Recently updated blogs

A great piece by Riccardo Mori on the walls slowly closing in on bootable backups on macOS. When I started using Linux full-time for my personal computing last year, one of the things I’ve missed most was the ability to easily backup my system. Time Machine is such an incredible feature and there really isn’t anything like it on other operating systems. But just as important to me as Time …

I thought I’d drop in quickly to wish you a Happy New Year before it’s not new anymore and it gets too weird. I’ve been focused on working on Unhinged over the last couple of weeks, but new posts will be coming shortly.

Thanks to everyone who made all those kind remarks in various places last month after my mother died. I've not responded individually (I did not have the strength) but I did read them all and they were deeply appreciated. Yesterday would’ve been mum‘s 93rd birthday. A little side-note occurred to me the other day: Since she left us a month ago, she was just short of having seen two perfect …

The theatre in the hills, Pitlochry Festival has announced a vibrant season of theatrical highlights. Beginning with a new play: 9-17 May STUDIO Presented by Byre Theatre and Pitlochry Festival Theatre WATER COLOUR by Milly Sweeney Winner of the St Andrews Playwriting Award Esme is at an all-time low, struggling with her studies and her art. She finds herself standing on the railing of one of the bridges that crosses …

In sports such as athletics and football there is need for a high degree of physical fitness. This fitness is very important, for it affects not only strength and stamina, but the athlete's skill and ability also.Angling, though seemingly less demanding, still requires a reasonable degree of fitness, and although, at first glance, it gives the impression that 'know-how' is the only factor controlling success, this is not so. To …

An odd tension, getting on with life when the world is in chaos, isn’t it? But here we are. “Fire season in Southern California is generally thought to stretch from May to October. But as California Governor Gavin Newsom put it in a press conference on Tuesday, blazes are now a perennial issue. “There’s no fire season,” he said. “It’s fire year.”” Via the BBC’s live reporting of the wildfires …

I’m extremely delighted to announce that I have a new book on the way, which will be published in the UK on May 15th and in a North American edition in Spring 2026. Regular readers of my blog posts here will know that I live above the Prespa lakes, and it’s this place that sits … Continue reading Lifelines: new book announcement!

I'm making some attempts at painting the terrain. As I've mentioned before getting the colours right could be tricky because all I'm working from are my own travel photos, photos I've found on line, and memories from hikes on the Mt. Lowe trail. Then there are the colour shifts introduced by printing the reference photos on paper, or viewing them on a screen. Unlike the Loonar Module I don't have …

Knowing things is hard, even about the past. Over the years I have compiled pithy names for some of the reasons why this is. This week I decided to share them in the style of Andrew Gelman’s Handy Statistical Lexicon or Samuel Johnson’s dictionary. Right now many entries are blank or just link to other people’s websites and articles. If I ever turn these into a book, I will expand …

It's time for all Coffee Geeks to become fans of super automatics. Not for ourselves, but for the sake and benefit of capsule coffee users. The post Bean to Cup Machines: Nespresso Killers! appeared first on CoffeeGeek.

Hello friends! It has been a VERY long time since I’ve shown my face around these parts. But with the start of the new year, it is time to shake the dust off, pull my brain back together and get back to the business of canning and making connections with all of you. Enter the Community Canning Challenge! Twice in the past, I’ve hosted year-long challenges in which I would …

Walking Lucie on a cold, clear late afternoon, the temperature hasn't risen above plus one all day and there's no doubt that tonight it will drop to minus four or five. Fishing plans have been suspended because every waterway in the Fens has a coating of ice. The was one piece of clear water I noticed the day before, it was under a tree, and I could see fish moving …

I have to admit that I’m a little proud of this one. It is the sort of mixtape I would have loved for someone else to have compiled - and for me to discover. Twelve compositions released in 2024 and two from 2023 is about as present tense that I’m capable of. Actually it’s way beyond my capabilities in that regard. I made a playlist titled «Strange Beauty», and somehow …

In our 89th episode, we talk about the wires that bring us the bits. And then Derrick the editor time travels. Enjoy it now, or download for later. Here’s a handy feed or subscribe via Overcast or iTunes. https://traffic.libsyn.com/rands/theimportantthing0089.mp3

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 …