August 7, 2026 Let’s check in our bank employee, with career goals clearly in her focus! She’s chosen to dress in a manner reflective of the way the upper executives dress, while still keeping a foot firmly planted in her current position. It’s a balancing act to clearly appear “promotion-worthy” while at the same time not alienating or offending your current co-workers… In order to help her in her focus and shopping discipline, our heroine has chosen this painting and color palette as her…
Not a bad day but the wind still cold. Did all the lawns and finished cutting the hedge. Went out with Bill Edwards. Stars and Nags Head. Saw Keith.
Bandcamp Friday - 7th August 2026. I only just remembered to to get this one in the nick of time with a little over a hour to go on. I’m a big fan of this type of heavy dub steppas productions of traditional cultural sounds. This is Violinbwoy’s take on a Belarusian traditional song. A beautiful interpretation by Laboratorium Pieśni remixed for sound system play by Violinbwoy in his laboratory. A tune gathering the ancient spirits - from that time to this time… play it loud and feel the…
“I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (Live)” by U2 Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. Share a song that feels like a prayer. That isn’t by Madonna? Hmmm (I mean like a prayer sure does feel uplifting, right? What a song!) In that case I’ll take a specific version of a song that always makes me feel uplifted and joyous —I don’t pray, is that what it feels like for believers? The original version of this lives on a classic album, a top 20 of all time…
A while back, I refactored REDbot to separate out a HTTP message linting library. httplint checks about 325 aspects of HTTP messages, covering the syntax and semantics of almost 200 HTTP header fields. Then, I got curious: what happens when you point it at Common Crawl? Its availability on AWS brings the opportunity to do a large-scale survey of how HTTP is used and abused. With the help of Claude Code, the result is cc-lint. Pointed at over 120 million responses from nearly 50,000 sites, the…
Okay gang, hold onto your shorts, as the New Progressive Ruin is launching next Monday! I’ve been working in a secret laboratory, tinkering with templates and japing with jpegs, and I think I finally found the right formula to freshen up this site. I won’t bore you with details (“What? Who are you, and what have you done with Mike?”) but one template I was working with, that I sure was The One, turned into a huge pain in the Athol, Idaho, so I pivoted mid-stream to another and found that it…
Here's a pair of especially nice photos of Disneyland, circa September 1959. Only about three months after the Matterhorn, Monorail, and Submarines debuted, which was an exciting time! It seems that the photographer was attempting to capture the general ambiance of Tomorrowland in a single photo, with the Mark I Monorail ("Li'l Stubby"), the crowds waiting for their Voyage Through Liquid Space, and the venerable Skyway overhead (with a cameo by the Astro Jets to the right). I usually think of…
The Art Of Getting By (2011)
Despite my best efforts to focus on the books which are languishing on the TBR, there are occasions when my eye is caught by a fascinating new title and I have to source a copy to read straight away. That happened recently when Grant shared his thoughts on “The Name on the Wall” by Herve Le Tellier (translated by Adriana Hunter). He’s an author I’ve meant to get to for ages, but the subject matter of this one sounded irresistible; so inevitably a copy made its way to the Ramblings and instantly…
Out of the drafts and into… About a thousand million years ago, I decided to follow up my mildly creepy little C64 text adventure Escape the Dragon Caves with a lighter sci-fi offering, written for the same hardware. Everything went pretty well I thought, until it didn’t. But the great thing about ideas—especially ideas that mostly exist in a notebook I can leave lying around the house—is that I can come back to them whenever I have the time, will, and courage/stupidity to try again. Like now,…
Lynn Roberts on covertracklistBelina - An Jenem Tag (Those Were The Days).mp3 Brenda Burns I'll Come Running.mp3 Joyce Harris - Baby, Baby, Baby.mp3 Judy Stone - Be My Baby.mp3 Lynn Roberts - Beatnicks.mp3 Madame X - Ain't Worth The Pain.mp3 Mae West - Shakin' All Over.mp3 Marga Benitez - Geechie Goomie.mp3 Miss Chuckle Cherry - S.O.S..mp3 Patti Morrow - If I Could Paint A Picture As Beautiful As You.mp3 Pony Sherrell - Jungle Ungle, Um, Bai.mp3 Shirley Goodman - Tell Me So.mp3 WoM21
We have a polytunnel. At 17m x 9m its footprint is quite a bit bigger than the 2-floor area of our house. At one time we had a straggly grapevine trained up a trellis inside the tunnel. A friend, who knows a thing or two about wine came to view the tunnel when it was new and the plastic was clear and clean. I asked him: if were were to propagate our vine and have a 17m run of plants suitably pruned and fed and cared for, how much wine might we get in a good year? Oh, he replied, a bottle a day…
It's currently Blaugust, and so I'm counting all my blog posts this month as Blaugust posts, including the Linkdumps. I told a friend about it and she laughed, because "blau" in German means "blue", like the colour, but it can also mean being drunk. And I had this thought too... Blaugust sounds a bit like I'm planning to spend the month getting hammered. Sometimes a totally innocent or meaningless word in one language can mean something entirely different in another language. I'm always…
At about 02:30 local time last night, says William reading to the court from his notes, I observed a suspicious milk delivery. Now, I need you to know that I am not yet so old that what happens outside my window is my entire world, but when you’ve finished three hours of studying your bedroom ceiling, you’ll take anything. Plus it’s recycling day and our council has us using these large blue sack things that as yet have not blown away on a whim, but it didn’t half sound like that’s exactly what…
pictures developed in (pa)rodinal I brewed myself. scanned by Minetta Film Lab (Hyedrabad)
▶️ watched episodes 1-6 of Silo over the past week, most while I was a bit under the weather. Excellent dystopia concept and show. Pausing before watching episode 7, titled “The Flamekeepers”.#Silo #SiloTV #AppleOriginal #AppleTV#Blaugust #Blaugust2026
Suburban stories, fractured friendships, puncturing power: Showtunes from the Shadows is here for you on #BandcampFriday!https://helenmcc.bandcamp.com/album/showtunes-from-the-shadows
Another stunning leopard video.
Reading Time: 41 minutes I am approximately 38 minutes away from one of my godchildren showing up and demanding to be fed and, presumably, entertained (I plan on showing them Web Curios and then going to the pub, alone); as such, we’re once again cutting the intro short this week because, well, I really don’t still want to be in my pants when she gets here (and she wants that even less, I don’t doubt). I am still Matt, this is still Web Curios, and you may be wondering who the fcuk would…
Very autumnal here this morning - light and dew and temperature - for the first time. Enough rain has fallen...
MÖWE COFFEE ROASTERS is a small coffee store and cafe in Koenji. Once inside the store, you can grab a seat and take a look at the menu - the barista will come over and take your order when you are ready. Rather intimidatingly, the front cover of the menu had a rather long series of instructions. To translate and summarise - it mentions that MÖWE is mainly a roaster, and not a cafe. You are limited to 1 hour per drink, and to only talk in quiet voices. Standing up to take photos and taking…
LONDON A-Z P is for Plashet For my next unsung suburb I've been to a swallowed hamlet in Newham. Plashet used to be home to someone important enough to have appeared on a banknote and is now a mesh of Victorian terraces with a nice park and a dead library. If there were a stop on the District line between Upton Park and East Ham they could call it Plashet, but there isn't and the name's almost been lost. It's also not quite where modern maps put it because the original crossroads we seek is…
If you’re craving cozy comfort without the leftovers, this Cheesy Tuna Casserole for One is the perfect small‑batch meal. Made with tender pasta, a rich homemade sauce, and plenty of melted cheddar and Parmesan, it delivers all the creamy, crunchy goodness of a classic tuna bake — no canned soup required. Baked until bubbly with a crisp, buttery topping, it’s quick to prepare, deeply satisfying, and ideal for anyone cooking for themselves. Whether you’re after an easy weeknight dinner or a…
Volunteer State: It Would Seem Trump's Endorsement Is No Longer Golden As we noted yesterday, those crazy kids in Tennessee hold their primaries on Thursdays. Most states do it on Tuesdays, because it's a tradition established by the Constitution. Some states and territories do it on a weekend day, because that is when most people are off work. But Tennesseans shun both tradition and convenience. They have ever since Davy Crockett killed a b'ar when he was only three. Click here for full story
Years of landscape photography eventually crystallised into something I could trust. The experimentation settled, the instincts took hold, and I started recognising my own hand in a frame before I could explain why. A composition either felt like mine or it didn’t. Then I started shooting street, and shortly after that, documentary work around people I knew. Both felt like arriving somewhere new with instincts calibrated for somewhere else, the technical knowledge and compositional logic…
As I mentioned, I accidentally published all my draft posts. You know, the ones I cheekily listed at the bottom of my ripgrep post. All public and in my RSS feed. Dangit. What happened I can’t know for sure, but here’s what I suspect happened. Sloppiness on my part When Hugo builds my production site, it puts the files in the public/ subdirectory. I then upload that subdir to Cloudflare Pages with wrangler.... Read the full post on Sal's
weather: 🌥️ subtropical critters: CAW CAW CAW CAW CAW CAW (and a western tanager) my dad's coworker bought apples and peanut butter the other day. he mentioned this to my dad with an explanation: years ago, he saw my dad having apples and peanut butter on his break. coworker bought some apples and peanut butter that week to try it out. he thought it was good, so he made it for his small daughter. she now regularly asks for apples and peanut butter i feel bad sometimes that my dad has two gay…
It’s Friday! That means new music of course, but it’s also Bandcamp Friday. So let’s find some good stuff we like and support some artists we love. Hails! Temple of Dread - death - GermanyBrainBath - death - UKHorrifier - death - NorwayMiscreation - GermanyVertiginous - death - IndonesiaNew Sūn - death/groove - ItalyF.A.M - death/grind - PolandCasketSnack - death/deathcore - USABreath of Sindragosa - deathcore - USASarof - melodeath - FinlandHulder - black - USADark Plague - black -…
This week's "return to form," after last week's adventure time, was foiled by a nasty virus that I am certain Kim and I caught during our attendance at the aquarium. Most of the week I spent in survival mode, casting aside physical training for another week. As I'm climbing out of the foggy delirium of sickness, I'm feeling the "softness" of not going on a run or lifting heavy things settle in, and the leg cramps from inactivity feel like a quiet protest from the body itself.
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