Recently updated blogs

UPDATE 5 October 2024: in addition to the pretty printing pdf version of the “Nonviolent personality” by Giuliano Pontara that I translated from the Italian original, the booklet is now also available for free in reflowable epub version, for easier reading on a wider variety of devices. The remainder of this post below, which introduces the booklet, is almost the same as the original post from 3 March 2011. ~~~ …

Which books/covers/authors in the post intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed? 1. In Alien Flesh, Gregory Benford (1986) Joe Bergeron’s cover for the 1986 edition From the back cover: “A journey into the depts of space and time by Gregory Benford, winner of the Nebula Award.” Contents: “In Alien Flesh” (1978), “Time Shards” (1979), “Redeemer” (1979), “Snatching the Bot” (1977), “Relativistic Effects” (1982), “Nooncoming” (1978), “To the Storming …

Relative Dormancy Star Trek: TNG will always be my measure of a tablet. We’re still not there yet. Paid a visit to the Field Museum in Chicago. Vibe.

You aren’t alone, Ben. Am I alone in preferring an offline, analogue, tactile reading experience? Is there something here, or is the future of media entirely, irrevocably digital? Sitting back and reading paper is magnificent.

A quick post about some quirky geology today. Geodes are crystal-filled masses inside a larger body of rock. They are awesome. Scientists generally know how they form. Voids or bubbles in volcanic or sedimentary rock (particularly basalt/lava) were inundated with hot, mineral rich, fluids circulating in the ground. Crystals grew from the fluids – like rock candy grows on a string in a saturated sugar solution. Geodes are typically small. …

Nicky Campbell: “Woah. Welcome to indisputably the nation's top pop show. What an opener we've got for you tonight. They're frenetic, flamboyant, fun loving, the lot. You can tell from their name that they come from Germany. They're here tonight with Harlem Desire. The one and only, the two and only, London Boys.” [21] LONDON BOYS: harlem desire. Stanley Appel doesn't like starting Top of the Pops with the host …

One of the most unusual sets released this month is the #71438 LEGO Super Mario World: Mario & Yoshi animated large-scale statue. LEGO didn’t advertise this set much, but it has some interesting features and functions worth checking out. The set recreates the pixelated appearance of Mario and Yoshi from an earlier generation of side-scrolling […]

AT. LONG. LAST. This part of the challenge was always going to be a difficult owing to the amount of Barbel and indeed Chub present. I have spent over the course of 10 trips (including this trip) 168 hours of angling with 62 Barbel caught, the 62nd being the one I was after, everything in between has been enjoyable and testing in equal measure. A wonderful part of the world, …

Hey You,First off, we're sorry for the delay in getting this newsletter to you—our busy summer months are catching up with us! But we’re here now, and October is packed with so much happening in Aberdeen’s cultural scene that we couldn’t let you miss out. Despite the shorter days and the cooler weather, the city is full of creative energy, and we’re excited to bring you all the latest news.In …

Welcome to another edition of The Weekend Stream, The Second Disc's review of notable catalogue titles (and some new ones, too!) making digital debuts. This Saturday brings remixes from James Brown, live rarities from Daryl Hall and - yes - a jump on some Christmas catalogue. James Brown, We Got to Change / Soul Power: The […]

Orcs are bred for war and have faces only a mother could love. Screenshot from the Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

buttermilk vanilla cake with fudgy cocoa frosting and sprinkles Win of the week: finally got around to baking the cake I’ve been wanting: vanilla cake with chocolate frosting and sprinkles 🧁 (from Snacking Cakes) Looking forward to: chilling this weekend Stuff I did: 9.25 hours consulting — finally kicked off the new project! Lots of yardwork ✂ Two doctor trips for my annual wellness checkup and bloodwork Walked at the …

The HTML Framework is constantly evolving and it's hard to keep up. In this article, I'll cover the steps involved in building a fully-interactive, stateful counter control (complete with increment and decrement buttons) in just one line of code, using the latest version (version 5, which just came out in 2008). Let's dig in! Steps Installation: $ npm install the following packages: react, react-dom, babel Locate your /node_modules folder and …

This is a guest post by David Quantick. Covers of the first U.S. editions of Daisy Ashford’s The Young Visiters and Ring Lardner’s The Young Immigrunts. “My parents are both married and ½ of them are very good looking.” This is the story of two very different writers, one an American comic writer of genius, playwright and sportswriter, the other a young English girl with terrible spelling. The American was …

Gaming hasn’t exactly been one of my most intensive pastimes of late–it has its highs and lows, and typically tends to be more intensive in the cold seasons. But this year, with the public demise of Switch emulation and my interest in preserving a time capsule of my high-performance Zelda setup, I decided to create a VM snapshot of it and (re)document the process. Either way, these steps will yield …