Recently updated blogs

We live in and work in a nest of complex adaptive systems and one of the characteristic of this kind of system is that with time and experience, things tend to become more complex and interdependent. As a leader, it is our responsibility to understand this increasing complexity and make sense of it. Then break it down to its simplest form and share this with our teams, so that they …

Back in July 22 I visited Kynance Cove on a gorgeous July evening with my sister. We swam in the sparkling water and I came home with lots of inspiring photos. April 23 I produced a print I named Kynance Light and it was my fastest selling print. Since then I've kept looking at this photograph and wondering if it was suitable for a print. The blurred patch at the …

One of the hardest things about shipping products is balancing this contradiction: you want to do the best possible work everywhere, but optimizing every piece takes time, and time is finite. I’ve done a poor job here countless times in my career. And I have seen many others struggle here, too. If you like your craft, it’s natural that you want to do your best all the time. But the …

Recently, I had a birthday! The birthday was quiet, filled with all kinds of introverted heaven such as good podcasts to listen to, quiet phone calls of love and bliss with my found family, and, of course, some freaking divine holds came in from my many nonresident libraries I subscribe to yearly instead of paying for an Audible subscription. All in all, chefs kiss perfect! Just as I got into …

"The Silver Horde" is undoubtedly the most detailed film ever made about the process of canning salmon. Granted, there's not a lot of competition -- it's like being the world's oldest cat ballet company.Aside from that honor, "The Silver Horde" is an interesting look at two stars early in their career -- Joel McCrea and Jean Arthur, more than a decade before they generated genuine heat onscreen in George Stevens' …

At Caltrain’s board meeting on Thursday September 5 (and meetings at SamTrans and VTA last week), board members grappled with the issues around regional transit funding and solutions being proposed in a regional process with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, legislators, and other stakeholders. At the Caltrain board meeting, about two dozen riders from all three Caltrain counties told personal stories about using multiple agencies – Caltrain, and BART and SamTrans …

Will Cornwell, for whom the gravestone was initially erected, was killed whilst cycling home from work one April evening in 1923. He was the third son of Henry & Ada Minnie Cornwell who lived in Sangley Road, Catford, and who would later be buried beside him, and commemorated on his memorial.Will was born in Catford and lived there all his brief life. His first job out of school was as …

This summer, a new video game came out that changed the way we think about comedy in games, becoming an instant smash hit in the process. That’s right, I’m talking about Thank Goodness You’re Here! from Coal Supper. Ok, yeah, sure, I work for Panic and we published the game, so I was contractually required to write that opener, but I assure you, it’s very good and very funny. Thank …

I've written a lot before about building vulnerable environments to lab out attack paths, learn how tooling and techniques work and how to fix them up. I've also talked about the different attacks and tooling I've built in the past; however, I have been running labs on a single machine for the longest time. Recently, I have invested time in creating a NUC cluster using Proxmox; this several-part blog series …

Yeah, we’re talking D&D again. Setup: The party is in a battle with lamias. They’ve gotten the drop on us with a clever disguise, so one of them has already taken the minute required to cast a geas on my character (Zebulon the dragonborn ranger, a desert nomad who longs to see the glaciers) to “defend us.” Short-sightedly, they’ve also summoned a bunch of mephits and pretended that they’re being …

For once, I have managed to continue on with the ongoing craft projects without starting any new ones for, ooh, must be nearly a couple of months now. Most of the crafting time has been devoted to the cross-stitch project I mentioned back in July. Despite a break for my holiday—because it’s too large to go in the luggage—I’ve got on quite a way with it. Here’s the progress to …

I must admit I was both curious and excited when I heard that Tecsun was replacing the discontinued S-2000 with an all-new S-2200X. Originally introduced in 2008 the S-2000 was sold under several names including the Tecsun S-2000, Grundig Satellit 750, Eton Satellit 750 and Eton Elite 750. Of all the Tecsun radios I have owned over the years (which is most of them) that radio was the quirkiest with …

Our cast of characters continues to explore Death Frost Doom (DFD), but the ending of last game session was perhaps one of my favorites. First - about Death Frost Doom. In the early OSR period (pre-2010), this stood out to me as an adventure that took D&D style gaming in a new direction. Once I started running a game with my old high school friends, I knew this was an …

I threw a party for my birthday not long ago, and on the cover you can see me eagerly awaiting the arrival of my first guests. The idea was to compile music for that first hour at a party - or any kind of festive gathering. There’s a lot of considerations to be taken. It’s basically background music for conversing, but it needs to be fun and hold a semi-danceable …