Mixed feelings: somebody dies; the reaction makes you check out their work; you find you’ve been missing something great. You’ve got a great new band to explore. But it’s like coming in at the end of a movie.

And the guy is dead. (He was my age.)

The Tragically Hip. Very good.

You ever watch a scene and it shocks you, even though you know what’s going to happen? My Buffy rewatch just reached ‘Seeing Red.’

Watched The Last Jedi trailer. Didn’t do a lot for me. Don’t worry, though: I’ve booked my ticket for opening night.

I’m not going to say much about Blade Runner 2049 yet, except: I felt disappointment more than enjoyment. All the critics are praising it unreservedly, and I didn’t enjoy it that much. I have a whole lot more written, but I’m going to wait a while before posting it.

Blades and Running

Watched Blade Runner in preparation for tomorrow. Chose the original theatrical cut, voiceover and all. I think I’m increasingly down with Mitch Benn’s thinking on the matter.

And you should watch the video of his song, ‘Don’t Fuck Up the Sequel to Blade Runner’

Also started watching Dangerous Days, the ‘making of’ documentary. Fascinating and surprising to learn that Rutger Hauer came up with the ‘tears in rain’ line.

Anyway, more news tomorrow, perhaps.

So why has no-one told me about Milk Kan before? God With an iPod, for example, is brilliant. From 2008.

Brett Terpstra is offering the chance to win a copy of the new 60 Mac Tips book and the (updated) old one. All you have to do is register. Sounds great.

Citymapper has AR now. Not sure it’s as useful as the rest of the app, but fun.

Star Trek: Discovery, episode 3, ‘Context is for Kings,’ keeps up the good work, in case you were expecting otherwise. And I forgot to say the other day that, although the IMDB people were negative, there is a very positive review on Tor.com. Much positivity in the comments there. too.

I received one of the stranger pieces of spam or phishing I’ve ever seen. Not because of what it’s trying to do — obviously it wants me to click on a dodgy link — but because of the weird, almost surreal ineptness of the content. Take a look:

Phishing spam screengrab

Isn’t that its own special thing? Almost poetry, in a disturbed, fractured way.