Microposts
March in London romorrow in support of the protests in Iran. I’ll be there. Not much reporting of it in the mainstream news, from what I can see.
Watched: Towards Zero Season 1 🎥
Or season ‘only’, as it is. An adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel, and quite a fun one. Where ‘fun’ includes murder, as it tends to with the Queen of Crime, of course.
I note in passing on this early-morning start day, that The Monkees (or songwriter John Stewart) had to get up earlier than The Clash, pre-fame. ‘Ring, ring, it’s seven am’ vs ‘The six o’clock alarm would never ring.’
🎥 Forgot to mention we watched Holiday Inn over the Christmas period. A singer gives up show-business because it’s hard work, to become a farmer! After a year he realises the obvious, and turns his house into a supper club that’s only open on the fifteen holidays in the US year. Great songs.
Trying out mb-cli, a command-line Micro.blog client from @timapple.
I fail to understand anyone who considers themself to be even vaguely ‘progressive’ or ’liberal’ or ‘on the right side of history’ can not stand with the people of Iran. Sure, the US taking action might not be the best result, but as long as the Islamic Republic falls, the world will be better.
Five under par in today’s Minute Cryptic!
Minute Cryptic - 12 January, 2026 “7-Eleven uniform among ugliest uniforms” (5,4) 🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣 🏆 0 hints – 5 under the community par (47,960 solvers so far). www.minutecryptic.com
Going to see The Book of Mormon tonight. I’ve no real idea what it’s about, which may be the best way to approach it, I don’t know.
Very weird. I’m trying to sign in to YouTube on my Mac. The signin page gets intercepted by Microsoft’s SSO page, which wants me to log on with my City Lit account. I did a course there last term. They used Google Classroom, so that was the last way I signed in to anything Google. But I want to sign in with my Google account.
Watched: Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl 🎥
Another one we watched over Christmas. Rewatched, actually, as we saw it when it came out last year.
Tons of fun, of course. Four stars.
Watched: A Few Good Men 🎥
I’m trying the Micro.blog films feature, for more control than the Letterboxd RSS feed.
We introduced our daughter to The West Wing over the last few months, and needed more Sorkin. Also RIP Rob Reiner. It’s a great film. I’d give it four stars if this had them.
The world turns, and just like that, it’s a new year. Happy New Year, everybody!
I didn’t know creating a list on Letterboxd would add an entry to my feed, and thereby create a post on my blog. It was only meant to be a place to record the films we watched recently, prior to me writing about them. Oh well.
Incredibly, and contrary to my previous post, I remain unwhammed after shopping in the West End on the Saturday before Christmas. Wow.
It was busy, you won’t be surprised to hear.
It is the 20th of December, and incredibly, I have not yet been Whammed! Which probably just shows how little I go out.
I’m shopping in the West End today, though, so Whamaggedon seems inevitable.
Every time I try to share a link to GoodLinks on my Mac, the sharing app crashes. This applies to both Safari and NetNewsWire. Haven’t tried from anything else yet. I may reboot.
There’s something way wrong with this list from Variety of the 100 all-time best comedy films. There are hundreds of those lists, of course.
But this one has Airplane at only 62. 62! And then compounds the error by making number 1 be… The Naked Gun. A fine and funny film, to be sure; but not as good as Airplane. Certainly not 61 places better than it!
‘[W]e might have to wait two years for the conclusion’ I wrote almost six years ago.
The conclusion of The Book of Dust arrived the other day. I haven’t started it yet, and now I’m thinking I might go back and reread the previous one first.
Spent yesterday at the Battle of Ideas festival, from the Academy of Ideas. Lots of panels on various subjects around politics, society, literature, and more. I mostly went to literature-related ones. why has fantasy fiction become so popular? How fantastic is Jane Austen?
Going back for day two today.
Watched: Mission: Impossible 🎥
Went back and took a half-star off after posting, because of the betrayal. Honestly. It’s hard to get over that. I don’t really know why I went on and watched the second one last night.