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  Lotus Wight's "Cluck Old Hen" features: a) exquisite examples of the "cluck", a much sought-after harmonic technique in clawhammer (that for every other stringed instrument would be a "hell naw"); b) bass harmonica so grotty it should be illegal. https://soundcloud.com/lotuswight/cluck-old-hen-banjo-and-contra #banjo

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  another late one for #BandCampFriday : Echo | Sheila Chandra — https://sheilachandra.bandcamp.com/album/echo

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  If you're still casting around for #BandCampFriday purchases, Wild Gods' "The Glorious Abysmal" starts at dronecore with Gaelic waulking song and gets weirder from there. Review: Wild Gods: The Glorious Abysmal — https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/jul/10/wild-gods-the-glorious-abysmal-review-truly-fascinating-songs-born-of-tweed-beating-and-psychedelic-trips link: https://wildgods.bandcamp.com/album/the-glorious-abysmal

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  The Canadian Amateur magazine (ham radio) seldom makes me laugh, but Brent Dalgleish VE3GXD's "Backyard WSPR Tests with Everyday Metal Objects" was lovely. Using an extension ladder, eavestrough, a stepladder, a shovel and a beach chair as antennas, 3000+ km reception was possible #HamRadio

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  Welp, there goes our attempt to foster water-conserving long grass: we just got hit with a Toronto s.489-3.3.A order to comply. Gotta cut everything down to less than 20 cm by Saturday. Bet it was our neighbour's lawn guy who grassed on us. Was always "offering to help" ...

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  The kittens are snoozing in a heap on the deck. Must be tough work being a kitten

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  At times like this, I remember that George Soros is one of the few native speakers of Esperanto.

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  Opt your code out from thieving bastards: https://huggingface.co/spaces/HuggingFaceCode/in-the-stack

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  Rest as peacefully as this little one was snoozing on our deck this afternoon #caturday #kitten

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  It's baby skunk time! #skunks #skunk #toronto #squee

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  ooh, I just made a spline do exactly what I needed to. Though I've been an Inkscape user for more than a decade, I'm more of a straight lines type

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  Up, at, and have already been bleated at by this baby raccoon. #toronto #TrashPanda

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  For Canada Day, I'd like to share The Most Canadian Picture ever. It also helps me to remember that colder temperatures are possible. This sled thingy was improvised by installers at Dave Rampel Solar farm on Rainy River First Nations land in NW Ontario (it's about 1 km from Minnesota). It was below -35 °C on that day, and the installers were finding that their cable ties were shattering from the cold. So they went home. #CanadaDay #solar

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  If you happen to like Canadian flight suits (Who wouldn't? They're comfy! With pockets in the right places!) and are fairly tall, Hero Outdoors have a bunch of new old stock blue ones for $25. This is an absolute steal. Hero does mail order. They're your standard slightly scary-looking military surplus store, but they are extremely friendly https://www.herooutdoors.com/canadian-armed-forces-blue-flight-suits-medium-long/ #canada #surplus

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  Oh no! He's dicking about with dot matrix pin shapes now! #typography

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  Dammit, I'm going to have to go round to Costco to sort out my order. It's still showing a delivery date of two days ago. What's worse, when I call the order line, it happily reads out the other two parts of the order, but when it gets to the main item it say "Please call back later, we have encountered an error" and hangs up.

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  Still on my ROT13 nonsense: gnat/tang is the longest pair that are ROT13 and reverse of each other. If you're into very obscure words, nana/anan work too. (Anan: obsolete interjection meaning 'in a moment' or 'at your service', 17th century)

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  If you rot13 the work 'irk', you get a close synonym, 'vex'

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  Satoshi Nakamoto is actually Carmen Sandiego

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  skink → skiink → skünk → skunk

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  Your keyboard isn't cool enough to have a CQ key. (This is from an SRT-3000 RTTY Send/Receive terminal from 1983. It also has keys dedicated to the prosigns SK, KN and DE) #RetroComputing #hamRadio #keeb #keyboard #Gorton

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  @gloriouscow sounds like a doorbell, less impressive than you might think https://www.theclockdepot.com/bulova-c4443-baronet-wall-clock.html

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  @gloriouscow I dunno: a Lifer would've started in the 1950s, and a Hamilton watch might've been a much more familiar (and American) name than Rolex. The only thing I know about IBM recognition is from a friend who started as a junior in IBM Canada c. 2000. On her first day, she was shown a huge catalogue to pick her business card from. It looked like she could pick any, but picked one that was reserved for Lifers. Her manager advised that there was one very basic design she could have

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  @splorp I didn't know that Glowforge *could* ship to Canada at any cost. I know someone at a Canadian university who has tried, and maybe given up on getting a Glowforge

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  @splorp yeah, that Glowforge bed is just slightly too small. It's a shame that there's still no official way to get them in Canada.

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  @geoffl - which, since it was an S100 main board, likely didn't do much of anything. Processor, RAM, I/O all extra

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  @geoffl I guess I'm forgetting how hideously expensive disk drives were in the UK back then. Bare 5¼" drives at 200 quid each!

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  Some little shite called in a bomb threat to VCF East and the place got cleared by armed police Camp Evans is fully evacuated and the bomb squad has been called in. #RetroComputing #vcfeast2026

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  @cobalt123 @thisismyglasgow I tool remember these (just). Possibly even ones attached to pillar boxes. Some of the closes on Edgehill Road have amazing stained glass interior windows over the doors. My partner lived in one while she was doing her PhD at Glasgow.

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  @tempusfelix vaseline glass tends only to be mildly clicky. It's much easier to find in a thrift store with a UV flashlight: its glow is very bright