Recently updated blogs

Amazon Prime Big Deal Days are here! Shop my picks, including home and kitchen discounts on items like the Zojirushi rice cooker, tofu press, cabbage slicer, simplehuman liquid soap pump, Crock-Pot electric cooker, and more. Amazon’s annual Prime Day may have come and gone, but the retailer just launched its Big Deal Day — AKA a ... READ: My Favorite Items at Amazon Prime Big Deal Days Sale

One more year went by and the blog continued its existence. As you know by now, the blog took birth once I had read the book by A. Juilland "Rethinking Track and Field" which gave me the idea to write about things that could (should?) change in the way we are doing athletics. Things that could make competitions more interesting and funnier. (And I must admit that Juilland's title was …

OM-1 Mark II (Press Photo) I have a question for those of you who own and use either an OM-1 or an OM-1 Mark II camera. Here's some background.Several weeks ago, a photographer friend emailed me puzzled that he was not able to capture a particular image that required high speed sequential shooting. The particular circumstance was photographing a Revolutionary War re-enactor firing a musket. His intention was to capture …

We’re excited: our new book (“our” meaning Steve with Bethann Garramon Merkle) has been formally accepted by the University of Chicago Press, and is now headed into production. So today, an update, and a request for your opinions about its title. “What book?”, you might be asking. Darn – we tried to pester folks so […]

Earlier this year, a new self-identification act for transgender, intersex, and nonbinary persons was enacted in Germany. The law adds to the growing number of European jurisdictions that have recently enacted self-identification laws for legal gender purposes, including Sweden. The legal landscape is not uniform, however. Other European jurisdictions are curbing the right to change one’s gender, most recently Georgia, which has forbidden the reassignment of one’s gender, and Bulgaria, …

I have a new article up on web.dev, about CSSNestedDeclarations which is coming to all browsers. To fix some weird quirks with CSS nesting, the CSS Working Group resolved to add the CSSNestedDeclarations interface to the CSS Nesting Specification. With this addition, declarations that come after style rules no longer shift up, among some other improvements. These changes are available in Chrome from version 130 and are ready for testing …

INTRODUCTION “The lies, the greed, and the guilt.” One of the most malevolent places I have ever experienced in the world of literature is the paranoid, claustrophobic corner of Britain depicted in the Red Riding Quartet, four books by David Peace published between 1999 and 2002 that are simply titled by the primary years that each book deals with: 1974, 1977, 1980, and 1983. The Quartet is a series of …

A few last thoughts on Venice, and then (promise) I'll move on.Was it better or worse than six years ago, when it left me wondering whether I'd ever visit La Serenissima again? On the whole, I think, a good deal better, probably in large part because those gigantic floating hotels that pass themselves off as 'cruise ships' are no longer allowed to dock in the city to debouch their cargoes …

Hurricane Helene brought devastation — and an opportunity — to Appalachia’s power gridsThe reconstruction of the power grid in the areas of Appalachia where it was wrecked by Helene will ultimately offer a chance for the utility industry to rethink how the electricity system should be structured. “​​In areas where there could be more extreme weather events like this, it’s going to be more and more difficult to maintain far-flung …

“Animism has endowed things with souls; industrialism turns souls into things.” — Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment It is well attested that languages across Eurasia inherit their word for ‘bear’ from a common Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root, *h2r̥tk̑o-. In Hittite, this root became ḫartaggaš; in Sanskrit, ŕ̥kṣaḥ; and in Albanian, ari. For English speakers, the most recognizable descendants would almost certainly be found in Greek (wherein árktos became …

I was reminded of this phrase by a marketing email from Plotter, linking to this post. Techo Kaigi means “notebook meeting,” and the idea is that you should have a meeting with yourself to contemplate your notebooking methods and make sure they are right for you. This is generally done in the fall, when planners … Continue reading Techo Kaigi →

Multiply the number of hours you typically work in a day by 0.33378. Eg if you work 8 hours a day, the number is 8 x 0.33378 = 2.67024 kgCO2e/day. Now you know your emissions per day. That 0.33378 kgCO2e per hour worked is an emissions factor for “Homeworking (office equipment + heating)” from UK Gov’s GHG reporting conversion factors 2024 (Homeworking tab C24), which uses the EcoAct 2020 Homeworking …

In the early days of this weblog, I was on MediaTemple using MoveableType for a good long time. Three things happened during these many years: MoveableType was mostly abandoned during this time. I’m sure well-intentioned folks were working on it (and it appears they still are), but the vibrancy of development had faded from my perspective at the time. MediaTemple (now GoDaddy) was similarly abandoned. They were happy to take …

For obvious reasons, I love this Syllabus Project from Rena Tom. This syllabus explores the concept of fake objects, defined as material replicas of originals that are absent, fictional, immaterial, or otherwise unobtainable. Fake objects are created to satisfy the desire for things that never were. Their worth is not necessarily tied to the rarity of the original or the fidelity of reproduction. Value is found through fakeness, not in …

Earlier this year I took two Japanese courses (102 and 103) at NihongoDekita, and I had a blast! The way they teach really resonates with me.After taking these two courses, I could continue to 104, but I felt a bit overwhelmed with all the things going on my life.Now, I'm back! I decided to retake 103 since another 104 batch will open only next year.The course curriculum was updated, and …