Recently updated blogs

Just saw Helena Deland on the last night of her tour. Absolutely stunning gig. After a beautiful, delicate set from Clara Mann, they came on and blew us away. The band were so tight and were clearly enjoying themselves. Someone passed Helena a piece of paper with a request for a song that they don’t usually play; after a nod from all the band members, and a quick errand to …

My name is Rachel, and I am currently the Service Design Lead at Basildon Council in Essex. I am also a PhD Researcher in Service Co-design. This means working with service beneficiaries and the workforce to design a service to meet future needs and life events. I live with a disability that affects my immunity and mobility and this has really changed my approach to design (and re-design) of services. …

C. and I left the desert sooner than expected because an ideal apartment opened up down the hall from her parents. At first, I did not want to leave Vegas. Not so soon. Then I thought about how I would move heaven and earth to live down the hall from my parents if they were still here. A different timeline, perhaps. I like my in-laws. They taught me to play …

Ninety percent of the ads I see on Facebook are either for shoes (especially with wide sizes), electric cars, or glasses, especially sunglasses and reading glasses. That’s because I’m interested in those things, and keep clicking on attractive ads. What can I say? It keeps me off the street. The other day, I clicked on a shoe ad and this appeared: I’ve been on the elusive trail of “trainers” (BrE …

I’m an artist and maker from southern Scotland, designing and hand printing bespoke textiles for interiors. My work focuses on the relationship between pattern & place; all of my designs are inspired by a particular location and aim to interpret the story of their surroundings. My curtains are designed and made to commission, and I also print ‘building collage’ cushions inspired by special places which are available to buy or …

I’ve written elsewhere about the funeral I attended at Mortlake Crematorium last Friday, and I had it in my mind that Mortlake represented a stretch of the River Thames in London that I hadn’t been to before. I’d visited Kew, Richmond, Hammersmith, and Twickenham, but had no recollection of Mortlake - or so I thought. It wasn't until I’d walked the short distance from Mortlake station towards the Thames, that …

The kitchen sink cabinet door has water damage along the top edge — not from a leak, just from being less than careful and being constructed of materials that don't handle water very well. It's been on the todo list since we moved in and my great idea was to use clear fingernail polish to stem the issue. While looking for that I paused to admire the Goody colors and …

“Route 2 bus and Spring St traffic” by Oran Viriyincy is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. I’m continuing to explore accessed-based route productivity measurements by examining four routes that, like route 1, serve Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood. Routes 2, 3, 4, and 13 make their way up its eponymous hill. These are some of the quirkiest routes in King County Metro’s system. The former three are putatively long routes connecting …

I wasn't sure if I even wanted to write about this. It feels like I'm bragging by acknowledging it, but it was so exciting that I have to talk about it. Yesterday, I woke up to Monday's article about OSM, Rust, and WASM at the top of Hacker News. Here's how I found out: I woke up early and started poking around on my phone and scrolling through Hacker News …

Made up a 2×2 after a long time. And am kicking off a new Lunchtime Leadership blogchain. Name inspired by Hitchhiker’s Guide joke about most work being done by random people who wander into offices while leaders are out to lunch, see something worth doing, and do it. BDFxing, the idea I introduced in the […]

Paul Lukas stars as Josef, a butler employed to Prince Alfred, portrayed by the dashing Nils Asther. Josef loves working for the prince because he not only admires him but wishes to emulate him... especially when it comes to the prince's wooing technique, for the prince has a reputation of being a "great lover". One of his favorite methods of enchanting women is by candlelight. This method involves Josef turning …

Join or Die is a film about why you should join a club—and why the fate of America depends on it. Screening on Saturday February 24 in NYC at 3.30pm at FIT. Tickets and more info here. (Thanks Casper)

I know you’ll never read this, but I’m putting this (digital) note in a (digital) bottle and lobbing it into the (digital) oceans anyway. We probably weren’t as close as we should have been. A lot of little reasons for that, but it was what it was. Still, we were family and that’s what mattered. But you were one of the first people to look past my daughter’s disability and …

At the Green Jello show the other day, the singer opened with the following anecdote: This is what's left over, after the comedy night here tonight? Did you know there was a big comedy night here? Nah? It was fuckin' packed! It was jam packed, line around the corner! We pull over after driving 82 fuckin' hours to get here, and we're like wow, look at that fuckin' line down …

The world is still getting warmer. Charts like this shouldn’t be necessary to prove this fact. All that is necessary is to have lived a certain number of decades, and remembering how things used to be. The scientific consensus is that a big driver of global warming is the burning of fossil fuels. But cutting down on fossil fuels may not be compatible with maintaining current material standards of living. …