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Discover the breathtaking landscapes of Japan in over 550 real-world cars and become a racing Legend in Forza Horizon’s biggest open world driving adventure yet. Japan awaits! youtube • video ID: oZkvQ9I_iKQclick image to load player First I wanted to say that I was considering to start this title for a while, but waited until I knew I had the spare time to play it. I was also thinking of getting a one-month Game Pass discount so I’d try it, but with all the changes Moneysoft brought to it,…

Wise Child by Monica Furlong, 1987. Juniper is an unusual woman in the community where she lives. Wise Child knows that she originally came from Cornwall, and now, she lives alone and unmarried. People also know that she practices magic and doesn’t go to church. Yet, although people are a little suspicious about her for that, they still call on her for help when someone is very ill because she is an excellent healer and can frequently help when others can’t. Wise Child (a nickname given to her…

A series of names emerged in turn, as I seguéd awake from the last REM sleep dream of earlier this morning... [ day {and post} in progress... ] [ I asked them to make me an image about the thread; some Turner, a bit of Monet. Yes, it's derivative but in a reasonably tasteful way; and besides, I prompted it specifically in that direction in the first place. ]

Sometime in the early teens, I went to this lunch that was for a guy that was the head of a summer camp I used to go to, and I bumped into a couple people. You know, when you're at one of these things where people have common interests, and you kind of gravitate to people that seem like you'd be friends with. One of these guys, he's just randomly like, “Hey, I'm in this songwriting group. You should do it.” And my response was, “OK.” And that's the moment I got seriously into writing. And it's…

At the beginning of this year, as soon as it came out for the West, I've tried out the Hobonichi App to do some light journaling without ever stopping writing on paper. This is something that's suggested by the Hobonichi staff as well as one of its use cases: write down some lines to recall it better when you have to write it down, or just save pictures and tidbits of information that are usually roaming aimlessly in your phone. Unfortunately, this has made my phone much more untidy because I…

My comment on The best engineers I know are almost invisible online – LinkedIn “I’ve seen a decent amount of both. Great engineers who are also prolific content creators, great engineers who are silent, and middling engineers in both categories. Although, it’s hard to maintain the Dunning-Kruger effect when you’re regularly sharing engineering ideas online.” The author continues to argue that invisible engineers should consider building an online presence to survive in today’s job market. I…

This month marks the end of the another series of Randonneur Round the Year (RRtY) rides. Two in fact. At least two rides each month with a minimum distance of 200k at randonneur pace1 over the last the last year. Four series have now been completed. I plan to start series 5 and 6 next month. Crossing the halfway mark to the Ultra RRtY Award (ten Randonnees Round the Year) is a motivational milestone. Looking at the list of those that have the ultra award - there are entries for people that…

Issue 5 of Unnamed Worlds has dropped, the theme is Sci Fi. It is a collaborative collection of new and twisted worlds suitable for roleplaying, it includes: fiction and art as inspiration; roleplaying tools useful at any table; and short or detailed worlds and adventures to explore. Mechanics are minimised, so you can play using whatever system or approach you desire. I have an article in it The Children of Cerosia which I ran for my local group. I also have an article in Issue 3 called Dogs…

I keep trying to get prose from ai agents that matches my style. But I think perhaps it’s more productive to summarise key points then write it myself, despite it being a lot slower, and me not being confident.

Find all previous and future episodes listed here or in your podcast app under “Barbican Station”. This episode I talk with Scott from the SpyHards podcast about episode two, Daddy Issues. We talk about that cliffhanger ending, bad tv interviews and small text messages. Plus Scott offers his British food insights, what is Roddy keeping in his desk and River tries his hand at HR work? Finally, do we think all of the remaining Slow Horses will make it through this season? All that and more in…

Took a slightly different route to the office this morning and enjoyed the light. Made lots of A41 images, of which this one above I liked the most. Oh! Totally forgot that the day before yesterday marked another milestone: 600 daily posts in a row. Almost didn't make it in time, because my hosting provider ran some server updates last night.

It's the equinox so it's officially autumn here, whichever way you slice it. Maybe it's time to migrate like a bird to the southern hemisphere. I'll be back in March. Because I'm not, in fact, migrating I like to think seasonally about things I will do, things to look forward to. Autumn can be tricky because it's not summer and is Nearly Winter. Autumn cleaning is always a thing. I need to wash the windows. So much stuff blows in here during the summer. I'm constantly sweeping leaves and the…

I'm not doing well and I'm watching Dogville because I clearly hate myself. #movies #cinema #mentalHealth #Dogville #burnout #stress #work #antiwork

We often call something a goal when it is really a dream: an outcome we want, but one that depends largely on other people’s decisions, on timing or on luck. Making the bestseller list, hitting a revenue target, getting hired: it feels concrete and measurable, so it gets the label “goal”. But as soon as someone else decides the result, your own effort becomes necessary without being enough. That difference is exactly why SMART goals so often frustrate. They check whether a goal is specific,…

At Microsoft, we host a global hackathon once a year. It's a great opportunity for people to come together, experiment with ideas, and build things that might make life a little easier. Hackathons have traditionally attracted people who are comfortable writing code. You might have a designer or subject matter expert on the team, but sooner or later an idea would need to pass through a developer before it became a working feature. AI is beginning to change that. For our most recent hackathon, I…

# Introduction I started playing with IPFS because I wanted a different way of publishing data over the Internet. My first experiments with IPFS and a private swarm showed that the technology is useful, but the user experience is bad. It is easy to get an IPFS node running, but hard to make it useful in real world. The issue was not only that the protocol itself is complicated: IPFS is not a file server, it is a content-addressed system where files are identified by a CID, which is a hash of…

I heard that aliens are real and that the world will break once major contact is established. I heard that our country is banning Reddit and Discord while barely batting an eye at illegal gambling and porn sites. But I know what really matters to you and me, and it isn't any of that. All of those things are practically abstract. They are meant to keep you paralyzed and distracted. Paralyzed and distracted enough not to look your loved ones in the eye when talking to them. Paralyzed and…

Three years after the original Japanese-only Castlevania: Rondo of Blood release on Hudson’s PC-Engine, Europe was finally blessed by the Konami lords with a cursed gift called Castlevania: Vampire’s Kiss. You might better know it as Dracula X—the initial Japanese title of Rondo; Akumajō Dracula X—but since I’m in Europe, I’m calling it by its even weirder name. This game has been called out for being a sloppy port of its PC-Engine original. Others claim it’s more of an indirect sequel to…

I’ve updated the Apple Charging Guide to account for all of the new hardware announced at the September Apple event. One of the recurring marketing blurbs from Apple was the claim “Up to 50% charge in around 15 minutes.” This line resonates because this strategy maps to how most humans construct their charging strategy: “Crap, I’ve got 5% charge and 15 minutes… am I screwed?” Apple: No, you’re fine. You’ll have 50% charge in 15 minutes. While that’s clear, the hardware recipe to get maximum…

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Jev is a useful zero-shot classifier, but its probabilities can't be calibrated for your data. Calibration depends on your data distribution, which Jev never sees, so treat its outputs as scores and recalibrate them on your own labeled examples.

A few years ago I went down the SVG sprites rabbit hole and came back with a list of methods, each broken in its own special way. The dividing line turned out to be in a different place than I expected. Caching is a solved problem: a sprite full of <symbol>s lives in an external file, gets cached like anything else, and still picks up your currentcolor. But it only works through an inline <svg> placeholder in your markup. Ask for that same graphic as an <img> or a background image and styling…

I am teaching a fun, 6-week, non-credit course on the search for intelligent life among the stars, offered (by zoom or in person) through the San Francisco State University Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, starting Sept. 30. It’s part of a program of courses for retired people, so if you are younger, perhaps you can pass this on to a retired person you know. The richly illustrated course does not require any science background, and is open to anyone. We will discuss exciting experiments now…

💡Read Dinosaurs Are Too Big now!So what do you have against heavy-duty, industrial sized dinos like the Triceratops? What did they ever do to you?!You know what, this is a valid point, it really isn’t fair to the dinos to put this all on them. In real-life I have an intense amount of anxiety around motor vehicles. I don’t drive myself (never have, never will) and I prefer to get things done on foot or by bicycle whenever possible, but that’s not really realistic in a place like Saskatchewan. My…

Background / Basic Concepts Another entry in the "Things that old folks care about but young folks don't know much about" department, let's talk about dithering! Dithering was how you got your 8/16-bit computers to look like they had more colors (or shades of gray) onscreen than they could really produce. It was even used in chiptunes, to make a single-voice PC speaker sound like it actually had four or more voices by quickly switching between the different parts of the tune, sort of like PWM,…

I was going for a walk six years ago when this caught my eye. As the sign on the right shows, there is a public footpath leading across the field. Yet the owner has put up an ugly, hostile sign saying ANY PERSONS CAUGHT ON CC TV THE POLICE WILL BE INFORMED. I’m sure the police would be delighted to spend their time investigating a case of someone walking along a public footpath. (Six years ago? Yes. That’s how long it took me to write this 88-word post.)

Alex, you are gone, but so much of you remains. After you went to where the sound goes when the bell stops ringing, I wrote a memorial essay with a heavy heart and deep gratitude for our friendship. Today, I’ve … Continue reading →

You heard me right. No more zero days.Shared by Reddit user u/ryans01 over a decade ago (can't believe I've just come across this concept), the simple premise is that a day where you've not worked on a goal or target is a zero day:What's a zero day? A zero day is when you don't do a single fucking thing towards whatever dream or goal or want or whatever that you got going on.I've had a lot of those zero days. Whether it was trying to learn python, get out walking everyday, becoming less…