New theme on my site. Independent Publisher wasn’t behaving quite how I wanted, especially with microblog posts. So I’m trying Minnow, with thanks to [@colinwalker](https://micro.blog/colinwalker) for the suggestion.

Raspberry jam for breakfast leads to both Prince’s and the Hindu Love Gods’ versions of “Raspberry Beret,” and I marvel again at how cool the Sonos & Apple Music combination is.

Congratulations to France. Nice to get some good electoral news for a change.

Of course @bbcanyquestions has the traitor Farage on again. Of course. (Someone who has spent his adult life working against the national interest can rightly be described as a traitor.)

The Clips app actually records full-frame video, even through it only shows squares. So I now have some portrait videos. Ewww.

If Squarespace, Casper, & Linode stopped advertising on podcasts, the whole podcast industry would collapse. Parts I listen to, at least.

At the dentist, she & the nurse were talking about marathons. I said maybe they shouldn’t cos of Marathon Man. They had never heard of it.

Perhaps the most annoying feature of Eclipse is that a new workspace always defaults to tabs instead of spaces. Who uses tabs?

This is posted using the new Micro.blog app and service from Manton Reece. The app is in beta, I should note.

Maybe

Sometimes you just want to write something. Maybe you have something specific to say, maybe not. Maybe you have nothing to say at all, but just want to get something out there.

Maybe you’ve set yourself a target, and having missed a day (and being aware that you’ll doubtless miss others) you’ve decided you want to keep the average up. So that at the end of 2017 you’ll be able to look back at at least 365 posts in the year.

Maybe at the start of the year, that was about as many posts as were on your blog in its whole history. So it’s a major challenge. But maybe you keep going, even with nothing to say.

Whoops!

OK, I missed a day. Obviously it had to happen sooner or later. But yesterday I just totally forgot.

Oh well. We pick up and keep going.

Content Provider

I may not get to write a proper post today, as I haven’t yet and we’re about to go and see Stewart Lee: Content Provider, so I probably won’t manage to later.

So this is by way of meeting my challenge.

The hottest day of the year, and I end up having an interview. Glad to have it, but gladder to be home and into cooler clothes.

I'm having trouble with WordPress not wanting make a "Link" format post if I have too much other stuff in it.

Daily Mail Taking Over Yahoo?

Christ, we're gonna have to pull all our photos from Flickr if this goes through: Daily Mail publisher in talks with companies over Yahoo takeover.

Woman Who Shot at Home Depot Shoplifters Vows to Never Help Anyone Again - The New York Times

Tatiana Duva-Rodriguez of Michigan, who had been a passerby when she noticed the commotion, lost her gun-carrying permit and got 18 months’ probation.

The NY Times reports this without comment. This crazy woman shot at people who were suspected of shoplifting. Not murder, not terrorism. Shoplifting. And the lesson she says she’s learned is, “I’ll never help anyone again.”

Test from Editorial

A test from the iPhone Editorial app.

Newsflash: the Firefly guys were villains

Malcolm Reynolds’ twelve-headed hydra wang of hate for the alliance doesn’t come from outrage over the dubious morality of a couple of black bag cabals within the government

An excellent analysis of Firefly and Serenity, by someone who loves them as all right-thinking people should.

via Newsflash: the Firefly guys were villains | Jay Kristoff - Literary Giant.

Once again I won’t be reaching NaNoWriMo’s 50,000-word mark this year, but I have written over 30,000, which is the most ever. And I finished a novella at the start. So I’m pretty happy.

3,446 words today for a NaNoWriMo total so far of 15,724. That also completes a 20,000 word novella called “All Tomorrow’s Troubles”. Going well. Now I can get back to my novel.

This “short story” that I was going to knock out before getting back to my novel is growing into a behemoth. At 12000 words it’s thoroughly a novelette, and heading squarely for novella-land.

2001: The aliens that almost were

[W]e could summarize the whole ordeal by saying that Kubrick tried to the last minute not to follow Sagan's advice!.

An interesting piece on Kubrick, Clarke and collaborators trying to design the aliens for 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Via Daring Fireball.

He’s really a guitar player but he uses a camera

"He's really a guitar player but he uses a camera": Interview at The Quietus with Lou Reed and Mick Rock, the photographer who took, among many other things, the Transformer cover shot.

A British Court Bans a TV Broadcast

BBC lawyers consider formal appeal over court ban on riots drama | Media | guardian.co.uk.

The most chilling thing about this is not so much banning the broadcast; there could conceivably be a legitimate reason for that, though it’s hard to imagine a good one. Rather it is this:

For legal reasons, the Guardian cannot name the judge who made the ruling, the court in which he is sitting or the case he is presiding over.

This meta-blocking smacks of the "superinjunctions" that we heard a lot about a few years back (but which strangely seem to have dropped out of sight recently).

Link: Screenwriting Tip Of The Day by William C. Martell - Romeo to Rambo

How good scripts get turned into bad movies: Screenwriting Tip Of The Day by William C. Martell - Romeo to Rambo