Recently updated blogs

I have worked for two newspapers over the course of my career (three if you count my high school newspaper). One thing I learned there is that the top half of each and every newspaper homepage is a daily battle of priorities. The idea here is that the thing that is highest, largest, and leftmost on the page will get the most attention. Placement and ordering of this content is …

I try to make myself and my immediate surroundings as self-sufficient as possible. There’s something innate in me that makes me want to do everything myself, to not depend on anyone, and even more so to be free. Of course, “free” can hide a lot. Despite how ingrained this part of my nature is, though, I can see where it’s been reinforced. As always, it begins with a “there but …

In August I bought a Kinesis Freestyle Edge keyboard off of eBay. I’ve been using it for about four months now, and I’m typing this review on it. I’d been wanting to try out a split keyboard for a long time but didn’t want to spend a lot of money on one. Good quality split programmable keyboards start at around $200. The Freestyle Edge I found on eBay was new …

I've decided to migrate this blog to a quarto-based blog format. All future posts will be found here: https://swingley.dev/blog2.

To write of Christmas after December 25th is neither a sin nor a crime, but there is something untoward in my tardiness. We meet the overdue Christmas missive with the same misgiving we reserve for the rooftop that twinkles through February. Even small children know—however much they may deny it—that the Christmas season cheers because it only lasts a season. The magical must be momentary. Thus we treat Christmas lights …

If you’re a horror movie fan, I think you’ll agree with the assessment that Scream (1996) is a top-notch meta horror-comedy. But did you know that it’s been accused of being a rip-off...

My year in review I’ll begin by briefly weighing in on five of the most prominent pieces of the 2023 zeitgeist, at least from where I was sitting. Some cynical vibes ahead, so feel free to skip past this part if you’re not in the mood for negative energy: Taylor Swift: Gen Z’s version of Beatlemania is a bit of a head-scratcher for me, since I find Taylor Swift’s music …

WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Star Trek: Picard Season Three, which as of this writing has been out for the better part of a year.In the spring of 1994 Star Trek fans were treated to the wonderful TNG finale "All Good Things". It was a little technobabble-heavy, but it was still an affectionate send-off to the TV adventures of the Enterprise-D crew as they made the jump to the …

Vincennes Review of Books 2023 is here!Key:* = Excellent, highly recommend~ = Actively bad, do not recommendFirst readsThe Book of Form & Emptiness–Ruth OzekiLove in Idleness–Charlotte Mendelson Straight Man–Richard Russo *The Complete Magazine Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1921–1924–F. Scott Fitzgerald *The Book of Goose–Yiyun Li The Imperfect Life of T. S. Eliot–Lyndall Gordon The Liar’s Dictionary–Eley Williams The Coaching Habit–Michael Bungay Stainer Cleopatra and Frankenstein–Coco Mellors The Waste Land: …

Reading this week: Dragon Rouge by Fred E. Wagoner Dragon Operations by Major Thomas P. Odom Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton Getting Past No by William Ury Seasons in Hippoland by Wanjikũ wa Ngũgĩ To make up for a whole bunch of blog posts, I am publishing in post format the biographies I compiled for my world-famous “The Chronicle of the London Missionary Society …

My new album is out, on most/all? of the streaming platforms. It’s a collection of dark ambient/minimalist music that I wrote to have something relaxing & quiet to meditate to/breath to/fall asleep to. Find it on: Apple Music Amazon Music Bandcamp Pandora Spotify Tidal & iTunes probably too, but I’m not sure how to link to those. I released my last EP about a year ago and wrote at the …

Happy 2024, everyone! I don’t know if there’s some symbolism behind this year’s J.C. Leyendecker New Year’s baby that I’m missing, or if it’s just a baby knight riding a mechanical horse and using a feather as a lance. Any insights would be welcomed. Elsewhere, Life waxes whimsical, a skating duo rings in the new year at St. Nicholas,* Fruit, Garden and Home (soon to be retitled, much more sensibly, …

This year I want to continue my introduction to bodybuilding and round out my fitness regimen with regular cardio. For January and February, I'll finish the "Start From Scratch" series of workouts. I will also start running three days a week again. I'll be taking progress photos. By July, I want to see distinct muscle definition in the mirror. I also want to try and get my VO2 max consistently …

Solely by happenstance, this observation surfaced out of my memory during the past week: "The future's uncertain and the end is always near." An unexpected message for the New Year? And who might be the source of this thought? Perhaps Schopenhauer or Leopardi, those cheerful, happy-go-lucky characters? Or, further back in time, should we look to Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius? And what of the poets? For instance, one might imagine …

The historian Arno Mayer, who had such an influence on my work and eventually became a friend, has died at 97. He wrote books on everything from the French Revolution to the First World War to the Holocaust to the creation of the State of Israel. He was one of a cohort of brilliant scholars at Princeton University who made the study of history, in which I majored as an …