Recently updated blogs

ONE OF MY FAVORITE WAYS of being with my clients is when the dialogue suddenly time travels into the future. You can almost feel it when it’s about to happen. A tale of a frustrated interaction with a colleague or a terrible edict from the C-suite starts to slow down, and there’s an almost furtive moment when something else pops up—like a little furred creature cautiously peeking their head up …

Organisations know they want to change, but they often assume that the only way to change is to do a big technology project. They call in some big and small vendors, and then they’re “procuring an IT system”. 3 reasons why they might start with the words instead. 1 - Immediately impactful Tom Loosemore: “The single thing you could do to quickly improve public services? Redesign all the words.” Rewriting …

This beautiful canyon is under serious threat California geology is complicated. Unlike any other state, it is affected by the interactions of all three kinds of plate boundaries: divergent (the crust pulling apart), convergent (the crust compressing together), and transform (the crust sliding laterally). All of these forces have formed a complex landscape with incredible scenery unlike any other place in the world. The Coast Ranges province is one of …

Hello! Here are some awesome deals for programming books and courses during the 2024 festive season. My ebooks🔗 Offers valid till 30-Nov-2024. You can get them on Leanpub: All 13 Books bundle — $15 (normal price $32), learn Regular Expressions, Linux CLI tools, Python, Vim and more! Linux CLI Text Processing bundle — $10 (normal price $20), grep, sed, awk, perl and ruby one-liners, GNU coreutils, CLI computing Learn by …

An article I wrote for the Conversation on Meta’s recent announcement around making their generative artificial intelligence (AI) models available to defence and national security organisations. Read here

The 38th Annual Irish Economic Association Conference is being organized by the Department of Economics at Queen’s University Belfast and will be held at the Hilton Belfast, 4 Lanyon Place, Belfast (BT1 3LP), from Thursday, May 8th to Friday, May 9th, 2025. The keynote speakers are Professor John List, Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago, and Professor Renée Adams, Professor of Finance at …

Oscar Gough & Ellie Spooner in the Welkin © Craig Fuller Lucy Kirkwood’s The Welkin quickly established itself as one of the great plays of the 21st century. Touching upon classic cornerstones Twelve Angry Men and The Crucible, it finds its own path, using the trajectory of Halley’s comet to combine past and present, an intoxicating blend that grips and surprises and puts Kate Bush firmly back on the map …

Vastlite Sima Specifications Introduction Torch in use Build quality LED, bezel, lens, reflector and beam Size and comparison User interface Batteries and charging Performance Beamshots Conclusion Price Product page Specifications Brand/model Vastlite Sima LED 2*Osram P9 Maximum lumens 2,200 lm Maximum beam intensity 11,050 cd Maximum throw 210 m Battery 2*14500 3.7V Li-ion 1000mAh Onboard charging Yes (USB-C) Material Aluminium Modes 5 Blinkies Strobe, SOS, Beacon Reflector OP Waterproof IPX8 …

Feeling quite proud of myself for getting my broken microwave repaired instead of mindlessly taking it to the dump and buying a new one. Only cost £45 to replace a blown capacitor.

It’s been a while. I’ve been coming through things, and still am, but here I am, writing again. In the café at Wrexham General station, the kind barista is putting up the Christmas tree while I drink my morning coffee. I choose to take it as a sign of hope. It may snow before November is out. I will love again the way snow falls through the street light outside …

….Well, I can certainly see why this is called an “Acid Western”. “El Topo” – or “The Mole” (Alejandro Jodorowsky, who also directs) is a gunslinger on the Mexican frontier. For a chunk of the film, he is accompanied by his son, “Hijo” (Brontis Jodorowsky, Alejandro’s own son), or a woman he names “Marah” (Mara Lorenzio). At first El Topo is simply a sort of knight-errant, heading off on missions …

This post is inspired by a poll that Ellen Jovin, aka the Grammar Table, ran in September. Before I get into that, let me point out that there is a Kickstarter to support the documentary about her spreading grammatical joy across all 50 US states. It'd be lovely to be able to see that film in a (BrE) cinema/(AmE) theater or event near you, near me and near everybody. So …

We categorized songs in the Billboard Top 10 to see if love songs are on the decline.

Hey, remember this blog? Yeah, me too. Anyway. Almost fifteen years ago, I posted here an account of my decades-long efforts to emulate the lasagna that my grandmother made for my family in my youth. In the intervening years I've made adjustments to my recipe. I actually swapped out fresh mozzarella right from Caputo's salt water tub for whole-milk mozzarella, also from Caputo's. Which I shred, rather than apply in …

There’s been increasing talk about how blue light from phones and computer screens could be a potential cause of skin damage. Is it worth worrying about, or is it just marketing? This topic is going to be a two-parter. In this installment we’re going to talk about visible light damage, and how you can protect your skin; in part 2, ... Read more Source