posts

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I asked:

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!

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.

“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.