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The very mention of the village of Happisburgh in Norfolk brings to mind all manner of prehistoric associations and connections with long-extinct ancestors. The early years of this current century have revealed exciting local evidence of the presence of earliest hominins in northwest Europe: Homo antecessor (‘Pioneer Man’) – near million-year-old clues in the form … Continue reading "Of Whales and Ancestors: Ostend, Norfolk"

Whenever I publish something about my Python Docker workflows, I invariably get challenged about whether it makes sense to use virtual environments in Docker containers. As always, it’s a trade-off, and I err on the side of standards and predictability.

one thing about being away from the desk for a while is it resets your habits and relationships to your habits and you see them afresh from the outside, & this prompted me to ask 'when I feel this little stab of distress that prompts me to check reddit, where is that distress coming from? What is distressing me?' & I realised that for me at least, it's the context …

ESPHome device, a Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32S3 and level shifter with 3.5mm TS and HDMI connectors. After getting the Onkyo RI support for ESPHome and Home Assistant in place, it was neat that I could turn my Onkyo A-9050 amplifier on and off remotely, but it wasn’t actually very useful; it didn’t save me any time/hassle. This iteration, adding HDMI-CEC support, brings it all together. Back when I started this …

This is one of those things that I do so much but always need to think. So I’m going to create some documentation for myself, and maybe it’ll help others. Specifically, I’m going to setup an extern...

Every week, we recommend 5 publishing articles/blog posts that supplement the major news for the week. Whether data or industry commentary, we hope these 5 links will be a simple way to keep you in the know. How Hobart, NY Transformed Into a Book Lover’s Paradise How Translating Small Languages is No Small Task Should Author Profiles Replace Book Criticism? The Censorship Battle in Florida Continues as US Publishers Sue …

What’s wrong with mindfulness? Why do companies make everything worse? And why do we still work for them? I’ve got answers! Please continue to my website to read the post. Sorry about that. If you're a technical person and you know how let Astro render mdx to an RSS feed, please let me know.

“Rape, murder – it’s just a shot away.” [Mick Jagger & Keith Richards] In my review for Woodstock I claim that the positive energy at that concert was an organic thing, something that couldn’t be forced. This film by Albert and David Maylses is proof of that. The Maylses took a different approach to their film than Michael Wadleigh did with his; here, the Maylses focus mainly on following the …

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arditi_del_Popolo

An 18th century “Pandora” or “poupée de mode”. In the absence of fashion magazines, these three-dimensional samples traveled across the seas to inform dressmakers about the latest fashion trends . Before Paris firmly seized power in the domain, art styles and fashion trends were generated mainly in Italy. The reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715) marked the beginning of Paris’s rise as a fashion capital. The Sun King used fashion as …

Quick PSA: someone on Facebook is apparently impersonating me using an account called “McMansion Hell 2.0” – If you see it, please report! Thanks!Howdy folks! I hope if you were born between 1995 and 2001 you’re ready for some indelible pre-recession vibes because I think this entire house, including the photos have not been touched since that time. This Wake County, NC house, built in 2007, currently boasts a price …

Hakobune‘s guitar is processed like one hundred Guthries, ringing with reverb abandon as chords stretch into warm, elongated vibrations. The 2019 album Rain Studies is a full-spectrum affair; it alternately plays and washes away intruding sounds. Its CTwins-spirit is best transmitted on “Tenkyuu,” which sounds like muting everything but a single guitar track on Victorialand‘s mixing desk. I suppose these comparisons are a little unfair. I feel I’m projecting my …

Hurrying through the National Gallery of Art five minutes before closing, I passed a Navajo weaving with a complex abstract pattern. Suddenly, I realized the pattern was strangely familiar, so I stopped and looked closely. The design turned out to be an image of Intel's Pentium chip, the start of the long-lived Pentium family.1 The weaver, Marilou Schultz, created the artwork in 1994 using traditional materials and techniques. The rug …

The Hebrew month of Elul אֱלוּל begins this week, so let's look at its etymology. As with the other names of the months in the current Hebrew calendar, it was adopted in Babylonia, and therefore has Akkadian origin. Klein writes that it derives from an Akkadian word reflecting its function as the beginning of the harvest period:Akka. ulūlu, elūlu (= harvest, harvest time; lit.: ‘the time when the produce of …

I was interested* to see Naz Hamid asking on Mastodon** about how folks keep diaries these days. *I was also thinking I should probably spin up Visual Studio Code for the first time in a few weeks to check that it all still works and that I still remember how to blog. **Can we talk about how infuriating it is trying to link to a specific post/thread in Mastodon, or …