Recently updated blogs

I thought it would be fun to revisit Known, the open source publishing platform that powers my site.How it worksKnown allows a team or community to publish news on any topic to a single, searchable stream of content that’s easily accessible from any device. It is not a full CMS, and nor is it designed for independent publishers to sell subscriptions; instead, it’s optimized for publishing to a single feed.Every …

Midweek at GDS I attended the London office to see a selection of Matt Lamont's graphic design collection followed by a talk he gave about his work and inspirations including Design Reviewed. Making the most of the dwindling daylight afterwork, I joined Luis for cycling round a very dark but empty Richmond Park. By the end of the ride my new powerful Canyon front light was proving its costly price …

I’ve been growing my own veg for 30 years and most years I grow the same things because I know they work, or usually work, or I like them: runner beans, broad beans, tomatoes, lots of peas, marrows, courgettes, cucumbers, potatoes. Soft fruit and apples just keep coming back every year, with not very much effort. Other things are a constant battle or there are difficult years when even the …

Admission is free - Bob Hicok

A couple players in my ongoing Friday night Krevborna game gave me "nights off" by running something in usual campaign's stead. One of those games was Deadlands. My character was Frances D., aka Frances Donner, who survived the Donner Party ordeal but came away from the experience haunted by the ghosts of the eaten and charged with fighting supernatural evil by way of survivor's guilt.Ironically, when the game started she …

Various campaigns have asked 2024 council candidates to commit to advocating for better public and active transport. Here's a quick summary of known campaigns, what they want and areas they're active in: Melbourne FOE Better Buses campaign Campaign seeks a radically reformed direct and frequent bus network across Melbourne's western suburbs. Also advocates for new bus routes in growth areas. Most active in Wyndham, Melton, Brimbank, Hobsons Bay, Maribyrnong with …

The first thing you should know is that this biopic is not a hatchet job on the former President. It’s a smart, but not smart-alecky, dramatization of his evolution as an entrepreneur and public figure, under the tutelage of the notorious New York lawyer Roy Cohn. That relationship is at the core of this film, and its impact may be muted somewhat if you’ve seen Matt Tyrnauer’s excellent 2019 documentary …

Fun long weekend in Berlin. No photos. Productive week at work. FF published a case study on what we’re doing. They’re good at writing words. Binged Nobody Wants This in a single week. The first 20 minutes will make you very confused how such a standard rom-com could have a 94% rotten tomatoes score, but I fell in love quickly. I think the main thing is that yes, the characters …

Short week this week: In part because of last week it started on Tuesday morning, and in another part because my weekend got capped. :( This week in numbers: 🌿 Plant-based dinners: 3/6 🎚️ Missed buttdials from DJs: 2 💉 Cannulas worn: 2 Last week’s terrible eating and drinking led me this week to notch up my New Health Century. I ate mostly vegetables this week. Tim Spector would be …

Happy Sunday, everyone! This week, I’ve been brushing up on my HTML skills with the delightfully designed HTML for People website/ebook, trying to convince my friends to get into yo-yoing with this awesome starter kit from Doctor Popular, geeking out on Jared Owen’s latest video on how 3D printers work, and experimenting with more X-Pan format photography using the simple but fun 65x24 iOS app.On to the good stuff!🚁 DJI …

The Discovery Channel’s new series “Lost Monster Files” (LMF) is promoted as a cryptozoology program that uses a team of experts that consult the archives of “founder of cryptozoology”, Ivan T. Sanderson, in their investigations of modern claims of unclassified animals. The first episode, titled Carolina Chupacabra, aired on 9 October 2024. Here is my review about the content and conclusions. Not a promising start There is not a lot …

“That summer the countryside had suddenly become an unknown world. A ghost story without the ghosts but they were expected any minute.” Rainy Day Women (1984), written by David Pirie, was one of the later episodes of the BBC’s Play for Today television anthology drama strand and blimey, it’s stunning, thought provoking, unsettling, shocking and at points politically radical stuff. Viewed today it’s almost difficult to comprehend that challenging work …

It’s Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, so I’m out at Squam, eating delicious food and spending time with family. When I was living on the west coast that wasn’t really in the cards, so we’d host our own, which was a delight, but it’s nice to do the big family one again. Styling RSS I’ve mentioned before, I use Vienna as my RSS reader. I like it generally, but I wasn’t satisfied …

Crouched, hunched, bent-double on a floor, wooden, carpet, concrete. One input, one output, mediated via a BOSS ME-50 multi-effects pedalboard. Looping, delayed, pitch-shifted, crunched. Over the last few years, I’ve performed occasionally as Snails in Joyland, an improvised noise act which prides itself on being simple and crunchy. I say occasionally, because it works out to be at a frequency of about once per year. I like taking Snails to …

I'm slogging through my ballot, looking at California proposition 33. This proposition says that cities could impose rent control on more types of housing. Opponents say: Beware! NIMBY jerks will use this to prevent new construction by imposing unreasonable rent control so that new projects don't "pencil out." That sounds bad to me, but I'm not a real estate development expert. I dunno whether this is a real problem with …