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  1. Derrick Bang on Film, , more info

    Vengeance Most Fowl: It's a gnome run!
    Vengeance Most Fowl (2024) • View trailer4.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG, and needlessly, for mild rude humorAvailable via: NetflixBy Derrick Bang Filmmaker Nick Park already had won two Oscars, the second for Wallace & Gromit’s The Wrong Trousers, when American viewers finally got to see that hilariously clever claymation short via a Wednesday evening PBS screening on March 20, 1995. That’s how long it took to cross the …
    By Derrick Bang, 974 words
  2. All Edinburgh Theatre.com, , more info

    Summerhall confirms EdFringe 2025
    Summerhall Arts charity announces future plans Summerhall will be a venue at EdFringe 2025 according to Summerhall Arts, the independent charity set up in 2023 to take over the running of Summerhall’s arts and performance programme. The charity says that it is now welcoming applications for performers and theatre companies for this year’s fringe. And that besides being a venue at future fringes, it intends to run a “diverse programme …
    By Thom Dibdin, 609 words
  3. theatreCat, , more info

    TITANIQUE.   Criterion theatre. W1
    NO SINKING FEELINGS HERE, GIRLFRIEND Call it a jukebox musical if you like, but only if the jukebox came alive, went rogue and started tottering around the stage on rubber feet hurling insults and doing its own thing like the one in the Kuttner sci-fi story which got modified by aliens from the future. Curiosity drove me into a snug balcony seat up against the sound-desk (high-fives with the young …
    By Libby Purves and friends, 677 words
  4. My Life 100 Years Ago, , more info

    The Top Posts of 1924
    Belated happy New Year, everyone, and welcome to the (can it be?) eighth year of My Life 100 Years Ago.* J.C. Leyendecker, January 3, 1925 This year’s J.C. Leyendecker New Year’s baby apparently just registered his new car and immediately has to repair it, which I gather is par for the course for ca. 1925 vehicles. John Held Jr., January 5, 1925 Cars can be fun, though, as you can …
    By Mary Grace McGeehan, 804 words
  5. The Adventurers Guild, , more info

    Companions of Xanth – Ogre, Ogre and Dragon on a Pedestal
    By IlmariI bet that “sail” is meant to be taken literallyWould this do the trick?Apparently notSo, here I was in front of a shack. I still had no idea where I was supposed to be heading and Nada suggested I should take a look at who’s living there. I knocked on the door and an old lady called Ma Anathe (get it, it’s like anathema) let us in.I guess Christmas …
    By Ilmari Jauhiainen, 955 words
  6. MUBI | Notebook, , more info

    Mike Leigh’s Humanist Gestures
    Illustrations by Michelle Perez.It’s odd that a movie like Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) should have an unsettling climax. Mike Leigh’s film stars Sally Hawkins as Poppy, a bubbly kindergarten teacher who takes a few driving lessons with a curmudgeonly Scott (Eddie Marsan). He dispatches conspiratorial rants, replete with right-wing dog whistles, and berates her for her clumsiness. He is, in the language of professional wrestling, the heel to Poppy’s face. Poppy’s life …
    By Sam Bodrojan, 3,246 words
  7. Valhalla's Things, , more info

    Winter
    Posted on January 10, 2025 Tags: madeof:atoms, craft:painting, medium:acrylic A few days ago1 I wanted to paint, but I didn’t know what to paint, so I did a few more colour tests to find out which green combinations I can get out of the available yellows and blues (and greens) acrylic I have (from a cheap student grade line). I liked the cool grey tones in the second to last …
    190 words
  8. Shtetl-Optimized, , more info

    Above my pay grade: Jensen Huang and the quantum computing stock market crash
    Update (Jan. 13): Readers might enjoy the Bankless Podcast, in which I and Justin Drake of the Ethereum engineering team discuss quantum computing and its impact on cryptocurrency. I learned something interesting from Justin—namely that Satoshi has about $90 billion worth of bitcoin that’s never been touched since the cryptocurrency’s earliest days, much of which (added: the early stuff, the stuff not additionally protected by a hash function) would be …
    By Scott, 765 words
  9. SPINE, , more info

    What Message Does (Hyper)realistic Photography Send on a Book Cover?
    Photography as part of book cover design is a relatively recent addition to book cover designers’ and marketers’ toolboxes. It was not until the late 20th century—as camera equipment became more accessible—that photographic book covers began to gain popularity for their ability to convey realism, emotion and immediacy to the audience.Now that designers are able to blend graphic design, photos and typography freely, the possibilities are endless when it comes …
    By Linnea Gradin, 1,037 words
  10. Europe by Rail | The Definitive Guide, , more info

    ERT Newslines Jan 2025
  11. Cassidy's blog, , more info

    A couple CSS tricks for HTML Dialog elements
    I recently was messing around with the HTML <dialog> element. It’s really handy for native dialogs without a ton of JavaScript. If you want to see a decent quick example of them in action, you can check out my game Jumblie and click the Settings gear button at the top. Anyway! There’s a couple tricks that you might find handy when you’re implementing your own <dialog>s on your websites! Blur …
    258 words
  12. Loretta Chase, , more info

    Welcoming "My Inconvenient Duke" and celebrating "Lord of Scoundrels"
    As has been proclaimed in various areas of my website, the third Difficult Dukes book, My Inconvenient Duke, will be released on 21 January. After all the frustration, and the fighting with characters (those strong and rather secretive personalities!) and delays and delays, Alice & Blackwood’s story will finally reach my readers.It’s won some thumbs-up early reviews, including a starred advance review in Booklist in December, which included the following:With …
    By Loretta Chase, 349 words
  13. Jessie at Home, , more info

    High Tide Square – Afghan Square Crochet Pattern
    Diagonal double crochet waves traced with surface crochet are surrounded by a thick border in this striking crochet block. The High Tide Square is suited for crocheting in a single color, or in many colors. See what combinations you can come up with and create and entire blanket, or choose just your favorite and combine it with other crochet square patterns. Maybe you noticed that things seem to happen a …
    By Jessie, 107 words
  14. Lambda Latitudinarians, , more info

    The Day Google Killed the Pixel 4a
    Many of us use phones that are a couple of years out of date. As the phone industry insists on removing useful features while at the same time inflating new phones to a seeming minimum of $500, older phones have become increasingly attractive. Using an older phone is good for your wallet and good for the environment (the most environmentally-friendly phone purchase is no new phone purchase), but not good …
    By Nathan Contino (ncontino[at]lambdalatitudinarians[dot]org), 3,284 words
  15. The Squire Presents, , more info

    Pink Floyd – More Relics
    After 1983’s ‘The Final Cut’, it looked as though Pink Floyd were unlikely to release an album of new material any time soon, if at all. ‘The Final Cut’ was essentially a Roger Waters solo album and even though it was commercially successful, each band member spent the next couple of years releasing solo records. This included the no longer officially a member even though not everyone released it until …
    By The Squire, 1,036 words