🎶 It took a while to get here from Canada, but it was well worth the wait. Not sure how easy it will be to buy from Discogs sellers overseas once Brexit kicks in.

🎬 Flicking through Disney+ last night I watched Steamboat Willie (1928). Contains a cat that chews tobacco and spits on himself, and a vicious Mickey Mouse who strangles a tune out of a duck, then kicks a piglet off its mother so he can play music on her teats. Different times!

Excited that my Luminelle Records parcel made it here from the US. I’m not sure I’ve ever been this into a record label before. All of their artists I’ve heard so far have been excellent.

Album Club #116 tonight and it’s an amazing choice by our host. So sad we can’t do this one in the same room together.

I’m not sure how useful this is. Why bother telling me at all?

Joining Helena Deland’s streamed launch show on Bandcamp for her new album Someone New. Feeling the time difference between Montreal and the UK right now!

Helena Deland’s debut album Someone New is out today. I preordered it based on her beautiful EPs. Had one listen so far this afternoon at work and looking forward to giving it my full attention over the weekend.

Going all in on Readwise.io for a while. Spent a bit of time this evening prepping and uploading my old Readmill highlights to the service, so they will get played back to me over time. So grateful that the Readmill team made such a classy exit and I had the data to hand.

What are we going to do when people in critical safety roles, like pilots or surgeons, start suffering from post-COVID-19 brain fog?

Attended the Microsoft 365 UK user group for the first time this afternoon. Great presentations on Teams adoption and data protection. Thank you to Joanne C Klein for answering all my questions!

📷 Berkhamsted, UK // 14 Oct 2020 // 7:47am

The view from just outside my garden office. A chilly morning, with clouds that look like they are from an oil painting. Work started very early today.

Posted for the wonderful micro.blog’s A Day In The Life #adayinthelife

I have a 4am start tomorrow to coordinate some IT infra work in Beijing. Past experience tells me it’s a roll of the dice as to whether I’ll be fully ‘with it’ or not. I secretly quite like having the excuse to quit the day and go up to bed three hours earlier than usual.

When I started work in the City of London at the turn of the century, one of my colleagues told me that our office was on the site of an old train station. Reading this history of Broad Street, I’m sad to report that I didn’t commute there by gyroplane.

Damn you, The Economist, for your 50% off an annual subscription offer. I’m like the Boris Johnson of Economist readers — I want the job, but I’ll struggle to do the work.

The only thing to do is to let the offer linger in my inbox for a few days before deleting it.

Today’s Bunker podcast really made me think. I’m all for the normalisation of mask-wearing everywhere during the pandemic, but there are many good reasons why people struggle with them. E.g. the deaf, neurodiverse or victims of violent crime.

Well, this is worrying.

Wisepay ‘outage’ is actually the school meal payments biz trying to stop an intruder from stealing customer card details

We pulled entire website to halt attack, says spokesman

Hope they are read up on Troy Hunt’s Breach Disclosure 101.

Intriguing. Like a biscuit placebo.

📚 Finished Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Robert DeMott.

“In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration.”

“I think I’ll leave this book now.”

💿 I couldn’t resist this.