Robot school
The robot is teaching me how to edit Epub files.
The thing that surprised me most when I first learned about EPUBs is that they are not really a document format at all. They’re more like a miniature website zipped into a single file.
The thing that surprised me. ChatGPT is such a card! Anyhoo, it’s right – an Epub file is a bunch of xhtml and css and image and media files all zipped together – literally! If you rename a book.epub file into book.zip, you can open it and poke around in it.
I may have mentioned it before. What I didn’t know before is that the best way to edit them is using an open source tool called Sigil (pictured above). It makes it really easy to see the structure of the file and edit the various components directly.
Why was I doing this? I have downloaded a series of Victorian books which are behaving badly on my preferred Kindle reader (which is, for the record, a Remarkable tablet).
(Oh, who am I kidding? I just like to dissect files and Frankenstein them).
August 3, 2026 — 6:57 pm
Comments: none
Wigged out. Soul food. Stink eye. Poo. Nonheterosexual. Monkeypox.
Montezuma’s revenge. Meet and greet. Mayo. MacPherson strut. AAA battery. A-go-go. Black Muslim. Coin-op. Arugula. Doofus. Dreadlock. Hate crime. Hair gel. Helipad.
See what words first hit print the year you were born (or any year) thanks to Merriam-Webster. And have a hyperarid weekend!
July 31, 2026 — 3:49 pm
Comments: 7
Older mustelids
This dude found the earliest known fossil weasel, somewhere in Spain. Well, a protoweasel. Here’s Grok’s synopsis:
A research team that includes Chris Law (University of Washington principal research scientist and affiliate curator at the Burke Museum) described a new fossil species named Galanthis baskini.
It comes from the Late Miocene of Spain (Las Casiones site, roughly 6.5–6.3 million years old). This pushes the known origin of the weasel subfamily Mustelinae (weasels, ferrets, minks, etc.) back by about three million years. Previously the oldest confirmed true weasels were around 3.5 million years old.
The animal was very small — estimated at about 135 grams (roughly the size of a modern least weasel) — and already had the sharp teeth of a small carnivore.
Chris Law is quoted in the article discussing how this fossil helps explain the early evolution of the distinctive small, elongated weasel body plan.
The paper is here, and it looks dead boring. What was more interesting was the clip of the guy talking about it – he was talking about the elongation of mustelids, selected for nipping into burrows and murdering rodents. It’s always fun to hear a scientist talk about his specialty. Unfortunately, it was an embedded video on a Facebook post, so no easy link.
July 30, 2026 — 4:53 pm
Comments: 2
This is a real error message
The message was just like this, including the exclamation points and the number one. It was on a browser tab for a book I was reading at Google Books: Topography of the County of Sussex. Grok tells me: HTTP 403 Forbidden means the server understood your request but refuses to fulfill it because you don’t have permission to access the resource.
Next time I booted, the book loaded fine. Somebody coding Google Books having a laugh.
Another hot, sunny day and I’ve been sitting quietly in the shade playing computer. Nothing but hot, sunny days forecast for as far in the future as it goes (which, for the record, is Tuesday the 11th of August).
July 29, 2026 — 6:51 pm
Comments: 3
Opinion, please
Is this what you call a mackerel sky? Because both Uncle B and I think it is, but the robot says: “In traditional weather lore it signals approaching change, usually rain or unsettled weather within roughly 6–24 hours.”
Google Images search thinks it is, too, but there’s absolutely no change predicted for our weather for days and days.
Also
“Mackerel sky, not twenty-four hours dry.”
And
“Mackerel sky, mackerel sky — never long wet and never long dry.”
And
“Mares’ tails and mackerel scales make tall ships carry low sails.”
Phooey.
July 28, 2026 — 7:11 pm
Comments: 6
I should have paid attention
We’ve had the longest spell of hot, dry weather I can remember, these last two months. Yes, this is hot for us. I installed Obsidian so I could keep a diary of such things, but I haven’t been conscientious about writing down the weather. I thought AI could go back and fill in the blanks for me later.
Spoiler: it can’t. I’ve tried four or five of them and they can tell me the total hours of sunshine (because the Met Office reports that), but not the consecutive days of sunshine. Boo.
We were very excited on Sunday because a couple of hours of rain were predicted. I gathered swept up my things ran inside when I felt the first couple of drops prickle against my skin.
That was it. That was our lot. My chair wasn’t even wet. It was sunny again within the hour.
Uncle B is going nuts watering everything every day. He’ll go nutser if they impose a hosepipe ban and everything dies.
July 27, 2026 — 5:21 pm
Comments: 2
The whole Franklin Mint set…
…including the display case.
The display case. That’s what gets me. It’s one thing to have a dentures collection, but to have one specifically for display? Same weird auction as before.
Guide price £250 – £350. Wait…what?!
Have a good weekend and dreamest thou not of teeth!
July 24, 2026 — 5:54 pm
Comments: 8
It is 9 carat gold
To my beloved granddaughter on her seventh birthday – please enjoy this gold charm of a cat throwing up into a garbage can. Love, grammy.
No, I just made that up. But I can’t quite figure out what’s going on here. Can you?
From the same auction that brought us the gusle.
July 23, 2026 — 5:27 pm
Comments: 5
Here’s a neat bit of kit
It’s a power block. More precisely, a charging station. Uncle B got me a small one for my birthday and I loved it so much I bought this thumping great one.
This model is billed as being suitable for hiking. It is, in fact, a little heavy for that, but it’s not like the big models that will boil a kettle.
Fully charged, it will power my laptop all day long. Or my laptop and my phone. You can charge up in one port as you discharge from the other. Or charge in both ports, or discharge in both. The display shows how many watts you’re pulling (or pushing), what percentage charge is left and how long that will power your device at your current usage (or how much longer until it will be fully charged).
I’m learning so much about wattages!
Uncle B reminded me that the current run of sunny, dry weather is extremely unusual and I’m more likely to be inside with my computer, huddled under a blanket fort. Even in July.
I don’t see what that has to do with anything. It’s a toy.
July 22, 2026 — 5:36 pm
Comments: 3
It’s a gusle!
I don’t really have an auction watch set for stuffed stoats. I didn’t realize until now, I apparently do have one for banjos. That’s how this item came to my attention. It’s a banjo on sale with a gusle.
A gusle! I hear you shout in absolute astonishment.
A gusle is a one-stringed Serbian instrument (called a lahuta in Albania). One horsehair string played with a horsehair bow. If you play a gusle, you’re a guslar. And if you’re a guslar, you sing epic poems while you gusle.
Yeah, I thought so, too – but actually, they sound pretty cool. That guy is guslaring the hell out of that thing, accompanied by a Cimbalom, a Zarb, two Frame Drums and a double-bass drone (which I think is a track on that one King Crimson album).
Sounds like the background music for a Witcher game. And no, I’m not going to buy it. I’m a little old to take up the gusle, don’t you think?
That’s a weird auction. Usually, the stamps would go into a stamp auction and the horse brasses into a horse brass auction, but not Eastbourne Auctions. They throw thousands of things up against the wall and sell them in one big auction that lasts five days.
July 21, 2026 — 6:11 pm
Comments: 7