Recently updated blogs

The first thing we hear in Peter Bogdanovich’s tragicomic treasure Paper Moon (1973) is an old recording of the 1932 title song by Harold Arlen, E. Y. “Yip” Harburg, and Billy Rose, a reflection on the seductive power of falsity that keeps returning to the plaintive refrain “It wouldn’t be make-believe / If you believed in me.” The idea in that lyric is that true love has the power to …

In my do-over game of Factorio: Space Age, it became apparent to me why Factorio (and other games) are addictive. Once you get started, you enter the “flow state,” meaning I was fixing one thing and then fixing another …. aaaaannnndddd it’s 2am. Or today when I was tinkering on Vulcanus and missed lunch. How many board game reviews have said “It took half a day, but the time flew …

Last week I wrote about the impossibility of deciding on the single best way to write anything – because readers differ, and what works well for one reader will work poorly for another. (Don’t panic, this isn’t a completely nihilistic position. There’s definitely bad, good, and better writing; there just isn’t best.) There’s an interesting […]

Finding Nemo’s Almanac For many many years I have been a great fan of Nemo’s Almanac, and it seems to me that many of my readers might like to know about it too. It is an excellent diversion, and also makes a great present for bookish friends…. My erudite, literary, knowledgeable readers (yes I mean you) would make the ideal audience. So I will try to describe the whole phenomenon. …

From the fashion shows at the Louvre. 1994Certain photographers who worked professionally through the decades have a propensity for accumulating more and more stuff as time goes on. I count myself among the worst offenders. I've rarely met a lens or a camera body in which I wasn't at least passingly interested. Recently I looked into a drawer that holds most of my lenses and realized that things have gotten …

From snow and subzero temperatures…. We’ve woken up to a spot of snow! ….to flooding that put paid to the Loosemore Family Pre-Christmas Treat: Dinner, Bed & Breakfast at The Angel Hotel, Abergavenny, when Storm Bert (and Tom) came a-calling at the weekend: Storm Bert at Forty Acres Flooding on the lane down to Lower Jury Farm (Video, 20 sec) We woke up to a light dusting of sleety snow …

Margaret Kilgallen: “My hand will always be imperfect, because it’s human.” Glorious.

Slowest week of the year in the Blegsylvanian calendar so of course I'm gonna post though my tablets have gone silent, nothing but canvases of late, them and grids how I'm processing Life in the Assholoscene nowI didn't mention here that earlier this month when I was in Michigan while driving around in my car with Maryland plates I was targeted as a Subaru-American by multiple Pick-up Truck-Americans, GMC-Americans, Ford …

We've made running fine-tunes on Replicate much faster, and the optimizations are open-source.

Apple has added a new routine to the Shortcuts app on iPhone and iPad which lets you set up a single-button way to run a search using Open AI’s Open SearchGPT service. This is bound to be popular, so I thought I’d explain how it works and how to make it usable from the Lockscreen on your iPhone. What is ChatGPT Search? Introduced earlier this year, ChatGPT Search raids Google …

After all the chilly grey tones in my most recent blog post, I felt like I should reassure you that mostly my November life is lived in glorious full colour. It's funny looking back at that post (((here)) if you missed it) because it really doesn't look like it belongs to me, if you know what I mean?! I think it's safe to say that shades of brown and grey …

Like most of us, I have a lot of “Junk” in my life! To many things; collections, stuff, material possesions that I don ‘t really need, so on Thanksgiving I won’t be thankful any of that! So what will I be giving thanks for? My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and his forgiveness and grace! My family; Sherelene, Scott & Diane, Ben, and Tawny & Kearnes. Catherine & Clint, Cade …

Ahead of a national expansion, Gints Zilbalodis' feline survival tale 'Flow' is off to a strong start in limited release.

Well. Here we go. The champions of 2021. The champions of 2022. The champions of 2023. The champions of 2024? The pastry strikes the perfect balance between firm and soft, with just the right amount of "chew", but the taste is maybe just a bit too buttery? The filling is lovely. Fruity, dense, and with a hint of booze, but nothing too overpowering. Just enough to feel a bit cheeky.

Satire warning (slightly updated from six decades ago.1): • • • "Kid, I want you to go over and sit down on that bench that says Group W. Now, kid!" And I walked over to the bench there — and Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the government after committing your special crime. And there was all kinds of mean, nasty,