Jul. 19, 2015
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.
I oscillate between the two extremes, though I tend to sleep better if I stay up late.
Tags: Ideas, Self Improvement, Fifteen, Philosophy
Jul. 9, 2015
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.
It’s very funny. Right from the opening credits you get the minions and their anarchic fun-loving slapstick humour. There’s always been something delightful about they way in which they innocently bumble around.
Tags: Films, Animation, Fifteen, Fun
Jul. 5, 2015
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).
After a few days of living with it I thought I’d write about it and Spotify, so that it’s not just my snarky comments about the keynote that are on record here.
Tags: Music, Software, Spotify, Apple Music, Fifteen
Jun. 30, 2015
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.
Hot Chip “Why Make Sense?” Hot Chip seem to be settling in to a pattern with their album releases, alternating between messy experimental affairs and then a state of the art correction.
Tags: Music, Album Digest, June, Hot Chip, Jamie Xx, Blanck Mass, Holly Herndon, The Orb, Fifteen
Jun. 18, 2015
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.
So why does Facebook feel the need to jiggle things about into a random order? Well most of you have that mobile phone app of theirs that sucks your battery and your data allowance like crazy (mainly by auto-playing videos like a dick).
Tags: Ideas, Philosophy, Social Media, Fifteen, Blogging, Internet
Jun. 3, 2015
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.
Tags: Programming, Learning, Fifteen
May. 25, 2015
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.
Obviously Jim can’t keep that debt hanging over him forever. What does he do?
Tags: Ideas, Politics, News, Economics, Fifteen
May. 9, 2015
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.
Ah Matthew, I hear you say, you’re trotting out the old “the turkeys have voted for Christmas” line. Well no, like I said, this is purely selfish.
Tags: News, Politics, Fifteen
Apr. 19, 2015
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”1 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.
“Our Aim Is To Satisfy” is one of those albums spawned in the late nineties and early naughties at the height of the Electronica boom: dance music that you didn’t necessarily have to dance to.
Tags: Music, Red Snapper, Understated Classics, Fifteen, Electronic
Apr. 11, 2015
Or, From There to Here With the Simpsons Old episodes of The Simpsons are great. The other night “Bart After Dark” was on and I really enjoyed seeing it again. It’s from season eight, the one where Bart ends up working in the Maison Derriére. I thought it was older; mind you, this makes it nineteen years old. When I thought about the episode later on that evening, I realised how the story anarchically set out in multiple directions before settling into its main storyline.
Tags: Ideas, The Simpsons, Fifteen
Apr. 3, 2015
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.
Mark Watney is believed to be dead following an accident during an emergency evacuation in a dust storm.
Tags: Books, Andy Weir, Science Fiction, Fifteen
Mar. 27, 2015
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.
Tags: Films, Documentary, Frank Herbert, Fifteen, Science Fiction, Books