Microposts
Minute Cryptic - 27 January, 2026 “Wolf pack roved with uncertainty, initially turning back” (6) 🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣 🏆 0 hints – 2 under the community par (55,613 solvers so far). www.minutecryptic.com
In answer to my earlier question: like this! I’m not sure it all quite hangs together, though. I’ll have to watch Angas’s video.
Every word in today’s Minute Cryptic could be an indicator. Every. Single. Word. How am I meant to solve that?
Watched: Now You See Me 🎥
I believe the third of these recently came out, but we hadn’t seen any of them at the start of the month and year when we watched this. A group of stage magicians — so good they seem that they might have real powers — do heists. Or do they?
A decent romp.
Watched: Office Space 🎥
Some of my work colleagues recommended this to me. I was vaguely aware of its existence before that, since it’s been around since 1999.
It’s a comedy about office workers — amusingly enough, they’re specifically software developers working to prevent the year-2000 two-digit date problem, or ‘Y2K Bug’, as it was usually called. Amusing, because I did some of that myself. Or at least tested the system I worked on at the time to make sure it didn’t have the problem (it didn’t).
As to the amusement value of the film itself: it was fine. Not that great, but not a total waste of time. Probably two and a half stars, if M.b had stars like Letterboxd.
Watched: Mrs. Dalloway 🎥
I still haven’t caught up with posting about the movies we watched over Christmas & New Year, but never mind. Watched this yesterday. I read the book about seven years ago, and would have thought it close to impossible to film. Far from it. This actually worked pretty well. It’s not as rich as the book, of course, but it hits many of the points the book makes. The shellshocked veteran of the First World War, Septimus, I though was particularly well played, by Rupert Graves. Who, I learn, played LeStrade in Sherlock.
In the unlikely event that anyone reading this uses the London bus routes 19 or 38, you have until today to comment on TFL’s terrible proposals to reduce the services.
I was wondering why my iPhone was refusing to download my full Obsidian vault.
Had a look at its storage:
Whoops! I’m gonna need a bigger phone.
Existential question: in Springsteen’s ‘Open All Night’, if it ‘takes [him] two hours to get back to where [his] baby lives’, why does he later call her on the phone to say he’s ‘got three more hours but [he’s] covering ground’? Where has he been in the extra hours???
📚 Emily Tesh wrote the best SF book of the last couple of years (not just my opinion, it won the Hugo). Now The Incandescent is an incredible fantasy book, a magic-school story for adults.
She’s so good she almost scares me. Yet she just seemed to appear out of nowhere.
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.