one single big thing, even though underneath it’s split into pieces. Today we go the other way: we’re going to make one machine look like several. You’ve probably done this already without thinking about it. Start a container, and the processes inside it see their own hostname, their own list of processes, their own network and their own filesystem, as if they had the machine to themselves. But there’s no second…

A flower can be held in many ways. One can latch on to the stem, breaking the stem. It can lie flat in ones hand, loosing it to a sudden wind gust. It can be put in vase, where one doesn't even touch the flower. One crumble it up, making its original shape and form unrecognizable. Put in you pocket and let it peak out. Or perhaps in your hair. There are many ways to hold a flower, but the important is that you never stop looking at it.

O scale is becoming increasingly popular, helped by the number of smaller locomotives now available with matching price tags. When an O gauge shunter is little more than a OO example it is clear why people are intrigued by the scale…This latest layout design commission explored the concept of a ‘Paxton Road’ in O gauge - a blank-ish canvas with operational potential but the ability to enjoy different models in a realistic setting.The layout design process is a guided exploration of my customers…

I quite enjoyed Train to Busan when it came out, so I was excited to watch Yeon Sang-ho's new zombie movie, Colony. Here is the trailer: Off the bat I'll just say that this doesn't really hold a candle to Train to Busan, and I'd probably recommend it mainly to people who love zombie films or love Korean zombie movies in particular. It's got a ton of creative zombie twists and "mechanics" and remains surprising throughout, but it puts way more energy into the zombie half of the movie than the…

The three women of the McWatt family, Honesty, Mary and their niece, Bridie, sat around the interior grate of their little flat in Napier Crescent, Castleburgh, on a cold December evening in 1945, their eyes on the black marble clock on the mantelshelf, tense with anxiety and anticipation. The opening paragraph of Winifred Peck’s A Clear Dawn made me feel pretty sure I’d picked up something I’d enjoy. We’re in a domestic setting with a group of women and something is happening to shake things…

September 2026 was a big month! Hence my posting this Learning Log in mid-October. Doodles by Timothy Goodman I headed out to Boston for the first time for Webflow Conf. My team, a couple of our partners, and I presented the Builder Keynote; the session—and the product updates we shared—was a love letter to everyone who builds sites on Webflow. Our sweet, funny, goofy daughter turned 1 year old! 🍰 😭 Literally don’t know where the time went. To celebrate, we had a small get together at our…

'We will leave the silver moon-flowers of old thought for the gold sun-flowers of our true Apollonian theme ... It is before Dionysus, the maddening one, the disturber, came rudely in the twilight to make the fair, even world, odd and fantastic; the horns thrusting apart the twin thighs of duality. Out of that odd, wild, Bacchic art came Unity, for the order of the old tie was as a chaos to the goat-god...' - from 'Dionysus and Diana'Coming soon - with your help - from the resurrected Vine…

One day, two prompts. This one is stinky.

Looking out from my balcony at the Dusit Thani Hotel in Cairo, Egypt These weeknotes are over a week late. It’s been a busy time. After finishing up with work on Friday evening, I leapt straight for the ironing board to get a new set of work shirts ready for the following week. On Saturday morning, just after 6am, a taxi picked me up to take me to Heathrow for a flight to Cairo. In Egypt, the working week is Sunday to Thursday, which meant that I had a one-day weekend, which I spent travelling.…

Latest shiny links from a week on the web. For even more, try last weeks set found here or the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Bloggie-nominated. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch, delinked by request. Vulcan Stev's Database hosts Octobers RPG Blog Carnival: Magic Items, the Weirdest and Best Medieval World gives us Castle enthusiasts, assemble! Inside Out Library shares A world of images, hidden inside books. Joe B. posts Divinity of conversational games…

Four essays have made a single case from four directions. Organisations appoint on the certificate because it is legible, train by the fortnight because it produces a document, hand the result machines that reward obedience, and sometimes select against the very people who would have argued. Twice I have promised that the remedy costs less than the certification budget and considerably more trouble. This essay makes good on that promise, and most of it is given to practice rather than argument,…

In continuing work on VAAK, which has been progressing each day, every day. Sort of, kind of going over a lot of the same issues until the wrinkles are flattened out, while others spring up for the first time, or once again (the fediverse being tons and tons of different software is a huge blessing and a horrible curse), I’ve come pretty much to the point where it’s generally usable and not hugely and entirely a glitch-fest that was originally designed as a page where I could view incoming…

We live in interesting times. Not 'interesting' as in Ukraine, Venezuela, Yemen; but things could go sloppy quickly if [insert emergency here]. The Government of Ireland has just thought through the list of things that could go wrong;done a risk assessment [seriousness of adverse situation x likelihood of it happening]decided how much infrastructure will remainmade a list of citizen actionshired a design team [cute hat R]printed 500,000 copies send one out to every home in the audience Don't…

TL;DR - Thank goodness for good friends. Zane @Speedytech7 noticed this crack in the metal frame that secures the passenger front lower control arm when we were reinforcing my alignment cam tabs. I wasn't even sure I wanted to go to the trouble of upgrading the cam tabs; sometimes, we all get more than a little lucky. Got it welded back up as good as new-ish. You push your truck hard, what cracks next? I've been having a bit of trouble with my alignment, and I've mostly been trying to ignore…

TL;DR - I've had a slow leak in one of my Kenda Klever RTs for the last two trips. With a bit of soapy water, I found the problem and got it plugged up. 16-penny puncture. Once on each of our recent trips to Canada - first to Bella Coola, and then further north - we woke up to a completely flat rear passenger tire on the Tacoma. It was a slow leak - unnoticeable while we were out on the trail during the day - and easily remedied at the time by just pumping a few more pounds of…

On software engineering, epistemology, and liability when code is generated by LLMs. Robert C. Martin recently generated much interest with a tweet: "My current strategy is to not read any of the code written by my agents. That's the only way I can take advantage of their productivity. What I do instead is to surround the agents with extreme constraints. Unit tests, gherkin tests, QA procedures, quality metrics, mutation testing, test coverage, and a plethora of others. In the end, I have very…

The flight back from Venice was delayed and delayed again. I finished the drive home at 3.30am. Got through that journey yelling along to the drive time playlist at the top of my lungs. That sort of set the tone for the working week. The last day in Venice was low-key. Not the culinary or artistic highs of the three days beforehand. Clouds sat still, I *just missed* each vaporetto. That kind of day. The Peggy Guggenheim was a miss, for me. Beautiful space, but art that shut me out. I have said…

It’s been a while since I’ve written about a game on this blog and what better game to write about than one that hooked me from start to finish — and that I still haven’t been able to put down, because I’m not quite ready to move on yet. I’ll try to keep the main portion as spoiler-free as possible, because this is one of those games that you should know as little about as possible, before you play it. If you haven’t played it yet: go do it! It’s really good. The game is set in an artificial…

I’ve done a proper unboxing before on this blog, and since SuSE Linux 7.2 is contained in a box, it needs unboxing. But where normally for any box six sides are plenty to make clear what’s inside, advertise logos and paint one corner red with the word “New” (or translations thereof), SuSE apparently needed two more sides, so they simply added them. A box with eight sides This box was for the Dutch market, so it’s in Dutch, but the contents are mostly not. On the back side (not visible) a price…

My blog used to use Crimson Pro as the main body font, something that threads the needle of being serif-y enough for the Possession-esque posts, but not too out of place for the technical macOS Messages debugging ones. You should consider customizing anything you use, and the font is no exception. Let's tweak it!

Perfume PosseA Little Bit More Lush Well, we’ve crossed over into ‘proper’ autumn. Colder, damp, though sun here and there. First time lighting the woodstove this past Saturday. Gathering up the eucalyptus tree’s shedded bark which makes good fire starter. I am slowly cutting back the… Continue Reading → Perfume PosseA Little Bit More Lush

My quest through deadpan photography and New Topographics has led me to discovering a photographer that kind of lives at the intersection: Lars Tunbjörk. I’ve spent a worrying fraction of my life inside offices. When you work as a university researcher or as a software developer, that’s pretty much all you know. Fluorescent tubes, carpet tiles, the smell of someone else’s lunch reheated in a shared microwave (ewww! I remember particularly nasty fishy leftovers). You rarely photograph your own…

Nothing says autumn quite like pumpkin baking and this Pumpkin Streusel Bundt Cake is a true seasonal favourite. Made with real pumpkin, warm autumn spices, and filled with a buttery brown sugar streusel, this moist and tender cake is perfect for cozy mornings, afternoon coffee breaks or festive gatherings. Elegant enough for special occasions, yet simple enough for everyday baking, every slice is filled with the comforting flavours of the season. I have a beautiful pumpkin cake recipe to share…

My symptoms had been getting steadily worse for almost a year by the time I was brought in for questioning. I’d been in denial for at least eighteen months at that point. It was easy to hide from other people because my profession is an extremely solitary one. The very few people that I do meet invariably don’t have the chance to even see my face — and if they do, and I do my job right, it’s the last thing they ever see. My reputation precedes me, you might say. My clients all come via word of…

Preorder Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster! Offer three choices at several points in your games to give your players agency over the campaign they play. Selecting from three meaningful choices gives your campaign a clear direction, focuses where you need to prep, and ensures you're not railroading the characters down a single predetermined path. Whenever your adventure or campaign reaches a moment of decision, offer three reasonable choices to the players. Whenever the characters complete a quest or…