Recently updated blogs

Planets Align in ShifnalShifnal has been on my destination list for ages, and today, everything fell into place. My monthly scan of Ramblers Group walks revealed the Shrewsbury Group was heading there—perfect timing. That’s the beauty of the Ramblers: one subscription grants access to countless walks and groups, each filled with fascinating people.In today’s group, I met a man who very nearly ran the best steak pub in the county …

I suggested the idea of a “links initiative” as a way to kick-start the more daunting task of building a front-end resource directory.Basically just blog your favourite dev related links and maybe they can be collated to bootstrap a directory. I started listing and then a client project landed and to my shame I totally forgot about the idea. Until now!So finally, without further ado — BTW I have no …

It was so typical. Just his damned luck. Alan forced himself to unclench his fists, knowing that his anger had no productive outlet, and would only make the situation worse. These things happened; that was life. And it was only a tablet computer. Thousands of miles from home, on the last day of a holiday trip, and he’d dropped the damned thing. It had all his photos, and his work, …

November 25, 2024 Our heroine has a couple of weekend holiday trips this year, and since the people that she will see don’t overlap (that’s handy!), she’s decided to really refine a small wardrobe and take it for all of her trips… AND!!! She’s really being brought down by the darkness that comes so early in the Northern Hemisphere this time of year. Therefore, she’s decided that she’s going to …

I’ve just returned from a short trip to Australia, having been invited to take part in the annual Melbourne Queer Film Festival, which this year was inspired, in part, by my 2017 book David Bowie Made Me Gay. I had a wonderful time: I met some amazing, creative people and got to visit an incredible city. And, while I was on the other side of the planet, I had some …

Happy Thanksgiving! This is the time when so many of us are remembering, with gratitude, all the people, creatures and things in our lives that make it rich and full. This friend was at our south bird garden hoping to find some lunch. The Hawk is another example of why mine and Chris’ lives are very fortunate. We have wildlife and plants and weather all around us and they affect …

As a [mighty] land-owner, I've also had another look at land areas [prev+prev]. There were no hectares until the metre had been triangulated out and therefore defined in 1793. A square 100m x 100m has an area of 1 hectare. Obvs from the name, if you have The Greek, there are 100 ares [10m x 10m] to the hectare. Our modest house occupies about a ½ are, while Crowe's, the …

Since opening in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge has been captured in paintings, photographs, and illustrations by scores of artists, each rendering the Bridge’s beauty and power in their own way. But it’s the poetic, enchanting Brooklyn Bridge depicted by Johann Berthelsen, which he titled “New York Skyline From the Brooklyn Navy Yard,” that I find most mesmerizing. Born in Denmark the same year as the Bridge was completed, Berthelsen moved …

Last week two additional tracks were appended to digital editions of Blackbox Life Recorder 21f / In a Room7 F760. The two tracks are the isolated drum track from blackbox life recorder 21f and an ambient mix of the same track titled blackbox life recorder 21 drumreesapella 760_16bit . The ambient mix was previously available as a promotional mp3 download , but is now available in higher quality for all …

Astraba - Sink The Moon Apart from this being a London band's debut there doesn't seem to be a lot of background to Astraba, which can feel suspicious for ones so fully formed, but they're a band who seem to have much in front of them, routed in layered psychedelia that shifts from Mazzy Star-adjacent wistfulness to spiralling surges, all still ethereal at heart and all that. Augustin Bousfield - …

[1981]One of the great post-154 albums. If you like your post-punk nice and gloomy yet sometimes uplifting, the incredibly dreamy Fiction Tales LP is for you. Along with Alex Johnson's inventive idiosyncratic vocal style & melodies we get serious post-punk drummage, classic goth bass lines and an array stellar dreamlike guitar textures. Chuck in weird atmospheric sound fx, a bit of piano, synth waves and some sax on a coupla …

The Great War is on and all the young men are heading “over there” so when a pediatric surgeon decides that his place is with his young patients, he is scorned for shirking his duty and loses the woman he loves. Home Media Availability: No official release yet. Yankee Doodle do or die Hollywood went […]

Occasionally, you have to accept when you fail. Week notes are such a failure to me. My day job almost makes it impossible for me to collect anything helpful I want to reflect on during the weekend. But I love to write regularly. So, let’s try something new and also stick to the advice of Jeff — please publish and share more. His post also includes two further tips to …

Flemish, Wallonian, German and Czech: these are the origins of the beer styles tackled in today's set, from Czech brewery Zichovec, in collaboration with Swedish, English, Dutch and French brewers, all as part of their Winter Affair Gossip series. That's from last winter -- I bought them several months ago for a knockdown price from the Craft Central bargain bucket.I would like to think that pilsner is exempt from craft-style …