Since writing a book on the night sky (The Wild Dark), I can’t help looking up. I’ve slept outside most nights since the end of February, more comfortable falling asleep under stars than in a bed. The other night, I woke startled at the brightness of the Millky Way, thinking it was a wildfire. The nights that drive me inside are some of the best, hauling in my sleeping bag and pad and falling back to sleep to the sound of rain on the roof. Which brings us a post I wrote in 2021, looking up and…

The next frontier in worm research is to be able to visualise (map) the locations of worms, in-situ, and if possible, at the paddock scale. We know so much more about the movements of ants, spiders, beetles, bees/pollinators and the above ground invertebrates. Yet so little about everything below ground. Frankly its a blight on us all we don't know more. Okay maybe that's a bit dramatic, but for a group of organisms that are so important to soil fertility and health, we know so little about…

There are plenty of maps that show you where the world's lighthouses are. Lighthouses, live does something much more interesting: it shows you how they actually work. Instead of just showing each lighthouse as a static point on a map this map gives you a sense of what its light signal actually looks like at sea.Lighthouses, live plots charted coastal lights on a dark, night-time relief map and animates each one according to its real-world light characteristics. Some lights sweep continuously…

I always love a good band documentary. This pretty much explains, how they made their by far shittiest album. But I really would have liked to know how they landed on the decision about that snare sound.👍 Recommended!

Last evening I was on the couch watching the Phillies. Andrew Painter I am happy with. I thought he should settle down like he has but was never sure. The bats, on the other hand, have been back to their atrocious ways. The bats are why they keep on losing in the playoffs. While watching the game, you could see they had a neat sunset. Shortly after that I noticed a glow coming in the windows and the front door, so I had to go check it out. This was more of the area of clouds with an afterglow a…

Zichovec Pivovar is one of those European breweries with a vast array of beers on sale in my neck of the woods, so I get to pick what looks interesting from their range. Here are three that caught my eye.For starters, Sea Buckthorn and Ginger Gose. I'm not generally convinced by sea buckthorn as a beer ingredient; I don't think it does much. Ginger, though? And salt and juniper? Irresistible. I had no idea what it would look like, so was surprised to see it pouring opaque and orange from the…

During the summer holiday of 2010, I read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals. I remember it well: we were visiting the Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, a region that is also known for its local meat produce. Of course we took advantage of that and stocked up on sausages in the cottage we rented. As I made progress in the book, I became more and more disgusted with the way meat is produced and lands on our plate. By the time I finished the book, we were back home. The next supermarket visit,…

September 25, 2026 Some of you have been over the Seasalt Cornwall website with a fine-tooth comb! There have been questions about how to incorporate Fair Isle sweaters into a wardrobe, so I’m going to address one of the (at least) three Fair Isle sweaters I see there. This sweater is lovely, and the colors are unusual: Sweater – Seasalt Cornwall Our friend who wants to buy this sweater is interested in using it as the fulcrum around which she will assemble a small autumn wardrobe. She only…

Welcome to Friday, a soggy morning after a very pleasant autumnal week here in North Wales. Progress on a wide range of models and more positively, Ribbons and The Art as well. Make yourself comfortable, grab a drink, possibly a biscuit and I’ll wait here until you’re done…We’ll kick things off this week with some etched brass, a medium missed here over the past few months and it is lovely to see models emerging from flat metal once more. A pair of Judith Edge kits are in the works - a Barclay…

Bruce is one of my favorite writers. He packs profoundness. Also honored that he’s an advisor at Automattic, truly one of my idols. His blogs and books rocked my world when I was young.

Loureedrichards stretches in to street hassle me with “The post on war comics and the reaction to it was interesting. Several people mentioned not being interested in war comics when they were younger, but they now have a greater affinity for them. I felt much the same way and now find I am as interested in war, horror, romance, and funny animal comics as I am in superhero comics. That may partly be due to the histories of those genres and many of the creators not being covered quite as…

I recently scanned some batches of slides that had some real beauties in them, and I look forward to sharing them with you over the next few months! We'll begin with this pretty 1972 view taken from the Parking Lot, looking along the Monorail beam with the Disneyland Hotel in the distance. We are in lot J, that's J for... uh... "Jiminy Cricket"? "J. Worthington Foulfellow"? Sorry, there is no "Jafar" or "Jasmine" yet. I love those gorgeous October clouds. Next, a very nice picture of the ticket…

Sorry To Bother You (2018)

I’ve been a keen reader of the British Library Crime Classics series since they first started reissuing Golden Age Crime back in 2012, and it’s been fascinating to watch the development of the imprint over the years. In the early days, the releases did seem to be more straightforward stories from the era of the country house murder and the like, and I believe the books really took off in 2014 with “Mystery in White” by J Jefferson Farjeon. However, the range of the books has expanded, with some…

This one does not look like being stuck.You are progressing, you've had two promotions in three years. Bigger scope, better title, a team that grew. When people ask how it is going you have something to point at, and it is all true.You are also, if you are honest, running very hard towards something you cannot remember choosing.Ask most people what success looks like and the answer comes straight back. Fluent, specific, no hesitation at all. Ask where the definition came from and the pause is…

Distinctiveness at the fingerpostIn 1964, the Warboys Committee, led by Sir Walter Warboys, reported on traffic signs on the roads of Britain. The committee concluded that the existing signs were no longer good enough – increased traffic levels and the speed of traffic on the roads meant that signs could be difficult to read. New signs were developed that are still used today. They included everything from the triangular warning signs with their clear symbols and minimal use of words, to the…

You may have played this under its English name, Robotica, and may also recall the consistently middling to bad reviews it received at the time. It’s generally considered a dull FPS, and for several very good reasons. The genre label, found on the back of every copy of the game’s Japanese box, simply states it’s a shooting game. The back of the US case promises “explosive game play” and the opportunity to “rage against the robots”. PAL copy refers to it as a “32-bit blaster”. Even if I ignore…

Look, if I passed you in the street this week, if I met you in a shop or if you were even one of the staggering number of spam callers I get these days, I will have told you at length about my stepping down as a deputy chair of the Writers’ Guild. If you managed to block your ears before, you’d best do that again because this is so on my mind and I think for a particular reason. It’s that there’s a strong chance this was my last time working for the Guild. I’ll always be a member, I’m never…

I was in Kilkenny's spanking new library filling in time before a visit to the dentist. It is, as all public libraries, richer in 400s "Language" than 500s "Science & Math". But I snagged (423.0922) The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary (2023) by Sarah Ogilvie. And I was rewarded in the snagging - it's great. The famous post-box [L cropped under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 from the work of Kaihsu Tai] outside 78 Banbury Road, Oxford…

Back in April, I complained about Letterboxd deleting one of my reviews without even telling me. Give it a read if you’re interested, I won’t reiterate all my complaints here.1 Well, I’ve been keeping an eye on this, and they’ve now deleted three more of my reviews, as TMDB have entirely deleted three more entries. All of them are Public Information Films. So I thought I might as well preserve the three reviews I wrote here. All three of these PIFs have been on DVDs released by the BFI, which…

man starts blog. man's blog different. man writes real truth on blog. man understand all tricks brain plays, all illusions. man shrug nonchalantly at stupid things like stress and emotions and love. man writes Brennan tried and failed to be healer and saviour. man right. man writes about swede robert birming, his stupid positivity. how does robert not know all positivity is false? man helpfully informs the world of this. man doing service on his blog. man create interesting and subversive…

It’s Friday. It’s been a long week. Let’s face it, they’re all long. So some new metal will help us stage dive right into the weeks. Let’s go. Remember that Bandcamp Friday is next week. Hails! Wharflurch - death - USASacriligious - death - SwedenProfanation - death - FranceZealot Cult - death - IrelandBurner - death/hardcore - UKCrown Magnetar - deathcore - USABarren - death/grind/crust - BelgiumTombstalker - thrash/death - USABeat - grindcore - USAVictims of Contagion - tech death -…

Source Researchers installed railroad crossing signals for wild animals in Banff National Park. Bells rang and lights flashed 30 seconds before each train arrived. Grizzly bears, elk, wolves, and coyotes fled the tracks 62 percent earlier at sites with the warning system than at sites without it, gaining an extra 360 feet of distance between themselves and the incoming train. The animals were not trained. Nobody conditioned them. The system was installed, the bells started ringing, and the…

I am trying to get better at taking pictures with a camera!! So I took the camera I use to photograph plants and bugs and headed to Baldwin Hill, a large and native-plant-heavy park in Culver City which I've blogged about before. It's always completely covered in people exercising, even at midnight, so it's a very safe and fun place to go lurk around and photograph after sunset. I brought a small but powerful flashlight and a flash for my camera. I am not a big expert at night photography but I…

Reading Time: 34 minutes While I imagine that most of you delete this email unthinkingly every time it crops up in your inbox – no, really, I don’t mind, I know you’re busy and this is only the textual expression of my very soul you’re ignoring, don’t worry about it! – I like to imagine that there are at least one or two sickos who spend Fridays sweating anticipatorily as they eagerly await a freshly-culled selection of links to land in their laps. And so it is for them and them alone that I…

Post Games, a podcast by Chris Plante, covered the new Resident Evil movie - which I really liked - by interviewing the guy who made all the old Resident Evil movies. I really liked this interview! Paul W.S. Anderson is clearly an Actual Gamer who has a specific perspective about how videogames should be adapted to film... and what the inherent tensions are in trying to do that. I enjoyed the conversation. I do think that if you interviewed Cregger, he'd have a very different philosophy - and…

If you think that a truly good Bolognese sauce has to be complicated, this recipe proves the opposite. After decades of trial, error, and plenty of home-cooked suppers, this is the version that finally became "the one" - simple, hearty and deeply flavorful.This is the kind of sauce that tastes like it has been perfected over a lifetime - because it has. Whether you spoon it over pasta, tuck it into a lasagna or serve it over fluffy mash or rice, this simple Bolognese will bring everyone to the…

I’ve been taking photos of benches for years. Sometimes on purpose because I find them intriguing and I have an thing for objects designed for people but without anybody using them, sometimes just because they were there next to my subject. Last year, looking at these photographs, I noticed something I didn’t know existed in my archive. Bench on a platform, 2026 I went back in time through my archive and checked more of my photos. I found that not only I had been fascinated by benches, which I…