Journal

Love Matt Wilde’s music and his new LP Hello World is even better than expected. Beautiful laid-back and understated vibe from start to finish. Lovely artwork too.

I really like Jim’s idea of putting an avatar file somewhere that’s memorable and easy to access by me wherever I am and that also (in the future) might be automatically grabbable by any platform that needs my avatar.

Great post by Chris here on the double-edged-sword of our rapidly-evolving web standards, and how to stay sane. On the one hand the latest additions to the HTML, CSS and JavaScript standards are removing the need for many custom tools which is positive. However:

it can also leave you feeling like it’s impossible to keep up or learn it all. And that’s because you can’t! The field is literally too big to learn everything. “Keeping up” is both impossible and overrated. It’s the path to burnout.

Clair recently brought her fancy coffee machine home from work. It’s a Sage Barista Touch. Since then, I’ve been learning what’s involved in making a coffee by grinding fresh from whole beans, barista-style!

It’s more complicated than I would have thought, and has involved lots of learning and trial and error.

Here are my go-to resources and my rules-of-thumb. I’m not saying they’re perfect, but they’re working for me! Any additional tips from people more in the know are, of course, very welcome.

This lasagne was meat-free, fun to cook, easy on the eye and tasted great.

It’s important to set the record straight. Normally when people talk about the early UK scene the same few things get mentioned. The real underground never gets talked about."

Clair and I, along with our pal Fiona, just went to see Banksy’s Cut and run exhibition at the GOMA in Glasgow. I loved it!

Banksy describes it as follows:

I’ve kept these stencils hidden away for years, mindful they could be used as evidence in a charge of criminal damage. But that moment seems to have passed, so now I’m exhibiting them in a gallery as works of art. I’m not sure which is the greater crime.

He mentions that one of the main reasons he chose Glasgow’s GOMA is because the ever-present cone on the head of the Duke of Wellington statue outside is his favourite work of art in the UK.

…the statue out the front has had a cone on its head continuously for the past 40 odd years. Despite the best efforts of the council and the police, every time one is removed another takes its place."

I really enjoyed the way the exhibition was arranged and presented with the various use of corridors, rooms, concourses and other objects such as elevators and phone booths.

I liked Banky self-effacing introduction saying that really he was cheating and gets (steals) all his inspiration from others, or real artists.

I loved where he talked about the light-switch moment about not needing to add a background but rather to make the real-life location the background, and how that then fires the imagination with the challenge “How much of the environment can you integrate into the piece?”. How much space could there be between the girl and the balloon?

Lastly, the final area is a treat. It simulates Banksy’s bedroom growing up and the music, art and films which influenced him. There’s a great description of how the graffitied sign in Jaws – where a sign presenting Amity Island as a paradise is doctored with a shark fin and “Help!” speech bubble – was an early example of art that really spoke to him. In this graffiti he saw a wonderful combination of satire, powerless people finding a way to make their voice heard, humour, art and rebellion.

Here are my quick links and tips for creating a markdown-file-based blog post using only github.com and no CMS. I’ve put these on this site so that they’re on the web therefore I can access them wherever I am.

Why do I create posts this way? Because I’ve tried forestry.io (now Tina) and Netlify CMS and I no longer have the time or inclination to maintain their dependencies, load their JavaScript or make ongoing updates as they evolve. I’ve also found them a little flaky. So instead let’s see how this lo-fi approach works.

This post is mainly for my own reference but who knows, maybe it’ll be useful to someone else too.

In this tutorial video Seth Pech shares what he’s learned about that most foundational (and important) of table-tennis shots – the block.

Nice video here from Tom Lodziak in which coach Emma Harradine demonstrates a forehand loop (against backspin) that just looks so spinny, safe and reliable.

I’ve always liked the idea of this shot – the archetypal third ball in the rally – being like a well-oiled machine, but have never quite nailed it. So I’m gonna study this!