Recently updated blogs

A quick reminder to those interested that our first meeting of 2024 is on Tuesday 14th January at the Crosse Keys pub in the City of London. Normally at least a couple of us are there by 6.30 p.m. Join us anytime in the evening. The pub promises to be warm despite the outside temperatures – and an evening there may save you the cost of heating your home that …

I was at a ReThink event about Penn Station the other day; it didn’t talk about through-running but about Penn Station redesign, as Richard Cameron presented options for rebuilding the station in-place, of course without expansion a block to the south. The presentation was interesting, and I have no strong opinions about the architecture, certainly no objection. But something said in there, I forget if by Richard or one of …

Hello everyone and happy New Year! I am still working very hard on my novel and making progress on it, although progress in recent months has been slower than I had hoped. Despite being focused on writing my novel, I have also been working on a few drafts of posts for this blog, which I will hopefully post in the not-too-distant future. I am also now waiting to hear back …

The post fOKOS Magazine Wordmark appeared first on Smitho.graphics℠ All Original Content © 1996 – 2025 Smitho.graphics | Logo & Icon Designer fOKOS Photography Magazine Banner Logo & Masthead Photography Magazine Logo & Masthead: Project for a limited print run bi-monthly photography magazine, called: fOKOS. A subtly styled lowercase ‘f‘ precedes the uppercase OKOS, just adding enough visual interest to keep it from being too ‘normal’. The right-side of the …

Facebook and its sister companies have announced a strong relaxing of content moderation in the US (except for illegal activities). I have mixed feelings about it, but the feeling that wins out slightly is that I don’t like leaving it up to big tech companies to decide what we can talk about. David Heinemeier Hansson calls it a straight up victory. Read The social media censorship era is over (for …

This photograph by Duncan Rawlinson captures dramatic storm clouds sweeping over the St. Lawrence River in the Thousand Islands region. The dark, churning clouds form a striking contrast against the vibrant greenery of the tree-lined shore and the tranquil surface of the river. This evocative scene highlights the natural beauty and dynamic weather patterns of this iconic Canadian landscape. Duncan.co/storm-clouds-over-the-st-lawrence-river-in-the-thousand-islands Buy a print The post Storm Clouds Over the St. …

The 1921 Census of England and Wales is now available on Ancestry. Subscribers can search that Census directly from this page.You will soon be able to see 1921 Census hints show up under the category of "new collections" on the hints page. Above is a photo of my husband's Ancestry family tree hints page. So far, only 4 "new collections" hints have appeared but there's a reason.Remember, to stimulate the …

If you’ve spent any time in conversations about autism online, you’ve probably come across debates about self-diagnosis. Let’s cut to the chase: self-diagnosed autistic people are valid — full stop. This post dives into why that is and why we need to stop gatekeeping autism. Barriers to formal diagnosis First, let’s talk about why formal diagnosis isn’t accessible to everyone. Getting a diagnosis can be expensive, especially in countries where …

Saturday 11th January 2025 Welcome to a new blog series featuring towns and cities around Britain which, by a quirk of history, are blessed with having two railway stations on different lines serving completely different destinations. To kick things off I’ve been to Hertford and had a look at that town’s contrasting pair of stations: Hertford East and Hertford North. As you can see from the map, Hertford East is …

SCORE! About a month ago, I visited the Strelitz Academy in Virginia Beach and it gave me SUCH HEART! Everyone in the elementary school is doing The Let Grow Experience, so there were paper trees in the hall festooned with Let Grow “leaves.” These are leaf-shaped pieces of paper where the kids wrote the new things they’d just started doing on their own: learned to ride a bike, made dinner, …

Stunning. Absolutely stunning. I have ascended. The post Domi and JD Beck – SPACE MOUNTAiN (Live) appeared first on Sampleface.

December was a good reading month and three of my reads were Christmas books. I included some notes on my reading in 2024 at the end of this post. Here is my list of books read:FictionTom Lake (2023) by Ann PatchettThis was a very good book and an enjoyable read. Basically it is the story of a woman telling her daughters about a summer love affair she had with a …

The Vikings, often romanticized as fearsome raiders, were also adept navigators, traders, and settlers. But beyond the swords and sails lies another fascinating aspect of their lives: how they understood and managed health and healing.

It was just a little over a year ago that I briefly softened in my general disdain for Meta (which I held not only for their overall anti-web walled garden approach of the last 20 years, but especially for their role in the last decade’s rise of misinformation). Watching what was going on with their new Twitter clone, I raised an interested eyebrow as I followed their rapid progress in …

What happened was, there was a pretty moon in the sky, so I got out a tripod and the big honkin’ Tamron 150-500 and fired away. Here’s the shot I wanted to keep. Sadly, the clouds had shiftedand Luna had lost her pretty bronze shading. I thought the camera and lens did OK given that I was shooting from sea level through soggy Pacific-Northwest winter air. But when I zoomed …