It's now been months of working every night in the small hours. Not even watching the baby any more - she's sleeping in her new cot in the bedroom - but this is still the only way I can get work done while still having time to look after her during the day. Brutally exhausted.

Ooh, there's a big Byblos exhibition happening in Paris next year. Might have to see if I can get to that. I love Byblos and will have seen a lot of these objects in Beirut during my PhD, but it'd be nice to see them again. Plus I've never actually been to Paris. www.imarabe.org/fr/agenda/ex...

I didn't build this to be a baby's night light. But since it's there, our baby has the coolest night light.

OK, this is quite nice. No O'Brien is a shame but maybe that's a hint they're planning a DS9. Missed opportunity to launch with a video showing how minifig Riker sits in a chair, though. Probably disconnects his leg. www.brothers-brick.com/2025/11/06/l...

We moved the baby into a proper cot in our bedroom as she's outgrown the Moses basket in the living room. This in theory means my wife and I both get to sleep at the same time, in an actual bed. In fact the extra 2 ft or so distance between her and us made it one of the worst nights' sleep in ages.

So good they make the rest of us look like we should just delete Blender and give up.

Evening style is OMG SHE FINALLY GREW INTO IT!

Baby's overnight style was 'Tiny Auton'.

Language change can throw up some delights from time to time.

For reasons no-one is entirely sure of, the LBSC railway's 'improved engine green' looks like this. My wife and I were at a model train show once and she asked a stallholder if she could look at 'the yellow one'. He did a big show of being confused before eventually going 'Oh, the green one!'

Finally got round to watching the Underwater Menace blu-ray. I don't think I've ever actually seen the recovered episode 2 before, it turns out. I never had the official DVD and my copy of the recon predates the episode recovery. So a new-to-me 25 minutes of Doctor Who!

2 of these sets are currently on sale with significant discounts so guess what happened. I'm not even sorry. They're not the first 2 either, so I'm kind of committed to at least the first 5 modules.

Genuinely delighted to download a PhD thesis from a university repository where the author has neglected to remove the words "BITCH THIS IS YOUR THESIS" from the filename.

I never knew he was interested. Or could read.

I... don't love this as much as I wanted to. Never thought I would pass on a Lego Enterprise, but I don't think I can justify this at the likely price. Might pick it up next year, especially if I can find it on sale somewhere. Though it's a shame to miss out on a Ro Laren minifig.

When I was a commercial archaeologist, finds were stored in large plastic paint-style buckets. 'Cracking open a cold one' was sometimes used by colleagues to refer to opening a new tub of bones to wash. In retrospect this probably wasn't as respectful as it could have been.

I choose to believe this actor and the Robert Englund who did extensive work on early cuneiform are one and the same multi-talented individual.

My son was basically a celebrity trick or treating tonight. He was on cloud 9 from all the attention. Worth the effort!

Very pleased with my decision to pre-order a whole bunch of these based on these decorated sample images that have just come to my inbox. Just very, very pretty little models. Did I order the red ones, the teak ones or the blue ones, though? Yes.

My wife put loads of effort into making a Halloween play area for the baby. Despite this, the things that got the biggest smiles: Me waving a tissue around and going 'Woooo' Proper big laugh for me saying 'I vant to drink your milk' in a Dracula voice when she was going to feed.

It's Hallowe'en. Who wants a quick thread on Doctor Who that actually messed me up a bit over the years?

Great. Internet Archive's gone down when I was partway through reading something.

Well that's certainly one way to do a reference.

These days, when colds fade they seem to leave me with this constant, smothering, slow torrent of catarrh that lasts for months and in many ways is worse than the cold itself.

Everyone on my feed's talking about The War Between the Land and the Sea again, which just reminds me how icky I felt about Russell Tovey's Doctor Who appearances after reading RTD leching over him in The Writer's Tale.

Magisterial

Classic embarrassing parental anecdote material here tonight as my wife ended another 3-day poo drought in the baby by reading her her very first (very gentle) ghost story, halfway through which the baby shat herself. One for when she's a teenager, watching horror movies with her mates.

There's something about the name Bärry with the umlaut that is just utterly delightful. Like Barry, but just a little bit Continental.

I wish I had a quid for every time I've mistyped Josephus as 'Jospehus'.

They should get that little girl from the Bake-Off intro to be a contestant. She must be old enough by now.

Watched a bit of Sarah and Duck today. Why does she seem to live alone and have no friends except a duck? Between that and the art style, it reminds me of Salad Fingers.

Episode 1 of Daleks' Master Plan is 60 years old 2 weeks tomorrow. That would be an auspicious date to release an animated version someone might be putting the finishing touches to, wouldn't it? You know, assuming someone can actually get those finishing touches finished in 2 weeks...

Awful brother-in-law proudly messaged this morning to say he'd read a book to his son for the first time last night. His son is nearly 13.

Once again, it's not a ceasefire if one side gets to arbitrarily murder over a hundred people in a night whenever it feels like it.

Not sure whether this is good or bad for my self-esteem but currently the baby gets so excited when she sees me she often throws up.

I think we're on day 4 now. I am learning how having to care for another human being while unwell can take a nothing cold you could ordinarily work through and stretch it out into a several-day, exhausting pain in the arse.

Two days in a row some random massive unaccompanied husky has shown up in our garden and run around pissing on everything. Yesterday I was in the process of bringing in the shopping and it ran into the house and started jumping around the baby's basket. I've never liked dogs but seriously.

After feeling like dung last night, the cold has been on the wane today, but is definitely not going without the fight. I've been masked up all day to try and avoid giving it to the baby, but that's likely a losing battle.

Really enjoyed the episode of this I did! The relaunch is looking very good!

I seem to have caught my wife's coldy sore throat. It's no big deal, except for the looming prospect of a coldy baby.

Asked the baby 'Who's a cheeky baby?', to which she replied, very distinctly, 'Mum'. Given that she can't talk yet, this is impressively early sass.

Just re-read this, probably for the first time since it came out. A decent mid-tier runaround. I don't think I realised in the 90s how obviously the villains are Pip 'n' Jane Baker: Interstellar arms dealers. I don't know why they are, but they very clearly are, and I think I'm good with that.

In case anyone missed my seminar on Wednesday but wishes they hadn't, it's now on our YouTube channel: youtu.be/oqwzTSLCeBE?...

Just had a moment of worry about whether or not a chapter would be submitted for a book I edited 4 years ago. It did come in. It was published 4 years ago. I should be asleep.

Pretty much the only time I've been jealous of a work colleague was when I found out one had been flown out by George Lucas to have lunch and discuss ideas for this museum.

Ah, the joys of having a baby in your 40s, when waking her up with the clicking of your joints is a very real possibility.

absolute workhorse of a reaction image from over 100 years ago

New glasses, attempt 2 (previous ones had to go back to be made 'technically worse' because the astigmatism correction was messing with me). Strangely anxious about them, but they seem better so far.

It's very trendy for the woke left to mock the police these days, but this is the kind of thing that you and I might miss.

Not that I'm addicted to checking Rebrickable these days, but someone's just uploaded free instructions for the First Doctor's console room: rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-238...