Recently updated blogs

it is 2025 and i can’t tell you what I’ve really been watching on youtube recently because you will think I’ve lost the plot, so instead, here are the things I can tell you about: knitting with paint knitting with yarn music, not knitting and a laugh to end the post

The set up for the weekly staff meeting at the Alaska Humanities Forum offices in Anchorage. We spent the day yesterday with our colleagues at the Alaska Humanities Forum (AKHF) preparing for the Art of Hosting that begins this morning. AKHF is an organization that has long embraced the Art of Hosting as a way of operating both their internal organizational functions and their relationship and gatherings with their partners …

I was reminded of this book while reading the short story The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury, by Neil Gaiman, which was reprinted in Trigger Warning. I realized I’ve read very little of Ray Bradbury, the greatest sci-fi writer in history, and I thought I should fill this void a bit. Given the crazy amount of stuff he wrote, I would have been troubled to choose. Likely, this one has …

This year we got a new Solar Pons collection from Belanger Books that finally takes him to the United States: The American Adventures of Solar Pons. Edited by David Marcum the collection features a dozen stories by various authors. I’ve posted on Solar Pons before, recently doing a re-reading of both the original stories by […]

Restless Dolly Maunder – Kate Grenville Kate Grenville tells her grandmother’s story; family history and historical research enriched with a storyteller’s gloss. I loved it. Author’s page: Restless Dolly Maunder – Kate Grenville

I had been lacking books from the Snoopy Museum in Tokyo, so when I saw one one for sale on eBay, I chunked up some money and ordered it. It was a bit more than I like to spend on one book… which is why I was so happy when it turned out to be two! It isn’t a boxed set per se, because what they were in was open …

DMFT is significantly less perplexing than HMRC Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread mathematical joy. This week, I’ve made another contribution to the OEIS (currently in review) about the excellent puzzle #23 from Scroggsvent that Matt has written up here. I’ve also written a blog post I’m unusually pleased about: when Michelle Kwan skated last at the 1995 Figure Skating Worlds, …

koko-mochi:I was talking to my dad about renewable energy and he was like “the only problem with solar farms is they take up so much space.”And it made me think about a city and how much sun exposure all the rooftops in a city get and…why not just make the city it’s own solar farm by putting solar panels on every rooftop?

Our January 2025 edition of Now Playing features music that changes the way we think and write, shows to sink into, and great winter reads, all from our contributors!Sasha BrownI've been listening to Daniel Bachman's apocalyptic banjo drone music while I write. It was the soundtrack to Catching Babies. The album is perfect to write to: instrumental, spooky, uncomfortable. Bachman made some of the instruments on it himself. When he's …

Two weeks into 2025 and I'm only now starting in on my first novel of the New Year... and so late in the day!I've wanted to read The Weird World of Wes Beattie for some time, but forays through the used bookstores of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia brought frustration. Exhausted from the chase, I resorted to online booksellers, which explains how it is I ended up with …

1BoB is The First Battle of Britain: The Air War Over England, 1917–1918 (hereafter 1BoB), which sounds like a book but is actually a wargame. I bought my copy back in April 2009, not long after I submitted my PhD, at which point I noted that 'I try to avoid buying wargames because I never seem to actually play them'. It took me nearly 16 years, but over the end-of-year …

Does solar PV really work? Does it also make you rich, sexy and smug? #microgen #solar #PV

In the early days of this blog, the political debate around whether to ban fox hunting was a big deal. Those were, perhaps, simpler times. I think some would be surprised to read these days that I argued against banning hunting with foxes. It may seem even more surprising that I probably still would—yet I would argue perhaps more forcefully against repealing the ban now that it exists. My arguments …

I’d like to do more teaching this year. I’ve taught and assessed responsible & ethical tech modules at both undergraduate and postgrad levels and am open to guest/visiting lecturer opportunities, or even whole modules if it was the right fit. I’m particularly at home teaching design, computer science, business, and engineering students. Please bear me in mind if you hear of anything.(Still happy to teach practitioners too, of course! Get …

I wasn’t explicitly asked by anyone to join the Blog Questions Challenge, but I guess I can just join and also tell a bit about my blogging process. So here are the questions and answers: Why did you start blogging in the first place? I am not completely sure anymore, but I think what pushed me to start blogging was my discovery of the platform Medium. Some of the first …