2025-03-14 17:45:47
Røry is an English singer/songwriter — a description that doesn't do them justice. Some rap/metal/emo hybrid with pop sensibilities and shades of Cranberries on occasion in that Gen Z "what the fuck even are genres?" kind of way. "In The Bible" is a particular favourite of mine.
Ukrainian hardcore thrash punk riot grrl outfit Death Pill sound like Brody Dalle in Black Flag doing Metallica covers and it's incredible. "Die for Vietnam" and "Friend" are so very good as an introduction.
Rach Smith pointed me in the direction of Punchbag, a brand new London synth-punk band that would be the sound of my summer if they only had more songs! "Fuck it!" is both a manifesto and a certified club banger.
2025-03-13 00:28:13
I like to tag my posts on this website. I thought it would be helpful — to me as well as others. But then the number of tags grew. And grew. So many tags with one (1) post!
I asked around on the Fediverse for some suggestions and the general consensus seemed to be "tags are useful". There goes my plan to delete them all and be done with it!
In my little poll the clear winner was "Rework them to be better" so that is what I did.
If I take a step back and look at the "purpose" of my website, I can clearly see a few topics that crop up again and again; Technology, photography, weeknotes, book reviews.
I decided to make a start re-architecting my site around four primary categories: Technology, Photography, Entertainment, and Lifestyle. Everything else is a sub-category of one of these; code is a sub-category of Technology, as is basically anything else I write about around my day job. Book, TV, and film reviews sit under Entertainment and anything about travel, shopping, blogging challenges, and weeknotes all inhabit Lifestyle which is a bit of a wanky term but it'll do. Photographs and related topics (film photography, 35mm, #coolpix, etc), obviously, sit under Photography. It's a big enough category to live on its own.
I've updated the filter component to only show these top level categories and added a Categories page that shows everything. Individual posts will also allow you to link out to a tag page showing other posts with the same tag.
DavidB said Use as many tags as you need, but no need to list them all in the same place
and, I think, this solution answers that point. All of the random tags are still there but only if you need them.
2025-03-12 23:14:15
I know it's all evil and stuff but the music subscription service with platforms like YouTube Music and Spotify is just so darn convenient! I pay my £10 a month and I get all of the music in the world — whatever I fancy listening to, whenever I want to!
But, yeah, evil. So I cancelled my YouTube Music subscription and moved 90% of my daily music listening to Bandcamp.
I'm not going to pretend that it's been easy. Bandcamp isn't a streaming service per se so, although you can listen to music you haven't bought, there's no queue to add to and you don't have access to everything which means a lot more time looking for music and purposefully playing it rather than pressing play and the music never ends.
This isn't a bad thing but I've found it can pull me "out of the zone" on occasion. The flip-side is that listening to one album at a time with a gap in between works as a natural Pomodoro technique.
I have discovered more new-to-me music though. I'm a huge fan of the hierarchical filter system for discovery. A marked improvement on the way YouTube Music does it which seems to be "guess or we tell you".
I've started making a few purchases here and there. My collection will only get bigger; weird to begin with as I'm just picking up random stuff I like.
One step closer to a personal music server… 😅
2025-03-11 14:40:50
Two tales told in parallel; a boy and a girl invent a walled city where people have no shadows, and the same boy (now a middle aged man) arrives in the walled city to become the new Dream Reader. Essentially alternating chapters; the world over there and the world over here
.
There's a vibe running through the walled city chapters that brings to mind William S. Burroughs' "Naked Lunch". But a gentle version, with the calmness and routine associated (at least in Western culture) with Japanese culture.
I could see this playing out as a gorgeous anime of twinkling water, pastel shades, and the grotesque Gatekeeper modelled on Yubaba from "Spirited Away".
Some of the passages can be hard going. Maybe this is a failing on my part – too many easy-to-digest Young Adult fantasy novels. It feels like a very intellectual novel making a profound point that, so far at least, is just beyond my comprehension.
Obviously, my daily life and the events in my dreams are far apart—as different as a subway and a balloon.
Murakami's depiction of the narrator's life in the library is so seductive. I found myself, at points, both jealous and seen. The simplicity is alluring.
There's a conscious decision to barely name anyone in the book; our narrator, his love interests, the boy in the Yellow Submarine coat. Anonymous in a way that adds to the dreamlike feeling of the story.
Were names, for the time being, not an important issue?
Part one shuffles along establishing character and world-building. Part two starts slow and builds to a crescendo that feels like holding your breath for a little too long after a big gasp. Part three feels like slowly letting that breath out and feeling the tension in your shoulders melt away.
I've never read Murakami's earlier works, though I have heard of "Norwegian Wood", but I have been intrigued by this charmingly bizarre novel.
2025-03-11 08:24:11
I like to save articles from around the internet into my "read later" app. I am not the only one.
The app I use is Inoreader which is also my RSS feed reader.
I follow a lot of folks who read and then share articles that are also of interest to me.
This puts me in an interesting situation of my unread count going up despite reading my way through the posts in the list.
I have 112 unread posts, I read five which results in me saving seven new articles. I now have 114 unread posts.
This is not a complaint but an observation; please continue to share the articles you find!
2025-03-09 17:06:31
Ten past six in the morning and the first streaks of pink dawn cut through the inky clouds.
Daylight when I set off to work; pink mellowing to peach and gold cutting through the trees.
It's still light when I get home.
I had my first proper turn around the garden. Plenty to deal with over the coming months to get it ready for full Spring but really nice to see the rhododendron and rose bushes starting to bud, the iris is putting up fresh shoots and there are Crocuses flowering in the lawn.
Saw the first fat bumblebee of the season. Thankfully not nesting under a bush in my garden this year.
I took some time off work to go to Crufts so I missed out on Thursday Brew Crew™. Instead, I picked up a Cinnamon Bun Latte from my local Costa. I'm not usually a fan of Costa as their drinks are a bit too sweet but needs must on a chilly morning!
Got a new pair of glasses from Specscart UK. They are my first new pair in four years and the first time I will have had two functional pairs simultaneously since I was in school.
The world was, day by day, becoming a more convenient, and unromantic, place.
Haruki Murakami, "The City and Its Uncertain Walls"
Yorkshire folk musician, Jim Ghedi, just dropped "Sheaf & Feld" from the album "Wasteland" and it's the most metal folk song I've ever heard. One of the heaviest tracks of the year so far. It slaps.
Seattle guitar-less metal duo, Year of the Cobra, caught my ear this week. Sludgy bass riffs over solid drumming under female vocals that brings to mind Alice in Chains, Siouxsie and the Banshees, early-Hole, and Paradise Lost. Check out "Year of the Cobra".
Spiritbox released their second full length album this week. "Tsunami Sea" has been eagerly anticipated and, according to the advance reviews, is well worth a listen. I worry that, when I say it's "unmistakeably Spiritbox", you will hear "samey" but it really isn't. They are a band confident in their sound and it shows. Have a listen to "Soft Spine".