Jonathan Sanderson

Hurray!

I hope it goes smoothly. Take all the rest you need. See you on the other side.

Heck, yes

First of the month. Time for the deluge of emails from all my smart devices telling me how they’ve performed over the last month. The self-congratulatory little shits.

I’ve been referring to it as my ‘emotional support dragon’ all day. Very much needed this week. 😀

Stanton Bikes, what are you thinking? British steel and titanium bike manufacturer Stanton Bikes has put to market a pair of CYC motor conversion systems that

Stanton Bikes, what on earth are you thinking?

I'm dismayed to see a Brit brand putting the e-bike category at risk by irresponsibly using & selling highly overpowered kits - filming their use on public roads & down countryside paths at speed.

Call it out.

www.cyclingelectric.com/news/stanton...

I had to do a second take where I wasn’t doing that myself.

Lovely @robives.bsky.social dragon linkage mechanism. Next step: recreate with my acrylic linkage kit and add servo control. 😀🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 www.robives.com/project/drag...

Lovely essay here; this pull quote may be the banger line, but the whole piece is worth teasing apart.

Absurdly - though perhaps not improbably - a straw poll of my first-year computing students this year showed none of them had heard of Douglas Adams. This is, I think, a critical capability gap.

I’m not a particular fan of the royal family, but it turns out they do have some uses.

This is epic. I once worked with a specialist paper tube manufacturer, who were utterly brilliant but also very funny about their passion for cylindrical cardboard products. Between them and a rubber supplier in Bradford I’ve long had a love for quirky industrial estate culture.

Many of them have more depth than Farage.

Implausibly, this worked. Or he reached exactly 599 backers via some other route. One or the other. Delete as applicable.

Four hours to go, needs 18 more backers to hit the arbitrary-but-satisfying 500. £5 print-and-play word game. Nice guy behind it.

Word Dungeon Print-and-play solo dungeon scrawler where letters become loot. Spell your way through hand-drawn depths and leave with treasure!

Ten hours to get Joe’s print-and-play game to 500 backers! www.kickstarter.com/projects/wha...

Trump said he’ll release federal funds if officials rename Dulles Airport, Penn Station after him The president’s obsession with self-glorification is old hat, but his tactics regarding the Gateway infrastructure project are new.

Go on, rename Dulles to Dipshit International.

www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

a little girl is asking why not both while standing in a kitchen . Alt: a little girl is asking why not both while standing in a kitchen .

Absolutely this. Also: podcasts are terrible.

Go on, get him to 300 backers. 😀

Hah! To be fair, the 1800 ES existed. Also: paging @garethjonestv.bsky.social, shooting brake alert.

Oh wow, AutoTrader social cards are broken here. It’s a gorgeous dark red P1800, anyway.

I’m in the process of buying a car, which means I’m looking at a seemingly-infinite number of indistinguishable wheeled boxes.

And then this comes along. Sadly, nowhere to put a roof rack. Oh, also: not enough seats. Dammit.

www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/...

Word Dungeon Print-and-play solo dungeon scrawler where letters become loot. Spell your way through hand-drawn depths and leave with treasure!

My chum Joe has a neat print-to-play “dungeon scrawler” word game on #kickstarter: check out Word Dungeon. www.kickstarter.com/projects/wha.... £5 pledge, and it’s actually fun/clever/interesting. Yay!

Ah, I see you’ve heard my strangled response every time the alert pops up.

At work we have an ongoing review of our academic misconduct policy and process; I’ve been to some of the briefings. It’s interesting.

Apple’s AI, however, thinks it’s absolutely flippin’ serious and urgent that I know immediately and frequently about “your Academic Misconduct Review meeting.” 😬

It baffles me why wishlists don’t have a karma system. Or just some way to send that particular French novel to people I dislike.

Oh, I see now. That’s why, isn’t it?

About thirty years ago I went on a binge trip of debut novels, and some of those are technically still on the go. Including one which required financial assistance from the French government to achieve an English translation. Lesson learned: always read the front matter.

A year of Trump: terror, territory and tariffs — The News Agents We bring you a special report today of the ‘dark flights’ that are deporting hundreds of people - the vast majority of them here legally - in shackles from Minnesota to Texas detention centres.There i...

The New Agents’ story on deportation flights from Minneapolis is utterly chilling. overcast.fm/+AA9hL63fPFE

Waves - ScienceDemo.org I threw this together last night to try out an arrangement for a practical demo Elin is planning to build for a new show at the Centre for Life. I thought it might find wider use than just us sitting ...

Ooh, ocean waves are particularly cool, though, in that the particle motion does involve lateral oscillation: sciencedemo.org/2014/05/waves/

(That website is slightly broken on mobile, but the video should play. I really should write the follow-up, ten years later. 😂)

Fruit pastilles is more authentic, though! The first prototype used them, before we switched to jelly babies for filming because… well, stabbing jelly babies is funnier, right?

But still: fruit pastilles are the OG wave machine sweet.

A simple wave machine YouTube video by Institute of Physics

The @iop.org have posted a higher-quality version, www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eMT..., and you’ll find loads of others. I’ve even seen it demonstrated by Microsoft’s education team.