Recently updated blogs

The CSS Anchor Positioning API is a game-changer in web development because it lets you natively position elements.

"Get or create" is a very common operation for syncing data in the database, but implementing it correctly may be trickier than you may expect. If you ever had to implement it in a real system with real-life load, you may have overlooked potential race conditions, concurrency issues and even bloat! In this article I explore ways to "get ot create" in PostgresSQL. Illustration by Abstrakt Design Table of Contents …

photo by Milton GreeneLike so many summer days in Los Angeles, this one began as a balmy and sunlit morning. It would grow warmer and sunnier, but the languid summertime mood was shattered by news of a shocking event in one of the city’s most elite enclaves. It was Sunday, August 5, 1962, the day Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her West Los Angeles home, an empty pill bottle …

The long-awaited day has arrived! It's been a while since we've had a Release Day celebration for a new Furrowed Middlebrow title, but as of today Eleanor Farjeon's delightful Miss Granby's Secret is officially out in the world, and doesn't it look lovely added to my shelf?Thank you to all who pre-ordered. Hope you enjoy it as much as I have!

Welcome back readers. It was very painful this week to hear of Game Informer’s sudden shuttering, layoff-ing, and off-lining, as such a long-running publication that has continued to publish good work for nearly as long as I have been alive. These folks deserve far greater dignity than an unceremonious blindside by their parent company. It feels timely yet also evergreen to remind folks that independent games crit–not subject to the …

On his blog, Brent writes about NetNewsWire and Conditional GET issues.

I wrote a bit about the war of the zettlekasten as my last entry, and have been keeping two separate ones; one is a set of notes on Philosophy, thus far really just notes and nodes as I read Bertrand Russell, and another which is for… life stuff, the novel I am perpetually not writing, and so forth, It’s new, and filled with strange observations, one chapter from the novel, …

I’m running a bit behind getting this post written and uploaded this morning. It’s the last full day of PulpFest 2024. I didn’t make it to the Doc Savage gathering this morning at 7:30, but I did make it to the informal meeting of members of PEAPS, the Pulp Era Amateur Press Society. I will […]

My book about how comedy works, and why it matters, is available from good bookshops and truly exceptional coal merchants...Deeply analytical and utterly joyous.Robin Ince Joel Morris has finally invented ‘being funny whilst talking about being funny.Caitlin Moran It's made me a better writer. It's probably made me a better human too.Daisy Buchanan Joel knows what he’s talking about. And he’s sickeningly funny. Stop reading this sentence and buy this …

Where we started The first Government project I worked on was a licensing service, as part of the project, licence numbers were updated. That change stopped users from being able to log into a related service where they recorded their activity. In summary, our ‘service’ had broken someone else’s ‘service’. I’ve seen loads of examples of similar issues over the years. Usually the result of only designing parts of services …

This is a slight departure for Historical Ragbag, as I’ll be looking at a mythical figure. But it still involves research and a good story so I decided it still fit. In researching for my novel, it’s contemporary and with merpeople but based on Welsh history and mythology, I came across a figure who gets one tantalising mention in the Mabinogion. Dylan of the Wave. The Mabinogion is a series …

The fourth in the series about every year of Numberphile. Videos about Klein bottles, infinity, and coin flips.

Like a lot of you I first got interested in technology through audio equipment. More specifically, my Walkman. Growing up in a rural village being able to slip on some headphones and instantly transport myself to another world was magic. I was hooked as soon as I tried my mum’s Walkman. My parents gave me a cheap model of my own for my eighth birthday, and from that point I’ve …

Few alliance nations would ponder how the cadence of Netanyahu’s speech inside Congress put them under the spell of denial. This is akin to the Khmer Rouge (government in exile) that was invited to hold a seat in the United Nations until 1993. Continue reading »