Andy rounds up yesterday’s meeting with some photos. A mainly Sci-Fi and Fantasy day today, although there was a large historical game as well. We’ll lead with Alan’s Star Wars X-Wing game, featuring a couple of large(ish) ships and several fighters (above) The big ships join battle TIE Defender getting close X-Wings and Y-Wings on patrol C-Roc Gazanti Class (I think) Imperial Gozanti-class Assault Carrier Tony and Phil continued their Glacial Quest of the Ringbearer campaign, including the…

The big 3-9. Friday was my birthday.I woke up that morning free of new mosquito bites. Perhaps Ms. Mosquito decided to give me a break; or she's just so FULL from 2 days of drinking our blood that she's hidden herself somewhere and is now laying eggs. (The hunt continues...) Despite my previous reservations about this particular year, I was excited to celebrate ME. The sky is clear and blue; the air crisp and slightly cold, just how I like it. A really long timeline 8:30 ⇣Wake up, receive…

elevator meetingbeautiful, Black womansmelled of jasmine, lilac, coconut, and patchouli.we rode the floors, silent yet observant.I exited, but turned around and uttered,“You smell good”and watched her facelight the dark, enclosed space.“THANK YOU!”in my head, she’s“Lady Smellgood”, subtlylacing our buildingwith her scent without trying. effortless victory.

4-6 months ago I had the urge to distrohop. It's been about 8 years since I've tried Ubuntu, so I decided to switch over from Debian. It was great for a little bit, got a newer NVIDIA driver and a newer version of Gnome, but my god has my patience dwindled for setting up new distros on a personal computer. It effectively an entire afternoon of my time gone, and I don't exactly enjoy it anymore. After setting up Zed (my preferred editor) with all its theme changes and typing shortcuts, then…

Note: This review, as with all content I write on this site, is my opinion. It does not reflect the opinion of others, including the American Knife and Tool Institute (AKTI), the cutlery trade group that I advise on legal matters.There were a whole bunch of reasons on paper, why the project should be a success. It was the first production mid-engine car made in the US. It was a two seater. It has non-load bearing body panels and a number of touches to make the car lighter. In some ways it…

Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914-2003), The Wartime Journals (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012), pp. 121-122 (Dec. 1942; note omitted): Poor old Rowse says somewhere in his autobiography that he regards the old ideal of Mens sana in corpore sano as arrant nonsense and a contradiction in terms, or words to that effect; for when he rides his hobby-horses he does ride them with whips and spur. He prefers to believe that bodily health and intellectual force are incompatible things, and that art springs from the…

Leeloo (2016)I'm back on my Mac and all-in with Bear again right now. Working on an Alfred workflow for daily notes and logging. So refreshing! Well, it looks like I may have a use for that "extra" Xteink X4 I bought: Snail — The screen you can read in the sun. (via Espresso Shots 9-27-26) Some of you may be disappointed to hear it, but I vibe-coded a CMS for this blog. ✍️ Reply by email

I wanted to make a region and then give it a person who lived there: a Dungeon Crawl Classics character with ties to that place. Iron Arachne could generate both, but they were stranded on separate pages. There wasn’t a good way to treat them as pieces of the same world. That’s what the Iron Arachne Workshop changes. It’s out now, and it gives you a place to bring generator results together and build them into a setting or campaign. From a pile of tools to a world Iron Arachne has accumulated a…

Sterling Hayden in The Long Goodbye (1973) Vitals Sterling Hayden as Roger Wade, larger-than-life alcoholic writer Los Angeles, Summer 1972 Film: The Long Goodbye Release Date: March 7, 1973 Director: Robert Altman Men’s Costume Designer: Kent James (uncredited) WARNING! Spoilers ahead! Background Sterling Hayden storms into The Long Goodbye like a force of nature, a happily hulking 6’5″ direct counter to Elliott Gould’s laidback characterization of private eye Philip Marlowe. It’s a…

Part of What I’ve Been Doing Introduction September 16th was the date of the last post on this site. Where have I been for the last eleven days you may be wondering? The short, tldr, answer is: I’ve been following through with the things I talked about in the Blog Auditing posts from around that time. The long version? That is a bit more involved, and is what the cover image above is about. The Main Clean Up Three (out of four) sites have been cleaned up, for the most part. PageSpeed Insights…

This is the final review for our book club. If you want the weekly posts you can join for free. October 2026 we will be reading The Small Stuff While Jaron Lanier's look at the impact of social media on our lives is from 2018, he did correctly see much of the corruption in our relationships that we encounter today. If anything he was unwilling to go far enough in his book, instead trusting in the rational thought of people that could stop the juggernaut that is social media companies and Big…

Some of my earliest lessons in this craft served me very well—at the beginning. As I’ve grown, they have stopped being helpful. I suspect this is true for you, too. I was told to put the sun behind me. I was told to fill the frame with my subject. I was told that if I divided the frame into thirds and put the subject on one of those magical lines, then my photographs would be more interesting. For a while, these ideas helped make sense of an otherwise overwhelming craft. They were good lessons…

I'm doing something a little different this week, Sweets fans:All of today's cakes are by the same baker.Why?Because after ten years of searching out the best cakes the web has to offer, it takes a lot to impress me. And Elena Gnut, a culinary artist from Kaliningrad, Russia, knocks my sugar-loving socks off. Her cakes are pure art, incredibly unique, and I think you're going to love them. Here, just look at her hot air balloon cake topped with floating butterflies: That's all hand-painted! And…

A book with this high of a body count (in the violence sense) should not be so comforting, and able to be the good kind of fluffy. Likewise, despite being situated in the red flag zone as far as my expectations, (an established series, previously exclusively male dom) I really liked it. I actually enjoyed it enough that I stayed up late to finish it. It’s fairly short, all things considered and slower burn. All its sex are in the latter acts, but a bunch of whump, hurt/comfort and caretaking…

There’s been some chatter on the webs that the next base iPad update could adopt the new “Neo” branding like the MacBook released earlier this year. But that’s folly. Spec bumps do not a Neo make; they’re nothing new. The MacBook Neo created a whole new class or tier of MacBook; the next base iPad is rumored to be…wait for it…a base iPad. I’ll explain and toss in fun speculation. For the next base iPad to actually be all-new, it would need more changes or new things to warrant a rebrand with a…

2026-09-27Hello!This is director Lee Chang-dong, who presented his drama film Possible Love first to Venice and now to New York City. Before the screening, I photographed him during an afternoon photoshoot.I haven't been back at the red carpet since April, but when registration opened to take portrait photography for the 64th New York Film Festival this September, I signed up.While I didn't get the full press pass to see the theater screening, I did spend a half hour prepping and practicing…

I miss the ocean. It's been about two years since I last saw it, when I travelled up north to Salvador, and before that I only saw it sparingly, never more than once per year. My father's union owns an inn by the seaside in Santos, and the stay is quite cheap for people who work there, so we travelled almost every year, but I stopped going around, God, a decade ago. It is a strange thing to miss a place whose last memory you have is terrible. I won't linger on how that day, visiting someone I…

I have yet to make a dish from Ella Quittner’s Obsessed with the Best that wasn’t phenomenal, and her Teeny Tiny Meatballs were no exception! These adorable little pork-and-beef meatballs start with a panade of milk-soaked bread blended with onion, garlic, and fennel seed, which keeps them tender and seasons every bite. They’re rolled in breadcrumbs and pan-fried until golden, giving you the ideal ratio of crisp exterior to juicy center. The rolling and frying are a project, but you’ll have…

On 27 September 1960 Europe’s first travelator was ceremonially opened. Bank Station, which had been in service since late Victorian times had only one exit down a sloping corridor. By the 1930s the increased passenger volumes had made its use impractical. The war and post-war austerity had stopped the project, finally construction began in 1957 taking three years for completion. On 27 September 1968 the musical Hair, containing nudity and drug-taking, opened after the abolition of theatre…

New blogt post: "New House Keys as Mid-Autumn Festival Present".

These are for every type of roast, and as a side for any substantial meal. This made enough for 3-4 people, although it was eaten by 2 as we were very hungry.

It is a Mid-Autumn Festival custom to gift mooncakes. In this Mid-Autumn Festival in 2026, we both bought and received mooncakes, but also received a different, special present: the keys to our new house! My parents purchased a terraced house in a new residential area in our city last year in 2025. Originally, the construction of our new home was expected to be completed in late July 2026, which happened to be around my birthday, so I had hoped that we would receive the keys to our new house as…

This idea jumped in my head when I pondered my blog and it set up a whirlwind of thoughts. Time to get them out of my head and on my blog. The reason for writing this list is that when words just don’t want to get posted, focusing on the who may help you to write. In random order, I write my blog for: myself. My aim is to figure out ideas, to share my discoveries and my creative path. Also, to spread joy! It also helps me become a better writer because I focus on writing daily and that means…

I had dinner the other night with a friend who - a little more open than normal thanks to a glass or three of wine - admitted he was terrified (yes, terrified) of inviting a potential date to his house for a meal. 'Should I ask her to sign a piece of paper to confirm consent before kissing her?' He was not joking. How has the tender moment of 'ae fond kiss' been condemned to lettering and recording, ignoring and mistrusting enlarged pupils and quivering lips? What have we done to so emasculate…

There was a big storm last night. The wind picked up and there were trees down on the street. I can hear the wind and the rain are still blowing around but the storm has mostly passed and all that’s left are the remnants of a northeast storm that devastated the weekend.I sit here now and I have my trusty companion with me. Ah, thank God for trusty companions.And no, this is not a person or an animal but instead, I have my cup of coffee which is what I needed this morning.Or wait.No.I have other…

HUGE week as I finally managed to wrap up my passport issuance, and it has now shipped out. If I knew I could not count on the Bengaluru Police to do their jobs I would’ve just gone to the police station on day one instead of waiting the stipulated 3 weeks. Anyway, no point raging about that any more. I’m also writing this week note on my phone because I’m out touching grass and won’t get back home in time to write this on my usual schedule. Social Like I mentioned last week, Amogh is in town…

It is a Mid-Autumn Festival custom to gift mooncakes. In this Mid-Autumn Festival in 2026, we both bought and received mooncakes, but also received a different, special present: the keys to our new house! My parents purchased a terraced house in a new residential area in our city last year in 2025. Originally, the construction of our new home was expected to be completed in late July 2026, which happened to be around my birthday, so I had hoped that we would receive the keys to our new house as…

I finished Bad Blood recently :) It is a must-read if you want to understand what happened with Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. It is very specific and focused in that regard - it isn't a general observation about Silicon Valley or Palo Alto startups with her as an example (which parts of the cover may suggest), but instead a detailed recount and look behind the scenes by the journalist who broke the initial story. It feels like a written documentary as much as it feels like a piece of evidence,…

Usually, when I grow tired of editing blog posts using Markdown files in Emacs or whatever, I create a new blog using Ghost or something like it. This time, I did something different. NOTE: This post is about vibe coding an app for myself. If you're put off by this, now's the time to stop reading. Sometimes I just want a nice, easy, CMS for blogging. Emacs and a few lisp function are not that, so I asked Claude Code to make me a web app. At 7:00 am I sent the following to Claude: My blog at…

The padlocked security gate was open, which immediately meant that the other locked security gate would probably be open too, and as it turned out, I was right. There is something deeply satisfying about correctly predicting the behaviour of gates, although sadly this particular skill has yet to prove useful in any other area of my life.The only slight drawback was that the boat club were also out in force, milling up and down the river with the enthusiasm of people who had absolutely no…