"He’d become one of those people he’d once liked to tell me about, that he met on his route and had always pitied, old boys in their house slippers watching afternoon shows until the evening shows began, seeing hardly anyone, doing nothing."
Might have some more quotes from this at some point in the future.
"Her favourite thing in life was to see conflict resolved, any conflict, and so my mother was a great resource for her: everywhere she went she made conflict, which Miriam then had to resolve."
Got this book for Fathers’ Day. Steadily making my way through it. It is good.
Definitely not a short list.
For whatever reason* I have been in a funk and decided against my semi-regular posts where I mention anything I’ve been listening to recently. Until this post, where it’s all built up.
I had a recent opportunity where I could forgo having to watch telly for a few days and just listen to music instead. I took it. I listened to about fifty albums in total, the majority of them being the albums listed above, released this year. I had listened to most of above already throughout the course of the year, but it was good to listen again, if only because sometimes it takes a few listens to an album to appreciate it (Young Fathers for me).
There has been a ridiculous amount of albums out this year (at least on my radar). And I know there’s many more I’ve missed.
And yet, for whatever reason, I don’t think any of these here are “it”; Normally I just base it on a feeling rather than me having to think about it and decide.
A lot here have really good standout tracks, but then I’m not so fussed about the rest of the album.
There’s some here I thought really would be contenders. Ezra Williams, Coach Party, and Lucia (especially) it feels like I’ve been anticipating for ages. And they are really good albums. And I’ve listened to them a lot. But that “feeling” isn’t there.
I’m not going to comment on them all individually, but lots of these have tracks that have made it onto my 2023 favourites playlist.
I am posting this after a Friday when a whole new batch of albums have dropped. Maybe it’ll be one of those?
* - Oh yeah… human beings doubling down on destroying the shit out of each other instead of helping each other
I’m still reading Positive News and I have once again blocked most news websites from my phone, but this is one of the most accurate and depressing things I’ve read recently.
It’s really getting to me how after a global fucking pandemic a select few people decided to make people’s lives even worse. Be it business leaders, politicians or world leaders, these people have made decisions that are not in anyway necessary, nor justified and yet they’ve gone full steam ahead in full knowledge they are making lives worse for hundreds, thousands or millions of people.
And there is nothing anyone can do. You can’t vote for a change, because the opposition is basically the same as the current government. Protesting changes nothing. You can’t really even change your job, because it’s still capitalism.
All I know is I’m not running anywhere near enough to cope with this mentally. But 75 minutes is what I’ve got so it’ll have to do.
Fuck.
Of sorts, although things aren’t that bad.
I somewhat recently dropped my (now old) new old phone and cracked the screen. It was still usable, but I’d been toying with getting the battery replaced via a third party since it was at 45% battery health, but with the screen broken I’d have to replace that first and at that price might I might as well get a second hand SE 2020 instead. If I had that much money. Which I don’t. So I switched back to my original iPhone SE (85% battery health). I was amazed at how much better and brighter the screen is. I can use Apple Pay without it freezing the screen. It’s so light and small I don’t even notice it in my pocket. The A9 processor is still fast enough. This was the peak of phone technology.
In hindsight I would have not bothered with the iPhone 8, I got that because I anticipated the iPhone SE going out of support, but it actually took a year longer than I thought it would until the latest iOS wouldn’t run on the SE, plus Apple pretty much do support the previous iOS for another year anyway (iOS 15 just got an update so really it’s only going to be right about now as iOS 17 is released that it is unsupported). I’ve decided it can last a little bit longer still and then maybe I’ll have to get something on contract - I’m paying £10 a month anyway for data/minutes/sms, if I got a contract at around £20 a month then that seems really quite reasonable.
My plan for one pair of running shoes a year is not going to work out. I’m not even at six months and I’ve had to re-glue the sole on one shoe and stitch a tear in the upper in the other (to be fair, the tear is exactly where I’ve removed the internal reinforcement cage, because it gave me a blister). I had not factored in all the dog walking, and what’s more the shoes getting constantly soaked from dewy grass which I’m sure has weakened the uppers. I hope they can keep going a bit longer (more glue, more sewing) and then I think I’m going to try some cheapish Decathlon trail shoes (£40 for the Evadict Easytrail to £60 for the Evadict TR2) which can do the combo of road, trail and dog walking; I slipped over at the weekend on a muddy trail run in my “road” shoes so it’s time for something with more grip.
And this was going to be a separate post, but actually there isn’t that much to say so it makes sense to be part three here. I’ve sadly given up using Teuxdeux (again) and have switched back to Taskwarrior. It’s going to save me a bit of cash and I wasn’t thrilled with the direction the preview was going in: Function over fashion, whereas I really appreciated the fashion of Teuxdeux, if I want pure functionality… well, there’s Taskwarrior. Since I last used Taskwarrior the bugs that impacted my reports have gone so I don’t need any wrapper scripts, etc and I can have simple reports like so:
#Custom report - Teuxdeux
report.teuxdeux.description=TeuxDeux style
report.teuxdeux.sort=due+/,tags-,description+
report.teuxdeux.filter=(status:completed or status:pending) and due.after:sow-1min and due.before:eow and -BLOCKED
report.teuxdeux.columns=id,uuid.short,tags,due,description.truncated_count
report.teuxdeux.labels=ID,UUID,Context,Due,Description
#Custom report - Teuxdeux
report.roll.description=TeuxDeux rolling
report.roll.sort=due+/,tags-,description+
report.roll.filter=(status:completed or status:pending) and due.after:-2days and due.before:5days and -BLOCKED
report.roll.columns=id,uuid.short,tags,due,description.truncated_count
report.roll.labels=ID,UUID,Context,Due,Description
I am trying to use it mostly like Teuxdeux, but with:
I.e. just keeping it as simple as possible. I also resurrected my crontab entry for rolling over incomplete todos.
I never finished off updating Haskerdeux for the new Teuxdeux API, but using Taskwarrior means I could easily update my Apple Watch shortcuts so I can once again see and complete todos from my watch. I thought about setting up a sync server, but I might as well just have my home todos on my server and my work todos on my work laptop and separate things that way. Simple.
[EDIT: 2023-10-30] Turns out the daylight saving bug is
still there in Taskwarrior.
Almost nine years since I provided a patch.
For now I’m not going to update my patch and rebuild from
source because I’m using on my work macOS machine and my NetBSD server so it’s
easier just to use the binary. I’ll just modify tasks after daylight savings
occur using task $(task +TEMPLATE uuids) modify due:'due + 1 hours', etc; At least I just
use recurrence.limit=1 now; I did think about just setting my recurring tasks
to midday, but this other old bug screws up my report grouping.
In what seems to have become my (sole) annual benefit of moving to town I went to see Dead Pony on the first night of their new tour at Tunnels. Last year was Coach party at a less attended (god knows why) Krakatoa. This marked my third time lucky in getting to Tunnels: I’d missed OK Button and The Reytons (still pissed about that) previously despite having tickets. But at least now I’m in town there is nothing preventing me going.
I’d go see more if a) more bands played in Aberdeen and b) my allowance would stretch to it, but since I had to cover three tickets, and I’m desperate for other things, once a year it is (probably…).
They had local support from Pitnamoon (on first) and then, making quite a grand entrance, Tina Sandwich (great name) who is really quite intriguing - will keep and eye on her (and am tempted to see if I can squeeze in seeing her in October in Aberdeen).
This isn’t meant to be a review at all, but Dead Pony were amazing. The crowd took a while to warm-up, but I like to think this is a “good thing” and just all the old men at the front being considerate for the younguns, but they were eventually persuaded to get moving. This didn’t include me as I was nearer the back with A (but I’ll take that over not going at all; And we’ll leave going to the front to the youngest), but I pretty much dad-danced and sang-a-long from the start (I just don’t care anymore since Glastonbury - it’s better to just enjoy yourself than worrying about what you look like).
Intrigued to see where they end up on my top artists list as I do seem to keep listening to them on repeat. They are filling a Dream State sized hole that was filling a Marmozets sized hole. Here’s hoping Dead Pony have a bit more longevity to them.
I can’t be bothered with a post catching up on everything I’ve been listening to recently, but I have been adding stuff to my 2023 picks list.
Anyway, some things from this year that sound like other things:
Something else I meant to mention (way) before now*. The magazine is only published quarterly (the cynic in me says that’s because there isn’t much good news to go around), but it is actually pretty cool because a) it’s an actual magazine and not a goddamn phone screen and b) is full of legitimately interesting good news.
I keep trying to block myself from reading normal news sites on my phone, but there are so many it’s impossible to really stop myself, but I do find that reading the news makes me feel pretty anxious. So I guess the least I can do is have a copy of this lying around to read so I can try to balance things out.
* -I got a subscription from A for Christmas.
From the Nuart Aberdeen’s Rewilding event in June. Yes it’s the end of July now, but better late than never. This is my favourite piece from this year’s additions by Tamara Alves.
One of the best things about Aberdeen is its street art.
"What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveller may never read it."
Another book I’ve had since Christmas (?); I’ve got the “Earthsea, The First Four Books” volume. Steadily making my way through it.
When I was a kid I was very into science fiction and mostly glossed over fantasy stuff so this could actually be the first time I’ve read Ursula K. le Guin. Properly, anyway, probably read some short stories when younger.
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