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…

Build your systems, workflows, and user interfaces for the kind of user that would walk up to this place and ask “What kind of food do you have?” It’s not that they’re idiots, but that their attention is getting pulled in so many different directions at once these days. The post My systems design advice appeared first on Global Nerdy.

It's been almost a week since the week that I'm reviewing ended. I've been busy for annoying and not-blog-relevant reasons! Once cool thing I can share is this toucan: It still needs more paint, I'm not convinced that these are the colors yet, and some parts that are flapping around need to be glued down, but I'm quite pleased with it. I think it is maybe the best thing I have made. Trying to remember what else happened a fortnight ago…I rode the LA Metro for the second time! (The first time…

Listen to my new mixtape on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube “Still Summer” is a mixtape full of jazz and electronic music that evokes the kind of autumn wind and crunchy leaves that I pine for here in Texas when the fall equinox hits and it’s still 99 degrees outside: I started the tape with the working title “See you in the fall,” which is a phrase I used as a sign-off in my last newsletter. (Reader Pamela B. responded, “Paraphrased from IG: When people say, ‘See you in the fall’ it takes me…

Jammed up to Sedona for a few days. Camped south of town this time. The southern camping area doesn't have the nice views that the western campgrounds have, but there are plenty of trails in and around the campsites for quick runs or getting lots of elevation on a mountain bike ride. I drove in to town each day at around 12:00 and finished my shift at the trail side, then as soon as 4:00 pm came, I hit the trails. Wednesday was eastern side of Hiline, which had some great climbing and also some…

it feels like Thursday, and it’s not–short week for me dragging like the dress’s threaded hem of a Mother in a Southern Baptist Church… forever kissing red seas, while everyone ignores it.

NOTE: While I'm offline this week, here's another fall post to enjoy, this time from 2022.Happy Autumn!To celebrate, here's a sequel to last year's fall post, featuring a few autumnal movie magazine covers of the 1940s.Ginger Rogers, September 1946:Gene Tierney, October 1946:Olivia de Havilland, October 1947:Claudette Colbert, October 1940:Lana Turner, October 1944:Irene Dunne, October 1941:Shirley Temple, November 1943:And on the September 1943 edition of Movie Show, Rita Hayworth seems to be…

Blog post: https://www.davidrevoy.com/article1175/the-degraded-search-engine

We’ve got a rare foray into semi-self promotion today. The “semi-” because Blue Drops, the forthcoming debut album from Toronto’s Azure Rose, does not feature me in any way, shape, or form. It’s the solo project from Justin Hinman, formerly of Toronto bands Fjord Rowboat and Bluescreen, both staples of the local ’00s shoegaze scene […] The post Azure Rose – “Villains” appeared first on Space Echo.

Going up the country! After their exciting visit to the Big City, these potted plants sit in the shade, waiting for their ride back to the farm.

I'm testing a new feature, just for fun. Little chatroom to say hello to everyone, share ideas or personal projects? If it's too much for me to moderate, I'll pull it down, but for now let's see how it goes. I hope you all enjoy, and I see you on the net! chat rules Be respectful. No harassment, spam, NSFW, politics, or flooding. No random/promotional links. Sharing your own website, portfolio, or social media is fine. additionally Messages can't be edited or deleted, so please think before…

Somehow I've never played this T-Square album on here, despite having played the rest of my collection! This is a true classic from their late 80s period; it's been a fave of mine for a long time.

This is the sort of post that will have more preamble than the resulting code, but bear with me. If you're working on security fixes to a project on GitHub, you'll likely be using a temporary private fork to collaborate on. If you do so, as well as things like CI and other GitHub Apps not being enabled on the repo, you'll also find that the PR page doesn't seem to be as responsive as it suggests it will be. For instance: We can see that there's a lot of blank space either side of the PR, which…

TL;DR Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary, written by Geoffrey Cain, published in 2026 by Penguin Random House, recounts the life and career of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs between his stints at Apple, starting with his departure in 1985 and ending with his return in 1997, a period spent mostly at NeXT, another company cofounded by Jobs, ultimately acquired by Apple. The book includes a number of stories that I had never heard before and…

We started from what was, essentially, the furthest north we'd ever been in British Columbia, and it still took us 10 more hours to reach the trailhead for Telkwa Pass. Having left our camp below Perkins Peak a bit before noon, it was dark as we positioned the Tacoma along the banks of the Telkwa River and at the terminus of a dead-end road. We were half a day behind schedule, and while that wouldn't normally be a problem, we'd been shooting for a reasonably small weather window when we'd…

TL;DR - I've always just worn my "current old pair" of tennis shoes when I'm out hiking because I never liked hiking boots. They get beat up quickly on desert trails, and so I finally bought some purpose-designed hiking shoes. Wow, what a difference! Like they were built to hike! When I started adventuring more than a decade ago, it was mostly about driving around in the Tacoma, checking out cool places and pushing my truck (and my nerves) over semi-gnarly - because let's be honest, I thought…

TL;DR - Hiking poles are really helpful and make hiking easier. They work even if you already know how to walk! I've never thought I needed hiking poles because I know how to walk and I don't have any trouble doing it. Still, when I was out with Matt @theesotericone on our attempt at the summit of Mt. Tom, he had a set of poles and ended up lending me one to make some hiking on the unforgiving terrain just a little bit easier. And boy, I was shocked at how much easier it was to hike - even with…

As well as doing more work, finishing some house projects, and spending more quality time with Patrick, I have wanted to create more.So, when we were up at the cabin and visited Vintage Village, I spent literally a few cents to buy some gourds from Jerry.The other day I washed them, sanded them down, and varnished them.(this is the project in process, never mind the mess in back)I mean, as projects go it was pretty basic, though I did also varnish to protect my rattan mushroom for my "Catmint…

Detail of a waterslide aboard the cruise ship Carnival Magic. The post Curly appeared first on 75CentralPhotography.

Absolute Wonder Woman #24B Terry Dodson Variant Release: Sep 23, 2026Cover: Nov 2026 HERETIC KICKS INTO HIGH GEAR! Diana has lost so much in the last month that she’s not about to give up on the search for her friend, but with Gateway City descending into chaos as the gods put their fingers on the scale, she may have no other choice. Diana’s return to the surface came with new weapons from hell, forged by Diana, Circe, and Hephaestus…will they be enough to beat back even gods? Creators…

All probabilities, odds, and adjustments are the author's opinion and not statements of fact. Two weeks ago, under the bright lights of Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens, Alexander Zverev blasted an unreturned serve down the T to win the 2026 US Open. Before this year, Zverev had spent his 14-year career chasing a Grand Slam, one of tennis' four most important tournaments. In the 2020 COVID edition of the US Open, he lost his mind and choked a massive lead to lose in five sets. After snapping his…

I had ChatGPT write a JavaScript for me, and was surprised to see this arrangement: function main() { // Do work... } try { main(); } catch (error) { console.error(error); process.exitCode = 1; } I would not have written this file this way; instead, I’d have put a try/catch in the file directly and probably forgotten the exit code. This lets my script return nonzero on any error and be chained with other scripts. And it encapsulates the work in main(), a C-like flourish I admire.

Virginia Pilot, May 19, 1935 Canadian born actor Marie Dressler (ca. 1868-1934), was a big star in the 1920s and 1930s. She got her start in vaudeville, moving to the stage and finally to film. There she played both comic and serious roles as the older woman. Time magazine, August 7, 1933 Her big busted, large body didn’t stand in the way of her popularity. She was so revered that she even appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1933. Dresses bearing the Marie Dressler name were already…

Yesterday was the first day of fall and today definitely feels like it. We have strong wind gusts, cloudy skies, and relatively (for southeast Michigan in September) cool temperatures in the low 60’s degrees Fahrenheit. Doesn’t seem to make a difference to my flowering plants. Brilliant red, yellow, white, purple, blue, and orange flowers are blooming throughout my yard. Though many are at the end of their blooming season. Here’s my list of flowering plants in my garden this week: Anise hyssop…

💡Zack Rhodes is a cartoonist based in Sonoma County. Find him on Instagram @solditfor50