A flat sea in flat light under flat skies. The ‘sunshine on Leith’ promised by the stereo at the Shrimp Wreck where we’re getting our lunch is not materialising any time soon, but it cheers many who hear it, including me. As does a friendly starling, with their eye on my chips.

New kittens will be arriving in the familybot within weeks, and I can’t help but remember what it was like when we last had kittens around, back in 2009. #caturday

Very zen hospital cat is not moving out of anyone's way #caturday #CatsOfMastodon #dailyvenice #venice #venezia

A rare European robin has been seen in Montréal https://montreal.citynews.ca/2026/01/15/rare-european-robin-spotted-in-montreal-draws-crowds-from-across-canada/ - - - Un rare rouge-gorge familier a été observé à Montréal // Article en anglais // #Montréal #birds #oiseaux

Some lovely shots in a couple of posts from BOOOOOOOM, lately: https://www.booooooom.com/2026/01/02/edgelands-by-photographer-morgan-mueller/ https://www.booooooom.com/2026/01/14/nothing-gold-can-stay-by-photographer-matthew-ludak/ #photography

What on earth did we do to deserve this fresh hell? https://news.stv.tv/scotland/starmer-farage-and-badenoch-expected-to-appear-in-scotland

I'm not sure about all of this, my friends... those borogoves are looking awfully mimsy.

Oh gawd, nothing ruins your early Monday morning like finding out Nigel Farage will be visiting your city this week. 🤮

[Sport / NFL] Ahh well. Can’t really say I was surprised by that Eagles performance, in the end. If anything, going by the way things have played out this year, the solid drives of the first half were the surprise! Feel bad for them all, but you have to score points to win games, eh? […]

Visited the new kittens again, today. Oh boy. Again, apologies for what’s incoming, folks. Once these little critters move in, well: Prepare for a lorra lorra kitten shots!

[Sport / NFL] Two great games last night. So gutted for the Panthers, who I’m afraid I hadn’t thought would have much of a chance at all, but so very pleased to see the Bears finally going further into the playoffs… Very exciting stuff! #nfl

I used the Rosyth-Zeebrugge route once, back in 2004, and it was brilliant! 5:30ish sailing, not having to drive through the UK, and then there you were in Belgium the next morning! https://ohai.social/@s1m0n4/115871134746083075

Idly browsing the archives I come across this panorama/composite shot, which I realise I took twenty years ago this week. Such things are so easy with smartphones, now, but I remember taking the pictures on my trusty Pentax back then and thinking how lucky I was to have access to Photoshop!

I often hear Americans & rich brits justify buying oversized, polluting vehicles by claiming they need them because they live in the "countryside". I call bullshit, Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15⬇

I find myself thinking of two films. Everybody To Kenmure Street!, by Felipe Bustos Sierra, will be released this year. The trailer may lift your heart a bit. It does for me. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/debasers/everybody-to-kenmure-street The Long Goodbye, a short by Riz Ahmed and […]

RE: https://mastodon.social/@AltTextHealthCheck/115859423638098805 Come on, fellow mastodon.scot users: we can do better than this!

2026 Hey Siri Songs - Day 7 "Hey Siri. Play Cannock Chase by Labi Siffrie" #nite #homepod #music #labisiffrie #sentimentalvalue Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/gb/album/cannock-chase/952587922?i=952587936 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/0WAEGVylZjbe2mQ6Or6HxY

Goodness. Dead Cities turns 30, this year. https://album.link/i/714769679

Oh, excellent! Felipe Bustos Sierra's film Everybody To Kenmure Street is going to open the Glasgow Film Festival this year. Safe to say I look forward to this one being finally watchable more than anything else this year. I remember being glued to the screens as the day unfolded, and clips of […]

Boring question about UK energy providers. I'm currently looking at switching suppliers. I don't have an electric car or any solar panels or anything - just a normal dual fuel tariff. Is Octopus the company to go with? Any human experience or thoughts gratefully received!

Slowly making our way through The Beast In Me, and really enjoying it. Great to see Matthew Rhys again (not really watched him since The Americans) and Claire Danes is very, very good at appearing exceptionally stressed. Also she really looks like my little sister, which is very odd but also […]

I remember being in the US on my gap year when this first came out. A fairly quiet opening, iirc, and then the US launched missiles in Sudan just as the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. It’s also got a lovely Mark Knopfler soundtrack. Really lovely. https://mastodon.social/@Julf/115837075657730885

Today’s #caturday post feels like an important one. Behold, the first online appearance of our new cats! They don’t yet live with us and they don’t yet have names, but I fully expect them to be taking up a lot of space around here in the months and years to come. Please make them feel welcome!

Some more shots - mostly from the big camera - from yesterday's first sunrise of the year, out at Tyninghame in East Lothian. https://www.flickr.com/gp/davemorris/v71c302E4A

5th year of going out to greet the first dawn of the new year, and it’s rather lovely, out. Happy new year, fedi-folk! #2026 #happynewyear

Right. Bed time. Night night! See you all in 2026.

It’s now been four years we’ve been up to greet the first dawn of the new year. It’s not always beautiful weather, but we’ve appeared appreciated being there for it! Looks like tomorrow will be a cold one…Wish us luck!

The Holdovers film is available to buy for only £2.99 on the UK Apple Store right now. A good use of any Christmas Apple Gift card balance you might have. #film #movies https://tv.apple.com/gb/movie/the-holdovers/umc.cmc.3fppeehnnl7du06td7t1k1o6v

Here’s one for anybody who’s been following me for a while. This is my Dad’s ampersand, which has been on the mantelpiece for the vast majority of my life. It’s fair to say this is where it all started.

In my parents' kitchen.

Doodling while the family plays word games

#lightadvent2025 day 24 The last door of this little calendar is a song from a few years ago, but which has increasingly become one of my favourites. Twinkly Lights, from Bob’s Burgers. https://youtu.be/9U3oPEv8gVQ A disco banger for any lighting designers out there, of course, and anyone […]

RE: https://mastodon.scot/@daveybot/115767738929449986 This one's also particularly for @pocketpixels, with whom I was having a brief discussion about internal shots with reflections in the glazing, last week. Thanks for the prompt to dig out this old set, PocketPixels!

#LightAdvent2025 day 23 This one touches on a number of the light-related themes already mentioned, including sunlight, moonlight, natural light, artificial light, reflections, atmospheric conditions, dawn, dusk, lamp design, colour, and even silhouettes. Or […] [Original post on mastodon.scot]

#lightadvent2025 day 22 Sunday was an appropriate day for thinking about the sun, so let’s follow that up with Monday, and some appreciation of the moon. It’s all light reflected from the sun originally, of course, but you can’t ignore what an elegant light source the moon is, up there.

#LightAdvent2025 day 21 Since it’s the solstice, an appreciation of the sun and its angles. This was taken when I was on a building site in Hong Kong in June, many years ago, and realised it was the first time I’d ever personally witnessed the sun being […] [Original post on mastodon.scot]

Public service announcement: Tomorrow is the winter solstice for the northern hemisphere. We should all enjoy and celebrate it! But: it is NOT necessarily the latest sunrise nor the earliest sunset. (They come on different dates, depending on where you are!) It is simply the shortest day. So […]

#LightAdvent2025 day 20 …which is about shadows, and silhouettes, and the way light is seen on or through physical materials, and, importantly: cats. #caturday

For no particular reason, I've gone through all of this year's #theplaylist shows and made a list of the songs which @DJDarren selected from my suggestions. If I've got them all correctly, we can observe: ⏰ Real people have listened to almost 4 hours of tunes I suggested! Gah! 🔢 2 selections […]

""Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.” https://boingboing.net/2025/12/18/mathematicians-say-theyve-proven-the-universe-cant-be-a-simulation.html

#LightAdvent2025 day 19 All this contrast or diffusion, lighter or darker, LED sources or sunlight or fire... we've forgotten one of the most important aspects of light: colour! This is a wall in St Giles Cathedral, here in Edinburgh. The colour is light […] [Original post on mastodon.scot]

Apologies for the following brag. Wifebot is a considerably better human than I, in many different ways. She doesn't really like to hang around online very much, for instance, and instead focuses on fighting good fights. She just got our constituency MSP sanctioned for breach of the […]

#lightadvent2025 I haven't posted much fire, yet. Let's have some fire.

#lightadvent2025 Trees are great.

I see the Trump administration is planning to dismantle the the National Center for Atmospheric Research, on the edge of the Rocky Mountains overlooking Boulder, Colorado […]

USA Today - Trump administration to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/12/16/trump-dismantle-national-center-atmospheric-research-climate/87798771007/

#LightAdvent day 16 I posted a shot about contrast on day 9, but following some wonderful fog chat with @mothninja and others yesterday, I thought today I'd feature some pictures of obscurity and diffusion and all that lovely atmosphere that exists when things […] [Original post on mastodon.scot]

Oh, this is Alan Partridge level genius. Apparently it just continuously looped someone saying "fuck" for 26 minutes 😀 https://mastodonapp.uk/@HowardGees/115728785345615682