Recently updated blogs

To kick off the year I paid a visit to the Itchen with my younger brother Rich and the plan was to drown some maggots and catch what we could. The river was up a bit with some colour but absolutely fishable, the plan was to move around and trot areas where I know fish hold. The main target was Grayling but hoped to locate some Roach which I know …

A different kind of month with a different category of reading. CHINA Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China (5th-13th cent.), tr. David Hinton – The teenagers in The Story of the Stone play various games based on their memorization of massive amounts of classical Chinese poetry. I revisited an arbitrary sliver of it, the “mountains and rivers” school, in David Hinton’s Buddhist-leaning translation. It made the Qing games …

Dear friends and comrades in loitering With a heavy heart and much regret I’m cancelling today’s in person meet-up. I’m heeding travel warnings and also looking out of the window with some alarm and I simply don’t want to put anyone (including me) at risk. I think this is only the second time, outside of pandemic restrictions, this has happened and I hope you understand I have set up a …

One of the little side-quests I’ve had on the agenda is to build some clamps to help out when the eventual planking process. Now, you might say, “hey, there are plenty of clamps available for purchase in stores, why would you want to make your own?” Fair question, and to answer it, we need to remember that this particular boat uses lapstrake (or “clinker” for those across the pond) construction. …

In the previous update I talked about the process of designing my first bass guitar, my Delfinen Bass, looking at how it differs from a regular electric guitar design. This set of notes will catch us up on how the build of that has got going. Refinement Before we start in the workshop side of things, a quick update on the CAD model, as it’s had a couple of tweaks …

And so, another year, another list of translations! I’m doing something a bit different this year: I’m posting the entries that I have today – and wishing you a happy (still-not-quite-here-in-my-time-zone) 2025 – but I’ll finish the list by Friday. This 2024th year has been full of surprises right up until the very end so checking the rest of the publishers on my list has been the last thing on …

This baobab and ginger tea is the perfect cold and flu season tea. It is packed with antioxidants, multivitamins and nutrients that support your immune system, and overall health. What is baobab Baobab is indigenous to the African continent, Madagascar and Australia, where it stands as some of the world’s oldest trees. It holds a lot of importance in various African cultures as a symbol of wisdom and longevity. Despite …

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It’s the end of the year and that means it’s the appropriate time to post an end of the year list. Not November. Not even the middle of December. But at the end of the year. So here is the Breaking More Waves Favourite Albums of 2024 list. There’s no big commentary or no real explanation of the records here. This is because if you are the sort of person …

We are no longer in a culture war, we are fighting instead an epistemological war, where authoritarians seek to replace process with diktat: why truth is a gradient and not a boolean. Captain Jay Zeamer, Jr., as aviation historian Martin Caidin tells it, was a barely-competent aviator who struggled to earn his pilot wings and fell asleep in the copilot seat during combat missions. Eventually passing his check flight, he …

Shipping Forecast Rosary The Shipping Forecast is celebrating its centenary. I’ve always loved this very British “accidental slice of nonsense poetry” About 15 years ago, I did a little project to make a ‘rosary’ for what is often referred to as a ‘secular prayer’. Shipping Forecast Rosary – South East Iceland Each of the forecast’s regions are represented in laser-cut marine plywood, and strung – in the order of the …

Intermezzo Sally Rooney I like the way she writes. I found the first half gripping, then felt it was going adrift, but returned to it with delight, because of her prose and the fresh way she writes about people. Especially in sexual relationships. I keep going despite several breaks because she can really write. However though I have re started many times I still haven’t finished it so I must …

Been to the movies lately? With so many channels and streaming choices these days, going to a movie theater seems a bit archaic, but we still enjoy seeing a movie on the big screen. I know we could wait till it’s streaming, but there’s a certain feeling you get when you settle into your seat, the surround sound envelops you and you become totally immersed in another world.In our area, …

I think some of my early thoughts on the CEO killer have panned out. The story of Luigi’s Mansion has become even more ridiculous as time has gone on. The news concerning drones is laughable dribble. As 2025 has started out, we’re greeted with an exploding Cybertruck outside a Trump hotel1, along with someone driving through a crowd in New Orleans2. Whether these events were truly random acts or they …