I haven’t soldered anything since school. When we decluttered the flat some years ago, I gave away all the soldering gear of my dad. But this year, I finally soldered again. I upgraded my electric toothbrush with a much bigger battery, going from an aging 700 mAh to 2300 mAh. As we have three of those Braun / Oral-B Vitality (Pro) toothbrushes, I was thinking it might be worth it to try to repair one and see if I can replace or maybe even upgrade the battery. I had to recharge it every second…

I saw something on June 30 in Sarnia that reminded me of better days. I almost hesitated in writing that in the headline, because I find it frustrating when older railfans (I suppose I'm edging into that demographic) insist that everything was better before. For younger railfans, this is their golden age. They will grow up, become adults, and become nostalgic for these days. In other words, I think we need to be mindful of dealing in absolutes. If you asked me whether trains were more…

I like word and trivia games, and the world has no shortage of it. Ever since Wordle took off, I felt like something new cropped up every week with the same daily structure. That's nice, something to play for everyone! I have said in previous post why I dislike daily logins, but most of these games would have archive of the puzzles available (with or without paid option) so that's fine. No, I'm inclined to stop whenever people around me flock to play one and I start seeing results shared…

Dear Constant Reader, I was surpised and delighted to get a call from Ember Sky looking for a couple of performers to round out a show in Fitchburg (notable as the home of both a college and the kitten who would become Bartholomew A. Cat). She and her producing partner, Mistress Neon, were debuting a burlesque show at a bar-arcade. Betty, Scratch, and I headed west. The venue is pretty fun. There was a small stage in the middle of the space, surrounded by video game machines. Our dressing room…

Good goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound. The acronym for this is SMART. Keeping a goal “time bound,” estimating a fair amount of time it takes to achieve a goal, needs some flexibility. A good time estimate needs to be realistic, and adapt to new information along the way. A few months ago, my wife and I adopted a dog. We kept them separate at first, intending to introduce them within three weeks. That felt like a long time. But, the first time our dog came…

Went on a ghost tour of Fox Theater last night. Was fun to learn the history of the building and see it empty and dark.

I recently opened up B&W commissions!! And my wonderful spouse immediately asked me for a physical piece xey can hang in xer office at work. We recently saw The Barber of Seville together and we were both smitten by (apparently) the Canadian Opera Company’s extra silly version of it. Our actor for Figaro was an absolute delight, and Max wanted this energy for office work!

We love Jaadugar!!! 00:00 Intro 00:40 Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia 24:45 Outro Music Credits: “Clover 3” by Vibe Mountain “Seasons” by roljui

A terrific string wall appears in London Spy s01e02 (BBC Two, 2015). ▲ London Spy s01e02 (BBC Two, 2015) ▲ London Spy s01e02 (BBC Two, 2015) The series credits also feature a string motif that fractures the image. ▲ London Spy s01e02 (BBC Two, 2015)

This was only the second time in my life that I brought something to the cleaners, and it always makes me feel like a character in Friends or Seinfeld. Those shows really made me think dry cleaning would be a much bigger part of adult life. Turns out: they lied to us. I switched to a fountain pen for the previous comic and this one, and I think you can tell. There’s something different about the line quality and, in my opinion, something better. Everything feels so crisp now!

Links on politics, DRM-free ebooks, science fiction, privacy, and gambling. I got the job!! I am still waiting for HR onboarding stuff to fully be employed, but I've signed a contract, which they sent at 11:04pm EST Friday. It's likely I won't really start work until around the 21st so I still have some time to rest and recover. And read RSS feeds. Even though I haven't worked in a week I'm still very low energy and low motivation. The ultimate list of DRM-free ebookshops Ancient Âsowanânihk…

Tags: #sketches #dispatchesGreyhounds, it is said, cannot back up. I have evidence to the contrary, not that it is particularly helpful in this situation. Ginger, in her heretofore under-appreciated canine curiosity, has followed her nose to the space between the shed and the fence. No, not that shed, I mean the other one that most people don’t know about because it’s in the dog run on the side of the house by the A/C. Ginger getting stuck in the dog run is rather ironic, especially because…

Over the last couple years, I’ve been using hotel key cards to wrap washi tape around to make it more portable and less bulky. But then Kaleidocraft Prints stepped in with their Washi Wallet ($20) which is not just cards for washi but also a built-in cutter, protective covers and a method to keep all the cards together. Why did I wait so long to switch? This is the cutter edge card that will make i easier to tear washi cleanly. Here’s an example of the clean cut on my washi. No more janky…

My Pixel Blog Library is live! And Under Constructions. 🚧👷🏻‍♀️ #blog #pixels #website #redesignThank you for following my feed! ♥ Leave a reply here.

We have a rectangular Japanese-style omelette pan in our kitchen. These pans are called makiyakinabe (巻き焼き鍋), and they’re sometimes square rather than oblong, depending on which region they belong to. But just because we have one of these pans doesn’t mean we really know how to use it. This pan is typically used to make the Japanese rolled omelette, known as tamagoyaki, but you can also make dashimaki tamago with it, which is usually made with dashi stock, or usuyaki tamago, which is a thinner…

October begins my favorite period of the year: the last three months and the Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas seasons. Autumn and winter bring the best weather for me personally. I love the cold, wrapping up in warm clothes and blankets, and feeling like there's always a sense of celebration in the air. It's been a difficult year throughout the world, to say the least, and I recognize that feeling the way I've described is a privilege. It's one I don't take lightly, and I hope to continue…

I was in a forum thread with Loebas last week, who implied that webhosts might routinely firewall (e.g. via Fail2ban) IP addresses that engage in port-scanning against them. While Loebas is technically right that such a thing that can technically be done by an adaptive firewall (here's an example for Fail2ban) or e.g. in response to a honeypot hit, I'd argue that it's not a widespread practice... because this approach to security can easily do more harm than good. Blocking based on…

This year marks the 550th anniversary of the start of printing from movable types in Britain. William Caxton established his printing press in Westminster, Britain’s first print shop in 1476. In celebration of the anniversary The Bibliographical Society is hosting a series of videos dealing with different pieces printed by Caxton. Here is one of two surviving examples of the earliest known printed book advertisement. It was printed by William Caxton to promote The Salisbury Pye and suggests the…

The only ethical consumption under capitalism is eating the rich.

To read Rosalind Belben’s 1974 novel The Limit is to find yourself admitted to rooms where you are going to feel very uncomfortable. To the hospital room where Ilario sits and watches as his wife Anna tries to die from the cancer that has been eating away at her. To their bedroom on the night of their wedding, when the 40-year-old virgin and her much younger husband painfully discover they are sexually unsuited for each other. To the bedroom years later, when a rapturous night leads only to an…

10 minutes i missed too many discourse cycles and now you have to take them all at once, no chasing. no thoughtful lead-in or anything it's time to fuck around [hbomberguy off-key cacophanous kazoo music starts playin;g[ i tried duskbloods during the network test and it was so incredibly confusing. i felt like i was being inducted into an MLM. fromsoft NEEDS to STOP throwing nouns at me there was literally like, 5PNS/m i almost screamed.1 2 i jumped around like hulk gif and it was ,awesome the…

This one was a fun, limited edition box project a couple of autumn's back, but you can read a digital version for free HERE:https://heyzine.com/flip-book/fcf6de84ca.html#poetry #horrorpoetry #fauztography #writinglife

I'm ok. This morning, I left the house 40 minutes early to head to the clinic. Normally, I can walk there in 20 minutes, but I wanted to take the bus. Which means I also had to give myself enough time to get to the bus stop. While I can get around the apartment without crutches, I thought it'd be safer to use them in public. That's where the sidewalks are, after all. Yesterday, I had my usual remote-therapy appointment which occurs every three weeks. I expressed some anxiety about taking the…

Just a one-shotter today, I like this photo I got of a uni building I got the other day. Funny enough this building looks great in colour, it’s a really well considered bit of architecture with little stripes of colour that stand out but also somehow fit the environment. You’ll have to take my word for it! Reply by email

Ayal Senior - Yutori ゆとりMore Medusa Editions! Ever-dependable Toronto guitarist Ayal Senior’s latest is a collection of gorgeous instrumental psych-folk. On Yutori ゆとり, Senior is working with a relatively large ensemble — eight players at times — but things never get overly cluttered or bogged down. The musicians move as one throughout, with acoustic guitar framed beautifully by pedal steel, vibraphone, acoustic bass, cello, gentle-but-insistent percussion and lightly fried electric six-string…

Enterprise knowledge management could become a more direct source of business value as organisations connect their accumulated experience to AI agents capable of acting on it. Customer insights could inform more commercial decisions. Lessons from delivery could improve the next proposal. The reasoning behind a critical decision could remain available long after the people involved have changed roles. The opportunity is to make expertise available across more of the enterprise, at the moment it…

Most people are turning out to be absolute machines. They are fed just one program and one purpose for that program: to win the entire world. To keep chasing things. To win every race, no matter the cost they have to pay. When you are wired to think in only one direction—that you have to get that promotion, win that deal, buy that latest car, or own that house—you naturally eliminate a lot of good things from your life without even realising it. Nothing can be achieved without eliminating…

The RNLI aren’t traitors; they’re heroes. There is a racism and cohesion crisis in Britain. Britain knew about the Holocaust as it happened. Generations of monarchs were central to Britain’s slave trade. The British government makes five billion pounds a year from immigration fees. The Home Office threw some EU residents’ settled status into doubt because it misinterpreted Italian citizenship law. Slovenia in 1992 showed “remigration” in action. Donald Tusk warns of Russian drone and rocket…

Before you read this, I suggest you read posts 16.12 and 26.7. I introduced the concept of time in post 16.12. However, the special theory of relativity leads to an unexpected property of time – it depends on the state of motion of an observer; time does not pass equally in different inertial frames of reference. The more quickly you move, the slower time passes. We don’t normally notice this effect because it only becomes appreciable at speeds that are comparable to the speed of light in a…

What is this?A weekly note on what I've been up to. Last week's is here.tldrLast day at NHS England, then straight to Cambridge for a conference and a Hepworth on the lawn. Four rehab runs, 9.1km short of 1,000km for the year. Town lose at home to Shrewsbury.FinishingTuesday was my last day working with create/change at NHS England. The sheer number of extra hours we put in towards the end made it feel like a relegation battle. We was staying up heading into the last game of the season but just…