Recently updated blogs

I didn’t have a great time when I started at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It was my first office job in the US (I think I’d got an SSN barely weeks beforehand) and there was a lot to culturally absorb. My predecessors as EFF’s sole activist were Cory and Ren Bucholz; big shoes to fill. Joining an institution you know and respect is, for me at least, a challenge: you …

There’s been quite a few superlatives thrown at this early January cold spell, not least the recording of the coldest January night at Altnaharra in 15 years. Snowfalls across the Highlands, Lake District and northern England have been notable in their longevity relative to recent years. But the absence of any lying snow at 9am in this locality and fairly standard minima for January left me looking elsewhere for something …

Vanishing Point by Patricia Wentworth lists say published 1953, the copyright says 1955 If you saw this sentence from the book, unadorned: Hazel Green communicated with Melbury --you might well think Hazel Green was the heroine, and Melbury perhaps the Assistant Chief Constable. But these are both place names. There is something surprising about this book: it wasn’t at all clear what the outcome would be, or what the underlying …

My friend and Forge of Foes partner, Scott Fitzgerald Gray, wrote a great post called Embracing the Awesome (subscribe to his newsletter here!) extolling the virtues of letting characters automatically succeed at ability checks more often than we typically do. Letting characters auto-succeed sometimes is a useful way to keep the pace of your game moving forward and showcase the characters' role in the world. When should you let your …

You might already know how to use the --color option to highlight matched portions with GNU grep. In this post, you'll see how to use ANSI escape sequences to format matched portions with GNU sed and GNU awk. GNU grep🔗 Consider this sample input file: $ cat fruits.txt banana mango cherry pineapple grape fig apple dragonfruit papaya watermelon cashew tomato orange almond lime grapefruit walnut The output for grep --color …

The Aston Martin Lagonda, a full-size luxury four-door saloon, was produced by the British automaker Aston Martin between 1974 and 1990. A total of 645 units were manufactured during this period. Its name originates from the Lagonda marque, which Aston Martin acquired in 1947. The model spans two distinct generations: the short-lived Series 1 introduced […]

I’m always on the hunt for new music and have really been loving the music of ShyGodwin. ShyGodwin is a grunge-metal duo from Philly. Their riffs are heavy, and their lyrics get stuck in my head for days. “New Enemies” is a great song to start off with: Their full discography is available on Bandcamp, and their website, shygodwin.com, is worth visiting too for some weird and retro vibes. The …

“Dark Wave,” hosted by Slicing Up Eyeballs’ Matt Sebastian, explores the darker side of classic alternative, including goth, post-punk and industrial.

The Architectural Review Competition: Nové Bazaly football stadium, Ostrava An architecture contest is being held to create a new €83 million (CZK 2.5 billion) football stadium in Ostrava, Czechia (Deadline: 24 January) The post Competition: Nové Bazaly football stadium, Ostrava appeared first on The Architectural Review. Merlin Fulcher

🎉 Eight years ago today, the #IndieWeb Webmention protocol was published as a W3C REC https://www.w3.org/TR/webmention/As a social web building block, #Webmention was designed to work with various other building blocks. Small pieces, loosely joined. Every year developers find new ways to work with Webmention, and new subtleties when combined with other building blocks.The primary uses of Webmention, peer-to-peer comments, likes, and other responses across web sites, have long presented …

I was mildly startled, during the coverage of the lynx being released in Scotland, to hear more than one broadcaster explain, often with an annoying mini-chuckle, that they meant a kind of big cat, not a brand of deodorant. But surely there’s a large constituency, especially among listeners to what’s now known as legacy media, who don’t have day-to-day contact with stinky, surly 14-year-olds, but do have a bit of …

• Global (non-US) Rapid Transit Projects planned to open in 2025 (TransportPolitic) • Matthew Somerville pulls Live Underground Train Tracker due to possible legal action (CLondoner92) • How Madrid built its Metro Cheaply (WorksInProgress) • Ambitious High-Speed Rail Plans in the Baltic (CityLab) • It’s Time to Start Removing Highways, for real this time (FastCompany) • Miami’s new Underline linear park partially opens: Bioswales, bike paths, & more (SmartCitiesDive) • …

They say even a broken clock is right twice a day. In the same way, the Sun is “right” four times a year; the analemma shows how. What time is it at noon? What a silly question! It’s 12pm noon, at noon, right? … Right? Actually, not really. Picture this: you take a photo of … Continue reading "Analemma answers the question: “What time is it at noon?”" The post …

Finished “Chained Echoes” yesterday, after 45 hours, off and on since August! It took some time to grow on me, but I loved the game in the end – what a fun twists-and-turnsy storyline 😄 I wrote up some further thoughts on Backloggd (external link) if you’re interested.

Remarkable wet-to-dry transition combined with extreme downslope wind event yields dual wildfire catastrophes in SoCal It’s never good feeling when a dire weather or disaster risk prognostication comes to fruition; that “pit in your stomach” sensation has been described by many meteorologists, climate scientists, emergency managers, and disaster-focused researchers over the years. It certainly encapsulates […] The post Following historic wildfire disasters in Southern California, a statewide dry spell intensifies …