Thoughts of Widdershins writes: I see a lot of posts about people leaving platforms. … What strikes me is that hardly anyone is leaving for something big. They’re going smaller. A personal site, a self-hosted app, a capsule nobody’s going to stumble onto by accident. Gordon over at Happily Imperfect wrote a reply and made some good observations I want to expand on here. I wonder if everyone who cares about a better, more open internet packs up and retreats to their own little corners, aren’t we…

Can you please translate the Shelley poem “Ozymandias” into ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English?Copilot said:Certainly. Since “Ozymandias” is in the public domain, it can be adapted freely. ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English aims for short sentences, one meaning per sentence, controlled vocabulary, and minimal figurative language. The result loses much of the poem’s beauty, but preserves its information and message.Ozymandias in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical EnglishI met a traveller…

i'm trying out joplin! i'm very fond of my basic text editor, i just keep it open at all times and dump random notes and ideas in there. they might become obsolete, or i might develop them into something to post on here (and remove from the file) so it's ever-changing and not really Eternally Growing. but even so, it was getting a bit troublesome to keep scrolling to reach whatever it is that i needed to reference at any given moment. i used to use logseq for a while but it stopped working on…

Cold and clear before dawn. I lean forward to tie my boots in the light of the half moon, then sit back in deep shadow. A barred owl calls once, twice. Orion lies on his side above the ridge—a hunter half out of bed on this, the opening day of deer season.

I tried to improve this photo with my cheap scanner. Eh. Still the only sign one can make out is the TIP THE MONKEY FOR A PICTURE A so I guess this worked on the honor system. No idea where it was but I hope it’s gone. I don’t see anyone reaching into their pocket, but mqybe the guy who snapped the pic did. Tip the Monkey pile of folk art junk sculpture. No date, circa 1940ish. Original snapshot collection Jim Linderman / Dull Tool Dim Bulb.

Okay so today I decided to get a little too aspirational with the would-be reading corner. Pulled a couple plants out of the garden and potted them inside. I have no idea whether or not they will survive, but if they do... I may attempt to make this corner even more lush. #journal #studio

2026-10-03Hello!I'm chasing something so specific I don't even know what it is yet. Catching the train to a new destination to get inspiration for photography at home. I only made it by a few minutes!Relying on the city to provide me interesting photographs is a crutch that I'm beginning to rely on too much. The scrap test I made with some materials at home was an interesting experiment that I might continue, because it's something I can do on a rainy day with limited budget and time. That…

It’s now autumn, the nights are drawing in, and the temperature is finally coming down after an extremely hot summer. It’s my favourite season, partly because it goes with hearty and comforting meals. I’ve also got a nasty cold which I can’t seem to shake. Feels like the right time for a chicken stew, warming, and full of nutrition. Fingers crossed it helps me feel better.

Many people are discussing the Administration’s spending taxpayer funds to run partisan advertisements glorifying President Trump less than two months before a crucial election. Most media coverage on this episode has been decent as far as it goes, but it has missed a few points that seem worth pointing out. Most discussions of the legality of these expenditures have focused on statutory prohibitions on this sort of thing. That is fine, I suppose, but to me the first question for any public…

Act 1: Scene 2End of summer 1989 –August was not what I assumed it was going to be I don’t know what happened. Then again, no one ever assumes that “this would be them,” or that the worst case would be the best case, and in my case to say the least, the worst was the best case scenario. I say this was the best case for me because had it not been for this moment; I might have not have been around to be this, your modest and humble narrator. I might not have survived or been around to tell a…

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement. Passport for Pimlico (20.08.13) Just south of bustling Victoria lies a little enclave comprising some of the quietest streets in London. It is an area full of intrigue and scandal, so isolated yet near to the seats of power if I…

Over the past month of September, I’ve collected 12 links for my link journal. 2026-09-01 MicroLighter - Syntax Highlighter css-tricks.com CSS JavaScript Syntax highlighting for code blocks without the complicated markup, spans, classes, and bloated JavaScript, courtesy of Uncle Dave. MicroLighter - A zero-dep syntax highlighter davatron5000.github.io GitHub - davatron5000/microlighter: A zero-dep syntax highlighter that uses the CSS Highlights API A zero-dep syntax highlighter that uses the…

{1974}Speaking of long lost summers, nostalgia and romance here's the ultra smooth soft rock masterpiece Under The Jamaican Moon.Impeccable with its light latin feel, sublime smooth jazz guitar and immaculate baroque touches from the master arranger Nick DeCaro himself. Get out your summer drinks with umbrellas in, pop on your best Hawaiian shirt and luxuriate in this splendorous tropical atmosphere... ....it's time to get free and easy... Its all about sea breezes and seduction and everything…

It’s Saturday again, so it’s time for another update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published a further 13 papers, including one correction to an article already published, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 229 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 677. This would have been a busy week even without the clutch of four MEGATRON papers announced on Wednesday! I continue to include the posts made on our Mastodon account (on…

Today Saturday Mash-up (on CBBC) had Mr Blobby on because it was 30 years of live kids TV on Saturday mornings and some of are still going while a few have got cancelled Source

My notes for the French code de la route, part 1: how permis probatoire points work, default and rainy-day speed limits, and roof load limits. Read the full post on the blog.

I’m continuing to buy issues of Comics Buyer’s Guide lethargically whenever a really cheap lot shows up on ebay. (It’s just a strange category of magazine — it really has no discernible value, so it’s not worth the work (for sellers) of putting them up for sale. So you almost only see people who are er somewhat misguided putting up some lots for $$$, and then the listings stay up for years because nobody buys them.) Anyway, I got a nice cheap lot of newer issues (i.e., post-2000 when they…

Last Monday morning (28/9/26), before any of the national media covered the story, we broke the news that Alder Tim Hailes was stepping away from the role of Lord Mayor of the City of London just days before he was due to be “elected” to it. He was doing so ostensibly on his own initiative to protect the reputation of the office because “someone closely connected” to one of his former employers was subject to criminal proceedings, although he said this did not involve him and he was not…

So DIGGER was… interesting. I avoided all reviews before I went, so I was watching the film clean. In case anyone’s reading this who hasn’t seen the film yet, I will simply say that the trailers for the film are not the film. I think it’s built to be watched twice. The first time, the twists hit you and you grapple with disappointment and your patience is tested. I want to watch it again with more attention to the details, while I’m not fidgeting in my chair, my investment in the first thirty…

★★☆☆: A fun premise that actually seemed like it was written by someone who had played a videogame. Loved the idea of sentient NPCs. Lots of cute visual references and nods to existing games. But the story itself fell flat for me. They put so much energy into building that world only for the actual plot to be a forgettable series of chase scenes with a love story hamfistedly woven in. It's not a bad watch overall (especially if you love videogames) but it felt like a missed opporunity. Also the…

It feels nostalgic to look at clouds. I remember laying in the grass as a boy and staring at them. It doesn’t take long to look, so I wonder why I stopped? The clouds were particularly beautiful yesterday, around sunset, just outside my bedroom window.

Our fourth novelette is live! Snag a copy directly from us now or anywhere books are sold. In a world... ravaged by global warming and wars, Banana Brian is forced to take a job as a supervillain's henchman to pay off his student loans. In order to survive, Brian must find a way to pay off his giant debt, avoid kleptomaniac henchmen, find shortcuts to freedom, and avoid getting killed by rampaging amoral superheroes, the supervillain's brutal enforcers, and a nasty infection he got from a…

Whis week, Ed Asner and Mason Adams, the stars of Lou Grant, are on the cover, and with a name like Lou Grant it has to be good, right?**Bonus points to anyone who gets that joke. If you're not sure, here's a clue.Seriously, I digress from this TV Guide for a moment to take a look at the issue of April 23, 1977. In the TV Teletype, we read a story about how Asner's going to be doing a new CBS series this fall about the newspaper business. Asner describes the show, to be set in Los Angeles, as a…

The winches on your sailboat are the workhorses of its rig. They do the heavy lifting and make your job as skipper easier so you can enjoy the ride. They’re also the most expensive hardware aboard so it only makes …

A driving lesson about test anxiety and a bit of tablet weaving.

Lumpin What Works Well? What Works…Less Well? Opportunities What’s Adaptable? Six Years Hence: Where Are the Joneses? part 2 Coming Attractions This week, our Free Culture Book Club listens to Lumpin. To give this series some sense of organization, check out some basic facts without much in the way of context. For Clarity : You can best think of these posts like their titles suggest, as the seed of a discussion group (“book club”) to spark conversation about a Free Culture work. Thinking of it…

Every week, I share something I learned in the previous seven days. I usually find these while I'm putting my weekly newsletter together but somehow, they don't quite fit! This week I learned why people are ticklish, and how ticklishness is the same across cultures. The experience of tickling and ticklishness is the same across cultures: new researchMore than 98% of people have been tickled. But scientists still don’t understand why we do it. Get better at work. Every Week. One Email. Practical…

I wrote this post for a prompt given during our local Indieweb club meeting My impossible bucket list, things I would want to do/be if the realities of the world and my life did not constrain me. Here it goes: Write a journal entry every day. Write a bestseller book about physics. Watch the Sun die. Take a transcontinental train. Swim across a river. Spend a day in the International Space Station. Solve integration problems in my head. Solve a Millennium Prize Problem. Run an ultra marathon.…