My Bluesky profile includes a quote from a poem (probably) by St Teresa of Ávila which I discovered a few years ago. One of the stanzas goes: With my vast store of wisdom, it seems a pity not to use it all; but You know, Lord, that I want a few friends at the end. Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point. I think about this a lot in an age of freewheeling public opining on social media. I think it bleeds into work sometimes when I’m asked for my…

Apple has announced a "special event" with the tagline "Welcome home." Now that Siri appears to be good enough, Apple is pushing into the home accessories market again, this time with an improved AI bot. As far as I can see, there aren't any rumors about significant new features for the updated HomePod mini speakers and Apple TV set-top box. So, the star of the show is probably going to be the rumored Siri speaker-with-a-screen device. We'll find out this upcoming Tuesday then. ~ Link: Apple…

I may have found two new Earth-sized planets in our galaxy this morning! Inspired by yesterday’s reddit thread on how someone used Claude Code to find a new planet, I spent this morning searching NASA TESS data on nearby stars that TESS scanned less thoroughly (at low cadence). To my surprise the pipeline discovered two previously undocumented exoplanet candidates: • TIC 370612437 (Cygnus constellation, 158 light-years): dims by 0.02% every 3.56 days → ~1.0× Earth’s size. • HIP 114417…

My fellow coworkers, Caroline and Tom, organise a regular Show and Tell at The Skiff. Yesterday, there was a bumper episode, full of wonderful things people are doing. I wanted to note one about the UK government, because I’d not heard about it before.Becky’s let us know that the government has granted “permission to test and learn” for policy implementation.It’s all in something called the Magenta Book, as explained on the Test and Learn page:Traditionally, policies and programmes have often…

It was February 2026 when I realised that software development had completely changed and I essentially stopped writing code by hand. Over the next couple of months I changed our Linear statuses and set up a couple of claude code instances, running in tmux, with cron jobs set to deal with various scenarios. The basic idea was “these are the parts of my job that I don’t enjoy, let’s automate them away”. In particular, I don’t like estimating work and I find code review deathly boring. In the…

I must admit to being rather mystified by all the brouhaha attending the display of the on-loan Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum. Surely if anyone was that interested they had only to hop over the Channel and take a look at it in situ in Bayeux. I was there some years ago, dutifully inspected it, and was frankly underwhelmed. Of course it has great historical importance and it's a remarkable survival, but as a work of art/craft it really isn't that great – certainly not when compared with…

🍿Finished watching: Ted Lasso Season 4. This was exactly what I wanted from a follow-up season to the last arc. It had to be different but similar and that’s exactly what we got. I love the writing on this show and plan to use ‘Yes, and…’ a lot more in my life.

North-Eastern horizon on the morning of Monday, October 12 as seen from Adelaide at 5:11 ACDST (90 minutes before sunrise, click to embiggen).Mars is in the heart of the Beehive cluster (M44). Mars forms a line with Jupiter and the bright star Regulus.The insets shows the binocular view of Mars in the Beehive cluster and telescopic view of Jupiter at this time. Black and white binocular chart suitable for printing showing the movement of Mars with respect to the Beehive from 10 to 13 October.…

Daily Drawing 1013

I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight. It just won't stop. I'm so uncomfortable. I'm just crying. Please make the bad luck stop please

When Ralph was published last year, I sat on it. People who have been reading this blog for a while know this. I first came across the idea of loop engineering in early January last year, sat on it for four months, and then started writing a lot, begging people to pay attention.Dear Student: Yes, AI is here, you’re screwed unless you take action...Two weeks ago a student anonymously emailed me asking for advice. This is the reply and if I was in your shoes this is what I’d do. So, I read your…

I really agree with the last couple of paragraphs of Jim Nielsen’s Make Money to Make More Websites. He’s talking about starting with something you want to make, and finding a way for money to let you keep doing it. I’d like to see a lot more of that in the things we build. KK Sans is a fairly good example of why this matters to me. I wanted to understand type better, and making a typeface gave me a reason to spend time with it. Then I put it on this site, and suddenly the letters were in…

I spent a recent overcast morning driving the National Road from its end in Vandalia, Illinois, to Marshall, near the Indiana border. My plan had been different that day, however. Even though National Road construction stopped in Vandalia in about 1839 due to funds running out, the road was surveyed all the way to the Mississippi River. The National Road Association of Illinois long ago placed its “Historic National Road” signs along a route that ends in East St. Louis. I don’t know whether…

Spent a sunny Friday at DisneySea taking photos, starting by wandering down the pier that leads to Aquatopia, but now that it’s closed, no one walks down there. It's really quiet. On my walk back into the main area of Port Discovery, I saw Mount Prometheius reflected in the mirrored windows at the Marine Life Institute. The DisneySea Electric Railway is—I think— the shortest Disney rail line in any park. It runs just between two areas, back and forth, rather than in a loop. Both stations are…

Barbara Cartland has become a blog obsession over recent weeks. We have had Matthew Sweet’s marvellous biography: Barbara Cartland: Give Pink a Chance Which then brought out Daniel Milford Cottam’s incredible pictures of her clothes: Barbara, the clothes, and a guest on the blog … and now we’re moving on to Barbara Cartland’s literary oeuvre. The books. Well. I had read some of her autobiographies (she wrote a few…) which are very enjoyable for the detail and the picture of life. She wrote…

Delightful morning. Spent the first few hours of the day sat on the new reading chair with a cup of coffee and a book by Ahmed Khaled Toufik on storytelling. I'm alternating between that and Boroughs' NAKED LUNCH. Tiger hopped on my lap and curled against my belly in silence. I'm hoping to stick to a system of only two books at a time, one fiction and one non-fiction. Oddly enough, I find that I've been enjoying non-fiction far, far more lately. The more fiction I read, the more it becomes…

Book #1 of the Witcher this is my 3rd or 4th time reading it

At The Betsey Trotwood this Sunday afternoon from 2 p.m.All new songs from me- The Darkside Truth, about the Brighton Punk Scene in 1977I'll have badges!and Robert Rotifer's Radical Friendship TheoryTickets here: https://wegottickets.com/f/22135/

Midwife Melissa Hendrix has bought a house in the small English village of Heredge, ready to start a new life after being embroiled in a scandal at her previous hospital. She is also trying to escape from her ex-boyfriend who has been stalking her and she hopes he won’t be able to track her down. As she settles into her new home and job, however, she quickly discovers that things are not quite right. She can’t believe that in such a small community there are twelve women all heavily pregnant…

So this is a little unprecedented. I wrote this post and sent it on to Ben as a heads-up. I’ve included a summary of his excellent, well-reasoned reply and have to agree with all his points. And for the eagle-eyed, you may have noticed that he’s already made a change, with the Random view moved to the top of the page, whereas before it was buried down in the footer. Ben is passionate about this project, and I can only applaud him for his response and immediate action! Now, read on for my…

What’s a remix or cover you like more than the original? Heck what a question! Fires up his playlist of Cover versions… well, let’s see. Lianne La Havas version of Weird Fishes is a wonderful reimagining in a trip hop style with her smooth soaring vocals over it. Glorious. Ben L’Oncle Soul covers Seven Nation Army and turns it into a much smoother sound. Johnny Cash took Hurt and made it a soul baring, emotional crying for help that moves me to tears. Nouela’s version of Black Hole Sun is a…

Metallica From Left to right: Robert Trujillo, Kirk Hammett, James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. Our local Red Cross chapter was soliciting volunteers to participate in a Metallica- themed blood drive occurring through the end of the year at the local Fashion Show Mall on the Las Vegas Strip. The 45-year-old heavy metal band is still touring and has, in fact, a scheduled 24-show residency at Sphere here in Las Vegas entitled ‘Life Burns Faster’, from October 1, 2026 through mid-March 2027. Hmm. Go…

1943 mystery/thriller, sixth in the Miss Silver series. Meade Underwood's fiancé was thought drowned when their liner was torpedoed, and now she's living in a flat with her aunt. The man turns up again, having lost his memory, but can the "fast" actress on the top floor really be his former wife? vt Miss Silver Deals with Death.

Two years ago I wrote a guide to finding your core values. A few hundred people read it. I have no idea how many did the exercise, because a PDF cannot tell you.That bothered me more than it should have. The exercise can be the single most useful thing I do with coaching clients, and the beneficial part is not reading about it. It is sitting with the cards for twenty minutes and being surprised by what comes out.So I rebuilt it as a tool. It is live today at thevaluesfinder.com, it is free, and…

I’ve sometimes thought that that’s why I became a painter, because I have all these pictures inside me, yes, so many pictures that they’re a kind of agony, yes, it hurts me when they keep popping up again and again, like visions almost, and in all kinds of contexts, and I can’t do anything about it, the only thing I can do is paint, yes, try to paint away these pictures that are lodged inside me, there’s nothing to do but paint them away, one by one THE OTHER NAME, Jon Fosse NOMAS 23 Mars’…

"The Empress of Mars" is a 2003 science fiction novella by Kage Baker. It is about a woman who overcomes all sorts of obstacles to build an empire on Mars. Non-Spoiler Summary In A Nutshell: "The Empress of Mars" follows the story of Mary, the woman who owns the only bar in the settlement on Mars. That wasn't always her occupation, though, and as the story is told we learn that she has had a rough life - and learned to roll with the punches. Mary came to Mars as the xenobotanist for the British…

Digger (2026) • View trailerFour stars (out of five); rated R, for relentless profanityAvailable via: Movie theatersBy Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.11.26This film is for folks who felt that 2021’s Don’t Look Up was insufficiently cynical and depressing. Director Alejnadro G. Iñárritu’s dark-dark-dark comedy is highlighted by a bravura performance by Tom Cruise, successfully operating leagues out of his usual wheelhouse. Despite his best reasoned, well-researched…

Habronattus pyrrithrix (Betsy Mason) Tomorrow is international jumping spider day, so I’m taking this as an excuse to tell you about one my favorite jumping spiders, Habronattus pyrrhithrix. I was introduced to the species while writing a story about the perceptual world of jumping spiders for Science News. I interviewed visual ecologist Nate Morehouse at the University of Cincinnati. He had discovered that that Habronattus spiders can see the color red using a specialized filter, making them…

This post is a part of a series of posts called Scrambling Mind. The world's leading technology companies are spending unprecedented amount of resources on developing intelligent computers. The debate rages around what the future holds if—or when—superintelligent machines emerge. Superintelligence is a level of intelligence exceeding that of humanity's brightest, leaving no doubt of who will be able to dominate the other. The grimmest predictions say that superintelligent AI will one day take…

Creative Work Writers went on strike to get protections against “AI”. Thousands of artists have signed open letters in protest of “AI”. There are so many copyright lawsuits from creative industry groups against AI that there’s a whole dedicated website for it. Popular YouTubers absolutely hate it. If they’re also musicians, they REALLY hate it. Across all creative industries, there is a concerted push to reject this technology. Yet, almost unique among creative fields, many experienced…