PHWOOR! What's under those Burka's ladz?I could say a trio of bank Robbers,but no-one in a Burka is allowed anywhere near a Bank these days.....y'know.Banks, those empty places with no humans inside,just machines sealed behind security glass, rather like the radiation-filled reactor room when Spock tries to repair the ship's warp drive and save the USS Enterprise In The Wrath Of Kahn(also a muslim). Before he dies, he shares an emotional farewell to James T Kirk, rather like us and our…

Hula dancers perform in front of steps leading up to the statue of King Kamehameha in Kapaau, Hawaii This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Stairs/Steps.’ See more responses here. Captions on the photos as usual. Steps leading down to water. Steps that are underwater! Steps going nowhere. Steps over water at Liliuokalani Park in Hilo. Steps going up to water. Steps in a path alongside the ocean at Pu’ukohola.

Thanksgiving (Canada)

A coward. A corrupt politician trying to sway an election. Un-American. A humiliation to the Republican Party. A humiliation of the Republican Party. Please count the American servicemen's lives that have been spent and lost in the fight against totalitarianism and communism. Trump spits on our brave men. He likes Putin because he is like Putin.There aren't enough words for a worm like this. Further, the entire Republican Party, every Representative and Senator, has made itself culpable. No…

Hung out at Gruga park (yet again). The little one took part in her friend's birthday scavenger hunt while her big sister and I went around to take some photographs. 👉 View 4 more images

For much of my life, I've thought that I wanted to be someone else. Or at least be a person like someone else. Sometimes I'd even try to be that person. "That person" has usually been whomever I happened to be reading or watching something about. It's never worked. Instead, maybe I shouldn't work so hard at being whatever kind of person I find interesting this week. Maybe I should be the kind of person I already am. Except, what kind even is that? Fair question! The short answer is that I like…

earthset from the moon, from the Artemis II crew, via NASA David Ehrenfeld, in his 1993 book Beginning Again, forecast that the final decades before civilization’s collapse would be a time of violent, destructive chaos: The most terrifying thing about this disintegration for a society that believes in prediction and control will be the randomness of its violent consequences. The chaotic violence will include not only desperate ruthless struggles over the wealth that remains, but the last great…

Due to his work’s immense commercial success and mainstream relevance, Drake has been nominated for the Grammy awards 56 times. He has only won five times. (By contrast, consider that Kendrick Lamar has been nominated 66 times, and won 27 times.) This year, Drake declined to submit his records for consideration. Perhaps the line of thinking goes: based on all this experience, the Grammy committee tends to give his work resistance. If he’s not going to win anyway, there’s no need to play. It’s…

The Great British Baking Show's Audience Choice Week (collection 14, series 17, episode 3) handed over all three challenges to viewers. Like on Survivor, that wasn't the best idea.

Turning 30 wasn’t actually an issue for me. 35 was much harder. Thirty still felt far enough away from 40 that I could basically consider myself the same age as I had been at the end of my twenties. But 35 feels like nearly 40, which isn’t that far away from 50, which means retirement is basically just 15 years away... Anyway, we all know these “health age” measurements are basically bullshit. They’re trying to put a number on something that’s incredibly hard to measure. But an indication is…

At work we had GIFT Week in which we stepped away from usual objectives-based work to spend time contributing to other work or backlogs. I dusted off my GitHub/developer skills and decided to spend some time addressing accessibility fixes on the Publishing Design guide. Highly enjoyed and recommend, Wild Horse Nine, which we saw on its London premiere at the London Film Festival. Some, in our opinion, inappropriate laughter from some of the audience throughout on the subject of the 1973 Chilean…

A shortcut to send to Kindle from GoodLinks The result on a Kindle GoodLinks is a macOS/iOS read-it-later app. I do read directly in the app, but I also tag longer items that I want to read on my big Kindle.To get the tagged entries onto the Kindle I have a shortcut I can run from my phone.This shortcut sends HTML, but the Amazon send-to-Kindle service doesn’t fetch images for you. They appear as the “broken image” icon.I “solve that” by cutting all the image tags out of the HTML before…

Time for the latest compilation of old school Dungeons & Dragons threads; all of the compilations can be found in my Dungeons & Dragons blog tag. I’ve still been on a roll in terms of doing these threads on Bluesky quite regularly! Legions of Thyatis (1990), by John Nephew. Here we have one of the very few ancient Roman Empire D&D adventures! This adventure is set in the D&D campaign world of Mystara, and is set in the empire of Thyatis, which is modeled after the late Roman empire. We…

A collection of stencil patterns that appeared recently on the streets. I do love patterns and these are so complex that they are almost visually overwhelming. They’re almost opt art with the way the grid is cut through with the arc — all with the same color. Perhaps they’re a reimagining of a cross walk graphic with a walk and wander motif interspersed. It certainly would be very tedious to cut this stencil by hand, so it could be 3D printed or cut via a CAD system. Sadly though, I think…

The reason for the visit to Ashington is that it is the end of a branch line that was re-opened to passenger traffic in December 2024, having been previously closed 60 years before. The town itself (some argue that it is a village) has a population of about 30,000, and grew up around the coal mining industry. The only clock that I found on my visit was on the Town Hall on Station Road. Work on this building began in 1911 and was completed two years later. It was the headquarters of Ashington…

Busy busy busy. My dentist’s uncanny mind-reading ability has struck again, and now that my teeth are fixed I have been successfully upsold on a new treatment. My dermatologist finally let me graduate the big-boy skincare medication. How do I feel? Well, relieved: Six months of dry lips & skin and mood-swings were unpleasant. However it worked including strangely for my hair. I’m gonna remain on a (very) low dose. Sitting in the park in Osaki is very good. Why don’t we sit in more parks?…

I took a quick glance at Facebook this morning. This is a habit of mine; I wish folks a happy birthday, scroll until I find something that is clearly AI and/or rage bait, and then I close Facebook until the next day. This activity usually takes a minute or two, since Facebook is designed to mostly enrage these days. This morning is took less than 15 seconds. It’s time to develop a new habit. We are on vacation and I shouldn’t be looking at social media anyway. I really don’t want to know what’s…

"In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could do to any person; I create myself." — Susan Sontag To keep myself organised and, because I love paper and all things stationery, I've been a journalist all my life. From writing in little spiral-bound notebooks and school exercise books as a child, right on through to a fancy leather-bound Midori (an expensive Japanese notebook) that was a birthday gift. I've been an avid note-maker since I was able to hold a pencil and…

In psychology, they say there are five stages to dealing with grief: denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, and acceptance. The order is interchangeable. It depends on who you are as a person and your emotional template. This is the most clinical way to look at grief. It almost assumes that if you know the stages in advance, dealing with grief and loss becomes easier. You can analyse your feelings and tell which stage you are in right now. If you are feeling angry, you know you are in the early…

Image via Reddit I used to have a long About page, but I shortened it. So, this morning, I created a separate page for my full bio.About I My Book | Consulting I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Email

This week’s chart was a bit of a challenge, as I wanted to put all of my top three songs at number one. In the end, I decided to keep The Neighbourhood‘s “Private” on top, as I continue to love it immensely. Accordingly, Phoebe Bridgers‘ “Lost Boys” and Fontaines D.C.‘s “Marianne” remain at #2 and #3. Cage the Elephant holds at #4 for a third week with “Beaches In Tennessee” which currently tops all of Billboard‘s various Alternative charts. Even though they’re one of my longtime favorite…

Pupdate The heat wave(s) finally let up, but much of the month was still warm and sunny, allowing for some good walks. Miniature Dachshunds Max and Milo paddling in a stream As I covered in an earlier post, Milo’s back in remission :) Caskmaster The Scotch Malt Whisky Society (SMWS) has started running a tasting competition called Caskmaster, with heats in various tasting rooms around the country and a final in November in Leith. I think it’s intended to get people into the new flavour…

they wrote that they did not finish the tattoo on someone, because their friend had died. i had faced a death of someone i cared about, and when i read the post, it's like something inside of me dropped. my hands got cold and sweaty and my the air around me felt heavy again. later, the friend they were talking about commented on the blogpost, being all alive and well evidently. apparently it was a joke (or maybe some slang i had not heard of?). but anyway, i unfollowed them. this is petty but…

Megacauda sungeiI was speaking with my friend Lori yesterday about mammals in a world dominated by dinosaurs. It is easy to picture the giants and overlook the smaller, furry creatures living alongside them. Yet those little animals had lives every bit as interesting as the dinosaurs that so often command our attention.A newly described fossil gives us a wonderful reason to look more

I always look forward to Steve Slotin’s auction catalogs and enjoy picking one listing to share on the blog. This time it’s a vivid Sister Gertrude Morgan work with hundreds of eyes…eyes she used to make with a steak bone as a stylus I once owned. I’m including a small picture of it here…A once cherished tool in my collection of her paintings. Over the years I collected work by the New Orleans preacher and artist who epitomized what this field and this art is all about. I have shared a dozen or…

I was reading recently about intermodal fares, the systems by which multiple modes of transit, and frequently multiple operators of transit, can be (or not be!) experienced as a single seamless whole by their customers through the use of shared payment systems, travelcards, etc.I thought it might be useful to think through how this operates in three different cities I've visited in the past year or so, and what we might take from those cities about how cities in general can make this idea work…

i tend to write very fast (had originally written vrery, point proven). my posts are born when i am feeling strongly about something, and i need to get my point across. the point i am making could be a realization, or something i dislike a lot, or an idea i believe would help people. i never proof-read the posts until later, and sometimes a few people have read the post and i notice embarrassing typos. it is a part of i blog, i suppose, but when i come across them i fix them. i have read a post…

I woke up with questions. Do I start packing? Is it irresponsible to take the leap right now? Will I regret waiting? Will I even live long enough? Prevailing orthodoxy says to stay put, work overtime, save aggressively, and target a 4% withdrawal at 65. That would mean another 24 years of this shit. I’ll eat a .40 before that happens. Perhaps the real question is the boy. Would an unconventional life abroad be a boon or a curse? It’s not like the U.S. public school system is doing much for him…

Be sure to check out the latest addition to our lineup of Carl pencil sharpeners! 2026 Dallas Pen Show Recap (via Pen Addict - Kimberly). It’s difficult to get to gauge the Dallas show given the rapid expansion from 2 to 4 days, which changes how vendors look at attending the show. Friday and Saturday were relatively well attended, but a four day show is difficult to justify.Ryan Krusac 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (via Figboot on Pens). I love Ryan’s pens featuring hand-carved artwork. This…

As part of my Pinball Era I have been playing a lot of pinball video games as well, which includes both DEMON’S TILT and XENOTILT. Both are pinball games inspired by the Turbografx/PC-Engine games Alien Crush and Devil’s Crush and like everyone else that’s played them, I think these are some of the best modern pinball video games out there. At a very broad high level, they have the same format of there being three segments of a pinball table that you hit the ball up. Both games have two…