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Previously: Retro Review: Tales of Graces F (PS3!) Continuing my year of playing Tales games on the very retro console PS3 with Tales of Xillia! Tales of Xillia is the thirteenth main title in the Tales series of JRPGs and is the the fifth one I played chronologically. It follows dual protagonists Jude Mathis and Milla Maxwell as they fight to determine the fates of humans and spirits in the world of Rieze Maxia. Collector's Edition This game was the first time I ever...
Coprolith: PutrescenceOut 3rd July on Me Saco Un Ojo / Rotted Life Low effort death metal combines Incantation and Autopsy into a route one interpretation of death/doom, oscillating between slow and fast with no attempt to create tension and release as each transition is carefully prepared for. The album attempts to get by on the somewhat chasmic production, hoping that the guitar tone will fill in the blanks where riffs and identity are lacking. The riffs pivot on easy to...
Found this pic on line by chance; is there any other way? I don't look up gravesites normally. Just looking for Kevin Ayers' videos. If you share my taste (?) in music then maybe these makeshift markers and the sun bleached stones will make some kind of sense to you. The graves are up on a hillside village in the north of Majorca. It's a bit of an "artists" cementerio apparently. It's also possible that none of their human remains are actually there, considering their...
Chinese history holds two opposing views on Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇), the first emperor of China. He was the man who unified the country in 221 BCE, standardizing currency, axle widths, and, above all, the written script: 书同文 (shū tóng wén). The standardization of written characters held the civilization together for thousands of years to come. He was also known as the tyrant who “burned the books and buried the scholars”—焚书坑儒 (fén shū kēng rú)—in an attempt to erase the...
During the month of August I will be participating in Blaugust, a month long blogging challenge. Today’s TDC asks us to: Tell us about your inner monologue. Bonus points for recording it. 224/365 Non Eclipse flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license Work’s tricky at the moment, so a lot of my inner monologue is best kept to myself, but there’s one thing on my mind today. Yesterday was the day of a solar eclipse, with a pretty...
Over the last few weeks, I’ve kept wondering how I would describe summer in our region with just one picture. Maybe a day at the lake? The old town flooded with sunlight? Then, on one of our evening walks, it suddenly became obvious. The harvested fields on the hills. The smell of freshly cut fields, the scattered straw bales, the blue sky, and swallows calling overhead. That’s my perfect summer scene. I already loved these kinds of summer scenes in the old Michel aus...
You may have noticed on the Fediverse that I haven't been trying to permanently configure my Stream Deck lately. Instead, I've built my own solution. This solution consists of two components. First, a client running on my phone that displays 32 buttons with small images on the screen. Second, a server called DeckServer that pushes different button layouts (which I would normally see on the Stream Deck) to this client. The Problem The DeckServer runs as a background service...
Caroline Lash, a native Manhattanite who works in publishing, is burnt out at 28 and eager to get away from the shadow of her prima donna mother, a bestselling author. On the strength of having published one story in the New Yorker, she secures a writing fellowship and heads to Boston’s North Shore for a year. On the way to fictional Greenhead, she meets Van Whittaker, who works at Hammond Castle Museum, and soon they are a couple, and she is included if not welcomed by...
readyI eyeballed the bookcase checking for any holidays and found none. Last night after dinner I had put primer on the molding. This AM I sanded it down with 320 grit, wiped down it down and rolled on the first top coat.nopeUsed a roller to apply the top coat and I like the look. No brush marks and the coverage looks smooth. I had to brush some parts - corners and the molded edges of the shelves.the left oneBoth frames have the same molded outside edge. The left one I got...
Python A-Z is a blog series about Python. Each day, I share insights, ideas and examples for different parts of Python development that match with the letter of the day. Blaugust is an annual blogging festival in August where the goal is to write a blog post every day of the month. A life of a software developer — no matter if you’re doing it professionally or as a hobby — is a life of continuous learning. The technologies evolve, problem solving skills are never complete...
I'm not sure if I'm skiving or just taking a bit of time out!Yesterday, I was a victim of funky lateness twice in one go: things that are supposed to begin at a certain time and don't seem to be part of social life. I didn't mind though. Every time I walk somewhere it's an opportunity to think through stuff to do with the album; the reflection is part of the process.The bass guitar is looming in the kitchen, waiting to be played. Are my fingers ready? I do hope so!
If you want to discover the best spots nearby to watch the sunset, then you need the Sunset Atlas. Choosing a good local spot to watch the sun disappear below the horizon can involve a fair amount of trial and error. Sunset Atlas takes some of the guesswork out of finding the perfect sunset viewpoint by mapping sunset viewing conditions across Europe.The interactive map uses a colourful heatmap to show the quality of sunset views, with warmer colours indicating locations...
For the best part of three decades, any idiot could make money in UK property. And, for a while, this one certainly did. September 2025 Agent: “It’s rent review time. The current rent is £740 pcm. We’re proposing £850.” Me: “No. I really don’t want to go into the new rent control regime on an under-market rent. Let’s ask for £880–£890. Comparables are £1,000, but I acknowledge starting with a nine might cause sticker shock.” Agent: “We don’t recommend that large an...
From the office of Prof. Neville Morley, Supreme Plenipotentiary, Überboss and Vice-Chancellor of Ex University, Earth 2: Your ever-caring and responsive senior management team has heard your pathetic whining about the Why On Earth Should We Keep Paying You? pro-formas, the ever-shifting timescale for their completion and the sheer opacity of our plans for making use of them. Naturally our first concern is to minimise distress and anxiety among members of our HR department...
Well, it’s gone quiet around here again. The Euro-branch of the clan has moved to the other end of the lake before taking the skies and heading home. But first they took in a game Wednesday between the Jays and the Sox, as illustrated. $17.28 CND with a bit of a tip for that Bud. Lordy. No wonder I stick to high end rare vintage ports. Long time readers will recall that we are a Red Sox family due to the Boston branch of the clan so it’s good that the seats up there are...
Women of Music Volume 23 Ann-Marget on cover tracklistAnn-Margret - Dance With Me Henry.mp3 Beti Webb - Tic Toc.mp3 Bonnie Tyler - Those Were The Days.mp3 Carmen Taylor - Ooh I.mp3 Cindy Carson - Just As I Am.mp3 Jane Morgan - Girl Named Johnny Cash.mp3 Kathy Lee - Look At Me And Smile.mp3 Mary Deloatch - The New Gospel Street.mp3 Mary Sue - Gravy.mp3 Paula Lamont - A Beatle Meets A Ladybug.mp3 Sherri Gibbs & The Quovans - Oh My Baby.mp3 Sparkley Betty Barkley - Oh Johnny.mp3
Ayer, como medio país, estuve viendo el eclipse. Tenía unas gafas que me facilitó uno de mis cuponeros de confianza (sí, tengo más de uno) y me fui con un amigo a verlo al campo con un par de latas de refresco, una bolsa de palomitas y un par de sillas de camping. Fue un planazo, la verdad. La sensación fue muy rara; como en mi localización la cobertura no fue completa (creo que se quedó en un 97 o 98%), la sensación era como cuando bajas el punto blanco o el contraste del...
So last night I played cricket. I did my usual – hung around for a bit and scored fuck all – but it was during the biggest solar eclipse since 1999. I was fortunate in seeing the Solar Eclipse back then. We were about 20 miles away from totality at the time (on holiday in Weymouth) and seeing it go so dark was surreal. This photo was taken at around 10am! Last night was still impressive. I thought I tried getting a few photos, but it seems I got lucky with a few...
I’m trying something new. Every so often a software developer reaches out to tell me about a new app they’ve built for film photographers. They’re invariably a film photographer themselves, and they built an app they wanted for themselves. So far none of these apps have entered my workflows — they’ve been fine apps, just not ones that solve problems I have. But I like the idea of putting good work from our community in front of you, because you might find it valuable....
In the late 1930s comparisons were often made between new art and ancient landscapes. In British Art: Ancient Landscapes Sam Smiles cites an essay by John Piper which refers to the work of Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, who 'has landed us back in the stomach of pre-history' and Paul Nash, who 'leaves us with the bare sea-washed bones of it.' A Barbara Hepworth catalogue compared her work to menhirs and in an article about her work in Circle, the journal that promoted...
Looking across from my train at Blackfriars Station, down along the Thames to the silhouette of Tower Bridge and the city around it, already in the early morning beginning to bake in another heatwave at the end of a completely rainless summer, I find myself wondering how long it will be before the whiplash effects of homeostatic attempts at a correction see a vast red cyclonic eye perpetually howling around the atmosphere of our dead planet.
We had a partial solar eclipse in the UK yesterday, about 80% of the sun was obscured by the moon at about 7pm. It was really cool. My youngest kid - now in his mid 20s - was with me in front of the house as I held up two pieces of card in the dying light to see the eclipse projected through pinholes in one card onto the other. All this time he was filming on his phone as we chatted. It weighed heavy on me that I will definitely never see another eclipse like this. I hoped...
Well, here in Lichfield, we had a typically English eclipse – which is to say that a magnificent bank of cloud (something scarcely seen in the past three weeks) rolled into place bang on time, right in front of the eclipsing sun, and in an otherwise largely blue sky. 'The world is disgracefully managed,' as Ronald Firbank's Mrs Shamefoot puts it. 'One hardly knows to whom to complain.' We had a couple of glimpses of the sun, so knew roughly what was going on, but the...
This won't be a lengthy post. It will consist of a small update and a brief explanation regarding why I am no longer publishing Sightless Scribbles to YouTube. For those that do follow my YouTube channel, you might have noticed that I began streaming again. I won't stream every day. My one hobby is reading and writing. I'd much rather publish new blog entries about what I've read or enjoyed writing than take up streaming as a hobby/main project, but I thought, it's fun....