Implementing my latest idea of “let’s support everything I can” in Quicktake for Apple II came with a new challenge: in order for every program to have as much RAM as each require, the application now ships a lot of binaries, each with its own task. There’s one for configuring the camera model and serial communication, one for the application’s UI, one for viewing and printing images, four different image decoders, and six camera drivers. I already have experience using zx02 to compress assets…

Last June, when I left Indiana after the first TEEM onground intensive that I attended, I thought ahead to our next gathering in October, where I anticipated autumnal shifts with still-warm days.I did not anticipate a hurricane affecting the weather that far inland. But here we are. I've changed travel plans, and instead of leaving on Sunday, I'm leaving in a few hours. There's already a bit of rain here, but nothing like what is expected later this morning.We are supposed to have record…

There's a fun demo of me talking to Grok in my Tesla about my emails. Which, admittedly, is a slightly ridiculous way to introduce an email tool. But the reason I built CloudPost was much less flashy: I wanted ChatGPT to help me make sense of my inbox. I've had my email address for a long time. Over the years, it's accumulated a barrage of spam, newsletters I no longer read, and mailing lists I barely remember joining. In my experience, iCloud's spam filtering is pretty poor, and sorting…

Daily Drawing 1014

Best of the blogs ▷ Bernie Michalik lists ten good reasons to start a blog (or continue the one you already have) even though blogging will probably never make you any real money. It’s not about the money, he reminds us. Read Why you should blog, be it 2006 or 2026 or 2046 ▷ Fancy a dander through the English countryside? M. B. Henry took one not long ago, including a visit to a maze on the ground. Read The Miz Maze: Finding the Right Path Sears KS-2, 135mm f/2.8 Auto Sears MC, Fujifilm…

August saw a family trip to Vienna, but of course, there was time for me to go for a couple of cycle rides while I was there and in this post, I am going to show you Argentinierstraße, a street to the south of the city centre.Argentinierstraße provides a connection between Vienna's Central Station and Karlplatz, which is just outside the city core. The street was named after a donation from the Argentine government after the First World War, but the streets in the area had been around for…

Desert Brat 2026-10-10

Power Cat 2026-10-10

Musik hören und allem aus dem Weg gehen, voll mein Ding.

My book shelves are groaning and to help clear some space the following have sacrificed their place in my collection…Prices on multiple purchases negotiable, and postage added at cost. Payment via bank transfer preferred. Prices and details on caption. All in good but used condition, prices reflect condition.Paul Theroux travel book ‘The Great Railway Bazaar’, deeply enjoyable diary of travel from London across Europe through India and Asia and return via the USSR - paper back £1‘The Model…

This years Vindiecon was just had last weekend - this year I was purely a punter - got in played a game, chatted with pals, shopped the vendors, bailed. A very early start to the day by eldest had made it long already by the time I got in the door and I turned into a pumpkin and rolled home just as the second slot was starting up. First impressions This year felt like a solid evolution on last year - perhaps not "better" since the first one last year had a wonderful boutique vibe but bigger…

Week notes, weeks 1340-1341 / 2026-09-27--2026-10-10 Couldn't organize myself in time for week 1340, so here is a post featuring not one, but two weeks! Overall, was plenty busy with both work and German studies. My company was part of the organizers for KCD Sofia, and I got one of the tickets. I was... amused by the variety of AI topics at the conference. There was AI in cybersecurity, AI in operations, AI in HTTP gateways, AI mindfulness for used resources... along with some nicer Open-source…

I think square sensors make the most sense for video shared online. We watch so much of it on phones and tablets, turning screens and moving between feeds, full-screen playback, and smaller windows. The same recording needs to work in several shapes. Cinema already has the right setting: a movie theater, where the screen presents the intended composition. This idea is for video that travels between devices and orientations. A square sensor, recorded as a square image, gives portrait and…

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg: Apple Inc.’s upcoming push into smart home devices will include a doorbell, thermostat and other accessories developed through an unusual partnership with LG Electronics Inc. The products will be part of an ecosystem of devices that work with Apple’s new smart home hub, as well as an upgraded HomePod mini and fresh TV set-top box, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The new Apple devices are set to be introduced on Oct. 13. The products…

1917 Swedish comedy, dir. Mauritz Stiller, Victor Sjöström, Karin Molander; IMDb. Thomas Graal is a struggling scriptwriter who falls for, and takes inspiration from, his secretary… Vtt original Thomas Graals bästa film and in rerelease Wanted - A Film Actress.

See all that green? Every green cell is a part of the screen the browser just repainted. The snake moves about 6 times a second, but the board below gets repainted 60 times a second. Now switch to Dirty flag. The board goes calm. Only the cells the snake actually touched flash, and about 90% of the frames paint nothing at all. Same game. Same picture. A fraction of the work. The trick is one of the simplest patterns in game development: the dirty flag. Where I found it I’m building a…

Wrote section 'I asked LLMs to critique my article'. Minor updates to military and teachers.

The last time I brought you here to walk along the Ashuelot River we were looking for those beautiful closed gentians, but this time we’re leaf peeping. Leaf peeper is the name given to those who come sometimes from very long distances to see the colorful foliage. The only difference between them and natives is, we don’t have to travel to see this amazing spectacle. But just like the leaf peepers we stand mute, stunned into silence by the beauty of it all. What after all, is there to say? I get…

Not a bad day again. Cleaned the big rose bed. Very dirty. The gang came for tea. Went home 7pm. I never went out. Stayed in and saw the telly.

And so to the next batch of excellent layouts. Penworth is a worthy Pendon in N gauge. I rather liked Watts Lane (O9), a modular estate railway, perhaps only spoilt by the shortage of running trains. But I appreciated the concept of ‘linked cameos’ – potential for N gauge here? Minimum space O gauge shunting on Wood Street. Lacey Dale (N). High level for continuous running, low level for shunting. Ropley (OO) is a closely to scale model of the station on the heritage Watercress line. Excellent…

Welcome to your weekly ttrpg newsletter. This week I published Turns: Understanding the Grammar of D&D and Good Adventures and Great Adventures. The most popular older posts on the blog were Running Red Dragon’s Tale, Dungeon, Inc., A First Review, Dolmenwood Resources for You, Writing Interesting Encounters, and Prepping Myths in Mythic Bastionland. Also! This newsletter currently has 245 subscribers but I’d love to have 250 (because I am shallow and like to see number go up) so please feel…

Another week has flown by, and the main thing keeping me going is Celebrity Traitors! I’ve also started my second level of British Sign Language, which is already quite a step up from the first level. So it’s all go here, and I don’t seem to be finishing many books – but I’m excited to launch into the 1949 Club next week! As ever, Karen and I are asking everyone to read and review books from a particular year, and this time it’s 1949. Exciting! Before we get there, here’s a book, a blog post,…

Don't know about you guys in the rest of the world, but I'm gonna get mine some hefty Xmas presents this year, cause I'm getting me some hefty $$$ coming in from... the greatest POTUS of all time! First, I got $5,000 coming in from all the massive, record breaking DOGE savings. It's a little late, granted, but it's a comin' awright! Then I got the $2,000 from the unprecedented tariff savings on the way! And finally, finally, I got another five grand coming in when MAGA humiliates and lays waste…

Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time, we’ve got cask sales down, cask sales up, and tips on sipping. First, some big new: Carslberg is closing the Marston’s brewery in Burton upon Trent, citing falling cask sales, as reported by Jessica Mason at The Drinks Business: The range of beers that are currently brewed at the Marstons Brewery and could potentially need to either be re-allocated to a new location or face extinction include: Marston’s…

I selected two rather random slide scans, but there is a theme (as you can see by the title of the post). Where can you stay when you go to Palm Springs or Santa Barbara? Stay tuned!This 1963 scan was a mystery to me. Sure, we can see a funky place called the "Dunes Hotel", with that distinctive whatsit out front. A pergola from outer space? With the name of the hotel,, and the desert-ish environs, I thought that this might be on the outskirts of Las Vegas, but it is in fact Palm Springs. The…

Man In The Moon (1960)

“The weekend mindset is an invention overdue for radical reinvention,” writes freelancer and Zoom jockey Richard Morgan. Most people’s Saturdays, it seems, are as busy as any weekday, while Sundays are no longer sacrosanct. The weekend was once the week’s well-earned dessert but its ice-cream has long been melted by the burdensome breach of busyness. The slop we now have can perhaps be refrozen, but it will never again be the confection of yesteryear. Besides, if we’re gradually learning to…

When you really picture a future situation, with the place, the people and the small details, you are doing more than daydreaming. Your brain builds a scene out of what it already knows: memories, facts and past experiences, recombined into something that does not exist yet. The more concrete the scene, the more believable it becomes. Then your brain starts looking around. Which needs could I meet here, which goals move closer? The motives that come up first tend to matter most, because they…

Letters from the turn of a century, 3The third and last, for now, of my series on Art Nouveau lettering from Manchester. If you look up the architectural history of the Vine Inn on Kennedy Street, you’ll find out how it occupies two buildings, one originally an 18th-century town house and one part of an adjoining 19th-century textile warehouse. The town house is recorded as a pub by the 1880s, but the joining together of the two buildings occurred, according to CAMRA, as recently as the 1970s.…