atomicules

Mostly walking the dogs

Album of the year: Low Girl: Is It Too Late To Freak Out?

Came very close to it being Heartworms with Glutton For Punishment, especially because I saw them live, but then I thought Lambrini Girls have five tracks in my “Picks of 2025” list and I saw them live (excellent!), but it doesn’t feel like album of the year emotionally to me. Then there is also Carla Aakre’s things i forgot to tell you, which is outstandingly beautiful. Oh, and NewDad’s Altar. But I went with Low Girl after a recent re-listening of them all. I can’t recall how this ended up on my radar, but it is just superb. I don’t really have much to say about each indiviual song, but have highlighted my favourites. In general, the layering of all the instruments and vocals is so good - I know that is the point of a band, but it’s just done so well here.

  • This House Is On Fire - Initially I overlooked this, but the more I listen the more it sticks in my head and I find myself singing it. It’s a beautiful building opening to the album and just transitions seamlessly to…
  • ♡ 2007 - Which is just stonkingly good.
  • Doing My Time - Great use of piano.
  • Ctrl - Great use of guitar.
  • ♡ Driveway - Reminds me (emotionally) of Embrace’s Gravity. Really, really breaks you down, but in a most beautiful way - you really don’t mind being desolated. Plus the brass! And piano! Oh my.
  • ♡ Overgrown - The lyrics suggest otherwise, but the chorus in this really picks me up after Driveway.
  • ♡ Handbrake - Is just utterly beautiful with an uplifting chorus (actually, here again, the lyrics are in opposition to the mood of the music).
  • No Reasons - Has a really good ending.
  • White Gown
  • Spite
  • ♡ I Love All My Friends - Just a beautiful ending to the album. I actually love the fake/extended ending on this too. I assume they finish all their sets with this and everyone in the crowd just hugs and cries?

How does this make me feel? All the feelings. Like someone reaching inside of you and making you dissolve.

I guess if I went for a top five albums it would be: 1) Low Girl, 2) Heartworms, 3) Carla Aakre, 4) NewDad, 5) Lambrini Girls. Maybe. Probably.

I used the word beautiful as many times as was appropriate.

Spotify Wrapped

Spotify Wrapped

The interesting thing here is how early the cutoff must be for Top Artists, etc. I’ve absolutely rinsed Low Girl’s Is It Too Late To Freak Out?, but it was only released on 24th October so doesn’t feature here at all.

Aside from that omission this makes sense though: Carla Aakre and Heartworms are album of the year contenders. Lambrini Girl’s should be since I have five songs from that album in my Picks of 2025 list. Rose Gray’s album had three tracks (Free, Party People and Switch) in that same list. Chy Cartier must have made it based on one track, NOT THE ONE, from her album (class track though).

The Top Songs are:

  1. Heartworms: Extraordinary Wings
  2. Carla Aakre: these hours
  3. Heartworms: Mad Catch
  4. Heartworms: Just To Ask A Dance
  5. Blondshell: T&A

My listening age came out as 16, which is either embarassing or cool, I’m not sure

Last Jazz At The Blue Lamp

Last Jazz At The Blue Lamp

When I got tickets for the Aberdeen Jazz Orchestra’s Christmas show I didn’t realise at the time it would be the last ever Jazz at the Blue Lamp.

Note: Are the people giving Amber Davies hate just jealous of her insane dancing skills? #strictly

December is busy. Ended up doing this run again this week to get my running in in one go.

Note: Loving this LIFTGOINGUP EP by Emmeline. So good.

Making Use Of Having Netbsd Hardware Again

It took me a bit to get up and running after getting the laptop, but did want to point out that I am actually making use of it now:

  • I make use of the excellent pdh on my NetBSD server so it means I can somewhat have an unofficial PagerDuty client on my phone (for “reasons” I can’t use the official one). But it bugged me that plain output was broken and that I couldn’t snooze alerts. So I fixed them both; Technically I didn’t need local NetBSD hardware for this since I only run pdh on my server, but just having a portable computer which is mine doesn’t half make it easier to do this.
    • I spent quite a bit of time looking at pre-commit and ruff-pre-commit as part of this. In the end I’ve not pushed anything, but I patched pre-commit locally so it works after I install pysqlite3, but then still ran into issues building ruff-pre-commit on NetBSD and I couldn’t find a work-around even though I could install ruff itself fine.
      diff --git a/pre_commit/store.py b/pre_commit/store.py
  index 1235942..ba2469a 100644
  --- a/pre_commit/store.py
  +++ b/pre_commit/store.py
  @@ -3,7 +3,11 @@ from __future__ import annotations
   import contextlib
   import logging
   import os.path
  -import sqlite3
  +try:
  +    # Primarily for BSDs that don't have built-in
  +    import pysqlite3
  +except ImportError:
  +    import sqlite3
   import tempfile
   from collections.abc import Generator
   from collections.abc import Sequence
  • One of the first things I did on this machine was build helix. It built fine outside of Pkgsrc, but I wanted to update the Pkgsrc package and having local NetBSD hardware meant I could finally do it. Now I just need someone to merge it.
  • Similarly with spotifyd, especially since I’m the supposed maintainer of the Pkgsrc package. That really can only be tested on local hardware.
  • And libvips too.
  • I had some thoughts about trying to setup my own taskwarrior sync server and put together a Pkgsrc WIP package for taskchampion-sync-server, but I don’t think I’m going to pursue this as using the mobile app requires running CCsync as well which just seems silly. Maybe I’ll re-visit this at some point. Maybe I’ll go back to TeuxDeux.

Nike Training Club 1001

Nike Training Club 1001

At roughly three per week that’s six years of workouts which feels about right; Only more recently have I made a point of balancing running with strength workouts.

The Nike Training Club application really seems to struggle to sync this number of activities and has lost a few; According to the Strava API I have done 1055 workouts (Yoga + Workouts), not all of those are Nike Run Club, but most definitely are so NTC has probably lost about 40 workouts in all.

Asides from that though, I 100% rate and recommend it as a free fitness application.

Quick/hacky summing of my workouts thanks to strava-ruby-client:

irb(main):093> sports = {}
=> {}
irb(main):094* client.athlete_activities(per_page: 30) do |activity|
irb(main):095*   sport_type = activity.sport_type
irb(main):096*   if sports[sport_type]
irb(main):097*     sports[sport_type] += 1
irb(main):098*   else
irb(main):099*     sports[sport_type] = 1
irb(main):100*   end
irb(main):101*   sleep 1
irb(main):102> end; 0
=> 0
irb(main):103> sports
=>
{"Workout" => 363,
 "Run" => 1782,
 "Yoga" => 692,
 "Swim" => 25,
 "Kayaking" => 1,
 "Walk" => 7,
 "EBikeRide" => 2,
 "Skateboard" => 2}

I’m actually up to 1003 now

LINK: Cantilever Music

This looks like a really great idea and I’m very tempted to give this a go next year for fufilling my new music fix.

This year I’ve made an effort to listen to the Line of Best Fit’s New Music Discovery playlist every week (other years I’ve listened more sporadically) to discover new artists. And using that in combination with other sources (e.g. Radio) has meant I’ve listened to a fair few albums. But I have two issues with this:

  1. I am finding this hard to keep up with - I have a huge backlog of albums I want to get through before the end of the year. And because it’s not enough to listen to an album once to really get a feel for it this does take some time and means I don’t have a lot of time for re-listening to the albums I have really enjoyed (Heartworms, for starters).
  2. Spotify is a pretty shit business. Unfortunately I can’t get rid of Spotify easily because I pay for a family plan so the decision doesn’t just affect me.

Maybe with Cantilever I can alleviate these? I could have a more considered listening experience - still listening to new music, but a bit less in terms of overall volume of artists with more listens given to each album? It also means I’d start getting more money in the pockets of artists instead of in the pockets of Spotify.

Almost a year since the last effort. Last time round I missed the bus so killed time at the Old Post Office Tearoom. This time round I decided to make more use of that time and do a longer run, only to find it harder going that I thought and missing the bus again. I killed time at the Old Post Office Tearoom. Next time (next year?) I’m just going to plan to end up at the Tearoom.

Also, it seems my Apple Watch is finally reaching end of life. Did not last the run.

Note: One Battle After Another as over-rated as the Geese album: Fine if you've never seen a film or listened to music before.

All I Could Think Of That Week Was Flowers

"...all I could think of that week was flowers for breath and flowers for eyes and mouths full of flowers, armpits of them, the backs of the knees, laps, groins overflowing with flowers..."

— How to be Both by Ali Smith

One quote from each half. That’s me finally finished my haul of books I got as presents this year.

The Word Mystery Originally Meant A Closing

"The word mystery originally meant a closing, of the mouth or the eyes. It meant an agreement or an understanding that something would not be disclosed."

— How to be Both by Ali Smith

Probably not the best quote as far as beautiful prose goes in this book, but it is apt for the novel itself. I’ve got the “George first” edition and I loved that first half of the book: I think I read that in one day on the last day of our holiday whilst travelling back home. It’s taken me well over a month to finish the second half - sure some of that is because I’m no longer on holiday, but I also found the Francescho half much harder going.

I would love to know what actually happens to the rest of George’s story… alas it is a mystery.

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