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Recuperate
I've written a new short story. It's only about three and a half pages long, so... very short story. I enjoyed writing it -- a fun idea, I think.Let me know what you think of...
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Radiolab talks and analysing my stories
Been a while since I blogged here. I should do so more often.It has been my habit for years to eat my meals while listening to a talk, or watching a documentary, or watching a piece of fiction. Lately...
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Kenilworth Community Information Centre
Kenilworth Community Information Centrehttps://www.facebook.com/Kenilworth-Community-Information-Centre-1419018014791094/I've been helping out a bit with getting their facebook page organised.This link...
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Linux is 25 years old
Linus back in the dayLinux was named after him and is pronounced LIN-ucks.Here is Linus on pronunciation.The year was 1991, in August, on the 25th day, young computer student Linus Torvalds first...
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Wacom graphics tablet is go!!!
Yay!!!! After many months of trying to get my Wacom graphics tablet working with this damn computer I have finally done it!First task now: to paint a cover for my novel Insurance.(Crossposted from...
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How to colonise Mars
Elon Musk recently gave a fascinating talk on how to go to mars and maintain a self-sustaining civilisation there.(Edit: fixed the link, which had broken over time.)(Crossposted from...
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I think I have a new favorite film
When Marnie Was There (2014) is a Studio Ghibli film I hadn't heard of previously. It is a beautifully bittersweet story that reminds me of some of my favorite RenPy stories.It adds to, rather than...
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Walkaway
I just finished reading Cory Doctorow's latest book Walkaway. I really enjoyed it. I think it's his best yet. The ideas in it come thick and fast, as they do in all his books, but this one has the most...
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am, pm
Is anybody else confused by the abbreviations "am" and "pm" when applied to 12 o'clock midday and 12 o'clock midnight? It seems to me not only arbitrary and confusing, but actually wrong.The...
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matching a pattern in thesaurus output
There must be a simpler way to do this. I was looking for words similar in meaning to "back" or "previous" or "before" but beginning with the letter "d".My awk is a bit rusty so I used sed, which I...
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odd-even weeks or calculating fortnights
This calculates even weeks, that is, it can calculate fortnights:expr \( `date +%s` / 604800 \) % 2 >/dev/null || echo "even"or if you want odd weeks:expr \( `date +%s` / 604800 + 1 \) % 2...
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happiness
(A lovely friend, Dorejejaguar, prompted me to write this last night.)I've often wondered why I'm happier than most people. After reading a fair bit on the topic I've come to the conclusion that I was...
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Disappeared page
An opinion piece was published at Forbes a couple of days ago, but has mysteriously disappeared. Even stranger, when checking the Internet Archive I found the article there, but when I began to read...
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theory of mind and helping people
Theory of mind is an interesting concept. It lets us understand what another person sees. We generally develop this ability at about age 4 years.Here is a common way it is explained: A father phones...
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Blackmail threat
I just got a threat from some piece of shit out there on the net.He posted from IP 94.70.164.115 at an address in Athens marked by the red pin in the map. The idiot thinks faking my name in the "Send"...
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a little story analogy regarding climate change denial
You're on your way to a business meeting that could make you a lot of money. Ahead is a bus and a small car parked on the side of the road before a bridge and a lot of men milling around. Several of...
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a little story analogy for free speech
You're having a pleasant afternoon stroll in your neighborhood. With its tall trees, much shrubbery, plentiful birds, and lack of fences, it looks like virgin bushland, but it's actually fairly well...
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The power, beauty, majesty and duty of reality
It seems to me, realising that a blind, unfeeling universe gets to be conscious through us, and thus able understand itself via our minds (for we are the tiny, infinitely precious, conscious bits of...
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What we should do, but are too stupid to take the hint
We've recently been slapped in the face by reality a couple of times, but seem unable to collectively realise the obvious message.The bushfires have been getting worse every few years until last year...
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playing hevc videos on old mplyer that doesn't support that format
Woo hoo!!!! I just enjoyed a lovely bit of Linux magic. My favorite Linux is a bit old, but I have it working just how I like, with a lot of programs installed and a lot of things I've set up exactly...
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Getting close to the end of my current novel
I've been writing my latest novel, Breathe, for too many years. I got the idea for it back in 2015, while I was writing my short novel, Shirlocke, but it really took me a year or more to get started....
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Galatea - amazing interactive fiction
My favorite work of Interactive Fiction (IF) is "Galatea" by the incredibly talented author Emily Short.So, what is IF? You have probably heard of Choose Your Own Adventure stories, where you are able...
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Curved space
It's 3:30am and my mind keeps ticking over the same annoying thing. I keep trying to think of some way to see gravity as curved space without it collapsing into contradictions. I can see the attraction...
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Tinkering with Puppy on a UEFI laptop
Well, last night was definitely NOT fun, though it certainly was interesting. I spent almost 6 hours trying to resurrect my computer. The kind of Linux I use is Puppy Linux, which has a number of...
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Voting for lunatics and crooks
Today I helped Mum and Dad make their postal vote in the QLD election. I was horrified that of the 6 candidates, 3 are anti-science morons and one is a right-wing liar who is probably also...
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