Starting season 2 of SeaQuest DSV 📺

Watching an episode of The X Files season one (“Fallen Angel”) with a brew. Just like lunchtime in high school 📺

Got to say, I’m really enjoying watching seaQuest DSV on the Horror Channel. I don’t think I’ve seen it since the original run 📺

Picked up a Kirby CMS license yesterday for my new domain (fancied a change from WordPress). 20% off until today too, bonus 😎

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The photo above is when I met William Gibson during his “Idoru” book tour, at Andromeda in Birmingham, 1997. Loved Ulysses 31 as a kid (can’t remember the ending though). Nice little find via Facebook The History of Ulysses 31: A Worldwide Hit Barely Registered in the US. I’ve had the MP3 of this for years, but of course somebody would have uploaded it to YouTube. William Gibson’s epicNeuromancer, dramatised by the BBC.

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The Bond themes that could have been. Michael Hawley has died. I hadn’t heard his name before (not that I can recollect anyway) but wow, what a life: A man of manifold interests, his achievements ranged from developing ideas behind the so-called Internet of Things to publishing the world’s biggest book. A lot of the expected Apple Silicon articles doing the rounds, but I particularly enjoyed reading this one.

Finally bought myself a Raspberry Pi Cortec Rover from Pimoroni (sale on, 20% off!) 🤖

20 minutes or so left of Space Force. Really enjoyed it, hope it gets a season 2

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The Project Behind a Front Page Full of Names “Putting 100,000 dots or stick figures on a page “doesn’t really tell you very much about who these people were, the lives that they lived, what it means for us as a country,” Ms. Landon said. So, she came up with the idea of compiling obituaries and death notices of Covid-19 victims from newspapers large and small across the country, and culling vivid passages from them.

MISSIONS, SEASON 2

I watched season 1 of this on BBC Four in 2018. I didn’t know season 2 had been released, and both are on Prime! It’s French with subtitles, and I highly recommend it. The Prime synopsis isn’t great, Wikipedia is better: In the near future, the first manned space mission to Mars, Ulysses 1, is a European mission funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) and William Meyer, a billionaire Swiss philanthropist.

Another day, another domain bought. Wonder if I’ll get round to building anything on this one, or if it’s just another “good idea I’ll get to” 😄

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Cozy Lego I’ve never heard the term before I listened to the tested.com “This Is A Test” podcast but wow these photos look amazing. Words don’t do it justice, go and check out Architeclego over on Instagram. The Five Deeps Great article over at The New Yorker about the expedition to visit the 5 deepest points of the 5 oceans. They also stopped at Titanic. The real Lord Of The Flies For his new book, Humankind: A Hopeful History, Rutger Bregman uncovered the real-life story of 6 schoolboys who were stranded on a Pacific island for 15 months in 1965-66.

Just noticed season 3 of Somebody Feed Phil | Netflix Official Site lands on the 29th of May. Real feel good 📺

QUICK LINK TO SOME USEFUL DEV TOOLS

Fayaz Ahmed has posted a great list over on dev.to “I am surprised more people are not using these tools!!”. Some really nice inclusions for API, HTML email, image optimisation… Well worth a coffee and some digging into.

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CleanShot X for Mac This screenshot/video capture tool is great - even lets you capture scrolling regions intelligently. Arundhati Roy: ‘The pandemic is a portal’ Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us.

Dog walking in the rain

NASA AND THE OPEN SOURCE ROVER

This made me smile so much last night. NASA JPL has created a website where you can drive a rover in 3D (works perfectly on mobile too), plus it also has a “build your own rover” section. This not only lists the parts but it also lets you drive that rover in the browser too - it’s brilliant! If nothing else you can enjoy some stress-free driving on another planet for a while 🚀

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Future Crunch seriously nailed it in this week’s edition. So much good stuff in there, but here are some of their quick links from near the end of the newsletter: At the beginning of every disaster movie, there’s a scientist being ignored “I never hear scientists, true scientists, good quality scientists, speak in terms of nationality.” Never before have so many of the world’s researchers focused so urgently on a single topic.

Just caught the first episode of DEVS. Yup, I’m hooked.

Seriously great edition from Future Crunch in the inbox today. If you haven’t heard of them “We are a group of scientists, artists, researchers and designers who believe that science and technology are the most powerful drivers of human progress. We’re determined to share that story. Our expertise ranges from political economy, genetics, urban planning and zoology, to music, painting and philosophy. We use our diverse skills and knowledge to provide unexpected perspectives on the state of the world in 2020.

Done some work, time for a film or two. “Reign Of Fire” is first up 🎥

Totally missed that season 2 of Cosmos started on National Geographic UK last Sunday. Catch up TV is an amazing thing 📺

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Location data of phones on a Florida beach during Spring Break via The Loop Life size pizza table and meatball pizza via Under Consideration Quarantined photographer executes fantastic FaceTime fashion shoot via Cult Of Mac ‘RoboCop 2’: The crazy story of how Cain got his CG puppeteered head “What’s ironic about that is – the stop-motion that Tippett Studio did in RoboCop 2 is astounding. In my opinion, Cain is the pinnacle of stop motion as a realistic VFX technique.

Just finished the last episode of Picard. Damn that was good 🚀📺

First film of the day - Tomorrowland 🍿

Trying to decide between watching “The Thing” or the 70s version of “Invasion Of The Body Snatchers” 🤔🎥

Time for a bit of Doom Eternal 🎮

Thinking about my phone, one thing I’d really like is if the layout changed over the day - “you’re done with work for the day, let’s shuffle those apps out of thumb reach until tomorrow” 🤔

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Nintendo Customer Support Goes Above And Beyond For 95-Year-Old Grandma’s Busted Game Boy Nine Inch Nails make Ghosts V-VI available for free Astronaut Chris Hadfield Reviews Space Movies, from ‘Gravity’ to ‘Interstellar’ | Vanity Fair Flight 008 first podcast episodes are now online “Eleven of the biggest writers in science fiction, through eleven unique stories, follow one single thread: a non-stop flight from Tokyo to San Francisco that passes through a wrinkle in spacetime and lands in the year 2040.

Starting the morning with some pre-work Disney+ action. Time for The Phantom Menace 📽

Starting the day off with Europe “Out Of This World” 🎵

Watching “The Imagineering Story” 📺

MOCKOON - RUN MOCK APIS LOCALLY

I’ve been working through “Building Forms with Vue.js” by Marina Mosti, and a tool she mentioned to use was an open source free API simulator called Mockoon: “Mockoon is the easiest and quickest way to run mock APIs locally. No remote deployment, no account required, open source." Seriously, this app is brilliant. I think I’ll get a lot of use out of it 😄 H/T to Enjoy The Vue podcast, episode 6.

Outside one of the local pubs (seen while dog walking).

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Flight 008, a multi-part science fiction story Following on from the XPrize “Seat 14C” science fiction competition from 2017. “Eleven of the biggest writers in science fiction, through eleven unique stories, follow one single thread: a non-stop flight from Tokyo to San Francisco that passes through a wrinkle in spacetime and lands in the year 2040. With performances by an all-star cast Dan Stevens, Calista Flockheart, Reid Scott, Keith David, Alfred Molina, and Danny Trejo Flight 008 is an audio experience unlike any other.

WE ARE WAVES OF THE SAME SEA

I meant to post this a while back (pre-vaccine release), but it was left languishing in the drafts. If you read one thing today, this newsletter from Future Crunch should be it. It’s not overly lengthy, and this section in particular struck a chord with me. Don’t forget the scientists. There are more of them alive today than have ever existed, and right now as you’re reading this, they’re all pulling in the same direction.

"ONE DAY I'LL CREATE A PROPER BLOG FOR MYSELF"

Yeah. One day. When I get a spare hour or two. When I decide which static site generator I want to use. After a long time reading other indie blogs I decided to just go for it. Basic WP theme, no bells and whistles, just content that I’ve found or written in an easy to administer format. So here we go for 2020, and yes I’m even using Gutenberg 😎.

FLEA HAS A BOOK CLUB!

So with lockdowns/isolation/home working rampant, I thought I’d post some things that I’ve found which are totally unrelated to coronavirus. There are plenty of great sources online to get information from, so instead of contributing to the churn and the endless memes I present the first link - Flea’s book club (h/t The Outline).

Ok here goes. After listening to a lot of the @monday micro.monday podcasts in the last week, and seeing my Facebook feed turn more anxious I’ve signed up. This place seems great 😎