Recently updated blogs

I recently lost a dear friend with the passing of Jay Popa. Anyone who is a big band fan is familiar with the website The Big Band Alliance, which Jay and his brother Chris run. Jay had a big heart, and I count him as a friend. Here is his beautiful obituary...Everyone should have a devoted son, loving brother, and best pal like James Michael Popa, known to family and …

Premise I was introduced to John Vervaeke and his work by the inimitable Matt Church who leads the Thought Leaders Business School and is based in Australia. John is an award-winning professor of psychology, cognitive science, and Buddhist psychology at the University of Toronto. He says that there are four different ways we can know things, which he calls the 4P’s of Knowing. These are about the manners in which …

Atlas Games’ Penumbra line of D20 products continues to lead the field in D&D supplements. Review Originally Published December 15th, 2000 There are two primary functions that a review serves: First, it lets people know about a product they might otherwise have been unaware of. Second, it tells them enough about it to let them know whether or not its a product they should buy. The Black Amulet is a …

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.

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 …

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 …