Recently updated blogs

I think not!This is a modern 80s built house, and the ivy has been allowed to grow right the way across the upstairs window (the house had been unoccupied for a while), covering it completely, and heading on upwards into the gutter and into the roof.I sent my colleague up the ladder (I'm not daft!) to pull it off, and we found that the ivy had forced a way inside …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 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 …

I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things after a welcome Christmas and New Year break. I mentioned last week that I had sidelined myself into writing a probably unnecessary article on the history of newsprint rationing during and just after the Second World War (1940-56). Well, that came about because I wanted to write about why newspapers were still dramatically reduced in size all the

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …