Recently updated blogs

We don’t really know much about Tomas, other than what we can infer from the photographs and words he left behind. Oh, and there are the snippets of memories by his grandson Terje (Terje Abusdal, the photographer), who was too young to ask more questions around the time Tomas took his pictures. Tomas moved in with Terje’s family after his wife had died. He was already in his seventies. Even …

I caused a ruckus on social media when I pointed out that a Venn diagram commonly posted on Strong Towns and by American urbanists in general about taxes, services, and urbanism, is completely false: The truth is that the overwhelming majority of taxes and services are about things that don’t meaningfully depend on local density. The overwhelming majority of those services are not even locally provided. In the United States, …

What to do after if you accidentally lock yourself outWhen messing around with my NixOS config, I managed to accidentally log myself out of my system by setting my hashedPassword to a string that was not a hash. After a bit of searching and experimentation, I was able to reset my password by rebooting into single user mode. I set out the steps below for the benefit of my future …

This 2-minute podcast created by Google NotebookLM AI is worth listening to for it’s brilliant imititation and creatitivity. The NotebookLM hosts realizing they are AI and spiraling out is a twist I did not see coming

Geordie Greep “Holy, Holy” Congratulations to former Black Midi member Geordie Greep for writing the most Steely Dan-ish lyrics I’ve ever heard outside of anything Walter Becker and Donald Fagen actually made themselves. The Dan-ness carries over to the vocal melody and cadence, but the arrangement mixes in some aggro-prog flavor along with the suave Latin percussion to keep it firmly in Greep’s established lane. The lyrical conceit is brilliant …

Welcome Visitors and New Subscribers. Link to YouTube short video. This Lincoln Town Car looks mysterious to me, like it’s waiting to pick someone up for some weird errand.I want to paint it faithfully, but change the lighting to make it look like a moody and mysterious street scene that evokes the mood of film noir. More about this strategy at my Substack today.

It's only one month now until the release of the audiobook version of my book Pull to Open, which tells the story of the creation of Doctor Who in 1963. And here's a little bit of pre-publicity for it, in the form of BBC Audiobooks' Doctor Who catalogue for this autumn. Published on the Penguin website, as Penguin Random House are the company who release BBC Audiobooks titles.It's nice to …

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others. Amy Stuber’s story collection Sad Grownups is a stunning debut filled with marvelously complex characters. Morgan Talty wrote of the book: “If emotions …

This week’s blog nearly writes itself. It’s been a trip full of adventures, and I’ve only been away a week. Within five minutes of leaving home, I’d scraped the side of the car. I stopped at the nearest pillar box to post a letter. The side road narrows at one point, and I’d odged over to let another car past. Crunch crumple! I’d scraped the car against the front corner …

by Dennis Crouch This post focuses on the issues raised in the patent challenger Sun Pharma’s recent en banc petition in Allergan USA, Inc. v. MSN Laboratories Private Ltd and Sun Pharmaceutical Indus. Ltd., No. 2024-1061 (Fed. Cir. 2024). The original panel majority opinion is controversial on two separate fronts. First, it created an obviousness-type double patenting (ODP) safe harbor for certain patents whose term had been extended via patent …

Hetzner has Object Storage in beta now. I got access to it, but one thing is holding me back from using it: A fixed price (5,95 € per month per bucket), even if there is nothing stored in there or way less than the included 1 TB. Why not bill based on actual usage, like most other services are doing it nowadays? I guess I will keep using Scaleway Object …

Rest in Peace, Robert Coover. You don't need to read Robert Coover's 1966 novel *Origin of the Brunists* to be astonished by 2014's *Brunist Day of Wrath* but you DO need to read *Brunist Day of Wrath,* the most American novel I've ever read, it's fourth read this coming 25 summer, might need to push up. I also recommend *Gerald's Party*, *John's Wife*, *Universal Baseball Association*, and of course *Public …

Pnårp experienced parasitological overimaginative verisimilitude, formication followed by disinsection, and concluded with a torrent of shrieking and hooting.

This is going to be a packed month. For Thanksgiving weekend, I am going on a camping trip with friends to do some trail repair near Temagami. Then, from the 24th to 27th, I am photographing a diplomatic conference in Montreal. Both will require a fair bit of packing and preparation, and I expect a … Continue reading "Two October trips"

When we see big dollar amounts, it is difficult to figure out exactly what they mean. . . . Let’s say that you and three of your pals received degrees in Whatever Studies. Immediately thereafter the four of you were presented with the opportunity to get jobs at Consolidated Acme. Now having a degree in Whatever Studies isn’t the sort of thing that opens a whole lot of doors. It …