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shmup (n): Shortened form of “shoot-em-up;” a genre of 2D video games based on shooting down waves of enemies while dodging waves of projectiles. (Usually in an aircraft, usually scrolling in one direction, but not necessarily either.) Japanese synonym: STG (short for "shooting game"). Shmups are one of the most fundamental forms of action game; most of what I used to play on the Atari 2600 as a kid qualified …

James Gilchrist Swan was a remarkable individual. Born in 1818 he spend most of his life in the Pacific North West, now part of Washington state in the US. Having travelled widely before arrival there, he took on a number of roles for the US government and other interests, becoming an Indian Agent, a temporary representative of a railroad company, and other such frontier roles. He was also a

I’ve been following the US election results to do some calculations on the final numbers, and frustratingly they’re still not there yet; the latest figures show only 98.3% reported two weeks after polling day. Even a week after the election, though, it was clear that the result was much closer than most of the early indications had suggested, when it seemed that Harris was 3 to 4 points behind and …

I had planned to do this next part much earlier, but I had to travel to Prague again for work in late September and much of October. As an aside I did see an interesting train bbq on a walk to a local castle called Karlstejn on a weekend I had off while there - and what a cool idea for a train! I want it in the backyard of …

The Last Quarter Moon is Saturday November 23. In the evening Venus is in the "Handle" of the Teapot of Sagittarius. Mercury begins to sink back to the horizon. Saturn is in the north western sky. Jupiter is now visible in the evening sky along with Saturn and Venus. In the morning Mars and Jupiter continue to draw apart. Mars comes close to the Beehive cluster on the 28th.The Last …

Highlights I’m finding it easier to balance my time as a new father. I moped about two of my blog posts doing poorly, and then they did well. I experimented with a stacked diff workflow for software development and liked it except for git’s weaknesses. Goal grades At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals: Enjoy family time …

Greetings from the New Management! I'm currently up to my elbows in The Regicide Report (coming to you in 2026). In the meantime, I wrote a bundle of world building notes that won't ever make it into a novel because they're far too policy-oriented (translation: deathly boring to normal readers). After all, it's a civil service/politics satire series, and to give it some substance I had to work out what …

This is a personal collection, subject to change at any time. A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein, and Sara IshikawaA classic on architecture and urban design that you’ll find on many lists like this. What keeps it here for me — as a text that has shaped my technological worldview — is the very notion of describing problems and solutions or needs and constructions as patterns, and building …

Indie pop trio ENY explores the realms of electropop and guitar music with conviction and has a seriously majestic sound. Hailing from Hereford, the project is led by Sharon Kosobucka. Originally born in Poland, she has been in the UK for five years and is gracing the country with their punchy dream-like pop. Releasing new single ‘Die Like This’, ENY combine catchy melodies and powerful synths to draw you into …

A great escape Developers: Atari Games, Tengen (SAM Coupé version) Publishers: Atari Games, Domark (all the computer ports except SAM Coupé), Enigma Variations (SAM Coupé), Ocean (Amiga, C64, ZX Spectrum re-releases) Release Years: 1989 (Arcade), 1990 (Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS, SAM Coupé, ZX Spectrum), 1991 (Budget re-release for Atari ST), 1992 (Budget re-releases for Amiga, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum) Available On: Arcade, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari …

[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.]In June of 2000, the power shut off across much of the San Francisco Bay area. There simply wasn’t enough electricity to meet demands, so more than a million customers were disconnected in California's largest load shed event since World War II. It was just one of the many rolling blackouts that hit the state in the early 2000s. …

Photographed with a Fujifilm X-T5 + XF150-600mmF5.6-8 R LM OIS WR – 150 mm focal length – 1/210″ at f/8 – ISO 125 Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, United States – Newe Sogobia (Eastern Shoshone), Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla, Shoshone-Bannock, and Tséstho’e (Cheyenne) land This photograph, titled “Prospectors Mountain, Grand Teton National Park. November, 2024.”, was originally published on All-Encompassing Trip.

In health and medicine, we have many government agencies, and private philanthropies, devoted to many specific medical conditions, and also to studying and reforming medicine in general, at a meta level. In education and research, we also have many government agencies, and also private philanthropies, devoted to many specific topic areas, and also to studying and reforming education and research as a whole. Regarding commerce and markets, we also have …

The news recently came through that the Guardian was unhooking itself from the drip drip drip of the Twitterverse. It was coming for a long time, they said, a decision that “the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives.” It made headlines, unsurprisingly—and seems to be a vanguard in a fresh exodus away from Twitter after the dispiriting election results in early November. The news meant …

Today I learned how to use shell scripting to activate my virtual environment automatically when I change directories. Automatically activating virtual environments Since I can remember, whenever I cd into a directory that contains a virtual environment folder .venv, I always want to activate that virtual environment. I typed source .venv/bin/activate so often that I even created an alias so that typing activate was enough. Today, I wondered if there …