Recently updated blogs

Translated by Oonagh Stransky Review by Annabel Version 1.0.0 Such is my woeful lack of knowledge of African history, I had no idea that Eritrea had been colonized by Italy in the late 1880s, transferring to British administration during WWII, before reverting to Ethiopian control until its independence in 1991. The author, Erminia Dell’Oro, is the granddaughter of one of the first Italian settlers, being born and growing up in …

ALTHalf a can is better than none!// Disneyland Paris Resort, Disneyland Paris, Adventureland, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril, 2016[Source: Cameron Donlon. Used by Permission.]

I've been obsessed with Clive Barker's Hellraiser since I saw the first film back in the 80s, after getting my grandmother to rent it from the local grocery store. Truth be told, the first time I watched it I had to take it in two parts; it freaked me out so much that I had to stop the tape and continue the next day! After finishing it, though, I couldn't …

Today I'm giving a talk at the last annual meeting1 1It's the 8th of our 7 annual meetings of the Simons Collaboration on Arithmetic Geometry, Number Theory, and Computation. It's about Maass forms. The short of it is: Maass forms are in the LMFDB now, go [check it out](https://www.lmfdb.org/ModularForm/GL2/Q/Maass]! I've given many other talks about Maass forms in the past, and I'm happy to talk more about them. The slides …

Bluesky and the Fediverse are our best online hopes for humane human conversation. Things happened on 2025/01/13; I’ll hand the microphone to Anil Dash, whose post starts “This is a monumental day for the future of the social web.” What happened? Follow Anil’s links: Mastodon and Bluesky (under the “Free Our Feeds” banner). Not in his sound-bite: Both groups are seeking donations, raising funds to meet those goals. I’m sympathetic …

My year of success is chugging right along. I sent out ARC emails (and ARCs) this week. If you’re on the team and didn’t get an email, or didn’t get a reply, let me know. The paperback would be completely ready to be crossed off, if Ingram didn’t send a cover template a tenth of an inch smaller than they want them to be, then complain when those files return …

16 years ago today I wrote up and posted a proposal for a new calendar: newcal.orgHaving long been frustrated by unnecessary unevenness and other quirks of the Gregorian calendar, I designed and wrote up a more ordered, mathematically simpler, and more continuously consistent calendar.Building up from the atomic calendar unit of a 'day':* five day weeks* six week (30 day) months* two month (60 day) + a sync day bims¹* …

The Rig (2023) s02e01 “Episode 1” [2025] D: John Strickland. S: Emily Hampshire, Iain Glen, Martin Compston, Rochenda Sandall, Owen Teale, Abraham Popoola, Nikhil Parmar. Last season’s cliffhanger resolves real quick when it turns out they’re just on another RIG. By the end of the episode, Hampshire and Glen are commanding another undersea mission (anyone seen the ABYSS), while their bosses deceive them. The finale’s incredibly tense, which makes up …

♫ Luck and Strange, David Gilmour

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their …

Two of the many tsundokus fighting for my future attentionIn 2009 I read five books all year; in 2024 I read 55! The difference being of course that back then I was working, and almost all my reading was confined to briefs on the next work project, and going over my interview write ups. It has taken me several years in fact to finally accept that I am "retired" - …

Dear Darling Ones, I’ve been thinking a lot about trauma lately. This might come as a total surprise as I’m such a magnanimous, even-keeled, generous spirit, but I can be pretty judgmental. Thankfully, I’ve matured enough to (mostly) go ahead and shut the fuck up about most of my judgements. Because, who and I to judge, and most of the things I like to judge are none of my damn …

Ruth Rendell published 14 Barbara Vine novels over nearly three decades between 1986 and 2014. As perhaps can be expected with a highly prolific writer--in addition to the 14 Vines she published 52 novels under her own name, as well as seemingly countless pieces of short fiction--the Vines afforded diminishing yields of poisoned fruit over time. Rendell banged out the first three Vine novels--A Dark Adapted Eye, A Fatal Inversion …

Can’t get enough of bookandswordblog? This spring I will be teaching two short courses for the University of Victoria’s Continuing Education program. One of them is online on Tuesday 4 February from 6 to 8 pm Victoria, BC time. The price is CAD $35.70 (about USD $24). You can find more here. Ancient sieges were once familiar and alien. Armies struggled to take settlements, soldiers sweated in the grime beneath …

At the dawn of the new millennium, web-based technology was undergoing a transformative phase. Google, though well-known, was just one of many search engines vying for attention and far from the tech giant it would later become. Dial-up internet, complete with its unmistakable connection tone, remained a fixture in countless American households. Meanwhile, file-sharing platforms […]