15.05 - Search Live - No thanks.
Oh god no, please don't make me actually speak my stupid search terms. Bad enough having them in my head let alone speak them out loud. No way anyone on the bus is going to hear me ask for pictures of Heather Graham. Another desperate invasion of our privacy by Google. Whatever happened to "Don't be Evil?". Eh? Eh?
15.05
I want to write a book in which the tone is set by 'Wandering Star' by Portishead. Set in the 90s in Scotland, so it is. I'll start on it any day now.
13.05
Oh good - the holiday money has come in, that'll keep us going through the expensive summer months.
30.04
Is Tumblr still a thing?
24.04
Just spotted an awful spelling mistake on the 'About' page. It's been 'corrected'.
24.04
Finally got the garden lights to work via an app. Talk about over-engineering. What's wrong with a simple light switch?
28.03
Some random Friday thoughts "Notes from the office"
28.03
Up early, planning my trip to London next week.
24.03
I average three 'likes' per post. Must try harder.
24.03
Joy! To the office today. Always a favourite moment for me.
23.03
Thinking of going to London over the easter weekend. Trying to get some flights ...
23.03
I had to go back to using Google as my default search engine on my Brave browser. I've used Ecosia, StartPage, Qwant (which has blocked me, it think I'm a bot), DuckDuckGo, to name a few in the past. I feel dirty for having done this but at the end of the day Google just works and gives me the results I need.
22.03
Watching "The Man In The High Castle" on that Netflix they have nowadays. I read the book, and I've watched the first episode but other than the names I can't really find any correlation between the book and what I've just watched. Not sure we'll stick with it. The acting is very wooden. Shame, because the visuals are amazing and the book was great, but, yeah ... Should we stick with it? The series, that is?
21.03 (part II)
Coming up to my three-month anniversary on Bear, and enjoying it very much so far. I could do with a bit more interaction but I think I need to let go of that Instagram/Threads mentality of doing it for the likes and follows. Blogging is a but more solitary, after all you're blogging for yourself, not an audience. If someone reads and comments, that's great, but it's not the goal, unlike Insta etc., where it very much is. Must think differently.
21.03 (part I)
Dad would have been 86 today.
18.03
Is the blogging version of "Dance like no one is watching", "Write like no one is reading"? Asking for a friend.
17.03
I always set out to not write too much, because the eyes and brain can only take so much, but once I start I find it hard to stop.
16.03
Deactivated three of my Instagram accounts today. It felt terrific. No longer the pressure of keeping it updated, or feeling guilty in neglecting them for so long.
14.03
Added a guestbook. It's a bit ugly, but there's not exactly a lot of nice options for bear.
12.03
I'm not a fan of Iran, but it's a sad state of affairs when you find yourself rooting for Iran simply because I hate Trump and Netanyahu so much for everything they're doing, all the lives lost and the lives ruined. All that gloating about death and destruction. Nero fiddles while Rome burns.
12.03 How much is too much?
There's a great variety in the length of people's blogs on Bear. Some are really short, some are really long. I think mine are too long, but I don't do short. Once I get going, it's hard to stop. Must work on this.
12.03
I was meant to go to the office today for the big Yearly Kick-off meeting but I just couldn't be bothered. I still have a cold, and not even the prospect of → kibbeling wasn't enough to drag me out the house.
10.03 Track of The Day - The First Big Weekend (Arab Strap)
I was thinking the other day about tracks featuring monologues-put-to-music. Purely by coincidence, the bands I have in mind are also all Scottish, and have a commonality - Belle and Sebastian. Stuart David, who played bass for most of his time with Belle and Sebastian wrote two tracks, "A Century of Elvis" and "A Spaceboy Dream" in which he experimented with the spoken-word style, a style which he later further developed with his follow-up project, Looper, on tracks like "Impossible Things #2", "Festival 95" and the brilliant "Dave the Moon Man". The other artists who use the spoken-word style a lot is another Scottish band, Arab Strap. This track → The First Weekend is a great example of the genre. Hope you like!
09.03
Really must stop tinkering with this site 😁
09.03 - Thank goodness for the Wayback Machine
I recently deleted a load of my social media sites, from Tumblr to Wordpress, Blogger and Substack to name a few. Only thing is, I forget to export the data in those blogs before I deleted them, meaning I've lost quite a bit of original content. Thankfully I was able to recover some of it via a snapshot the → Wayback Machine took of an old Blogger site from years ago! Amazing technology.
05.03
Might have a go at vibe-coding an app for Bear. I'd love a better editor for mobile.
27.02
Do you get a free beanie hat with every roll of film sold? Looking through my Instagram suggestions of young hipsters and their Nikon FM3s today would seem to indicate that this is, indeed, the case. Yellow, orange, red, and green seem to be very much in vogue.
26.02
You know what I think would be totally fantastic? An app that lets you edit your Bear blog via your mobile!
25.02
Anyone out there using → Qwant? Trying to figure out if it's any good. I use Brave these days, if only for the YouTube ad blocking, but it also comes with a plethora of alternative search engines. I've been trying out Ecosia cuz it kinda sounds like Ecosse, which is always +1 in my book, and I've given up on DuckDuckGo and Bing because their search results are pants. Qwant looks ok, but for some reason blocks me on my phone because it detects suspicious activity coming from my phone, but it's completely cool with my computer.
02.02
Quick shoutout to → Discogs, probably one of my favourite sites on the Interweb. A music nerds Babylon of info about just about any record you can find anywhere. All Music is another great example.
31.01
In other news, myself and the missus are thinking of going on safari in June, or in any case some month where the sweat isn't lashing off my ballsack. Anyone ever been on one? A safari, that is ...
30.01
The waiting room at the garage is playing awful music, and has crappy magazines only ever found in waiting rooms around the world.
29.01
Much as love → The Sundays, I hope they never reform. It just wont be the same.
26.01
I tried → Upscrolled today, for FOMO reasons. It seemed to be the new hot thing but between registering my account and deleting it again took approximately 9 minutes to see it was just another hate fest.
25.01
My two new books arrived today. "The Road to 1945" by Paul Addison, and "Consensus Politics from Attlee to Thatcher" are the two seminal works about the period of Consensus politics, or Butskellism, to give it another name, the time just after the war and up to around the mid 70s when the economy in the UK was focused on social citizenship, something that was lost with the rise of Thatcher and her dogma of the individual. Looking forward to reading these two.
28.03 - At home • 18:00
I went to the club to say farewell to our tennis coach, he'd been coaching now for 42 years. Just let that sink in. I was 13 when he started doing that. Bought a small gift - a book - and stayed for a free drink. I don't really know that many people there so snuck out. Went over to the hockey club (somewhere else I used to spend a lot of time when the kids still played) to catch the final ten minutes of game. Then the hail came so I went home. Now thinking of what to eat for dinner. Not really hungry, but there's the kids to cook for. Tonight we're going to watch the Peaky Blinders film.
28.03 - At home • 15:03
Didn't buy a suit, but did buy two pairs of jeans that I didn't need.
28.03 - In town • 11:45
Just had the neighbours around asking if we'd be witnesses at their wedding in three weeks time. So off to town to get a suit that fits me.
28.03 - At home • 08:30
Still playing around with the format of this site while listening to Beggars Banquet, an amazing album that, to my ears anyway, is the start of the classic Rolling Stones phase, the phase between this album and "It's Only Rock and Roll". Essentially, the Mick Taylor years.
28.03 - At home • 07:30
Up early, planning my trip to London next week.
27.03 - New post
Some random Friday thoughts, written while waiting for something exciting to happen at work. Still waiting, but here are some "Notes from the office"
24.03
I average three 'likes' per post. Must try harder.
24.03
Joy! To the office today. Always a favourite moment for me.
23.03
Thinking of going to London over the easter weekend. Trying to get some flights ...
23.03
I had to go back to using Google as my default search engine on my Brave browser. I've used Ecosia, StartPage, Qwant (which has blocked me, it think I'm a bot), DuckDuckGo, to name a few in the past. I feel dirty for having done this but at the end of the day Google just works and gives me the results I need.
22.03
Watching "The Man In The High Castle" on that Netflix they have nowadays. I read the book, and I've watched the first episode but other than the names I can't really find any correlation between the book and what I've just watched. Not sure we'll stick with it. The acting is very wooden. Shame, because the visuals are amazing and the book was great, but, yeah ... Should we stick with it? The series, that is?
21.03 (part II)
Coming up to my three-month anniversary on Bear, and enjoying it very much so far. I could do with a bit more interaction but I think I need to let go of that Instagram/Threads mentality of doing it for the likes and follows. Blogging is a but more solitary, after all you're blogging for yourself, not an audience. If someone reads and comments, that's great, but it's not the goal, unlike Insta etc., where it very much is. Must think differently.
21.03 (part I)
Dad would have been 86 today.
18.03
Is the blogging version of "Dance like no one is watching", "Write like no one is reading"? Asking for a friend.
17.03
I always set out to not write too much, because the eyes and brain can only take so much, but once I start I find it hard to stop.
16.03
Deactivated three of my Instagram accounts today. It felt terrific. No longer the pressure of keeping it updated, or feeling guilty in neglecting them for so long.
14.03
Added a guestbook. It's a bit ugly, but there's not exactly a lot of nice options for bear.
12.03
I'm not a fan of Iran, but it's a sad state of affairs when you find yourself rooting for Iran simply because I hate Trump and Netanyahu so much for everything they're doing, all the lives lost and the lives ruined. All that gloating about death and destruction. Nero fiddles while Rome burns.
12.03 How much is too much?
There's a great variety in the length of people's blogs on Bear. Some are really short, some are really long. I think mine are too long, but I don't do short. Once I get going, it's hard to stop. Must work on this.
12.03
I was meant to go to the office today for the big Yearly Kick-off meeting but I just couldn't be bothered. I still have a cold, and not even the prospect of → kibbeling wasn't enough to drag me out the house.
10.03 Track of The Day - The First Big Weekend (Arab Strap)
I was thinking the other day about tracks featuring monologues-put-to-music. Purely by coincidence, the bands I have in mind are also all Scottish, and have a commonality - Belle and Sebastian. Stuart David, who played bass for most of his time with Belle and Sebastian wrote two tracks, "A Century of Elvis" and "A Spaceboy Dream" in which he experimented with the spoken-word style, a style which he later further developed with his follow-up project, Looper, on tracks like "Impossible Things #2", "Festival 95" and the brilliant "Dave the Moon Man". The other artists who use the spoken-word style a lot is another Scottish band, Arab Strap. This track → The First Weekend is a great example of the genre. Hope you like!
09.03
Really must stop tinkering with this site 😁
09.03 - Thank goodness for the Wayback Machine
I recently deleted a load of my social media sites, from Tumblr to Wordpress, Blogger and Substack to name a few. Only thing is, I forget to export the data in those blogs before I deleted them, meaning I've lost quite a bit of original content. Thankfully I was able to recover some of it via a snapshot the → Wayback Machine took of an old Blogger site from years ago! Amazing technology.
05.03
Might have a go at vibe-coding an app for Bear. I'd love a better editor for mobile.
27.02
Do you get a free beanie hat with every roll of film sold? Looking through my Instagram suggestions of young hipsters and their Nikon FM3s today would seem to indicate that this is, indeed, the case. Yellow, orange, red, and green seem to be very much in vogue.
26.02
You know what I think would be totally fantastic? An app that lets you edit your Bear blog via your mobile!
25.02
Anyone out there using → Qwant? Trying to figure out if it's any good. I use Brave these days, if only for the YouTube ad blocking, but it also comes with a plethora of alternative search engines. I've been trying out Ecosia cuz it kinda sounds like Ecosse, which is always +1 in my book, and I've given up on DuckDuckGo and Bing because their search results are pants. Qwant looks ok, but for some reason blocks me on my phone because it detects suspicious activity coming from my phone, but it's completely cool with my computer.
02.02
Quick shoutout to → Discogs, probably one of my favourite sites on the Interweb. A music nerds Babylon of info about just about any record you can find anywhere. All Music is another great example.
31.01
In other news, myself and the missus are thinking of going on safari in June, or in any case some month where the sweat isn't lashing off my ballsack. Anyone ever been on one? A safari, that is ...
30.01
The waiting room at the garage is playing awful music, and has crappy magazines only ever found in waiting rooms around the world.
29.01
Much as love → The Sundays, I hope they never reform. It just wont be the same.
26.01
I tried → Upscrolled today, for FOMO reasons. It seemed to be the new hot thing but between registering my account and deleting it again took approximately 9 minutes to see it was just another hate fest.
25.01
My two new books arrived today. "The Road to 1945" by Paul Addison, and "Consensus Politics from Attlee to Thatcher" are the two seminal works about the period of Consensus politics, or Butskellism, to give it another name, the time just after the war and up to around the mid 70s when the economy in the UK was focused on social citizenship, something that was lost with the rise of Thatcher and her dogma of the individual. Looking forward to reading these two.