Recently updated blogs

An 1851 San Francisco paper described a city of immigrants… I found a lovely line in an 1851 San Francisco newspaper that celebrates the diversity of Gold Rush San Francisco—a boom town whose residents included “Hindoos” (South Asians), “Mussulmans” (Muslims), and people “from the fairy lands of Persia and Arabia”: “In our streets, the fair European jostles with the swarthy Kanaka or the darker Hindoo; the pious Mussulman says his …

Our first release of 2024 is here! This one features many small improvements and fixes, plus a big new feature many people have asked for: newsletters / email subscriptions! Download v0.15.0 now, or read on to see what’s new in this version. Major Features Newsletters / subscribe by email (#478) Now readers can subscribe to receive blog posts via email! Connect an email service to enable email subscriptions and automated …

An update to this blog is severely overdue, it appears. I hadn't realised it had been so long since I had last posted.There's been no big leap forward since the autumn but there have been developments in a number of directions.Rolling stock acquisition continues steadily.The most recent arrivals are a suitably ragbag selection of carriages to represent the final few years of steam haulage on the Cambrian, made up of …

I spent a lot of time in TV studios in my yoof. My dad was a sound engineer, and I took any opportunity I could to bunk off school or use the holidays to go and hang out on whatever he was working on. I’d generally be left alone, because my dad had an actual job to do, so I’d raid the vending machines, chat to bored camera operators, or …

Ever since the double-whammy of ‘having kids’ and ‘global pandemic’, I haven’t been going to board game nights at game stores that much. To regain some of my exposure to new game releases, I tend to watch ‘Top 10’ lists for the last year. This year, I decided to compile all of the top 10 lists I could find to create a global list. This took way more time than …

Twelve years ago I published my first article on this site, and it's still alive (is it?). Writing # I haven't published anything in the last year. Last year I thought I will come back to writing again, but it didn't happen. Maybe I will get back to writing again here, but I just don't know. Social # I'm also not really active anymore on social media. I do browse …

Making space to work out at home When we moved to out house almost two years ago from one one-bed London flat, I was really excited to have more space to do some home workouts. Living in a small flat, with a toddler through lockdowns was hard, but we made it work. It was where I recorded all of my YouTube workouts that have now had many thousands of plays. …

The third of my year-in-reading columns has gone up over at Dorian's blog: the best stuff I read in 2023.

Imagine you’re on the hunt for a new sweater and decide to visit a local clothing store. Upon arrival, you engage with Tom, an enthusiastic new employee who began working there last week. You inquire about the sweater selection, and he’s eager to help, providing prompt responses. As this unfolds, Clarice, the store owner, approaches. With genuine concern, she inquires if everything is okay. You affirm that it is, expressing …

Let us posit a simplification, which will hopefully seem less arbitrary and less reductive as we further describe it. The simplification is this: that the two poles of concern, when it comes to what we call “art,” are the production of pleasure and the production of models. This is a bit what Gabriel Duquette has touched upon in calling “maps” and “chords” the building blocks of a work. The maps …

Today’s reflection is from Bondings 2.0 Contributor, Angela Howard McParland. Today’s liturgical readings for the 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time can be found here. Pope Francis recently said that he hoped hell was empty. “It’s difficult to imagine it,” the pope said. “What I would say is not a dogma of faith, but my personal thought: I like to think hell is empty; I hope it is.” In so much …

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 …

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 — …

I’m not sure if I’m misremembering but my brain says there was a time when blog posts did not have “post titles” by default. Coming up with a post title is one of my least favorite exercises when writing a blog post. Often how these things change on the internet is a bit hard to unearth (particularly in the early 2000s) but it could have been as innocent as some …

How to celebrate the 30th anniversary of a personal web site? I considered this morning as I fashioned a three-legged stool over my morning ritual oracular vapors. I thought it would be good to have a petting zoo here. Basically, I thought, I'll declare links.net a virtual single human petting zoo mostly in text. I've already set myself up as an exhibit, so I don't have to do very much …