Recently updated blogs

This morning, OpenAI launched the GPT Store: a simple way to browse and distribute customized versions of ChatGPT. GPTs – awkwardly named to solidify OpenAI’s claim to the trademark “GPT” – consist of a custom ChatGPT prompt, an icon, and optionally some reference data or hookups to external APIs. In the coming weeks, OpenAI will also start paying developers based on usage of their GPTs. While GPTs may prove useful …

A personal summary of the past year, after reading a couple of others from friends

New year, new books! 2024 is your year to read more film books and there are plenty of new ones coming out for you to enjoy. There is lots here for those of you who enjoy Oscar history, fashion, Westerns, film noir, etc. There are 80+ new titles featured so plenty options to consider!Are you new to my list? Here are the details. The books include biographies, memoirs, scholarly texts, …

This year, our cookie inspiration came from the New York Times, especially Cookie Week 2023, and the book Fabulous Modern Cookies. Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies Neapolitan Checkerboard Squares Peanut Butter-Miso Cookies Pistachio Pinwheels Mango Chutney Thumbprints Smoked Almond and Caramel Cookie Crunch We made one box as a New Years’ gift to a friend, brought some as a hostess gift for a New Year’s Eve party.

It's now been a fair few months since changes to UK Duty legislation made it advantageous for breweries to produce beers at a strength of 3.4% or weaker, and we should be starting to see the effects of this at the bar counter as breweries seek to offer beers meeting this criteria.Speculation at the time suggested that this could be the death knell for cask ales in the 3.5 to …

The Partnership for NYC, alongside its partners at the MTA, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, NJ TRANSIT, and NYC Department of Transportation, launched a call for applications for the 6th annual Transit Tech Lab this week. To kick off this year’s program, the Transit Tech Lab is seeking early and growth-stage tech companies with compelling solutions to one of three local transit system challenges: Customer Experience …

My annual, lengthy, round-up tradition continues into another year. 2023 brought a return to Japan, a return to work, a lot of fatigue and health challenges to navigate, but also a lot of lovely memories. This post is part of a yearly series dating back to 2011(!), of which the previous post can be found here. Overview Before I dive in, I haven’t been on social media nearly as much …

I have a new novel coming out in July (amazon page here): a utopian novel mashed-up with some space-opera Lovecraftian/Dennis Wheatley horror. My teenage son, when I explained the premise, suggested I call it Space Satan!!!, with that many exclamation marks, and this may have been a better title than the King Lear reference with which I have actually gone. But here we are. And isn't the cover-art, above, splendid? …

Paul Simon got there first.. I’m giving up ‘intelligence’ for 2024. That is, I’m not going to use the term ‘intelligence’ except to critique it as an inherently flawed construction firmly grounded in race science and unable to sustain the weight of current usage as a measure of cognitive ability that can help us assess human, animal, or machine-based capabilities. It doesn’t do the work we want it to in …

Lorrie Moore’s 2009 novel A Gate at the Stairs offers among its attractions several passages and exchanges of lexical and linguistic interest. This post looks at some of them. The book’s narrator, Tassie, is a Midwestern farm girl now in college. She’s also employed as a nanny by Sarah, a restaurateur. One of their early conversations has commentary on the semantic inflation of awesome: “You have a mother?” I said. …

Despite being twice included on lists of influential Black Britons, Olive Morris is still frequently overlooked in British history. Still, she achieved much in her tragically short life and her legacy remains alive today.

Thoughts on 2023 The Big Stuff:A year of contentment. Family life atop the miller’s hill is bliss, and the kids are so much more relaxed and confident now we’re more comfortable letting them explore. Felt like a slower year at work. I’d have rather made more, but it wasn’t to be. The sabbatical in the middle of it didn’t help matters. But it did allow me to make a lot …

I love a lot of things about Chicago, but the number one thing is that it works. It's the city that brought the world the eight-hour day, the city that rebuilt itself from ashes. It's a city of immigrants and of the great migration; a city of neighborhoods forged by working class hands. And it's the city that brought the world the hardest-working typeface, Cooper Black. Created in Chicago in …

PRC Pittsburgh Railways PCC Route 28Location: Pittsburgh, PennsylvaniaDate: July 1958Photographer: UnknownPittsburgh PCC #1562 was built in 1944 by the St. Louis Car Company. The Roxian Theatre is located at 501 Chartiers Avenue, McKees Rocks, PA 15136. It was built in 1928 and had 1,200 seats. It closed in 1979 and was converted into a concert venue for a time. In 2019, it reopened as a film and performing arts theatre. …