Recently updated blogs

My 2025 calendars are now available! I have put together some of my favourite recent photographs into a 11″x17″ (28cm x 43cm) calendar. Included are 12 photographs of landscape, wildlife, and nature scenes from British Columbia, Canada. Take a look at the index below for a small preview of the images contained in the calendar. ... Read more The post 2025 Nature Calendar Now Available! appeared first on Michael Russell …

FROM (2022) s03e06 “Scar Tissue” [2024] D: Alexandra La Roche. S: Harold Perrineau, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Eion Bailey, David Alpay, Scott McCord, Ricky He, Corteon Moore. It’s one of the better (if not best) FROM bridging episodes. Considering it’s an extension of last episode’s bridging episode… though this episode does have a couple solid reveals. It also has Moreno and Bailey arguing too much, Perrineau almost entirely in support of …

We chanced this week on a timetable for European night trains in 1999. So it’s interesting to look back and see which trains were running 25 years ago. By 1999, many European high-speed lines were already up and running, so the overnight network had already been trimmed back from its peak in the 1970s and 1980s.

Regular readers will know that I’ve become interested in the history of publishing, both as an exercise in the history of technology and as a way of seeing how communities of thought and discourse organise themselves. In 2020 I published… Continue reading →

Image source: MUBI In anecdotes repeated by Jack Nicholson and Katharina Kubrick, director Stanley Kubrick believed ghost stories were fundamentally optimistic since they suggested continued existence after death. This is an interesting sentiment, though one I don’t agree with. True, some ghost stories allow for closure and redemption. However, in a great many ghost stories, the dead are unable to rest, tormented by the sins committed or wrongs done to …

I’m in the midst of a media cleanse. This started before the election when I canceled my Washington Post subscription. Jeff Bezos can do whatever he wants with the Washington Post, and he’s 100% correct that I don’t trust large media organizations. After the election, I removed all news sources from Feedly except the Atlantic because I find their writing informative and compelling. A friend calls this turtling. Pulling your …

So a large change for today, instead of Outer Space books we are going to Inner Space with Undersea Base. I have blogged about Mae Freeman's book Space Base (1974) several times. In it she showed children visiting a space station in the future. I recently found she had also written a children's book about futurist undersea exploration and children visiting an undersea base in the future. The late 60s …

Credit: Emma Humphries A Repair Mindset for the Current Trouble 2024-11-15T21:00:52+00:00, by Emma Humphries, from Infinite Wishes 🏳️‍⚧️🚀 I’d like you all to think about learning more about machining and maintenance. If you’re sick of tech, and like making physical things1, I recommend it. If the incoming administration goes through with their plan to wreck the economy with grievous tariffs, so that the oligarchs can buy it for pennies on …

The Wellcome Collection has a heavily annotated copy of this (in)famous photograph of Major General Horatio Gordon Robley seated before his collection of 33 mokomokai, Māori preserved heads. Its provenance is Stevens Auction Rooms formerly of 38 King Street, Covent Garden. One note says that this is a “1895 photograph”; this copy was presumably given by Robley to Henry Stevens the auctioneer when he attempted to sell Robley’s mokomokai collection …

Week4に行く / に来る / に帰るTo add a bit more of nuance when indicating action, use the に particle.[Location]に[purpose]に[motion verb]Instead of writing this:公園に行きます。本を読みます。You can combine everything on a single quote:公園に本を読みに行きます。Offering Assistance~ましょうか (with rising intonation).英語を教えましょうか。Week 5Te-formru-verbDrop the verb ending る and add て食べる = 食べてu verbThe conjugation rule depends on what sound the verb ends with.買う = 買って乗る = 乗ってirregular verbsくる = きてする = してexceptions行く ends with く but it's an exception. …

London North Eastern Railway 1950 Brake Corridor Third E1866 (GOLD)Following completion of the ceiling, it has been decided to build out the bulkhead wall at the Holt end of the coach by around an inch. Some packing pieces, which will be hidden, have been fixed to the old wall and will be suitably clad in due course. A start has been made on the upper panels, which are white to …

MPLS Coffee is now available for both iOS and Android to help everyone find top coffee shops in Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

I think this has been long overdue. I will be discontinuing the Mahabharat review series that I started more than two years ago. Despite promising multiple times that I will keep going on, I have come to a realization that I won't be able to. There are multiple reasons for that but the primary reason is that I do not have the time for it. If by some miracle I …

As a kid, I never liked M*A*S*H. That melancholy theme tune and the khaki-and-sand visuals switched me right off. What a stupid kid! I’m watching the show now, at last. I can’t believe (a) how good it is, (b) how much of it there is, and, (c) where Hawkeye has been all my life. I think I’m a little bit in love with him. As well as actually finding him …

For a good overview of Dora Hall musical career, see The World's Worst Records. Not all her records are bad, as Darryl Bullock readily admits : The difference between Dora and other similar artists is that Dora could actually sing. When she sings kid-friendly songs such as Tony the Pony she’s actually quite charming. Her failings, if you will, become most apparent when she tries to sing pop songs; her …