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As long as computers have existed, we've had the desire to type funny little symbols into them. Until emoji was standardized globally in the 2010s, though, we really didn't have that many options for typing funny characters—unless you had a computer with dingbat fonts. Windows users of a certain era probably remember the Wingdings font that came with the operating system, but for many people that was probably their only …

I’m not at all surprised Anaïs Nin: A Sea of Lies by Léonie Bischoff is a European import (translated by Jenna Allen). It pretty much has to be, given the subject matter: a woman as famous for whom she slept with as what she wrote, and when she wrote, her work involved sex and desire. (Plus, a lot of biographical comics seem to start outside the US.) What struck me …

I got friends in New York City‘Cause everyone I know left townThat’s the place your daily dreams goWhere you can’t see the sun go down Hold your head up, you’re a beaconYou pull me northward in my carYou don’t have to hit the big time, babyWe know who you are I got friends in LA CountyWhere the hillsides shine like starsAnd the people float like gold dustThrough the red rope …

The Iliad and the Odyssey are often regarded as being among the greatest works of world literature and many people have an interest in reading them—but how does one go about starting? Which translations are the best? In what manner should one read them? In this post, I will give advice in response to all these questions and discuss both the strengths and shortcomings of the most widely read translations, …

Explore Satellite Imagery of 59,507 Basketball Courts

In the forgotten age of the Mystical Kingdom, nestled beyond the reach of time, a serene land flourished under the protection of The Gleam. This ethereal force bathed the world in golden light, its brilliance illuminating even the darkest corners of human hearts. People lived in harmony, unaware of the shadows stirring beneath their feet.Yet deep in the bowels of the earth, beneath the pastoral hills, a dark art festered—necrosorcery, …

The readableContentGuide(docs) API was (and still is) such a quintessential quality of life fix for UIKit developers. With the rise of # h u g e iPad devices emerging with iOS 9, the need to reasonably size views primarily meant for reading became important. As such, Cupertino & Friends© gifted us a straightforward way to do just that: private func setupTableView() { tableView = UITableView(frame: .zero, style: .grouped) tableView.dataSource = …

Solar powered.

I've written a number of pieces on this blog about various Alabama maps; one of these days I may put together a post that's a list of those posts. At any rate, here we are again.Son Amos and I were recently going through some of the endless stuff around our house and came across this map of Hoover. We both agreed these kinds of graphic maps are pretty neat.This map …

This movie, like the characters that live in its frame, has got sand. Grit. Guts. This movie seduces your spouse and then winks at you and you find you can’t hold a grudge. Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is one of the grizzly director’s great masterpieces but only became so long after it was released. The studio cut all the life out of it but it was …

Continuing with a bit of a flying saucer theme today is The Boy Who Discovered The Earth. It is a pleasant science fiction novel for kids about an alien boy who is left behind on Earth. He makes friends with the locals and learns about dogs, baseball, and the life of children on another planet. The only trick is they don't look like humans at the beginning but disguise themselves …

Yesterday, I was at State of the Browser in London. It was great to catch up with friends and make new ones, and the talks were once again very well curated. In this post, I'll share some notes from the day and the takeaways that stood out to me the most. The Barbican tube station Think about funding the web ecosystem Stephanie Stimac kicked us off with a brilliant talk …

I’ve recently got into a bit of a rabbit hole with FPV quadcopter drones.1 Specifically with a “mini-whoop” style drone, the Meteor 75 Pro. ...sneak preview of the end product!

From time to time, I collect some random sightings into an observations post. Mostly, the posts centre around Ottawa, but I'm happy to have a few images from Kingston, so this post will be an Eastern Ontario post. However, I do want to start with a bit of news from Ottawa.Farewell, 4977 You may have noticed, if you follow this organization on Facebook, that the Bytown Railway Society has found …

The history of Western encounters with ‘the other’ is a horrifying collection of oppression, colonisation, extermination; of seemingly intellectual debates about race and the superiority of one race over another; of inflammatory remarks, persecution, camps. Anyone who was not Western (specifically European) and Christian (mainly Catholic) was considered vermin, subhuman, a danger to public life. […]