Through much of my early and mid thirties, I had this vision of running a marathon... as I got to my late thirties, I decided that I would run a marathon before my fortieth birthday. The day after I turned 39, I ran the Blackpool Marathon. I didn't do it quickly, but on that day I managed to move my legs from the start line to the finish line in in 05:22:10 (5 hours, 22 minutes and 10 seconds). On finishing this race, I decided that I was never going to do that again... ___ We are now 191 days…

Four or five years ago, m'sister was visiting from England and we went to Red Mills for some mmmm good sheep-muesli and a bucket. I was between Lidl-special gumboots, and Sis mocked my cheapskatery until I purchased some top-range Bekina (Belgian) Wellingtons . . . because I was no longer an impoverished student and what else - go faster car [χ] cruise holiday [χ] silk undies] [χ] - was I going to spend my money on?A couple of months later I was trimming back the hedge we planted in the 00s…

Bruno wrote a very good blog post about the kinds of things that can make a person burn out of a job they genuinely like. I resonated with a lot of the stuff here! I've also experienced profound lack of control over my own success at several previous games jobs. The most offensive company communication I ever received was in 2020 or 2021, when my employer tried to make us complete a course about "resilience" during the period when we had, I think, the least control over the circumstances of our…

200 Motels is a 1971 surrealist musical film written and directed by Frank Zappa and Tony Palmer, and featuring music by Zappa and The Mothers of Invention. An international co-production of United States and the United Kingdom, the film stars the Mothers of Invention, Theodore Bikel, Keith Moon and Ringo Starr. The film attempts to portray the craziness of life on the road as a rock musician, and as such consists of a series of unconnected nonsense vignettes interspersed with concert footage…

The buffers article followed an 8KB page from disk into shared memory and back. What it didn't do is name the file. Every page that passes through the buffer pool is block number N of some file under the data directory, and the file has a naming scheme, a size limit, and companion files that share its name. Before the next article reads the inside of a page, this one finds it on disk with ls and od, and shows that the bytes are the same ones. Nothing here needs more than a scratch database and…

Disclosure has never moved this fast in all the decades it's been demanded. Congressional hearings, six releases of government files with more on the way, "whistleblowers" on a near-monthly rhythm, and names with mainstream audiences treating the subject seriously on air. Greys, craft, beings that come and go between dimensions, none of it raised much of a stir this time. The weird and the woo had its day in the light and stopped being *that* weird.

Hand on heart, I know for absolute certain that this is a quote: “it’s only a story, a story, a fanciful tale.” And I know for nearly absolute certain that it’s a line from an Alan Plater script. But which one, I do not know. I can even hear how it should be said, how it was said in whatever it was, I can read that line and hear the intended rhythms of it. But then you usually can with Alan because his writing is him and the only difference if you happened to know him was that you’d see the…

David Bernstein replies to an Amnesty International/ACLU report decrying crackdowns on pro-Palestinian speech on campus. The report particularly hangs its hat on the issue of double-standards: many of the "rules" pro-Palestinian activists were alleged to have broken were ones the university rarely if ever enforced when flouted by other activists and protesters.Bernstein concedes that there "is some truth to that conclusion," but ultimately dismisses the "claim that alleged viewpoint…

I’m tired this morning, but I don’t need sympathy. Slightly under the weather and getting up early to support my eldest going to college (her bus is just after seven!) is taking its toll - but it has been busy here never the less, a shorter write up today though…Steve and I are keen to press a few product lines that could do with some awareness / expansion, one of which is the custom nameplate service to non-steam modellers. To this end, ‘Your Name Here’ plates were created and the result is…

Reading Time: 38 minutes WHY HELLO AGAIN HELLO! I *missed* you! No, really, I did; I even woke up at 6am last Friday in a sweaty panic that I had a Curios to write and no links to fill it with – this is my internal life, you see, SO RICH!! – and, well, what more proof do you need that without you I am nothing? As I might have alluded to last time, I went to a wedding a couple of weeks back; it was lovely, but you might enjoy this small anecdote from it because, well. So I was asked to do a…

Some people can seemingly sleep at will, and it comes as naturally to them as eating or walking. I am not of this tribe. In the years before there was a general "sleep awareness" in society, I used to have pretty bad sleep, something that occurred to me only in hindsight. I remember being quite sleepy and inattentive in school and college. I thought this was a natural consequence of these institutions being dreadfully boring. Which is true, but I also wasn't good at sleeping. Most of my problem…

There's something glamorous about how such remarks, which the author themselves seemingly didn't think much about, stick out from otherwise homogeneous points.

Life Ηη got up and did all of his homework on Saturday morning, instead of coming to wake us up at unfeasibly early o’clock which has thus far been the normal order of things. I could hardly believe it – more sleep for us, and no standing over his shoulder getting-blood-from-a-stone homework routine. Long may this new dawn continue. I bumped into the school chef in the week and was able to procure the recipe for a basil and lentil swirl (which Ηη is fairly obsessed with). I wasn’t convinced he…

​ Tree nuts are in season and falling. I am in gathering mode. They present this as a nut but technically it is not. Its history, however, is fascinating. I had no clue it existed.

[1978]The power-pop party continues with all the misses and non memories from regional nobodies you cherish and love.Real Life Saver's got all of the lovely hooks... everything here is in the right place... melodiousness for days.. A Pizza dee resistance! A platter du jour!Despite being released in the new wave era this is just classic old school power-pop. Coulda been made five years earlier know what I mean. Who the hell is/was this guy? All I know is this primo slice of pure power-pop turned…

If you're looking for a comforting Italian dish that feels rustic, honey, and full of bold Mediterranean flavour, these Peperoni Ripieni are exactly the kind of recipe you will want to make again and again. Inspired by classic Neapolitan Cooking, each pepper is stuffed with a rich mixture golden fried mushrooms, juicy cherry tomatoes, briny capers and olives, creamy mozzarella, and toasted bread that soaks up every drop of those flavours.The peppers bake until tender and lightly wrinkled,…

Last week I said I hate the word work and then proceeded to use it and explain it with a private definition: work is what you’ve shared, everything else is practice. I feel that I need to clarify that post. I had planned to revisit it at some point because I wrote it a long time ago, but I think it needs to be sooner rather than later. The comments that followed were correct. For example, Brooke pointed out that the dictionary disagrees with me, and that “work in progress” and “finished work”…

A guided tour of the Greater London boundary (clockwise) Hillingdon Welcome to Heathrow but the side most passengers never see, the cargo-loading logistics backside. Past massive secure sheds trading whatever, first on the local Bedfont Road then switching to the more circuitous Southern Perimeter Road. Two rivers run parallel for a mile and a half, the Longford and the Duke of Northumberland's, each shamelessly shifted out of the way by airport construction. Walk along or walk between, perhaps…

We hope to have a posting tomorrow, but... no promises. Hegseth Plans to Brodcast Firing Squad Execution We imagine that everyone knows what happened when Tennessee tried to execute convicted murderer Christa Pike. Thanks to a poorly placed needle, as well as drugs that were past their expiration date, she was merely rendered comatose. There was much supposition that she would be permanently brain-damaged, and might never actually awaken from her coma, but a few days ago she awakened and is…

I hadn't realised how much this season of racing had taken out of me. I get it, this is like the fourth post about this season, but I was looking forward to a couple of weeks off to relax a little and recoup, and nearly two weeks in I still don't feel human again.Taking time off after a race isn't something I have ever really done. I've always been straight back to it, with a half marathon meaning a couple of days before I'm out again and a full perhaps three or four. My first 70.3 was followed…

Do you wake up every day, spend thirty minutes on your phone catching up on the world’s doings, silently adding stress to your day by prematurely overloading your brain with as much informational ingestion as inherently allowed, only to find that you’re left in a state of disarray and discombobulation for the remainder of your morning? I quite prize these moments, truth be told, as I like to be appraised of what’s happening on our little blue-green blob, and even though I know it can add to the…

In Paris, or the Future of War (1925), Basil Liddell Hart asked: Who that saw it will ever forget the nightly sight of the population of a great industrial and shipping town, such as Hull, streaming out into the fields on the first sound of the alarm signals? Women, children, babies in arms, spending night after night huddled in sodden fields, shivering under a bitter wintry sky — the exposure must have caused far more harm than the few bombs dropped from two or three Zeppelins.1 Liddell Hart…

Fran found an apparently-dead Harvest Mouse in the stairwell of her boat. It must have dropped down in the night, and been unable to escape. We put them into a box and gave them some water and a blackberry, and they revived remarkably quickly, tucking into the blackberry with relish. Presently, we liberated them on the towpath, and they went scampering off into the tall vegetation, making good use of their prehensile tail. It hadn't occurred to me that Harvest Mice would be a thing along the…

Pike of 10lb 4oz (above) and a couple of jacks (below). The birds gave away the location of the baitfish - and the pike weren't far away...

Translation of a letter from pope Adrian I to Charlemagne, about the expulsion of all Venetians from the lands of the former Exarchate.

Reykjavík in black and white: 20 days until Iceland!

I spent Thursday morning in the hospital having a nuclear stress test performed. It’s a painless, time-consuming procedure made pleasant by the nurses and techs who worked on me. By my count they represented five countries of origin, not including my cardiologist, who is from India. My blood pressure has been distressingly low and the doctor urged me to use more salt after I’ve spent a lifetime hearing the opposite advice. He also fetched a can of Coke, the high-test stuff, something I haven’t…

We love new microbrands here at The Time Bum, so when a watchmaker approaches us to review their very first model, we take notice. Today, I have the debut release… The post Vesora Gantry Field appeared first on The Time Bum.

"I'm sorry, you're out of time, we have to move on. Senator, what's your response? You have three minutes." Watching a political debate these days feels useless. Candidates get two minutes to make their case, and their opponents get even less time to reply. I'm reminded of Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, where he argues that what passes for debate on TV is nothing more than an audition or a performance review. It is only an opportunity to come up with catchy sound bites or to appear…