Recently updated blogs

This blogpost is about Central curves on noncommutative surfaces. If you just want mathematics and not some of the backstory, you can click the link to immediately get to the preprint. Background Almost to the day 4 years ago, I wrote a blogpost about how to (possibly) interpret a type of noncommutative curve using the geometry of orders on varieties. I did so, because I was initially confused by some …

It's that time of year when the Penstemon are still going strong, and we all love Penstemon, which are going from strength to strength these days:- more variety of colour, longer-lasting, and often truly perennial. They have trumpet-shaped flowers, often with a splash of white inside them, and they flower for a long time, through summer and right into autumn.But at this time of year, the weeds are also springing …

Stories of immortal bloodsuckers spanned centuries, continents, and cultures long before Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897. And while Stoker’s gothic horror novel wasn’t the first to feature vampires, it’s arguably the most famous vampire literary work and defined the modern vampire’s abilities and weaknesses (hopefully you’re stocked up on garlic). More than 100 years later, vampires remain one of the most popular monsters in fiction. And it’s no wonder …

Just popping in for a quick reminder that the 1970 Club is coming on Monday! Hosted by me and Karen (see her post about it), we ask everyone to read one or more books published in 1970 and post a review wherever you post reviews. Any type of book, any language, anything goes! Since I’m doing A Century of Books, I’ll just be reading a handful – but I’m looking …

Submitted by Lachlan, who says: Brisbane dropped a new transit map and it is EXTREMELY pretty. I’m a big fan. Definitely the best-designed official transit map in Australia in my opinion. It even acknowledges the rapid bus routes and the G-Link light rail! I wish it could have acknowledged the existence of the ferries but that would probably require that the city centre become even more distorted… … and also …

In this fascinating new dystopian novella, Rhiannon Lewis expands on a short story from her 2021 collection I am the Mask Maker. When I read that short story, I actually mentioned in my review that it was one I found particularly intriguing and wished was longer, so I was pleased to learn that my wish had come true! The book begins with Aeronwy visiting her brother at his farm on …

Gossiping at the harbor, Vernazza, Cinque Terra, Italy. What's new? Not much new around here. And that's the problem. Unlike the Italian ladies above, I'm having a little trouble finding something new to talk about.Some years ago, in the heyday of photography magazines, I read that most magazines recycled their content about every five years.Well, I've been posting this blog for almost five years now, and I have a better …

Evan Roth is the guest of the sixth episode of the podcast series I did with artists who 1. are among my absolute cultural heroes and 2. have exhibited at Aksioma Institute for Contemporary Art in Ljubljana. Evan Roth, Strand 47, 2022 For the past 19 years, Evan Roth has been making work in art institutions, in public spaces and on the internet, resulting in paintings, installations, videos and websites. …

Another piece of the 2025 puzzle fell into place on Wednesday, when Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLL) announced they had signed the reigning Indy NXT champion, Louis Foster. Marshall Pruett, or Racer.com, reported this as a multiyear contract on a fulltime ride for Foster, but you would never know it from the very cryptic press-release […]

This comes a little late (work got in the way…), but as someone with an interest in Korean literature, I couldn’t let the announcement of Han Kang’s Nobel Prize go unmentioned on the blog. This is the first time I’ve ever really been invested in a Nobel winner, even more so than was the case with Olga Tokarczuk or Kazuo Ishiguro, other writers I was familiar with before their wins, …

Previously: Part 3 This phase of the course is all about building up the basic apparatus. We’ve stated our axioms, and it might seem like they’re not very powerful. It’s our job now to show that, in fact, they’re powerful enough to do just about everything with sets that mathematicians ever want. We began that job this week, with a chapter on subsets. For example, in the axioms, we only …

One of my many jobs within the local government was the manager of a city’s building department. The building department is responsible for the administration, review and inspection of construction to ensure that it's in compliance with the state building code. This department is also responsible for consumer protection by verifying that construction — whether completed by a licensed contractor or a property owner — has been constructed properly and …

It has been another busy week mainly still working on the [redacted] project which meant a trip to London on the 0700 from Bristol Parkway Monday morning. This train and the Tube were unnervingly quiet – I guess in the post-Covid, hybrid working world people don’t ‘do’ Mondays! The [redacted] project remains challenging but some of the fog is starting to lift and I have to say the work of …

1994 Mindscape Platform: Commodore Amiga CD32 MegaRace was an ambitious title due for release on the Amiga CD32 by Mindscape back in 1994, and was being developed by French programmers Cryo. Set in the future, the game revolves around a … Continue reading →

Back in 2009, I recorded a podcast about It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. It was a childhood favorite and a podcast that many people have emailed me about over the years. So now that I am committed to revisiting some of my older episodes, this one went straight to the top of the list. It's a great subject to cover at this time of year, and I hope you …