I wasn't blogging in 2006, but I was a regular commenter on the Nielsen Haydens' blog Making Light in the year and on the morning that I read "Mike Ford is gone." I found the comment which I posted twenty years ago today: I saw him just one or two times, at conventions. I never spoke with him. I admired him desperately and furiously. I started with reading Just the Planet in a Crown Books, because I couldn’t justify spending my allowance on it. After a while, I started to worry they’d throw me…

Because at that moment you go from a greasy slack-jawed popcorn-kernel-n-sweatpants covered couch potato to a fast-talking screenwriter with sharp eyes, a whizzing mind, and a backup second career. AWESOME! All-new awesome things posted daily here: Photo from: here The post #585 Figuring out the plot twist just before they reveal it appeared first on 1000 Awesome Things.

Here’s what’s happening in the thriving tech scene in Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Monday, September 28 through Sunday, October 4! This list includes both in-person and online events. Note that each item in the list includes: When the event will take place What the event is Where the event will take place Who is holding the event This week’s events Monday, September 28 Tuesday, September 29 Wednesday, September 30 Thursday, October 1 Friday, October 2 Saturday, October 3…

“Even when things get tough, I want to keep moving forward, so I can become someone who can help others.” –Aoba Suzukaze Aoba Suzukaze is a new graduate and pursues a career in 3D graphics design for Eagle Jump, the company that produced the series of games she became enamoured by. Aoba is thrilled to […]

Starlight Quartet is a game from Hong Kong, designed by Hims Chu and published by Capstone (Hong Kong). It is an abstract game for 2 to 4 players. You start with nine empty tiles arranged in a 3x3 grid. Every player has his own token colour. On your turn, you must place one of your tokens on a tile, then move that tile somewhere else. To win, you need to

If you’d rather shop on Etsy, the Mltply maths workbooks are now there too: thechelsuk on Etsy. It’s the same set of printable workbooks for Years 1 to 7: Addition & Subtraction, Times Tables, Division, Fractions, and Squares, Cubes & Roots. There are also SATs arithmetic practice papers for Year 6. They’re all instant downloads, with full answers. The Etsy shop is my general maker’s shop, so Mltply is one part of it and other things may join it over time. Prefer to buy direct? Everything is on…

★★★★★How Migration Really Works: The Facts About the Most Divisive Issue in Politics This book taught me a couple of things that contradicted what I thought I knew, namely that migration has remained pretty much stable, it’s an economic process, and immigrants aren’t gonna take your jobs. ★★★★★Columbine I watched the Columbine tragedy occur live when I was a kid and this book was insanely fascinating to read because most of what I thought I knew turns out to be false or misleading. It often…

This week we've been lucky enough to see two great performances!Monday night we went to Bull in a China Shop by Fortune's Fool Productions. It ticked so many boxes in advance for us: great company, exciting new work, set at a historical women's college, at a lovely little space (The Hive in Saint Paul), and FREE tickets (thanks to an MRAC grant). And we left even more impressed, because the performances were great and we really enjoyed ourselves. (I mean, we did come out and have to deal with a…

This 1:144 scale Sopwith Dolphin isn't all my own work. It's a remix of Decapod's model to make it more likely to print on my Ender 3.Though in all honesty, I'm going to print it on my new Mars 5, because it's twice as fast, as well as giving me a more detailed and smooth print.

I've started using Linkding1 for storing links in a more curated and deliberate capacity. I have Raindrop which is basically just a mess now, but it's easy to navigate when there's lots of things. Linkding isn't designed that way however, so I'm being cautious. Whatever my usage(s), there is one concern: backing up the data. There's a couple of ways to do this. The first would be some calls via the REST API to build something that could be imported. Too much effort. The sceond was to manually…

In the 2009, extraordinary Oscar-winning Argentine crime drama “The Secret in Their Eyes”, there’s a memorable scene (one of many, actually) driven by Mario Alarcón, who plays the role of judge Raimundo Fortuna-Lacalle. At the end of that scene, visible on YouTube, judge Fortuna-Lacalle stands next to Pablo Sandoval (played by the immense Guillermo Francella) and describes how he (who in the movie suffers of quite chronic alcoholism) started drinking “a bottle of Old Smuggler” in the middle of…

Not too long ago I got a new Casio watch and it’s been nice going back to a regular watch, and putting the Apple Watch on the shelf. The Apple Watch I have is an older one and with my new iPhone last fall, it was showing its age. What I like about the watch is the easy switch between a 12 hour and 24 hour time face. At work, many time based tasks are done in a 24 hour clock, so seeing time in a 24 hour format has gotten more natural. Another nice feature is a dual-time clock on the watch, which…

Credit: tomgauld.com

2026 UPDATE: I wrote this post in 2019, two days after becoming a Morning Person. I had plans. I had advice. I had apparently undergone a complete personality transformation. I meant to update you on my impressive progress over time. I didn't. With that information, please enjoy the following expert advice. I'm one of them. ...Read More

This month's book was How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr. I was worried that I wasn't going to finish it given that this month the last Thursday is nearly a week earlier than expected and the fact that I got knocked off of my flow with an anxiety spiral like a week or two ago. To finish reading this book, I downloaded it on my mobile and computer and borrowed the audio book. So I did manage to finish listening to it (need to finish taking notes on the last part, though). I also took my…

Earl and I drove up toward Mount Lemmon in the Jeep. There was lightning on the horizon and I wanted to get a good photo or two. I ended up grabbing this awesome photo. This is three photos of one lightning strike combined into one photo. The strike was about 50 miles away near Nogales, Arizona and Sonora (on the border). To the west, Mother Nature gave us a beautiful sunset. I really enjoyed capturing the moment. The photos below are in sequence and I’ve uploaded them in full resolution.

As someone with a chronic condition of overthinking and anxiety like me (please note that I have never been formally and medically diagnosed, so I’m not going to say that I have an anxiety disorder. That said, yes, I tend to worry about everything), it has been difficult for me to find a suitable exercise to keep me healthy. People have been mentioning about “runners’ high” or “dopamine hits”, but not me. I have never been able to find the joy in jogging, let alone running. I loathe zumba class…

Target: 50 carp, including 10 doubles. With the hot weather hindering the barbel fishing I thought the Summer Challenge should be focused on carp. The 50 carp element was easily beaten with the help of a commerical carp pond, so the challenge became about the doubles. Carp:233(77 non-commerical) Doubles:27(to 15lb 4oz) I landed carp from 4 venues (3 ponds & one from the Small River) and had doubles from all the ponds. Great fun (and I may add some more yet depending on the weather). Next summer…

I wrote a bit about my partner and our anniversary on this date last year. I still think and feel the same, but, like, more. And better. Love is very cool, and this year was celebrated with, among other things, some 0% beer from Blood Brothers and Burdock, pizza from Neon, tostadas from Chino, and a few minutes of Dodge Juggle 3: Revenge of the Dodgeballs, which was "the largest team Dodge Juggle tournament in the world" at one point. If your next question is, "What is Dodge Juggle?" I implore…

Mltply is my free iPhone and iPad app where children practise maths by chatting with Buddy the robot. Plenty of practice still happens at the kitchen table, though, so I’ve put Buddy on paper. The Mltply workbooks follow England’s national curriculum, year by year. Each one has Learn and Practice pages, mixed reviews, quick-fire tests, a certificate and full answers. Every answer is worked out and checked by computer, so the answer keys are right. Addition & Subtraction (Years 1–3): £4.99 Times…

Afternoon Shadows – New York, New York I’m pretty sure I wasn’t thinking any deep photographic thoughts when I framed this scene and shot the picture. I just saw the buildings, made a reasonably balanced composition, and moved on. But looking at this picture a year later, I really like it. While this picture might not be anything special to an experienced urban landscape photographer, it’s actually very different from how I typically make and post-process my photos. Let me explain. When I got…

We hadn't initially planned on it, but when the lineup for Louder Than Life↗ dropped back in February, I knew that my partner (C) and I needed to go. There were just so many bands we love playing that we really didn't have a choice. I mean, seriously: Gojira A Day To Remember The Prodigy Babymetal Rise Against Ice Nine Kills Taking Back Sunday Dance Gavin Dance Nothing More Lindsey Stirling Dethklok Underoath Starset Thrice Bowling For Soup Thursday We The Kings Fit For A King GWAR Atreyu Lit…

I was halfway through writing a pretty interesting blogpost today. Some thoughts about all the science fiction films I’ve watched this year! It’s seriously so much I realized I should probably save it for the end of the year. Why you ask? Well, because I can literally make a recap of only sci-fi movies, and a recap of other movies if I want to, and all I have to do is wait for the end of the year. I’ll definitely save the writing I already did, and probably use some of it for this month’s recap…

Andy had left an interesting comment over on my the next shed (part 1) post, mentioning a “cabman shelter” and I was curious: “What’s that?” Wikipedia to the rescue with answers to build on Andy’s photographs. Not only do they... Read More ›

Each morning is a bit colder than the previous. Five degrees yesterday, four today. The sun lumbers up into a clear morning sky, scaring off a light mist that had been loitering over the distant strawberry field and honestly getting just a bit too comfortable with itself. A group of geese has congregated there. “It’s a cold morning,” one observes. “I can see my breath,” says another. This causes several of them to make huh-huh noises so they could see their breath, too. “Is it time to go?” “Not…

Oh wow. Việt Nam has my favourite coffee culture in the world now, but Australia is an easy second. He says, as he drinks cold brew from South America. You know what I mean. By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-09-25.

My Tokyo Game Show 2026 CoverageTokyo Game Show isn't Tokyo Game Show without a new demo from RGG Studio. Last year it was Yakuza Kiwami 3, the year before that was Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, and in 2023 we got both Gaiden and Infinite Wealth, which made up for 2022 being Yakuza-less. Covid ate up 2020 and 2021, but we were treated to Like a Dragon in 2019 and, well, you get the picture. RGG Studio demos are a fixture of TGS.This year, we got Stranger Than Heaven, a spin-off-slash-prequel to the…

Heck, K., Hatz, K., Cattaneo, M. et al. Six-Month Real-World Data in Macular Edema Due to Retinal Vein Occlusion Treated with Faricimab: Swiss Retina Research Network Report. Ophthalmol Ther 15, 2643–2657 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40123-026-01442-w Originally FDA-approved in early 2022 for wet AMD and diabetic macular edema, the indication for faricimab to treat macular edema secondary to retinal vein occlusion was added in late 2023. Heck et al set out to prove if the drug was effective…

I occassionally look at the Google Analytics for my blog in the slim hope it might tell me something about the level and nature of interest (or lack thereof) from my audience.Until a few months I thought the data was somewhat meaningful and believable. It gives data on the number of views for the whole blog and for individual posts. It also provides information for specific countries.Until a few months ago, there were (supposedly) about one thousand page views per day. A typical post would…