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  1. DNA Lounge: DNA Sequencing, , more info

    Wherein the techbros are here to "disrupt" ordering drinks at a bar
    Another group of smirking techbros have decided that rich people shouldn't have to follow the same rules as the poors. There's an app for that. LineLeap, backed by Y Combinator, lets people pay to skip lines at bars. LineLeap makes money by charging Ticketmaster-style convenience fees for certain passes. The company also imposes fees for "newfound revenue" on venues -- that is, revenue that the venues weren't generating beforehand, such …
    By jwz, 483 words
  2. Amit Merchant, , more info

    The magic behind Laravel’s new defer() helper
    Laravel has recently been shipped with a new helper called defer() which can be used to defer the execution of a callback until after a successful response has been sent. This way you can offload time-consuming work (such as calling an external API) to a callback and return a response to the user as soon as possible. Here’s what it looks like. Route::get('/defer', function () { defer(function () { // …
    By Amit Merchant, 926 words
  3. analogue, , more info

    Bits & bytes for September 2024
    The PS5 Pro was announced last week, and it was a controversial launch in many ways. I had said a few days before, when the teaser dropped, that it would wind up being a boring and confusing presso. Because they usually are when they're hyper technical with Cerny involved. Great if you're deep diving as a nerd, but otherwise a bit of faff for the sake of it.And certainly that …
    364 words
  4. TECHknitting, , more info

    Cords for decoration & utility: quickly use a crochet hook to make "lanyard" cords (+ musings on warp knitting)
    Pretty, aren't they?I-cords are useful and attractive, but they can only really be knit in one color, and can be rather stiff. Today's method of making cords with a crochet hook can be made in different colors--very pretty! This cord is based on a crocheted chain stitch, but two strands (or more) are used. Like the chain stitch cord on which it is based, this is very strong--much stronger
    By TECHknitter, 88 words
  5. Chris Ford model railways, , more info

    Jinty time
    You didn't see this coming.Amongst all the clearing up and out came this form the kits box. It's been there for a while and it was intended to use the the body for a Ted Polet type conversion to 009. This didn't happen and I didn't even try running it. It was absolutely filthy and appeared to be electrically dead. The body came off and I dumped it in a …
    By Chris Ford, 177 words
  6. Chaplin-Keaton-Lloyd film locations (and more), , more info

    Buster Keaton – the Great SMILING Stoneface
    Buster Keaton – “The Great Stoneface” – the child vaudeville performer who famously never smiled on stage, the silent comedy star who promoted his deadpan persona on film. Yet working with friend and mentor Roscoe Arbuckle, Buster started his film career in 1917 with a very different vibe, laughing and smiling with joy and glee. Studying his Arbuckle films closely – spoiler ahead – I was stunned to discover Buster …
    By John Bengtson, 1,060 words
  7. The Hippies Now Wear Black, , more info

    Not Just Bits of Paper – new extended, tenth anniversary, full-colour edition
    THE EDITORS OF Not Just Bits of Paper, a compendium of writing on the original anarcho-punk wave which offers a participant’s eye view of events, has been republished in an updated edition to mark the tenth anniversary of its release. The original edition of Not Just Bits of Paper was published back in 2014. The 2024 edition is printed in full-colour, and has been extended to include an additional thirty-seven …
    By Rich Cross, 420 words
  8. Impressions of Vince, , more info

    Vince on the Web: 2024 update
    This topic hasn't been revisited since 2014, and it's definitely time for another look. Rather than link back to that earlier post, I'll simply repeat, modify and update it here.Guaraldi fans are lucky; all of the albums under his own name have remained in print and been readily available since their initial release, with new ones arriving rapidly these days. But what about material that saw limited commercial release, or …
    By Derrick Bang, 2,541 words
  9. The World's Worst Records, , more info

    Casting Out Demons Again
    It staggers me to realise that, after penning this blog for almost 17 years now, I have only featured A. A. Allen’s incredible output once, seven years ago when I posted Crying Demons (now updated), a staple of pretty much every ‘worst records’ list compiled. Crying Demons is a classic noted, on the reverse of one of Allen’s many releases, as ‘one of the most amazing recordings of demons speaking …
    By Darryl W. Bullock, 1,913 words
  10. Adrian Roselli, , more info

    Brief Note on Disclosures in Fieldsets
    TL;DR: Probably don’t use disclosure widgets in fieldsets. If you do it anyway, don’t put the trigger in the <legend>. Context With <details> / <summary>, recent support for the popover attribute, and the never-ending belief that a “clean” page means hiding content, there is a resurgence in stuffing useful content behind an interaction. I’ve already established that you should use <legend> and <fieldset> over an ARIA approach. Keeping that in …
    By Adrian Roselli, 519 words
  11. Mario Villalobos, , more info

    2024-09-14 18:30
    Our second game went really well. Many improvements over last week, many things still to work on. I love seeing the progress our boys are making.
    26 words
  12. The White Pube | blog, , more info

    Dream Machines, by Rebecca Moss
    Peak August. A very sunny Sunday morning. I scraped myself together early and got the bus to Stratford. It’s a weird part of the city, isn’t it? The shopping centre and the football stadium make it feel like a toy town. The ArcelorMittal Orbit is a sculpture, a slide, a tower and a massive advert for a multinational steel corporation. Capital projects to regenerate former industrial zones, relocating cultural institutions …
    1,540 words
  13. StrollerParking, , more info

    Grier Park
    Strangely, we first visited this park almost exactly 10 years ago, when it was the FIRST wheelchair accessible playground we’d seen in (then) 60... The post Grier Park appeared first on StrollerParking.
    By StrollerMom, 34 words
  14. The Homepage of Dave Rupert - daverupert.com, , more info

    Hibiclens
    Every two-to-four years my body chemistry changes and my armpits start to reject my deodorant with an intense itch. All that aluminum has gunked up the works I guess. Usually cycling out deodorants works fine, but this time it didn’t work because my armpits were overpowering all the other deodorants. I tried a tactical reset and took the “No deodorant challenge”, the legend –which I remember my hippie step-brother Nik …
    337 words
  15. Charlie's Diary, , more info

    Zen and the art of Writer Decks (using the Pomera DM250)
    This is a brain dump about a gadget I acquired recently—a Japanese grey-market import Pomera DM250—and it's of limited interest so I wouldn't normally write about it here, except the manufacturer has pre-announced a kickstarter campaign, coming in the next couple of months, to sell a US/English version of the machine. I still have the occasional vestigial tech journalist itch, even though it's been nearly 20 years since I stopped …
    By Charlie Stross, 3,231 words