Recently updated blogs

This will be the new home of my blog Georneys. I’ll be moving all of my posts here from the AGU blogosphere – and starting some new blogging in 2024. Stay tuned!

In 1989, Konami released an arcade game based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. Everything about it was tailored to the source material. In the cartoon, there are four ninja turtles, who usually fight together as a team, so it was a four-player co-op game, even though this required a larger-than-standard cabinet. The turtles frequently fight their way through masses of faceless goons, so it was a scrolling brawler. …

The Untourists The Untourists - Travel Blog - Discovering the beautiful world we live in. We have always felt Indian food is best had in a home. There is no, not one restaurant which serves the amazing tastes and varieties of Indian home food. And what does Indian Food even mean? Last time I checked there were 28 states and 8 union territories. Each of them have a completely different …

“I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares.” — Saul Bass The Art of the Title – That’s Saul, Folks!Psycho. Vertigo. North by Northwest. Goodfellas. Casino. You’ve seen his work, but do you know his name? Beginning in May 2024, Art of the Title is pairing with Hot Docs Cinema in Toronto to present That's Saul, Folks!, a film series dedicated to famed graphic designer Saul Bass. Hosted …

I don't love how this painting turned out, but I enjoyed every moment of creating it. (I did the best I could on the photography with a tripod, my phone, and my office lights.) I absolutely adore how the background turned out, and I'm sure I'll use some of those techniques in the future (texturing with paper, diluted paint splatter). However, I don't love how the really experimental parts turned …

It's time. After 12 years of writing about cities with a Rust Belt perspective on this platform, I'm closing it down. And no, this is not an April Fool's joke. I'm moving on to a new platform with a new name: petesaunders.substack.com.It's got my name for now but that may change. It also has the more than 800 articles I've written since 2012 archived and available for viewing. As you …

Nature is all about life - and death.As lovers of the natural world, we delight in the abundant, thriving, humming life all around us, which is at no time of the year more apparent than during the spring season of growth and rebirth. As the world breaks free from the grip of winter, we revel in a season of renewal and resurrection.But remember that in the natural world, it is …

I have a story set in the modern day with supernatural traces, with three characters: a young boy, his bio dad, and his adoptive dad. The boy and his bio dad are Indian, the adoptive dad is Chinese. The bio dad is one of the few people in the story with powers. He put his son up for adoption when he was a child because at the time he was …

There is a space between renting woes and property sales that is often unseen. On the one hand, we read stories of students renting places with black mould and being taken to the tenancy tribunal for supposedly causing damage to their under-maintained properties. On the other hand are the first home buyers being priced out of the property market, and the novelty articles about people in their 20s beating the …

Findlater’s Corner – a prominent site on the western approach to London Bridge railway station – was restored to its original glory by The Arch Company, working with Benedict O’Looney Architects, in 2022. The result is impressive. Important aspects of the building’s history, however, have been misunderstood. This landmark site is named after the wine and spirit dealer, Findlater, Mackie, Todd & Co., which moved into new premises beneath the …

I was going to wait to do this until Nov. 19, 2024, the 10th anniversary of this site’s launch. However, now’s the right time. Vehlinggo.com, this music website updated with various degrees of regularity since 2014, is going on an indefinite hiatus. That big deep dive with The Midnight about their upcoming Dark Horse Comics graphic novel was essentially the last interview for this site. Vehlinggo the entity will still …

learning a lot about sed, awk and other commands by making a spotify statusbar widget

I’ve been experimenting with the MapChart website to produce maps showing the birth county of people in North Walls and Brims in two censuses, 1861 and 1921. What do you think? 1861 Census And here’s 1921, a much smaller population, 401 rather than 597, but a wider spread of birthplaces partly due to the Naval base at Lyness. Middlesex – actually all these people were Londoners, some from the East …

I don’t feel like this is what Microsoft were expecting when they set up the ‘on this day’ feature. What a day though. What a day…

Text of a Presidential Address (2023) delivered to the Norfolk & Norwich Naturalists’ Society at Norwich, 26-3-2024 Thank you – firstly – for doing me the honour of asking me to be your President for 2023. It is a particular honour as my background is in geology and geological conservation, and the Society has a strong biological emphasis. However, it has never turned its back on geological enquiry. Many years …