Thomas RigbyModify

2025-09-30 16:29:01

The streets round here are lined with trees. Some mark the bounds of farm land, some are decorative; planted by municipalities past.

The main road through the village has a variety of species of differing ages. Some saplings planted next to the stumps of the ancient monsters they replace. Oak, Beech, Maple, Birch, and this — the London Plane.

Apparently this tree is particularly good at extracting pollutants from the air which is why it is ubiquitous in urban planning.

As the outer bark, covered in particulates, sheds in easily-swept-up sheets, it reveals a patchwork of cream and grey inner bark leaving this distinctive camouflage pattern.

2025-09-29 18:56:05

For my sins, I have watched more "PAW Patrol" than anyone should have to. Here are some notes on why it's rubbish.

• The "emergencies" are of wildly varying severity; ecological disaster with whales covered in oil but also everyone's phones are missing, broken ski-lift but also unpacking vegetables for a local café owner, literally saving Christmas but also painting fences and building a stage for a village fair
• The animation goes hard with some realism but also hard on cartoon-y which creates a weird juxtaposition of realistic lighting on nostril-less noses
• None of the stories have morals
• or lessons
• or story arcs
• I'm not asking for hidden smut, but there's absolutely nothing for the parents watching; no nods to pop culture, no double entendre, no celebrity cameos — nothing
• Related to that, the over-powering earnestness of the whole thing. nothing is tongue-in-cheek or self-deprecatory (except one line in "PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie" where a news reporter cracks a gag about a new line of merch)
• The characters are riddled with inconsistencies speaking to weak writing. for example, in one episode Rocky hates having baths, in the next he's reluctant to get dirty. These are two episodes in the same season!
• lazy stereotypes
• hero worshipping cops
• if it's an emergency, why does there have to be two whole minutes of adverts showing the dogs being changed into uniforms and converting their transforming dog houses into cars before each mission?
• Ryder's God Complex™
  • despite his magical talking dogs being experts in their respective fields, ryder always formulates the solution by himself and instructs the pups on how to apply their expertise leaving them no autonomy. having been a frontend developer in a certain type of organisation, this perhaps hits a little close to home
• The universe is a madness. Dinosaurs, ghosts, dragons, outer space, mermaids, robot houses, actual Santa. I have a theory that Keith Chapman (creator. Also made Bob the Builder. evil personified, afaik) keeps going to Nickelodeon with new show ideas and they make him roll it into PAW Patrol instead.
  • "Knights and dragons!"
  • "Are they dog knights…?"
  • "erm… no"
  • "Make them dogs, Keith. It's expensive launching a new show when we could just add a new merch line to an existing show whether it makes any sense or not."
• The show commits the cardinal sin of having some, but not all, animals talk leading to questions about tiered caste systems, slavery, and autonomy that are never answered

2025-09-28 20:46:10

the real power of LLMs is natural language interfaces, not making content.
Ian Betteridge

This actually tracks with my experience. Using them at work for creating a helper to get the job done has proven valuable.

Trying to generate usable, production-ready code is a fool's errand though.

2025-09-28 16:55:22

22nd September - 28th September

The smell of creosote, the sound of a Goldcrest, the feeling of the paling sun on the dawn of Autumn tickling my face, the branches of a beech silhouetted against a cloudless sky through the viewfinder of my camera, the last lingering taste of a scrumped damson plum. Around the corner, surprise!, sheep in a field.

I got pulled off my PowerBI work to support on another job where they wanted to demo a voice-controlled support app for patients. I spent the last few days wrangling various text-to-speech and speech-recognition APIs into a gorgeous looking frontend.

Tested it with a few people in the team to varying levels of success which really drove home the disparity in browser capabilities, operating system nuances, and just how difficult it is to get a computer to understand female-presenting voices.

Ten past six in the morning, the day and the family are yet to properly wake, and I'm stood at the back door with a coffee. I heard the clear and distinctive "he-wit he-wit" of a Tawny Owl. Far too dark to see the little fellow but, still, incredible!

There was silence on the other end. The static crackle from one hundred kilometres of telephone lines. Crows sitting on them, shivering, while people's conversations darted past under their feet.
John Ajvide Lindqvist, "Let the Right One In"

Links of Interest™

• Publish, don’t polish
• How aesthetics destroyed privacy and polarized us
• How Much Does Freedom Cost?
• It Took a Photographer 10 Years to Finally Nail the Perfect Lion Photo
• What’s new with Kobo – Fall 2025 update

2025-09-28 13:01:25

In a basement beneath an upmarket boutique hotel there is a tattoo parlour.

A single, unassuming door opens on a stairwell to an underground labyrinth like a Gen-Z art TARDIS.

It feels very retro-futuristic 1980's cyberpunk; the sort of place they do cybernetic implants and remove government chips as well as ink and piercings.

2025-09-28 01:37:13

Courtesy of Chris Glass, I learned the word Komorebi (木漏れ日) –dappling light patterns caused by sunlight through leaves– and immediately ran out to capture my own like it's some kind of Pokémon.

Where I live, late-August and September are good times to capture Komorebi. There's usually enough breeze and the sun is hot and high, and I (an Irish-skinned goth) can most often be found under suitable tree-cover anyway.

In motion, the patterns are reminiscent of sunlight on water; subtly undulating, almost twinkling. Especially effective on dry leaves or, oddly enough tarmac.