Recently updated blogs

I had to come back from the West sadly as my liver was acting up. It drains me and I have no energy me especially after feeling a bit better over the last few weeks. I hardly sleep which is awful. Yet I have to live with this and the ups and downs. I am back home now it’s pouring but such is life. Kalies flowers from her garden I …

tanadrin:My copy of Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s by @70sscifiart just got here, and it’s gorgeous. A seriously impressive collation of work, with a wealth of information on individual artists and on trends in popular SF illustration in the period. Also nostalgic as hell to see some of my favorite cover illustrations from old paperback books I read as a teenager. Awesome! Glad you liked it!

Hope you had a blessed Sunday! Time for another Catholic Meme Monday. Happy Belated Feast of Saint Bruno! Saint Francis de Sales (patron saint of journalists) would have an interesting time editing this interview. I stepped outside for a few minutes to sweep my garage and I heard my kids yelling, ” Not Saint Francis!”.I guess my dog loved on the patron saint of animals too much. Sometimes new I …

Overview September is a fading memory, and it's time to do a round-up post for that month's IndieWeb Carnival. I had chosen a dark, heavy theme for the month, not recalling that September is Suicide Prevention Month in the US. The theme for the month was Power Underneath Despair, in which I had asked, In your darkest hour, what saved you? What helped you find the strength to carry on? …

Part I, Part II, Part III, and now Part IV: The debate moderators did not fact-check all of Trump’s lies. Can you imagine Trump or Vance sobbing with regret? I predict the adults in the room will prevail again, but if the government shuts down in two weeks, it’s because of Trump and his House MAGA minions. That word doesn’t mean what he thinks it does. He’s no fan of …

Original airdate: October 6, 2024 The premise: The Simpsons get the once-in-a-lifetime chance to stay at the luxurious Yellow Lotus resort, until their free pass is yanked out from under them and they’re forced to leave. Laying low in an empty room to avoid getting caught, they overhear a familiar guest next door: Sideshow Bob, there with his new wife and seemingly plotting to kill her to inherit her fortune. …

PC In 1439, a goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg was working on an ill-begotten project to create polished metal mirrors designed to capture the holy light from religious relics, to be sold to pilgrims visiting an exhibition in Aachen, Germany. However, after flooding led to the event being delayed by a year, Gutenberg found himself out of money, and instead turned to his other project, a press that would use movable …

Not much reading again this month. I gave up on The Aleppo Codex because I didn't have the brainpower to follow all of the names and dates. The premise is interesting, but I can't dedicate reading time to something so intense during the school year. Maybe I'll revisit it during winter break. I did finish two books. The Monster in the Hollows - Andrew Peterson This is the third book …

Genteel English 'manners" mystery fiction arguably achieved its apogee in the late mid-to-late 1930s and the 1940s with such crime writers as Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, Georgette Heyer, Patricia Wentworth, Michael Innes and Nicholas Blake, to name some of the subgenre's most prominent exponents. Even writers not directly association with manners mystery, like Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr, published manners-ish mysteries like Five Little Pigs and …

Autumn is a great time to get outside and enjoy nature with your family. The leaves are turning beautiful colors, the air is crisp, and there are so many seasonal treasures to find. A fall scavenger hunt is a fun way to keep kids entertained while making the most of the season. Fall has always been one of our favorite times of the year—we have so many wonderful memories of …

Council elections are happening this month. In a lot of areas there’s been a change. Here in Glen Eira we used to have 3 wards with 3 councillors each. Now we’ll have 9 wards with 1 councillor each. I’m not so sure this is a good idea. Unfortunately some elected councillors aren’t great. In the past if you had an issue and needed to contact one, there’d be at least …

LP – Dischi Fantom An unusual union was created from the meeting of essayist, editor and translator Ginevra Bompiani with sound artists Caterina Barbieri and Tomoko Sauvage. The result is an original narrative with an allegorical-classical slant, where the relationships between sound, words, voice, media, and technology are explored through orality and poetry, with texts that belong to the world of fable and myth. The techniques implemented – as opposed …

Even in the coldest months we keep our house at a moderate 66 degrees, both to save energy and money, though I've been known to sneak it up a degree (to 67!) if the chill begins to seep too far into my bones even under several layers of clothing. In the past couple of days our furnace kicked on for the first time this fall, which inevitably signals the beginning …