Recently updated blogs

It’s been a while since the last update, summer, holidays, birthdays, etc have all taken precedent over the last few months but there been progress! We’ve laid a lot of sleepers! I did make full use of child labour too! Abbie’s made a decent job of the sleepers she’s laid, probably between a third and a half of this board. My wife Kerry was helping me thread chairs as some …

Top stuff from English jazzman John Surman. View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize A lovely album with a mix of avant-garde/free/spiritual/post bop. A majority is on the free side though. It’s bombastic and chaotic at times and slower paced and more melodic in parts. There are plenty of different interesting passages throughout. It keeps …

Specifically in this case a Tenor Baritone guitar? I mean, I already have a tenor guitar (more than one), and I have a baritone guitar too. Why would I need a tenor baritone? That’s just silly. And yet. Here is one anyway. A mystery, it is. Anyway, hi. How are you? — JS

The Arabian Heritage Collection by Areej Le Doré is a deliberately minimalist collection, focused on the three materials that are not only critical to Arabian or mukhallat style perfumery but happen to be the recurring motifs of each Areej Le Doré collection – ambergris (Al Ambar), oud (Al Oud) and sandalwood (Al Sandal). As always, when I smell an Areej Le Doré collection, I try to evaluate what I am …

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is …

I joined my Silver Lining for Learning (SLL) co-hosts – Chris Dede, Curt Bonk, and Lydia Cao (with Yong Zhao unable to attend due to travel) – to deliver a keynote at the Global Learning for an Open World Conference. SLL has been a labor of love over the past five years, with more than […]

Back in the summer, I decided to get more serious about controlling my Type 2 diabetes, and I enrolled in a program that I found through my insurance company. Overall, things have gone quite well: my blood glucose is down, my weight is down, and I’ve been able to cut my medications to about a third of what I was taking before. But nothing is perfect, and the iPhone app …

The narrator of Sharon Bolton’s new novel is the very definition of a nosy neighbour. Living in the middle of three adjoining cottages with very thin walls makes it easy to hear the people on either side: the narrator knows what music they listen to and what they watch on television, who they speak to on the telephone and what time they get out of bed in the morning. In …

Also rated feeders, AllHere fraud, expensive banana and AI on the blockchain.

What was it like to watch The Box Of Delights for the first time back in 1984? Unless you've actually got the box, there's only one way to find out...

The crew of the USS Cerritos are faced with a classic diplomatic mission in “Of Gods and Angles” as Captain Freeman and her crew work to bring peace between two races of photonic beings, the Orbs and the Cubes. Seemingly standalone from the multiversal storyline running through this season, this episode is a fun comfort food episode of Lower Decks — there’s some good character work, some funny jokes, and …

Yesterday at QCon, I got to give a talk with my colleague Dan Fike about the Principal Engineer role. You can also watch the video on YouTube. The content itself is largely based on the High-Context Triad of blog posts I wrote in late 2023: Layers of context Navigating ambiguity Useful tradeoffs are multi-dimensional I hope you enjoy the talk! (Unfortunately I don’t have a recording of Dan Fike’s portion, …

My website has been static since — checks new search index — at least July 2014!I’ve gone through so many static site generators and custom build scripts I’ve lost track. In that time I’ve amassed quite a big blog. Finding old articles has become harder than it should be. I need search.Finding PagefindBecause my website is “serverless”† I have to implement client-side search. That means JavaScript. That means probably not …

We also answered questions about when it’s time to fire your financial advisor, the impact of the presidential election on the markets and economy, investing a pile of cash during a bull market and the best hedge for China invading Taiwan. Further Reading: The Problem With Timing the Housing Market 1Who am I kidding? I love it! The post Timing the Housing Market: When Should You Sell? appeared first on …

Check out As in guillotine... for more. This is my bi-weekly “newsletter” delivered straight to your inbox, with at least one guaranteed typo I’ll catch after hitting send! If email’s not your thing, don’t hesitate to switch to the RSS feed. I encourage you to click through the main links (there’s only five and they’re all interesting!), and if you enjoy something — send me (or them) an email, leave …