About a year or so ago, I built myself a short scale bass, inspired (aesthetically) by the Kay EB-100 that I had previously restored. I play this bass pretty much daily: it’s set-up with flat-wound strings and I love its smooth richness of tone. However, having recently restored the Westone Thunder Bass which has a long-scale and round-wound strings and spent some time playing it, I have found whole new range of tonal possibilities, which contrast and complement the short scale. So, whilst…

Hello fellow bloggers, I'm long overdue an update! There are many easter eggs in the works right now, which may or may not include adopting your own desktop cat for your blog ;) So..

But the latest major-case tale in the Murphy-Brennan franchise's library isn't exactly GOOD, either…should you watch it?

A couple of weeks ago, I bought a new pair of glasses. I intended them to be a backup pair. The gold plating on my main pair has been wearing off after several years of use, so I was hoping to get them replated. Guess what? The price of gold has gone up. People don’t really do it anymore. So my gold plated glasses sit in my drawer, and my intended backup is my main pair of glasses at the moment. It reminds me of a friend, who had bought property in upstate New York City. He moved out of…

A girl who lives on a small island shaped like a cat’s paw awakes to see her own cat kidnapped by a furry dragon. Well, yes, you might say that’s a strange beginning to an animated short film, but that’s about the least odd thing about The Cat and the Camera. Visually stunning, this story is one that that might leave you scratching your head at the end, but I for one can say that it was a satisfactory itch! This animated short was created and directed by Park Jisoo for their thesis project at…

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I've been fortunate to have a Nintendo Switch 2 since launch. Lie with the Switch 1 I pre-ordered it the moment I could. Setting aside money - or as was the case with the Switch 1 during my post-grad student days upping my credit amount - in readiness so that the process could be as smooth as possible. At launch there were some who said that the launch line-up for the S2 could have been stronger, even though it launched (and there was the bundle offer) with Mario Kart World. Is MKW the best…

A cute little day. We spent quite a while in the perfume section of a large shopping center, trying dozens of fragrances. It was fun, and it sent Anna spiraling down a deep rabbit hole of fragrance research. I love those moments when you suddenly unlock a new interest and get to learn an entirely new set of things. I also learned that I’m apparently a big fan of pine in my fragrances. Who would have guessed I’d enjoy smelling like a tree!

From 610 KONA: During an interview this morning (Friday) on 610 KONA-AM’s Mike and AJ in the Morning, Hector Cruz, Vice President for Visit Tri-Cities, announced that the Tri-Cities will host the IRONMAN race for another three years. That’s an extension of the event’s original three-year agreement, which covered 2024 through 2026. Good news. This is a great venue, and I’m looking forward to keep racing here for a few more years. I’m already in Richland for this year’s edition—bib number 79, if…

One idea I’ve internalized while designing APIs is that actions don’t always have to look like actions. Many actions are better off being actual resources. It feels intuitive and logical to define endpoints like: POST /subscriptions/:id/cancel POST /invoices/:id/pay It’s straightforward to build, easy for clients to use, and by itself it’s not inherently wrong. But again and again, I’ve noticed its limitations. When an action becomes a resource When you cancel a subscription, there’s a reason.…

I admire the insight and sensitivity of D H Lawrence in this:"some old things are lovely, warm still with life ... of the forgotten men who made them." which comes from his short piece "Things Men Have Made"Things Men Have MadeTHINGS men have made with wakened hands, and put soft life intoare awake through years with transferred touch,, and go on glowingfor long years.And for this reason, some old things are lovelywarm with the life of forgotten men who made them.I live in an age of unmakers.…

Today was the first time in years I read some news and didn’t cringe right away. It was more or less usual news. This article was interesting (sorry, paywall) www.wsj.com/business/…

8689/21608Despite feeling a bit under the weather I forced myself into doing a Park Run (Phoebe's kick off time was late enough this morning) and until the 5th km I felt pretty good and was even at pace to get sub 30 minutes. In the end it was 30 mins and 36 seconds, which is still 3 minutes faster than my last effort. At this rate, by Christmas, I will have finished before I started. It feels good to be getting round, though I'm still a long way off my PB and even over a minute slower than I…

Today is the third Saturday in September, meaning it is Batman Day! To celebrate the occasion, comic stores will have free Batman-themed comics geared towards new readers, fun little masks, assorted other swag, and a special comic they weren't allowed to release until today, "Batman of Two Worlds." It features the Bruce Wayne of the usual/regular DC Universe and the Absolute Universe, each solving a mystery (that I would assume is somehow linked between the Worlds). A ton of comic shops are…

Last night’s sunset, no edits.

While perusing, as opposed to the 1920's and 1930's slapstick we often focus on, the latest news in the world of comedy (notably, the talented comediennes Saidah Belo-Osagie and Grace Reiter joining the SNL cast for season 52), the gang here tips a top hat worn in 1926 by Raymond Griffith to one of our favorite comedy writers and comics, Robert Smigel.Since anyone who even worked on the periphery of show business is now required by federal law to have a podcast, here's Robert's podcast!First…

Self-loathing feels like honesty. It's actually just an old habit repeating itself. If you were criticised for every small mistake as a child, you keep criticising yourself as an adult. You never learned to sort a real mistake from a normal need. So wanting love becomes a mistake too. You decide love isn't for you, and you stop asking. Self-loathing is good at one thing: keeping you small. It keeps you from ever admitting you get hurt. It looks like discipline because it comes from the same…

Friends may have seen the controversy simmering on the pages of Jacobin about the politics of Victor Serge. At the start of this month, Suzi Weissman Claudio Albertani, and Christian Dubucq published a piece criticising the recent biography about Serge written by the translator Mitchell Abidor. On Friday, he replied, insisting his narrative was accurate. […]

TGS Day OneMy Tokyo Game Show is done. As for attendees on the public days, their show is about to be cut short.Monday, day five, has been cancelled, due to a typhoon that'll bring heavy rain and will likely cause extensive delays to public transport. I'm afraid Mother Nature doesn't respect our right to play a Monster Hunter demo in September.There was no danger of me going on Monday, or Saturday-Sunday for that matter. I have had my fill of the TGS hustle and bustle and desperately need to…

Today, I realized that running my own business (successfully for a while) is a big part of what made me hate capitalism so damn much. For nearly a decade, I grew a blog I started while learning to code into a tech education business and dev consultancy. First it was a hobby, then a side hustle, then a full time job. I loved having control of my work and my time. I got to decide what I worked on and who I worked with. I didn’t need permission to take a day off to enjoy time with my family. I…

This is a bit of an extreme idea, but hear me out. It's the norm today that companies optimise for time so much they routinely drop tasks. There are queues, support tickets that go stale, projects that never ship. We see it in our daily lives as well, the todolist just grows, the home renovation is never complete. We're so used to this, it feels normal. It feels like this is the way it has to be. But is that true? Isn't a company dropping tasks, or not shipping a project, a sign of poor…

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This update covers Sunday 09-13-30-26 through Saturday 09-19-26 (icon Glossary, if needed). LIFE 🈁 My body's warranty ran out after my 55th birthday. 📕 Back issues for me, work issues for L. 📜 Socializing for both good (visiting friends on Sun 09-20) and sad (funeral for L.’s former co-worker on Sat 09-19). ❤️‍🩹 My original plan was to move my 7-minute workout schedule a day later, as my lower back was still feeling achy as of Tue 09-15. A late-night swim with L. helped me feel better, but the…

Redox-driven mineral and organic associations in Jezero Crater, Mars. Hurowitz, J. A., et al (2025) Nature, 645, Article 8080. PDF

CompleteTheHaiga is a haiku, senryu and tanka prompt project with images created by Josiah. All haiku by Cendrine Marrouat. Source

You’ve probably seen the news by now, but the Brasstown is back! Not only that, I have one here to give away, courtesy of Rickshaw. This one features a Grey exterior, with an Orange interior and zipper pulls, similar to the GGB in the Fog model made for this year’s San Francisco Pen Show. And the winner is: Congrats Greg! I’ve sent you an email to collect your shipping address.

I don’t know if any game series has a higher ratio of difficulty to simplicity as the Monkey Ball titles. Just use the analog joystick to tilt a 3D landscape to use physics and gravity to steer a plastic ball containing a money into a goal tape. But within that simple premise is some of the most devilishly hard gaming of all. Especially in the original game, Super Monkey Ball. (Okay, the original original was Monkey Ball, but that was only released in Japanese arcades, and is pretty similar to…

One of the lesser-known benefits of joining the Tatsunami International Fan Club is that it includes access to observe asa-geiko, the stable’s morning practice. I had joined the Fan Club mainly to get a regular banzuke and because I thought it would be interesting. Once I started planning a trip to Japan, I came to … Continue reading A Morning at Tatsunami-beya: Watching the Professionals

You keep using that function. I do not think it does what you think it does As longtime readers of this blog will no doubt be aware, I am a tidyverse girl. As deeply as I adore the R programming language, there are some wild things that are baked into the behaviour of base R, and a lot of what tidyverse does so very, very well is smooth over those rough edges. Whether it is data visualisation with ggplot2, data wrangling with dplyr, or navigating the hell that is string manipulation with…

Doing those CMS updates. Updating Ubuntu on the server. Upgrading your PHP version. Upgrading the database. Getting rid of deprecation notices. Making sure all backups are running as they should. No stuck queues, no stopped daemons or cron jobs. Deployments still running smoothly. Its boring work, but I think it's the kind of stuff that really matters in the long run. Especially if you deal with clients and they pay you to be on top of it. Doing the "boring work", and not constantly having…