Martine’s annual listing of books read has really upset one anonymous commentator 🤷‍♂️

Looks genuine 🧐

Somewhat belatedly happened upon The Way, Way Back so am now on a mission to find more characters called Duncan.

🤦‍♂️

Expanding on a theme by @ldstephens and @jtr the 2024 Mac’s menu bar contents/clutter.

The AutumnalCam from the end of August to the end of November in just over a minute:

To do today:

1: Do not buy anything. But being an old man I may have to spend a penny or two.

2: Search “Black Friday” in Mail and delete several hundred unread emails.

3: Enjoy

The ever fascinating Cultural Offering provided some advice on writing one of which was Check you quotations 😂😂😂

A sales poster for one of the new towers going up in Manchester promises a Content Creation area - because sometimes the kitchen table is not enough.

…on the bright side: at least there will not be anymore devastating hurricanes now that the Democrats can no longer control the weather.

The excavations of the desk has revealed a stash of old hard drives

from which I retrieved pictures of our home flooding in 2007.

Well said Matthew Graybosch:

...as far as I'm concerned, the personal and non-commercial web is the web; the various names it's been given — indie web, small web, personal web, etc. — are bad framing. It's the commercial and corporate web and social media — including the Fediverse — that we should be othering, instead of permitting ourselves to be othered.

Damn it! After the repairs I put the desktop on the wrong way which means the top drawers do not slide as they should. This has become sufficiently irritating that everything will have to come off and the top rotated.

😔

So farewell KnotWords. You have shared my morning coffee for 900 days but I feel we now need a break. At least I now know what an Alb is - so not a complete waste of time.

A view from Alderley Edge across the Cheshire Plain towards the hills of the Peak District.

You Too can make up your own joke!

A whole month’s worth of Autumnal Cam in under two minutes. Exclusively available in glorious Low-Res-O-Vision.

With delightful synchronicity Open Culture discusses the Wikipedia - first link - philosophy thing just after I mentioned it.

A trip to Chester (for the first time in thirty years) and a wander around the city walls and their potted history of England (even if Apple’s weather app insists it is in Wales). From Roman origins to medieval enhancements to a civil war siege and battle to Victorian ornateness to current repairs.

According to The Verge Apple’s AI feature set will expand to include localized English in the UK. 🤷‍♂️🙄

Now @xxxx has piqued my interest in Wikipedia again. I am always fascinated by the first link in successive articles will eventually/usually get you back to philosophy thing…. Here we start at a dmoRan baseball team…

A lovely day for a cricket match in Manchester today 😂🏏

With all the youthful excitement about AI the old man smiles and thinks ‘haven’t we heard all this before?’ This is from 1967

“Machines should do the work. People should think.”

According to the AI thingy… “A worn-out brown shoe with frayed laces is resting on a red surface.” Alas we are unable to argue with the AI thingy and have to correct its errors ourselves. Whilst the shoe is worn it is not worn-out as I wear them out daily.

Hmmm! 🤔 Not sure what I was doing last night but it looks like it was fun.

I was wondering if a new solar powered webcam could handle a Manchester winter but now I am wondering if it could survive a Manchester summer. 🏏🌧️☔️😟

A (long) day trip to Edinburgh yesterday…

…to visit some Fringe events including Voices of a Siren and Life.

For me the highlight of the informative documentary (BBC iPlayer till mid September 2024) about the 1969 Woodstock festival was the briefest of appearances of the Keef Hartley Band. Legend has it that, on being informed that there was no immediate financial award for being included in the filming and recording of their performance, their manager declined to give permission for the use of such material. As other performers had their careers boosted to international stardom by their inclusion in the subsequent film and album the Keef Hartley Band returned to relative obscurity and inevitable demise.

But it seems to me to also mark the demise of an era when one would listen to, and enjoy/appreciate, anything and everything. The first couple of Keef Hartley Band records were well known and enjoyed amongst our teenage cohort. They were a kind of quirky rock and/or jazz thing. It did not matter what it was. But as the 60s rolled into the 70s the marketing people sub-divided everything into a genre to make it easier to sell to a specific demographic - whilst hoping for an elusive “crossover” that sold to multiple audiences. 🤷‍♂️

For example in a 1969 concert the youthful Led Zeppelin were supported by the aging Woody Herman Big Band - which featured a young Bruce Fowler who would join Frank Zappa a few years later. Of course the later Mothers were never as good as the original pre 1969 Mothers.

The Keef Hartley Band’s Woodstock performance would eventually appear on the 2019 38 CD set Woodstock – Back to the Garden: The Definitive 50th Anniversary Archive.

Dear New York Times,

Neither the sun nor tides go up and down.

🤷‍♂️

The Irreal post about the possible arrival of 32TB hard drives and recollections about the days when computers did not come with hard drives reminded me that I once described my own addition of 20MB of hard disc as being like “a vast empty warehouse”. A recent picture from my daughter was 14MB.

The informative review by Andrew Doran of ‘How Civil Wars Start’ nicely tied up the week which included What Elon Musk perhaps gets wrong about civil wars being ‘inevitable’ and a View of the riots from America - and how I think we got here.

The distortion of how they view Britain, based on what they pick up from various right-wing outlets, is so insane, you can’t begin to engage with them on it.

Growing towards the light:

Fortunately/unfortunately (delete as appropriate) missed me strutting about in my underwear.

Was thinking about buying some of those fancy barefoot shoes but thought if I continue wearing the old shoes it will be much the same effect.

Since when? 🤷‍♂️

Finally fired up the webcam after several years of inactivity. Thanks for nothing ~/.ssh/known_hosts 🤬. Having looked for a swanky HD cam (which would be handy for my Twitch make-up tutorials) I am thinking the whole low res, back to mono retro thing is more me.

Voted ❌.
Must find the big coffee pot - it is going to be a long, but hopefully enjoyable, night.

One more day to get through and then it is over. According to Vote Compass this is me:

Although that feels a little too far to the right for me.

There has been an array of leaflets through the door:

Sadly nothing from the Green Party candidate nor the sacrificial lamb sent from London by the Tories.

Amongst the treasures discovered during the recent upheavals was this BMUG anthology from 1996. How different things were back then. Apple on the verge of bankruptcy, this new fangled Web thingy, Cyberdog - which seems to have only been around for a couple of years 1996 - 97.

A brief “Hello world” from Maschine…

Well this is going to be fun. 😎

A trip to Shrewsbury, birth place of Charles Darwin, provided much to delight including Grope Lane:

It was once what would be known today as the red light area. Most places had such places but the names have been mostly toned down somewhat.

Exclusive: Seems to be a sound check for tonight’s Foo Fighters concert… it is quite breezy and I am two miles away. 🤣

Disappointed not to make the Birthday Honours List but was pleased to be included in today’s New York Times Connections and on GitHub 😁

Having fixed the leaky roof last year we are now in the midst of internal repairs. 🤞Returning to some kind of normal soon.

Listening to Radio 3 with my morning coffee I was scrolling through my RSS feeds on the iPad. Whilst Tavener’s Dhyana was playing on the radio I came to Colin Walker’s latest post with his “blissed out, trancey #acid track”. The two melded together rather delightfully.

Is there a word for that brief moment when you switch from panicking 😥, fearing several terabytes of external storage has been lost, to relief as you realise it was not the drive itself but the hub it was connected to that had failed? Phew! 😅

I tried. I really did. Having decided that my desk was becoming unusable due to the clutter I had a thorough tidy. It was good for an hour or two but is rapidly disintegrating.

(Before on the left and after on the right)

Good to see a steady stream of voters at the polling station this morning. It is in a local school a few minutes walk from home. Was it wrong of me to dismiss the idea of voting for one candidate because they had a hotmail email address?

Despite their good intentions one wonders if all these EU Regulations are actually achieving what they are designed to do.

From a web host’s email today:

🤷‍♂️

Hometown of Manchester where the new is rapidly replacing the old.

Passing Clouds drift by:

Two of the disastrous 1970s housing project known as the Crescents occupied this land (with two more behind us). As they were abandoned by the local authorities a community of artists, musicians, anarchists was established. The community turned flats into cafes, studios and cinemas.

Moving on from son to daughter. I doubt it will be a surprise to her when I unpack a cafetière and iPad - the essentials for travelling…. But I seem to have forgotten the carabiners and multitool 🤷‍♂️

Translating into English a critter appears to be anything and everything from people to domesticated animals to any other living creature. So here are some Belted Galloway cattle from our walk around Woodchester yesterday.

My aged spine and my hair are rapidly becoming the same length.

Being away from home/Macs I am grateful for Hyperduck which holds links to Mac stuff in iCloud until I return.

The evening light catches my son’s Snake plant.

Staying with my son for a few days. It seems his neighbour’s cat comes round for a daily dreamy nap. Do cats dream?

Sometimes the blue bins (paper & cardboard recycling) are not collected - you can then spend the next week trying to persuade Manchester City Council to come and collect them but they will deny missing them even though you have a picture of a street full of blue bins. 🤷‍♂️

On a train between Manchester and Leeds which crosses the Pennines often described as the backbone of England - admittedly more hills than mountains.

As a pedestrian I find the number of ICE vehicle owners who think pavements are provided as a car parking space somewhat frustrating.

It was daughter’s birthday on Tuesday (it is her picture). I am heading south tomorrow to visit her and the boy - the first time in several years. Perhaps younger people will be able to explain Taylor Swift to me 🤷‍♂️

Inspired by a recent post I keep thinking I should probably tidy up my desk but then decide I am not in the mood.

Well that was a transcendental morning:

Now I need to lie down.

I guess (🤷‍♂️) being retired one becomes something of a flaneur - with nothing to do and all day to do it.

Some complain about the small knobs on the SE02 but I do not find it a problem. Some have replaced the knobs with chunkier versions.

As it did not make the cut for Page why not recycle it for Small? 😁

Being bereft of cacti myself I am indebted to Martine who shared a picture of her Christmas Cactus.

With all those knobs and switches one might imagine the SE 02 synthesiser would come with a chunky manual but it is just a single page.

Mix up some flour and water. Leave it to thrive on all the bacteria and yeasts with which you live. Keep it warm and in a few days you will have a sourdough starter to make your bread. Magic.

Despite working at quite an elevation the official Sky Inspectors of Chorlton-cum-Hardy (the Sky Guys as they are known colloquially) live a relatively lonely and lowly life.

Further to today’s train theme a short video of a train leaving Moreton In Marsh station. An experiment in Pleasantville styling about 15 years ago.

I may need to train some house plants before they take over.

Some home made potato crisps in all their crispy crispness…. or for American readers: Some potato chips in all their chippy chippiness.

Since Bill Gates’ 1976 letter developers have tried numerous ways to enable the prevention of the theft of their software. In the world of music software the most objectionable is called iLok. It may have improved from its earlier form which seemed like malware, but I do not buy apps that use it.

Well-Being: Sunday morning in bed with a mug of coffee, a bowl of porridge and a 706 day streak on Knotwords… probably as good as it is going to get.

Today sees the arrival of Storm Kathleen continuing what has been a very windy winter that has seen much damage to properties and numerous trees fallen.

If not too crowded the Malvern Hills can be serene.

In the summer I am always impressed by the foliage of this, I assume, Japanese Maple.

From left to right a card made by Martine when we lived together. We now live half a mile apart. An old promotional card from Chris & Cosey for their Heartbeat album. A picture postcard from Torbay.

The landlord made a start at clearing the overgrown jungle affectionately known as the garden. The extra light and space has seen several clumps of Buttercup flowers. Although they will soon be obscured by the invasive Spanish Bluebells. No sign of foxes returning.

Signing up for this year’s A to Z challenge (a post a day during April excluding Sundays) Martine noted the decline in the number of bloggers. What was once measured in thousands is currently only 163 participants.

The toy wizard guy is back to check the growth of the coffee plant since last year’s challenge.

In January I happened to notice that the sun at noon aligned with the avenue in the local park and so it became this year’s project to record the avenue at noon. But now I am undecided as to stick with the avenue or follow the sun - which may involve lying on my back at some point. 🤔

A day trip to the somewhat muddy Arnside along the estuary towards Morecambe Bay with the Lake District rising in the background; although according to the map (pdf) it is just within the southernmost tip of the national park.

Chatting with my daughter about her trip to Iceland. Was it the volcanoes, the geysers, the glaciers or the aurora that would be a lasting memory? Apparently it’s the liquorice ice cream. That’s my girl.

Oh well! Having wrestled with the decision I decided I should cancel my subscription. But then I was confronted with a question…

…which will take at least another year to answer. So here we are. 🤷‍♂️

A chat with Apple Support:

The obvious next question: “Are you a person or a bot?” 🤔

They assured me they were an actual person. 🤷‍♂️

Weird marketing 🤷‍♂️ It looks like the bleepy beepy plinky plonky type of thing I would buy but it is for “professional composers”.

Autocorrect changed bleepy beepy to sleepy beefy - same difference.

I’ll put the kettle on. 😋

A winter wonderland:

A handy guide to accessing the Internet (from the late 1990s) from The Sunday Format.

The plait of the day:

The midday sun struggling to get above the trees reflected in the remains of recent flooding.

I assume the people setting off fireworks at 5a.m. were Americans celebrating the arrival of the new year on the east coast of the U.S.A. 🙄