I don't know about you but I finish for the year at COB Thursday, and it can't come soon enough 
Happy invoicing!
- Inside the Vatican’s secret saint-making process - Fancy being canonised? ”Canonisation has long been a way for the Catholic church to shape its image. The Vatican is preparing to anoint its first millennial saint, but how does it decide who is worthy?”
- Conjuring the Lost Land Beneath the North Sea - New findings on life before the North Sea: ”New research reveals that Doggerland—a sunken swath of Europe connecting Britain to the mainland—was more than a simple thoroughfare. It was home.”
- James Webb Space Telescope discovers 4th exoplanet in sweet triple 'super puff' star system - There's a solar system of planets with the density of candy floss: ”If trying to explain how three super puffs formed in one system wasn’t challenging enough, now we have to explain a fourth planet.”
- No, Orcas Probably Aren’t Reviving the ‘Dead Salmon Hat’ Trend, Despite a Viral Photo, Experts Say. Here’s Why - Some are casting doubt on last week's story about orca fashion trends: ”A recent photo of an orca swimming with a salmon on its head has fueled speculation that the fad, first observed in the 1980s, has re-emerged off the coast of Washington state. But some experts are less eager to jump to that conclusion.”
- Citroen’s genius act of sabotage against the Nazis in World War II - HT to Paddy for this story of subtle resistance: ”When the German army rolled into France in 1940, the boss of Citroen was never just going to just lie down and surrender.”
- 1942 Capehart 500M Restoration Topic - HT to DoctorStrangelove for this thread about a remarkably elegant music centre: ”I purchased this magnificent machine back in 2021 and wanted to share and document the restoration. Pictured below is a circa 1942 Capehart 500M. This is the last radio Capehart manufactured before switching over to WWII war time production. This is the only known 1942 Capehart 500M example known to collectors at the time of this posting today.”
- Writing down (and searching through) every UUID - A Universally Unique Identifier is a long string of characters that is, as the name implies, unique. Except now Nolen Royalty has catalogued them all at everyuuid.com/, and here he explains how: ”Having 5,316,911,983,139,663,491,615,228,241,121,378,304 possible values made it way harder than it needed to be to write them all down… So I think the final implementation here is pretty interesting. Let me tell you about it.”
- The Gradual Growth Of Silicon Wafer Sizes: An Evolutionary History - HT to DoctorStrangelove again for this one: ”At WaferPro, we have been at the forefront of silicon wafer manufacturing for decades. We have witnessed firsthand the incremental and innovative changes in wafer sizes, from tiny 1-inch diameters in 1960 to the current 300mm standard. Each size increase was a milestone for the semiconductor industry.”
- One Tiny Mod Makes A Cheap Mic Sound Like One Of The Best - Following on from the other week's story about replicating valve microphones, here's a way to make a cheap mic off eBay sound like a top notch one: ”I wanna tell you about a simple, 10 minute modification that takes a relatively inexpensive microphone and brings it shockingly close to one of the greatest microphones of all time: the Neumann U 87.”
- Operation Plunder 1945 - Mike (no surname that I can find) blogs about the Allied crossing of the Rhine with numerous images of the equipment used: ”Operation Plunder was the British and Canadian operation to cross the Rhine river on 23 March 1945, launched by the 21st Army Group under Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery.” This is Churchill, who insisted on joining in, riding on an armoured car.
Happy invoicing!
