Recently updated blogs

A conversation about the day's playground shenanigans with one of my kids had me asking him: "do you know what social skills are?". He replied "no, what's that?". After I explained, he was keen to tell me which skills he thinks he is good at (being kind and respectful, communicating with friends, being able to compromise within a group with different needs). He then said "the skill I don't have, …

Election Day Update: For anyone who’s still undecided (?!?), I can’t beat this from Sam Harris. When I think of Harris winning the presidency this week, it’s like watching a film of a car crash run in reverse: the windshield unshatters; stray objects and bits of metal converge; and defenseless human bodies are hurled into states of perfect repose. Normalcy descends out of chaos. Important Announcement: I don’t in any …

Wuhan-based studio Nekcom is composing a provocative love letter to Japanese Pop culture from the 80s and 90s in the form of a post-apocalyptic RPG. Showa American Story is set in an alternative history setting in which the United States territory was bought by a prosperous Japan, whose economic bubble never burst, leading to mass migration and a rapidly developing form of cultural amalgamation. Interestingly, the game itself merges elements …

Many people I respect are big fans of Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language" (online PDF copy). I've leafed through it myself and had added it to my to read pile from an urbanism/architecture perspective. I was also interested in the format itself. A book of patterns rather than rules feels like a much better way to approach group endeavours. In particular it felt like a good way into writing a …

why is aquinas helping you? bc there is lots of it. bc of the systematic and patient exploration of questions. you need something like this as counterweight. you need it a lot. and all souls that always means so much to you, of loss and life going on regardless. you have always found that v hard to understand -the great fire of londonand your own fire. you got burned, a …

I helped coached my first set of middle school boys basketball games today, and I have to say, I had loads of fun! I didn’t play basketball growing up and I didn’t know much about the game before I signed on to help coach, but after a few weeks with these boys and coach Pederson, I’m beginning to enjoy and maybe even love this game. I’m excited for the rest …

They did it again! Flicker Alley is now hosting Laurel & Hardy: Year Two, a beautifully presented 2-disc Blu-ray set of Stan and Ollie’s 1928 films, their second year (Year Two) working as a duo. These all-new restorations were assembled from archives and collectors from around the world, and once again I was honored to present a bonus video essay providing a detailed overview of the locations appearing in such …

This post is an extract from Bringing the English Curriculum to Life. In order to teach responsively, teachers need to be able to quickly identify misconceptions and check students’ understanding. A hinge question is a diagnostic tool deployed at a point in a lesson – the hinge – where teachers need to know whether [...]

Detective Weekly magazine: ‘famous for long, complete Sexton Blake stories’ This issue of Detective Weekly carries the 18-page Crossword Murder Story written by Coutts Brisbane, one of many hack writers who produced the stories. Crossword puzzles were relatively new then having first appeared in Pearson’s Magazine in 1922 and becoming a national craze by 1925. So this story will have been capitalising on their popularity. They were popular with advertisers …

I've tried a variety of times to keep month notes, week notes, logs, all sorts. Failure, all of them. However. I still need to solve these anxieties for myself: Feeling like time slips by too fast. Feeling like I'm not getting anything done. The system that's finally worked for me is one that's private and low-effort, scrappy and ugly. At the beginning of the year, I started a fresh daily …

Exterior -Image © Wellu Hämäläinen It’s often quite hard to make direct comparisons as to the sustainability of different buildings in the industry as costs, supply chains, and methods of construction to name just a few things are all variable. This is even before size, location and programme are taken into account. So this project in Turku, Finland is really interesting as it is twin identical apartment blocks identical visually …

I haven’t been posting much to the ‘main blog’ recently, but I have been keeping the micro blog updates humming. If you want more content in your RSS reader, you can subscribe to those posts, which are shorter, more scattered, and even less copyedited. It feels bad to have multiple “Recently” headings in the blog listing, so I’ll give them short subtitles from now on. Anyway, what’s up? October was …

Using Mailpit as my default MTA Three years ago I blogged about Using Mailhog as my default MTA and that worked great for me. However, Mailhog development seems to be stalled and it had occasional problems with some perfectly fine mails. So when I stumbled across Mailpit, it was time to switch. The setup is basically the same. Install via AUR: yay -Sy mailpit-bin Adjust the systemd service file using …

Earlier this week I was in Manchester for a conference. I didn't have time for a proper look around at what's new, but I did manage to jump on a tram to Stretford before it got dark on the day I arrived.Why Stretford? Well, in a previous job, I became aware of a project planned for Kingsway which is part of the wider regeneration of the Stretford Mall Shopping centre …

Nearly at the end of these posts! During my two weeks in London researching, I also managed to fit in some sightseeing (it helped that none of my archives were open on Sundays). Mostly this meant the British Museum, but there were also a couple of other favourite haunts plus a museum I'd never managed to make it to before. St George's Gardens, my favourite Bloomsbury spot. Sadly, I didn't …