I’m mildly surprised that I’ve only written about two of the ghost subway stations – Worth Street and the famous City Hall Station. (I’ve written about discontinued lines, but that’s not quite the same thing as a now-unused station that trains pass every hour of every day.) Today’s topic is not a ghost station since it was never built – it was an idea that was rejected, twice, and is now probably moot. Most mass transit system have a few heavily travelled trunk lines in the center of the city…

I am a huge fan of the Netflix series Peaky Blinders. When it first came out in 2013, I didn't really pay much attention to it. Then, around Season 3 in 2015, I watched it and was hooked. One of the things I learned while watching the series, and finally the movie this year, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, was how many bits of history were intertwined with the obvious fictional elements. It is a huge reason I am a fan. There is something about historical fiction that, as someone who studies…

No worries. The sunflowers will be back next year. (click to enlarge)I guess summer is officially over, both meteorologically and astronomically. I know many people are sad that warm, sunny days are fading away. Schools are in session. Vacations and holidays have passed. The water in the rivers, lakes and at the beaches has started to cool. The weather patterns have also now shifted. But not me. Here in southeastern Virginia summer means hot, humid and miserable weather as far as I am…

I abused the C preprocessor until C read like Ruby. At -O2 the assembly shows it changes little beyond the spelling of a loop. Steve Bourne did the same to C in the 1970s, and his version inspired the International Obfuscated C Code Contest.

I met the artist Jill Ross through an online journaling group offered by artist Vonda Drees. That feels like a very different time and world, and in a way, it was, back in 2018. We were journaling our way through Joyce Rupp's Open the Door: A Journey to the True Self. I first blogged about the experience in this post, but there were others. Through the years, we did some additional journaling classes online together.Beginning of a Mosaic by Jill RossA few days ago, Jill posted this picture on…

I recently read Don't couple your Go code to GitHub. I still like Github, and think the GitHub hate for its instability is overblown. Like not being able to code for a few hours is really not that big of deal. But! I think it's still a good point to allow for migrations off of GitHub. So, I am moving all of my Golang packages to go.icco.me. If you're using my packages, nothing will change, but I'll start recommending in code to use the domain. If you previously read my Homelab 2024 post about…

In prelaunch with Violent Delights, another game inspired by Shakespeare:Follow the CampaignIt’s game night. You and your friends gather to play a Hamlet-inspired game manuscript from 1983. But there’s a catch… The game is cursed. By the end of the night, some of you will be sucked into the game — trapped inside a castle with a vindictive ghost — and your characters will take your place at the table. What will they do with their newfound freedom? How will your friends get you out?Secrets are…

Daily Drawing 1003

“Listen to me! How melodramatic I sound. But once one has had the experience of waking up to a body in one’s own library, one never really loses the sense that just about anything might happen.” Long time readers of the blog will know that I am not the biggest fan of continuation novels but seeing the Puzzle Doctor’s recent review of Foley’s new book, I decided to give it a go. I think one thing which was helpful, for the nervous traditionalist, going into this novel was realistic reading…

A fellow member of the tildes.net community posted a thread about taking a screen free day, and after trying one I wanted to comment with my thoughts on it. Rapidly I realised that the comment was becoming far longer than the average, so I took the opportunity to stick it onto my blog instead. I took a screenless day on 12th September, and it was incredibly restorative. I decided that it was easier to have zero screens than to permit just one or a specific purpose, so there was no digital input…

The rugged and mountainous terrain of Alaska’s Glacier Bay presents a dramatic and awe-inspiring natural landscape, characterized by towering peaks, steep cliffs, and expansive glaciers that descend toward the pristine waters below. The post In Glacier Bay appeared first on 75CentralPhotography.

Some recent research (mentioned in New Scientist, Feedback) on what cats actually do, was originally published in ‘Pets’ journal, 12 September. A team from Massay University, New Zealand, fitted cat collars out with activity monitors: 10 indoors cats, 18 free-roaming, 8 semi-outdoors cats.The results/conclusions? What do cats actually do? You’d expect the free-roamers to be most active, and they are. But what that amounts to is spending 3.9 of their time active.How does it all break down?2.4 to…

Control Panel for YouTube Control Panel for YouTube is a browser extension which gives you more control over YouTube by adding missing options and UI improvements After only a few minutes, this has become my new favorite browser extension. ✍️ Reply by email

THE SOLAR GRID makes The Markaz Review's The Anthropocene Book List, a handsome list of 10 very fine books that I am humbled to see my demented graphic novel share company with. Steven Heller showcases 10 cover samples of UN SEDICESIMO, a 16-page Italian quarterly that provides a blank slate for a different artist to do whatever they want with each time. How I wish more books and graphic novel covers looked like these. WORKSTREAM: Today, apparently, is brain fog day. A condition I must overcome…

It’s officially fall, so we’re breaking into the pumpkin desserts! I’ve already devoured my one-quart annual allotment of pumpkin ice cream, so now we’re moving on to Smitten Kitchen’s Marbled Pumpkin Gingersnap Tart! Deb turns up the volume on the usual pressed-in crust by combining gingersnaps with graham crackers. The gingersnaps provide a little more character and spice that complements the filling nicely. The crust is filled with a warmly spiced pumpkin batter flavored with cinnamon,…

Soooooo Hacker News happened. 🤣 Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email, or leave a comment.

People feel proud about their intelect. They believe it defines them, as it took humble monkeys from the savanna and made them top of the food chain. Yet the concept is quite nebulous. Other creatures have some intelligence and now, with the new machines, there is a lot of intelligence around, but it still feels off. So we're in a new culture shock: forced to define intelligence, accept it in others and other things, then realize that it was never about that in the first place. Think of a…

Portuguese A bit of a dramatic title, it makes sound like I just lost my sense of smell, but the truth is I can’t smell anuthing for almost two decades. At some point, when I was six or seven, I stopped smelling things. Maybe I never could, or perhaps I lost the ability gradually and no one noticed until years later. Either way, this little fact about me is practically part of my personality. It would definitely be on my character sheet. I always end up mentioning it for one reason or another,…

Sometimes I feel as though Grace is watching over me. The device in the picture is an apple peeler/corer; it works like a charm for preparing apples to cook, because all one need do is stick an apple on those spikes and turn the crank, and the apple is peeled, cored, and spiral-sliced in about 30 seconds. But a few weeks ago, I noticed I hadn’t cleaned it thoroughly enough when I put it away last year, and in the process of remedying that I accidentally unseated the spring you can see at lower…

smooth like Norah Jones’s version of “Prototype”, yougo down easy…mellow, melodic, musing–fantastic phenomenon. I’m moved by you, but not moved by you.intrigued, cautionary tale–I’mtip-toeing into your world,fitted armor too tight…you can’t break in, and I… can’t break out.so, we’re just stuck,circling the circle of life, in our own circles, afraidto square up for loveagain.

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's theme is Fall so here are ten corresponding books:The Autumn People by Ruth M. Arthur (1973). This is a time-slip set mostly in Scotland, which Romilly visits with her grandmother. She gets caught up in a family tragedy from many years ago and falls in love with a ghost. This always reminded me of Time at the Top by Mabel Esther Allan, another favorite. Read more »

A few years back, I posted about the “Daily Logic” and “Daily Semantics” project of Josh Dever, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. The projects offer up mini-lessons in logic or semantics that anyone can subscribe to. At the time, Professor Dever wrote, “The idea of each is that each day you get sent a little, roughly 200 word bite in the relevant area, so that you can gradually and painlessly(-ish) build up real expertise.” Since that post, Professor Dever has added…

In one week, matz closed my pull request to spinel and the /r/rails moderators banned me for good. Matz explained his decision in five sentences. In two years of removing my posts, the moderators never explained one.

WoM 34 Alabama Annie - Let's Work Together.mp3Barbara Hogue & The Countrymen - Specialize In Love.mp3Donna Mae Tremblay - Tell Me Why.mp3Elise LeGrow - You Never Can Tell.mp3Gail Davis - I'm A Female Thru And Thru.mp3Irma Thomas - Don't Mess with My Man.mp3Jai Malano - Matchbox, (I'm Gonna Forget About You).mp3Judy Clay - Do You Think That's Right.mp3Lucille Mapp - Chinchilla.mp3Maria Mariadou (MG Shuffle) - Roll Over Beethoven.mp3Myrna Lorrie - Listen To My Heart Strings.mp3Ruby Falls - He…

Selected scenes from a walk in Malaga Lake Park. On a balmy Sunday morning, Eleanor and I took a short walk on a nature trail through Malaga Lake Park. Ellie wanted to use a real camera, and I used the opportunity to get out of the house and make some images in the woods. I enjoyed making some detailed compositions of some smaller scenes. So much so that I made a print of the image of the fallen tree trunk.

Autumn Morning flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license Today’s TDC says: Use this random word generator and write a haiku (5, 7, 5 syllables) about the first word you generate! The word I got was drift: A crisp autumn day Cluds drift across the skyline Trees dance in the breeze I took a photo through my study window, it’s at the top of this post

A simple story can have so many layers, it’s sometimes difficult to keep up. Whatever layer you get from The Boy Who Rode the Wind, this animated short by Spaghetti Tree Productions is a rewarding watch, but, if, like me, you are easily brought to tears, then have your handkerchief ready. That makes this sound like a very drab watch, but honestly, the workmanship that has gone into this is nothing short of astounding (using tools such as Higgsfield, Adobe, Suno, Claude, Davinci) and I love the…

A recent lunch with my good friend Prashanth sparked a realization about the rapidly shifting landscape of software engineering. Amidst catching up, he pointed out a looming industry paradox, as AI accelerates our coding speed, the role of Quality Assurance (QA) becomes exponentially more critical, not less. I couldn't agree more.Historically, an average developer might write 500 to 2,000 lines of production-grade code in a month. Today, with AI coding agents developer generate that same volume…

I’m going to try to avoid falling into the trap of making a bad pun about the season…damnit! ;-) Welcome to the September edition of Interesting Links in the Data and AI World. It’s a bumper edition (aren’t they always), with lots and lots about Kafka and related technologies in particular this month. Oh, and AI. Obvs.