Jonathan Littlewood

A Badgeware Tufty 2350 Python-powered conference badge is in the foreground with its ePaper and LED-array siblings in the background, on either side of it. The Tufty 2350 has a white panel across the top with a lanyard hole in the centre and small circular holes at each end. There is a pen drawing of a squirrel wearing goggles across the panel and a "TUFTY 2350" logo. Right at the top is the URL https://badgewa.re. The main body of the badge has a colour display showing a "BadgeOS v4.03.." heading, a battery level meter and six icons. The Clock icon is highlighted, and a label says "Clock" at the bottom of the display. Under the display, there are three buttons, labelled A, B, and C, and there are up and down buttons to the right.

Great to see that new Badgeware firmware has been released that fixes the FAT filesystem corruption that I hit a few weeks ago. It also adds a new 'badge' module with some interesting new features. Thankfully, the documentation is also getting regular updates.

badgewa.re/docs

Tired: paperclip maximizer problem
Wired: datacenter maximizer problem

If you're doomscrolling, guess what? So far there are 51 kākāpō chicks hatched and thriving this season, the same number of birds as we had in TOTAL in the 90s! Only one chick has died and there are still fertile eggs waiting to hatch!

A roughly oval mass of black shiny black spheres lay on damp ground amongst some decaying leaves. There is a green leaf at the top right. There is a metric ruler along the bottom showing that the whole mass is about 6 cm across, with each egg about 2mm in diameter.

As an experiment, I scraped up a very sticky lump and dropped it into a bucket of water. Within half an hour, it was expanding and showing transparent albumen and central black nuclei. Frog's eggs... Somebody couldn't wait! 2/2

A roughly oval mass of black shiny black spheres lay on damp ground amongst some decaying leaves. There is a green living leaf at the top right, and bare earth at the bottom of the photo.

I thought I'd found a small, but perfectly formed, lump of black pearl slime mould just outside our back door. Each "sporangium" was about 2mm across and looked perfectly black. Subsequently, I found two other lumps in a direct line to the pond... 1/2

A fascinating thread... as far as I could follow it...

A futuristic illustration of a city built upwards, with buildings on top of buildings, and a railroad wrapping around it all.

A Victorian's vision of the future - by Grant E. Hamilton for Judge Magazine in 1895. What will people say of our predictions in 100+ years?

New blog entry: More in Sadness than in Anger: www.antipope.org/charlie/blog...

Post from twitter on our @clarkesworld account from 11:48AM on Feb 20, 2023. "Submissions are currently closed. It shouldn't be hard to guess why."

Today is the 3rd slopiversary of us having to temporarily close submissions. The problem of "AI"-generated submissions hasn't gone away and is still a huge waste of our time. House policy remains the same: #noAI stories, translation, art, or anything else.

A Badgeware Tufty 2350 programmable lanyard badge sits on a laptop keyboard. The Tufty has a banner across its top decorated with a drawing of a squirrel wearing a flying helmet, a "Tufty 2350" logo, and the URL https://badgewa.re. Most of the front is taken up by a colour screen displaying six icons in two rows of three. At the top of the screen, it announces "BadgeOS v4.03" and indicates the battery is at 100%. A yellow bar along the bottom names the selected app - "30 Minutes to Alpha Centauri". There are up and down buttons to the right of the screen. There are also three buttons labelled A to C just below the screen.

Phew! Reflashing the firmware using the latest image from github.com/pimoroni/tuf... got the Tufty back working again. I still don't know what caused the issue, but at least I can put my MicroPython coding trousers back on and get coding again.

A Badgeware Tufty 2350 programmable lanyard badge sits on a rather dusty laptop keyboard. The Tufty has a banner across its top decorated with a drawing of a squirrel wearing a flying helmet, a "Tufty 2350" logo, and the URL https://badgewa.re. Most of the front is taken up by a (blank) screen which has up and down buttons to its right, and three buttons labelled A to C underneath it.

Spent a few evenings enjoying getting back up to speed with MicroPython when my new Badgeware Tufty 2350 decided to lose its firmware and apps. Found the GitHub repo and will try reflashing the firmware tomorrow when I'm in a better mood.

A Tuxedo Cat made of Lego sits on a table in front of a vase of daffodils and a Lego Christmas candle. The cat has a black head and ears, and a white face and bib. Its eyes are yellow and its nose pink. The rest of its body is black, while its feet and the tip of its tail are white. Its body is angled to the right of the picture, but it is looking off to the left. Lego set 21349.

Over the weekend, I finally finished building the Lego Tuxedo Cat I received for Christmas. I always start by emptying all the packets of bricks into a single box to maximise the rummaging fun - and this gave me 10 hours of mindful relaxation. Mind you, I never realised cats looked like that inside!

He decided to bequeath the typeface to the Thames instead and made 170 trips to Hammersmith Bridge to throw the matrices and punches into the river - 1,000 kg in total. Just over a century later, Robert Green recovered enough of the type to create a digital replica.
typespec.co.uk/doves-type/ 3/3

Around 1900, two neighbours in Hammersmith founded Doves Press and created the rather attractive Doves Type typeface for use in all their books. There was a falling out, and one partner was given sole use of the typeface but had to bequeath it to the other on his death. 2/3

A metal wire tree holds eleven typeface punches that had been recovered from the bed of the Thames near Hammersmith Bridge. Around thirty more punches are piled around the bottom of the tree on a wooden base. Each punch is made of light grey metal with a raised letter or punctuation mark at one end. A reproduction of part of the Thames shore can be seen in the background.

We went to the fascinating "Secrets of the Thames" exhibition at the London Museum Docklands today. My favourite exhibit was some examples of Doves Type recovered from the river and subsequently used to recreate the font. The photo is poor, but the story is much better. 1/3

Caveat Cat adaptation as requested by @anniemg.bsky.social

Analytics card labeled ‘Number of Users’ displaying a total of 5,000,000, with a user icon shown above the number.

Earlier today we passed 5 million user signups! 🎉

Thank you to everyone who’s tried the product so far and tells their friends to do the same! ❤️

We’re improving StoryGraph every single day, based on all of your wonderful feedback.

We have huge plans for 2026. Stay tuned!

In great need of caffeination. Grind beans and spill half the grounds trying to get them into the AeroPress. Grind some more, knock over the AeroPress trying to top it up. The kitchen counter is now more caffeinated than I am.

An illustration of two frogs holding hands like the are spinning round like Leo and Kate in Titanic Text reads: YOU KNOW WHEN SOMETHING JUST CLICKS* * it was either my neck or my back Jaunty Art 26

You Know When Something Just Clicks*

🚨The Petition calling for by-elections to be called automatically when MPs defect to another party is now closing on 80,000 signatures!

Let’s get it to the 100,000 needed today!

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/73...

A screenshot of "The StoryGraph" website showing a series of menus across the top. Underneath is a "To-Read Pile" section showing the covers of six books. Underneath that is a "Recommendations" section showing another six books. On the right is a "Current Reads" panel showing the front covers of the books I'm currently reading with progress bars, the title, and authors.

I've been playing with app.thestorygraph.com in the last few days and found it a great encouragement to read with a little more attention and thoughtfulness. A vibrant community and useful tracking tools without being GoodReads, what is not to like?

2026 started with an operation for my wife, and an exciting bout of norovirus, followed by lots of medical tests for me. We still have the Christmas decoration boxes piled up on the lounge floor, and the Christmas cake and pudding are untouched. But we are finally feeling ready to take on the year!

A bright red Routemaster bus is driving towards the left of the camera. It has a yellow strip between the lower and upper floors. It is bus number RT 2150 with registration number KGK 959. Its route information is displayed in white letters on black backgrounds. The route number is 252, the destination is Collier Row, and the route summary reads "Hornchurch Station, Airfield Way, Elm Pk, Roneo Cnr, Romford, Mawney Road".

Glad to see that TFL are rolling out the latest buses to the 252 route in Hornchurch. #routemaster #bus #london

every provocateur who wangs on all the time about Britain being “broken” should be sent to an actual failed state or autocracy for a month as a learning experience, there’s no shortage of them

An illustration of a frog sitting plomped on its bum on the floor with its legs splayed to its side Text reads: FROG BELIEVES IN YOU* * no-one else. only frog. Jaunty Art 26

Frog Believes In You*

Title: New year's resolution A man sits at a table with a coffee writing in a notebook: “This year i will devote myself completely to reading serious, improving literature, forsaking easy pleasures and tirelessly seeking out truth and profundity in the work of the greatest writers.” He looks at it Says: Hmm... then “Scratch Scratch Scratch scratch” scribbles out words until the text reads: “This year I will read for Fun”

Happy New Year, everyone!

This is a @theguardian.com books cartoon from a few years ago.

A pile of parts from a new Lego set emptied into a box. There are parts in white, red, black, beige, and yellow. Most of the parts are conventional Lego bricks with only a few Technic pins.

Really enjoying starting work on building the Christmas present from my wife. Can you guess what it is yet? 😀 #lego

Tech Christmas
Tom Fishburne, Marketoonist

Front and back paperback mockup of The Re-Emergence book cover on a starry background with the SFINCS finalist badge on the right

At the fayre, Mr 10 sat next to me and read The Re-Emergence for the first time. The whole thing (fast reader).

He absolutely loved it. Spent the rest of the afternoon telling me all his favourite bits, and relentlessly asking questions 🥹😆

He says it's a "must buy", FYI. 👀
📢📚🪐
1/2

The FUNGAL x FOREST level of BALL x PIT with only a couple of enemies left and the boss strength meter at zero.

Just BALL x PIT freezing at the moment I was finishing off the boss in the FUNGAL x FOREST for the first time.

#notHappyBunny