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A pattern variation. After writing the articles Collecting and handling result values and Short-circuiting an asynchronous traversal, I realized that it might be valuable to describe a more disciplined variation of the Impureim Sandwich pattern. The book Design Patterns describes each pattern over a number of sections. There's a description of the overall motivation, the structure of the pattern, UML diagrams, examples code, and more. One section discusses various implementation …

Top of my bedside reading pile just now is a gift from my daughter – the great essayist Joseph Epstein's new memoir, Never Say You've Had a Lucky Life. Especially If You've Had a Lucky Life. As I am another who feels he's had a lucky life, in all manner of ways (and is hesitant about saying so, for fear of tempting fate), I am naturally drawn to a book …

YouTube has so many interviews with great photographers these days. ↬ ∙ Tagged in Photography.

As expected the first week of the New Year for me back at work wasn't too busy with a lot of my colleagues still on leave. I've been spending the quiet periods between tasks seeing whether establishing an accessibility advocates network within the organisation is viable. It's slow take-up so far, and demanding much patience. I learnt just towards the end of the week of the recent tragic passing of …

from Stephen Downes’ novel Mural Photo-embedded literature—novels and books of poetry which use photographs as an essential element of the “text”—is a core interest of mine and has been something I have written about extensively on Vertigo since I started it in 2007. In 2024, I managed to see or be informed about a number of newly published examples of such books by writers from Australia, Austria, Czechoslovakia, England, Ireland, …

I'll see you in the beginning, friend. In two and bit hours I will will to became a guy who will have seen Tenet. I am starting this review with the last paragraph and the whole thing is a palindrome. 🎵BRRRRRRRRRRR🎵 The laser focus on the forwards-backwards time concept worked for me and I really enjoyed the film. That is to say, I enjoyed the film and its focus on …

2025 is here. Now that 2024 is complete, I can look and see how much I made doing things outside of normal employment. This will be the second year I’ve done it in the beginning of January instead of the end of December, and the ninth year of doing it in general. Here are the past eight income reports: 2023 End of Year Side Income Report 2022 End of Year …

This post was originally intended for the actual friends I share on Facebook, not necessarily the ‘added friends’ who I don’t know in real life. Over the decades, I’ve made many worldwide acquaintances; sadly, my only link to some is as a Facebook connection. This screed is about deleting my Facebook account, which means forever severing connections with some people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. This is not a …

If you’re going to be in northern Europe in December, you need to be prepared for the darkness. Every day gets darker than the last, and by early December, you’ll find yourself wondering just how bleak it can get. But that’s where the Christmas lights come in. And the markets. And everything becomes a little more bearable. Table of Contents ToggleDestinations VisitedDo You Want to Move Abroad in 2025?HighlightsChallengesBlog Posts …

The pet store near me is closing. First you need to understand by near, I mean walking distance. Like I once carried home twenty pounds of cat litter and I am not a person who regular walks more than a few feet with twenty pounds of anything other than myself if I can help it. My recollection was that it opened near the end of my cat Sabrina's life. I …

The Midwest will likely benefit from “farm productivity, economy and in overall comfort” as a more habitable place to live than anywhere else in the US. It’s sad to say, as so many live elsewhere, but it looks to be a bastion of safe haven if climate change continues its inevitable march.

Jean-Louis Trintignant as Silence.The most acclaimed Spaghetti Western filmmaker not named Sergio Leone. That's an apt description for Sergio Corbucci, a prolific Italian director and screenwriter whose career spanned four decades. Although he directed comedies, horror films, and sand-and-scandal epics, Corbucci is best known for his Spaghetti Westerns, especially Django (1966). Inspired by his friend Leone, Corbucci crafted a violent, allegorical Western that generated dozens of imitations and grew in …

This is a test to see if I can write from the comfort of my bed using a wireless keyboard with my Onyx BOOX Note Air 2 e-ink tablet. The answer, with a bit of tweaking in the ‘e-ink centre’ of the Android settings pane — which I think is custom to the Onyx devices — is ‘yes’. I’m not likely to turn into Patricia Highsmith, author of The Talented …

Come, love of country, fill my heart… I do love Britain. I guess I love England more. London most of all. I hope that in my life I’ve honoured the place I live and not disgraced it or undermined it (I support England and GB in sporting events – I fly a little flag on the car during the World Cup). So I really don’t want to sound like one …

Do You Believe in Miracles?![1] When something miraculous happens, we have two mutually exclusive choices to explain it. Either its cause is supernatural or within the scope of known natural laws. For example, the famous magician David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear. His audience was blown away, but when later it was discovered how he did it, it was clear that it was just a brilliantly orchestrated stunt. …