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Paul III was the last pope to seriously imagine that the second great schism in the history of Christianity could be healed, that a peaceful way could be found to bring Protestants back home to the Catholic Church. In 1536, as Michelangelo was beginning the painting of the Sistine Chapel’s altar wall in Rome and Henry VIII was executing his second wife in London in order to make space for …

I must have said this before but I will say it again, if you live anywhere near to London and you are into geotech, maps or location influenced applications then you should give Geomob a try. I’d offer you a money back guarantee but as it’s free that isn’t necesary but more on that later. On Wednesday night (24th Jan 2024) we had nearly a hundred people attending what truly …

The alien is an interesting design Starring Oksana Akinshina, Fedor Bondarchuk, Pyotr Fyodorov and Anton Vasilev. Written by Oleg Malovichko and Andrey Zolotarev. Directed by Egor Abramenko. That’s a rather bloody helmet In 1980s Russia an independently-minded doctor, Tatyana Klimova (Akinshina), is taken to a military base to help with research focusing on a cosmonaut, Konstantin Veshnyakov (Fyodorov), who has formed a symbiotic bond with a cortisol-consuming alien creature living …

Today is the 25th anniversary of my mother's death. This isn't going to be a tribute post as such - I have already written one of those, on the occasion of the 11th anniversary. It is true, however, that an item belonging to my mother has inspired this post...to wit, her book log / book diary? / book book?!. This is a small hardbacked notebook in which she used to …

Introduction # As we gear up for the release of Bonfire Classic 1.0 – which includes not just the software but also extensive documentation and tutorials for people to customise and extend functionality in-depth – we're testing the framework's modularity. Our goal is to understand the workflow involved in planning, designing, implementing, and shipping a Bonfire extension from scratch. Our first experiment involved implementing a design pattern from the Prosocial …

Perhaps the sharpest distinction between science and pseudoscience is that science has a far keener appreciation of human imperfections and fallibility than does pseudoscience (or “inerrant” revelation). If we resolutely refuse to acknowledge where we are liable to fall into error, then we can confidently expect that error—even serious error, profound mistakes—will be our companion forever. But if we are capable of a little courageous self-assessment, whatever rueful reflections they …

When I got the new (to me) car it only had one key – although it had two fobs, it was just that the actual keyblade on one of them was missing. (Which is quite an achievement in the first place!) I like having two working keys for the car – it means, among other things, that I can leave it with people (valets, MoT/Servicing etc.) without leaving my full …

Let’s talk about Power Electronics. It’s a genre of music largely credited to the band “Whitehouse” (which is really more or less just one person, but for the record, I am a fan of those sorts of shenanigans). Whitehouse’s output basically consists of high pitched synth noises, very loud kick drum noises, and shouting. On their earlier albums, that shouting consisted of simple, repetitive phrases– the song “Erector” mostly is …

“The court concludes that the conditions are met” The decision of the ICJ to impose provisional measures is a vindication for everyone who spoke out against the war – for the Palestinians of course and above all – but also everyone who marched, and for the hundreds of people in Britain, and the tens of […]

In a nutshell: -Chiswick’s neighbourhood coffee shop -Offering pinball, a Japanese arcade, fresh pastries…and coffee -An effortless welcome served with meticulous care Chief Coffee: serving you coffee, pastries and…pinball If you find yourself walking along Chiswick High Street, you might just think you have stumbled upon the perfect antidote to city life. I raise you – take a left (or right – not sure of your coordinates) into an unassuming …

Those who do not react flexibly to the demands of the situation make themselves slaves to their stubbornness. When processing James Clear’s Atomic Habits1, I deviate from the actually recommended reading method. The reason is: I work the way the book requires and not the way I would like to. Atomic Habits is perhaps the best-selling book on habits and how to work on them. Reading this book was one …

Dear Readers, Over the years, some of us (the past and present members of the collective that runs this blog) have been fortunate enough to meet some of you. We say fortunate, because such encounters have always been positive. Many of you have a background in anthropology, having studied it in college, or even a graduate degree, but — as is the case with most people who study anthropology — …

You’re allowed to have preferences. Set your preferences. I’ve been playing with user styles. Not like fancy site-specific styles, just setting the defaults that I want. Slightly larger text, nicer fallback fonts, etc. Why not? Firefox/Gecko: about:preferences (GUI) Chrome/Blink: chrome://settings/appearance (GUI) Safari/WebKit: go to… Settings / Advanced / Style sheet… (you’ll need to write CSS) As a developer I worry about seeing something different than what other people will see …

From: https://music.apple.com/gb/playlist/all-my-friends/pl.u-KRoNGI18eDm?a=join&it=bo1G4SM8NAbs9VX08The latest version of iOS—17.3—just dropped*, and with it comes a great and long overdue update to Apple Music: Collaborative Playlists. There’s delightful touches throughout, including emoji reactions per song, which strikes me as just the right amount of social in a Music app. If you want to test it out, update to 17.3 and add something good (no pressure) to my shared playlist (link below). * Can operating …

It doesn’t matter if you’re working in a complex organisation or not. It’s pretty common to work on projects where you have opinionated colleagues who have a “stake” in the product or feature working. Either to their part of an organisation or their reputation. This can be the starting point for a lot of terrible features and ideas. Or things that sound very believable but aren’t quite right. Particularly if …