Recently updated blogs

Non-fiction Viviane Robinson Reduce Change to Increase Improvement: My brilliant colleague at the National Institute of Teaching, Paula, recommended this. It has been hugely influential in developing leadership approaches that are clear and simple, and is full of helpful and … Continue reading →

December brought episode number three, the last of the calendar year 2023. This edition of “The Almanac” first aired on Wednesday the 6th at 8pm Eastern over on Uncertain.FM, and got a replay the following day at 4pm. By now you’ve hopefully got the drill: The first Wednesday of every month brings a couple […]

Never let a name fool you: Yvette Mimieux. The ooo-la-la French seductress thing was all the rage in the early 1960s cinema and TV. After WWII, French culture spilled across the Atlantic and wormed into American culture. French plus female, along with even a minimal degree of attractiveness, propelled a woman into the hearts, minds,… Continue reading Evan Engber and Yvette Mimieux Kayak the Coquille River

Sometimes a story takes a number of years to ripen. And sometimes two or three stories merge in unexpected ways. I just had a moment of convergence when new infill development, sub rosa adaptation, and wartime migration all collided. Back in the 1990s I used to live across the street from an old gas station. It was still functioning at the time, but some years after I moved it went …

This is my second in a series of guitars which take inspiration from the work of Dominique Field, this time in Red Cedar and 640 scale. With the addition of an elevated neck and a discreet soundport, I believe these offer an excellent blend of tone, volume, projection and playability, perfectly bridging the gap between purely traditional guitars and modern, heavy body lattice braced soundboards. This set of Ziricote has …

The Pope of Physics is a 2016 biography of Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), written by Gino Segre and Bettina Hoerlin. Segre's uncle Emilio was a student of Fermi's in Rome, whereas Hoerlin's father knew Fermi from Los Alamos, New Mexico in the post-World War II years.I began reading the book earlier this year, before I knew that the movie Oppenheimer was coming out. Both The Pope of Physics and Oppenheimer chronicle …

Over the past 20 years, I have featured these maps and images to rotate on my home page. They represent the growing depth and breadth of the collection.

[Web master's note: Northern California film critic Derrick Bang — the eldest, youngest and only son of this site's primary jazz guru, Ric Bang — has surveyed the holiday jazz scene for more than a quarter century (!). Check out previous columns by clicking on the CHRISTMAS label below.] In early November, this looked like another disappointing year for holiday jazz. With fewer than half a dozen albums to consider …

Hi there. Long time no see. I’m not really sure how to start this, so I guess we’ll just start. 2023 has been an interesting year full of… Life changes? Life adjustments? Life somethings. A few of these life somethings has been really cool, and what have made good blog posts, but maybe at the time I wasn’t sure how I wanted to talk about them, or which parts of …

An afternoon at Big Trees Dear Reader, I am happy to report that Calaveras Big Trees State Park sits a scant three miles past the town of Arnold, California and is home to two groves of Giant Sequoias. I am delighted to tell you that ample, affordable, highway-close parking makes them the most accessible in the Sierras. I am elated to let you know that being a state park translates …

In our programs we often have to deal with whitespaces, for example to sanitize input we received from users or other applications. With the release of Java 11, there have been some changes to the way whitespace is handled, and it’s important for developers to understand these changes in order to avoid potential pitfalls and write efficient, error-free code. In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at whitespace …

I found myself wanting to host a private website that I could reliably update, but only serve it to users on my tailnet. I didn't find anything obvious that could do the job, but I did realize that between the existence of s3fs, tsnet, and the batteries that come with Go, I could probably bodge together something that does the job for me. This is it: offbyone/tailscale-s3-proxy. It's not complicated, …

The tick-tock of time trips on and here we are again, old friends. Said the Gramophone. Best songs. By now I hope you know the drill. This world needs some kindnesses--it wants more peace, liberation, and music shared between strangers. So here's a pistachio, a ripe pear. Here are my 100 favourite songs of the year 2023; songs I love much more than doomed submarines (or basketball). Earlier this year, …

I haven't actually played it yet, but I've seen the videos, read the rules, and it looks fun. Not only that, but I already have a sizeable collection of painted samurai to use!The only problem is that Senjutsu is in 30mm and I have 40mm. No worries, I'll build my own terrain!The battle board was mapped out using isometric graph paper to set the grid, then it was cut out …

The iphone view of the pool. The two conical shapes on the horizon are the Bass Rock island on the left and North Berwick Law on the southern shore of the estuary. Both are volcanic plugs. The rounded one in the centre is, I think, Traprain Law in East Lothian.Yes, straight from the "Don't do as I do, do as I say" department of the Online Darkroom comes a tale …