Recently updated blogs

A bunch of years ago, I threw together Sauntering verse. Based on an individual going on a walk, it uses what3words as a source for collecting words, related to the locations the person moves through, to construct poetry connected to the person’s journey. Then, the often clunky result can be cleaned up by using ChatGPT, constructing a poem that still might not make much sense, but is readable. Because of …

Phew – after a few days of internal debate I’ve decided that I don’t need the new iPhone after all. The only reason I want one is for the better camera system, but I’d still really want an actual new camera with all the image stabilisation, autofocus and low-light performance of the modern models. I’ll put the $1700 the phone would cost and put it toward a better actual camera. …

Over on my Substack, I’ve published a lengthy appreciation and defense of Alain Delon. I hope you’ll join me there! It’s accessible to anyone but please consider becoming a paying subscriber. Supporting me on Substack helps keep Cinebeats and its archives online. Your support also allows me to write more. An excerpt from Remembering the […]

Can you feel it? Autumn has arrived, and with it, early voting for the November election. I’m in an all mail-in voting state and will get my ballot in about 3 weeks, but I want it now! Do you have your plan for voting all figured out? Good News National surveys compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show an unprecedented decline in drug deaths of roughly 10.6%. …

Era-defining TV show Lost celebrates its 20th anniversary today. The Lost pilot episode aired on 22 September 2004 on ABC, and was an immediate smash hit. The show chalked up 121 episodes over six seasons, concluding in 2010. Widely sold around the world and shifting tens of millions of DVD boxed sets (becoming, alongside Battlestar Galactica and 24, a prime motivator of the "box set binge" phenomenon), Lost was arguably …

Last week I stumbled across an exhibition of photos of Jeff Buckley by Merri Cyr, including the shots she took for the cover of Grace, his only studio album released 30 years ago in 1994. A beautiful man with a beautiful voice, difficult though to approach his music with a clear perspective through the fog of the misplaced romanticism surrounding an early death - in his case of course a …

It’s difficult to argue with this article’s damning assessment of Britain’s inability to build just about anything, and the economic stagnation that has resulted: “Real wage growth has been flat for 16 years. Average weekly wages are only 0.8 percent higher today than their previous peak in 2008. Annual real wages are 6.9 percent lower for the median full-time worker today than they were in 2008. This essay argues that …

The grand old man of Marxisty critique made it to 90.Here below: a review of Jameson's magnum opus Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism that the Observer let me do when I was barely more than a baby.Postmodernism is a thick, dense slab of a book. My favorite Jamesons are the slimmer efforts: A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present and Fables of Aggression: Wyndham …

Today marks the autumn equinox in the northern hemisphere, the day when I stop wearing shorts by default and when I get my SAD light out in order to save off the incoming winter blues. At the start of the month, I committed to camping for at least one night away from home. Having met that target last weekend in the Lake District, I managed to sneak in a Brucie …

I’m a traditionalist in some ways and a modernist in others, but I constantly strive never to compromise my own integrity nor the integrity of my work. What do I mean by that? Well, integrity affects many things. Going for cheap-quality and low-grade plywood would compromise the longevity of the pieces I make. Using solid... Source

Trip:47 Nights: 156-166 Part 1 On Thursday, we went back to Audubon and spent 2.5 hours walking the trails to ID 21 bird species. It was a good day of birding. Then we went back, packed up the camper, and moved about 40 miles east to a new campground, Shady Knoll Campground in Brewster. It was wonderful and definitely a solid choice for your Cape Cod campground. Between the battery …

Three weeks ago, I was following my afternoon routine of enjoying my afternoon coffee while scrolling through some of my old fishing folders. Surprisingly, I discovered the Bluegill website page I created in 2010 on the BLUEGILL-BIG BLUEGILL WEBSITE. In fact, that was the year I created my fishing blog, Fishing Through Life. I was using the Bluegill site to connect with bluegill fishermen nationwide. I decided to create a …

They were walking down yet another long dim narrow corridor. Mr. Whitman walked to Milford's left, his brawny arm in Milford's thin arm, pulling him along. Ahead of them walked Miss Blackbourne and the Negro man called Jelly Roll, and they also walked arm in arm.Mr. Whitman was singing, and his song was thus:Four friends, all stout and truestriding along through the hallways of life,they know not wherefore, nor where …

I met Mike Freedman last week at CMSA and I learned a great metaphor about an old favorite subject of mine, random walks on groups. The Heisenberg group is the group of upper triangular matrices with 1’s on the diagonal: You can take a walk on the integral or Z/pZ points of the Heisenberg group using the standard generators and their inverses. How do you get a central element with …

The activity in Kilauea in the last year has been, A LOT. Not much may have happened on the surface, but underground the developments have been many, including dike intrusions, changing focuses of inflation, and seismic crises. One year has seen a shift from a rapidly inflating Mauna Loa to an overactive Kilauea. It has…