I wrote a bit about it, but unfortunately nothing very conclusive about its origins: shadycharacters.co.uk/2025/12/adve....

💻 Ebooks are at bookshop.org (uk.bookshop.org/beta...) and Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk/sto...). "Shady Characters" is just £1.99 at the moment! Again, though, you'll need to navigate to the appropriate Audiobooks or Audible domain for your country.

👂 You'll find audio editions at audiobooks.com (www.audiobooks.co.uk...) and audible.com (www.audible.co.uk/au...). You'll need to be careful to navigate to the appropriate Audiobooks or Audible domain for your country.

I'll be posting a new entry every two days until December 25th. Enjoy!

Hi Oskari - thanks for getting in touch! I'll email you.

Really? That's pretty wild. Could the switch be down to mistaken identity between 'f' and 'ſ' (he asked without a shred of evidence or conducting a moment's research)? That is, did the word change because its typography changed?

So, what are my options for comments and email subscriptions that don't cost the earth and which let me reduce rather than increase the complexity of the blog? All ideas gratefully received!

For instance, phpList looks quite powerful, but its configuration and styling options are extremely deep - and by using a server-side product, I'm back to managing and backing up a PHP app and its accompanying database.

Lastly, running an email list seems to me to be the most problematic part of all this. Short of paying what feels like quite a lot of money for a commercial provider, I'm left with self-hosting. Unfortunately, my host supports PHP only, more or less, which limits my choices.