Month: February 2025
Book Club 2025: Tales from the Folly by Ben Aaronovitch
(February 28, 2025)The worst mistake an author can do when writing short stories in between a series of novels is to try to “fill in” stuff from the backstory. That is, when creating a universe, good authors know a lot about their world that they never actually write (extensively) about. So for instance, if one of the … Continue reading Book Club 2025: Tales from the Folly by Ben Aaronovitch
Noise Show
(February 27, 2025)Book Club 2025: The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett
(February 27, 2025)I bought this (at a sale) back in 2009 along with either Malone Dies or Molloy. I read the other book at the time, but not this one. I’m really culturemaxxing here — this edition was translated by Norway’s foremost poet, Jan Erik Vold, in the late 60s. And it flows really well; I wasn’t … Continue reading Book Club 2025: The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett
Book Club 2025: School for Murder by Robert Barnard
(February 27, 2025)I had a hangover over today from all that jazz yesterday, so I read another mystery. This is pretty solid — lots of interesting characters and a brisk pace. The only problem was that I took a five minute time out to think about who the murderer could be, and there was really only one … Continue reading Book Club 2025: School for Murder by Robert Barnard
Jazz Show
(February 25, 2025)Stuff Mixtape #424
(February 25, 2025)Book Club 2025: Arkansas by John Brandon
(February 24, 2025)I bought this in 2008 — for a handful of years back then I bought basically everything published by McSweeney’s. I had a subscription to the quarterly, of course, but I also snapped up the other books they published. Half of the charm was the humour surrounding McSweeney’s, even if the books themselves weren’t “funny … Continue reading Book Club 2025: Arkansas by John Brandon
Book Club 2025: In the Teeth of Adversity by Marian Babson
(February 24, 2025)I started this book last week while I had a cold, but then I suddenly got all better, and found it rather a chore to finish this book. It’s not that it’s bad on sentence by sentence basis, but Babson here really goes for a P. G. Wodehouse-style farce, but also featuring cats, several dentists … Continue reading Book Club 2025: In the Teeth of Adversity by Marian Babson
Random Comics
(February 23, 2025)Here’s some comics I’ve read over the past few weeks. Mais d’abord, quelques mots que vous devez connaître. Er, I mean… This is the fourth Agence Hardy album by Pierre Christin and Annie Goetzinger… … and it’s the chattiest one yet. Really, this French is above my level, so it took a couple hours to … Continue reading Random Comics
Egill Skallagrímsson doesn’t seem relevant at all today
(February 22, 2025)(Translated from Old Norse by Emily Osborne.)
New Type of Spam/Scam via Eventbrite?
(February 22, 2025)I got the mail above from Eventbrite today, and as far as I can tell, it’s really been sent from Eventbrite, and the links are valid. So it’s for some show in Belgium somewhere, with a person called Tracy Wells? So I googled, and: Tracy Wells seems to be some kind of fortune teller scammer? … Continue reading New Type of Spam/Scam via Eventbrite?
Thanks, Cloudflare
(February 21, 2025)I’m using a link checker plugin on this blog, but I’ve noticed lately that about half of the external links are marked as broken. (The plugin marks those links with a line through the text like shown above.) But when I click on the links, they work perfectly. So I just had a peek at … Continue reading Thanks, Cloudflare
Comics Daze
(February 21, 2025)Oops, I’m still getting up at the wrong time of day after having a cold. But why not read some comics, then? Hey! It’s snowing again! And I’ve gotten a bunch of comics in the mail that I’m excited to read, so let’s get started. Shearwater: Animal Joy 03:06: Good Night and Sweet Dreams! by … Continue reading Comics Daze
WordPress Link Rot Tweak
(February 20, 2025)A few years ago, I amended the Emacs package for WordPress so that it automatically grabbed a screenshot of whatever I linked to. That’s a low effort solution to the link rot problem — i.e., inevitably, all web sites die, and your blog ends up talking about web sites readers can no longer read. Now, … Continue reading WordPress Link Rot Tweak
Inserting Images Automatically in ewp
(February 19, 2025)I’ve had code for ages to handle images automatically in Emacs and the WordPress Emacs package, but it hasn’t been integrated well before, and it’s been a bit hacky, leaving temporary files behind and stuff. So I’ve now finally cleaned it up, and here’s how it works in practice: See? Blogging with images is easy … Continue reading Inserting Images Automatically in ewp
HTML, but not too HTML
(February 17, 2025)When writing blog posts, I use ewp, an Emacs package to administrate WordPress. It offers an editing mode based on the revolutionary idea of just writing HTML. Everything is cyclical in computing, so people move between writing things in raw HTML and using arcane and unholy systems, mostly based on some Markdown dialect. I understand … Continue reading HTML, but not too HTML
Book Club 2025: Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty
(February 17, 2025)“Despite this solve…” Oh my gerd! This is awful! On a sentence by sentence basis, this is gruelling. “The kettle screamed its achievement of boiling water and Adrian jerked it off the element, wincing.” This is torture. I got to page 30 before giving up, because the concept here sounds like it could be fun. … Continue reading Book Club 2025: Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty
Book Club 2025: In the Company of Cheerful Ladies by Alexander McCall Smith
(February 17, 2025)I’ve got a strange kind of cold this week — it doesn’t seem to get better or get worse, but just remains at a stage of me feeling slightly cruddy, so I’m picking books to read that go down easily. I’m not up for reading anything challenging. I bought this book in 2005 and then … Continue reading Book Club 2025: In the Company of Cheerful Ladies by Alexander McCall Smith
Spam, Spam, WordPress and Spam
(February 17, 2025)I was puttering around looking at WordPress spam, so I wondered just how much I get. So I altered the WordPress Statistics for Emacs package to grab spam comments, too, so that I see what I have, and… It’s about 160 spam comments per day across the blogs. These are all caught by Akismet Anti-Spam, … Continue reading Spam, Spam, WordPress and Spam
Comment Spam Is Annoying Part XIV
(February 16, 2025)I was looking at the WordPress statistics just now, and I saw that an old, obscure post had suddenly gotten popular. Looking at the details, all the hits are from different IP addresses, and all the visitors come via Google! Over a 15 minute period! So that’s obviously not real — it’s a botnet of … Continue reading Comment Spam Is Annoying Part XIV
Book Club 2025: A Conventional Boy by Charles Stross
(February 16, 2025)This book collects one novella and two short stories, so, er, “A Laundry Files Novel”? Well, OK, perhaps Stross considers this to be a very short novel, and not a novella… Or perhaps the publishers think “novel” sells better than “novella”, and they should know. As usual with Stross, his style is burbling — it’s … Continue reading Book Club 2025: A Conventional Boy by Charles Stross
Book Club 2025: Cetaganda by Lois McMaster Bujold
(February 15, 2025)I’ve got a cold. Boo! But whenever I have a cold, I get to re-read old science fiction novels. Yay! I mean, I could do that even if I didn’t have a cold, but somehow I prefer reading new books when I’m well and books I’ve read before when I’m poorly. And this is just … Continue reading Book Club 2025: Cetaganda by Lois McMaster Bujold
Book Club 2025: The Sandcastle by Iris Murdoch
(February 13, 2025)Looks like I bought this book at a sale back in 2004 and then didn’t read it. I guess that happens more often with books on sale than other books. This is a slightly over-the-top satire of the “middle aged academic meets pixie dream girl” genre: The main character, Mor, is the head of a … Continue reading Book Club 2025: The Sandcastle by Iris Murdoch
Comics Daze
(February 9, 2025)I went on a short trip to London and I bought a bunch of comics. But I also have a bunch of other comics I haven’t read yet, so let’s mix things up. And for today’s music… perhaps just David Bowie? With the albums played in the other I used to play as a teenager … Continue reading Comics Daze
Synth Show
(February 7, 2025)Jazz Show
(February 6, 2025)I’m the best photographer.
Maintain asocial distance
(February 6, 2025)Amazing life hack: Extra lil’ sink so you can wash your hands while you poop
(February 6, 2025)(Could also be a very avant garde bidet, I guess.)
Improv Show
(February 6, 2025)It was fab. Fab-ish. Rie Nakajima & Max Eastley did some interesting stuff, but most of it was on the floor, so only the people in the first row got to see what was going on with all those little machines and stuff. Mia Zabelka didn’t have that problem, and it was fab-fab. But then … Continue reading Improv Show
Book Club 2025: Heavy Weather by P. G. Wodehouse
(February 4, 2025)I’ve gotten to 1933 in my chronological read of P.G. Wodehouse novels, and I was wondering whether there’s a general drop-off in quality in his books… so I googled what people thought, and the rough consensus is that yes indeed, after 1940 his books suck or something? And that this is almost his final top … Continue reading Book Club 2025: Heavy Weather by P. G. Wodehouse
Comics Daze
(February 4, 2025)Gah! I woke up in the middle of the night and I don’t feel like wrestling myself back to sleep, so perhaps this is a good night and then day to read comics? I guess we’ll see. And for today’s music: 1991 only. Heidi Berry: Love 04:25: Mothballs by Sole Otero (Fantagraphics) The artwork here … Continue reading Comics Daze