Recently updated blogs

On Saturday, I got into a stupid little spat with Wendy. We tentatively planned she would meet me at my place, and from there we would head to a 5:45 dinner reservation together. By 5:35 I was walking out my door and wondering where she was. I wouldn't normally care, knowing at least she would be on her way... In this specific case, however, I was going to pay at …

This project stated with the broad question of "How long did mid-Victorian clothing last?" (and it's reenacting corollary: "Can one justify wear a dress with specifically 1840s style elements at an event set in the 1850s, 1860s, or later by pretending to be old, poor, or rural?"). I've since come to realize it's really a series of related questions encompassing among other things:How frequently are dresses (or clothing more generally) …

The weight loss drug Semaglutide, variously marketed as Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy and Rybelsus, has been much in the headlines recently. Many showbiz celebrities, and indeed some leading politicians, are rumoured to have been using it to control their weight. While it isn’t generally available via the NHS, it has been prescribed for certain specific conditions, and more and more people away from the public eye seem to be getting hold …

In the previous post, I looked at this chart that shows the distributions of four subgroups found in a dataset: This chart takes quite some effort to decipher, as does another version I featured. The key messages appear to be: (i) most English words are of Germanic origin, (ii) the most popular English words are even more skewed towards Germanic origin, (iii) words of French origin started showing up around …

The house was at the end of a long, winding road through the country, and it took Erin almost three hours to get there. When she pulled up on the expanse of gravel in front of the imposing entrance, there was one vehicle already parked there, with its owner standing nearby. The solicitor who was acting as executor of her late aunt’s estate was dressed conservatively, and bundled up against …

Not ideal conditions, fishing in the snow-melt - but at least it wasn't freezing cold! And a herring deadbait lowered into a little slack soon brought a run - convinced I was attached to a twenty - but at 19lb 10oz I'm not complaining! Glad I'm not counting the hours-per-pike though. Records: 1.3 (falling), 3° (cold/bright), float-ledgered herring.

Starting in Old Broad Street we go looking for the Dutch Church in Austin Friars where Vincent Van Gogh Worshipped. We then go along Throgmorton Street and admire the exterior of Drapers’ Hall and Throgmorton Avenue. We emerge behind the Bank of England and get drawn into Tokenhouse Yard, Telegraph Street, Whalebone Yard and King’s Arms Yard. Then we go inside the magnificent St. Margaret Lothbury with its fascinating relics …

Ahead of Fairport Convention’s Winter Tour, I catch up with Dave Pegg. We discuss the making of the Full House album, the crucial role that Jethro Tull played in Fairport’s resurrection, changes afoot at Cropredy this summer so that the festival survives the financial pressures facing the sector and the forthcoming tour, starting 31 January. We’ll talk about the Winter Tour and about Cropredy later but first I want to …

Last year, I redid my nightstand. It’s still a bit of a mess, but at least this one has drawers and tiered shelves to help things be a bit more tidy. The one problem I ran into was that there isn’t a great place for a tissue box. I ended up stuffing it sideways between shelves, but it slides around too much. And slides off onto the floor. It’s not …

The most famous architect of the 20th century, Frank Lloyd Wright designed 1,114 houses, offices, and other structures during a prominent professional life that spanned seven decades. Of these, 532 architectural works were actually completed, according to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. New York State has several Wright-designed dwellings. The Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue is Manhattan’s lone Wright building, ever since an auto showroom on Park Avenue and 56th …

Radiometric quantities are crucial for physically-based rendering. These physical quantities enable us to formulate how much light there is in a scene, where it is and which way it is going. In the end, rendering is all about figuring out what light reaches a camera and how. Without radiometry, there is no way to formalize this problem. For example, the rendering equation, which is the backbone of modern rendering, is …

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 …