Week 45

Hibernation

I always have a tendency to go into some form of hibernation when winter comes, but it’s become pretty obvious that I’ve been doing that for a few years now after moving out of London. It’s too easy to think things are logistically too hard, so you take the easy way out and just get the train home and watch Netflix. This is a perfectly valid response a lot of the time, but if you’re not careful you just get into a self-perpetuating loop — your tolerance for ‘hassle’ goes down, so ever more things become ‘too much hassle’ and you end up not doing anything.

So, time to get myself out of that loop and do more things — London is full of stuff to do, it’s ridiculous to not do more of it. First thing on the agenda is the Peanuts exhibition at Somerset House, it’s on late Wed/Thursday/Friday so difficulty level should be pretty low, will attempt to do it by the end of the month. Should definitely check out the V&A Computer Games show at some point as well, other suggestions welcome.

Wrkbk

Not much headway this week as I got stuck in a loop trying to fix the runtime type system. I think I need to simplify and start from first principles, it’s too easy to get lost in the detail and just end up coding for an hour, realising it’s all wrong and deleting your code again, then repeating ad infinitum.

I think it’s probably a case of me having to sit down for 3–4 hours uninterrupted and crack the spine of it instead of trying to fix this stuff on the train where I don’t get a long enough stretch to concentrate. I think they call it ’Deep Work’ these days, I’m sure it used just be called ‘peace and quiet’.

Dr Who

Really enjoying this season, it may be my favourite since they rebooted, and this weeks episode was up there with the best of Dr Who. Tackling the Partition of India in a primetime family sci-fi show could have been a car crash, but it worked really well, didn’t try and do too much but also didn’t simplify anything and really got across a lot of info and emotion. I liked the ‘Speaker for the Dead’ element as well, very fitting for Armistice Day. Lots of questions from the kids so mission accomplished — they should probably put this episode on the national curriculum.

When I was in school the mess we made of India wasn’t mentioned at all, which helps engender some of the ridiculous ‘British Exceptionalism’ attitudes we’ve seen around Brexit. It’s far past time to be honest about our history and some of the terrible shit we’ve done, though maybe it’s better in schools now? Will ask Alice.

Don’t Feed The Trolls?

In a related note, saw a load of people raging against Twitter idiots complaining about Dr Who being too political/politically correct/whatever again. This really feels like a time when people are signal boosting things that would just wither away on the vine if they left them alone. It takes about 3 seconds to destroy the argument, do we even need to engage with things that are so blatantly wrong and have dropped out of the news cycle? Reminds me of the ’Women can’t write Science Fiction’ argument that kept going around for weeks on Twitter, it’s the cultural equivalent of Flat Earth theory so immune to rational discussion. Hard to know how much Twitter is responsible for manufacturing outrage sometimes.

Not sure if there’s a tech fix for it, but a quick look at someones (real) follower count should be enough to work out whether you’re signal boosting them or fighting the good fight.

The Saga of the Exiles

Finished the 4th book, The Adversary, and it all felt a bit rushed at the end. I re-read the Galactic Milieu series before and it had exactly the same problem — after a massive 4 book build up the end just happens in relatively few pages and it’s done. The ride was very enjoyable though, maybe I just need to become more Buddhist and care less about endings.

Pitchfork 200 Best Songs of the 2000’

Finished going through this list and enjoyed the exercise. The infinite bounty of Spotify makes listening to music a bit of a scattershot exercise sometimes so having a bit of structure is nice. Some random thoughts:

• A lot of good music in this period, but not really a big new ‘scene’ — I guess the rise of R&B/Rap into the dominant pop style is the main change, a trend that doesn’t look like changing anytime soon.
• How have I never heard Cadillacs on 22s by David Banner! If i’d only discovered this song from listening to this list it would have been worth it.
• Life Without Buildings are a band that completely passed me by — they sound a bit like a teleportation accident involving The Sundays and Talking Heads. Pity they only did on album.
• Man, Pitchfork really like Animal Collective
• Why do Pitchfork like Animal Collective so much?
• Also Wilco, people absolutely love them but I’m just ‘they’re pretty good I guess?’
• How can Mr Brightside be 72? That’s just wrong, should be top 20 at the very least.
• M.I.A’s Paper Planes (Diplo Remix) is at number 3, probably would have had this at number 1 as it hasn’t aged a bit.
• The top 20 is pretty balanced, lots of good stuff, but B.O.B by Outkast as #1 song of the period? It’s a great song but nope. It’s hardly the most zeitgeisty Outkast song (Hey Ya sits at number 12, a bit too low I reckon) Probably should have put Crazy In Love at the top instead of at #4, especially as Bey-Z would go on to bestraddle the world like a colossus.
• If it was totally down to innate greatness, Ignition (Remix) would be number one, here’s a list of 100 reasons why. Bit ‘problematic’ though innit.

Here’s a list of songs I really liked that I either hadn’t heard or had heard but hadn’t listened to enough to realise they were excellent.

Here’s the entire list if you’re interested — there’s 5 songs missing for various, some of them are mashups that probably never got proper releases

In Progress

• Beastie Boys Book — nearly finished, it’s good all the way through, loving it
• Red Moon— started on the new Kim Stanley Robinson, he’s definitely one of my favourite living sci-fi writers so looking forward to it.
• Haunting of Hill House — it had glowing reviews I thought I’d give it a try, was quite different to what I expected, very much enjoyed the first episode.

Random Thoughts

• Chomsky should write a sequel to Manufacturing Consent called Manufacturing Outrage.
• Auto-correct really doesn’t like the word ‘bestraddle’, computers are idiots sometimes.