Posts tagged with "aside"

If a video starts with a dude wearing a backwards baseball cap, nothing interesting or good is about to happen. I immediately scroll.

Something you just have to embrace with with the Oscars it just how toe-curlingly cringe it can be at times.1 So it was fun watching it with my girlfriend – who has never watched the Oscars before – and finding her cringe at the exact same moments. Me and my girlfriend put ‘bets’ on each category, which added a nice sense of occasion and suspense. She won. Conan O’Brien as host was okay. Read more →

I’ve been playing a lot of Age of Empires II over the past few months. First released in 1999, I was first introduced to it by watching my Uncle play it probably some time in 2003. And I’ve been playing it on and off ever since. Over 20 years! As a game it has had remarkable staying power. And it’s a prime example of the benefit of single player games. Read more →

One day you start blogging1 and before you know it your blog post folder is looking very long. I’m Left Handed, my blog largely about technology is now 15 years old.2 And ’late to the game’ too. ↩︎ Well, not technically as I wrote my first post in October and it’s currently February. But still, it’s at least in its fifteenth year. ↩︎

I’m thinking about cafes in museums, art galleries and other such buildings. I’ve never really thought about it until now how depressing they are. In my mind these cafes should be lovely. Cosy, warming and comfortable. A place to discuss the art just seen. Instead they’re nearly always like school cafeterias. The food trays and chairs are made out of the same plain, thin wood. The tables are arranged to get the largest number of people inside. Read more →

Inspired and enlightened by this article, I’ve put Mastodon ‘comments’ onto my Hugo-powered blog blot.blog.

Nothing comes close to the anger of biting your tongue. Not yanking on your headphone wire. Not catching your pocket on a door handle. NOTHING.

Tom Hardy hasn’t been in a good film for years. When I saw him pop up in a trailer I used to be like “can’t wait to check this out”. Now when I see him I think “this is going to be terrible”.

I went to Waterstones, St. Albans. Here are the books that caught my eye and might make their way to my want list.

The Qatar ExxonMobil Open: a tennis tournament brought to you by fossil fuels and sportswashing.

Talking of QR codes. I’m amazed by how ubiquitous they are now. I remember when they first appeared. They were a bit of a flop. You’d rarely see them. And non-techies didn’t know what they were or how to interact with them. But now they’re on anything and everything, and even my Dad knows how to scan them.

I wish I had the strength to get up and walk away when presented with a QR menu in a restaurant.

Weird hearing someone say “WSJ” out loud instead of “Wall Street Journal” – it takes longer to say! Like that Alan Partridge bit about “VW” vs “Volkswagen”.

It’s currently 01:32 and I was due to be asleep quite a few hours ago. It’s fine. Once or twice a week I struggle to sleep. It’s a pain – especially when I’m working in-office the next day. But I’m used to it.1 On these sleepless evenings I worry about the lack of sleep I’m going to get. But another thing I think about is how much I like the nighttime. Read more →

Washington Post: Security officials in the United Kingdom have demanded that Apple create a back door allowing them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud… The British government’s undisclosed order, issued last month, requires blanket capability to view fully encrypted material, not merely assistance in cracking a specific account, and has no known precedent in major democracies. One of the things I hate most about Britain and its governments1 is its weird anti-privacy obsession. Read more →

Ruben Schade complains about a mug with a tiny handle. And I’m with him all the way. The example above is an extreme case. But in general far too many mug handles are too small.1 Me and my girlfriend are buying our own place and need to buy homeware. And I refuse to buy mugs online without holding them first. For me it’s vital that I can get all my fingers through the handle without it being a tight fit. Read more →

Rewatch. I’m just happy an Alan Partridge film exists. It’s not quite vintage Partridge, but feature lengths can often prove tricky for comedy. If you’re not a fan of the character you can probably skip this. But if you’re a Partridge fan who has somehow missed it then give it a watch. I have a real soft spot for this and rewatch it once a year. I find it oddly comforting as a film. Read more →

I like the previous Tom Hardy / Charlize Theron one a lot – it’s a lot of fun. And I’ve rewatched it many times. But I didn’t have too much interest in a sequel. So it’s taken me a while to watch this. It takes a little while for the film to ‘warm up’, with the first 40 minutes or so not grabbing much of my attention. But once it finds its feet this becomes a nice addition to the world of Mad Max. Read more →

Most of my weekend has been spent microdosing liquorice.

Tony Morley (The Up Wing). Progress in nearly all aspects of love, although hard-won, has advanced dramatically over the last 200 years. Granted, the progress didn’t come fast enough, equitably enough, or ubiquitously enough, and there is still much progress to be made, but advancements have been made nonetheless, and they are continuing. In large swathes of the world, long gone are the days when you could sell your wife on the open market or even when physical violence against a partner, and particularly against women, was a tolerated part of everyday life. Read more →

Why is iOS so concerned about pasting into apps? I consider myself pretty security/privacy conscious, but I feel like I shouldn’t need to give an app permission to copy my clipboard.

The trajectory of Asteroid 2024 YR4 passes from South America to Asia, crossing central Africa (Starwalk/Screenshot) There’s an asteroid called 2024 YR4 that might hit earth some time in 2032. The odds of the event are frequently changing though. So if you don’t want to have to follow the news-cycle about it, you can see the odds by visiting arewedoomedyet.org. Via Matt Webb, who has a very good summary on the asteroid. Read more →

Tracy Durnell: Some ideas warrant 300 pages. A very few justify 600. But many 100-page ideas are bloated into the 300-page form factor — from my understanding (which may well be wrong), because Americans want to feel like we’ve gotten our money’s worth? Perhaps this desire for brevity makes me sound unfocused, but the seeming depth of a 300-pager is often illusory. I suspect I’m not the only one who’d like more 100-page ideas without the padding. Read more →

You know a social network is going to shit when it bates you with ‘notifications’ that are just suggested posts. Threads, I enjoy you. But you are officially in crapification territory.

Writing the ‘about me’ section on social networks can be tough. And I’ve seen plenty of dull and bad ones (including my own). But over on Micro.blog, I love Miraz Jordan’s: I love simplicity and silence. I enjoy taking photos of birds. I also enjoy drinking tea - green, white, yellow, but not black. I live at Waikawa Beach in New Zealand, which I love, and strive to be an actively decent human being. Read more →

It’s sad that if I see someone in the street jumping for joy, dancing or singing I assume that they’re either mentally ill or on drugs. Loudly and openly expressed joy is taboo.1 Especially in Britain. We look down on that sort of thing. ↩︎

Penguin’s have got to be one of the worst chocolate bars going. Their texture and taste is atrocious. And my girlfriend willingly and happily eats them. I thought the only people who ate them were school kids, because it was put in their lunchbox by their parent trying to save a bit of money by buying one of the WORST AND CHEAPEST CHOCOLATES.

My favourite recorded concert of all time is The Last Waltz (video / album) by The Band. Recorded in 1976, it was their farewell concert. It may have been their farewell concert, but the Band were still looking young. Well, aside from Garth Hudson. He looked a decade or two older than the rest. So if you would have told me when I was younger that the elderly-looking Hudson would outlive the rest of the band I never would have believed you. Read more →

“Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave [behind].” - Henry David Thoreau, 1846

“I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men, the former are so much the freer.” - Henry David Thoreau