The hilarity of the “free-speechers”

Like most sane people, I’m concerned with issues around freedom of speech, so I was interested to see recent discussions about Trump and Twitter, the removal of Parler from All The Places and the end of Voat. With each of these – and yes, I’ve also just listened to the hilarious James O’Brien / Piers … Read more

Moral redundancy

A few things seem to have coalesced recently to make me think quite hard about “moral redundancy”. A bit of a trigger for this post was the story about the lorry deaths in Essex (and can I just say that the graphic on that page showing the positions of the people in the back of … Read more

Meditations on meditation

{ I wrote this in February 2020 – firstly just for myself, then a limited “audience” of a few friends – but now for anyone that is interested… } I’ve been a dabbler, an infrequent sitter, for ten years or more. I’ve been a semi regular for two years. It’s been a proper daily thing … Read more

Covid Christmas

My editorial policy* roughly for this blog roughly aligns with: if rant, post on The Rantimator, if more considered, post here. I’m going to break that rule: here comes a rant. I get that Christmas is an important time. I get that families like to hang out together. I get that an awful lot of … Read more

Too much

There’s too much noise. Too much opinion. Too many things to listen to. Too much stuff to read. There’s always been too much, probably since the moment Sludge1 crawled out of the swamp and couldn’t keep up with all the groovy things that Sludge2 was clearly up to with all his Sludgy mates over on … Read more

The press is here!

Not as in “I’m looking outside my front door and my front garden is full of journalists baying for my blood” but as in this: Yes. There it is, a Polymetaal Ething Press HS-35. Get in. I’ve hankered after some kind of press since I got serious about printing. Although a good baren does the … Read more

Sea print

Got the printing gear out today. This is one I’ve been working on for a while. It’s two layers, but at the moment the layers are too similar. So here’s both: …and here’s just one: I think next step is to simplify one of the blocks, remove the double layering. I like the sea texture … Read more

Two very different new things

I promised myself I’d come up here and look at something (see, now I can’t even remember what that thing was, the internet rabbithole foo is so strong) – but it certainly wasn’t this site, and then I got sucked in for whatever reason and now I’ve been fiddling for about an hour (NEW THEME, … Read more

Back into it

So I’ve been mulling a renaissance in the form of writing some stuff again. And then I went down a long rabbit hole where I was thinking – man, static stuff is all the rage and maybe I should redo my site in some JAMSTACK bollocks, and “what do I want this thing to be” … Read more

I’m happier without a smartphone

It’s now just over a month since I gave up my smartphone and began an experiment with a Nokia 3310. Much has already been written about smartphone sanity. Books, blog posts, tweets – just Google it to see other people doing the same, or poke this blog or my links to see some of the … Read more