posts

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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 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’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).

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.