Spotted knapweed closed on a gray day, Frick Park, 26 Sep 2026 (photo by Kate St. John) 28 September 2026 Same but different. Last week I photographed whatever caught my fancy. Today I found three pairs of photos connected by their similarities and differences. Tales of Two Things. Saturday morning 26 September was chilly with heavy dew. At Frick Park I found two purple flowers with different approaches to the day. The spotted knapweed, at top, had been closed and was just starting to open at…

I have the fondest memories of starting this website. It was in a completely different form, on a completely different platform, in a completely different city (if that even matters). I remember coming across the idea of a blog in a printed tech magazine. The magazine used to come with CDs, sometimes two or three of them, and eventually switched to DVDs. Just the idea fascinated me: I could log on, write, and my words would appear as if printed on a piece of paper, instantly, for the world to…

There's an essay floating around that is probably bait, but here we are. It speaks fondly of smoking. The thing is, I lived through the same period the author did and it, in the way nostalgia often does, leaves out some things. Smoking was allowed many places. Not schools, but that was kind of it. Restaurants had sections. There were fans or ventilation to try to keep the smoke contained. If you went somewhere like a concert, you had to plan for your clothes, your hair, your coat, your pores to…

I have so many ideas for weird web october... probably because I'm at work which is always, annoyingly, where I feel more creative. Here are some resources and inspiration links I've been looking at... linklog #003 - silly websites now! sweetfish.site weird web october ribo.zone weird web october lina's html energy page At the same time, we're getting access to Claude at work along with reassurances its not going to replace anyone's job (I think the ship is sailing on that across the whole…

A round-up of what caught my eye on social.omgmog.net between 21 and 27 September, an AI let loose on Pokémon, an actual paper on Monkey Island’s grog, and a koi pond that cost me more of my afternoon than I’d like to admit.

[It was actually “a random resident who happens to own a demon goat mask”.] In the Massachusetts town of Billerica, they pronounce their name bill-rick-uh, not bill-erica. They also let Krampus the Christmas demon address their Select Board about Flock cameras. “Santa handles incentives; I handle corrective action,” explained Krampus, a ghoulish figure said to punish poorly behaved children during the holidays. “This stuff is right up my alley: people associating with the wrong crowds, being…

I didn't want the Baty.net Editor to be just another tab buried in my browser, so I had Claude make me a real Mac app out of it. In a normal world, the only way I'd be able to split a website into its own app would be "Add to Dock" via Safari. That would work, but it would mean that running the local Node server for Eleventy was a separate step from the app. It would also only have Safari's default menus. I wanted something nicer, so I had Claude build me a Swift wrapper. I suppose I could have…

The long way around to screen sharing.Sony has progressively locked down what you can do with the PS5’s hardware. Streaming is a good example: the console gives you a nice, convenient “Broadcast” button, but the moment you want to do anything outside the handful of services Sony supports, it gets annoying very fast. Third-party Bluetooth devices are the same story! Sony locks the wireless stack to their own peripherals, so your headphones or controllers from other brands simply won’t pair :/…

Like sticky popcorn, this is a moreish but ultimately unsatisfying set of stories. After I flamed out of Dungeon Crawler Carl, someone suggested I try this series. I can see why! It's campy sci-fi fun, with enough tropes to keep you chuckling and enough tension to keep you turning the pages. Bob's brain is uploaded to a computer post-mortem. Awoken in a dystopian future, he has to pilot a spaceship to strange new worlds, put right what once went wrong, and hoping The Force will be with him,…

Nick Chubb will never be the same.The date is October 10, 2015, and Nick Chubb has just suffered one of the most gruesome injuries I have ever seen on a football field. I’m going to show it, but this video comes with a very serious trigger warning. It’s not for the faint of heart.For those who chose not to watch the video, this is the first play of a week six college football game between Nick Chubb’s Georgia Bulldogs and the Tennessee Volunteers. It’s a simple pitch from the I formation, which…

Hot on the heels Canute Road Quay at the enjoyable Worthing MRC show last weekend it is now the turn of Simon’s Collingwood to hit the road. With Collingwood and its modern signalling in miniature based on Fareham in Hampshire, it is being appropriately being exhibited at this weekends (3rd/4th October) Fareham RailEx show organised by the Fareham & District Model Railway Club. The Fareham RailEx show is being held at the Fareham Leisure Centre, Park Lane, Fareham PO16 7JU and has free parking…

Just to step back and get a look at the big picture (or the big pictures), when we talk about AI, which these days almost always comes down to large language models and LLM-driven agents, there are at least four huge stories to choose from.1. The capacities and limitations of the rapidly evolving technology. This is both the most exciting and infuriating part of AI news, with legitimate breakthroughs and sensationalistic crap fighting for readers' attention.2. The tremendous and often…

‘There is quicksand,’ here George tells his guest Nick during their destructively competitive evening, a warning that nothing in George and Martha’s relationship and their homelife is quite what it seems. But writer Edward Albee’s words are as much a hint for the characters as they are for the actors who must somehow skim across […]

What's been happeningWe've been lazy. But I'll get to that a bit later. I thought I'd get last week's post out early but I got too busy with work. I spent the past week in Bellevue, meeting up with my teammates and talking about what we'll be working on the next few weeks/months. I was hoping to meet Reetesh but as luck would have it, he'll be out of town just as I am flying in and will be back as I fly out. But first - after many months of classes, many frustrating moments and a few times when…

‘Uncle’ no more, this is barbecue you can (usually) eat with chopsticks. A Chinese-American barbecue restaurant might initially sound like a plot point from an episode of King of the Hill. Or it might conjure up images of fusion-ified dishes, from char siu pulled pork to five spice ribs. The reality at Hon’s BBQ is a lot less obvious and much more subtle. Skyward. The barbecue at Hon’s hews closely to Texan tradition, but with some Chinese flourishes in places. Despite their self-applied and…

Nearly twenty years ago, I listened to one of my first self-improvement audiobooks, called Boundaries by Dr Henry Cloud and Dr John Townsend. I don’t remember much of what’s actually written in it anymore (I did remember not loving the narrator). But the book left me with one idea that’s stuck ever since. In every relationship, you have to set boundaries. If you don’t, you lose the right to complain about being taken for granted. Setting the line is on you, and in relationships, as in most of…

"The Olympian," July 27, 1981, via Newspapers.comIn the movie “Wait Until Dark,” Audrey Hepburn played a blind woman terrorized by sinister strangers searching her apartment. The film showed that there is a unique psychological horror in knowing danger lurks around you, but you are unable to see it. That same fear is central to the following crime case--only in this real-life story, justice, let alone any answers, never made an appearance in the last act.Retired bookkeeper Sigrid Barginde was…

It’s no secret that the Hollywood Comet loves musicals. In 2010, I revealed I had seen 400 movie musicals over the course of eight years. Now that number is over 800. To celebrate and share this musical love, here is … Continue reading →

I’m a member of 50 Ways for Palestine, a branch of our local activist group 50 Ways Rockbridge, which we founded way back in 2016 for reasons that remain disturbingly true. The Palestine subgroup is a little over a year old. We had a busy summer, including a letter-to-the-editor campaign in response to a local conservative’s anti-Palestinian rant in our local newspaper. My own column about Gaza and genocide resulted in a rightwing Zionist organization inundating the paper, my university, and…

By Oliver Müller, Prizren BuçpapajVoltaria GamesOSELevel 1 A village is silent. None dares to speak out loud anymore, for fear of invoking the curse of the bell. A nun was burned 300 years ago, because she was accused of having consorted with a demon who stole the voices of his victims. The same demon who is bound to the bell of the ancient belltower in the center of the village. Will your party of adventurers brave the depths of the old catacombs to lift the curse and right the wrongs from the…

8697/21616Back to the Leicester Square Theatre and it felt like ages since I'd been here or done a podcast in front of an audience (Edinburgh is just a distant dream that I am not sure even happened).I had two fantastic guests lined up and the show was sold out and so I wasn't too worried. And turned out that I didn't need to be. When this place is full the atmosphere is already amazing and tonight had the added excitement of this being one of the last chances to see this.

I have long considered Lon Chaney Sr to be the ultimate character actor in the history of film. The man was a marvel. Not only could he play anybody, but he completely disappeared inside the characters he portrayed. Every move he makes, even down to the smallest and seemingly most insignificant of gestures, draws you in and keeps your attention. He also conveys more inner turmoil and emotion to audiences with a single look than any line of dialogue could ever hope to convey. He reached…

Sleep fitness company Eight Sleep published a technical bulletin Tuesday addressing a flood of customer support tickets regarding unexplained morning dampness on its Pod mattress covers.“Our hydro-engine circulates fifty-four degree water through medical-grade capillaries under continuous pressure,” said Eight Sleep VP of Product Integrity, Terry Towell. “Every returned unit undergoes a forty-eight hour diagnostic sweep with food-grade neon dye in our laboratory. In one hundred percent of…

IN THIS ISSUE How Meta Smart Glasses Are Changing Life With Sight Loss Taking Stock: How To Keep Diabetes Supplies on Hand Zucara’s ZT-01: What Could Taking the Brake Off Glucagon Do? The 20% Rule: What Two Hospitals Missed — And What Caught It FROM T1DTO100 “One Spot of Joy at a Time”: Managing Type 1 in Midlife T1Dto100’s Maddy Arnstein Testifies Before US Congressional Hearing The Management of Type 1 Diabetes in Adults: The Updated 2026 Consensus Report The Single Cheapest (and Most…

The beginning of 1902 saw the frame of the St. Regis Hotel, temporarily called “the Astor Building,” reach its full height in two stages. On January 21, the frame for the main block of the building had reached its full height, although there were no visual cues to that fact. The Fifth Avenue (west) side: The 55th Street (north) side: Unlike a couple of months earlier, the frame, the heavy masonry walls, and the concrete floors were all rising more or less in sync, suggesting that the earlier…

“The key question is not whether AI is used, but how it is used.” That’s from Springer Nature’s policy on using AI when peer reviewing for its journals. Wiley tells its journal referees: “Use AI responsibly: Apply best practices and properly disclose AI use in manuscripts and peer review.” That’s right: two of the largest academic publishers allow referees to use AI when reviewing submissions to their journals. Springer has created a “risk-assessment framework for AI use in peer review” to…

Lady of Rain’s folk thrived ‘neath her guidance. They never knew suffering. Then the farms sent word that trouble had come, strangers wandering from far. These raiders declared that the Lord of Feasts granted them authority. Their Child God allowed his People to seize anything that would please him. Farmers resisted and several were slain. Other farmers acquiesced. The harvest given Lord of Feasts’ folk gone. The farmers had nought to send. They feared the raiders would return again to demand…

Prompt 8: Divide a page into 4 sections, with one of the subheadings below at the top of each section: See Hear Feel Smell Write 4 simple bullet point sentences for each sense, describing the four things you can see, hear, feel and smell around you right now. This week’s prompt from The Writer Within is all about being present in the moment. So here goes… See I see the framed poster I bought my husband for his birthday some years ago. It’s a reprint of an old poster from the 1920s of the…

I struggled to get myself to the gym. It’s a classic trap, and I suspect many of us can relate to it. My sister was one of them, too. But she used to tell me: The best workout is the one you actually do. Her words have stuck with me ever since she first told me. They’ve helped me adjust the bar when I’ve felt resistance to going. Instead of telling myself I need to have a proper workout, I can think: I’ll just hop on the bike for a few minutes. Then I can reward myself with a nice long shower…