Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.

You can't get a lot cooler than that.

![email protected] looks interesting.

![email protected] might become a pleasant UK based one

I have a Plex server for film, tv, audiobooks and music and and a Calibre server for ebooks. I have shelves for my physical book collection that now need re-organising, since I have recently moved. Getting the Plex and Calibre server up and running was a lot quicker, I have to say.

At some stage, I expect that I will move to Jellyfin, but Plex is still ok for now.

A week.

I was in my teens and had no commitments at the time and just spontaneously decided not to eat or sleep for a few days - which I later decided would be a week. At the time, I had no idea of the world record for this or I probably would have tried for that - although, obviously, I was not supervised or anything.

The afternoons from the second day onwards were the worst - when I felt pretty lousy - but otherwise I was running on serotonin and was pretty much on a natural high for most the duration.

At the end, I cycled 12 miles during which one of my feet cramped and left me jabbing at the pedal as it went past, but I did it ok.

I slept extremely well when I finally did, but I took some while to get back into the whole eating thing again.

There is no way in hell that I could do anything like that now.

There is https://beehaw.org/c/creative which seems to be fairly active and certainly includes some knitters.

A week.

I was in my teens and had no commitments at the time and just spontaneously decided not to eat or sleep for a few days - which I later decided would be a week. At the time, I had no idea of the world record for this or I probably would have tried for that - although, obviously, I was not supervised or anything.

The afternoons from the second day onwards were the worst - when I felt pretty lousy - but otherwise I was running on serotonin and was pretty much on a natural high for most the duration.

At the end, I cycled 12 miles during which one of my feet cramped and left me jabbing at the pedal as it went past, but I did it ok.

I slept extremely well when I finally did, but I took some while to get back into the whole eating thing again.

There is no way in hell that I could do anything like that now.

A deckchair? A pub sign?

Some that I have enjoyed:

• A Spy Among Friends
• Slow Horses
• The Ipcress File (both the recent TV show and the 1965 film are great)
• Traitors (2019)
• The Night Manager
• London Spy
• The Game (2014)
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (both the TV show from 1979 and the 2011 film are great)
• Smiley's People

We've recently moved. The house is basically in order - give or take a couple of stacks of boxes in the corner - and the shed is kinda there too, so this weekend is 'doing things in the garden' with hedge trimming the first on the list, along with scanning Gumtree for a suitable mower. I am not going to be borrowing our new neighbour's one for a third time however friendly and happy about it he is.

I have an unexpected WFH day today due to a face-to-face meeting being cancelled. Most of the day will probably be filled with emails and on-line meeting about the reason that the meeting was cancelled though.

Tonight we are evidently having falafel and then I will be putting the new hedge-trimmer to work over the weekend.

How is your weekend looking?

Ahh - ok. I had not met that bug before. I certainly did intend to post there.

Thanks!

It is pretty clear that this is a joke sign/poster - akin to "you don't have to be crazy to work here but it helps" and so on.

I'm very much a fan of Dunsany - though I'm in my '50s so certainly don't count as a younger reader. I clearly recall reading The Hoard of the Gibbelins as a teen (probably in de Camp's The Spell of Seven) and being smitten from then on.

Moving further afield than fantasy, I don't know if anyone reads M. R. James these days. His ghost stories are still adapted for seasonal TV shorts by the BBC as well as cropping up on Radio 4, but whether he is actually read...?

Another that is underappreciated is George and Weedon Grossmith's Diary of a Nobody, which to my mind is easily on a par with Three Men in a Boat, but gets nothing like as much appreciation. But, then how many people read Three Men... nowadays?

I am rather surprised and disappointed with Waldinger's conflation of introversion and 'being shy' here. It does not inspire me to seek out his book.

My 'big read' this year is Finnegans Wake which I am reading weekly along with the reddit TrueLit sub. It would be a very different experience without the comments and interpretation from there, so that's something that I will be thinking about...

Otherwise, The Twisted Ones by T Kingfisher, which is engaging and well paced, a Doctor Who novel from the '90s and am listening to Ron Hutton's Queens of the Wild. This books are always authoritative and entertaining but I have only just started this one so can't say a lot so far.

I would advise not reading them all together. They were published separately and are best read that way IMHO - just dipped into between other reads. James had particular settings and themes that his did extremely well and returned to often. I love love his tales, but I must admit that reading them them all consecutively does them no favours.

Overrated: Before Sunrise (1995) - tedious and self-indulgent. I would rather have seen the play about the cow.

Underrated: After Hours (1985) - One of Scorsese's absolute best. Nightmarish, out-of-control, pitch-black comedy.

Presumably this was not a single snow crystal, but an agglomeration. More details on large snowflakes here.

Another BF listener here - I really liked Walker and McGann on screen in Annika too.

Otherwise, my SO and I have the Ted Lasso finale lined up. The third season (yes, I know, but I agree with the Americans that there is a distinction between series and season) has been a necessary conclusion to the material in the previous two, but not without some fun moments.

And - in terms of other UK TV - we are just on to season two of Jam and Jerusalem which I totally missed at the time but am enjoying now.

Otherwise, in non-UK shows, Drops of God and Shrinking are the clear highlights in our lineup at the moment.

Yes - -for certain values of SF. Nobody is going to call the MCU hard SF, and superheroes are a fairly clear genre of their own, but in the broadest sense that genre certainly feels like it fits into the overall category of SF.