There's loads of new music out today. I like days like this where there's a few records out from bands you like. Funnily enough, my favourite is from a band I've never really liked, doing something I never heard before. Turnstile - Glow On is such a weird mix of things that shouldn't work but really does. Then there's Jinjer - Wallflowers, which is another refinement and technical progression of an already very polished sound. Then finally there's TesseracT - Portals, which is a very accomplished live album, and a good mix of TesseracT's career. If you're new to them but familiar with the genre (how?), it might sound a bit samey, but I'm enjoying it.

As a bonus, something that came out a while ago that I can't stop thinking about is Alexis Marshall - House of Lull House of When. Incredibly bleak and unsettling. A really coherent, borderline jazz direction of the sound on Daughters' latest record, which is still (and may always be?) my favourite live music experience ever.

A little walk, and a couple of snaps

08/26/2021

You're not always going to come back from a walk with an SD card full of winners, but sometimes you're just out for an hour and the light is golden, and you're looking at everything and framing it and everything looks beautiful and the photos you come home with don't really matter.

Foxes

08/26/2021

There's a family of lovely foxes at Charlotte's allotment. I've always wanted to take pictures of a fox from a reasonable distance. This was a real treat for me.

Every time we feed Sudo, we ask "is it dinner time?" and since revisiting Donald Glover, it always reminds me of this song, which has been stuck in my head for about 3 weeks. It'd be annoying if I didn't love this song and its video, I suppose.

Little Keyboards Reviung41

08/23/2021

I've wanted one of Little Keyboards' kits for ages, but they were always a bit spenny. This Reviung41 Comptroller case was actually pretty reasonable. Especially for the quality.

One of my favourite things to do, when I've written a long blog post, is to go back through and edit it to remove the 500 occurrences of the word "really". No idea why I use it so much. I wonder if I do that in speech as well.

Bromsgrove Summer 2021

08/15/2021

Going away anywhere is strange and makes me feel nervous pretty much constantly, but we managed to have a really nice few days away visiting family and friends for the first time in absolutely ages.

Bite the Wave

08/10/2021

In a concerted effort to get out of my creative funk, I've done a few things. Firstly I've decided that everywhere I go, a camera goes too. And I will take pictures. Probably not good pictures, but when you fall out of a good habit, the first thing to do is get back in.

I'm not doing great

08/05/2021

I haven't posted, or really taken any pictures since my last post, which was before my birthday, which was over a month ago. I'm just not into anything right now. I want to be but that's where my motivation ends.

When I was a kid, my dad knew this guy called Ronan O'Connor. His mother was an Austrian woman called Maria, and my dad used to work on their vehicles. They lived in a huge house with loads of land, right on a flood plain. When it flooded Ronan had a kayak he would take from his front door to his front gate so that he could do things like leaving his home.

Once I was a precocious ~ten-year-old; if you can believe that. I forget the exact content of this conversation, but one day Ronan was trying to tell me something. He had a left-hand-drive VW Scirocco, and he'd obviously seen a lot of the world. I distinctly remember being blasé and obstructive. I already knew what he was trying to tell me, and so the conversation ended before it began.

Later, I asked my dad what Ronan had been trying to tell me. He didn't know. I was so busy trying to impress Ronan that I'd missed out on something cool he could've taught me.

I learned three things that day:

  1. Always keep your ears and mind open
  2. Your parents don't know everything
  3. Get your damn COVID vaccination. I don't care about your half-baked research. This isn't about you.

Real Life

When I was a kid, dairy grossed me out. Don't know why but I have a real problem with food texture so maybe there.

Anyway now I have two favourite butters and I don't remember the last time I wasn't eating cheese.

Pralines and Cream is the epitome of ice cream flavours. If I could only ever have one flavour of ice cream forever it'd be this. 10/10

Recently

06/20/2021

I've been going through a phase of writing a lot recently. Work's been pleasantly busy - lots of smaller, fun tasks to work on doing things I don't get to do a lot. We've got something big starting soon so it's always nice to get stuff done before I need to get my head down.

Here's a hot tip for you, if you're making a TV show: if you need to fill some product placement obligations, you should contrive to shoot a scene in a supermarket. All the cool kids are doing it!

The Illustrated Mum

06/12/2021

I've made some very satisfying discoveries whilst reading bedtime stories to Tabitha, but this one was probably the most emotionally draining.

Literally every time one of our clients says "what's the ETA?" I have to almost physically force myself not to say "it's the estimated time of arrival". Because apparently I am still 7 years old, or Lloyd Bridges.

Early

06/05/2021

It's getting light about 4am at the moment. That's too early. Went for a quick skate to the marina and the sea was lovely. I really need to go for a swim at some point. Keep saying I'm going to then not doing it.

Bank Holiday Walk

05/31/2021

Maybe it's just the Brit in me but it always seems that the best weather falls around bank holidays and never over them. Not this weekend, though. It's been lovely weather all weekend so we went for a walk. Lots of animals out enjoying the sun, but I can't say I'm envious of sheep in this heat.

Got my first COVID vaccine today. Didn't really want the AstraZeneca, but was only offered the Pfizer so lucked out I guess. Or someone somewhere else is making my decisions for me.

The whole thing was super slick. So many staff, making sure everyone's funnelled through to the right place in the right order. Was in and out easily in under 25 minutes, and that includes a 15 minute post-needle wait.

Beach huts

05/18/2021

Managed to get out in between rain showers and go for a couple of walks by the sea.

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