David Morgan-Mar

I teach school age students online, from all around the world. I’ve had past ones in Dubai, and a current one in Bahrain.
I’m hoping they are all okay, and the Bahrain one shows up for class on Thursday.

I think I got lazier as I went... didn't do all the filigree detail with the pencil. :-)

Sketch of a Victorian terrace house covered with ivy. Grey ink pens.

Sketch of a Victorian terrace house covered with ivy. Cool & warm grey brush pens.

Sketch of a Victorian terrace house covered with ivy. Japanese brush pen.

Sketch of a Victorian terrace house covered with ivy. 2B pencil.

I sketched four different versions of the same house in North Sydney.
Media:
1. Grey ink pens.
2. Cool & warm grey brush pens.
3. Japanese brush pen.
4. Pencil.

#sketching

To clarify, I do have a GitHub, but any software developer impressed by my projects and technical clarity... well, I wouldn't want them working on anything important.

“I’m Kevin, a software developer with experience designing and scaling applications. After reviewing your GitHub, I was impressed by your projects and technical clarity. I’m currently developing a new software initiative and hoping to connect with an Australia-based collaborator.”

MY GitHub?? 🤣

Photo of the Sydney skyline in heavy rain. An old sandstone church on the left frames the background. The background city skyline is grey and misty.

It’s a very wet day here in Sydney.

Friend:
Transportation sentences [for convicts from England to Australia] included the phrase "for the term of his/her natural life".
So a convict turned into a vampire might be legally able to return to England...

I made some edits to a file, which I didn't want to save. So I did what I've done for 20+ years: Just close the file, ready to hit "no" on the "Do you want to save before closing?" dialogue.

But no dialogue! The app auto-saves the edits, with no warning!

NOOOO! WHY CHANGE THE UI LIKE THAT??!

Screenshot of a code editor showing some Python code, rendered in a messy old typewriter style font.

Experimenting with alternative monospaced fonts for coding. What do you think of Old Typewriter?

The "oldies" classic hits radio station I listen to has started playing Taylor Swift.

Oh, there was a separate issue a few days ago when the cron job failed to update the strip, and it missed a day. So there was no actual update at all on 11 February.

Hmm. No idea why it would have been affected a week ago. But I've now added a Cloudflare rule to allow access to .xml files, which should enable RSS readers to see what they need again. Hopefully that will fix things.

Did it start being unreliable only 2 days ago? It could be, yeah, if the RSS is fetched by a bot.

Screencap of the Cloudflare control panel, showing that a "Challenge non-browser traffic" rule has had 100.96k events in the last 24 hours, with a Challenge Success Rate of just 1.01% (i.e. humans).

Since activating Cloudflare challenge on Irregular Webcomic yesterday, in the past 24 hours, Cloudflare has issued 101,000 challenges to attempted HTTP requests, and only 1.01% of them have passed. So 100,000 of them were bots, and only 1,000 humans.

Yes, that's exactly why. I know it's annoying, but the bot overload was more annoying.

I was sick of my Irregular Webcomic forums intermittently being down because of AI bot traffic overload, so I added another layer of Cloudflare protection, with a challenge screen that humans need to pass.
In the first hour, it issued 6000 challenges and blocked 99% of them.

I hate how if someone coughs in a movie and then says, “Oh, it’s nothing,” you know that they’re going to die of lung cancer.

Photo of Sophie Ellis-Bextor singing live on stage at the UNSW Roundhouse. 7 February 2026.

Photo of Sophie Ellis-Bextor singing live on stage at the UNSW Roundhouse. 7 February 2026.

Photo of Sophie Ellis-Bextor singing live on stage, with her band, at the UNSW Roundhouse. 7 February 2026.

Saw the talented Sophie Ellis-Bextor at her first headline act Sydney show tonight!
#sophieellisbextor

Word I learnt today: galactagogue.
I thought it might be a word that applies to people like Emperor Palpatine.

What it actually means: A substance that promotes lactation.

Introduce yourself with five classes you took in college/university:
- Electromagnetism
- Thermodynamics
- History and Philosophy of Science
- Advanced Quantum Mechanics
- Astrophysics

The one I use most these days? History and Philosophy of Science.

Photo of the aforementioned meal in a dark green bowl.

Dinner I cooked tonight:
Fried Brussels sprouts in miso-gochujang sauce (with garlic, ginger, maple syrup, soy, vinegar), on brown rice with crispy fried tempeh, topped with a fried egg and sunflower seeds.

#cooking

I've been feeling an increasing urge to revive Irregular Webcomic! as a political cartoon.
There's just so much material these days.

Photo of Sydney as viewed from a suburb across the harbour, showing the Harbour Bridge and central business district skyscrapers, all of which are partly obscured by a thin smoky haze in the air.

Sydney was a bit smoky today. Haze caused by bushfire smoke blowing in from fires a few hundred kilometres away.

Germany issues formal travel advisory for US Germany has advised citizens demonstrations can lead to clashes with migration and security authorities.

Germany: Don’t go to the USA, it’s full of Nazis.

www.newsweek.com/germany-issu...

A: 4 days in a row of Zoom meetings from 1am to 9am in my time zone.
B: All-expenses-paid trip to Boulder, Colorado, to attend the meetings in person, plus as much extra leisure time as I want.

As much as I’ve always wanted to see/hike the Rocky Mountains, I’m taking option A.

Photo of a red fox, standing, facing towards the lower left of the photo, captured from a high angle.

I saw a fox today! These are an introduced feral pest species here. Never seen one before. They eat native birds and mammals. A little disturbing to know they are in the neighbourhood.

Photo of a bunya tree cone on a road, split into two large pieces. It's a large, round seed cone, about the size of a bowling ball, with the exterior appearance similar to a pineapple, with spikes all over. A foot in a running shoe is next to it for size comparison.

This bunya tree cone dropped and crashed to the ground maybe 3-4 metres away from where I was walking past. Imagine a spiky bowling ball falling from 40 or 50 metres up. For size reference, my shoes are large, 310mm long.

Dang... Someone beat me to it? 😀

Idea for movie plot that has never been done before:

A detective investigates a mysterious case that has no links whatsoever to their past or family.

A CAPTCHA challenge with text: "Select all squares with fruit sandwiches". Squares contain photos of: 1. a layered watermelon cake: cake, cream, watermelon, cream, cake, topped with strawberries etc. 2. layered jam biscuits: biscuit, jam, biscuit. 3. peach pie: crust base filled with peaches topped with pastry. 4. apple turnovers. 5. cucumber sandwiches. 6. pumpkin pie. 7. bruschetta (bread topped with chopped tomatoes). 8. dessert made of slices of brown bread filled with banana chunks, topped with nuts and syrup. 9. sliced bread roll filled with strawberries, kiwifruit, melon, and blueberries.