posts

Fabric 44 by John Tejada

Posted on 2023-06-05  ·  3 min read  ·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·   · 

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.

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How random should things be?

Posted on 2023-06-03  ·  4 min read  ·   ·   ·   ·   · 

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.

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Goldfrapp - Black Cherry

Posted on 2023-06-02  ·  4 min read  ·   ·   ·   ·   · 

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

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Cheeseburgers 🍔

Posted on 2023-04-04  ·  2 min read  ·   ·   ·   ·   ·   · 

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.

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What is in my Rakefile? (March 2023 edition)

Posted on 2023-03-15  ·  3 min read  ·   ·   ·   ·   ·   · 

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.

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Come back to us Brother Matthew

Posted on 2023-01-20  ·  1 min read  ·   ·   ·   · 

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.

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The Orb, Live at Brighton Concord 2

Posted on 2022-10-29  ·  3 min read  ·   ·   ·   ·   ·   · 

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.

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I went to a pub quiz tonight

Posted on 2022-09-14  ·  1 min read  ·   ·   · 

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!

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The paths in the wood

Posted on 2022-06-01  ·  2 min read  ·   ·   ·   ·   · 

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.

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