I just heard the harmonica on ‘Garageland’ for the first time. I’ve heard that song thousands of times over… err, nearly forty years.

These Beats X headphones are really quite good. 🎵

I’m wildly behind the TV curve, in that I’m just watching Stranger Things now. But I’ve got to say they’re killing it with the music choices.

They were never quite my favourite band, but were always there or thereabouts

In Legend of the Fall: Mark E Smith kept swinging to the end, Dave Simpson sums things up well. 🎵

The Fallen

2018 is working hard to be the new 2016. First Ursula Le Guin; now Mark E Smith has been taken from us.

The Fall were one of the great bands, no matter what lineup. It’s just sad that the last time I saw them, about two years ago, they were terrible.

Sadder, of course, that Smith is dead.

So it goes.

The science-fiction community is dispossessed tonight. Ursula K Le Guin RIP.

Croydon looking colourful and futuristic, yesterday

Clarke Kickstarted

The Kickstarter for the Arthur C Clarke Award is already fully funded, but now they’re pushing for a stretch goal.

What you get already is pretty good: an anthology of original SF stories of exactly 2001 words each, by a host of great names including past Clarke winners.

But the stretch goal adds a specially-commissioned soundtrack, which is a great idea.

Why are you still reading this? Go and sign up.

Maybe this change to Facebook’s feed will take it back towards just showing what family and friends post, as I was asking for back in October.

My guess is it still won’t give us what we want: all the things our Friends post, in reverse-chronological order.

If only there were a special word that described posts presented in that way… or a special protocol, or feed format, that made it easy to share the posts…

I love that, on Touch Bar MacBooks, you can set things up so that you use your fingerprint to authorise sudo in the Terminal.

Happy New Year from firework-drenched London Town.