Recently updated blogs

Orley Farm by Anthony Trollope published 1861-1862 Last year in the Clothes in Books Christmas scenes series, I looked at The Small House at Allington, a later book by Trollope, which had a tremendous description of a very boring Christmas. Around that time (but not in the comments to that post) someone told me to read Orley Farm for its Christmas-y content – alas, I do not remember who, please …

Most of the fishing I do nowadays could be termed convenient, I don’t travel too far, don’t take much gear with me and fish in a relatively simple way. But the autumn is different, it’s the best time of the year so I go all in, push out of the comfort zone and make a big effort. Over the next few weeks this will become the normal then by the …

This recipe for braised pork with 40 cloves of garlic is a Chinese-inspired riff on the classic French dish. The garlic is meltingly sweet, and when combined with pork belly and steamed rice, it is simply delicious. Do You Really Use 40 Cloves? Yes! 40 cloves of garlic in one dish. That’s about 4 to ... View Post

Morfff. From the archive. I’ve always been fascinated with creating physical analog objects from a coded digital process. A few years ago as part of the product offerings on @producedforuse, I created this form from code and concrete, generated from sine waves. It served as a note / letter holder or for anything else you might think to place in there. It’s now sold out but I still use mine …

Every year I try to see the final cut for the National Portrait Gallery's award. Find out more here. On this occasion, I visited with a friend and discovered that we liked a lot of the same paintings, which is interesting because none of our favourites won a prize, these having been awarded pieces that we'd given less than a few seconds of our time. I'm not a fan of …

The WebCard project is moving forward again. My latest work involved card initialization and URL visiting. When a new Web card is created, the associated URL is now inserted as text in the content area of the card. This is useful documentation and prevents the potential confusion of a blank card. Speaking of card initialization, the WCD.AskURL function that prompts for a URL initially prefilled the input buffer with https:// …

MATTHEW FLORIANZ - ONBEGONNEN Dutch sound designer Matthew Florianz (currently working in the UK) presents what could be called an 'evolving album'. Onbegonnen (or: not started) is a collection of 'archived music, experiments, stepping stones, live recordings, hard to find and unfinished work' (ironically, none of these are literally 'onbegonnen'). The album collects four tracks (32 minutes) coming from different periods, three of them previously unreleased. Onbegonnen can be downloaded …

Maintaining secure integrations between Active Directory (AD) and identity management platforms like Keycloak is a crucial task in any modern IT environment. Password management for service accounts, especially those used in sensitive environments such as LDAP integrations, can become tedious when performed manually. However, automating the process reduces errors, enhances security, and saves time. In… The post Automated Rotation of Keycloak LDAP Federation Password for Zerto appeared first on Justin's …

Succumbing to my Ivy Compton-Burnett addiction again, and happening upon a title I had not yet read, I plunged into Mother and Son (1955), a late, immensely enjoyable, very funny and indeed almost mellow work (which deservedly won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize). Mother and Son is a quite straightforward affair, driven by the interactions between two households – one of spinsters and a cat (of whom more later), …

Had an incredible display of acrobatics yesterday when a couple young Peregrine Falcons had a disagreement. Initially the darker bird was cruising around, doing some practice dives on the peeps. Then the lighter bird came out of nowhere and took a swipe at the first bird (which I didn’t catch, it happened real fast!). Well, that dark bird took offence and what followed were several aerial encounters which reminded me …

Thanks to Jacob Wiczkowski for alerting me to this post from the Western Railway Museum a few days ago. Their third BART cars has arrived! Following the arrival of an "A2" car in August and a "B2" car in September, they've now acquired "C1" car number 329. This car has led a less eventful existence than the other two, never having been renumbered or rebuilt, and is the only one …

Today on We Hunted the Mammoth we explore Donald Trump’s apparent use of hypnotic techniques in his speeches, looking at Trump’s recent comments about women and abortion, and uncovering four hypnotic tricks that may be influencing MAGA’s collective unconscious. Embedded Commands: How Trump disguises orders as predictions Confusion Technique: Using incoherence to bypass rational thinking Repetition: The power of rhythmic, incantatory speech patterns The Hypnotic Voice: Trump’s sometimes unusually smooth …

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 …