Recently updated blogs

If you had to choose software to begin working in architectural design, which would be your first choice? Many might think that a BIM solution such as BlenderBIM or FreeCAD would be the ideal choice. In many cases, they offer numerous advantages. However, despite these advanced and modern workflows, a simple 2D CAD solution can still address most of our project needs. Using a 2D CAD solution has numerous benefits …

So, it’s been almost a year since Steve Wright in the Afternoon came to an end. This popular Radio 2 show had been on air for nearly 24 years, and Steve Wright himself has been a constant presence on UK radio for nearly twice as long.I thought it was worth me looking back on this end of an era one year on from that event, and also one year on …

I recently encountered an open source project that hadn't received updates for a while. The issue tracker had ~200 open issues, ~70 open pull requests, and CI was partially failing. It's not uncommon for projects to go through lulls, and that's where this project was at. As is often the case, some person had posted an issue to ask "Is this project still maintained?" The person ended with this line: …

Earlier today I got a surprise invitation to Google Foobar,1 a series of coding tests presented as a text adventure. You’re presented with a normal terminal interface, and a few familiar commands like ls, cd, cat to navigate around the file system and print the readme files. There are five levels to the challenge, and it’s allegedly used as a secret hiring technique, with the winning prize being that you …

I’ve started work on sourcing and painting up some scenic elements and terrain for the 15mm Terminator project, and am kicking things off with some wrecked cars and a suitably scrappy junkyard.I’ve found that 15mm vehicles in a pristine state can be fairly expensive to buy, given that in the Post-Apocalyptic wilderness they will be just heaps of rust - so have resorted to utilising some HO/OO scale railway pieces …

Just a heads-up that the listing for my forthcoming book Beyond Hope: Collective Power and Mutual care in the Long Emergency has just gone live on Amazon here in the UK, and that you’d be doing me a real solid by pre-ordering it via the link. (I’ll update this with links to alternative/non-Amazon sources as they become available.)

Hi everyone! You may have noticed that we’ve slowed down a bit on posting, approving comments, and, well, pretty much our whole end of the deal. We’d like to say we’re just too busy and important, but…we’re not. Behind the scenes, we’ve been actively downsizing and “sunsetting” this little dog and pony show we call Awful Library Books. We started this blog in 2009, and after 14 years we’ve realized …

A new home for the Landslide Blog I started this blog on 16 December 2007 – that feels like a long time ago now – as a site on Blogger. In 2010, the American Geophysical Union established the AGU Blogosphere, and I moved the blog to this site at that time. For almost 13 years it has been a great home for this blog. However, you may have been aware …

Barry Hughart (his surname is pronounced hew-gert) died in 2019 at the age of 85. His career as a writer of fantasy was short-lived, but his work was acclaimed. His first novel, Bridge of Birds: A Novel of an Ancient China That Never Was (1984), was the co-winner of the 1985 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel (along with Mythago Wood, by Robert Holdstock), and it won the 1986

I wrote about AI already, but that was about how we’re all going to die. Since then, the conversation has become more nuanced. Now I’m encountering more subtle ideas I think are totally wrong. So because I know better, here’s why. “AI is already here.” ChatBots are good at figuring out what comes next when you start a sentence with, “The capitol of Antigua is…” That’s pretty cool. We didn’t …

Learn how to use CollectRows, RowToStructByName, CollectOneRow, RowToStructByPos and ForEachRow

After 1,187 different stories, I’m sorry to say that this, the 1,188th, will be the last piece published on The Charlton Champion. We have now closed. Thank you for your custom. There’s a bit more to say than that, of… Continue reading →

On 11 July, BBC Media Action – the BBC’s international charity – will say goodbye to their CEO of 14 years, Caroline Nursey OBE, upon her retirement and welcome Simon Bishop as their new CEO. BBC Media Action’s head of communications, Carolynne Wheeler, sat down with Caroline and Simon to hear their reflections on the charity’s achievements, and on the challenges and opportunities ahead. Caroline, Simon, thank you for joining …