MX-5 Miata after a Wash I just got back inside after washing the cars. I learned a trick from Aaron to avoid swirl marks on the paint when he washed his Mini Cooper after trialing the foam cannon this past summer: I noticed he was drying the surface after hand washing in a straight up and down motion, rather than in a circular motion. I’ve tried it a few times since, and I can’t argue with the results. I hand wash that way now, too. It’s a very satisfying thing, to learn something from your…

I don’t usually check analytics on my website, but the hosting I use on Vercel does provide the ability to check referrals, and I have to admit, every once in a while I enjoy to see those! It’s not because I am obsessed with people who visit my website (although I kind of am), or because I want to write according to what my readers view the most (although I sometimes do that too). I simply love to see when someone links to a post of mine for the first time, and I see their website on my…

Welcome to this month’s post on all things historical fiction! This month, I want to highlight the books nominated for this year’s HWA Crown Awards. The longlists were announced last Wednesday by the Historical Writers Association (HWA) and you can find all the details here. There are three separate awards – one for debut novels, one for non-fiction and the other (the Gold Crown) for authors who have been previously published. The shortlists will be announced in October and the winner in…

Ich bin ein Kind der 70er und mit Fisch in Tomatensoße und Ölsardinen groß geworden. Wie oft gab es „ne Dose Fisch“ und eine frische Scheibe Brot zum Abendessen. Und ich habe es geliebt! Vielleicht… Der Beitrag Dosenfisch De Luxe: Miss Can Lissabon erschien zuerst auf Sternestulle.

🚴‍♂️ Remco!

This will be posted to Side Dish with Schniper in the coming weeks. Posting here early with permission. If you missed National Chicken Wing Day on July 29th, that’s OK, I did too, and I love chicken wings. The good news is, you’re allowed to eat chicken wings anytime, and you can do a lot worse than visiting the new WingForce at 1824 Democracy Pt Unit 110. Surrounded by a strong contingent of restaurants, WingForce officially opened in a modest spot in a strip mall on September 5th. It replaces…

Happenings We had to cut off a family whose son was nominally friends with my eldest, but actually has been pretty consistently mean to him, as well as being a bad influence on his behaviour thanks to “consequence-free” parenting. It came to a head on Sunday when our kid was pretty relentlessly bullied both physically and verbally by their kid, and the parents didn’t seem bothered (in fact, at one point the dad laughed at how upset ours was getting). A few empty threats to take him home, but…

The following conversation is fictional.---------------------------ALICE: (Looking over a student's record.) Hmm, let's see. She wants to work in quantum computing. She's had the year-long quantum sequence in the physics department and has taken a course in quantum computing in the computer science department. She has done a project in quantum computing in an REU program. Grades good, letters good. I think we should admit her.BOB: Wait! Did she get a minor in Physics? This is very…

Wednesday started normal.I woke up around 6am. Took my morning pill. Went for my two mile walk. Showered. Went to work.Got coffee. Got busy.Normal.Wednesday was a half-day for me, so at noon, I took off and went home.I've had a scratchy throat recently, and a bit of sinus thing, so as I was making lunch I took an Allegra and a couple snorts of nose spray.I ate my cheese rollup lunch and drank the last Monster. It was the only thing in the fridge that was cold. Then I sat to read for a bit.As I…

the neighbourhood tabby holding court

John Gruber makes his picks for the iPhone Hall of Fame: iPhone (original) iPhone 4 iPhone 5S iPhone X iPhone 17 Pro Ok, my turn. Here’s my iPhone Hall of Fame: iPhone (original) iPhone 4 iPhone X iPhone 12 Mini iPod Touch Notes: How do you not put the OG iPhone at the top spot? It’s like doing a Mount Rushmore and not putting the first president first. It’s gotta be George. Aesthetically, the 4 was the best. Just an absolute beauty to behold (and use, so long as you held it right).…

Charli XCX is Playboy’s Fall 2026 cover girl. Photographed by Aidan Zamiri. For the rest of the story, read it here.About I My Book | Consulting I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Email

I’m not exactly an avid cinema-goer but I couldn’t resist taking a short trip into Dublin to see Everybody Digs Bill Evans, a biographical drama about the late great jazz pianist Bill Evans, the trailer for which is above. I suppose Bill Evans is best known for his wonderful contributions to what many people regard as the greatest jazz album of all time, Kind of Blue which was released in 1959. This film, however, focuses on the period after he had left the Miles Davis band that made that album…

I’ve been recovering from my running injury that I got this past June and I got out for two easy miles this morning in the lovely fog. It is feeling like Fall even though we are close to 80 degrees on some days. A ground web showing itself. The Japanese maple tree in our backyard is turning a bit. Across the field.

Still no fresh offers for my apartment since the relaunch this month. Monday cleared the lounge of my dining table and sold my large indoor plant to try to make it seem more spacious following some initial feedback. Trying to remain positive in what feels like an ever tougher market to sell a modern 1-bed apartment in London coupled with relatively high service charges. A duo of evening meetups this week including London Web Standards and A11y Together, both in the City of London, so easy to…

I had dinner at India’s Restaurant for the first time in maybe 10 years. Their food was excellent!

I first saw Daniel Kitson live about a decade ago when he was touring a show titled Tree. It was the first time in the comedian’s career that he worked with a substantial piece of set dressing, and—more than a decade later—he mentions as part of his current show, Thrum, that the giant tree is still in storage. It’s a not-insignificant monthly expenditure, he explains, to keep it there. But environmentally-responsible disposal of the tree would cost ~10 months of storage costs in one go, which…

In the hands of a gifted photographer, their pictures conjure a world different than our own: photographs made in and from our world speak of another world, a world that is different and that, if the intent is artful, is filled with possibilities in a way that this one, the world we inhabit, does not. In the West, such an approach is not part of how the world is being looked at. The world is what it is — what it appears to be, and anything else beyond that is either for children, for dreamers,…

“Grist is a relational spreadsheet-database app that I can host on my own server. When I first tried it, it felt familiar because the basic idea is still the same: I get rows, columns, cells, and tables that I can use to organise information. I came across Grist while looking for something that could replace the spreadsheets I use for everyday work. I mainly wanted a simple way to create tables, organise information, and keep track of things without dealing with a complicated interface. The…

I’ve learned a lot in the past two months. I’ll start with what they don’t tell you: It’s important to take water breaks. The past few months have been both a delight and nonstop. You’ll never be ready, the list of todos is constantly growing. Cara and I are often dividing tasks to take care of Aspen (or Luna and Veela) that we hardly have time for each other. We’ve had such fun hosting family and friends, but sometimes go hours without actually talking. Two months ago on Sunday morning, Cara…

This is an unusual line to see in a court opinion: “Haley’s remarks about the size of Matt’s penis and its impact on her health and marriage were remarks about a matter of legitimate public concern.” * * * Matthew Kalil was an NFL offensive lineman from 2012-2019. He was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings as the fourth overall pick in the 2o12 NFL draft. He made the Pro Bowl and later signed a $55M contract with the Carolina Panthers. Haley Kalil was a beauty queen who married Matt and became an…

Wednesday I said the question for this work has become what puts this physical body at ease fast enough for awareness to leave it alone. By Friday the body answered, and the answer was expensive. It wants to float in warm salt water in the dark.

Big title! I’ve been thinking a lot how nowadays I come across more blogs and articles in languages I don’t know. On regular social media very rarely do I see things in languages besides English / Spanish. The exception to this is often about the soccer players I follow, like with Armando González recently signing with Olympiacos FC and Mateo Chávez playing at AZ Alkmaar, so my feed sometimes has posts in Greek and Dutch. When it comes to the fun reading I like doing online, more personal…

After quite a lot of wine fuelled reading of Brennans Blog I got a little interested in the Gemini Protocol designed as a new internet protocol for "supporting an electronic library of interconnected text documents". Sounds good to me. I don't often write about tech, because everyone else on the smallweb does. But I've been a Linux obsessive since Redhat 5.2. If you search my real name, there are contributions I made to the Fedora project back when I had free time. I have made my living for 20+…

The internet we know isn’t gone — it is being hidden under platform noise. And it seems like big platforms want to make us forget that this internet still exists. But while platforms rise and fall, the real internet is built on simple, open protocols like email, chat, and feeds — and they remain. Terry […]

This DLC for Cyberpunk is huge, if it wasn’t so knitted into the story and map of the base game then it really could be its own stand-alone release. It is set in a section of the Night City map, called Dogtown, that is locked off until you start these missions.