mattischrome

Darkmans

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

About eighteen years ago, I got a copy of Nicola Barker’s “Darkmans” for Christmas. It’s a hefty novel, one of those small runs where the ‘hardback’ is actually a paperback. I have the first edition and it’s ginormous. I read it at home because I couldn’t really take it anywhere.

But I got through it with the help of the following hack.

New Year Twenty Six

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is a quick blog post to say Happy New Year. I’ve got lots of things to write about, including my favourite albums of last year and a whole month in Australia. Obviously you don’t spend a whole month in Australia and blog about it while you’re there because someone will come and rob your house. So anyway, there’s a whole load of posts I need to write about: some books, all sorts of things really.

Some more thoughts on Civ 7

Tue, 03 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been about 5 months now since the release of Civilisation VII and it’s starting to become a playable game. This is partly due to me getting used to it and partly the effect of quality of life patches and additional features.

LLMs and Cryptic Crosswords

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

At the time of writing, one way to demonstrate the illusory nature of LLM intelligence is to get one to try and answer a cryptic crossword clue.

The Birds and then the Bees

Sun, 01 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“I’ve never had one fail” says my Dad brandishing his drill on Boxing Day 2022, before heading out into the garden and putting up our Christmas gift, a handsome wooden bird box. “If I put it up, they’ll come along eventually.”

808 State, Don Solaris

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I sometimes wonder if I picked the correct 808 State album for my understated classics series. That’s because today I was listening to their 1996 album Don Solaris and it’s pretty darn good. For understated classics I chose their earlier effort Gorgeous, partly out of the belief that probably no one else ever would, but also because 10X10 and Plan 9 are such total bangers.

Personal Development Environment

Wed, 02 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been trying to settle on a text editor, IDE, and terminal for a long time now. Partly I’m limited by what I can use at work because I owe to myself and my colleagues to be able to reproduce all my skills in a work setting. However, part of me has also wandered off a bit after reading about the idea of a “personal Development Environment” (or PDE I guess, though in a former life that meant something very different), which is essentially an application where you can do anything and have it configured exactly how you like. Here’s an update on my progress on that front:

Tree Shopping

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As part of getting the garden done, we’ve been out and about looking for trees. It’s quite exciting seeing in person all the trees we’ve discussed with our garden designer. Here are some of the species we’ve been looking at:

Bill Drummond, 45

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

45 is Bill Drummond’s sort of memoir, albeit one with a hazy memory of the events most readers (myself included) are likely to be interested in. Drummond is/was one half of pop-pranksters The KLF, but 45 barely mentions them at all. There’s a lot about before (e.g. managing Echo and the Bunnymen in late-70s and early-80s Liverpool) and after (various shenanigans in the art world and attempting to relate to his children), some of that writing is very interesting. Nevertheless the whole lacuna of his pop heyday seems to punches a hole through the entire book.

Wilco, A Ghost Is Born (Superdeluxe edition)

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In 2022, I invested in the big superdeluxe box for Wilco’s most successful album “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”. Across 11 pieces of ‘silver’ vinyl and one CD, the box set showed the tortuous process that Wilco went through to create that album. It’s a magnificent collection of music, though if you don’t like hearing multiple versions of the same song and are not fond of unfinished material, it’s not going to be as pleasant an afternoon as it is for me.

In Praise of Pulling Everything out of the Shed...

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday I pulled everything out of our shed and we took the stuff we didn’t need down to the dump. No one likes going to the dump, but it was strangely cathartic. It’s due in part to letting go of things from the past, but also the fact that I haven’t felt up to much lately. It ended up being a sunny afternoon so it was a pleasant walk back after we dropped off the hire car.

Post Statistics, Part 2

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Here are some more stats about the blog after I ran out of time yesterday due to data cleaning! This time I’ve taken the date of each post and extracted the month and year. Then I added the number of posts in each month and the number of words written. I had to left join on the complete time span between August 2010 and February 2025, filling in any NA values for the zeros that were missing before I did that.

Post Statistics

Sat, 15 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s of graph of how the number of posts and the total word count on mattischrome has evolved over the years:

Only Spring Indoors So Far

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It’s still quite wintry outside, especially in the wind. We’re having to make do with daffodils indoors to brighten our day. They’re being kept in the ensuite because the cats keep knocking them over.

Robin Egg Blue

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is record one of nine from the new “A Ghost Is Born” superdeluxe edition. I was hoping to write a review tonight but I haven’t managed to listen to it all yet!

A Collection of Links About Blogging

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

If you are thinking about making your own blog, here are some links to help you on your way.

Some Initial Thoughts About Civilization VII

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Sid Meier’s Civilization VII is out today to much fanfare. After spending what top scientists are calling “far too long” playing Civ VI and a couple of run-throughs of the new game during the early access period, here are some thoughts on the new instalment.

In Praise of Playing the Long Game

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I bought a Barbara Hepworth calendar in the sale at the Tate Modern shop that I thought was a steal until I realised it was a 2024 calendar, not a 2025 one! However, the joke’s on them because I only have to wait until 2029 for the next year that starts with a Monday.

Unfortunately, unlike 2024, 2029 is not a leap year. This means all the days of the week would be wrong from March 1st onwards. It gets worse! The next two years that start on a Monday are 2035 and 2046, both of which quite obviously fail to be leap years.

Oh dear…

Peter Gabriel, So

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I recently watched the entry about Peter Gabriel’s 1986 album “So” in the Classic Albums series on Amazon Prime. It was an entertaining way to fill an evening hour.

I absolutely love “So”. I came to its songs via the “Secret World Live” album, and it was “Red Rain” specifically that convinced me of his greatness. Previously, I’d been aware of “Sledgehammer” (also on this album) and “Steam” (from the similarly titled “Us”), but “Red Rain” really captured my imagination.

All Part of the Process

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Writing a blog post every day is not essential. It’s not part of some new year’s resolution, despite the fact that the start of this unbroken streak of posts was January 1st. If anything my new year’s resolution has been to try and step gently away from my perfection. And the adoption of that resolution began in the middle of 2024 rather than new year’s day.

The Incredible Shrinking Blog Post

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The problem with keeping up a blog streak for however many days it is now is that you don’t actually get a huge amount of time to think of ideas for posts and actually write them. Ironically, I’ve been thinking about this post for a while though.

Ingrid's Pottery

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Here are some photos of Ingrid’s pottery, some very pretty pots! (And more complex pieces are on the way!)

Patch (A poem)

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is a short poem I wrote for Ingrid about our little herb garden. I am reproducing it here in celebration of work that is shortly going to start on our new garden!

More Uses For Little Notebooks

Tue, 04 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’m an avid collector of small notebooks. So much so that I have a box full of them in my office. I’m not afraid of writing in them, it’s just that I’ve bought so many over the years I can’t get through them quick enough.

In Praise of Pomme Fritz

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The release of Pomme Fritz by The Orb in 1994 was a moment of genuine excitement for me as it was the first new material they released after I’d become aware of them. Not only that, but thanks to my hard work riding around Emsworth on my BMX at unsafe speeds belting out Green Day’s Dookie as out-of-tune-ly as is humanly possible, I’d managed to secure the funds to buy the album for myself. My excitement had been mounting from the moment the promotional postcard arrived a few weeks beforehand. I took my £4.99 to Our Price in Portsmouth Cascades on Saturday afternoon and bought myself a copy.

And boy, I pretty much hated it.

Slots and Pipes

Sun, 02 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Recent explorations in R have reminded me about two ways of thinking about how you refer to objects or (parts of objects) in the language.

Into February

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Having made it to one post per day in January, we now move into February: that graveyard of good habits for the new year. What is it about flipping over the calendar to a new month that does away with our resolve to continue with our resolutions? My office calendar has a lovely picture of a German steam train in the snow, in case you were wondering.

Dithering Around

Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

While off sick and under the weather I decided to play around with presenting the photos on this blog in a fashion more in keeping with the current Hugo theme.

Charlie XCX, Brat

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

When making my albums of the year posts at the start of the month, I realised that compared to many other critics lists, there was no sign of Brat by Charlie XCX. And when it came up again on my album shuffle the other day, I thought I should re-evaluate the album and whether it should have made my list.

Dora Carrington

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dora Carrington was an artist loosely affiliated with the Bloomsbury Group and noted for her unconventional lifestyle. Despite a short career, her work had a great impact and a retrospective at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester brings together some of her major works.

Thai Green Curry

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Thai Green Curry is one of our favourites. Often when we are travelling we will find a Thai restaurant and order it. It’s a nice way to see how a familiar dish is rendered in your new surroundings. More importantly, it’s a dish that’s reliably gluten and tomato free.

In Praise of Paris

Mon, 27 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This time last year, Ingrid and I were on the Eurostar to Paris for four days. We did so much in our time there that I couldn’t write about it at the time. Here’s a little summary with a few photos.

The Human in the Loop

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I want to start making generative art again. I can’t say I ever did it that seriously but using programming languages to generate ‘art’ is a pretty fun to while away the hours, especially when one’s talents for drawing truculently refuse to improve. Of course, more recently the phrase generative art might be said to have grown to encompass the GPT-class models that generate images from prompts. So what would be the point of coding something, when you can make ‘proper’ art?

Summer 1954

Sat, 25 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Summer 1954 is a pair of one-act plays by Sir Terrence Rattigan that are currently being performed together at the Chichester Festival Theatre. I really enjoyed both plays.

Ian MacDonald, Revolution in the Head

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ian MacDonald’s “Revolution in the Head” is a book that I’ve read parts of dozens of times and even all the way through once or twice. I picked it up again today and thought I would write about it. It’s a detailed analysis of every Beatles song ever released, along with the details and events of their recording. I own a copy of the second edition which was updated to include the anthology material. Today you can still get hold of a 3rd edition on the Waterstones website (not sure that I like the new cover though).

Underworld, Strawberrry Hotel

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

An album that arrived a bit too late to be considered in the best of the year list, Strawberry Hotel by Underworld is a solid effort. Their 11th album, it remarks their return to the format after five years after the Drift series in 2019.

Push the right key

Wed, 22 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

One of the absurd barriers to writing regularly is that my new post script is written to open the new markdown file in Neovim and until this week I had no idea how to type a hashtag (which markdown uses for headers) in this editor.

Sticky Toffee Pudding

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We had great success with our sticky toffee pudding as a Christmas Day dessert. It’s a hybrid of a recipe by Jamie Oliver, one that we found in a gluten free cookbook, and one for a make-ahead pudding by the hairy bikers.

In Praise of Putting Pen to Paper

Mon, 20 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Around this time last year, I wrote in praise of writing a diary. I also rather misanthropically referred to it as a “negativity casket” because I found that I was pouring a lot of negative feelings into the notebook. It’s not really a diary as such because I don’t write everyday and I also make other non-diaristic notes, but it does appear to have been something of a process that has helped me to work through my negative feelings.

Nineteen Out Of Nineteen?

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’m having trouble finding something to write about today. Partly the problem of having a productive weekend of doing things rather than ruminating on blog topics. So unfortunately, we get another space-filling post.

The Lost Guide to CIV VI

Sat, 18 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve written some guides about how to play as various leaders in Sid Meier’s Civilization VI, covering Hojo, Alexander, Amanitore, and Qin in his Mandate of Heaven persona. I’m pretty sure I also wrote a guide to Gorgo at some point but all I can find are game screenshots I took one of the times that I played as her.

Albums Matter

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Having recently completed my review of 2024’s best albums, I’ve been reflecting on what a strange year it was for me in terms of the music I listened to. According to my Last.fm annual report, I listened to 51% more music in 2024 compared with 2023 (and 2023 was itself a peak listening year). Moreover, I listened to 709 artists, of which 37% were new discoveries. I listened to over 2 albums a day apparently, with Acopia being the album I listened to most often. Apparently I was the 11th top listener on Last.fm of my number 1 album of the year Letter to Yu by Bolis Pupul.

A Realisation

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

One of the best pieces of advice I have ever been given about how to tackle programming problems is to treat your code as comments that describe your program to the computer, whilst the comments that are there for humans to read should tell them how the program is supposed to work.

Parquet Courts, Sympathy For Life

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Getting back to my occasional album revisits, I’d like to consider the 2021 Parquet Courts album “Sympathy For Life”. This is partly because I own it on vinyl and put it on the other day while I was doing some rather humdrum data downloading at work. It’s that kind of album, quite loose and jam-based.

Gluten Free Toad In The Hole

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is a weekly lifter of spirits during the winter months!

In Praise of Pilates

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In searching for something to write about today, I wondered whether I had ever written about Pilates on this blog before. I modified the search of my posts from yesterday’s post to look for the word Pilates I could have also just used CMD+F in Visual Studio Code, but where’s the fun in that? and it only came up once in a post about revisiting my ambitions ten years on.

Fun With Chat-GPT

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I asked:

Don't Break The Chain

Sat, 11 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

2025 might be a tough year, but I am going to try and blog every day. It means that now and then I might be writing a post like this one, where I am writing for the sake of continuing the streak. If I find myself doing that too often then I will take the hint and stop trying!

2024 Albums of the Year #1: Bolis Pupul, Letter To Yu

Fri, 10 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Bolis Pupul (the stage name of Boris Zeebroek) is an artist on Soulwax’s Deewee label. “Letter to Yu” is his debut album, inspired by a trip to Hong Kong to investigate his family history. It investigates themes of place, family, and identity. We are exposed to everywhere all at once but we’re also all from somewhere, even if it’s somewhere we might not recommend or understand.

2024 Albums of the Year #2: Waxahatchee, Tigers Blood

Thu, 09 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“Tiger’s Blood” is a glorious bundle of songs that writhe with brains and heart, with love and friendship, and many other complements and opposites. The music is mostly alternative AOR with a distinct country twang. The lyrics were pretty impenetrable to me, at least until I looked them up online (and they’re also on the back of the poster that came with the LP), but they’re mostly songs of hope and happiness. It was satisfying to listen to an album this care-free, even if there is a hint of darker times in the background.

2024 Albums of the Year #3: Acopia, Acopia

Wed, 08 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Acopia are a band from Melbourne Australia with that time honoured line up of one girl and two guys. This eponymous album is their second and it’s full of slinky electronic ballads that echo classic 90s trip hop. It’s got that same downtempo downbeat vibe, the sorts of songs that revel in sadness but also the joy of a killer bass line.

2024 Albums of the Year #4: Adrianne Lenker, Bright Future

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

One album that’s lurking in the periphery of my understated classics series is “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You” by Big Thief. “Bright Future” is the latest solo album by Big Thief singer-songwriter Adrianne Lenker and it is just as good. Intimate and intricate, it draws the listener in as Adrianne sings live with a very small band. At times you can hear breaths drawn and the sound feels like a small space that you are cocooned in: this could be sound engineering (spatial audio would have us believe anything is possible) but it’s most likely equipment set up intelligently in a cosy studio.

2024 Albums of the Year #5: Il Quadro di Troisi, La Commedia

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It’s interesting that an album sung entirely in Italian ended up being one of my favourites of the year, but perhaps not surprising given well written and arranged these songs are. They’re just the right side of electro-pop but also with an air of sophistication.

2024 Albums of the Year #6: Total Blue, Total Blue

Sun, 05 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

What do you think of when you think of the colour blue? The sea? Perhaps the sky? Maybe it makes you think of blue stones like sapphires, or flowers such as forget-me-nots? Maybe the colour blue is the glow of a phone screen on someone’s face (maybe yours) in the dark? Blue gathers at the edges of the harsh white LED light that has come to dominate our night time existence.

2024 Albums of the Year #7: MGMT, Loss Of Life

Sat, 04 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t know very much about MGMT these days. I haven’t read any interviews about their albums. The video to the single “Nothing to Declare” was brought to my attention by the YouTube channel Justin Hawkins Rides Again. In it he points out how melodically interesting the song is. To be honest I was more than a little bit in love with the video.

2024 Albums of the Year #8: Pet Shop Boys Nonetheless

Fri, 03 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Nonetheless is the fifteenth album by the Pet Shop Boys. As seems to be a common theme with this top 10 so far, it’s an album that initially underwhelmed me. Well, perhaps “underwhelmed” is a little unfair, it was more that it didn’t seem to have much to it to distinguish it from their previous albums, and there have been some palpable duds in the previous fourteen.

2024 Albums of the Year #9: Cassandra Jenkins, My Light, My Destroyer

Thu, 02 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The first time I listened to this album, I was still off work sick with Covid, but well enough to go out for a walk on what was too hot a day to stay inside the house. I remember it well, recovering from illness does tend to make these things more vivid, but more because I thought it was brilliant, but all out of order. I was, of course, completely wrong.

2024 Albums of the Year #10: Yard Act, Where's My Utopia?

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Yard Act are a post-punk band from Leeds. “Where’s My Utopia?” is their second album. I first encountered Yard Act in a review of this album, which sent me to look at the excellent video to their non-album single “The Trenchcoat Museum”. I enjoyed the metatextual references both in the video and the song, so I eagerly added “Where’s My Utopia?” to my library.

The Orphan Project

Sat, 26 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A nice feature I added to this blog in its recent update was a tags page. With the help of this very useful discourse thread and some additional CSS tweaks, the resulting page is something that I am very happy with. It lists all of the tags that apply to any post, along with the number of posts with that tag, in alphabetical order. It’s mostly intended as a guide for you the reader, to help you see whether your preoccupations match my own.

Bob Mortimer, The Satsuma Complex

Tue, 06 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A hardback book called “The Satsuma Complex” is all that remains of a mysterious young lady that young lawyer Gary is chatting up in the pub one night. It’s a book that everyone reckons is “a bit sh*t”. But Gary’s moping about after the Satsuma lady doing a runner while he was in the loo will have to be put on hold when his friend turns up dead.

The new look mattischrome

Mon, 05 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the new look for my blog. I’ve had my eye on a more minimal look for a while now. Whether this new look is successful or not depends on how often I write new posts. To that end, this theme also supports a separate (or almost separate) stream of photos. Once I’ve got back in to the habit of putting photos up, that should be a nice additional stream of content.

Sofa So Good

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Once upon a time, a cat named Nerys ripped into the bottom of our sofa to make herself a cozy burrow. This was all well and good, except for the times when she would do it when we were using the sofa too. On these occasions (and presumably on most others) she would proceed to sharpen her claws on what remained of the fabric. (A less charitable reason for this behaviour would be that she was simply widening the whole for her future self after eating more and more kibbles!)

The Negativity Casket

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

One of the things that people tend to start around this time of year is a diary. They usually get filled for as long as your new year’s resolutions last.

Unindexed?

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

There was an excellent article on The Verge yesterday about how Google is transforming the kinds of sites and blogs that are on the internet. I also read this slightly more personal take by Jason Velasquez, which is more about how social networks have gobbled up all the time and attention of people who might otherwise be making interesting web sites. This has made me think deeply about what this blog is for, and why I might continue to blog in Twenty Twenty Four.

Maara, The Ancient Truth (on vinyl)

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When I wrote about Maara’s “The Ancient Truth” over Christmas as part of my albums of the year rundown, I mentioned at the end that I would love to find a copy on vinyl to listen to. Well dear reader I managed to! It arrived today from the Netherlands with minimal fuss. It sounds great and I’m not sure whether my review did it justice: that’s the problem with attempting to (re-)review ten albums in ten days with Christmas and New Year all happening at the same time!

Agents of Chaos (2024 edition)

Mon, 08 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The cats broke their new resolution not to knock stuff over in my office. Oh, who am I kidding? They never had such a resolution! If you can see a sheet of saturated paper, that was my to do list! Oh well.

Some Git Instructions for Future Matt

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Dear Future Matt,

Reflections on 2023

Tue, 02 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Here are some reflections on 2023.

2023 Albums: Honourable Mentions

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A quick list of ten other albums I considered to be among the best of last year. I either listened to these less, or in the cases of “Transmission Three” and “Be Opened By The Wonderful” considered them to be ineligible as they are compilations.

2023 Albums of the Year #1: Sofia Kourtesis, Madres

Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Sofia Kourtesis is a Berlin-based Peruvian dance producer, “Madres” is her debut album which follows on from a 2021 EP “Fresia Magdalena”. Cover of Madres by Sofia Kourtesis It was trailed by several singles, including the title track which caught my attention back in May. The album is dedicated to her parents and there are also songs dedicated to the surgeon who performed life-saving surgery on Kourtesis’s mother. The whole album is a heady mix of positivity and dedication to both music and to family.

For me, ten years on from my trip to South America, I think my response to this album has been to its fusion of European and South American dance music, perhaps reminding me that it is possible to incorporate the experiences one has in other places into our viewpoint on the world. It seems to be that we are in a point in history that rather than acknowledging that we are interconnected and responsible for and to one another, that we have instead lurched into a protectionist and selfish mode of thinking.

2023 Albums of the Year #2: James Holden, Imagine This is a High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities

Sat, 30 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“Cool artwork! No, we don’t have it but it’s coming in next week.“ Cover of Imagine This is a High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities by James Holden

“Cool artwork! We haven’t had a copy in but I can order it for you.”

Me picking it up a week later: “Cool artwork!”

“Imagine This is a High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities” is definitely album title of the year, made all the more topical with the intrusion of Chat-GPT and the like into the cultural conversation. Large Language Models (LLMs) like Chat-GPT work by absorbing large amounts of textual data (i.e. this blog, helping to make all those instant album reviews you can write now just a tiny bit more shit) and breaking them down into tokens, with each token having a meaning and a grammatical role and so on. These meanings and roles form higher dimensional spaces in which the tokens are vectors, where the rules of the LLMs help determine which tokens live near to one another and which pairs are likely to sit together in ‘meaningful’ sentences etc etc.

2023 Albums of the Year #3: Barry Can't Swim, When Will We Land?

Fri, 29 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Some albums you come to one way: a good review on a blog you respect, Cover of When Will We Land by Barry Can’t Swim a track appearing on a playlist by someone whose taste you trust, etc and so on. And sometimes you get directed to something multiple times. This is what happened to me this year with the irrepressible “When Will We Land?” by Barry Can’t Swim. Anyway, tracks by “Barry” appeared in mixes a lot this year and the album kept popping up in eagerly anticipated lists.

I’ve listened to this album a lot but I still have questions. Like is “can’t swim” his last name? Was he not made to learn in detention at lunchtime in the school’s outdoor pool in an English April like yours truly?!

The album starts with the title track, a nice minimalist piece that is nearly “not dance music” in the way that so many opening tracks on dance albums are. It puts me in mind of Steve Reich played by Bonobo. The next track “Deadbeat Gospel” is an impromptu rap by an old school friend while on a night out sampled and cut to fit the beat, it’s pretty cool but I’m glad it’s near the beginning so I can skip over it if I’m not feeling it.

2023 Albums of the Year #4: The National, "First Two Pages of Frankenstein" and "Laugh Track"

Thu, 28 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

It’s probably no surprise that as we reach the top four (or five if you like) we also Cover of First Two Pages of Frankenstein by The National get to the two albums The National released in 2023. The first, “First Two Pages of Frankenstein”, was trailed with a big reveal early on in the year, while the second, “Laugh Track”, was dropped all of a sudden in October. Once I got to know both albums, I swung between liking each one more for a while, hence putting them both at the same point in the list and not considering each separately.

For the purposes of this list, we can consider both albums as one homogeneous collection of songs, though some reviews did pick out that “Laugh Track” has more live drums and the songs on that latter album are looser and longer than their “… Frankenstein” counterparts. I think there are songs that are similar to one another on both albums, and that for those tracks, the song on the first album is a bit better than the one on “Laugh Track”. Some of the songs on “Laugh Track” are almost invisible on the first few listens, songs like “Dreaming”, “Hornets” and “Tour Manager”, though the latter of those three has become one of my favourite songs on both albums.

2023 Albums of the Year #5: Nation of Language, Strange Disciple

Wed, 27 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

It would be remiss of me to claim that this is a placeholder for any number Cover of Strange Disciple by Nation of Language of (quite different sounding) song based albums that came out this year (Yves Tumor, Wilco to mention two) but it feels that way. This album came high up my list of listens because it’s a very good breakfast album, one to listen to while getting the Day started - though there are also some bangers on here too.

Nation of language are a three piece band from New York. I think one of them is famous for being in a band I’ve not heard of (or is that their producer, I must do some fact checking) and two of them are married, even going so far as to have had a gofundme or whatever for the band as a present at a wedding. (That doesn’t give off future “we are a duo now” vibes at all!)

2023 Albums of the Year #6: Grails, Anches en Maat

Tue, 26 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Grails are one of those bands who always get played a lot at my house. Cover of Anches en Maat by Grails There’s something about their slow incremental instrumental pieces that my brain just loves to get lost in. Anches en Maat, their first album in six years or so, and the first with the entire band in the studio together since 2008, is their most Grails-y album in a long time.

2023 Albums of the Year #7: Maara, The Ancient Truth

Mon, 25 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

There isn’t a great deal I can write about The Ancient Truth without sounding vague and anodyne. Cover of The Ancient Truth by Maara While I try to come think about different forms of music and go into some analysis of what makes one album more interesting than another, sometimes you end up just saying “this album is great because I like it and I always have a good time listening to it.”

2023 Albums of the Year #8: Everything But The Girl, Fuse

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

As you get older nostalgia becomes an ever important part of listening to music. Cover of Fuse by Everything But The Girl It often feels like the business relies on convincing an aging population of fans to part with their money on new versions of old material. It’s nostalgia, the feeling of recapturing something you loved in your youth, that often makes this acceptable. Of course it’s also nice to get new music from your favourite bands, especially when it’s as good as “Fuse”.

2023 Albums of the Year #9: Fever Ray, Radical Romantics

Sat, 23 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Radical Romantics, the third album by Fever Ray was released in April. I bought a copy on red vinyl which is a beautiful sight to behold. Cover of Radical Romantics by Fever Ray I listened to a lot when it was released but eased up a bit until listening to it a couple more times while writing this list. It’s a great collection of songs, probably better than their second album “Plunge”. The cover art is just as scary though.

2023 Albums of the Year #10: Wata Igarashi, Agartha

Fri, 22 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Agartha is the debut album by Japanese electronic artist Wata Igarashi. Cover of Agartha by Wata Igarashi I don’t really know much about him, but I do know that I enjoy releases on the German record label Kompakt and I have really enjoyed Japanese techno in recent years. Over lockdown I discovered Haruomi Hosono’s “Polyharmony” album and re-discovered the work of Shinichi Atobe, particularly their album “Love of Plastic”. Both of those albums could be future understated classics and while both are by Japanese artists working in electronic music, there the comparison ends.

2023 Albums of the Year Preview

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Another year (nearly) over and so starting from tomorrow, I’m going to count down my top 10 albums of 2023. The rules are:

Civ Leaders #4: Qin Shi Huang (Mandate of Heaven) of China

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Well, it’s been a while since I wrote my last Civ VI leader post about Amanitore of Nubia and there’s been a whole host of new leaders and personas added to the game since then. Among these the number of Chinese leaders has increased from two to five. Therefore it’s probably a good time to start writing about one of them, and where better to start than the OG himself, Qin Shi Huang. The recent leader pass has created a new persona for him but today we shall focus on his original version, which is now referred to in-game as his “Mandate of Heaven” persona.

On learning new tools

Mon, 19 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

It strikes me that it is better to sit and think about what you need to do, rather than endless try out new tools and hoping you end up with a use for them. I’m not saying that innovation is bad, or that you shouldn’t stretch yourself into some new spot once in a while, but you will become more valuable to others if you can identify what it is you are supposed to be doing and then use your existing skills to get that job done. Don’t go looking at galleries of tools and techniques in service of finding something to do. Trust me, I know from experience that it is a great way to spend a hell of a lot of time not getting anywhere in particular.

Ellie Goulding - Bright Lights

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

So today my random album script picked out “Bright Lights” by Ellie Goulding, an album I wasn’t sure I’ve ever listened to. I looked in my music library and there it was! As a result this is not so much an album revisit as an album visit.

Hot Chocolate Comparison

Wed, 07 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a massive fan of hot chocolate. Recently a friend recommended M&S hot chocolate flakes. Thanks to a promotion it was about half the price of the Montezuma’s hot chocolate discs that we usually buy. The Montezuma’s ones are lush (that’s official hot chocolate tasting terminology) but in this economy anything that saves a bit of money has got to be good right?

Fabric 44 by John Tejada

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This is one of my more played Fabric mix CDs so I decided to go for it when my random prompter plumped for this earlier today. One constraint of these posts was to write it in roughly the amount of time it takes to listen to it. You’d think that for a mix CD that would be ok. After all, this mix is a full CD and 74 minutes long.

How random should things be?

Sat, 03 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve managed to extract my music library, including all the albums I’ve added to streaming, as a CSV file and write a routine in R to select an album at random. The plan is to write about that album for the blog in roughly the time that it takes to listen to that album all the way through. I already did this yesterday for Goldfrapp’s Black Cherry.

Goldfrapp - Black Cherry

Fri, 02 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This is the first in an unplanned series of album revisits, I will write a post explaining the process soon.

Oh heck it's June

Thu, 01 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

White rabbits and all that.

Decision to Leave

Wed, 31 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I gave up writing reviews of movies because:

A list for '23

Sun, 09 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A set of rules for living from now on (in no particular order):

Cheeseburgers 🍔

Tue, 04 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I think there’s a sense of safety when putting energy into something that’s latent and/or hidden as it immediately makes it low stakes. Other more open routes to success contain fear of failure, but also a fear of going after something that won’t give you the same buzz or edge. There’s a thrill seeking element but it’s also about containing and confining it to a success zone. Keeping this success zone private also means that there’s no risk that someone might try and take it away from you. There’s so much risk in putting any kind of desire or chance for failure out into the public domain.

What is in my Rakefile? (March 2023 edition)

Wed, 15 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Because I am bored of forgetting what’s in my website’s Rakefile, I thought I’d write a list. Also, as I’m probably going to move over to a node based approach soon, it’s a handy wish list for my package.json file when the time comes.

Come back to us Brother Matthew

Fri, 20 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

As with most years, I had hoped to start off 2023 with a flurry of new blog posts. Instead I caught Covid, which knocked me out for most of ‘betweenmas’ and put paid to my hopes for a productive start to the year. At the time of writing this post, I only just feel like I have begun to get back to ’normal’, or at least as normal as things have been since 2020.

The Orb, Live at Brighton Concord 2

Sat, 29 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Went with my friend Nick to see The Orb at Concord 2 last night. The last time I’d seen the Orb was back in 2004, at the start of their relatively dry spell. That night, they’d been a bit lacklustre despite playing (some of) the hits and a relatively decent album in “Bicycles and Tricycles”. I left feeling that I’d seen the past rather than the future, something that I wouldn’t glimpse again in their records until 2015.

I went to a pub quiz tonight

Wed, 14 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Ingrid and I joined our usual quiz team tonight for the residents’ association pub quiz. As usual we came third. It’s a fairly settled group of attendees and we know our level. We’re also quite used to the quiz master and his questions, though I do wish he’d acknowledge that pop music continued to be a thing long after the sixties!

The paths in the wood

Wed, 01 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I began writing this post after realising that it is the first of June and I might as well attempt once more to write a post every day. The speed with which the first of the month comes around, inviting another such promise, always amuses me. But at the moment I am not sure whether this blog will still exist come the end of the month. I think I want to start again in pastures new.

M1 External Monitor Issues

Sun, 22 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Since moving to an M1 Mac, I’ve noticed some issues with my second screen that I do not experience with my previous Intel Mac or with my current work laptop, which is a Dell Intel PC running Windows 10.

Tade Thompson, Rosewater

Mon, 21 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Rosewater is an exciting science fiction novel set several decades after first contact with an alien called Wormwood, that has established itself as a large biodome in Nigeria. The novel follows Kaaro, a thief whose extra special abilities are forged from an unlikely connection with the alien. The whole thing is part sci-fi adventure and part spy novel.

Doing the thing

Thu, 03 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I find it hard to get started on projects. This may have always been the case. I definitely remember instances of complex plans for school projects that I’d barely have time to finish. I once got up at 6AM to finish making a calendar in French—I thought it was going to be this outstanding piece of work that would genuinely replace my teacher’s calendar! Reality didn’t quite match the idea though.

John Irving, The Imaginary Girlfriend

Sat, 26 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Imaginary Girlfriend is a short autobiography by American author John Irving. In it, he explains the interwoven roles of writing and wrestling in his life.

Laurent Binet, Civilisations

Tue, 08 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

‘Civilisations’ is a counterfactual historical novel that attempts to extrapolate the future course of history after changing one pivotal moment of the timeline. I usually find novels like this are great fun, another entertaining example is ‘Making History’ by Stephen Fry. The novel, originally written in French, won some big awards in France last year. I read the translation by Sam Taylor.

TIL: footnotes in Latex captions

Tue, 08 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Today I had an interesting bug in some Latex code I am writing. Putting a footnote into a caption caused the document to fail compilation. The problem was that this document doesn’t use a table of figures at the start, so I hadn’t thought to include a short summary caption. Apparently the curly brace in the footnote command does not sit well with that, even if you aren’t using a list or table of figures in your document. The solution is simple, as long as the footnote isn’t crucial to the list of tables!

The Garden

Sat, 05 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Today, we transferred our Christmas tree to a new pot. Being root-bound as the tree was, it took ages to get it out of the crappy pot from the store and into the new, bigger pot. And I’m pretty sure it’s a bit wonky, which might make the baubles a bit lopsided next Christmas. It looks excellent next to the new bird bath.

Understated Classics #39: Lifeforms by Future Sound of London

Fri, 04 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Lifeforms is the 1994 album from the Future Sound of London. A double album (just), it also features the talents of Robert Fripp, Ozric Tentacles, Talvin Singh, Toni Halliday, and Liz Frazer. It reached number 6 on the UK album chart and went silver.

What is FFI anyway?

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

At the moment I can’t compile this blog locally because my ruby-ffi install is somehow wrong and is preventing Jekyll from running on my recently upgraded Mac system. Fortunately the site still compiles on Netlify, or else you wouldn’t be reading this!

A February Project

Wed, 02 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hmmm it seems as though the ffi gem as installed by bundler is not compatible with a Mac that has an M1 chip. This limits my ability to preview blog posts locally. I might have to swap to a more modern static site generator (which is probably easier than working out what ffi actually does) - seems like a good February project!

Checking In

Wed, 02 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Despite my best intentions, I didn’t manage to continue writing posts after the first day of 2022! But perhaps now I can try again as an excuse to test my blogging set up on my new computer.

Understated Classics Or Not?

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

At the new year, thoughts and spare time for writing point me toward writing some new posts for my understated classics series. Expect some new ones soon.

A pox on both their houses

Wed, 24 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

How hard is it to just listen to music these days?

If anything, make it weirder

Wed, 25 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Today I listened to ‘Cloudbusting’ by Kate Bush for the first time in a while. What a gloriously strange song it is. Best of all, it’s one of those songs that obscures what it is really about. It’s not a song about a change in the weather, but about Wilhelm Reich, the orgone accumulator, fluorescent yo-yos, and a son (rather than a sun) coming out.

Jab 2

Mon, 02 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I was due to have my second vaccination today, but like most people I rebooked to have it a bit earlier. No real side effects this time, save for a bit of malaise. Though that may have just been the thought of opening up the country when cases are still increasing quickly.

Rachel Cusk, Outline

Sat, 31 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Outline is the first of a trilogy of novels by Rachel Cusk. In it, the narrator is travelling to Athens to help teach on a creative writing class. You could describe the rest of what happens in a couple of sentences. I won’t be doing so because first, that’s spoilers, and I don’t do spoilers; second, Outline is one of those novels where what happens doesn’t matter quite so much as how it all happens.

Understated Classics #38: Trance Nation (Various Artists)

Sat, 29 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t know about you, but lately I’ve been in need of some music that:

Jab 1

Mon, 17 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I had my first Covid-19 vaccination on Friday. Leading up to it, I was borderline having a panic attack. From about lunchtime I was just all over the shop (the jab was at 7pm). I’m glad that the vaccination centres run with such exactitude, but also with a sense of cheeriness. By the time I’d had the jab, I was feeling much better just from the sheer relief of it.

Drawing a line on the page

Fri, 26 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Ingrid has joined an online drawing class. She sits there on Teams getting feedback on her drawings, while I sit there attempting to absorb everything. I’m also learning by doing, by making a line on the page. In some ways, it’s instructive to observe the difference in what we learn with and without the feedback.

I was twenty one at the time…

Thu, 25 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

“I was twenty-one at the time, about to turn twenty-two. No prospect of graduating soon, and yet no reason to quit school. Caught in the most curiously depressing circumstances. For months I’d been stuck, unable to take one step in any new direction. The world kept moving on; I alone was at a standstill. In the autumn, everything took a desolate cast, the colors swiftly fading before my eyes. The sunlight, the smell of the grass, the faintest patter of rain, everything got on my nerves. How many times did I dream of catching a train at night?” Haruki Murakami || A Wild Sheep Chase

Some Tips For Saving Time

Tue, 05 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A non-exhaustive list of ideas for saving time:

The Forever Now

Mon, 04 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Writing this post came about from frustration with blogging. Specifically the tools I am using. Often it feels like a new language or paradigm comes along that shifts one or two of the pain points of blogging. The biggest are:

Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War

Sun, 03 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This Is How You Lose the Time War is a short novella about two members of opposing factions (Red and Blue) engaged in a ’time war’: that is they travel in time and attempt to erase each other’s existence. Except that one day Red decides to taunt Blue with a letter, and a correspondence emerges.

Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

Sat, 02 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Last year I started to write a review of Italo Calvino’s “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller”. I read it while we were in Germany for Christmas. We’d visited Bremen and also undergone the bizarreness of Christmas in another language - the same motifs played out in different words and different customs. I’d tried to write the review in a similar structure to the book but, in a testament to Calvino’s writing I couldn’t pull it off. Here’s the opening paragraph:

Richard Powers, Orfeo

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

“The mind may give up its desire to improve on creation and function as a faithful receiver of experience.” John Cage

Album Digest 2020

Thu, 31 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve listened to music in slightly different ways to normal in the last nine months, but it’s still been a decent year for music. When I checked out my Spotify Unwrapped and my Last.fm reports, I had listened to more 2020 music than I thought.

Old photographs

Thu, 08 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I’ve had cause to dig out some old photos. If I’m honest it’s made me sad. Sadder than I was expecting. There’s a quote from Nan Goldin that once felt like a warning but now just sounds like a sad statement of ongoing affairs:

Strategy one

Tue, 07 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I decided to create my own deck of creativity cards. I was sick of all the adverts for similar products on Instagram. You know the kind. They’re covered in pictures, patterns, and buzzwords. You shuffle the cards and draw them one at a time. As you place each card on the table, the brain’s natural desire to tell stories, create patterns and produce meaning takes over.

Am I caring for a naughty cat?

Thu, 11 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

“He keeps biting me on the leg” says Ingrid one day as I mill around her desk during the new water cooler moment that is a comfort break on a Microsoft Teams call. I pat Martok, one of our cats, and he rubs up against me, pretending that he might nibble at me too.

Sprucing up the Blog

Mon, 01 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This post explains some of the modifications I made to a minimal Jekyll theme to get this blog as I wanted it. This blog (currently) uses the excellent Sidey theme by Ronalds Vilciņš. His site looks eerily similar to this one, at least at time of writing.

Travel Writing After All This

Sun, 31 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

While sprucing up this blog a bit during lockdown, I fell into reading my old posts about South America. I enjoyed it, mostly for the memories, but also because the current lockdown is warping my sense of time and space. Hours feel like weeks, but then I blink and a month’s gone by. I find myself traipsing similar orbits each day around the house, and then perhaps over to the supermarket or the park. There’s a palpable escapism to be had in reminiscing about South America and other places.

Holiday Tabs

Sat, 30 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Over the course of a week on holiday, I started reading many interesting articles. In lockdown there isn’t much to do but read articles, but I still find myself not that good at finishing them. My phone has lots of tabs open and has become a Rolodex of shame. This post is to confess my sins.

Living in the Pi Hole

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Ingrid bought me a raspberry pi for my birthday. I’ve set it up to run the Pi-hole software. Pi-hole is a nifty bit of kit that intercepts your web requests and purges any that ask for material on known ad servers. Essentially it’s like having an ad blocker on your network rather than just your computer.

George Saunders, Lincoln In The Bardo

Thu, 28 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I read this book on holiday in Belgium last year. Having forgotten to pack a novel I scoured almost every book in the Waterstones at St. Pancras station before settling on this Booker prize winning novel by George Saunders.

Civ Leaders #3: Amanitore of Nubia

Wed, 27 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Amanitore of Nubia is available in a base game DLC. She also has her own scenario “The Gifts of the Nile”, which like most scenarios has unique tech and civic trees. You need to assert your dominance over the Nile by building seven temples. The scenario combines faith and military tactics in a satisfying way and you can also play it as Cleopatra for a different perspective.

Things to Remember

Tue, 26 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

These are some things I jotted down one day last week, I’ll refine them a bit more later on. Think of it as an aide-memoire of things that work for me, your milage may vary.

Don’t worry about things that haven’t happened.
Don’t turn whatever has happened and/or is bothering you into a catastrophe, especially if no one else is telling you that it is one. Seek out someone you trust and ask them “is this a catastrophe?” Not only will they say no about 99.9% of the time, they will often tell you why it isn’t a catastrophe.
The people who are important to you will not use your personal characteristics as a laundry list of personal failings in the same way that you do. In fact they won’t do it all. What you perceive as your own obvious and innate failings, others will often struggle to even see. Self awareness and hyper-awareness are two different things.
There will be people who don’t like you, people who don’t think you’re good enough, and people who won’t give you a chance. They most likely intersect, meaning there are fewer of them than you might think. You don’t have to satisfy these people, only those who like you and support you. Most of all, you have to be good enough for you.
Everybody has different needs and wants in life. Even though your needs and wants will often intersect with those of others, there is still no reason to use other people as the measure for what you should be getting out of life.
A person has more depth and dimensions than are measurable. If you focus solely on a single metric when you measure yourself against some standard or goal, you will be wrong in some way or another. A qualified and multi-dimensional validation of your progress will give you a more nuanced and more supportive sense of where you are heading and how to correct yourself.
Always focus on your capability. Regard potential as something to be shaped into capability.
Take time to think about things in many different ways, employing both proven mental models and lateral thinking.
Often problems are easier to tackle once you have been for a walk in the countryside.

Understated Classics #37: Lost Souls by Doves

Mon, 26 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Doves are a band from Manchester who traded dance music for rock yet never left their former genre behind. Starting out as Sub Sub, they scored a worldwide hit in 1993 with “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)”: a timeless dance tune that immediately owns whatever room it plays in. However, subsequent releases by Sub Sub did not catch on and people started to think of the band as a one-hit wonder.

Civ Leaders #2: Alexander of Macedon

Sun, 12 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Alexander of Macedon is available in a base game DLC pack alongside Darius of Persia. He also has his own scenario “The Conquests of Alexander”, which is both fun to play and instructive in how to use the formidable benefits of his bonuses and unique units.

Civ Leaders #1: Hojo Tokimune of Japan

Mon, 06 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Let’s write a guide for all the leaders in Civ 6! It’s a nice writing project and I seem to have plenty of time on my hands. For playing Civ VI that is, writing a post for every leader might be another matter…

Anyway, let’s start with one of my favourites: Hojo Tokimune of Japan.

About the Album Digest

Tue, 30 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I haven’t written one of my monthly album digests for over a year. The reasons mostly boil down to a lack of time and motivation but other factors include the changing way in which I listen to music. I bought more albums on vinyl and only a small proportion of those were recently released music. Meanwhile, the attractions of Spotify’s release radar proved too great to resist: it is a very convenient way to consume new music.

Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation

Sun, 28 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I managed to read all of the foundation novels since I wrote about the first one. In this post, I’ll write about the next two, which covers the original trilogy of ‘novels’ created from the original short stories. I’ve tried to avoid spoilers.

All the Civs

Wed, 24 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Ingrid and I love playing Civ VI. It’s a fine game that improves on previous versions, adding many layers and mechanics that mean you can vary your playing style. In fact, with the recent Gathering Storm expansion there’s now an incredible variety of ways to play. The 39 leaders to play with both reflect and provide the game’s increased complexity. Each leader has a slightly different mechanic that influences how you play the game, and of course the leaders you are up against also affect your game play. You can pick leaders to go up against that will make your game easier or harder. Some leaders can even be an existential threat if you spawn near to them and, as I’ve learned the hard way, it’s not always the leaders you expect that cause these problems.

Ambitions Revisited

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Back in 2012 I wrote a post listing my ambitions for the future. Well it’s the future now isn’t it? Almost. After all, I’m a whole new person now. Anyway it’s probably time to take stock. Have I achieved any of them? Have any of my ambitions changed? What’s replaced the things that I’ve decided not to worry about? What has come after the things I managed to do?

Four Recipe Book Recommendations

Mon, 22 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Here are some recipe book recommendations. A good set of recipes can provide you with many a project for a rainy day.

Five years after

Wed, 21 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Five years ago I set out at 3am for Heathrow airport to catch the early morning flight to Madrid. There I connected with a flight to Quito in Ecuador. The previous days and weeks had been fraught with worry about whether I was doing the right thing. Did I get the right vaccinations? Would I have enough money? Would I cope with all that travel? Was I coming back? What was I going to do with all my stuff?

Richard Powers, The Overstory

Tue, 30 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

“The Overstory” by Richard Powers piqued my interest among the novels shortlisted for the Booker Prize. And once again the book that interested me most did not win. One year I will succeed in my prediction!

Isaac Asimov, Foundation

Sun, 14 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

For our first anniversary we decided to exhange books. What better way to celebrate a paper anniversary? Ingrid bought me the entire Foundation saga, most of which were reissued in fancy new paperback designs by Mike Topping in 2016. All save for 1993’s Forward The Foundation that is, but Ingrid got me a copy anyway. Hence, here is a new series of blog posts!

J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy

Mon, 17 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

“Hillbilly Elegy” is the autobiography of JD Vance, a self-professed hillbilly made good who graduated from Yale Law School. I read it because reviews touted it as illustrating the economic conditions leading to Brexit and the implausible election of Donald Trump. As I wrote in an earlier post, I’m keen to learn about why Brexit happened. However, I think this book fails to provide an explanation.

Reboot

Sun, 10 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

As much as I hate to write about writing, especially when I write so infrequently, I feel I need to reboot this blog. I wrote so few posts in recent months I considered giving up altogether.

The Great Ocean Road

Fri, 23 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

As a wedding present, Ingrid’s Mum Maria kindly took us for a trip along The Great Ocean Road, the longest war memorial in the world.

More Melbourne

Wed, 21 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

On our second full day in Australia we went shopping in central Melbourne, before Ingrid’s mum Maria picked us up ahead of our trip along the Great Ocean Road.

Taking It Easy In Melbourne

Tue, 20 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

On our first full day in Melbourne we took it easy. It was warm and sunny, so different to the weather we’d left behind!

A Day in the Air

Mon, 19 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Any sugar?

Fri, 02 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Not being much of a drinker, I’ve never felt the need to do dry January. Also Ingrid and I sat in a restaurant in Barcelona on January 2nd drinking for the third night in row. We hadn’t got off to that great a start. Well today marks the completion of a dry month: dry January with a two day lag.

A Diary?

Thu, 01 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This year promises to be exciting so this week I tried to buy a diary. One of those day-to-a-page affairs for scribbling down all the things I’ve seen and learned about. I thought they might be cheap now the calendar is turning to February. No such luck. There were a few week-to-view diaries going for half price in Waterstones but nothing suitable for my needs. I have lots of Field Notes notebooks if my urge to write gets too much to resist.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Thu, 25 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Ingrid and I renewed our Cineworld passes as it is the season to go to the movies and check out the Oscar contenders. You nod along sagely while dreaming up superlatives to show how much you agree with the taste-makers. Or you can call such-and-such movie a pretentious load of crap.

Spain, New Year 2017/18

Fri, 12 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

For new year Ingrid and I met up with Ingrid’s friend Ros at Barcelona airport. We went from there to Cadaqués on the Costa Brava. A winding drive over steep hills leads you down to a cute bay with the typical white houses and terracotta roofs. All the window frames were painted just the right shade of blue.

Top 10 Albums 2017

Sun, 31 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Top 10 Songs 2017

Fri, 29 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Album Digest, December 2017

Wed, 27 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Turkey and Sweet Potato Stew

Tue, 26 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s a recipe to use up your turkey leftovers after Christmas.

A trip to Iceland. Part 3: Flu∂ir to Vík.

Sun, 17 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We left Gulfoss and drove through the countryside to Fluðir where our next hotel stay would be. The hotel had cute little cabins arranged around a central square and the room itself was comfy and warm. Our dinner was nice enough, although we had a bit of a Fawlty Towers moment with Ingrid’s chicken salad. First it went back because they didn’t leave the BBQ sauce off. Then it came back with tomatoes. And then back again with more BBQ sauce. Fourth time lucky.

Album Digest, November 2017

Thu, 07 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I Will Make Room For You - Four Tet Remix

Wed, 15 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

In a perfect confluence of last month’s album digest, here’s an excellent Four Tet remix of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s “I Will Make Room For You” from her album “The Kid”. I’ve put it into a playlist with “Lush” from Four Tet’s “New Energy” album and the original version of “I Will Make Room For You.”

Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

Sat, 11 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

After I read “Hello America” and “Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun” to Ingrid, it was her turn to read something to me. We settled on Matt Haig’s memoir of anxiety and depression “Reasons to Stay Alive”, which is as uplifting and life-affirming as its title suggests.

Beetroot Bolognaise

Sun, 05 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We cook this version of bolognaise with beetroot due to Ingrid’s tomato allergy. This recipe is an attempt to capture what we do on the fly. The key to it is using the wine, the Worcestershire sauce and the herbs to even out the sweetness of the beetroot. If you can manage that, it’s super tasty. The sauce usually ends up being an unusual but pleasing pink/purple colour, as you will see from the pictures.

A Little Lesson in R

Sat, 04 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I had to compute an indicator this week. It had confidence intervals that relied on taking 100,000 samples from the indicator’s approximate distribution. I had to repeat this over multiple GP practices and for twelve different demographic groups.

Suits Me

Fri, 03 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

In recent weeks I have worn a suit to work. I bought a new furry woolly suit a few weeks ago and have alternated between it and my old one. I also bought new shoes that gave me blisters and made me cry. Enough time has passed that by now it feels natural rather than silly and those shoes don’t eat my feet as much as they used to.

Album Digest, October 2017

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Three Years

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Three years ago today I moved in to my little flat in Chichester, soon to start a new job. I had no money left but at least, after a character building stint of six months sleeping on the floor, I had a bed. In the intervening three years, my job role has expanded, I’ve done another degree, the flat has become a home, and I’ve met and married Ingrid. Add to that the fact that it’s almost four years since I left for South America and I start to realise that I’ve done a crazy amount of things in that time. I don’t intend to stop.

Sarah Ladipo Manyika, Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun

Mon, 30 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

“Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun” is a novella by Sarah Ladipo Manyika. Of all the books nominated for the 2016 Goldsmiths Prize, this looked like the most interesting to my eyes. I’ve enjoyed previous Goldsmiths nominated novels including Acts of the Assassins and Satin Island.

Understated Classics #36: The Coral by The Coral

Sun, 29 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Perhaps in today’s modern age of streaming and such, The Coral would be a bigger band and may have survived their eventual burnout. Their work ethic was evident from the start, as rumours swirled in the NME about a fantastic new band from Liverpool who were going to blow everybody’s socks off. I went to see them live in Bristol after they’d released three EPs and they were incredible. Their sound, a bit like the movie “Holy Mountain” set to pop music, imagined a Merseybeat channelled from an alternative universe in which Lennon and McCartney took their acid in the Mojave desert rather than in the English suburbs. Yes, it was derivative but somehow it also managed to be utterly new and compelling.

A trip to Iceland. Part 2: Reykjavík to Flu∂ir.

Sun, 15 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

After a day on foot in Reykjavík, and with some trepidation, we returned to the car for our drive through Iceland’s countryside. We started by heading out on route 1, which is like Iceland’s M25 except that it encircles an entire country and about thirty times fewer people. We went to house of Nobel Prize winner Halldór Laxness, only to be turned away because it was being renovated and wouldn’t open for another month. Undeterred, we pressed on toward Þingvellir, stopping off on the way to take pictures at a viewpoint. It was just crazy, a flat expanse of undisturbed snow. Just as with the drive from the airport, the territory should have been relentlessly bleak but instead we got a winter wonderland.

Georgia O'Keeffe at Tate Modern

Sun, 08 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We went to see the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibition at the Tate Modern last year. At the time, I didn’t know much about her, other than the fact she was famous for painting flowers. And that people get a bit hot under the collar about what those paintings might represent. Was the art world of the 1920s and 1930s so repressed that it managed to get into a lather about some paintings of flowers? And more importantly, are they any good?

Alistair Reynolds, Revelation Space

Fri, 06 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Alistair Reynolds’ 2000 novel “Revelation Space” has long been in orbit of my science fiction “to read” list, but it wasn’t until one sleepless night (post “Command and Control”) that I came across it in Ingrid’s audiobooks. I was instantly drawn in as I listened to the opening scene about an archaeological dig facing evacuation ahead of an imminent ‘razor storm’.

Personal ggplot tips and tweaks

Thu, 05 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I love making plots in R with ggplot. However, there are always a few niggles that I forget about between plots. I wrote this post so that I have somewhere to look the next time I need to tweak a few things in my plots. I intend to come back and add updates in the future as I learn more things. If I keep coming back, I might also remember a few of these too.

A trip to Iceland. Part 1: Reykjavík.

Wed, 04 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We arrived in Reykjavík a few days after a monumental snowstorm. As such the city was still under at least six inches of snow. We collected the hire car from the airport and drove out of Keflavik. The scenery normally looks like a moonscape, but for us it was a frosty white wonderland.

J. G. Ballard, Hello America

Tue, 03 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I had low expectations for “Hello America”, the next in the series of Ballard novels that I started reading over seven years ago. However, it turned out to be a hoot. A couple of years ago, this novel would have been a wig-out bit of standard Ballard weirdness (a bit like “The Drowned World” or “The Crystal World”) but given recent events “Hello America” is starting to take on an eerie prescience.

The same, but different

Sun, 01 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Ingrid and I got married a month ago. It was a lovely day. We had a simple ceremony with two witnesses, our friends Sue and Andrew. We kept it quiet and small, as we just wanted to be married without too much fuss. A month on, we’re happy to report that we are glad we did it.

Album Digest, September 2017

Sat, 30 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Note: Recent months have been very busy, so this album digest combines a review of the new album by The National with a couple of reviews left over from earlier in the year.

I’ve written a few more album reviews in the past months but I’m so far behind (February and March have already been published on a considerable lag) that I’m just going to pepper forthcoming digests with additional reviews of older albums.

Eric Schlosser, Command and Control

Fri, 29 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

“Command and Control” by Eric Schlosser is about the history of nuclear weapons and their safety. This might not seem like a thrilling subject, but it’s absorbing from start to finish. I started it three years ago but only finished it more recently as the subject of nuclear weapons has become more pertinent to current affairs. Suffice to say that when I bought the book over three years ago, I would not have believed that it would be so much more relevant by the time I had finished it. There are many people who would stand to gain a great deal from reading this book. The name at the top of the list rhymes with Dump.

A little trip to Italy

Thu, 28 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We bought a cheap package holiday in the British Airways Black Friday sale. The weekend spanned Ingrid’s birthday, so it was ideal. £99 each for flights and a hotel, and we bagged a hire car quite cheaply too.

Understated Classics #35: Snivilisation by Orbital

Mon, 25 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I came late to Orbital’s work. I knew of them through a few remixes and because as a mad Orb fan, they could not have avoided my notice could they? Apart from that, one of my college friends tried to get me into “In Sides” just after its release in 1996. The same friend got me into “Second Toughest In The Infants” by Underworld. I cannot now understand the reason, but “In Sides” just left me cold.

Valleys

Mon, 17 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

In my last post, I wrote about hills. I tried to use them as a metaphor to explain nagging sense of incompletion when you single out one activity over another. The feeling that there’s always a more exciting hill off in the distance to go climb, instead of the one you’re on.

Hills

Sat, 15 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a big fan of books. The way they transport you away to other places and so on. As repositories of knowledge and adventure they can’t be beat. I can think of no better way out of an existential fix than reading.

Wonder Woman: A Short Review

Sat, 01 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I enjoyed Wonder Woman, which came as a surprise to me given my growing distaste for superhero movies. I can remember seeing the Superman reboot Man of Steel with its phallic rockets and its boring boring fight sequences. But almost everything about Wonder Woman exceeded my expectations. It’s a well-made superhero movie and better still, it gets to the heart of why these kinds of movies matter.

Create

Fri, 16 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

It can be a struggle to keep writing. I’ve found this happened a lot since I moved the blog. First, there was the business of moving things over. That meant a lot of thought about old posts and which ones I should keep. A lot of the time I thought “how on earth did I have time to write this?!”

Changes

Tue, 11 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Album Digest, March 2017

Fri, 31 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Album Digest, February 2017

Tue, 28 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Album Digest, January 2017

Tue, 31 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Understated Classics #34: Stray by Aztec Camera

Thu, 13 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The next instalment in my understated classics series is "Stray" by Aztec Camera. Released in 1990, it features two hit singles and the cover is my favourite colour: green.

Heavyweight Podcast

Mon, 10 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Heavyweight is a podcast about “heavyweight” issues, in the sense of burdens on the soul, rather than the burning issues of the day. It’s presented by Jonathan Goldstein, who was the host of the WireTap podcast. Each week he helps someone resolve an issue from their past. These include resolving family feuds and understanding mid-life depression.

Mira Schendel at Tate Modern

Sat, 08 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Mira Schendel was a Brazilian artist who was active throughout the middle to late twentieth century. She is considered to be one of South America’s best artists. Known mostly for her abstract paintings, she also experimented with sculptures and installations. Many of her works use text and semiotics to explore and define possible meanings for more abstract works.

Album Digest, September 2016

Fri, 30 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This month’s album digest features albums by Wilco, M.I.A., Local Natives, and a collaboration between Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Suzanne Ciani.

The Threepenny Opera

Sat, 24 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, Ingrid and I went to see The Threepenny Opera at the National Theatre.

A New Notebook

Sun, 11 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Witness the pressure of a new notebook. You sit at your desk, trying to get it started with an amazing piece of writing. Something worthy of that crisp new page. You want it to tumble out of you, fully formed and coherent. Something that justifies you abandoning the previous one. As though first drafts don’t exist. You cast yourself into the role of shaman, of seer - of someone gifted a prophetic vision. But it’s a role that you cannot and will not fulfil.

I Don't Have a Clue, part 43

Thu, 08 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

A little man wearing a bow tie, and possibly a fez, scurries into the middle of the frame clutching a clapboard. Breathing heavily he hoists the clapboard up to chest height. He holds the clapper up then brings down while slurring "This is a blog post about not having a clue, take 43". He exits to the right of the frame.

Album Digest, August 2016

Wed, 31 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I allowed Spotify to pick some new albums for me this month. It chose some noodly ambient techno, a captivating slice of World Jazz, a moody gothic hallucination, and a concept album about humans being rescued by aliens. All in all a pretty good job! Here is the list:

Adventures with Discover Weekly

Tue, 30 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Because I couldn’t find any albums coming out this month that I wanted to review for the album digest, I decided to let Spotify pick the albums to listen to. I listened to my algorithmically chosen Discover Weekly playlist one week and selected albums based on the songs that I liked the most. The album also had to be released in 2016. The selections are ones that got away.

BBC Prom 47 at the Royal Albert Hall

Sun, 21 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

We went to see Prom 47, an afternoon prom at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The bill included a brand new work by Piers Hellawell, along with a Cello concerto by Haydn and a symphony by Tchaikovsky. These were all performed by the Ulster Orchestra. The conductor was Rafael Payare. The tickets were an affordable £17 each which isn’t bad at all given that we were sat in the second row of the circle. We had a great view.

Album Digest, July 2016

Sun, 31 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Album Digest July 2016 consists of a bumper five albums, mainly because I couldn’t work out which one to drop. I think they’re all pretty good though it’s great to hear new music from The Avalanches after all this time.

Richard Beard, Acts of the Assassins

Sat, 30 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Acts of the Assassins is an interesting novel by Richard Beard that retells the story of the apostles and their deaths. It uses a modern crime genre style and a contemporary setting. The author himself refers to it as “Gospel Noir”. Cassius Gallio, a Roman CSI-type referred to as a speculator, investigates the murders of the apostles following the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Gallio, charged with guarding the body following Jesus’ death and greatly undermined by the disappearance of the body, views the resurrection as the greatest conspiracy of the age.

Understated Classics #33: Embrya by Maxwell

Wed, 20 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I give the impression of planning these posts but to be honest I came across an article about Maxwell a few weeks ago and fondly remembered my cassette copy of this album. The joy of Spotify is that it’s easy to dig up old favourites. The recent warm weather makes for a good opportunity to enjoy the sultry embrace of “Embrya” once more.

South America, Part 12

Tue, 19 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

J. G. Ballard, The Unlimited Dream Company

Thu, 14 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I last wrote about a JG Ballard novel nearly three years ago. That one - “High-Rise” - has since been made into a film. The subject of this post is “The Unlimited Dream Company”, my favourite among his novels: a silly romp through suburban sexual repression that glitters with sinister wit. Even after many read-throughs I still can’t work out whether it is a crazy masterpiece or something light that we’re meant to throw away after reading.

Swaptastic Part 3: The Shiny App

Fri, 01 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The shiny app embedded below allows you to explore the number of packets you need to complete the Panini sticker album for this summer’s Euro tournament. This builds on the results I presented in an [earlier post](link to earlier post) and allows you to explore how many fewer packets you need to buy when you have more friends to swap with. You can also vary the number of runs performed because the model runs considerably slower with more swappers involved.

Album Digest, June 2016

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Album Digest June 2016 is a poppy batch of albums. We have the return of my long-time favourites Roxette and the heroes of my South American tour Tegan & Sara. There’s some dance music in the form of Flume’s album “Skin”: an Australian presence ahead of the new Avalanches album next month. Finally there is the first of two new albums by Islands - both were released back in May but one gets reviewed this month and the other next month.

Swaptastic Part 2

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

As a follow-up to my post about the Euro 2016 Panini Stickers, I’ve now completed the collection with the help of an online swapping site and by buying the last 39 stickers directly from Panini. I also managed to write a new simulator, this time with additional collectors involved.

In the space between this and that

Sat, 25 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Britain voted to leave the EU this week. It made for an angry and confused Friday morning. I posted snippy comments on Facebook at a rate of about one every fifteen minutes. I also knew that there was nothing I could do. Even when you feel like Charlton Heston at the end of "Planet of the Apes", you have to suck it up and accept that sometimes things don't go as you like.

Swaptastic Part 1

Tue, 14 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Logitech K380 Review

Thu, 09 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Time for a little gear review. This is the Logitech K380 keyboard. It pairs with devices wirelessly over Bluetooth. I bought it to use with my Apple TV, iPad and iPhone. It runs on 2 AAA batteries, but the supplied batteries are not rechargeable. The keyboard is light and portable but you definitely know you have it in your bag.

Euro 2016 Panini Stickers

Sun, 05 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Sound the conspicuous consumption klaxon! 📣 I know it’s foolish but I decided to collect the Panini stickers for the Euro 2016 tournament this summer. I think it’s a more edifying waste of money than a series of group game accumulators that don’t come off. If this week’s long read in The Guardian is anything to go by, we really shouldn’t be giving any more of our money to betting companies. The album also looks better than any of the official books. Anyway, this post celebrates my inner collector/geek and the beauty of the shiny sticker!

Album Digest, May 2016

Tue, 31 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Album Digest May 2016 features the work of four bands or artists that I have reviewed in previous album digests. I also own (or will own) all of these albums on vinyl, so it’s handy that I’ve recently bought myself a record player!

Werner Bischof: Point of View and Helvetica

Mon, 23 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

2016 marks the centenary of the birth of Werner Bischof, the talented Magnum photojournalist who died in Peru in 1954, aged 38. He travelled widely, making the most of an incredible talent for photography. After the second world war, this led him all over Europe to document its aftermath. As the cold war began, Bischof found himself documenting events further afield.

Paul McAuley, Something Coming Through

Tue, 17 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

“Something Coming Through” is a science fiction novel set in the near future. A few years after a brief nuclear war known as “The Spasm”, an alien race known as the Jackaroo introduce themselves to humanity. The novel is funny, thoughtful, and politically charged. I found it to be a good read.

Album Digest, April 2016

Sat, 30 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This month’s album digest is a mixture of comparisons. First we compare the fortunes of old hands Underworld to even older hands the Pet Shop Boys. After that I’ve found two dance albums, one that I liked and one that I didn’t. I find it quite hard to write about dance music and so the comparison is quite useful. Sometimes it helps to work out why you like one thing and not another.

Lausanne, Switzerland, March 2016

Mon, 11 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Just before Easter Ingrid and I went to Lausanne in Switzerland for a few days. It was a much-needed break and my first trip out of the UK since I got back from South America.

The Orb - Alpine EP

Sat, 12 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The Orb return with a new EP on the Kompakt label called “Alpine”.

Album Digest, David Bowie RIP

Mon, 01 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I thought I’d add three of my favourite David Bowie albums to my review of Blackstar to a form an album digest tribute. Also among my favourites but not included here is “Outside”, which will be included in the understated classics (currently it’s number 66) at some point. I thought about bumping “Outside” up the running order but I’d like to be objective about it when its turn comes.

The Nutcracker

Fri, 29 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

For Ingrid’s birthday, we went to see The Nutcracker performed by the Moscow City Ballet at The King’s Theatre in Southsea.

My Favourite Albums of 2015

Thu, 31 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Given that I gave up on writing album digests for a bit this year, I thought I would at least do a proper top ten list of my favourite albums. There are quite a few albums that I did not have room for and I might try to revisit those later. In the mean time, let’s crack on. (To save time, I have in some instances pasted my original review from the appropriate album digest.)

The Long Post

Thu, 17 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I am writing a long post that I will either publish as one long post (about five or six thousand words) or as about seven smaller ones each closer to the average post length of about eight hundred words. I have to get it out-of-the-way soon as my mind needs to focus on my health economics essay.

Underworld, Second Toughest in the Infants (Superdeluxe edition)

Thu, 26 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Last week Underworld reissued their excellent second album “Second Toughest In The Infants” in various formats including a four disc super deluxe edition. I wrote about this album in my understated classics series and I want to share some thoughts on the reissue. I love this album so I was excited to hear the remaster and the additional material.

Satin Island by Tom McCarthy: Review

Fri, 20 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

As much as I wanted it to, Satin Island by Tom McCarthy did not win the Booker Prize. Having read it all I realise it was a long shot. However it is an interesting book that deserved consideration, even if it does have some flaws.

Understated Classics #32: They Were Wrong So We Drowned by Liars

Sat, 31 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

As it is Halloween, I’m writing about a spooky understated classic. Liars’ second album “They Were Wrong, So We Drowned” is a concept album about witches. It was the first of their albums that I owned having heard their name mentioned among those in the New York Post-punk revival scene at the start of the 00s.

The Martian: A Short Review

Sun, 18 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

In my review of the book I mentioned that a film adaptation of The Martian was on the way. I’m not sure why but it got released earlier than any of the dates that I’d seen and so on Saturday I found myself watching The Martian on the big screen. Could the film version deliver the same level of entertainment as the novel? Could Mark Watney (Matt Damon) get off Mars alive?

My Booker Prize Pick 2015

Mon, 12 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

“Satin Island” is my pick for the Man Booker prize, announced tomorrow. I’ve not managed to read all of it yet. Also, I’ve only glanced at the others on the shortlist.

Ben Elton, Time and Time Again

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Time and Time Again is a ridiculously stupid novel by Ben Elton. A shadowy sect (established by Isaac Newton no less!) recruits a soldier to go back in time and prevent Franz Ferdinand’s assassination in Sarajevo in August 1914. I wonder if it all goes to plan and everyone lives happily ever after with no weird timey-wimey after-effects?

South America, Part 11

Mon, 14 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Eric Schlosser, Gods of Metal

Wed, 02 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Y-12 is the United States’ most secure weapons-grade Uranium storage facility. It is known as the “Fort Knox of Uranium”. In 2012 it was infiltrated by three elderly peace protesters, sparking a major scandal about the safety of US nuclear sites. “Gods of Metal” by Eric Schlosser tells the story of that break-in alongside a history of both the anti-nuclear movement (in particular the Plowshares movement) and nuclear security in the United States.

Everything Everything, Get To Heaven

Tue, 01 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

It’s difficult to write honestly about your feelings. It’s difficult to write about your feelings consistently, for a living on a regular basis. It’s difficult to write about your feelings when the world constantly intrudes with inanity, insanity and hatred. It’s difficult to write under those conditions without seeming frayed, without coming loose at the edges.

Inherent Vice: A Short Review

Sat, 25 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Tonight I finally caught up with Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel. It stars Joaquin Phoenix as Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello who’s put on to a case of possible kidnapping by his “ex-old lady” Shasta, played by Katherine Waterston.

Understated Classics #31: The White Room by The KLF

Wed, 22 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This little masterpiece was released in 1991. I got my copy on cassette for Christmas that year, but by May in 1992 they’d already “retired” and split up.

Untitled 2

Mon, 20 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

A few months ago I wrote about an idea for a novel that I’d abandoned. I mentioned in that post that I’d abandoned it because there was another idea that I wanted to pursue. The working title for it is “Untitled 2”. (It isn’t really, I have an actual working title that would give things away or would at least make me feel like the idea was out in the world.)

First Light, Last Light

Sun, 19 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I often ponder whether the joys of waking up early are greater than those of staying up late. Empirical evidence seems to bear this out: all those people who get to work before you do, super-eager to get everything done. But then all the people walking under your windows late at night, drunk and laughing, they sound like they’re having a whale of a time too.

Minions: A Short Review

Thu, 09 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The Minions got their own movie, just as I predicted in my review of Despicable Me 2. I went to see it this week and I enjoyed it a lot. Here’s a short review. Don’t worry, there are no spoilers here that aren’t in the trailer.

An Initial Comparison of Apple Music and Spotify

Sun, 05 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

My previous post about Apple Music was more a response to how it was presented at the WWDC Keynote rather than to the idea of Apple Music itself. I should have known better than to use that clickbait title. I knew I wasn’t writing about the product, more the flatness of its introduction (despite the names on show).

Album Digest, June 2015

Tue, 30 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

To reboot this series, Album Digest June 2015 features five fantastic albums from Hot Chip, Jamie xx, Blanck Mass, Holly Herndon, and The Orb. I could pick loads more as I’ve listened to a lot of albums since February but I decided to focus on the more electronic material. This means that I have no excuses for not continuing next month with a rockier theme.

Time Is Time and That Is That

Thu, 18 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

A brief rant about Facebook: I hate the fact that the news feed defaults to “Top Stories” even though I change it back to “Most Recent” every time I log in. It’s a horrible pattern of user abuse that needs to stop. Time is time and that is that.

Learn X in Y Minutes

Wed, 03 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I found “Learn X in Y minutes” (www.learnxinyminutes.com) while researching the programming languages needed for a new project. The site aims to help people who know at least one programming language to learn others by proving a quick run through of the main language features. It’s not quite enough to get you up and running. After all, having sample code doesn’t get you the compiler. However, it’s a nice start that shows you how similar (and different) language X is compared to the one(s) you already know.

Jim's Conservatory

Mon, 25 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Let’s assume that Jim has just had a sudden unexpected expenditure: a neighbour released a bull into his back garden and it destroyed his conservatory. Let’s assume that the conservatory is essential to Jim’s wellbeing, so it has to be fixed immediately. As a result Jim’s debts, which were previously small and well-managed, have now increased somewhat.

Like a Rhino Voting for Poaching

Sat, 09 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a reason I cannot and will not vote Conservative, and like most people’s apparent motive for voting tory it is also a selfish one. As someone employed in the public sector, working to ensure the greater good, I’m a member of an increasingly endangered species.

Understated Classics #30: Our Aim Is to Satisfy by Red Snapper

Sun, 19 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The thirtieth understated classic is by a band named after a fish. There isn’t a great deal for me to say about “Our Aim Is To Satisfy” A note on the title of the album, some sources refer to is as “Our Aim Is To Satisfy Red Snapper”. Personally I think this is ridiculous. apart from the usual insistence that it is quite good. There’s no overarching theme to write about, and no deep personal story attached. It was bound to happen eventually.

Consider the Donut

Sat, 11 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Andy Weir, The Martian

Fri, 03 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I received a copy of The Martian by Andy Weir for Christmas. This week during some annual leave I managed to finish it. It’s one of those novels that just flies by once it gets going. I’ve stayed up incredibly late to read it as it is full of those “just one more page” moments. It’s a readable and enjoyable story of an astronaut trapped on Mars.

Jodorowsky's Dune

Fri, 27 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Jodorowsky’s Dune is a documentary about outlandish Chilean director Alejandro Jodorosky’s attempt at a film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune in the 1970s. As a big fan of the novel and of science fiction in general, I was very interested in this film. It does not disappoint. It gives a great insight into the mind of a little known (if slightly batty) director and shows even an artistic failure can lead to shock waves that can be felt in later work by others.

A Little Bit Intimidating Really

Sun, 22 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

There is so much good writing out there. All you have to do is fire up the guardian website, or download the medium app to your smartphone, or visit my friend Barrie’s site, or Lee’s, and so on and so on.

How Fireworks Work

Sun, 22 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Last night an impromptu firework display occurred. I watched it from my bathroom window. Very pretty and somewhat extravagant, given that there’s no reason for one on the calendar. I could have filmed it on meerkat but it would have diminished the spectacle. However, it did at least motivate me to write this piece that I have put off for a while (since about November I guess?). One where I find out (i.e. look up on Wikipedia) how fireworks work.

Ned Beauman, Glow

Mon, 16 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Glow is about a guy called Raf, a Londoner whose life is going nowhere in particular; a state of affairs not helped by “Non-24 Hour Sleep/Wake Syndrome”. One night while experimenting with a new ecstacy-like drug that’s apparently derived from a social anxiety medication for dogs, Raf meets a beautiful girl and then loses her to the crowd in a blink-and-you-miss-it moment. From there a conspiracy evolves involving the titular dog-medication-derived drug, Burmese dissidents, corporate espionage, pirate radio stations, and urban foxes.

You Can’t Just Switch Off Free

Wed, 11 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Ministry of Sound boss Lohan Presencer does the cry baby act in today’s Guardian, complaining that Spotify’s freemium model doesn’t allow him to bathe in a Scrooge McDuck style swimming pool of golden coins any more. The cat is out of the bag for streaming music now, and no matter how much music companies cry foul they can’t stop Spotify and their ilk, and there wouldn’t be pots of gold waiting for them even if they could.

Album Digest, February 2015

Sun, 01 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Understated Classics #29: Let It Come Down by Spiritualized

Sun, 22 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I listened to Let It Come Down by Spiritualized for the first time during a difficult time in my life. I think this will always affect my feelings towards it. For me it’s a great big comfort blanket of a record. Coming after one of the all-time best break-up albums (in an artistic sense) in “Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space” perhaps it’s not that much of a surprise. Layered in orchestras, horn sections, and gospel choirs, it’s not understated at all but hopefully I can persuade you that it is a classic.

On Writing As It Happens

Fri, 20 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I’m pretty close to a round number. To date I have written 298,500 words for this blog, not counting posts that I have discarded or deleted. This will be the 505th post currently on the blog, which makes for an average of just under 600 words per post. Some posts are just a picture or a video or a gallery though, so that distorts the average a bit.

On The Humble Cheese Grater

Mon, 16 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

You can’t beat a good cheese grater. Cheese just tastes better in a sandwich once it has been grated. It’s been proven by ACTUAL SCIENCE that this is the case: something about the increased surface area making it taste more zingy (NB. QI is not actually a peer-reviewed scientific journal). Of course the cheese we are grating here is a nice mature cheddar, you can’t grate Camembert or Stilton (well technically you can, but why would you?). There are even cheeses that can be grated but don’t deserve it, take Red Leicester for example: the ear wax of the cheese world.

On Jackson X

Sun, 15 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I set myself the task of writing about a fictional character for this blog post, so this post is about Jackson X. His surname isn’t really X, it’s just one of the details about him that I haven’t fleshed out yet. This is because Jackson X is the one of the protagonists of the novel I’m (not) writing.

On Voting

Wed, 04 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

We hear a lot about our rights but these are given to us in return for fulfilling our responsibilities. One of these is engagement in the democratic process, and in particular voting. You should register to vote, that’s a no brainer. You should take an interest in what politics means for you locally, nationally, and internationally. On the day you to get to the polling station and cast your vote. Then you need to hold you representative accountable afterwards, even if he or she isn’t the person you voted for.

Album Digest, January 2015

Sat, 31 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Album Digest January 2015 rounds up a few albums from the tail end of 2014 that I didn’t get much time to write about. The only one of these six to be released this month is the excellent “No Cities To Love” by Sleater-Kinney.

Understated Classics #28: The Meadowlands by The Wrens

Sun, 18 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

One of the first lines of “The House That Guilt Built”, the soft cricket-laden lament that opens The Meadowlands by The Wrens, is “I’m nowhere near where I thought I’d be”. The last line of the whole album is “this is not what you had planned”. These bookending lines set the tone for this shimmering, ramshackle masterpiece - a fatigue and careworn pride in failing to meet impossible standards writ large over its first and last eighty or so seconds. “The Meadowlands” is probably the best record you’ve never heard, and once you have heard it, you will never be the same. Even better, it changes and you change with every single listen. If you’re living your life and you really mean it, then this is the record for you.

Iain M. Banks, Feersum Endjinn

Sat, 03 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Feersum Endjinn is one of Iain Banks’ few non-Culture sci-fi novels. Like the Culture novels, an existential crisis drives the plot: in this case the action takes place on Earth in the far future and the sun has aged to a point where it will grow and swallow the earth. This is referred to as the Encroachment. The characters are divided between the good guys who seek to find a solution for the greater good and bad guys who use the Encroachment to consolidate their power and influence.

Happy New Year 2015!

Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Just a brief message to wish everyone a happy new year. Getting my flat connected to the internet continues to be a trial so it’s still not as easy to post as I would like. However, I have some workarounds now and I hope to write (and post) more often from now on.

On convictions, whereas to the strength of and belief in same

Tue, 30 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Overlong reflection upon the past is one sure way to make yourself unhappy so I try to avoid it. Nevertheless it becomes unavoidable at this time of year, especially if, like me, you are somewhat prone to reflection.

October and November 2014

Fri, 14 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I recently started a new job and moved in to a new flat. This means I’m too busy to write any long blog posts at the moment. Also I’m still not quite at home there, so I tend to spend my evenings tidying up or setting up new things. It’s a shame because I have plenty of things to write about (even without observations on moving, starting a new job, etc) but I guess the writing will happen eventually…

Building Brains

Fri, 24 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This is a longer form post about artificial intelligence inspired by reading a little bit of “The Pale King” by David Foster Wallace and putting a picture of a “ghost” up on Instagram. This might be the last of these that I’m able to write for a while.

Album Digest, September 2014

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Album Digest September 2014 contains four amazing albums, including the long-awaited return from the Aphex Twin, and an album from Cymbals Eat Guitars released about a week after I wondered what had happened to them. Spooky. Rounding out the selection this month are a cool punky-disco album by The Juan Maclean and a truly remarkable offering by Vessel.

How to generate random numbers in R

Thu, 25 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post deals with how to generate random numbers in R. It is good to know how to generate random numbers with a particular language or software package for at least one of the following three reasons:

Evie Wyld, All The Birds, Singing

Tue, 02 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I recently finished reading All The Birds, Singing, the second novel by Evie Wyld. It’s about a woman called Jake who lives alone on a farm with a dog called Dog on an island somewhere off the coast of Britain. She has sheep to look after but something keeps coming in the middle of the night to kill them.

Album Digest, August 2014

Sun, 31 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The album digest returns with five albums by four artists.

Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki And His Years Of Pilgrimage

Sun, 24 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki And His Years Of Pilgrimage is the latest novel by Haruki Murakami. It comes with free stickers. Perhaps that tells you everything you need to know about this book, which is slimmer than Murakami’s recent efforts. The plot begins with an intriguing premise. Tsukuru is part of a group of close friends and is one day expelled from the group for no reason. Unfortunately, the development of the plot is uncontrolled and by the end of novel too many holes have developed for it all to hold together.

Useful Ulysses

Thu, 21 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Understated Classics #27: A Ghost Is Born by Wilco

Tue, 19 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I have already given some of the personal background to why I love this album and now it’s time to give a bit of love to the music itself so I’ll stick to giving a track by track account of “A Ghost Is Born”.

If you are familiar with Wilco’s first few albums, you’ll know that A Ghost Is Born is on the line of best fit through Being There, Summerteeth, and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It continues its predecessor’s experimentation, but also gets reined in a little. Great songs - some of my favourite Wilco songs - were left off Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (“Venus Stopped The Train”, “A Magazine Called Sunset”) so the follow-up could easily have been more of the same and everyone would have gone home happy.

South America, Part 10

Mon, 18 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Picking up where I left off at Machu Picchu, we headed down into Aguas Calientes (trans. “hot waters”) by coach and by the time we got there it was torrenting down with rain. So much for exploration. We waited out the downpour in a pizza place and deliberated over whether to buy souvenier snaps from the tour guides. Ironically for a town named after hot waters, it was bitterly cold. One of those places where the sound of running water follows you wherever you go, the best thing about it was the huge trains that ran down the middle of street - big clanking hulks pulling huge passenger trains.

Clarice Lispector, Hour of the Star

Sun, 17 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Hour of the Star is a short novel by Clarice Lispector, a Ukrainian-born Brazilian author with an interesting life story. This is her last novel and is a remarkable book: inventive, funny, and sad, all at once. I found it in a special selection at the local library dedicated to Brazil because of the World Cup.

What IS That Noise?

Sun, 17 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I recently spruced up a post I wrote four years ago about Biosphere’s wonderful album Substrata. I added the following footnote about the difference between voice samples and found sound:

Guardians of the Galaxy: A Short Review

Fri, 15 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Finally saw Guardians of the Galaxy today. Here are fifteen observations about the film that may or may not constitute a short review.

My Amazing Subversive Revolutionary Adolescence

Tue, 22 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Understated Classics #26: Come On Die Young by Mogwai

Mon, 07 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I’ll tell you about punk rock: punk rock is a word used by dilettantes and ah… and ah… heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies and the bodies and the hearts and the souls and the time and the minds of young men who give what they have to it and give everything they have to it and it’s a… it’s a term that’s based on contempt, it’s a term that’s based on fashion, style, elitism, satanism and everything that’s rotten about rock ’n’ roll. I don’t know Johnny Rotten but I’m sure… I’m sure he puts as much blood and sweat into what he does as Sigmund Freud did. You see, what sounds to you like a big load of trashy old noise is in fact the brilliant music of a genius, myself . And that music is so powerful that it’s quite beyond my control and ah… when I’m in the grips of it I don’t feel pleasure and I don’t feel pain, either physically or emotionally. Do you understand what I’m talking about? Have you ever felt like that? When you just couldn’t feel anything and you didn’t want to either. You know? Like that? Do you understand what I’m saying sir? (Iggy Pop, Canadian TV, March 11th 1977.)

Whatever Happened To That Hat?

Thu, 03 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The hat in question is a Wilco baseball cap that I bought at a gig of theirs in 2004, the night that Germany got eliminated from Euro 2004. I’d love to show you a picture of it but I can’t, there isn’t even a picture of it from a Wilco merch site: at least not one that Google or Bing images can see anyway. I did manage to find a side-on picture of it in my bedroom in 2005 and zoom right in on it like they do in CSI.

Album Digest, June 2014

Mon, 30 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Watter are a “supergroup” composed from various members of Grails, Slint, and other bands. I did not know anything about Hundred Waters before this month: “The Moon Rang Like A Bell” is their second album. In fact second albums by bands I know nothing about are a something of theme because “Sunbathing Animal” is Parquet Courts’ sophomore effort and I don’t know anything about them either. Meanwhile, I’ve meant to write about “The Four Seasons Recomposed” since April.

Album Digest, May 2014

Sat, 31 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This month was strange. I didn’t listen to much new music and after last month’s bumper digest there’s probably a reason for that. Not to mention that Spotify gives you more reasons to look backwards than forwards. Nevertheless, this brief post features new albums by Little Dragon and Coldplay, along with the mini-album collaboration between Röyskopp and Robyn.

South America, Part 9

Tue, 27 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In a tour full of highlights, Christmas week of 2013 was nonetheless one of the greatest weeks of my life. I may have moaned, groaned, and got completely soaked, but it was worth it to see Machu Picchu in the sunshine.

Should I Drop Dropbox?

Tue, 15 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I am thinking about whether I want to use Dropbox to sync my files anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I love Dropbox. It came along in beta in just 2008 just as I needed it to manage my PhD thesis. In fact I often jokingly claim to having invented it by asking on the MacRumors forums whether a program like it existed - just a few weeks before its beta rode in to my life like a knight in shining armour. I recognised the need for a service that would synchronise a single directory and its contents between multiple computers using The Power Of The Internet™. I was used to using commands like scp to maintain my static blog on the university’s servers and the multiple computers that I authored it from, though in 2008 when I moved back to my parents’ house to write up my PhD I was frustrated that I couldn’t work out how to do the same things when the target was a PC running Windows XP.

Album Digest, March 2014

Mon, 31 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I’m back in the UK so it’s back to posts about albums each month. This one is a bit different because I didn’t listen to very much new stuff while I was away so not all of the albums are up to date. I had to write about the new album by Liars though because it’s awesome and I couldn’t wait to discuss it! Here’s the list of albums:

South America, Part 8

Mon, 10 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Arequipa and Cusco – the two cities that are the subject of this post – are probably the two cities in Peru that are most amenable to travellers (though Lima certainly has a lot to offer too). For me they should have been punctuated with a trip to Colca canyon, one of the deepest canyons in the world and twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, I got really sick on the second day in Arequipa as my attempts at keeping my tummy bug at bay finally failed. (Even so, I didn’t actually seek any proper medical help till the second day in Cusco, I was pretty boneheaded about it.)

South America, Part 7

Fri, 07 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Next up was a piecemeal section of the trip that took in a varied set of sights and helped us get to know the new passengers who joined in Lima. On the first day we took a boat trip out to the Ballestas Islands, a nature reserve that is informally known as “the poor man’s galapagos”. Living there are penguins, sea birds, sea lions and seals. The speed boat out was a little wet and wild (and in fact the return trip was even wetter and wilder) so we all got soaked (twice) but the microclimate around the islands themselves was calm and warm, and we all got good value out of our cameras (if they still worked that is). We even saw a pelican get taken down by a sea-lion which was an interesting if not altogether pleasant display of nature red in tooth and claw. Also, who knew that guano was so valuable?!?

South America, Part 6

Sun, 12 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

From Punta Sal we took a long driving down to Huanchaco, via a stop off at the Lord of Saipan museum. The lord of Saipan is a Moche mummy found dressed in all manner of gold and surrounded by artefacts and other sacrifices (including other humans and decapitated llamas). The tour took a while to get going (our guide was late) but the exhibition was so amazing (the pieces were painstakingly restored in Germany) that it was hugely enjoyable. The diorama at the end featuring moving animatronic waxworks of Moche people was extremely weird though.

South America, Part 5

Tue, 31 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

After Cuenca we set off for the Peruvian border. One of the great advantages of having a UK passport in South America is that you don’t need any visas. If you’re Australian or Canadian it’s a different story. Nevertheless we all got over the border with very little trouble (the third ever land border crossing of my life) apart from the bits where they seem to make you wait in a queue just for the sake of making you wait in a queue.

South America, Part 4

Sat, 28 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

After Baños, we set off for Cuenca, which is a town in the south of Ecuador. Being a long drive, the journey was broken up with our first excursion to some inca ruins, a large complex at Ingapirca with a sun temple. It was built on an earlier site that dated back to about the 9th century and the Inca then conquered the area and built on top of it, as they tended to while their empire was expanding out from Peru to the south in the 11th and 12th centuries.

South America, Part 3

Sat, 21 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

We left Misahualli for Baños via an hour in nearby Tena to get something for the truck fixed. After that the drive to Banos was pretty short - or at least it seemed that way as I alternated between dozing off, snapping the scenery and… well… dozing off some more. We arrived at a campsite about twenty minutes taxi ride from Banos and this was it, the thing I’d feared most about this trip: the camping. Fortunately, as an odd boy, I managed to secure my own tent - the gadget palace that you can see in my selfie! Getting the tent up was straightforward and all my assorted camping gear seemed to live up to requirements! It chucked it down with rain in the night, so it was good that the fly sheet did it’s job too. It was great fun to lie there listening to the rain, nice and warm and dry. More importantly, I also managed to get some sleep.

Grumble Grumble

Thu, 19 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a bit behind in my posts about the trip and this post interrupts the sequence of events somewhat, just because I’ve not felt that well and that has dominated my thoughts about what to write. Basically for a week or two I’ve had varying degrees of bellyache and it’s not been fun. Instead of feeling the gratitude and excitement I’ve felt since being here, I’ve spent a lot of time wanting to curl up in the corner and just be… well… somewhere else.

South America, Part 2

Mon, 02 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

South America, Part 1

Fri, 29 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

By the time this goes up, I will be at least a week in to my South American tour. I flew out to Ecuador last Thursday (the 21st) and ended up being awake for more than twenty four hours. My flight left London early and I had a three hour stopover in Madrid, then a twelve hour flight onward to Quito. My bag didn’t leave Madrid though, so we were separated for about twenty four nerve-racking hours. Luckily, I’d packed a change of clothes and so I was still able to explore Quito with Lee and Miriam (fellow Tucan travellers) the next day without too much discomfort.

Album Digest, October 2013

Thu, 31 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Four great albums this month for the last album digest in a while.

The Only Chocolate Cake Recipe You’ll Ever Need

Mon, 21 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

As I mentioned in a previous post, I baked a chocolate cake the other day and it was a great success. Here is the recipe, which is a trivial modification of one that appears in Nigel Slater’s “Real Food” (Amazon links: UK, US). “Real Food” is a cookbook that I genuinely treasure. The modification I have made for this recipe is to omit the espresso but I will point out where it should be added, in case you want to give that a try.

LS Lowry At Tate Britain

Fri, 18 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I have mixed feelings about this show. On the one hand, I like that there are depictions of working class Britain on display and I feel that it is right that these paintings are considered part of the British cultural canon. I also like that a lot of these paintings represent large gatherings of people, which are absent from a lot of what we might call the mainstream of art.

The Reset Button

Wed, 16 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Art Under Attack at Tate Britain

Sat, 12 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Today I went with a friend to see Tate Britain’s “Art Under Attack” show. It’s an interesting, if uneven, affair that entertains but doesn’t quite succeed in everything it attempts to do. The big word that you learn is iconoclasm: the act of attacking an object believed to represent particular beliefs. The show splits into two parts: ideological acts of iconoclasm committed against works of art in Britain and the work of British artists who embrace iconoclasm as a means for making art. The first half (comprising more than half of the show - because I lump together two of the shows sections “Religion” and “Politics” into this half) is more interesting and successful than the second (“Aesthetics”).

J. G. Ballard, High-Rise

Sat, 05 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

After a few false starts I managed to finish “High-Rise”, the next in my collection of JG Ballard novels. For a book that I had trouble getting into, it turned out to be a pretty good read - even if it was also a pretty unpleasant one. Published in 1975, “High-Rise” is perhaps ahead of its time in exploring the effects of social breakdown in stylised and artificial situations where people are in close contact. You might think the plot, about a luxury high-rise that goes to hell, is in some way political or sociological but it really isn’t. It’s just a big playground in which Ballard throws around some of his most twisted ideas, all the while remarking on the very artifice of the situation.

Album Digest, September 2013

Mon, 30 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

A nice diverse selection of albums this month:

Understated Classics #25: Long Gone Before Daylight by The Cardigans

Sat, 14 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The single biggest fact of life is that you are always going to be alone, you just might not realise it. Listening to The Cardigans’ excellent 2003 “Long Gone Before Daylight” will help you see that all our relationships are essentially screwed – but at least it sounds great while it does so.

Ellen Gallagher at Tate Modern

Fri, 13 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Ellen Gallagher is an American artist and her “AxME” show recently finished at the Tate Modern. I went along a few weeks ago and have only now had a bit of time to write up my thoughts.

Album Digest, August 2013

Sat, 31 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

For reasons that will become apparent, there will be a short period soon where I will not be writing album digests. Until then, I’m clearing a backlog of some albums that I’ve been listening to but haven’t had enough time or motivation to write about. Only one of this month’s albums was released this month, something that’s not that uncommon at this time of the year as it is not the best time to release things. Here’s the list:

The Truth About Work

Wed, 14 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Posters

Tue, 13 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

In 2005, towards the end of the second year of my PhD I presented a poster at a conference in Dresden, Germany. My eccentric colleagues and I stayed on a huge canal boat moored on the Elbe for no discernible reason other than it seemed like a laugh at the time. In reality I was the second worst snorer of the three of us and it also turned out that our room was right underneath the gang-plank and every morning at six the person who made breakfast would stomp across it.

Despicable Me 2: A Short Review

Mon, 12 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

It’s so good that I paid to see it twice! There, that’s the review done.

Album Digest, July 2013

Wed, 31 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Another four albums for you this month. Sometimes the problem is not finding albums to listen to but actually finding time to listen to them! Often it is not because I don’t have time but because I have already found some great albums this month and I am busy listening to those instead. As a result, a couple of these albums are ones that I have only listened to for a week or so, but they are interesting enough to write about. Here are the four albums I am going to write about this month:

Neil Gaiman, The Ocean At The End Of The Lane

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

“The Ocean At The End Of The Lane” is the new novel by Neil Gaiman. I was so intrigued by it that I bought the hardcover, which is unusual for me because I prefer paperbacks. I’d been excited by reading the first chapter online at the Guardian website and from reading a blog post about the novel written by the author’s wife Amanda Palmer. I’d not read any of his novels before but they had long been on that “to read” list that is typically as long as your arm. I also enjoyed the movie adaptation of “Stardust” though I have no way (yet!) of knowing whether the film is as good as the original book.

Ideas for TV shows: Great Mathematicians

Mon, 29 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I want to see a TV show about great mathematicians of the past on a channel like BBC Four. Programmes about mathematics tend to be rather condescending, at least to anyone who has a bit of mathematical knowledge. Perhaps a way around this is to delve into the social and historical circumstances of the great mathematicians and how that along with their personality produced the mathematical results for which they are famous.

Ibrahim El-Salahi At Tate Modern

Wed, 24 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Ibrahim El-Salahi is a modernist artist from Sudan. I believe this exhibition is a first for an African artist at the Tate Modern. Much like the Choucair show (which is still on everyone!), it’s an engaging but too short introduction to an interesting artist that you have probably never heard of.

Don Delillo, Point Omega

Tue, 23 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

There were no mornings or afternoons. It was one seamless day, every day, until the sun began to arc and fade, mountains emerging from their silhouettes. This is when we sat and watched in silence.

Michael Frayn, Skios

Fri, 05 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This week I read “Skios” by Michael Frayn (who was born in Mill Hill). It’s another book from now customary pile of books that tends to develop around this time of year. “Hawksmoor” and “The Marriage Plot” were on the same ever-increasing pile. “Skios” is something of a change from what I normally read: it’s a comedic farce about stolen identities set on the (fictional) titular Greek island. Amusingly, the wikipedia page for the novel currently reads “Praise for Skios was entirely misplaced”, probably thanks to some curmudgeon who doesn’t like the novel. Cue a ‘misplaced’ blog post about it, something that most people would consider to be business as usual for my blog.

Album Digest, June 2013

Sun, 30 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Just two albums this month as I am still enjoying last month’s albums so much (and I spent loads of time getting reacquainted with Boards Of Canada at the start of the month). I listened to a few more albums but not often enough to write loads about them so there is an “honourable mention” section at the end of the post that briefly discusses a few more albums.

Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor

Wed, 26 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Peter Ackroyd’s “Hawksmoor” was first published in 1985. I bought a recent reissue that forms part of Penguin’s decades collection whilst on a spree in Waterstone’s. It appealed to me as I recently realised that despite growing up in the eighties and nineties, I had read very novels that were either written or set in the eighties. Happily “Hawksmoor” is both of these, sort of. It also appealed to me because it is (again, sort of) a detective story and I’ve found myself getting into those lately. John Squire’s excellent artwork for the cover and the nice binding also helped to seal the deal: you don’t get that with an iPad or a Kindle.

Understated Classics #24: Reservoir by Fanfarlo

Mon, 24 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I have written a lot in these posts about how music gets indelibly tied up with places, events and feelings. For me this album by Fanfarlo is tied up with all three of these. It makes me happy and sad at the same time in memory of great times that are now gone but are fondly remembered. I am aware that this is the youngest album on the list so far and so it might be a bit early to endow classic status upon it, but “Reservoir” is a fine album and to my ears it stands up really well. Listening to it again in the course of writing this post I found that I remembered every note and musical phrase, and yet somehow I also managed to delight in hearing new features in the production that I’d not noticed before.

Man of Steel: A Short Review

Sat, 22 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Today I went to see the new Superman reboot Man of Steel with friends. I really enjoyed it, particularly the more reflective take on the superhero myth. Starting out with the fate of the planet Krypton, Man of Steel approximately fuses the events of both the first two original Superman movies. We get to see Superman’s arrival and childhood on earth and then the arrival of Zod, a maniac bent on replacing the earth and everyone on it with a new race of Kryptonians.

Album Digest, May 2013

Fri, 31 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

George Bellows At RA

Wed, 29 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Today I went to see “George Bellows 1882-1925 Modern American Life” at the Royal Academy of Arts. It’s the first time I’ve been to the RA but I was emboldened by my art pass and the fact that Bellows was a contemporary of Edward Hopper, a painter whom I admire greatly. This is the first major retrospective of Bellows’ work in the UK and taking in his wonderful paintings this afternoon, I felt a little embarrassed that I hadn’t seen anything of his before.

Choucair At Tate Modern

Sat, 25 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday I went to see the Saloua Raouda Choucair show at the Tate Modern. As it was quite small, I went to see the Lichtenstein show again as well.

Understated Classics #23: Gorgeous by 808 State

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

It was quite hard to choose an 808 State album for the understated classics series for two reasons. The first is that I was introduced to 808 State quite late through a friend’s sister’s cassette copy of The Shamen’s En-Tact (the original version recorded from vinyl that had a thirteen minute version of “Evil Is Eden”) that also had – to fill out the C90 – the full length sweary version of “What Time Is Love?” by The KLF and four tracks: “Cubik”, “Pacific”, “Olympic” (I think…), and “In Yer Face”.

Lichtenstein At Tate Modern

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This was a show that I had put off going to see for quite a while now. Looking online at the pictures featured in the show did not really excite me enough to get out and see it. I’d seen Whaam! before in isolation (it’s part of the Tate collection and will no doubt return once the retrospective show is over) and it didn’t really grab me, arresting as it is. However, with plenty of free time this week it was an ideal time to go see it and I was happy to be proved wrong.

Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

“The Marriage Plot” by Jeffrey Eugenides is a novel about love and growing up set in the privileged world of US academia in the early eighties. The main plot concerns a love triangle involving two guys and a girl. Madeline Hanna, the girl at the apex of the love triangle, is the main focus of the novel and the majority of the novel is told from her standpoint. I think her sections are incredibly well written but I’d love the thoughts of a female reader, in case it is actually all a horribly male way of seeing through a young woman’s eyes. In love with Madeline (and the guy that we meet first) is Mitchell Grammaticus, an overly deep guy who is terribly concerned about whether he is doing the right thing in the world. He thinks that religious studies is for him but later finds that it is harder to live up to your ideals than you first imagine.

Star Trek: Into Darkness - A Short Review

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I saw Star Trek: Into Darkness last night in 3D at the IMAX in Waterloo. I am going to have to separate this into a review into two parts, a review of the film and a review of the viewing experience. I am not completely happy with how the film experience is changed by the 3D and the super big screen and I will try to explain what I mean.

Album Digest, April 2013

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Some great albums this month!

Why I Love On The Road

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I was fifteen when I first read “On The Road” by Jack Kerouac and recently, after twice as much lifetime lived, I was able to watch the film version directed by Walter Salles.

Album Digest, March 2013

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Just the David Bowie album this month as it’s pretty much the only new music that I’ve listened to.

Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

A while back, I decided I was going to write about the Iain M. Banks sci-fi-novels (mainly as a respite from having to read and write about J. G. Ballard novels, but I only got as fas as writing about the excellent “Against A Dark Barkground” and re-reading the first of the Culture novels “Consider Phlebas”. WARNING: Some plot spoilers follow (but not too many).

Understated Classics #22: Walking With Thee by Clinic

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

“Walking With Thee” is the second album by Liverpool band Clinic. It was released in 2002, which seems like an age ago now. Even longer ago they released the single “The Return of Evil Bill”, which was got me interested in them in the first place.

A Work Of Art At The End Of My Road?

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I have had a lot of ideas for posts swirling around in my head in recent days. This is because I have actually done quite a lot of cool things in that time, and because I have hung out with some great people who make me think, and because I always have a whole load of things bouncing around in there anyway - space junk of the mind. I was thinking about how to put together these thoughts I have been having about art and about stories and yes, about love too. It all kind of got muddled up and then I saw it.

Album Digest, February 2013

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Most Februaries are quite quiet when it comes to albums (though this was not the case back in 2011) and although only the Foals album is a major release, I was quite surprised to find myself with four decent albums to write about. They are:

On Pynchon

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The existence, or impending existence, of a new novel by Thomas Pynchon was announced today. I have all his previous books (seven written over a period of about fifty years, a pace that I definitely approve of), though he’s a hard author to get close to: I’ve only finished three and started four up till now. The unfinished one is, of course, Gravity’s Rainbow (GR) and somewhat perversely, I have two copies of the thing. Of the three unstarted, both Mason & Dixon (MD) and Against The Day (ATD) seem too dense and intimidating, while Vineland just begs me to read The Crying Of Lot 49 (L49) or Inherent Vice (IV) one more time.

A Jigsaw

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The other weekend, beset by insomnia, I decided to follow my own advice and get up to do something instead of wallowing unable to sleep. I pulled my emergency jigsaw out of the cupboard and set to it. I should stress that I mean a jigsaw puzzle and not an actually jigsaw: DIY at 2am is not such a good idea!

Album Digest, January 2013

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Only one of this month three albums was actually released this month. Nelly Furtado’s Mi plan was actually released over three years ago - I only discovered it last year when I wrote the September album digest following the release of “The Spirit Indestructible”, or it might have been when I wrote about “Folklore” at around the same time.

Album Digest, December 2012

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Three albums (one very Christmassey one!) and an EP this month.

Album Digest, November 2012

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Pretty much a sliding scale between songs and electronic wibble on this month’s albums and a particularly damp, chilly feeling to proceedings too.

A Mountain Story

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

A cat reaches the top of a mountain after a long climb through the snow. He is cold from the bottom of his fur to the tips of his claws. He is sodden and wet, and we all know how much a cat hates to be wet.

Understated Classics #21: Woob 2 by Woob

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The second Woob album (AKA “Woob 4495”) is probably the greatest ambient album ever made and is certainly the best one you have never heard of. Originally released in 1995 on the em:t label it is also a rare record. I don’t have an actual copy but I have seen one! I downloaded it off the internet and even that is quite difficult to do. My friend is an avid collector of all the em:t releases and it is easy to see why: all the albums are titled in a specific way that is very appealing to people who like to collect things and they also have very striking nature photography on the covers. In a strange way, the label was able to create an identity for its releases in a way that many artists would try to.

Ambitions

Sat, 10 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes, when I am feeling a bit down, I like to write down some of my ambitions. As you can see from this list they are mostly pretty humble but they are also a bit cheesy and embarassing, so I have put them after the fold!

Rust And Bone: A Short Review

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

So, two short reviews in a row. I had the day off work and went to see “Rust And Bone” this afternooon. It’s the new film by Jacques Audiard, who directed “A Prophet” – one of my favourite films of the last five years.

Skyfall: A Short Review

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I went to see “Skyfall” last night and I really enjoyed it. I knew nothing about the plot, mostly because I had avoided all discussion of the plot with people who had already seen it and I even avoided reviews as so many these days seem to just rattle off plot points, instead of discussing what makes the movie any good. With that in mind I will obviously try not to give away any of the plot in this brief review.

Album Digest, October 2012

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

It has been a strange month and I found that I didn’t listen to a lot of new music. I have been a bit down and when that’s the case I tend to take refuge in music that I know well, stuff that cheers me up. I have listened to last month’s fave a lot, Nelly Furtado’s “The Spirit Indestructible”. I said a lot of nice things about it but it probably didn’t come over in my writing just how much I really liked it.

Stevenage vs Portsmouth

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Tonight, despite feeling a bit under the weather, I went to Stevenage to watch Portsmouth play a League One game at the Lamex Stadium. In addition, I met a “person off the internet” for the second time in a week – this time Tom, a friend of a friend from Facebook: our shared passions being Portsmouth FC and really cool music. We met at King’s Cross and caught a packed train to Stevenage, a non-descript dormitory town that was even more non-descript than I remember St Albans being. I’m glad I went, even though Pompey lost. It’s funny how sitting in a shed in the cold watching your team lose counts as entertainment!

Nonlinear Systems: A Rough Intro

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This is another mathematics post that does not actually feature any equations or graphs. It is intended to set the way clear for writing regularly about nonlinear systems. This in itself is a precursor to writing more about mathematical biology as biological systems are inherently complex and nonlinear. I am reading P. G. Drazin’s textbook on Nonlinear Systems and this post is a glossary of terms from the start of the book laid down here because I wanted to remember how to typeset definition lists in Markdown (though in the end I (ab)used <h4> tags because it looked better).

Album Digest, September 2012

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I had a bit more time to listen to this month’s albums because I was on holiday for two weeks. I didn’t manage to write about them while on holiday though! In fact I bought and listened to a few more, but I will save them for next month. The albums I will discuss now (in order bought) are:

Jon McGregor, Even The Dogs

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Over my holiday I read “Even The Dogs” by Jon McGregor. I’ve not quite finished it yet but that will at least prevent me from giving away spoilers. I am not sure I would want to give any spoilers anyway because it is unrelentingly grim so far. Perhaps there is a happy ending but both you and I will have to read it to find out.

Programming a Carcassonne Game

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Although I have put off finishing my UNO game for over eighteen months, I thought I would get started with another pet project of mine: making a Carcassonne game. This is not a serious affair, there is an excellent app of Carcassonne available for those of you who have iOS devices (it works particularly well on the iPad). The game just strikes me as having the right level of complexity to be a taxing yet attainable project. I’d also like to understand strategies for playing the game and what better way to evaluate strategies for games of chance than to have a simulator to play all those millions of games that you don’t have time to play?

Understated Classics #20: Folklore by Nelly Furtado

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

It’s rather spooky but shortly after deciding to write about Nelly Furtado’s “Folklore” as the next understated classic, I found out that she has a new album out this week. As a result, I have been listening to a lot of her music while writing this post, and I’ve been enjoying it too.

Album Digest, August 2012

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Album Digest August 2012 is also from the stack of albums that I mentioned last month. I chose this selection (along with the Passion Pit album) because the colours looked good together in the mosaic of covers that I make each month. Last month’s digest was about the right amount of detail so this will be another briefer digest. These are all good albums but not ones that will change your life, they’ll just happily sit alongside it. They are:

Nick Harkaway, The Gone-Away World

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

“The Gone-Away World” is a novel by Nick Harkaway. It’s about a world slightly askew to our own in which the powers-that-be have deigned to unleash a weapon that simply wipes the enemy out of existence. Unfortunately the enemies also have the same weapon and there are terrible consequences to the extent that the very fabric of reality is threatened. If you don’t already know what reification means, you will by the end.

Understated Classics #19: The Dreaming by Kate Bush

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

“I see the people working and see it working for them.” (Sat In Your Lap)

Album Digest, July 2012

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Just a short album digest this month. I bought a stack of CDs and am parcelling them out over the next few months (together with important additional releases as they crop up). This is in the hope that I can write more considered pieces about each one. This month I’ve grouped together albums with monochrome covers and a BT album from June that I found out about recently. These albums are not just linked by their artwork, they also form a cohesive whole. As a result I dispense with reviewing each album in depth. As usual there is a playlist at the end.

Album Digest, June 2012

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Three fantastic albums for Album Digest June 2012:

A Case For Yellow As Your New Favourite Colour

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post is about the films of Wes Anderson. I am no expert, I’ve just watched them all recently (inspired by seeing “Moonrise Kingdom”) and spotted a some similarities and differences between the films and I thought it would be fun to write about them. My appearance on Mastermind with “The Films of Wes Anderson” as my specialist subject will have to wait for now. Feel free to add to the discussion in the comments. In case you don’t know what the films are, here they are in order (with links to their IMDB pages):

Another Reading List

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Helen Fisher, Some Lessons In Love

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

As indicated by my reading list posted a couple of months ago (which has since been added to here), I’ve started to try to read more about the things that I felt that I did not understand so well. Most notably perhaps is this book “on love” by Helen Fisher. Lest there is any innuendo it is not a book about technique nor does it attempt to explain love to those who have never known it, instead it assumes that we have all been there. In fact, the book attempts to explain the neurological mechanisms of love (specifically romantic love) and describes how science has helped reveal these mechanisms to us.

CAN, The Lost Tapes

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This arrived on Monday and I thought I would give it a post of its own because at over 3 hours of music, I am unlikely to do more than dip into it before writing the album digest next week. It is a far bigger and more enjoyable artefact than I thought it was going to be, so it probably deserves special attention for that reason too.

Will Bingley and Anthony Hope-Smith, Gonzo

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Another book from the “university of life” pile (though not in the picture), “Gonzo” is the biography of Hunter S. Thompson in graphical form. In case you don’t know his work, Hunter S. Thompson was a journalist who invented the so-called “gonzo” style. This was basically to rock up at some major event and become embedded within it, usually writing up a long form piece from an outsider perspective. He was particularly famous for his work on the Hell’s Angels and Richard Nixon’s campaign for presidential re-election in 1972.

Moonrise Kingdom: A Short Review

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Tonight I avoided the first half of the football along with my friend Albert Jan and we went to watch “Moonrise Kingdom” at the wonderful Everyman cinema in Hampstead. It was a real treat in every sense. To start with, the Everyman is a lovely cinema. It is quite expensive but you do get what you pay for: a comfortable seat in a great theatre and the chance to watch more than just the latest blockbusters (though it shows those too). I think it was the only cinema in my area that was showing Moonrise Kingdom, though it has been out for a while now.

Understated Classics #18: Fabric 12 mixed by The Amalgamation Of Soundz

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Say what? We’re allowing compilations now?

Album Digest, May 2012

Thu, 31 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Four albums for Album Digest May 2012:

Album Digest, April 2012

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

A mostly instrumental month with a comeback from Orbital, an excellent remix collection from Battles, an amazing movie documenting a live performance by the Chemical Brothers and Austin Wintory’s soundtrack to the game Journey.

Reading list, mid-April 2012

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Understated Classics #17: Nearly God by Nearly God (Tricky)

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Sit back and let it happen, / Let us take your time away.

Ted Hughes, April Birthday

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

When your birthday brings the world under your window
And the song-thrush sings wet-throated in the dew
And aconite and primrose are unsticking the wrappers
Of the package that has come today for you

Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon was written in 1956 and tells of the experiences of West Indian men moving to London for work. It has been described as the definitive novel about the experiences of the Windrush settlers. The narrative centres on a man named Moses who was one of the first to come to London and finds himself the first port of call for many subsequent immigrants:

Net Loss

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I pay to have this blog up and running. That is, I pay for the space where it is stored and I pay for the name. I have to look after all the files and plug-ins, I have to perform all the updates and optimise the database tables. All this is great fun but wouldn’t it be cheaper to slap the mattischro.me address onto a hosted WordPress.com account?

Album Digest, March 2012

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Five albums for Album Digest March 2012

Understated Classics #16: Ambient 2 / The Plateaux Of Mirror by Howard Budd and Brian Eno

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Album Digest, February 2012

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

One EP and three albums for Album Digest February 2012:

Never Mind The Ballards

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Ages ago I set out to write a post for each of JG Ballard’s novels. In fact it is the oldest post on this blog. Most of the novels (I don’t have the two autobiographical novels Empire Of The Sun or The Kindness Of Women and the late period novel Milennium People) are sat in a row on top of my broken bookshelf, part of the weight there that bowed outer frame of the unit and made the inner shelves collapse. Had I known that it would be a task unfinished nearly eighteen months later and destroy a piece a furniture that I did not yet own, I may have been less ambitious.

Album Digest, January 2012

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Five albums to see in the new year:

Understated Classics #15: Début by Björk

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I got into Début via a cassette from the library, much like I did with Together Alone by Crowded House. I suppose it is less obscure than many of my choices for this strand but I do think that Post is more well-known (because of It’s Oh So Quiet, which we shall mention here only briefly) and that Homogenic is probably more popular among her fans.

The Painter

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Once upon a time there was a man who loved to paint. He studied the art and craft of painting for many years. He chose to invest his time and energy into creating the most realistic portraits that he could paint. For him the joy came not from completing the paintings but the process of recreating the real world with the strokes of his brush.

Dreams Of A Life: A Short Review

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Dreams Of A Life is a documentary about Joyce Vincent, a woman who was found in her flat three years after her death surrounded by wrapped christmas presents and with the TV still on. £2400 in arrears on her rent, she was discovered by bailiffs who forced the door down. The film attempts to work out happened to Joyce by interviewing people who knew her. In two other strands that unfold in parallel, various events from her life are re-enacted along with the clearing of her flat by forensics officers.

Album Digest, December 2011

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Some rather brief pen pictures of this month’s albums. I’ve been a bit busy!

The Amber World

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

My earliest memory is waking up in Queen Alexandra hospital in Cosham after an operation on my ears. I must have been about four years old and it was the middle of the night. I was in a room on my own and the door was locked. It had been daylight only seconds before so I got out of the bed and walked to the window to look incredulously out at the amber world that lay beyond.

Album Digest, November 2011

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Just three albums this month as I’ve been listening to a lot of Brian Eno records ready for an upcoming understated classic. First up is 50 Words For Snow by Kate Bush, the second album that she has released this year. Back in May I wrote about Director’s Cut, which presented re-recorded and re-mastered versions of songs from her albums The Sensual World and The Red Shoes. This time around it is an album of brand new material, the first since Aerial in 2006.

Understated Classics #14: Clear by Bomb The Bass

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I think it’s time to discuss your philosophy of drug use as it relates to artistic endeavour…

Contagion: A Short Review

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

There was much excitement about Contagion at work. Finally a movie that explains as part of the plot! A bunch of us went to see it, mainly to see whether a disaster movie about a global pandemic could hold up as entertainment and to have a bit of a giggle if it couldn’t.

Mark Rowlands, The Philosopher And The Wolf

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I saw that a friend had ‘liked’ this book on Facebook and reading about it on amazon, I was curious enough to give it a go. It is the autobiography of the philosopher Mark Rowlands, specifically the experiences and lessons learned from raising a wolf, Brenin, from cub to maturity and beyond.

Album Digest, October 2011

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This month we have albums by Björk, Coldplay, M83, and Radiohead.

Album Digest, September 2011

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Hmmm, a rather grey looking selection of covers this month. The albums I have listened to most are:

Frank Herbert, Dune

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

A week or so ago, I finished reading Dune by Frank Herbert. It tells the story of a revolution within a Galactic Empire that takes place on a harsh and unforgiving desert planet called Arrakis. One central theme is how destinies can be shaped despite being intertwined around many axes. Another is the importance of adaptation in the fight for survival.

Understated Classics #13: U.F.Orb by The Orb

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

FUN FACT: It was because of the artwork to this album that I obsessively scrawled onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome on my pencil case at school. I also had a very passable u.f.orb logo drawn on it too.

Album Digest, August 2011

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I bought a collection of electronic music this month. I mixed them all up in a smart playlist on iTunes, the smart aspect being to limit to tracks that had been played fewer than five then six then seven times etc. This made sure I was still listening to all the tracks equally often, despite the randomness.

Understated Classics #12: Look Sharp! by Roxette

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Five lessons from a year of blogging

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I have now been writing decent length articles on this site for about a year. I have learned a lot in this time, mostly about writing but also how to express your feelings and how to marshal your ideas and passions into action. For this month’s “five on the fifth”, I would like to share with you some of the things I have learned.

Album Digest, July 2011

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Quite a mixed bag this month.

The News

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

“I read the news today, oh boy” (The Beatles, A Day In The Life.)

Understated Classics #11: Second Toughest In The Infants by Underworld

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

A Beta Test Of Everything

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Reading a few articles about the recent launch of Google+, a few things hit home. Google tends to launch a product that works and not always one that is perfect or finished (like, say, Apple). Sometimes it takes them several iterations to get right. They love the beta tag. In fact, I think it was Google (or possibly Flickr) that made me aware of the concept of beta software.

Why I Love The Jungle Book

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Just as with the understated classics I want to set out my stall early on that good movies are good enough. Both Betty Blue and today’s choice The Jungle Book are never going to win any sort of consensus prize for the best movies ever made but they are really good. They also have a personal history attached that makes them worth writing about.

Maps And Charts

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

When I was growing up a framed print of a map hung on the wall in the hallway. It was one of my favourite things, littered with strange latin names and with Vs where Us should have been. The outlines of the continents and countries were all familiar and yet slightly distorted, becoming more recognisable around the shores of western Europe.

Album Digest, June 2011

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I have had the sort of month that is not conducive to listening to much new music. Therefore this month’s post is only going to consider two new albums and two albums that I have bought behind time. Because of various bits of stress and poor mood, I have ended up going back and taking refuge in some old favourites and not listening to new stuff. At other points I have also gone back to the Fleet Foxes’ album that I wrote about last month, which has grown on me even more since. Sometimes I think that I should writing about these albums on a two month delay. Meanwhile, I even have new music that I haven’t listened to at all, namely Bon Iver’s self-titled album. It has received so many good reviews that I have been too intimidated to listen to it. I will try to write about it next month.

Understated Classics #10: Tubular Bells II by Mike Oldfield

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

It was the artwork that got me interested in Tubular Bells II. Rendering Trevor Key’s wonderful icon of the twisted tubular bell in yellow and blue made it all the more mysterious. Seeing it one day in Woolworth’s in Leigh Park back in 1992 aroused my curiosity. The huge display must have been part of the massive publicity drive for the album. Despite dwindling sales for his albums at that time, a sequel to Tubular Bells represented a huge potential for sales. This is why Oldfield had been lured from his previous home at Virgin records over to Warner Music. At that point Oldfield had not made a good album since his soundtrack to the movie The Killing Fields in 1985, the end of a hot streak (perhaps 1980’s QE2 aside) that had lasted since the original Tubular Bells back in 1973.

Favourite Numbers

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

What’s your favourite number?

J. G. Ballard, Concrete Island

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Album Digest, May 2011

Tue, 31 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Four albums this month:

Kate Bush Director’s Cut
Africa Hitech 93 Million Miles
Fleet Foxes Helplessness Blues
TV On The Radio Nine Types of Light

Understated Classics #9: Tiger Bay by Saint Etienne

Fri, 06 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Five Superheroes We Can Live Without

Thu, 05 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The other day while writing some rather self-pitying notes in my blog book (yes, I handwrite all this rubbish before I go to bed at night!) I came up with some useless superheroes, or rather the only superheroes that a washed-up guy in his early thirties could hope to be. Because I haven’t got any ideas for “five things on the fifth” this month, I decided to flesh out a few of these. Last month I began the five on the fifth meme with five things to try if you can’t sleep and so this is a rather forced attempt to keep it going. I promise that I will try and think of more interesting posts on these lines for months.

Album Digest, April 2011

Sat, 30 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Why I Love Betty Blue

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I saw Betty Blue (original French title 37,2 Le Matin) for the first time in 1996 shortly after having read the book and it remains one of my favourite films to this day. Although there are many obvious reasons why a sixteen year old boy might like it, I think it does stand up to scrutiny beyond the sex and nudity. This post is a brief explanation of some of the obvious and not-so-obvious reasons why this is a film to be loved and cherished. (It was quite interesting to write this defence of a sexy film!)

Five Things To Try When You Can't Sleep

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Facebook is wonderful for keeping in touch but I’ve noticed that quite a few of my friends tend to use it to tell the world that they can’t sleep. Here’s some advice for you if you find yourself unable to sleep one night. I’ve often had to try these out myself! Note that these are just things that work for me and your mileage may vary, particularly if you are fortunate enough to have a partner next to you! You may need to appease them if you wriggle around too much.

Favourite Culture Ship Names

Sun, 03 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

As I mentioned before I am re-reading the novels of Iain Banks and this weekend I managed to finish Consider Phlebas. A little post about it will be coming up soon. One of my favourite things about the Culture novels is how the ships are named and having found a list on Wikipedia, I thought I would share ten of my favourites with you!

Album Digest, March 2011

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

More Books

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Understated Classics #8: Second Light by Dreadzone

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

In the understated classics series, I try to alternate between pop/rock and electronic albums. Keeping with this trend number eight is the wonderful dub-infused album Second Light by Dreadzone. Released in 1996 it was well-received critically and four of its tracks featured on John Peel’s best-of-year list that year. Little Britain received a lot of radio play, a popular choice for that flag-waving period of britpop and assorted other demons.

Album Digest, February 2011

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

February, the shortest month, harbinger of such delights as Groundhog Day and Valentine’s Day. Could it possibly produce any good albums? Well the candidates are the eponymous début album by James Blake, Zonoscope by Cut/Copy, Let England Shake by PJ Harvey and Smart Flesh by The Low Anthem. Furthermore, there was an unexpected bonus when Radiohead announced that their new album would be out and available to listen to this month too.

Out There Somewhere

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Hurrah for more exoplanets making the news this week. This time it is a star with a whole bunch of small planets very close to the star, usually they tend to be single gas giants larger even than Jupiter as this list of stars with exoplanets from Wikipedia shows.

Programming an UNO game, part 2

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

It turns out that programming the UNO game is not that complicated once you start designing the thing. This post will get the rules and game elements clear.

J. G. Ballard, Crash

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Album Digest, January 2011

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s to 2011 and the start of a monthly album digest. I want it to be a brief trot through some of the albums I have listened to each month. Sometimes January can bring a few quiet releases by big name bands. This happens if the previous album did not do as well as the record company hoped or if it is the kind of artist who would get lost under the hype of all the Christmas releases.

In Defence Of Tolerance

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve found twitter to be a bit boring lately but today a perfect storm brew up and once again the Daily Mail and one of its odious columnists was at its centre. Melanie Phillips’ opinion piece was a perfectly constructed piece of trolling that implied that since the repeal of section 28, schools have been flooded with an influx of gay propaganda in subjects like maths, history and geography. Well I’m all for it, Alan Turing was a genius brutally mistreated by his country despite turning the second world war in favour of the allies - that story is maths and history is combined. Meanwhile, if you can spice up geography a bit go for it. I am not sure what you would do, discuss routes for pride marches? After all, the subject is hideously out of date now that we all have google maps on our phones.

Understated Classics #7: 100 Broken Windows by Idlewild

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Idewild are a solid band who have released four or five albums that I could consider for this series. I’m even in the sleeve credits of one: Post-Electric Blues, if you’re asking.

Programming an UNO game

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Tales From Home

Fri, 24 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Understated Classics #6: Arbor Bona Arbor Mala by The Shamen

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The Setback

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Since the run there has been a bit of a hiatus in this blog. I wrote about how running was making me feel better. In fact, I should have said more. I recently stopped taking the antidepressants that I had been taking for eighteen months. This has been my longest period taking such medication but the running made me feel sufficiently good to decide that I could stop taking them.

Movember 10K

Sun, 14 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

So, Saturday. Finally. The big day. Would I a) be able to get to Greenwich in time for the registration? and b) be able to make it all the way around the course without collapsing and crying?

Understated Classics #5: A Weekend In The City by Bloc Party

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

J. G. Ballard, The Crystal World

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

At last, Ballard in full flow. The Crystal World (TCW) is definitely the most enjoyable of the early trio of apocalyptic novels. It takes the successful elements of the first two and embellishes them with new details and ideas. At time of writing, TCW is definitely the best Ballard novel that I have read in its entirety.

Understated Classics #4: Substrata by Biosphere

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I bought this album in the summer between my two years at college. I remember listening to this music under skies glowering with clouds so 1997 must have been a poor summer. I’d just bought a book of photography too, which placed photos from the north and south poles on opposite pages. I bought it mainly for the penguins that were, of course, on pretty much every other page. The pictures of snow and ice soon became the ideal companions to this album.

J. G. Ballard, The Drought

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

On to The Drought by J. G. Ballard in my ongoing quest to read and review all of his novels. This is his second novel, if we assume his convention of never acknowledging “The Wind From Nowhere” as being his first novel. “The Drought” itself was renamed from “The Burning World” and additional content added later on. This was quite common practice in SF in the 50s and 60s where novels were serialised in magazines like Amazing SF and Interzone. It is evidence though of Ballard finding his voice as he wrote and from The Drought it is easy to see that he is iterating his thought processes and subject matter with each novel.

“The Drought” is marvellous in a way that “The Drowned World” is not. Here Ballard has cut away much of the ropy science of that novel and left us with a much more realistic scenario of global drought without having to worry about all the outré trappings of giant iguanas and dragonflies the size of your head. Instead, all the magnetic and mesmerising elements of Ballard’s work are beginning to take form: the eccentric recluse with possible sinister intent, the confused and detached protagonist, the ambivalently regarded woman of standing, the encroachment of nature and the human tendency to defile pretty much all it touches, including all that it has constructed and lived alongside.

Understated Classics #3: The Circle & The Square by Red Box

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The next entry in the understated classics series is “The Circle & The Square” by Red Box.

J. G. Ballard, The Drowned World

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Understated Classics #2: Sinking by The Aloof

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Understated Classics #1: Together Alone by Crowded House

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This week Arcade Fire released their hotly anticipated third album “The Suburbs”. I loved “Neon Bible” but critics found it preachy, as overbearing as the religious folk it sought to satirise. I disagree and think it was an impressive continuation from an exciting debut. “The Suburbs” steps on from their previous two albums, both in subject matter and tone. It’s sad, thoughtful, resigned, angry and tetchy - among other things. “The Suburbs” isn’t the understated classic that I want to discuss though: with all the praise and plaudits, it may never suit this new thread of posts. I want to write about Together Alone by Crowded House.

J. G. Ballard

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Reading “Crash” at 17 left me in a state of numb shock. It got me hooked and left me with J. G. Ballard as one of my favourite authors. I then devoured a short story collection called “Myths of the Near Future” around the same time. You may recognise it because the Klaxons appropriated the title for their debut album. Those stories captured my imagination, in particular the eponymous story of a world gone to run amid “space sickness”.

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Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Features Book reviews Music reviews Understated Classics (slightly too personal album reviews) Very short film reviews Short stories Travels in Europe Travels in South America Travels in Australia (less of that but hopefully extend soon) Mathematics Economics Statistics Art exhibitions Gluten and tomato free recipes The meta of blogging Civ 6 Play Guide Games and how computers might play them How to be a human And much much more… This is a blog that will never pop up a window that tries to get you to sign up to a newsletter.

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