Recently updated blogs

In my post last month about life-drawing I mentioned that the amount of oil used in the Faber-Castell Pitt sanguine pencil meant that I couldn’t get the tonal variation from it that I could from graphite pencils. I ordered myself an oil-free sanguine pencil, but then — as often happens — discovered I already had an alternative buried in one of my many art supplies boxes! So this past weekend’s …

A few interesting things I learnt about this week are1. Coffee Stains in LaTeX - This package provides an essential feature that LaTeX has been missing for too long: It adds coffee stains to your documents. A lot of time can be saved by printing stains directly on the page rather than adding them manually.My Take: There is too much fun to be had with LaTeX. I guess the rest …

Published 8 years after it's predecessor, 'The Dark is Rising', returned Susan Cooper to her Arthurian world but relocated the action from Cornwall to the Thames Valley. The story of Will Stanton, last of 'The Old Ones', is another episodic quest as the newly minted magician comes into his power by locating lost artifacts. What elevates this beyond that first book however is Cooper's commitment to developing a coherent, mythic …

I tried Surreal Brewing Company's 7 Mile Porter. It's not bad. It has strong notes of chocolate and burnt coffee. The chocolate notes are more dark chocolate than milk chocolate. It didn't taste bad, it just didn't taste like beer. It needed something, more hops maybe, to offset the sweetness of the malts.

This week, the new Prime blasts his message to the people, and Megatron is surprised their war wasn't really over in ten minutes.All this and cryptic Metroplex in my look at Autocracy Chapter 11!

I first played the jumping and parrying to avoid death video game Prince of Persia on an IBM 386 at a friend’s house. I never saved the princess, though I did wall-run to the end of a later version called The Sands of Time. Needing games that I can play from any computer while traveling, I’m going to play both the original using SDL (source code) or JS versions, and …

In the world of British innovation, there’s a fascinating collection of ideas that, while incredibly creative, never quite made it into everyday life. These inventions, captured in pictures from the last century, reveal a time when people dared to dream big. Chris Hodge, an amateur historian from Chislehurst in southeast London, has dedicated more than […]

It's been 10 years since the last Darkspace album and we almost forgot about them. In the meantime, we did get Paysage d'Hiver full length albums from Wintherr though, which is pretty groundbreaking for people aware of the specific project.I have to say, the case of Darkspace is one of a kind and if you get behind it, you don't dislike anything from them, as the direction and the concept …

These Oscar Nominee reviews often group themselves into pairs; today we have two love stories. Maestro A lot of the press about this film has focused more on Bradley Cooper himself than on the rest of the film; how he was snubbed for a Best Director nomination, how his use of prosthetics to change his nose shape was controversial, and such. And it’s hard not to feel a little sorry …

This is the church of St. Andrew, Holborn, photographed in the low sun of a bright winter’s afternoon: I will be exploring the church later in the post, but to start, let’s look at the location of St. Andrew, because I suspect the church is here due to its proximity to the River Fleet, and it is one of a number of London’s churches that are located at key boundaries, …

this week arts council england updated some of their policy wording1 to threaten organisations which host artists or artworks that could pose ‘reputational risk’, warning those that chose to go ahead with hosting these risky political statements that they might be stripped of their National Portfolio Organisation (read: funded) status. with this move, ACE made explicit something which a lot of us had felt creeping in under the door (and …

Subscribe WordPress Facebook Twitter Instagram If you enjoy reading please consider “buying me a pint”, this will help to cover my hosting and image hosting and help to ensure further trips can go ahead!BUY ME A PINT A re-visit to the areas of Ilkeston, Heanor and Langley Mill in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. Visited here at the start of November 2023 following near the same route with two extra pub additions. …

I wrote here, critically, about the recent IMF report on the impact of AI and jobs. I was doing some research for a report I was writing recently which required me to go back into the same area, and found an article by David Autor that has a different view. Not more cheerful, necessarily, but maybe more honest about the radical uncertainty that pervades this whole area. Autor is a …

Hi everyone! Hope you’re having a lovely weekend! I’m not sure where I heard it first, but someone once said that in the first two weeks after releasing an anticipated game, it gets played more often than during all of the months and years of playtesting combined. It’s shocking to hear at first but makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Maybe that’s one of the reasons …

The Owd Tatts, Chadderton, Lancashire A white-painted pub with an unusual name on a back road on the south-west side of Oldham. There are now plans to demolish it and build a convenience store on the site.