2. 2011-03-05

    A good read, this: Almost everything I ever found of value within the various educational establishments I have dawdled through was provisioned from the library.

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  4. 2011-02-02

    Peak IPv4 : Latin America keeps looking more and more interesting to me.

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  5. 2011-01-27

    fileXray : is an intriguing looking utility from Amit Singh. Yeah, that guy .

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  6. 2011-01-27

    Heroic Auteur : A profile of David Lynch, by David Foster Wallace for Premier magazine, written during the location filming for ' Lost Highway '.

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  7. 2011-01-20

    "I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Most often two of these qualities come together. The officers who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Those who are stupid and lazy make up around 90% of every army in the world, and they can be used for routine work. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!"


    Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord , who clearly knew a thing or two about staff management

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  9. 2011-01-04

    That's 2010 all done then. 2011 said alound still sounds implausibly futuristic to my ears. One more sign that you're an old man.


    The 'holiday season' was surprisingly survivable. The nut roast didn't poison anybody. I doubled up the recipe quantities, and had exactly 50% left after dinner was done. The main problem I had was getting all the vegetables evenly done. There was much shuttling trays in and out of the oven, and from shelf to shelf, but everyone went away fed and uncomplaining, so I'm going to chalk that up as a success.


    It turns out that having a 1 year old daughter is an excellent diversion around this time of year. Most of my time seems to have been spent chaperoning her around various relatives' houses, where she excelled in capturing the centre of attention. She's unsurprisingly done terribly well for presents. Typically, her favourite seems to be something inessential; a tiny gift teddy bear that was part of a seasonal book bundle.


    I have a nice new coffee mug with a picture of Moominpapa on, of which I am already fond. Also notable, a comic strip book that frames the life and work of Bertrand Russell as an analogy to a classical greek tragedy. Better than it sounds, it's quite a fascinating piece.


    2010 has been a pretty good year I'd say. Mostly full of Ada , who has grown from being a rather sickly baby whose inability to keep food onboard, or sleep to rule frazzled nerves, to a largely reflux-free, sleep-friendly and entirely enchanting toddler. I think my Ada high-point of the last year would be when I taught her to high-five people, whenever she was being carried at shoulder height. She's currently showing signs of becoming a precocious chatterbox. Other than that, there's been the career gear-change, moving to work for last.fm , which has been almost entirely awesome. The new job brought a house move to London, which took me through the stages of ambivalence, active dislike of the place, right through to my current state of mind, which is settled back into an easy enjoyment of the appeals of city living. The fly in the ointment there is the lingering unsold Bristol house, dealing with which is going to feature heavily in the new year, I suspect.


    Usually, at this time of year, I'd do some sort of summary of the year in music. 2010 has been a year where I've been kept pretty out of touch, because I've simply been too busy with other things. So most of the new discoveries I've made have been anything but current. Like everyone else, I became briefly overexcited about Janelle in the middle of the year. Standouts would be finally getting around to listening to Spirit Of Eden , and falling for it predictably, discovering The Books and Field Music , and my most unusual acquisition Sia's 'Some people have real problems' album, which I wouldn't have expected to have been my thing, but really captivated me. Luckily last.fm did a chart thing of my annual listening (a subscriber-only feature).


    Having an infant at home has really curtailed the gig-going, so I had to focus on quality, not quantity. I did Primavera again, and I don't seem to be tiring of that yet, I've already bought tickets for 2011. I saw an astonishing Dirty Projectors show at the Barbican, performing ' The Getty Address' completely, accompanied by Alarm Will Sound . I finally got to see the New Pornographers with Neko , which was good enough to keep a stupid grin on my face all the way through the first hour, even though I was coming down with a stupid cold. I think I'll probably get more opportunity to see things in 201, but surprisingly I'm not really complaining.


    Here's to 2011. Still sounds wrong.




    Suggested listening


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  10. 2011-01-03

    Posthumous : 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy' by Jack Torrance.

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  11. 2011-01-03

    Don't Track Us : I've been using DDG as my default search engine for over six months now, without any perceivable loss of utility.

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  14. 2010-12-18

    This Christmas, we're going to be hosting for a small subset of family. I've volunteered to do the cooking myself. I would like to ensure that Mrs S gets a chance to have a rare day off from domestic catering. I don't really trust myself in a kitchen, so I'm looking to keep things straightforward. Some of the guests are fairly strict vegetarians, and so I've opted to go for that reliable cliché, the Nut Roast. I've never made a nut roast before, at least not one that didn't come from a packet mix. So this evening I've decided to go for a trial run.

    I got a recipe from DDG . The one I decided to go for was this Waitrose recipe . I think I was mostly attracted to the notion of mixing in brown rice. Although the recipe is straightforward, there has turned out to be a moderate amount of prep work, and I think I'll need to get as much of that prepared in advance of Christmas day as is plausible.

    The final worry is the somewhat temperamental old oven in this rented house. I'm only really used to working with reliable, fan-assisted electric ovens. This one is gas, rather undpredicatable and worn. To date, I've never successfully managed to so much as re-heat oven chips in it.

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  15. 2010-12-18

    It's been almost a year since I moved back to London. It seems like a year unusually blessed with snow. This morning, it was coming down thick and fast, and we had a freshly carpeted common, almost entirely to ourselves, aside from a handful of other dog walkers.

    Snow Day! /flickr]

    Snowballing a dog never loses it's appeal. He constantly appeals for you to throw one. The most fun is lobbing them skywards, in an easy parabola, giving him plenty of time to position himself below the descent, for an ariel catch. These are accompanied by a loud grunt, then a rough landing, wildly shaking the snow from the face. Then straight back into appealing for another.


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  18. 2010-12-14

    Map of Metal : This is a lot of fun to play with. Metalheads love a subgenre.

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  19. 2010-12-10

    John Hicklenton R.I.P. : Hicklenton blew my mind when I was a teenager, with his wild, hyper-stylized frantic run on Nemesis. Utterly absorbing and inspirational.

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