Recently updated blogs

Thanks for spelling it out for me. It's been a while since I played a session of this game, and it took me more than an hour to review my past entries and notes and get myself oriented. Rather than spend a lot of time recapping here, I'll direct you to the beginning of my last entry on the game, which summarizes the plot and the major missions as I …

Delia returned to the intimate By Our Own Hands We Make Our Way for its Fourth Happening. The evening began with ambient bliss from C5&C6, followed by a fascinating talk from Caroline Locke about her sound artworks. Headliners, The Low Drift, performed an evocative set of songs about land and place. As ever, host Simon Rudkin tied things together with poetry and storytelling. I love being a part of this …

In the waning minutes before the Orioles postseason begins I ought to mark down, as is my habit, some notes on games I saw; by complete chance I was visiting Harvard CMSA (where I talked with Mike Freedman about parallel parking) the same week the Orioles were at Fenway, so I caught a couple of games. Tiny notes: No amount of upgrades can make Fenway not feel old. The building …

A detail from another shot in the Lamia photoshoot Two weekends ago my studio in my flat here in Hastings got its first proper use: a session of life-drawing (drawings below) followed by the Lamia photoshoot (prints of which are available here). Although I felt a little out-of-practice with the life-drawing — I haven’t done any since the beginning of June — I was fairly pleased with the results, although …

The BBC has released a terrific investigative report about a tax dispute before the Liverpool City Council regarding a downtown office space. It’s a dispute that turns, as so often happens, on answering the question “when is a vacant office business actually a legitimate snail-farming operation”? Liverpool (like many jurisdictions) taxes domestic (residential) and commercial property at different rates. An owner of non-domestic property not only has to pay much …

[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.]If you have to know the answer right away, it’s no; or at least, my goal with this video is to convince you that the world is not running out of sand. But if it were that simple, I wouldn’t be here (right?) and you probably wouldn’t be either. In fact, I was really surprised by some of the …

I always thought that the opening question in the song “Little Fluffy Clouds” by the Orb (music video) was a sample of LeVar Burton, maybe from his show “Reading Rainbow, but apparently, it's not! (link via Jason Kottke) Upon relistening to the song, it's now clear to me that it's not Levar Burton. It's very close though. And while I like the song, my favorite one from The Orb is …

Looking back at the year 1954 - some 70 years ago it was pretty much the same top stars from the year before. After 1954 though the movies were changing, and the next generation of youth would soon be taking over the box office...1. JOHN WAYNE2. DEAN MARTIN/JERRY LEWIS3. GARY COOPER4. JAMES STEWART5. MARILYN MONROE6. ALAN LADD7. WILLIAM HOLDEN 8. BING CROSBY9. JANE WYMAN10. MARLON BRANDO

Precious and fleeting, an autumn wander around these 'Isles of the Sea'

Disclaimer: This post expresses my opinions, which do not necessarily reflect consensus by the whole Web Components community. A blog post by Ryan Carniato titled “Web Components Are Not the Future” has recently stirred a lot of controversy. A few other JS framework authors pitched in, expressing frustration and disillusionment around Web Components. Some Web Components folks wrote rebuttals, while others repeatedly tried to get to the bottom of the …

How The Mouse Stumbled

Up until 2021, Southend-on-Sea, in the ceremonial county of Essex, was a town. For many years the area's long-standing MP, Sir David Amess, had campaigned for it to be granted city status. In October 2021 following the fatal stabbing of Sir David at his constituency surgery, Queen Elizabeth II agreed to grant Southend-on-Sea with city status as a memorial to him and this was made official in early 2022. The …

For this episode I spoke to Ahmed Gatnash, the Executive director of Kawaakibi Foundation. He is also a Strategy Advisor at the Albert Einstein Institution, and is the co-author of Middle East Crisis Factory, a primer on systemic crises and a vision for a positive future for the MENA region. During the discussion we spoke about the context of the political economic situation where Islam rose, the economic policies that …

And another month has passed. With September, 75% of the year is already over. Christmas is coming soon! 🎄 But once again, there’s not much exciting to share. A lot of my time right now is spent supporting my girlfriend, who is finally taking her (hopefully) final exams in October and will then be done with her studies. 🥳 But even studying needs a break sometimes, so at the beginning …

This is the third time I’ve carved these words from J.R.R. Tolkien on a bowl, but it has been several years. Each bowl has been different, and so has the lettering. I think working with green wood straight from the … Continue reading →