Galileo's watercolours of the various moon phases from 1609. Note how the terminator between the light and dark sides is not smooth - thus showing that the moon's surface is also not smooth.

This is very bad. But also kinda fun.

See more of the Middlecave work here! It’s time for another exciting update from the demolition and rebuilding of the former farm at Middlecave Yard. And, if you've followed these posts before you'll have noticed the big change on the site since last time - the both the structural pillars and roof have been added! And there have been two changes since our last visit; the first - and most obvious - is the installation of the steel structure and roof.

'Cat Crossing' Malton, January 2026.

A time lapse of Boxing Day 2025's sunrise over Malton and the Yorkshire Wolds.

This Project Genie stuff is really rather impressive - I'm less interested in the gaming aspects (60 seconds? Pah!), but it's going to be interesting to watch how it's adopted for cheap stock shots and special effects. The thing is, though, there are a couple of articles kicking around and no-one seems to have done the next logical thing - create 60 seconds of footage, grab the last frame, and then try and create more footage based on that last frame. It's likely to degrade across generations, but how it degrades will be interesting in itself.

Having managed to get some of my snowy drone shots of Malton onto the Gazette and Herald's website it's now time to see them in hard copy! I've managed to make both the front page...

Itiner-e is a really nice open dataset and atlas of Roman roads. It's interesting to look at where the paths of the Roman roads have survived long enough to become the foundations of today's major routes.

Double-decker bus racing from 1982. I absolutely love that it's sponsored by Acorn Computers a year after they launched the BBC Micro!

Owston's Warehouse taken during last weekend's snow. I'd not realised that it was listed - nor that Malton Buildings Group had done a deep dive into it's history.

Here's an entirely sensible take on the failures around MacOS Tahoe window resizing. Honestly, OSX worked - there was no need for anyone to prat about with it!

So it looks like one of my drone shots from Saturday made it to the front page of the Ryedale Gazette and Herald! Which is nice.

Happy Plough Monday folks! Via the New York Public Library

A few quick photographs of Malton in the Snow by Drone from this morning. In black and white AND colour! The Talbot and The Mount

Sadly rather late, but here is another entry in the ongoing TopperBlog series. This topper could be found on Malton's Yorkersgate in the run up to Christmas 2025. t was a pretty thing though, alas, my photographs appear to have blown out the red - I'll have to try and figure out why.

So here’s an odd one: if you put Reddit into Google Trends then there is a distinct peak and then decline.

Here's something to take the edge off that liminal space between Christmas and New Year; two nicely illustrated articles from Adam Rowe's always fun 70s Sci-Fi Art. First we have Trains of the Future... ...and then Trains of the Past.

Walker, Ethel; Robin Hood's Bay in Winter; York Museums Trust; Ethel Walker's Robin Hood's Bay in Winter.It seems to be on permanent exhibition at York Art Gallery and, I must note, looks better in person. Taken from ArtUK.

Alfred Stieglitz's Winter on Fifth Avenue. This was, apparently, one of the first times that driving snow had been photographed. From Harvard Art Museum's collection. *Probably. Apparently there's a little confusion around dates.

A double-bill today; first, a surfing Santa and his knitted elves at Hawes bridge on Gale Beck.

There’s a rather festive snowflake hot air balloon just outside of Malton’s St Michael’s Church.

Nash, Paul; Winter Sea; York Museums Trust; Paul Nash's Winter Sea. Painted between 1925 and 1937.

Let's start this Christmas week with a copy of Pieter Bruegel's Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap.

Merry Winter Solstice 2025! And to mark it off, here's a lovely woodcut by Hasui Kawase. Hall of the Golden Hue, Hiraizumi

Castle Howard lit up in green as part of their Christmas 'Wonderful Wizard of Oz' installation.