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Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. ***It must have seemed like nothing but fear was waiting to greet those who foolishly entered a cinema in October 1974.It was, after all, a month which saw the release of those never to be forgotten nightmares The House on Skull Mountain, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, It's Alive, The Cars That …

The WordPress drama has not dried up. Since I wrote last, Matt Mullenweg has done a number of interviews, WP Engine sued Automattic, the structure of the WordPress organization has become clearer, and over 150 employees left Automattic in a buy-out deal. Now it seems Mullenweg is going after a popular plugin to try and win his battle against WP Engine. Ernie Smith wrote an excellent overview of recent events …

1. Apple’s built in apps can do (almost) everything One of the characteristics of hardcore nerdery is the tendency to over engineer your systems. People spend a lot of time creating systems, tinkering with them, making them as perfect as possible, only to abandon them a few years down the line when some new shiny hotness appears. I’m as guilty of this as the next nerd, but at least I’m …

I’m back in Essex, a few days earlier than planned, due to another family medical event. I would really like to write more about this stuff to be honest, but over the years I’ve become increasingly wary of writing about other people online without their consent. So forgive my vagueness. I would like to say a reassuring, “everyone’s OK,” but with every emergency visit to hospital – this is the …

This was the last selfie I took before I left the Essen game fair on Sunday, the final day of the fair for 2024. What an amazing four days it was. For many years I have been hearing other people share their Spiel experiences. Now that I was experiencing it first hand myself, whatever I had heard before still didn't fully prepare me for the real thing. It really is …

A month’s worth of movies to help you stay awake Every October, I put together a big schedule of horror films to watch, focusing mostly on ones I haven’t seen before. The schedule, a mix of theatrical screenings and home viewings, is published for posterity and for the sake of anyone who might like to join me. This year I seem to be nostalgic for the age of Satanic panic, …

My teenage years played a show at New York’s Pier 17.

The other day on X, Adam Wathan wondered how to feature detect (Custom Property) Style Queries. While in theory you could use @supports at-rule() for this, in practice you can’t because it has no browser support (… yet). Drawing inspiration from my previous post on how to detect support for @starting-style, I came up with a similar method to detect support for Style Queries: try actively using them and respond …

Back in June, this blog asked a question. What is the point of Morgan McSweeney?. He had made the Labour Party safe for Keir Starmer and his brand of authoritarian politics, and with a 2015-style left wing surge ranging from infinitesimally unlikely to impossible what role awaited him following the general election? Well, he did find purpose. To make Sue Gray's, Starmer's chief of staff, life a misery. And that …

A lot of the week went quite well. I did a workshop for a couple of hundred people, played some good games of Underworlds, had a lovely time with family. Monday evening I went to some back-pain friendly pilates. First time. I’d been nervous, but the session felt very chill. I was stretched in new ways, but nothing out-and-out hurt. Slowly, through the week, my back pain (which had been …

A splendid album that blew me away. View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize The amount of superb jazz recorded in the 70’s is vast. Very late to the game on much of this stuff, but I’m on the other hand grateful to have so much still to discover. Like this beautiful recording from 1973 by tenor …

An onigiri smushed at the bottom of your bag. Water splashing off a spoon. Burnt toast. Life is full of small disappointments. But helping us see the humor in it all is Makosun, a Japanese maker of weird plushies—their words, not ours—who renders all these small disappointments as handmade plushies. onigiri smushed at the bottom […] Related posts: Mythical Creatures from Ukiyoe Turned into Collectible Plushies New Pillow Lets You …

I’ve finished the game; this is continued from my last post. Via the Centre of Computing History. ftb on Discord pointed me to one of these mega-shareware discs having a copy of Raspion, but compiled for DOS. First off, RavenWorks cleared something up for me: that SLIT message was referring to the acronym that goes with the “say Lymbar in tomb” in the book; I hadn’t been paying attention to …

The Stag, Dumfries A four-storey pub situated in a narrow side street just off the town’s pedestrianised High Street. The StreetView car couldn’t actually get up the street – it is just visible on the right in the StreetView image. (My own picture)

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Weeknotes, a stream-of-consciousness post about life, work, media and everything in between. Here’s what I’ve been up to: Life I have very little to report when it comes to my life at the moment. Other than passing my driving test, I’ve mainly just been catching up with friends and family before we scoot off to Mexico in a few weeks. I always feel …