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Researching and tracking the latest slang can now draw upon statistical analysis of online data. As 2024 draws to its end and talk among lexicographers, culture journalists and language buffs turns to ‘words of the year’, I’m immensely grateful to Randoh Sallihall of Unscramblerer for providing me with his datasets showing lookups (Google searches) for the most popular recent slang expressions… Most searched for slang words in United Kingdom: 1. …

An easy-to-make, vegetarian mushroom casserole with noodles that works with any sort of mushroom, wild or store-bought. Want meat? Add some! Mushroom Casserole is the latest post on Hunter Angler Gardener Cook.

All skeined up, that yarn looks innocent, doesn't it? What, me tangle? Never!But when you first start in with skeins, it seems danger lurks. Perhaps that innocent looking skein will snarl into an awful tangle, never to come right. ...snarl into an awful tangle...Let's take the monster by the tail and see what happens. Poke the tail (now colored red) into and through the skein. The skein

I made this drawing in Paint. I’m guessing it took about four hours spread over three days. If I were a more experienced artist I assume it would take less time, but maybe not radically less? I’m also auditing my Creating Comics co-author Leigh Ann Beaver’s Drawing 1 class every Monday and Wednesday morning this semester, which has noticeably upped my game. Let’s call that Step One: Practice drawing. Don’t …

Usually, when working with things that require configuration, such as databases, caches, and mailers, you have to define them in their respective configuration files beforehand. So, for instance, you need to define all the mailers for your application in the config/mail.php file like so. return [ 'mailers' => [ 'smtp' => [ 'transport' => 'smtp', 'host' => env('MAIL_HOST', 'smtp.mailgun.org'), 'port' => env('MAIL_PORT', 587), 'encryption' => env('MAIL_ENCRYPTION', 'tls'), 'username' => env('MAIL_USERNAME'), …

A quick question to the gallery assistant regarding where might be the best place to start the exhibition turned into a much appreciated five minute introduction to their favourite piece from the show. Turner Prize nominee (probably soon to be the winner) Delaine Le Bas’s, ’What We Don’t Know Won’t Hurt Us?’ was, we were told, once exhibited as just the oval shaped embroidery piece at the centre, but later …

When Alvydas Šlepikas’ book Mano vardas – Marytė (‘My name is Marytė’) was published in Lithuania in 2011, it caused a nationwide discussion. Beautifully written and based on historical facts, it was the most read novel in Lithuania in 2012. Since then this multi-award winning book has had numerous editions...

The birding walks are full, but there's still a little room left to lunch with Thom and Mark Comon, attend the Mastering Nikon JPEG presentation, or sign up for the Nikon Z50II Introduction talk. I'm warning you, if you're in LA and miss the in-person stuff, you're going to miss out on more than seeing what Thom's wearing this week. I said surprises would be in store (literally). I mean …

Two truths seem evident to me in the tabletop RPG hobby: There are many "right" answers to how we play tabletop RPGs – including which RPGs we play. There's rarely only one right answer to any aspect of this hobby. Instead, there are many right answers, each fitting different people, groups, playstyles, and other circumstances. It's hard to understand why other people would choose the right answer that isn't ours. …

Back to the Pilot Field, back for the Sussex Cup, and back for another meeting of Hastings United and Newhaven. Haven’t we been here before? Well, yes, but so much keeps changing, not least the visitors in their rather cool looking ‘new’ away kit. Very smart. And the football was smart too, as a much […]

18th November 2024 The new Republican presidency-congress in the United States as well as developments in other countries mean that in addition to the illiberalism we have had so far, there is more – perhaps worse – to come. So how should liberals respond? Here are three suggestions, humbly put forward. 1. Do not respond, if you can, to catastrophism. You are going to think how bad things can be, …

I’m not technical when it comes to singing and use lots of visual imagery in my teaching. But does it help or can it be confusing? I came across a great satirical article the other day: Singing Teacher Uses Another, Even Better Analogy. It was pointing out that some of the analogies used by singing teachers can, on the face of it, seem ridiculous. “The sound doesn’t come out of …

Hep As Was and Maybe Still IsFrom Mark Vieira’s book, Into the Dark: The Hidden World of Film Noir, 1941-1950, here is thought expressed by critic John T. McManus for PM magazine, circa October 12, 1944: “That ultra-aware modernism, “hep,” is a very handy word to have around for a picture like To Have and Have Not.” So what was it to be hep? Simplest definition suggests awareness of what …

The Almeida Theatre’s Angry and Young season has been one of the highlights of the year with a repertory and rather revelatory run of Look Back in Anger and Roots. To that, the venue now adds a selection of rehearsed readings that pick up on some of the themes and concepts prevalent in the main […]

The answer is traverse. It's always traverse. I recently came across a Stack Overflow question about collecting and handling sum types (AKA discriminated unions or, in this case, result types). While the question was tagged functional-programming, the overall structure of the code was so imperative, with so much interleaved I/O, that it hardly qualified as functional architecture. Instead, I gave an answer which involved a minimal change to the code. …