Recently updated blogs

I generated this podcast a week back using Google's NotebookLM based on my Twenty Years of Engineering Practice blog post. Before I publish it here, I wanted to check what my friends and colleagues thought about it. Most thought it was an actual podcast discussing my article. They also thought it had a standard flow; once, I told them it was generated by a model. Some were surprised, and others …

I started a second game a month or so back with one of my older gaming groups running Shadowdark. We had all ended up at the same end-of-summer barbeque, started talking about games, and realized several folks in the old guard wanted to give Shadowdark a try. I had recently become enamored of the rules as well, and so the idea for a new campaign was formed. This is basically …

My recent post about the damage to my Miquelrius “Boarding” notebook reminded me that I had another Miquelrius notebook in my review queue: the Miquelrius Logbook. The Logbook is about the closest Miquelrius comes to a Moleskine clone: it’s a pocket sized 9x14cm hardcover notebook with an elastic closure, a ribbon marker and a back … Continue reading Notebook Review: Miquelrius Logbook →

Yesterday my phone went into “SOS Mode.” I wondered if I had paid my bill. But my email receipts indicated I had. I wondered if I was being subjected to some kind of spearphishing attack. That seemed too an exotic answer to a simple question. Kelly looked up “Verizon Outage” and found many results. Also: she uses AT&T. And so, I didn’t have cellular coverage. I missed it, but also, …

Frosting lovers, rejoice! We have the perfect pairing for your favorite pumpkin bread, cookies, spice cake, and more: Pumpkin spice buttercream frosting! It’s decadent, sweet, buttery (but vegan + dairy-free!), and perfectly pumpkin-spiced. This fluffy fall dream is just 1 bowl, 5 minutes, and 4 ingredients away. Grab your favorite pumpkin treat and let’s get to frosting! Vegan Pumpkin Spice Buttercream Frosting from Minimalist Baker →

‘Laughing While Leaving’ (2017). When the artist Roxana Halls was a child she considered becoming an actor or better still a film director when she grew up. Halls invented stories and ideas for the films she imagined she would make but soon realised the overly collaborative nature of filmmaking would only...

As I wrote in an earlier post, American Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) played world championship mat­ches in 1970–1 when he won 20 consecutive games before losing once and drawing 3 times to ex-world champion Russian Tigran Petros­yan. In 1972 Fischer was the first American-born Jewish man to hold the World Champion tit­­le when he defeated Russian Boris Spassky in a mat­ch held in Reykjavík Iceland. Russia had dominated chess since the …

Nothing Can Ever Be The Same at @dokleipzig Myself and @gary_hustwit will be presenting a second outing of Nothing Can Ever Be The Same as part of DOK Neuland at this year’s DOK Leipzig. NCEBTS is a real-time generative work based on the archive of @brianeno which never repeats and runs continuously. Opens 28th October till 3rd November.

Sunny Sugar Loaf with Phil. Sunday Lunch at Gwatkin Red Cow. Gardening: My Viking name is Mary Longloppers. To the gym for PT on a lovely day Tuesday morning, blue skies overhead. Speedy turnaround back home then to Lock’s in the Kia to pump the tyres up and then to Hereford (Belmont) for Tesco’s and Library. Back home I collected windfalls (not so many now – phew), lopped the smaller …

Darkly Bright Press is open for pre-ordering their limited hardcover edition of Arthur Machen's The Terror. This "New Critical Edition of the Mythopoeic Classic"includes the original Daily News serial of the text ("The Great Terror" October 1916), that of the first hardcover edition of the novel (Duckworth, February 1917), and the condensed version for the American periodical The Century

Two Karloffs, one great film In the late eighteenth-century, twin sons are born to a noble house. What would normally be a joyful occasion is marred by an ancient prophecy claiming the birth of twins will end with the younger sibling killing the elder in the Black Room of the castle. The new father shuts up the Black Room, hoping to thwart fate. Once they reach manhood, the brothers (both …

October is upon us with several new LEGO sets and promotions, including some perfect for Halloween! So let’s take a look at what’s new this month! NEW LEGO ART SET: The #31213 LEGO Art Mona Lisa comes in a bluer hue to reflect the colors used by da Vinci over 500 years ago before the […]

The model release train continues, with Mistral’s multimodal Pixtral 12B, OpenAI’s o1 models, and Roblox’s model for building 3D scenes. We also have another important AI-enabled programming tool: Cursor is an alternative to GitHub Copilot that’s getting rave reviews. Security will never cease to be a problem, but this month seems particularly problematic. The Mirai botnet is infecting a widely used surveillance camera that is unpatchable; the only known mitigation …