Recently updated blogs

Evidently discovered by French astronomer Pierre Méchain in 1786, Comet Encke was the first periodic comet to be found after Halley’s Comet. It was named after Johann Franz Encke, who first calculated its orbit. It comes into play this morning because it is considered the source of at least part of the Taurid meteor shower, which is the subject of new work out of the University of Maryland that has …

A profile view of the jaws (with stripped screw holes) in the original pine jaw of this “carver’s vise” (this one is from StewMac, where it’s called a “Guitar Repair Vise.”) Every chair class Chris teaches seems to develop its own gravitational pull. It’s inevitable – if you orbit within 50 feet of a class taught by Chris Schwarz you will get sucked in. Now getting sucked into a class …

A guide to the Padang Besar Railway Station border crossing between Malaysia and Thailand. Padang Besar is an international railway station in Malaysia on the Thailand border. There is also a separate Padang Besar station in Thailand in Tambon Padangbesa. If you are getting the train between Thailand and Malaysia, you will be going through Padang Besar in Malaysia. This a guide for crossing the border at Padang Besar, and …

Get into the spooky spirit with a Halloween screen printing project! Create t-shirts, tote bags, and poster prints that’re hauntingly fun and frightfully easy! Party Prints - Speedball Night Glo Acrylic Ink on Paper! If you’re a Halloween lover this project is for you! Using the Speedball Acrylic Night Glo Ink we made our own glow in the dark Halloween poster. This ink really gives your prints a twist. Great …

If the candidates for the Tory leadership sound much like ministers in the last year of the Conservative government, it’s because the leadership campaign started well before Sunak lost the election. But they lost that election very badly. To many it seems odd that the leadership contenders, at least publicly, appear in complete denial about this loss, and are carrying on as if it hadn’t happened. Given the nature of …

Forgive all the self-linking but this post continues a story. It’s been about 18 months since the big change. A few months later, I wrote about its ups and downs: I wanted to continue doing what I truly love to do on the web without that daily pressure to make the donuts. I like to think my donuts are tasty enough to enjoy even if they weren't available every day. …

The official Tour de France race guide ALWAYS SELLS OUT. It has all the info you need to follow the Tour de France. Here is how to find it.

Passage Brady is an interesting experiment in lying. Like every other arcade in Paris, Brady spills over two different streets on either side: 22 Boulevard de Strasbourg and 43 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin. Depending on which the side of the arcade one lives, one quickly starts believing that side to offer the one true opening into the arcade and the other opening is reinscribed in their minds as a deferred …

So without rehashing all the details, there is a non-profit in Canada called CIPPIC, whose work I respect, and who has provided me with assistance in the past on an unrelated matter. CIPPIC does good public interest work at the intersection of law and technology. They recently submitted a filing in federal court in Canada (a few months ago now) to ask for the correction of a copyright registration which …

The lovely Swan Public House in Clewer won a huge award last month. This 18th Century pub close to Windsor was awarded the nation’s best community pub in the Great British Pub Awards. The Swan is truly a special place with the amazing Green Room School having a classroom there. There is something going on every evening with groups as diverse as tabletop gaming, bicycle repair, German language practice and …

I've long maintained a set of interactive network frequency maps showing where Melbourne's frequent public transport goes. There are sets for various times of week and day and you can select layers by frequency threshold. But I have never quantified the population near frequent public transport at various times of week and day. But Philip Mallis has. And has presented figures and maps at last Friday's Transport Camp and earlier …

I live in El Granada, California. Wikipedia calls us a census designated place - we don't have a mayor or city council. But we do have a Community Services District - originally responsible for our sewers, and since 2014 also responsible for our parks. And we get to vote for the board members in the upcoming November election! My partner Natalie decided to arrange a "candidates forum" - effectively a …

‘The New York Times reports that Bob Wordward’s new book War includes a few stories about donald trump being Putin’s stooge. When the world, including the United States, was suffering a dire shortage of COVID-19 tests, trump was sending tests to his pal Putin for “personal use.” After leaving office, there are stories of donald rushing aides out of his way to take a private call with his good buddy, …

A fun book to draw from when teaching modern Japan is Soeda Azembo and Michael Lewis, A Life Adrift: Soeda Azembo, Popular Song and Modern Mass Culture in Japan ( London: Routledge, 2009). You can’t assign it, since it is not in our databases and costs too much, and maybe would not work that way anyway. You can pull a lot of songs from it though. There is a short …

Reading Time: 3 minutes Does testing actually improve student memory better than studying? Even when tests are given without feedback, retrieval practice enhances later retention more than restudying the material. For definition, research often refers to retrieval practice as the ‘testing effect’, and when the word ‘testing’ is used, people outside education become concerned, and often associate any kind […]