Recently updated blogs

The Great Smoky Mountain Council is celebrating 110 years of service in the Knoxville, Tennessee, area with a series of events over the next year. The council has upheld the core values of Scouting in East Tennessee for more than a century, shaping young men and women into productive citizens. The council has produced numerous leaders, including a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, and continues to impact local communities in …

Copenhagen duo snuggle drop a woozy and mercurial experimental pop gem, with a radiant, clear-eyed, softly anthemic chorus that would've absolutely killed on '90s alternative radio... Continue reading…

This Chinese Garlic Shrimp Clay Pot recipe is impressive, very delicious, and surprisingly easy to make. It is a great candidate for Chinese New Year dinner, not just because it symbolizes wealth and happiness “rolling in,” but also because you can prepare the entire dish in advance! This also makes it a wonderful makeahead weeknight ... View Post

I did my first Maine railfanning today at Northern Maine Junction in Hermon, Maine just outside Bangor. Posted 16 years ago today.

Though I own Bois de Violette and the original Dolce Vita, I really only have eyes for Feminité du Bois. I think this is because it is the only one that achieves a perfect balance between sparkle and gloom. God, the opening never fails to rouse me. Have you ever watched a downpour so sudden and violent that the raindrops bounce right back up off the ground? Here, the flirtier, …

I'm beyond honored to say that my playable essay, "individualism in the dead-internet age" is a nominee for this year's Nuovo award at IGF. This means I will be showcasing at GDC!

There seemed to be a hot minute when the tech industry understood the value of idle tinkering and made a point of providing ‘side project time’ as an explicit working perk. The concept endures — I’m lucky enough to work somewhere that has it — but it seems to have been outpaced in recent years by the endless charge toward efficiency. This seems a shame. We can’t optimize our way …

Back in 2020, while sorting out some old papers, I found an article in a gardening magazine from 2010, listing the three major changes we should expect in our gardens for the following decade or so - that is, pretty much, now.They warned us to expect long, hot, dry summers, mild winters, and prolonged periods of flooding, which would mean three major changes to how we garden, here in the …

You have for sure heard about the new CSS Anchor Positioning, right? It’s a feature that allows you to link any element from the page to another one, i.e., the anchor. It’s useful for all the tooltip stuff, but it can also create a lot of other nice effects. In this article, we will study menu navigation where I rely on anchor positioning to create a nice hover effect on …

Leave No Trace and its predecessor, In the Blink of an Eye, are “inventive thrillers,” a description that barely encompasses the unusualness of Team Kat and Lock. Meet Detective Chief Superintendent Kat Frank of the Leek Wootton Police Department in Warwickshire, England. Leave No Trace opens with Kat verbally briefing her boss, Chief Constable McLeish,…

A TTAB judge once said to me that one can predict the outcome of a Section 2(d) appeal about 95% of the time just by looking at the marks and the goods/services. Of course, if you just said "affirmed" you'd be right about 89.5% of the time. Anyway, here are three Board decisions issued early this year. No hints this time. How do you think they came out? [Answer in …

With the technology, economics, and markets for computers having changed so drastically over the last quarter century, individuals now have very few reasons for building their own computers. Will that ever change?

Some breaking UFO News... First up: Chris Rutkowski links to and summarizes what's within the overlong-awaited first installment of the Canadian government's response to the UFO problem. Rather like the U.S. September 14, 2023, NASA Report, this 16-page effort has pretty pictures, some charts and graphs, and is basically a set of recommendations for how a coordinated government and academic scientific study of UFOs should be conducted. Notably, governmental Canada …

Kelsey Corlett-Rivera, an international language librarian for the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, received a 2024 Librarian of Congress Award for expanding acquisition and discoverability of accessible books. Tell us about your background. I grew up on a ranch outside a small town in western Montana. I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, for college, where I completed my undergraduate studies at Harvard University, majoring in Spanish and …