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Still alive – still feeling ropy, although at least all the chest infections and so on have cleared up. I’ve still been left with a cough that’s just hanging around the back of my throat, and which causes the coughing up of lumpy green – not from the lungs, thankfully, but it’s still fairly grim. It is easing – although the most recent course of medication has done absolutely sod-all …

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Dr. Smogg is a rich bitch industrialist who made his fortune in heavy manufacturing. Still, his methods are wasteful and produce many toxic by-products, which he disposes of in environmentally irresponsible ways. His next scheme is to pump massive amounts of toxic smog into the atmosphere from the smokestacks of his factory. Once airborne, the pollution will condense into solid waste particles and rain down upon the unsuspecting countryside. Fortunately, …

Dating coach, oatmeal lover, and raging misogynist: Casey Zander is all three. Actually, it’s not clear he’s a dating coach exactly, as his alleged wisdom on the woman question is so bleak and hateful that he may be driving young men away from the dating scene instead of providing them a reliable guide to it. Come for Casey’s “Oatmeal Story,” stay for his toxic advice. Bonus Quest: See if you …

Only four years late, my long-time friend Joost visited me in Brazil over the last few weeks, coming over with wife Neha and their daughter. They had wanted to visit in 2020, but what is now the distant memory of COVID put a stop to that. Now, they were visiting for some three weeks, to enjoy the cultural riches of São Paulo, Foz de Iguaçu, Rio de Janeiro, and Paraty. …

At the end of September I'm doing a talk about PowerPoint for the members of a fancy club. Not quite sure why. To keep my eye in, mostly. But since I've got to put the talk together anyway it seems a shame not to share it with more people, so I thought I'd try an online version for all y'all. It's going to be at 7PM (UK time) on October …

I covered Showtime’s marvelous film noir series, Fallen Angels, in my second volume. This anthology show delivered six episodes in the summer of 1993, followed by another nine in the autumn of 1995. Each playlet was adapted from a story by a famed noir author, and was blessed with a phenomenal attention to detail appropriate to post-World War II Los Angeles: a heavily stylized depiction of the city populated by …

It's been two months since I last wrote here, the longest break I think I've taken in the twenty-plus-year history of this blog. During the summer, we cleaned, packed, and sold my family home at the lake in central New York. Since coming back to Montreal, I've needed some time to rest from that labor, both physically and emotionally, and reconnect with my life here. I feel like I'm still …

Usually down the years with this blog, I have tended to write about exciting developments in my writing career as soon as possible. Partly to show off about them, of course! But also because I enjoy having this blog as a record. I do have a private diary as well, in which I write about what goes on in my life purely for my own personal posterity and interest to …

There’s a concept that I’ve heard called by a lot of different names, but my favorite name for it is “the Highlander problem”, which refers to the catchphrase of the campy-yet-still-quite-fun Highlander movie/TV franchise. In Highlander, immortal beings secretly live amongst us and sword-fight each other in hopes of being the last one standing, who will then get to rule the world forever. And when one of them is about …

This September there are more than eight dozen calls for submissions. All of these are paying markets, and none charge submission fees. As always, every genre, style, and form is wanted, from short stories to poetry to essays.I post upcoming calls for submissions shortly before the first day of every month. But as I am collecting them, I post them on my page, Calls for Submissions. You can get a …

“And what is the point of learning facts within the school system when the most important facts given by the finest science of that same school system clearly mean nothing to our politicians and society?” Greta Thunberg (2019) No One Is Too Small To Make A Difference, Penguin: Harmondsworth (p. 12) In our final session in our 2024 series focussed upon considering how we humans can notice the subtle but …

I've been collecting the stickers since the beginning of my career, from events such as Gavin Strange's Droplet launch 💧, the Future Of Web Design conference, Netlify's Jamstack Conf, plus all the companies and people I've had the privilege to work with.However, the tabletop itself is from my first flat after moving out of my mum's house… actually, I lied. It was in my first flat, alongside an inflatable bed, …

I’ve tried Notion, Obsidian, Things, Apple Reminders, Apple Notes, Jotter and endless other tools to keep me organised and sure, Notion has stuck around the most because we use it for client stuff, but for todo lists, all of the above are way too complicated. I’ve given up this week and gone back to paper and a pencil and I feel unbelievably organised and flexible, day-to-day. It’s because it’s simple. …

Here are a few favorite random snippets from Zen resources: from Iron Flute. 14. Pai-Yun’s poem: Where others dwell, I do not dwell. Where others go, I do not go. This does not mean to refuse association with others; I only want to make black and white distinct. ***** from Gateless Gate. 19. “Everyday Life is the Path.” Joshu asked Nansen: “What is the path?'” Nansen said: “Everyday life is …