Welcome!

About eighteen years ago, I got a copy of Nicola Barker’s “Darkmans” for Christmas. It’s a hefty novel, one of those small runs where the ‘hardback’ is actually a paperback. I have the first edition and it’s ginormous. I read it at home because I couldn’t really take it anywhere.

But I got through it with the help of the following hack.

It’s been about 5 months now since the release of Civilisation VII and it’s starting to become a playable game. This is partly due to me getting used to it and partly the effect of quality of life patches and additional features.

At the time of writing, one way to demonstrate the illusory nature of LLM intelligence is to get one to try and answer a cryptic crossword clue.

“I’ve never had one fail” says my Dad brandishing his drill on Boxing Day 2022, before heading out into the garden and putting up our Christmas gift, a handsome wooden bird box. “If I put it up, they’ll come along eventually.”

I sometimes wonder if I picked the correct 808 State album for my understated classics series. That’s because today I was listening to their 1996 album Don Solaris and it’s pretty darn good. For understated classics I chose their earlier effort Gorgeous, partly out of the belief that probably no one else ever would, but also because 10X10 and Plan 9 are such total bangers.