Quintessential Steinbeck. I love his musings where he personifies a thing.

I say this to my kids a lot. I don’t think they love the phrase as much as I do.

Old but good: Troy Hunt on Why online identities are smart career moves. I have friends that use LinkedIn for networking, but it does seem like a gigantic fake love-in most of the time.

Just finished watching The Investigation (2020), an incredible 6-part Danish drama that covers the murder of journalist Kim Wall. Superb acting from everyone, respectfully done with no appearance of the murderer or any gore. Søren Malling is perfect in the lead role.

My 90 year old grandmother got her first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine today. 💪

🎶 I love Scott Yoshinaga’s annual post of his favourite albums of the past year. There’s always very little that is already familiar to me, and a brilliant section at the end with links to instrumental albums that are good to work to. Thank you for putting this together. 🙏

My son just taught me that one rotation of the earth on its axis only takes 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds. 🤯

Joe Jackson’s introduction to Economics.

Lesson 1: Opportunity cost.

Ollie is enjoying the coverage of the starling population on Winterwatch.

Based on the number of muddy paw prints around our house, I think cats would actually make pretty poor burglars.

The next 24 hours are going to be a masterclass in how not to write headlines.

“We can’t all be great developers.” 😂 👜

🎙 A new Common Sense episode always goes straight to the top of my listening queue. Dan Carlin is excellent as usual, quoting Eisenhower in that “The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.”

🎙 The Tortoise Media Slow News podcasts are excellent, and this episode on the COVID-19 vaccine in the UK is no exception. There’s so much in here that I didn’t know, and an interesting angle of just how much the government is betting on the vaccine rollout.

My turn to host Album Club tonight.

📚 Bought this as a way of supporting The Public Domain Review. Looking forward to getting stuck into this eclectic mix.

📚 Good point. I had never thought of this.

One of my ‘I’ll get to it one day’ items is to learn how to program in assembler, probably for an 8-bit processor to keep things easier. The BBC Micro Elite Source Code site looks like a wonderful resource for learning by example.

🎥 Going back to work has slowed my Astaire musical journey. Next up is Swing Time (1936), which has always been my fave Fred and Ginger, not for the plot but for the sheer joy of the music and dancing — all with the exception of the very problematic blackface routine. Shame.

🎶 Stumbled across the Hôtel Costes albums while browsing Discogs and have listened to the first couple on Spotify. A rich seam of funky, jazzy grooves that are great to work to. This will keep me going for some time.