Recently updated blogs

Or: what I drank on my holidays. In our perversely unseasonal family holiday in Swanage last year, I ticked off four of the town’s seven pubs and had beers from three different local breweries. This year’s perversely unseasonal return trip to Dorset took us to Weymouth, a much larger town and a considerably more serious proposition for the ticker; they’ve got two separate J.D. Wetherspoon’s! Dorset beer was considerably thinner …

The First Quarter Moon is Friday, October 11, the full Moon is Thursday October 17. This is a perigee ("super") Moon. Comet C/2023 A3 may be visible low in the evening twilight from the 13th and should be visible by weeks end not far from Venus. Mercury is low in the twilight below Venus. Saturn is just past opposition, and is visible all night long. Saturn is close to the …

Today's links Google's new phones can't stop phoning home: The call is coming from inside the house. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023 Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I've been. Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em. Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em. Colophon: All the rest. Google's new phones …

One of the sources for Ray Bradbury’s classic novel “Fahrenheit 45” was him and a friend being stopped by a policeman while walking through Los Angeles for no other reason than they were walking. This was in the late 40s or early 50s. In the afterword to the novel he tells the story, which I think makes a wonderful short story on its own (see below), and he turned the …

The last 35 miles of The Beacons Way. Helicopters. Sugar Loaf Circular in the cloud. OS Map and Stats: The Beacons Way Tuesday – woke to heavy rain, not the best conditions for embarking upon the last three days of The Beacons Way… An easy drive to Craig y Nos Country Park to rendezvous with S&S in a layby a little south of the hotel, then over the Beacons to …

R. P. Sand makes her Asimov’s debut with her new piece “Eternity is Moments”, available to read in our [September/October issue, on sale now!] Asimov’s Editor: How did this story germinate? Was there a spark of inspiration, or did it come to you slowly?R. P. Sand: Writing this story was one of the very rare occasions for me where the story basically flowed from the initial spark. A few hours …

In August 2024, we asked our customers to tell us about security: their role in security, their certifications, their concerns, and what their companies are doing to address those concerns. We had 1,322 complete responses, of which 419 (32%—roughly one-third) are members of a security team. 903 respondents aren’t on a security team, although 19% of that group hold at least one security-related certification. This report focuses primarily on the …

March 1943. "Truck transportation from Baltimore to New Orleans. A truck and trailer in Baltimore." Acetate negative by John Vachon for the Office of War Information. View full size.

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 […]

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 …

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 …