Recently updated blogs

A dozen years ago I shared my mother-in-law’s recipe for apple sharlotka (which family just calls “apple thing”), a lightly sweetened apple dessert that’s as much a thick crêpe as it is a cake. It’s got a short ingredient list and is the kind of thing you make on a whim. It’s so rustic and simple, I honestly didn’t expect it to cause a ruckus — it’s not apple pie, …

Let's get these out of the way! Bookmarks related to tech and web development Likes* are the best by Hagen Terschüren. Paged.js. Making Math Accessible by Dan O’Mahony and Ricky Onsman. My Eleventy site setup by Anh. 88x31 archive by . W3C badge custom element demo by Patrick Brosset. Adding Search to an Eleventy Site Without Client-side JavaScript by Philip Renich. My script to auto-delete Google Maps reviews by Ash …

This paragraph from Peter Coy's essay in the (paywalled) New York Times opinion section is just great. Computer scientists are continually surprised by the creativity displayed by new generations of A.I. Consider that lying is a sign of intellectual development: Children learn to lie around age 3, and they get better at it as they develop. As a liar, artificial intelligence is way past the toddler stage.Later in the same …

Norway, 1956: Housing Directorate’s type drawing 108A compact modern three bedroom house.Nordiske Småhus by Helge Abrahamsen, 1958. (Oslo, Norway) —from my library

Hew Locke asks us to consider imperial power as a grim yet alluring excess of the symbolic, not just as the exercise of brute force. The proliferating connections – from object to object and among the intricate details of his work – produce the uncomfortable sensation that empire’s manifold effects cannot be fully grasped.

Horns above me Tail ahin me Hooves beneath me Tripe within me Hail to the Hornèd Fáilte to the Fleet of Foot May fur fly Voice bell loud and strong Trapped in the rut Oh dear

I was in London last week for a few days and decided on a whim to have one entire day - or thereabouts - just drinking cask. "Unwise" I hear you say and of course I can see why, but arriving at a somewhat gloomy and rainy Euston and just as gloomy Aldgate, somehow pints of lager didn't appeal.As usual, we inspected the flat and having confirmed all is well, …

I've been very quiet here over the last couple of weeks. My mother, Delia Maria Johnson, already in hospital since 5th November or so, took a turn for the worse and began a rapid decline. She died peacefully after some days, and to be honest I’ve really not been myself since then. There's an extra element to the sense of loss when (as it approaches) you are powerless to do …

Thank you for a fascinating website.I have been researching the Wood family who lived in the area for many generations and in doing so have been looking at thousands of pages of parish records for around 1700-1800. One of the roads mentioned appears to be Crops Field Lane. Do you or your viewers have any information where this was located?Philip Jacquet

A quick project update that has been somewhat overdue: Openness has been a core building block and underlying philosophy of the web since its earliest days. However, the concept — and to an even larger degree, the term itself — have come under a lot of pressure. Largely that is because it carries many positive associations. In other words, Openness has become a victim of its own success. So where …

Our second panto of the season saw us tick off a new venue, with a trip to Catford’s Broadway Theatre. Panto legend, Susie McKenna returns to write and direct the festive production for a second year, with a feminist retelling of Sleeping Beauty. A classic panto with a modern twist, it’s a fantastic production with a distinctly Lewisham vibe. Our story begins (as is traditional) with the birth of a …

You may see a lot of tools, both good and bad, on the used market. But you will rarely if ever see a finishing brush on the used market. They simply wear out. These days brushes are considered largely a utility item in the woodworking world. Artists are known to be picky when it comes to brushes, and artist brushes can be quite expensive. But in the woodworking realm, finishing …

Thank god there’s only a week left of this bullshit. I am truly sick of somehow everyone deciding that “Christmas” means “all of December”. Just fuck off. All of it.

“All entities are shy retiring octopuses that squirt out a dissembling ink as they withdraw into the ontological shadows”. Timothy Morton (2013) Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). 3-4. The Christmas lights tumble out of their battered box, expanding like an uncaged octopus. In reverse they will assume the un-packability of a fully splayed kitten: legs and arms extended to deny …

This past year, I’ve been working with Marco Zero, an investigative news agency in Recife, in the northeast of Brazil, and Nest, an exhibition space in The Hague, to bring you a collection of 100 short, location-based podcasts, on the history of the Dutch colonisation efforts in northeastern Brazil. This project was funded through a grant by the Dutch Stimuleringsfonds, as a response to an Open Call which asked to …