Recently updated blogs

I run some lightweight privacy-respecting self-hosted analytics for my blog, so I know what my most popular posts were in 2024. It's hardly surprising that many of these were also published last year, but they include one from 2013 and another from 2018. Having a quick peek at my stats reminded me that the blog content that is most appreciated, shared and read is often not what you might think …

Chris Armstrong, advocating for a digital garden over a blog structure: A blog structure places the highest emphasis on ‘what’s new’… but what’s new has had the least scrutiny and little authority. Robin Rendle linked to Armstrong’s post recently and reading it reminded me of my 2011 post The blog format is ready for disruption. In that post, which is now nearly 14 years old, I argue that the structure …

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

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 …

Perhaps my most valuable asset in the past 10+ years of trying to learn about and recreate or at least taste every sandwich I can from around the world has been the Chicago metropolitan area. There are many, many cultures represented in a city this size, and once a particular population hits a critical density, the markets and restaurants to service their culture are not far behind. A content creator …