This week was the start of month 6 as Head of UCD in Digital Screening in NHS England. Here are some things I am thinking about: The NHS is not one place, it’s a network of businesses and trusts held together by a common understanding of risk. The closest I ever came to this was in banking but it’s still not quite the same. Almost piece of design work is deeply shaped by reputational, clinical and cybersecurity risks. What it does to design teams, I think, is that it creates a sense of unease…

This is my first time hosting the IndieWeb Fiction Carnival, and I am also hosting the IndieWeb Blog Carnival. It was an impulse, inspired by the itch for creative writing, while noticing no one had claimed the October spot. So why not? I noticed participation in the Fiction Carnival is less intense than in the Blog Carnival, so I hope to be able to manage both. Here we go! sunflower in the sky, why do you wish to fly? is earth not enough, the sun worth the fright? Prompt: Sunflowers in the Sky…

Recent events in the field of AI for mathematics have shown us beyond all reasonable doubt that the field is currently undergoing a rapid transformation, unlike anything that we have ever seen before. Language models are solving hard problems which humans could not, and mathematicians are reacting very differently to this news. I personally am extremely excited about the future of our field. However it is becoming clear to me that my views are not shared by everyone in the community: indeed,…

2026 romance and more. Roxie Mitchell is happy working temp jobs to save up for wild excursions, and reading romance novels with her book club between times. But then an unwise wish leads her into a sideways world…

While I didn’t post too many reviews in September, it was a most enjoyable reading month, with several great new reads and a few cheeky rereads going on in the background, too. I also managed to add a couple of posts to my ongoing chapter-by-chapter journey through The Tale of Genji, even if I only covered one chapter, in addition to managing to make a dent in my backlog of review copies. Lots to enjoy in the month that was, then, but we’ll begin, as is usually the case, with quantity, not…

RA-7 PROTOCOL DROID Silver Star Tours Droid Factory Customizable Figure Item No.: ??? Manufacturer: Disney? Number: n/a Includes: n/a Action Feature: Removable limbs Retail: $12.95 Availability: April 2017 Appearances: n/a Bio: The RA-7 protocol droid, also known as the RA-7 inventory droid, the RA-7 series protocol droid, the "insect droid" due to its large photoreceptors, and nicknamed the "Death Star droid" due to its use aboard the first Death Star, was a model of protocol droid…

I’ve been using my iPod classic as my sole music player all summer now. The replaced screen, battery, storage, and front shell are all steady. I’ve found myself on an alternate build of Rockbox called Rockpod; the main thing I like about it is very superficial: it changes the theme colors based on the playing track’s album art. It also claims other features that probably matter like being flash-aware so it treats flash storage like flash and not like spinning metal. However, the firmware also…

Here we go, here we go. The countdown of the posts that did the business on this here blog last month. 1. Labour's Far Right Failure 2. 25 Years 3. The Null Montie 4. Holborn and St Pancras: Two Observations 5. Andy Burnham at Labour Party Conference For all of Labour's turn to the soft left, the Keir Starmer continuity prevails in the government's response to the far right's provocations. And that's what made number one in September. It's almost as if Labour hope they'll go away by treating…

WORKSTREAM: Got to see proofs for issue 2 of ELON magazine, which features my collab with Dominic Boyer, and it's fantastic! The Gigacities Collective have done a really great job at creating the new culture-jamming publication for our times. I'll remember to post again once it's out and there's more information on how to get it. The complete THE SOLAR GRID box-set can now be nabbed through Asterism. October is already here, which I'm gonna need to dedicate almost entirely to wrapping up TIMES…

I'm hearing a lot from friends and collegues who've recently upgraded to Apple's latest iPhone 18 Pro that they are experiencing random Bluetooth disconnects, especially with Apple's own Apple Watch.

"I'm not a faun, but I just might be a goat. An old goat. Probably the one on its hind legs. At least that's what I'd like to think. But perhaps I'm more the one behind, standing slightly further away. Yes.I'm uncomfortable. A reluctant participant. I'm answering the call. A bit half hearted about it. No good will come of this. Pan can be unpredictable. I don't want to end up as goat's head soup either. Woodland creatures and actual gods are beyond my understanding of things.Besides, this is no…

Cue dramatic opening music, sweeping camera shots, a host appears… I don’t watch much “live” TV. The Great British Bake Off if the exception. Becca has said she is going to watch the upcoming Celebrity Traitors (largely for the ‘water cooler’ chat at her work). I will not be watching. Don’t get me wrong I like the idea behind the show, and there will be some people I’ve actually heard of as well —when is a celebrity, not a celebrity?— it’s just the format of these shows I don’t enjoy. Now, I…

This Month Picture… Drummond T14 4-6-0 No. 466 is turned at Fisherton Sarum as Bulleid Merchant Navy 21c14 heads through Salisbury on the Devon Belle.

Tamago sando is a classic Japanese egg sandwich made with soft shokupan and a creamy egg filling. My mom often made these sandwiches for our weekend breakfast when I was growing up in Japan and it’s something I made for my children’s lunchboxes too, so it’s a very well loved staple for me. It’s one ... The post Tamago Sando ( Japanese Egg Sandwich) appeared first on Chopstick Chronicles.

I have a theme this year, but I need to get this one out of the way first. I had heard a lot about it, both good and bad, but a quote from Director Luc Benson filled me with dread. And not the good kind.Besson had described the project as the "ultimate love story" and even going as far as to say (and I am trying to remember his exact quote) "if you read the novel it is a love story."NO.Dracula has NEVER been a love story unless you count Stoker's dedication in the novel to Hall Caine, aka…

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align. Tracks are added to…

Power Cat 2026-10-01

Yet another smash-and-grab after-work session, which these days seems to be my preferred method of angling. Why spend an entire day beside a river when you can spend and hour and a half an hour getting there through rush-hour traffic, arrive with approximately seventeen minutes of usable daylight, and then spend most of that time wondering whether there are actually any fish in the river? It’s all part of the experience. After navigating the worst of the traffic due to the drudgery of HS2, I…

Where it all began, from a certain point of view. Today is SV-POW!’s birthday. Not a nasty, dirty, wet birthday, like a 2nd or a 13th, nor yet a grand, nice-round-number birthday like a 10th or a 20th: it is our 19th birthday, and that means we’ve been around a while. I decided to celebrate by posting surprising facts about RNA. Nah, that was a transparent and rather feeble misdirect. It’s going to be sauropod vertebrae! (Although if you were really hoping for a surprising fact about RNA, hit…

I decided, in a fit of madness, that I wanted to use the 1918 German crosses on this one. And since I don't have any decals for that particular style, I had to paint them by hand, which proved to be a lot more difficult than I'd anticipated. Keeping them all sharp and geometrically regular was something of a trial.Still, it's done now. I don't know that I'll be likely to try it again, unless I can maybe organise some laser-cut masks.

Pheasant shooting beings Got up at 9.20. A rotten day. Rained the whole day. John brought my wages. Not fit to go out all day. Did some reading and sorted out some books.

Here are the non-bird pics from the zoo. Clearly mammals are the second focus for me after birds. I think I like how expressive they can be. Plus it’s easy to anthropomorphism an ape taking a nap or bears playing with a toy or a panda passed out. Size and relation to common pets also help make them relatable. But then you see the size of bone the grizzly has the chew on and you quickly realize this is not a pet… Something that I find fascinating about running a zoo is how do you keep all these…

Here are more DISNEYLAND DETAILS - photos that have zoomed in on some tiny aspect of a ride or building. Both of these are undated, but definitely from the 1950s.First up is a detail that fascinated me as a child... the big blue eye of Monstro the Whale, the "host" (?) of the Storybook Land Canal Boats. I guess most hosts don't swallow you, but Monstro has always thought outside the box. I would happily watch a 30 minute documentary about how this eye was made; is it cast resin? The iris was…

Arabesque (1966)

Letters from the turn of a century, 1From around 1890 and for the first ten or so years of the 20th century, a new decorative style, Art Nouveau, arrived in England. English designers* drew on the work of graphic artists, architects, and product designers in France and Belgium. The hallmarks of their work included curved lines (and curvaceousness generally), ornament based on the natural world, especially plants and flowers, and a preference for pastel shades.† The curvilinear features of Art…

In my collection Sphinxes and Obelisks (2021), I included an essay (adapted here) on The Ghost Book, Sixteen New Stories of the Uncanny edited by Cynthia Asquith, which may be seen as the first modern ghost story anthology. It celebrates its centenary this month: it was published in Hutchinson’s Autumn list, in plenty of time for the traditional season of ghost story

I’ve seen the Housing Theory of Everything, but I kinda wonder if the Healthcare Theory of Everything might work almost as well in the US to make life better for most people? People stay in jobs they hate because they (and their family) need health insurance. This gives workers less leverage in their treatment and compensation by corporations. Universal Healthcare would provide a safety net for workers to leave bad jobs… which in turn could improve conditions at workplaces if workers are not…

As the nights draw in and the sun becomes a long-distant memory, reasons to venture out with a camera are fewer and fewer. So, here are 31 prompts for October to encourage you out of a slump (like me) or whatever. I will almost certainly not do all 31! I will update this post periodically (I have other stuff to do!) and share images on the socials with the hashtags #Photober and #Photober2026 If you want to join in, feel free — the more the merrier! Do all of them; do one a week; pick one and…

Using WP Apps, you can turn your WordPress into your personal knowledge base: each app can help you organize a different aspect of your life with your data stored in structured ways, under your control, and available to the tools you choose. To explain my vision for establishing WP Apps, I have created a landing page and showcase at wpapps.kirk.at. If you think it’s a good idea, please spread the word! wpapps.kirk.at There is a knowledge base section on the “AI” page, and I would like to…

I've been reading Black Lagoon, the manga. I knew it would be on the horizon as soon as I learned that it is Surprisingly Leftist, and created with a powerful sense of perversion (positive) about both history and about women. It, so far, has not disappointed — I'm on volume 7 and fully convinced that Revy is one of the hottest women ever drawn, so it's working on me. I finished Baru Cormorant, or at least the three books that are out currently. There seems to… possibly… be a fourth on the way,…