Recently updated blogs

Yesterday (June 2nd 2024) we lost one of our great sporting heroes. Of course I’m talking about Rob Burrow CBE who played scrum-half for Leeds Rhinos. He was the tender age of 41. He lost his life to Motor Neurone Disease, a cruel and devastating disease affecting up to 5000 adults in the UK at any one time. Rob fought an incredible battle with MND right up to the end. …

Some notes on freedom of speech TL; DR – To unlock the promise of freedom of speech, we need to pair it with the duty to be constructive. Without thoughtfulness, we have a less free, less flourishing life and world. Freedom of speech has been on my mind recently for two reasons. In Sweden and Denmark last year, people burnt copies of the Holy Qu’ran. The most prominent Qu’ran burning …

The Dragon in the Sea The Santaroga Barrier Frank Herbert About a year ago my brother lent me an old copy of Frank Herbert's first novel, The Dragon in the Sea, and I hadn't got around to reading it, but after watching the second of the new Dune films I decided that rather than join the rest of the nerds re-reading the Dune series, I'd investigate some of his other …

All words written by Tom, the latest owner of a TSG.For the guitar enthusiast, it is a good time to be alive. There are plenty of talented luthiers nowadays, and this healthy emulation drives them to keep pushing the envelope of guitar building.This will be my first custom built guitar, so the excitement is paramount after a wait of almost 2 yearsFor the guitar enthusiast, it is a good time …

Outlook and Dimensions, a pair of UK-run festivals which used to temporarily takeover Pula in Croatia each summer, are famous for putting on a boat party series across each festival. Each party sees a hundred-ish punters emerge from the campsite, amble down to the harbour and hop aboard a dinky vessel with their pre-booked tickets in hand. The boat chugs out into the open waters of the Adriatic Sea and …

Well then. At the end of the last article I promised to write about the stations on HS2 phase 1 assuming that I hadn’t been too enraged by the political fallout from hopefully soon-to-be-ex-prime minister Rishi Sunak’s cancellation of phase 2 of HS2. Reader, I have been enraged. I have had to have a very […]

The new Kino app recording ProRes Log with a custom preview LUT. Yes we’re still talking about shooting video on iPhones. But I also want to talk about digital cinema shooting in general, in a world where top camera makers are battling to give filmmakers everything we want in a small, affordable package. How does the DV Rebel spirit — born of camcorders and skateboard dollies — live on in …

Part of what excites me about generative AI LLMs and GANs is the back-and-forth between language and representation. I’ve lately been playing more with MidJourney and Deep Dream Generator and a local install of Stable Diffusion, and using them to extend my art-hobby tinkering with Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. I enjoy abstract and non-figurative art, and I find thinking through the links between language and representation and abstraction—how to …

I decided back in 2019 that I wanted to do the Cape Wrath Ultra and was scheduled to volunteer for the 2020 race to earn credits for money off the next one. Well, we all know what happened in 2020. Then menopause related fatigue and Mark’s illness meant that my Cape Wrath dreams died as I couldn’t envisage ever getting back to that level of fitness again. However last year …

Author’s note: This is a longer piece that starts off with exposition into the nature of the N+1 query problem. If you’re already well familiar with it, you may want to skip my description of N+1 to a story involving a creative use of Ruby fibers at Stripe to try and plug this hole, or the two-phase load and render that I’ve put in my current company’s Go codebase, a …

The 77th Cannes Film Festival concluded with a shift to the new generation. Notable awards went to Sean Baker's Anora and Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof The Seed of the Sacred Fig. The post Cannes 2024: Sean Baker’s Anora wins Palme d’Or appeared first on CineVue.

The Cross Keys, Penkridge, Staffordshire ST19 5HJ An old pub standing by the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal to the south-east of the village centre, it was originally isolated in the middle of open fields, but has now been surrounded by post-war housing development. It is accessed from a residential street called Filance Road, and is not signed as such, although it is clearly visible along a side turning. The original …

Since my last post on here I've actually done quite a bit of modelling so I'll start in no particular order with a loco kit I swapped for a 'Dolgochification' kit. I had intended to make an open cab - not Dolcogh using the kit and the alarming yellow Bachmann loco but like many things I hadn't got around to starting it. A nice chap on Facebook asked if anyone …

Nicholas Kalis May 2024Helpful HintThis nicely detailed brass toolbox is meant for attachment to my Fn3 tender on my Oahu Sugar Company. I particularly liked the hinge detail on this casting - even its modeled bolts are carefully rendered by its manufacturer. My 1:20.3 plastic tender was more than a kit bashed but less than a technically scratch built project (article in the works). Indeed, this toolbox was a good …