Recently updated blogs

Here’s another in my series of ten year old photos, this time from September 2014. We were now fast approaching the November 2014 state election, as you’ll see in some of these snaps. Flinders Street Station’s clocks – if you look closely you’ll note some line names were modified as late as the 1990s (Cranbourne) but not since (St Albans, Broadmeadows). From this angle, Ikea at Springvale looks pretty impressive. …

“Lifer,” a new poem of mine, is published in the 17 October 2024 issue of the New York Review of Books. Please check it out! In other news, I’ll soon be leaving the derelict building where I’ve rented a writing studio for the past dozen years. The new owners plan to turn it into apartments. If you happen to have read Melville’s novel Pierre, you will have an idea what …

An approach for creating masonry layouts in vanilla CSS is one of those “holy grail” aspirations. I actually tend to plop masonry and the classic “Holy Grail” layout in the same general era of web design. They’re different types of layouts, of course, but the Holy Grail was a done deal when we got CSS Grid. That leaves masonry as perhaps the last standing layout from the CSS 3 era …

I’m excited to offer the next giveaway, 10 licenses ($15 value each) for Moom. Whether you know it yet or not, window management on a Mac can change your computing life. Imagine being able to fly windows into organized dimensions and locations with the click of a button or the press of a key. Moom is the best app for managing windows that I’ve found, and I get lost without …

How do you re-narrate the totality of someone’s life, whether your own or someone else’s? It would seem that providing as much detail as possible will help an audience understand the person in question. But as Édouard Levé demonstrated in his book Autoportrait, the accumulation of the most precise and minute statements only produces an incredibly compelling and magical piece of art, without bringing a reader any closer to the …

Harkness was always the first one in. He wasn’t the most senior, or perhaps even the most capable — though he was certainly in the top three — but his bravery and initiative were second to none. When you worked in the fire service, they were qualities to be admired. He always kept his wits about him, followed his training until he was better served by his instincts, and above …

Original airdate: September 29, 2024 The premise: Conan O’Brien hosts a star-studded gala in honor of The Simpsons long-awaited series finale, as written by an AI programmed with every series finale ever made. In the episode, Bart is eagerly awaiting his upcoming birthday, but is made increasingly uneasy as everyone in Springfield seems to be going through major life changes and personal revelations. The reaction: How will The Simpsons end? …

An interesting book I got recently is The Weird Tales Boys by Stephen Jones. Published in 2023 by PS Publishing‘s paperback imprint Drugstore Indian Press, it is available on Amazon. It’s part of the “Stephen Jones Masters of Horror Series” and is #15 in that series. It’s a nice volume, coming in at about 250 […]

If you haven’t already, I strongly encourage you to take a closer look at NotebookLM, a new(ish) Google tool to explore documents via a chat interface, based on a Large Language Model. It’s worth noting that NotebookLM does allow you to “chat” with documents, it does not train the LLM on those documents, though, so it all lives in the LLMs context window. I tested NotebookLM a bit over the …

[As with Shining the Holy Ark I will try to use official English names wherever possible, however as I’m playing in Japanese there might be some slight differences/slip-ups/personal preferences along the way. You can read through the official English script here. One last thing: Here, “Shining Force III” refers to the trilogy as a whole. I’ll always use “Scenario 1” when talking specifically about this game.] CONTENTS ~Chapter 1: Nightmare …

Retail Insider held its latest event with guest speaker Andy Harding, CEO at NiX by Nicola Harding and MD at NH&Co., at Hedonism Wines in London’s Mayfair followed by a tutored tasting of wines. The event sponsored by BetterCommerce involved senior executives from Jigsaw, Ribble Cycles, Henderson Design Group, Heal’s and Stuart Trevor hearing Andy tell the story behind the creation of an interior design business and how it has …

The ECWtravelogue returns to Essex, a county about as far away from Chateau KeepYourPowderDry without getting your feet wet, or having your passport checked.But first, for other Essex Civil War related locations please see:-ColchesterCombined Military Services MuseumEssex was Eastern Association territory, so it barely saw any disquiet during the Wars, apart from the the events that unfolded in 1648 in Colchester.Audley End House was the home of Royalist, James Howard …

Seal Spotting at Angel Bay5 years since a still memorably wet walk on Great Orme. Might as well tick off its smaller brother at the promenade's other end, Little Orme.Little Orme from the Free Parking PromThree things that appeal to the walker;1 - Views - over Llandudno bay and Snowdonia's mountains.The Climb Rewarded at Little Orme TrigA second climb to Mynydd Pant for Snowdonia Views2 - Wildlife - As we …

It’s not easy to find an old-school store sign in Manhattan anymore. Sans serif typeface, glorious neon, a phone number without an area code—they’re a vanishing breed. But the hunt is easier in the outer boroughs. Here, development in many areas isn’t as furious, and neighborhood shops don’t face the kind of competition that forces them to refresh their look and logo so often. Case in point is the signage …

“Dark Wave,” hosted by Slicing Up Eyeballs' Matt Sebastian, explores the darker side of classic '80s alternative, including vintage goth, post-punk and industrial.