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Liked: In “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” Luke Skywalker Finally Becomes Cool | The New Yorker
Luke’s diminished circumstances make for a far richer character, one whom Hamill portrays with mournful energy and depth. For the first time, Hamill’s performance is one of the best parts of a “Star Wars” movie.
I can’t really agree with this article more. Except maybe the bit about the wink.
At the cinema. What for, you say? Oh, nothing special: just Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
You’ll be pleased to know that we got the battery cover off the Fire TV Stick remote. Got Netflix and iPlayer installed, watched Person of Interest.
In the end we just had to be persistent. And firm.
Burn it With Fire (Stick)
I bought an Amazon Fire TV Stick in the Black/Cyber/Whatever sales, because I thought it would be a good way to watch BBC iPlayer, Netflix, and so on, on the telly, without having to plug a laptop in, as we do at present. Tonight I tried to set it up.
Amazon have decided to use replaceable batteries like it’s the 90s, instead of using a rechargeable like it’s today. I found it literally impossible to open the back of the remote.
The very fact that there are multiple YouTube videos explaining how to open the thing should be a giveaway. Unfortunately they all say, “It’s easy enough now because I’ve opened it before; it was really hard at first.”
The Apple TV may be several times the price, and the remote has its critics. But you just know you’re not going to have bollocks like this when you try to start using it.
Right now I’m planning to send the Fire TV Stick back. I’ll have another go when more of the family are around, and maybe we’ll get it. But I can’t help but wonder, what about someone who’s a bit older and maybe has arthritic hands? This is incredibly bad product design.
It would be weird if Tony Blair turned out to be the hero of the Brexit hour. But we need all the support we can get.
Just saw this winter’s first flurry of snow. Well, hardly flurry: just a few flakes drifting past the window. And it’s stopped now.
A Five and Four Zeroes
Actually it’s 50,069 words in total, as of a few minutes ago. And the last 5000 or so were not in the novel that I finished the other day.
Instead I wrote a new opening to the previous novel, which I hope will have moved it towards a submittable state; and a whole load of notes towards the next one, which I intend to start more or less right away.
As soon, at least, as I’ve got the skeleton of a plot, and a vague idea of the ending, so that I don’t go wandering around for years again.
Anyway: I declare myself a NaNoWriMo Winner.
I’m glad Scrivener 3 is out, but could they have picked a worse month for it? The end of November, when a crazy percentage of users are crazily last-minute-typing into the app.
Not a good time to upgrade.
On the other hand, when November is over we can reward ourselves.
Look at that, I’ve crossed the line. I’m now above the NaNoWriMo average daily word count.
Rock and Death
I appreciate this piece about AC/DC and Malcolm Young’s legacy. I never really cared for them myself. I was on the other side of the punk/metal wars, of course, and screechy vocals always put me off.
I completely understand the spirit of that piece, though, and feel the same way about The Clash, the Velvet Underground, probably others. But there is one telling line in it that says something about the different attitudes of the different sides in those not-really wars. I don’t know, maybe not; but this:
But we thought we were gonna live forever. The music too.
is not how things were for me, for us. We didn’t think we’d live beyond the eighties. The nineties at a pinch As Queen put it, we were the ones who:
grew up tall and proud
Under the shadow of the mushroom cloud.
But so too did the author of the AC/DC piece. He’s a decade older than me, but that still means he experienced the cold war.
Maybe it’s not generation, but location. I lived a few miles from the Faslane naval base, where the Polaris submarines were based (and where the Trident ones are still). We knew we’d be one of the first places to go.
Generations are too abstract, too arbitrary to make sweeping statements about in any case. But I still sometimes find myself surprised to be here, now, in this century.
The trees are afire in Clapton Square. (OK, with a little bit of help from Photos.)
Just realising that when the Star Trek: Discovery theme music starts, I now want someone to say “Space: the final frontier…”
Just saw a guy cycling along, no hands, hands in pockets. Geez, get some gloves, mon, you’re making us all terrified.
23,600 words in 15 days. I’m on course to make the 50,000. And to finish my novel. If I do that, I may not go to the full 50,000.
I also finished reading, a year and eleven days after I bought it, Alan Moore’s Jerusalem. Which was almost as much of a challenge.
Turned out the missing dates was a setting of the theme. Dates are back.
I wouldn’t mind if it showed the time, too, but dates are a bare minimum.
Missing Dates
I’ve just noticed that this WordPress theme I’m using, Independent Publisher, doesn’t show dates and times of posts. And as a side effect it doesn’t have permalinks for posts without titles (the datestamp should be the permalink in that case).
How can this be? Has it always been like this and I just haven’t noticed? I hate sites that don’t have dates on posts.
One way or another, this will have to change.
The Ramones were the first band I saw when I came to London, and I’ve seen them several other times. I’ve just been listening to a couple of early albums, and they’re still so good. Now sad that I’ll never see them live again.
Go and see bands live when you can.
12,120 words so far. And a sure sign that I’m getting close to finishing this novel: today I started thinking about what I’ll write next. The total word count is 85,700. I didn’t start a new one this month.
If FaceID comes to the Mac, with its attention detection, will we ever get what I’ve always wanted: “Focus Follows View”? Keystrokes should affect the window I’m looking at, not the one I last clicked in. Would be great.
Start at the top: Billy opens with ‘Sexuality’.
