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On All Hallow’s Eve, we quite naturally watched Buster Keaton’s 1921 two-reeler, The Haunted House. And of course, there on camera, displayed in all his glory, was The Great Stone Face, as Keaton is known far and wide. Yet I beg to differ. Oh, sure. In most of his film appearances, Buster didn’t smile. But he did a lot of other things with his face that were a beacon for …

In the final season of ALF, Jason Cort brings us the highest amount of outfits in a season. A total of 59 outfits were worn by ALF in his last season and they were a mix of new and repeats. Season 4 – Episode 1 “Baby, Come Back” A repeat of ALF’s red sweatshirt. First seen in S2E9 and then in S3E1, S3E13, S3E18. Season 4 – Episode 2 “Lies” …

INSIDE: Find kindergarten measurement activity ideas for teaching length, weight, capacity and area using nonstandard units. Our Kindergarten Measurement Investigations Every January, we explore the wonders of measurement, diving deep into the concepts of length, weight, capacity, and area, by asking questions, making predictions, and uncovering answers through hands-on investigations and play. Teaching measurement through […] The post Kindergarten Measurement Inquiries: Teaching Length, Weight, Capacity, and Area appeared first on …

I had the pleasure of reporting and writing the Many Worlds column — sponsored by NASA’s NExSS initiative and the Lunar & Planetary Institute — for more than seven years, but the run came to an end in October. Now an archive of the more than 400 columns is easily available at http://www.manyworlds.space. The stories focus on astrobiology writ large, but also include profiles, more general astronomy and planetology columns, …

In the last couple of years I have developed a complicated relationship with my phone. Whether it's scrolling past an endless wall of hate on Twitter or feeling my mood buckle under the weight of every TikTok or Reel that I push skywards, the tiny computer in my pocket has started to feel a bit like that box from Dune – there's nothing but pain in there. Increasingly though, it's …

I loved this interview with author Steven Johnson. It covers a lot about the way he writes and how he structures his books and articles. It also reminded me about the piece he wrote back in 2022 on ChatGPT which has a wonderful opening paragraph that illustrates the simple premise behind Large Language Models – predicting the next word. The article still rings true even though the technology has moved …

So I just found out that WordPress / Automattic is preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI. So it seems that unless I opt out, my creative work will be sold for AI training. Sold by the company I already PAY to host my websites. If it was opt in I’d be sad because it’s another sign of the open web caving in as it gets strip mined …

One of the biggest complaints new creators have is that they hate dealing with stretch goals. it’s a common customer complaint too, because if you do stretch goals wrong (you are), you’ll overburden your project and put yourself behind schedule, over budget, and cut your profits to nothing. So why have stretch goals? What’s the point? You’re doing stretch goals wrong Stretch goals are not “cool stuff we can do …

There are several nice options in NixOS for specifying scheduled backup jobs, including borgbackup, borgmatic and restic. But I’ve often used rsync in the past, and there is no such module for scheduled rsync jobs (or rsnapshot either). So I wrote my own simple module.

The dream of soaring in the sky like a bird has captivated the human mind for ages. Although many failed, some eventually succeeded in achieving that goal. These days we take air transportation for granted, but the physics of flight can still be puzzling. In this article we’ll investigate what makes airplanes fly by looking at the forces generated by the flow of air around the aircraft’s wings. More specifically, …

Despite all the media attention Seraph Moore has had over the past four months, he is now barely recognisable from his headshot sent to me by his media team. The give away as I take my seat opposite the diner table from him is his telltale yellow cravat, which sits, tossed aside, next to his full English breakfast. “Sunlight is an issue, down at camp,” he says, which explains the …

This is the transcript for “Become a Wikipedian in 30 minutes”, a video about how to get started editing Wikipedia. Contents Key things to keep in mind Create an account Reliable sources Your first edit Finding an article: Random article Finding citations for unsourced content Adding a citation Topics to avoid as a new editor Finding an article: Task Center Finding an article: Find an interesting fact Citing print books …

Welcome to Victoria, the long way During the summer holidays we drove our Tesla Model 3 from Sydney to Melbourne via the Princes Highway and back via the Hume, about 2500 km all in including various detours. We’ve now had the Tesla for a year and this was our third longer road trip (>1000 km), taking us across a wide variety of roads, terrain and weather conditions, so here’s some …

Leading Technical Change is a small, live, remote seminar aimed squarely at a single topic: Real Change in the Real World. A new cohort is open now: March 11,12,14, & 15, 10am to noon Eastern (UTC-5). There are just six seats available, so we can drill down on the actual situations in which you’re seeking […]

Perhaps I should be more emotional about this, but this will be my last blog post on Airbag. The time has come to make this domain more useful than where I share my thoughts and feelings about things and stuff. It has been a wonderful stage to practice writing in the English language (still needs a lot of work) and engaging with hundreds of people here on this site and …