Curated
Week from Monday 1st September 2025 - On Saturday, I dashed desperately into town to visit the CARTRIDGE WORLD concern, to avail myself of new toner for my 'office' printer. Turns out they are closed on Saturdays! So I had to make the journey AGAIN on Monday morning and was thus able to combine it with a 'regular' shopping trip (Teabags! Coffee! Chilli sauce!), before getting back to "MONDAY DOING MONDAY STUFF".
LA VUELTA continues in chaotic style, but this week also brings the TOUR OF BRITAIN, which is being carried in full by ITV4 (Ned Boulting et al). Should be fun, if only for enjoying the scenery! MADS PEDERSEN would appear to have sealed the deal in the Vuelta's GREEN JERSEY points competition, unless anything untoward happens in the last week. As is so often with 'GRAND TOURS', I've already lost interest in what's happening in GC. Besides, with all the shortened stages, a number of 'wins' and the subsequent TIME differences have been rendered somewhat meaningless. It remains to be seen what's supposed to happen when they only ride half of a TIME TRIAL!
COMPARE & CONTRAST: The Vuelta got disrupted by pro-Palestine demonstrations; the Tour of Britain was held up by a herd of dairy cattle crossing the road.
A couple of visits to the Ho's Spittle this week, firstly for a quick BLOOD TEST leeching, then to sit patiently (for the duration of two episodes of "The Goon Show" and the previous day's CYCLING highlights) while a Hospira Plum360 machine feeds me Pamidronate via a cannula. All standard ROUTINE stuff by now.
Indeed, believe me when I say that no medical procedure is as anxiety-inducing as THE LETTER that was waiting for me when I got home, calling me for JURY DUTY at the end of October...
Week from Monday 8th September 2025 - Yesterday, the gubnint tried out their EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM. So the idea is that, in the event of DOOMSDAY, a national disaster or four-minute warning, the people who will get to know about it straight away are those who stay glued to their SMARTPHONES all day. Bored teenagers? I'm a very infrequent phone user myself, but I left my device turned on for once, just to make sure that it was compatible. It 'WORKED'. But I wasn't adjacent to the phone when the "alarm" went off, so I didn't hear any AUDIBLE warning of pending catastrophe. The text message was still there on the phone when I glanced at it an hour later, so I had a record that something HAD happened, but it's probable that in a 'real' disaster, I'd have dozed through it!
"Music Projects" this week include seedifying the newly released download (re: BANDCAMP FRIDAY) of "Abracadabra In Tokyo" by SOFT WORKS (Elton Dean/John Marshall/Allan Holdsworth/Hugh Hopper) and further exploring of various HENRY COW-adjacent objets d'art, mostly via the BANDCAMP concern.
I've also discovered that watching the CYCLING highlights with the commentary turned off, goes so much better when accompanied by some choice nuggets from JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH.
There's been a fairly substantial update to the BLUESKY app. Firstly I've noticed lately that embedded YouTube clips now come with adverts attached, so I suspect some sort of deal has been struck with G***LE. They are making a big thing about being able to 'save' favourite posts in an archive... but a feature that's really caught MY eye (I'm not sure if it IS 'new, or whether I just haven't noticed it before?) is one's ability to hide the fairly useless "DISCOVER" timeline altogether, in many ways the equivalent of Xitter's "FOR YOU". Although it is a long way from reaching "X"-levels of toxicity, most of the unsolicited suggestions on mine were always from young Americans banging on about video gaming, Marvel movies or Japanese animation, subjects that have never held ANY appeal (to say the least!). So now my own screen just shows the "FOLLOWING" column, plus my own themed LISTS. Boff! CURATED!! ORGANISED!!!
LA VUELTA continues in chaotic style, but this week also brings the TOUR OF BRITAIN, which is being carried in full by ITV4 (Ned Boulting et al). Should be fun, if only for enjoying the scenery! MADS PEDERSEN would appear to have sealed the deal in the Vuelta's GREEN JERSEY points competition, unless anything untoward happens in the last week. As is so often with 'GRAND TOURS', I've already lost interest in what's happening in GC. Besides, with all the shortened stages, a number of 'wins' and the subsequent TIME differences have been rendered somewhat meaningless. It remains to be seen what's supposed to happen when they only ride half of a TIME TRIAL!
COMPARE & CONTRAST: The Vuelta got disrupted by pro-Palestine demonstrations; the Tour of Britain was held up by a herd of dairy cattle crossing the road.
A couple of visits to the Ho's Spittle this week, firstly for a quick BLOOD TEST leeching, then to sit patiently (for the duration of two episodes of "The Goon Show" and the previous day's CYCLING highlights) while a Hospira Plum360 machine feeds me Pamidronate via a cannula. All standard ROUTINE stuff by now.
Indeed, believe me when I say that no medical procedure is as anxiety-inducing as THE LETTER that was waiting for me when I got home, calling me for JURY DUTY at the end of October...
Week from Monday 8th September 2025 - Yesterday, the gubnint tried out their EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM. So the idea is that, in the event of DOOMSDAY, a national disaster or four-minute warning, the people who will get to know about it straight away are those who stay glued to their SMARTPHONES all day. Bored teenagers? I'm a very infrequent phone user myself, but I left my device turned on for once, just to make sure that it was compatible. It 'WORKED'. But I wasn't adjacent to the phone when the "alarm" went off, so I didn't hear any AUDIBLE warning of pending catastrophe. The text message was still there on the phone when I glanced at it an hour later, so I had a record that something HAD happened, but it's probable that in a 'real' disaster, I'd have dozed through it!
"Music Projects" this week include seedifying the newly released download (re: BANDCAMP FRIDAY) of "Abracadabra In Tokyo" by SOFT WORKS (Elton Dean/John Marshall/Allan Holdsworth/Hugh Hopper) and further exploring of various HENRY COW-adjacent objets d'art, mostly via the BANDCAMP concern.
I've also discovered that watching the CYCLING highlights with the commentary turned off, goes so much better when accompanied by some choice nuggets from JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH.
There's been a fairly substantial update to the BLUESKY app. Firstly I've noticed lately that embedded YouTube clips now come with adverts attached, so I suspect some sort of deal has been struck with G***LE. They are making a big thing about being able to 'save' favourite posts in an archive... but a feature that's really caught MY eye (I'm not sure if it IS 'new, or whether I just haven't noticed it before?) is one's ability to hide the fairly useless "DISCOVER" timeline altogether, in many ways the equivalent of Xitter's "FOR YOU". Although it is a long way from reaching "X"-levels of toxicity, most of the unsolicited suggestions on mine were always from young Americans banging on about video gaming, Marvel movies or Japanese animation, subjects that have never held ANY appeal (to say the least!). So now my own screen just shows the "FOLLOWING" column, plus my own themed LISTS. Boff! CURATED!! ORGANISED!!!
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