Recently updated blogs

The first season of The Rig was a curious series that ended up a long way from what you might expect with an ecological thread and ambitious staging far exceeding expectations. When you think of recent series cancelled by streamers, despite creating a big buzz and seeming popular, it seems odd that The Rig has sneaked though to a sophomore year. I liked the first season but I hadn’t realised …

The star of the 1934 film "The Silver Streak" isn't first-billed Sally Blane, or even male lead Charles Starrett.It's the future.Specifically, it's the future in the form of the Pioneer Zephyr, a streamlined diesel train here called the Silver Streak. But incidental roles in the movie are played by the Century of Progress International Exposition, also known as the 1933-34 Chicago World's Fair; by Boulder Dam (now known as Hoover …

This week, Prowl keeps trying to drop a Bombshell without anyone noticing, and the Decepticon Rep Theatre put on their latest masterwork, all as Omega Supreme finds out what happens when you sit on the fence politically.All as I look at Robots in Disguise issue 11!

The cord hangs heavyDiscipline crouches,A presence felt, not held,Time moves, but nothing stirs,Unfinished work. The spark waits, patient as stone Discipline Doesn’t Arrive On Its Own On The Blog: Photo 365 The Ministry Of My Own Labour Terminal Access Dipping the Stacks Reading Music Remember Kids:Discipline Doesn’t Arrive On Its OwnI am really struggling to get 2025 started. I’ve been pulling the starter cord over and over, but nothing is …

Friends, this year is going to be a doozy, one which will require mental fortitude on par with the strength of Hercules combined with the flexibility of Gumby. And yet there’s only much loin-girding a person can reasonably do, so instead I’m determined to keep a hyper-focus on the shit that keeps me sane: music, fiction, poetry, TV, and gassing on about them. I intend to support this endeavour with …

Hard bop was in a rut but Pearson was on a roll. [row-start] [half] [/half] [half] Personnel Duke Pearson (piano), Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), Joe Henderson (tenor saxophone), James Spaulding (flute, alto saxophone), Ron Carter (bass), Mickey Roker (drums) Recorded on December 7, 1966 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey Released as BST 84252 in 1967 Track listing Side A: Sweet Honey Bee / Sudel / After The Rain …

It’s so cold. It’s SO cold. Kick-off week. The work at M&S is broken in quarterly chunks, so this is the start of Phase 6. Amazing to see the team grow. Really nice energy from the teams I’m working directly with too. An auspicious start. Kick-off meetings took up the bulk of the working week. Next week is workshop planning and watching some teams test new ways of working. Got …

Hello. Everything’s going to be great. It’s been −4 °C this weekend. I record this to remind Summer Me that even though putting the heating on seems unthinkable in the sweltering hell of July, it’s essential in January. Likewise the prospect of opening the window at the moment is ridiculous but I know I’ll be doing it at every opportunity later in the year. Hopefully this will get it through …

I like writing these posts for my website, but I’ve sat down to write this one like 11 times and it either takes on a tone of totally encompassing dread and dystopian navel gazing or I feel like I’m burying my head in the sand and ignoring reality as it happens around me. …I finished reading Victor LaValle’s The Changeling. It was engaging, and I was interested in where it …

After a 2024 full of shows with punctuation in the title, the West End gets the OG musical hit in 2025 with the transferring Chichester Festival Theatre production of Lionel Bart's Oliver Exclamation Mark. Charles Dickens' (Chickens to his friends) story of child trafficking, wifebeating, murder, grooming gangs, antisemitism, alcoholism and a quadruple revolve sees Oliver Twist's (Cian Eagle-Service, alternating with Raphael Korniets, Jack Philpott and Odo Rowntree-Bailly) mother die …

Common Misconceptions About the Complexity in Robotics vs AI A roboticist breaks down common misconceptions about what's hard and easy in robotics. A response to everyone asking “can't we just stick a large language model into its brain to make it more capable?” Contrary to the assumptions of many people, making robots perceive and move in the world in the way humans can turns out to be an extraordinarily hard …

This is pretty late, but really, no hurry. This would probably feel like a repeat of my 2023 review.January 😔 Got disappointed by recent events. 📢 Made a statement that it’s impossible for an app to make everyone happy. February 😮 Gathered quite a lot of attention from an experimental UI that I did for catching up on posts on Mastodon. 🤩 My web app got mentioned on The Verge …

Just spent two hours (!) booking trains and intermediary hotels for a work trip to the UK in March. For some reason, the usually reliable Deutsche Bahn were unwilling to sell me any tickets for the journeys required, which usually means they’re waiting to release them due to e.g. track maintenance or timetable adjustments. However SNCB (the Belgian railways, basically) were happy to sell me tickets and reservations for everything …

Just occasionally, my silly research for this site turns up something wonderful. So, there I was, perusing the archives of that august organ Huddersfield Daily Examiner, when I spotted the following Channel 4 programme scheduled on the 30th November 1992: 11:00 CATHOLICS AND SEX Examining the Catholic Church’s attitudes towards birth-control and pre-marital sex. Catholic women talk about the ban on contraception, and teenagers give their views on virginity. A …

For a change, rather than looking at the past, today’s post is rather topical, and looks at a subject that at first glance may seem irrelevant to the blog – Artificial Intelligence, or AI. When I write a post for the blog, I try to apply a degree of intelligence. I use a wide range of sources – books (old and new), maps, national and local archives, old newspaper archives, …