Month: March 2025
March Music
(March 31, 2025)Music I’ve bought in March. Hey, that’s quite a lot of music. And a couple of eagerly awaited albums this month: Sacrew Paws has a new album out! Get it here. It’s pretty spiffy — it’s more “produced” than previous albums, and they don’t sing across each other like they used to (I love that … Continue reading March Music
Book Club 2025: The Moon and The Echo edited by Richard Porter
(March 31, 2025)I don’t really know how I come to have this… I guess I bought it in 2022? Anyway, this is subtitled “Responses to The Moon and The Melodies”, which is an album I quite like. It’s by Cocteau Twins with Harold Budd, but not titled that way, because that would have led to higher sales, … Continue reading Book Club 2025: The Moon and The Echo edited by Richard Porter
Hardware stores have become more hard core
(March 30, 2025)Everybody’s Live is the best TV show ever just based on this moment
(March 29, 2025)It’s The Year Of Linux On The Laptop
(March 29, 2025)So Firefox freaked out so violently at some kind of… security thing on a web site that it flooded the desktop with events that the laptop was unusable. Cool cool So I rebooted, and: OH MY GOD! First of all, that screen is so dusty! Second of all… when rebooting, Debian now kicks in something … Continue reading It’s The Year Of Linux On The Laptop
Laurie Sheck
(March 29, 2025)This is not Édith Piaf!
Book Club 2025: L’été 80 by Marguerite Duras
(March 28, 2025)I apparently picked this up at a sale in 2021. I quite enjoy Duras’ books, but I’ve only read a handful. I think I’ve seen most of her hit movies, though. This book is quite short, and you have to admire the lengths they’ve gone to to make this into something that can be sold … Continue reading Book Club 2025: L’été 80 by Marguerite Duras
Book Club 2025: The Luck of the Bodkins by P. G. Wodehouse
(March 27, 2025)I was feeling both under the weather and down in the dumps, so I reached for a Wodehouse book. And this one, from 1935, is top notch. This ticks along like extremely complicated clockwork in an almost hypnotic manner. There’s three (3) romances that have to come true, and there’s also a pearl necklace to … Continue reading Book Club 2025: The Luck of the Bodkins by P. G. Wodehouse
Book Club 2025: The Bad Samaritan by Robert Barnard
(March 25, 2025)Today was a perfect day for an old mystery novel. And as usual with Barnard, half of the book is about stuff that happens before The Crime, and then we get half a book of sleuthing. The problem with this kind of structure is that you have to have sufficiently interesting characters to pull it … Continue reading Book Club 2025: The Bad Samaritan by Robert Barnard
Book Club 2025: Fakkelen er tent! by Tor Eystein Øverås
(March 23, 2025)I frequently read several books in parallel — usually different types of books. Like, a musician autobiography, a short story collection and a novel — or in this case, I’ve been reading a book about the history of the “quality paperback” market in Norway. And it took me two and a half years to get … Continue reading Book Club 2025: Fakkelen er tent! by Tor Eystein Øverås
Comics Daze
(March 23, 2025)It’s a day for reading comics for sure. And for music today: Albums from 1981 only. Japan: Tin Drum (1) 12:48: Causeway 25-29 by CF Oh, man, the white balance is so balanced today. That is, it’s very sunny, and the lamp I’m reading under uses a “warm” bulb, so to get kinda realistic white … Continue reading Comics Daze
Book Club 2025: Deeds of Honor by Elizabeth Moon
(March 22, 2025)This is a slightly odd grab-bag of stuff. It’s got three proper short stories, one thirty page deleted sequence from one of the books, several things that I can only describe as “scenes”, and some “myth” recounts. None of these pieces would make much sense to somebody who hasn’t already read all the Paksenarrion books. … Continue reading Book Club 2025: Deeds of Honor by Elizabeth Moon
Book Club 2025: Numero Zero by Umberto Eco
(March 22, 2025)I got If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino as an Xmas present when I was seventeen, and I loved it to bits. Absolutely amazing book. But why am I talking about Calvino? Because I think I’m suffering from some obscure disease probably called something like calvinoecotrepidatioensis, wherein every time my eyes … Continue reading Book Club 2025: Numero Zero by Umberto Eco
Book Club 2025: London 2084 by Bing & Bringsværd
(March 21, 2025)I guess this author duo has a special place in the hearts of all Norwegian nerds of a certain age. Not only did they champion science fiction in Norway in the 70s, but they edited a number of anthologies, got a bunch of classics translated, wrote sci-fi TV series… and also wrote a bunch of … Continue reading Book Club 2025: London 2084 by Bing & Bringsværd
Book Club 2025: De romantiske hundene by Roberto Bolaño
(March 20, 2025)Of all the things I opine on that I’m utterly unqualified to opine on, poetry is the thing that I’m unqualifiediest (that’s a word) to opine on. But I’ve never let that stop me before, so: Eh, it didn’t grab me. I have no idea, of course, whether it’s the translation that’s the problem (this … Continue reading Book Club 2025: De romantiske hundene by Roberto Bolaño
Book Club 2025: Line Up For Murder by Marian Babson
(March 20, 2025)Oops! I was hung over today, so I decided to read a mystery. This is a quite original concept — it’s about a bunch of people in line for days for a huge sale, and the “mystery” bit is about whether the people in the queue have other motives for sleeping on the sidewalk than … Continue reading Book Club 2025: Line Up For Murder by Marian Babson
WoRdPrEsS ReWrItEs My PoStS
(March 18, 2025)So the other day, for the first time ever, I actually read one of my blog posts (excerpt seen above). (This also explains all the typoes.) But I saw that “WordPress” up there and I knew that I’d never write something that cringe-worthy. And indeed: See? In that test, there’s only one capitalised character in … Continue reading WoRdPrEsS ReWrItEs My PoStS
I Pity The Plants
(March 18, 2025)I’ve got a couple of big sansevierias of different types, but they all have the same problem: About once a year, they send up these huge flower stems of, admittedly, not very impressive off-white flowers. So what’s the problem? It’s that every night when it gets dark, they send out the richest, sweetest, most perfumed … Continue reading I Pity The Plants
Book Club 2025: Ned til hundene by Helle Helle
(March 18, 2025)Helle Helle is a Danish author, and I’ve seen her books around for years, but never actually read any of her books. I guess the main intriguing thing for me has been her cool name — yes, I’m that shallow. I guess I bought this book at an airport in December 2014, but then never … Continue reading Book Club 2025: Ned til hundene by Helle Helle
Two Panels From A Comic Book Presented Without Comment
(March 17, 2025)Comics Daze
(March 17, 2025)Finally a day for reading comics. And for music today: 1972 only. Or possibly also a bit of 1973 if I run out of 1972. David Bowie: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars 11:14: Death of Copra #1 by Michel Fiffe (Image Comics) The end of Copra is here. … Continue reading Comics Daze
Book Club 2025: The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham
(March 17, 2025)Like everybody else, I loved Cunningham’s book The Hours — it had a certain something very special going on. So I continued reading his books, but by the time I bought this one, I’d grown somewhat weary of his style. But I’ve got this strange habit of continuing to buy books from authors I’ve gone … Continue reading Book Club 2025: The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham
Wherein I Explain Why Emacs Is The Best Tool For WordPress
(March 16, 2025)When I look at popular tools for writing blog posts, they all seem to require an ungodly amount of work to get common things done. They mostly all get the basics right: You can just type away at a text, and then post it. Easy peasy. Sometimes it loses your work, but that’s modern computers … Continue reading Wherein I Explain Why Emacs Is The Best Tool For WordPress
Claude Simon is still hard core
(March 15, 2025)Claude Simon is hard core
(March 15, 2025)Book Club 2025: McSweeney’s #17
(March 15, 2025)This was published in 2005, but I apparently bought this in 2013 — at The Strand! I think this was after I stopped my subscription to the magazine, but apparently this format was irresistible to me. As it is to this day. Some of the “mail” in this package is just bizarre fun, like this … Continue reading Book Club 2025: McSweeney’s #17
Book Club 2025: Finding My Elegy by Ursula K. Le Guin
(March 14, 2025)The first half of this book has poems from most of her previous collections… … and I skipped that half, because I’ve already read them. Yes, OK, sure, perhaps I’m a teensy bit fanboyish about Le Guin? Anyway, the last half of the book is poetry written in the years before 2010, and I’ve been … Continue reading Book Club 2025: Finding My Elegy by Ursula K. Le Guin
Book Club 2025: King Rat by China Miéville
(March 14, 2025)I’ve read most of Miéville’s books, and they’re a bit hit or miss. He’s a talented writer on a sentence by sentence basis, and that’s sometimes a problem: He gets so enthusiastic about how good he is that he has a tendency to go on and on, conjuring forth an exciting miasmatic milieu just by … Continue reading Book Club 2025: King Rat by China Miéville
Tweaked version of the simple auto poster for Bluesky
(March 13, 2025)There’s are many plugins for WordPress to auto-post to Bluesky. I use the nice and simple one called (simply) simple-auto-poster-for-bluesky. It’s simple! But it has two problems: If you’re editing an older post that the plugin hasn’t seen before, it’ll post that to Bluesky, which is something you’d normally not want to happen. And the … Continue reading Tweaked version of the simple auto poster for Bluesky
Book Club 2025: Daybreak Zero by John Barnes
(March 12, 2025)Barnes wrote some moderately entertaining space opera books back in the day, but this is book two in a post-apocalyptic series. I bought the two first books in 2012, but I only read the first, and I wasn’t quite sure why. But reading this now, it’s kinda coming back to me: The book is competently … Continue reading Book Club 2025: Daybreak Zero by John Barnes
Jazz Show
(March 11, 2025)Comics Research Update
(March 10, 2025)I’ve been updating kwakk.info, the search engine for magazines about comics a bit, because: Anna’s Archive finally updated their libgen.li mirror. So now we can see vital things like turn into and thousands of people with OCD rejoiced. Now, doing searches for Cartoonist PROfiles #35 on Anna’s is easy enough — you just search for … Continue reading Comics Research Update
Book Club 2025: The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt
(March 10, 2025)This is a very short book — it’s part of a series called “Storybook ND” with the motto “the pleasure of reading a great book from cover to cover in an afternoon”. And it really succeeds at being a satisfying little book. It’s almost a short story, really, but it’s sly and witty and feels … Continue reading Book Club 2025: The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt
Random Comics
(March 9, 2025)Voici quelques bandes dessinées que je lis depuis quelques semaines. I mean, here’s some comics I’ve read during the past couple weeks. Spirou continues to be somewhat entertaining, but it depends on the serials they are running, of course. But it’s fun when they put some efforts into launching a new Natacha serialisation. So we … Continue reading Random Comics
Book Club 2025: The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson
(March 9, 2025)I think this is probably the third Sanderson book I’ve read. Sanderson is, of course, one of the most-selling fantasy authors in the world, so I’ve avoided his books, but I picked up one last year and though “well, this isn’t that bad”, so I got two more. This is a novella, and again, it’s … Continue reading Book Club 2025: The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson
Book Club 2025: The Paris Review #250
(March 8, 2025)This is the latest issue, so I’m finally caught up! I mean, I’ve got a whole stack of old issues I bought the other year, but I’ve caught up with the more recent ones. I’ve been reading this over the past couple weeks… It’s an unusually topical issue, but slyly so. The interview with Hanif … Continue reading Book Club 2025: The Paris Review #250
Book Club 2025: Lyorn by Steven Brust
(March 7, 2025)This is the seventeenth book in the Vlad Taltos series which has been going since the early 80s, so… 40 years? I think that’s pretty unique — I mean, there’s been many fantasy book series that have gone on for decades, but not quite this coherently. It’s basically the story of one single guy over … Continue reading Book Club 2025: Lyorn by Steven Brust
I Have Bought What May Be The Best Thing That Has Ever Been Made
(March 7, 2025)Just look at it! Look at it! It’s a keypad with two knobs on it. It’s USB C. And looks what happens when I plug it in. Exactly! Apparently nothing! There are no LEDs! Do you know how rare it is to find a product, any product, that doesn’t have any LED lights these days? … Continue reading I Have Bought What May Be The Best Thing That Has Ever Been Made
Book Club 2025: Parade by Rachel Cusk
(March 5, 2025)I don’t read reviews of book I might read, but I’ve seen some mutterings about this book — well, first of all, that’s it’s not as good as Outline, but then again, very few things are. So I was approaching this with some trepidation. Front-loading books with the most “difficult” material seems to be a … Continue reading Book Club 2025: Parade by Rachel Cusk
Book Club 2025: The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep by Lawrence Block
(March 3, 2025)I quite enjoyed Block’s later Bernie Rhodenbarr books — they were repetetive, but well-written and amusing. So I went ahead and bought all of his earlier Tanner books, and this is the second of those I’ve read. And as before, he’s got the patter going, and it’s amusingly written. But the book has the structure … Continue reading Book Club 2025: The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep by Lawrence Block
Comics Daze
(March 3, 2025)It’s time to read some comics. And for the music, I’m trying to recreate the order of Bowie albums I used to use when I was a teenager and reading comics. Let’s see if I get it right this time… David Bowie: Diamond Dogs 10:09: Distant Ruptures by CF (New York Review Comics) This is … Continue reading Comics Daze
Is it possible to take screenshots of web sites these days?
(March 3, 2025)I was thinking about writing some code for older posts to check broken links and do screenshots of where links points to, as explained here. But before starting that, I thought it might make sense to explore a bit first to see what the options are. So I’ll just be nattering on randomly here and … Continue reading Is it possible to take screenshots of web sites these days?
February Music
(March 1, 2025)Music I’ve bought in February. I’ve literally bought nothing this month. For some values of literally.