Recently updated blogs

In The Wall Street Journal last week, I interviewed comedian Ronny Chieng for my House Call column in the Mansion section (go here). Ronny is Comedy Central's Daily Show senior correspondent and co-stars in Interior Chinatown, a new drama-comediy series from Hulu. Ronny's rise is rather amazing. He grew up in Malaysia, came to the US as a 4-year-old when his parents went to college here, returned to Malaysia, went …

I read 12 books in September and October. I enjoyed all of them. Seven of the books were mysteries; five were in other genres.Humor / Cartoon CollectionA Wealth of Pigeons: A Cartoon Collection (2020) by Harry Bliss and Steve MartinIn this book, Steve Martin partnered with the cartoonist Harry Bliss to create a collection of cartoons and comic strips. Steve provided caption and cartoon ideas, and Harry created the artwork. …

A basic compass at $8 from Coghlan's but made for them by a navigation company with over 40 years experience. Good quality at a good price! Read More ... Continue reading Gear review – Coghlan’s Map Compass at PMags.com.

The first intimation I had that maps involved mathematics was when I looked up a map projection and came face to face with the equation that generated it. Math was never my strongest subject, so it’s probably for the best that I never went into cartography. Especially since it turns out that there’s a lot more math hidden behind the maps we use on a daily basis than you might …

From From Peoples into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe, by John Connelly (Princeton University Press, 2020), Kindle pp. 463-464: By 1941, three zones of influence had emerged in Nazi-dominated East Central Europe. The first included areas where Germany destroyed states and left no native administration, itself taking rudimentary control. The second comprised areas where it destroyed states and replaced them with its own political entities, misleadingly called “independent states.” …

Turning the clock back to 2012, when volunteering with CRAMBA I worked with my friend Kristi and developed the Ride Dirt Trails, Not Mud Trails signage. Originally hosted on the CRAMBA page (Internet Archive) this has fallen prey to link rot, so I’m re-posting / re-hosting it here. Back when this was released we very intentionally made it available it under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license along with an Adobe …

My latest post on Now Smell This is a review of three gourmand fragrances: Régime des Fleurs Fleur Éclair (orange blossom and cocoa pastry!), Arquiste Almond Suede (bitter almond marzipan and leather) and Isabelle Larignon Milky Dragon (oolong tea with notes of stone fruits and cream). You can read it here.

A short example of using Grafana, Microsoft SQL Server, and Docker Compose - Tagged: Containers, Grafana, Microsoft SQL Server

Guavas don’t get as big as some other types of fruit trees. And they certainly get bigger in the tropics than they do here. The biggest guava tree I’ve ever seen was on a coffee farm in the Monteverde region of Costa Rica. That said, I have seen some guava trees that are many decades […] The post Old guava trees in Southern California appeared first on Greg Alder's Yard …

What can the complete civil disobedience of the Sudanese Professionals Association teach us at a moment when belief in the efficacy of nonviolent protest is in decline? Celebrating the 1st anniversary of the Sudanese Revolution, 2019 via Shutterstock. On June 3, 2019, the Sudanese Transitional Military Council’s armed forces used gunfire and tear gas to disperse peaceful sit-in demonstrators camped in the center of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. During the action, …

Leonin iconoclasts are zealots that believe the gods of Theros “are more likely to spread doom than peace and bounty,” and honestly, I can’t really blame them. The post Leonin Iconoclast Tactics appeared first on The Monsters Know What They’re Doing.

Mount Everest Region, Nepal glacier snow lines on Sentinel image from 11-12-2024. Mean elevation of snow lines is 5800 m. As the post-monsoon period progresses, glacier snow lines have been rising in the Himalaya. Will this be similar to last year and in 2020/21 when the snow line on many glaciers remained high right through much of the winter? Here we examine Sentinel 2 imagery from Kanchenjunga Glacier on the …

3 weeks ago I was busy building a workshop with my dad. It inevitably took more time and brainspace than anticipated. It is still not finished. But I had to stop as I had run out of dad time, I needed to get back to my life, and I needed a break. Of course I made a timelapse. Here it is: In August I did a casual 3 day bikepack …

Bob Dylan “The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar” “The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar,” written and recorded in the tail end of Dylan’s Christian era, is a chugging, manic blues rock song with scattered images and anecdotes that add up to a sense of impending apocalypse. And not “apocalypse” as we tend to think of that word today, but more in the original sense – apocalypse as the …

BOGOTÁ, Colombia (AP) — A team that played in a basketball tournament in Russia usurped the colors and name of the Colombian national team, the country’s basketball federation said Thursday [August 22]. The federation said it will take legal action “for the improper use of our image and logo” and that it never received a formal proposal to participate in the tournament in the Russian city of Perm. [emphasis added] …