Media Film/TV Not really any movies lately! My partner cajoled me into watching A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which I had initially dismissed while it was airing because I was burnt out on the world of ASOIAF and a show about a normal knight didn’t sound terribly interesting. As it turns out, everyone is right: it is excellent all the way through. Five stars, no notes. I binge-watched season 19 of Jet Lag: The Game this past week so I could watch the finale in theatres. Dare I say this is the…

This is a long-form written guide for the fight AAC Heavyweight M1 (Savage) in the game Final Fantasy 14, where the challenger and their seven friends fight the Elezen succubus Vamp Fatale. You may call this the XeBin guide in party finder listings. If you want to experience this fight, don't read this guide. This guide is based off of the Toxic Friends raidplan, the Hector Lectures strategies used by North America Party Finder raiding culture, and insights I have gained from running this fight…

Margaret Rutherford made four wonderful Miss Marple mysteries in the 1960s and, of them all, Murder at the Gallop (1963) is the best. This one takes place at a riding establishment and features a delightfully eccentric lot of suspects including Robert Morley, Flora Robson, and Katya Douglas. In this scene from a UK lobby card, Miss Marple is conversing in a whisper with police inspector Craddock, played by Charles Tingwell.From the Archives is our latest series of posts where we share photos…

Since the recent explosion of very bespoke software since I set up the fleet, there are a few patterns I've realised work much better for my brain. Chief among them is: mark as read should be an explicit action. By that I mean, apps that track unread state should not mark an item as read as a side effect of me opening it. It should require a second, explicit action to mark something as read. This could be a button at the bottom of an article, or replying to an email, but never implicit from…

Lately I’ve been enjoying the iPad as my main device (again); it’s working like a charm. Yet it’s oh-so-easy to think about the next upgrade — MOAR IPAD! Safely assuming that I’ll stay within the Apple-verse: will I wait for the next base iPad? Will I instead switch back to a MacBook? Will I use both?? Or will I simply stick with what I’ve got (until it’s no longer working well for me)? iPad I love the fact that my base A16 iPad with only 6GB RAM performs so well. I only do basic computing…

Visited friends, exchanged goods, talked about snacks, and I snapped a pic of the newest addition to their family. Sidenote: If you ever need an insulated water bottle? Never pay full price. Visit a thrift store, they have oodles. (Hat tip to Kathryn for picking up some new ones for me to lose.) Currently Listening: Shawn James “Sometimes featuring Damien Jurado & Ann Annie”Reply via email

I recently acquired a classic, Roland GP-100 guitar effects processor from a friend. He is a wicked guitarist, multi-instrumentalist virtuoso, and owned it for decades. Naturally it's loaded with custom Jimmy Page and Zappa patches, EVH, Bridge of Sighs, ZZ Top, on and on! Anyway, I recorded a dump of the GP memory onto an external MIDI track in Logic Pro. I think this is a valid MIDI sysex file of the patches. But I don't want to test it on this thing, I've never tried it before, and I only…

Guides and die-hard anglers who spend more than just a few days on the water every season take heed. One of the sport’s most respected brands announced last week that it has revamped its flagship line of waders, complete with new fabric tech, a new fabric pattern, and a round of overall upgrades designed to make the waders more durable and comfortable.

This is just a short notice that this blog is also available under https://hook.si. With VeriSign planning to kill off all 3rd level .name domain names, this is a precaution I am taking in case my domain name disappears in the future. Hopefully, ultimately, it does not come to that and that ICANN either reverses course on their approval of this or at least presents a useful solution. So far my communication with my registrar, VeriSign, and ICANN have resulted in each of them just pointing the…

A cartoon coded in CSS from comiCSS.

I’m writing this after the fact. Time compressed to get ready for travel, now I’m on the backside of that trip and enjoying a long layover before the final leg home. Basking in the afterglow, preparing for the onslaught of return, and fondly recalling bowls of food with my brother from two weeks ago. Currently Listening: Hayley Williams “Ice In My OJ”Reply via email

24-09-26 So many days in September were not ideal weather-wise and I hummed-and-ho-ed about kicking an adventure into the long grass on the 24th. Hoping the weather would improve as the forecast suggested I caught the late morning North Berwick train to the penultimate station, Drem. It was still very overcast and there was no hurry to get across the fields to where I hoped to see dragonflies and butterflies. Maybe I'd have to settle for merely some exercise and less in the way of…

After twelve weeks of training, I did my second open-water triathlon at the Tarpon Springs Triathlon in Tarpon Springs, Florida. The Lead-Up I flew in 4 days before the race. That day I put together my bike and (after a bit of an adventure to get a pump that could pump to 109 PSI), I did a very swift test ride to make sure everything was working on the bike.Full post

I saw this going viral about the apparent lack of preparedness among today’s college students: I'm not sure if others in higher ed are noticing a decline in student achievement this semester, but it's been pronounced in my courses–particularly freshmen. I have a 101 course where, for the first time in my 12 years teaching it, no student earned an A on an exam. — David Alan Hughes (@davidhughes_phd) September 30, 2026 This has become a constant refrain in the established media, too. “Kids these…

The first recording today starts with the end of Scoop. I don’t think I eve watched this but it’s got a lot of familiar faces, like Barry from Eastenders (Shaun Williamson). Mina Anwar off of the Sarah Jane Adventures. Hacker the dog. And Mark Benton. There’s a trail for Ultimate Summer. Plus a trail for Escape from Scorpion Island. Then, it’s supposed to be an episode of Hounded – The Back of the Sofa. But in fact, what we get is an episode of Total Wipeout. Media Centre Description:…

Good bright color and 1980s slow motion, bad Pink Floyd music. Women be shoppin’, then be gettin’ murdered at their homes in Tucson. Was it possible for artists working in the 1980s to not produce an “80s movie?” Certainly not in this case, and the music is largely to blame. Cammell pulls off some great angles and edits, like a glitchy Nic Roeg movie, and overall I felt bad not liking it after reading this. David Keith is an audiophile home stereo installer, who drives an ugly green van while…

A review of The Moment.

In the weird future there’s a techno-spa where they can grow a full clone of you from just a single tooth. You are very appealing and aspirational, a hot commodity, dazzling etc. Visitors come to the spa to lease your clone, your Cherub. They temporarily decant into the Cherub’s body — living, seeing, feeling as you—I MEAN her, the Cherub. This was, of course, a booming industry. Because, just think about it: neoliberalism dissolved the boundary lines of capitalism and turned it into a soup we…

Where Are the Posts? # When I first set up this blog I had big plans for it. I wanted to share my tinkering with technology and online privacy. The main goal was to educate and inform others. The first target was 10 articles in year one. I published 3. I missed the same goalpost the next year, and every year after. Why? Why can’t I write as much as I want? My High Bar # I’m not short of ideas. I have a stack of drafts sitting on the back burner — posts that didn’t make the cut. Wait, what cut?…

For October: a new piece added to The Supernatural Writings of Stuart Palmer, and some Boris Karloff spookiness! Illustration for “An UNEARTHLY Stowaway,” Ghost Stories, October 1929. An UNEARTHLY Stowaway is another eerie “non-fiction” tale from Stuart Palmer, written under the name Theodore Orchards. The first mate of a barque enroute from Liverpool to Canada sees a strange man in the chart room. The man leaves a written message to “Steer to the Northwest,” then disappears. No stowaway is…

Read a free e-version of my play about local Chicago ghosty legend, Resurrection Mary. About two decades ago, I wrote a whole chapbook of poems about this local ghost story / urban legend and used those poems as a basis for this short play. Find it HERE..https://heyzine.com/flip-book/66eeaa43ae.html

StarringStephanie Beatriz, María Cecilia Botero, John Leguizamo, Mauro Castillo, and Jess DarrowDirectorByron Howard and Jared BushOverviewThere's a little magic in all of us...almost all of us.The tale of an extraordinary family, the Madrigals, who live hidden in the mountains of Colombia, in a magical house, in a vibrant town, in a wondrous, charmed place called an Encanto. The magic of the Encanto has blessed every child in the family—every child except one, Mirabel. But when she discovers…

🪨 “Hey.” 🌳 “Hey.” 🪨 “Decent morning.” 🌳 “Yep.” 🪨 “Hell of a storm last night.” 🌳 “Yep.” 🪨 “Thought I was going to get washed away there for a minute.” 🌳 “Oh yeah?” 🪨 “Yeah. At least you have roots. I just have weight.” 🌳 “Well at least you have that.” 🪨 “That water, though, it has weight.” 🌳 “I like the water.” 🪨 “You would.” 🌳 “Tastes good.” 🪨 “Gets me wet.” 🌳 “Well, the sun’s out now.” 🪨 “Yep. Feels good.” 🌳 “Can get a little hot.” 🪨 “Have you seen that construction?” 🌳 “Oh yeah, I’ve seen it…

p.s. I’m fine. I’m just… no fun to talk to anymore, for anyone. They’re sick of me and I’m sick of me, too. The process of releasing that grief and letting it go back to its ancient burial hole is really excruciating for everyone, lol. It’s an exorcism basically! This blog was originally titled “exorcism” but I changed it (not only because I previously wrote a different thing also called that). okay thanks for reading this notemy computer just asked me, so quiet I almost didn’t notice, if I’d…

When I think about my musical life, a lot of it can be traced back through the instruments I own. And I’ve owned nothing longer than bass guitars, my first of which was a 1977 Rickenbacker 4001 I got in the ’90s. I can kind of figure out what I was trying to do and who I was trying to be through these instruments as well. It’s amazing to see. It’s like a totally different guy when you consider the synths. The first bass I ever fell in love with was a Rickenbacker 4001 that was blue with googly…

Smiling Friends season 3 (2025) Animation-wise episode six is the greatest, one of multiple agency origin stories. Beef House (2020) Pretty good fake sitcom. The People’s Joker director worked on this.

Here's another 1:144 scale Albatros DV.I rather like this colour scheme, with the bare varnished plywood showing on the fuselage.

Caturday 🐈‍⬛

Purdue Boilermakers in victory formation. First conference win since 2023 🏈

I am returning to the subject of the Awful British Comedian exactly like a dog to its vomit, only you have to imagine something worse than vomit. And possibly worse than a dog. OLD MOTHER RILEY, HEADMISTRESS is a relatively late 1950 entry in the popular series starring drag comic Arthur Lucan and his wife/daughter. […]