January

What a January! If you're wondering why it's dragged it's my fault - I'm going to Germany to see Sven next week, and the last couple of weeks have been particularly torturous!

I feel like the light has been absolutely awful this month. I can't remember another month where I've taken fewer photos than I did this month, and that makes me a bit sad.

Earlier in the month I wrote about debugging as a skill. It doesn't really go anywhere, but the original post that inspired it is still worth reading.

Pizzas were made.

I started my own Mastodon instance. I've been enjoying that a lot actually. I only follow a few people and I'm looking for more but not a lot more.

There was a nice sunset.

I got a 3D printer.

Tabitha had her last match for Sussex U13 badminton.

I perpetuated a 2025-style chain-letter.

I got sick of wearing my Apple Watch.

And I posted the few photos that I did take this month.

Even media diet was a bit slow this month. I watched 28 Days Later, season 2 of Silo, Wicked, and finally finished Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

music

There hasn't been a lot of new releases that grabbed me lately. Use Your Heart by Sorry Holly sounds to me like Brand New playing The Smiths, and I like that. New Eidola was alright but I prefer their older stuff.

• architects - blackhole video is so cool. I love the way the members morph between each other. Charlotte said it reminds her of the Chop Suey video, which I can see.
• the body & dis fig on audiotree - surprised by this one. Not a huge fan of The Body but this works well.
• northlane - rot - not new, but one of my favourite vocal melodies.
• thirst - don't fuck with my cross. I cannot wait for these guys to put an album out.
• coheed and cambria - someone who can. Surprised by this. Not normally a huge fan of Coheed but I like this a lot.
• bruit≤ - ephemeral. I got sent these guys' first record as part of an order from a small French label a few years ago (can't find their website now), and I was blown away by it. Saw them at ArcTanGent as well and they were amazing. Looking forward to this next one.

links

• feather draw in 3D this looks fun - bet Tabitha would love it.
• I'm a sucker for iPad instruments; they've always got such cool, whimsical UIs. Wish I had any ability at all to get something resembling music out of them, though. motto akemie
• slice and dice is a cool little rogue-lite mobile dice game. I followed it on itch a while back but didn't realise it had come out for iOS.
• The Belgian Grand Prix isn't going to be an annual fixture any more.
• Grant Slatton did a good rant about Nobody caring. Totally agree with it - feels like there's been a marked increase in apathy lately, and I don't like it.
• Sonic Galactic looks amazing. I love that SEGA doesn't crush these fan games.
• Do I need a third precision screwdriver? Probably not. Do I want one? I do. Nice spin, and you can store a few bits in the handle? How am I still living without this now?!
• First time I spotted those blog questions, but I've seen so many more.
• I tried installing Control with Whisky. It doesn't run as well as I was hoping, but it does work and that's pretty cool.
• This video introduced me to the concept of paper apps. Very charming concept, and I love that dice pencil.
• Ableton's Learning Synths website is so fun.
• It's a wonder Automattic has any more toys left to throw out of the pram.
• Every now and again I think about Greeley Estates, and then I have to listen to them.
• You can buy a Batmobile, and you totally should. Then come over and take me out in it.
• Look at this crazy guitar!
• I discovered the concept of weekly blogging, via Mastodon. I love this format and there's some people doing it really well.
• The Honey Scam continues to unfold
• Janky Keycaps has this amazing embossed legend keycap concept and I want them so bad. Just look at them. They don't sell them though.
• Dan showed me this incredible chess set.
• This format for the 365 photo project works nicely.
• After watching Wicked, Tabitha and I were talking about vocalists who can sing in whistle register and I was telling her about Minnie Riperton, then I obviously played her Lovin' You.
• I've been trying to think of a way to get us off Sass (the migration from node-sass to dart-sass is a literal nightmare and we have too many codebases that pretty much need to be rewritten), but everything is basically "compile out your CSS and get on with your life". I don't really want that. Ideally I could compile out CSS, then organise it similarly to how it was before, then automate that. But I can't be bothered to write a CSS parser so was hoping something like Lightning CSS could help. Then I got distracted by something else.
• Teen Vogue with some pretty exceptional journalism on why Billionnaires shouldn't exist. Yep. Teen Vogue. I'm sure they've done some other noteworthy stuff that really surprised people in the past, too. Reminded me a bit of Fern's video about South Korea being a dystopia.
• Sony stopped producing blank mini-discs, so now I want a mini-disc player more than anything.
• Whilst looking up Laravel stuff, I found Meili Search. Could be an alternative to Elasticsearch, which has been irritating me a lot lately.
• Bookshop.org has started selling ebooks. People are super happy about this, and I sorta see why - it benefits high street bookshops, fair enough. But let's not forget that these ebooks are DRM-"protected", meaning you have to use Bookshop's app. Yes I understand why, but I will never use DRM. Every ebook I buy has the DRM ripped off it so I can use the platform I want to read. I would rather not read a book at all than be forced to use someone's app.
• Pebble is getting relaunched. This could be cool but I'm over smartwatches I think.
• Ruby has this really cool string interpolation syntax that I didn't know. You can do like "hello %{name}" % { name: "Jasper" } and that'll interpolate to "hello Jasper". Rails I18n interpolator uses this syntax but I assumed it was a Rails thing. Very happy to be able to use it elsewhere.
• Dan sent me this thing about The Smartest Person. Interesting read - it's so difficult to quantify intelligence and I definitely think some people are better-equipped to grow their intelligence. You're not necessarily born with an aptitude but some things do just come more naturally to some people than others. I usually attribute it to artistic ability but there's no reason in my (very unscientific) mind that it can't also be true of intelligence. Yes, anyone can learn to draw, but some people just get it without it being explained.

youtube

• probably riding tokyo toilet tour. I love this guy's vibe and, surprising no-one, Tokyo has some pretty nice toilets.
• 10 habits to unlock a better life. Enjoying Pumphrey's new channel a lot. I've watched pretty much all his new videos I think, and there's some good advice on this list.
• in the house - in a heartbeat. My favourite bit of the 28 days later soundtrack
• play these riffs to get good at guitar. Yeah, I'd like to but I probably won't.
• keanu reeves is an international treasure
• I started watching mint muffled and I love his videos. There's not a lot of gaming YouTubers I genuinely enjoy, but Mint Muffled is one. I've also watched a lot of Haelian and Razbuten recently.
• Another fern video. This one on who wants to be a millionnaire cheaters
• I introduced Tabitha to Rhythm Tengoku and she is...not very good at it, so we watched a video of someone doing it perfectly
• I don't hate this mini documentary about the 3d printed guns scene. Of course it's a thing.
• benn - using AI to detect AI music. It's Benn, just watch it. This newsletter will become a roundup of videos Benn posted and I'm OK with that.
• Garron reviews snacks. This guy's accent is so good, and he has some excellent turns of phrase.
• the truth about Hot Ones sauces. Who's shocked? No-one?
• Great British Road Journeys goes to my home-town (Evesham)
• hyrox wankers. I love this guy so much.
• Apparently everyone hated season 2 of Reacher but I didn't, and I am excited for more of the same in Season 3.
• how 60 seconds completely changed a character. Gene Wilder's Willie Wonka is one of my favourite characters. Gene Wilder in general was a phenomenal actor with such wonderful timing, and I loved seeing how he approached this character.
• blade chimera looks great but I'm not really gaming a lot right now.
• pilet is exactly something that I want, but in reality it'll probably live in a drawer with a dead battery so I probably just shouldn't.
• the most unique velodrome in the world. I rode this velodrome, oh god, 12 years ago and had an absolute blast. It's so steep and scary and I may have nearly caused a crash but aside from that I loved it.
• How is it that Efren Reyes is this good at pool? Come on.
• cool cars you can finally import. More speeed. You'll either love it or hate it.
• trombone champ is real and I want to play it, and I think I'm going to next week!
• B1M videos are always pretty great, and this one about how a nazi megastructure became luxury apartments is no exception.
• how to be creative with wah-wah pedals. I've been watching a lot of cyberattack videos lately, and I think I could watch him talking about anything. Like his favourite Boss pedals.
• how knocked loose creates danger with guitars. For some reason this video made me a little sad.
• sometimes you've just got to make something. Great advice and exactly why I wanted to have a 3D printer.
• The mk3 VW Golf is my least favourite Golf, but I do like Pumphrey's and I'm glad he's getting it back on the road

And that's more than enough I think. Hope you have an amazing February! Don't forget you can follow me on Mastodon now if, for some reason, all this isn't enough for you!