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Recently, I finished one of the most beautiful, interesting and fascinating, but at the same time challenging, books I have ever read: “The Old Ways: a Journey on Foot” by Robert Macfarlane.

I had other plans. Like finalizing some posts I had been mulling over the past days or weeks. But then I did the occasional

Not even one week after the 2025 edition of the Record Store Day, two releases did arrive which I ordered online on the Monday night after RSD¹. At the time I hit the stores on RSD, the two releases I wanted where not available². Today, both releases are still available online, obviously they did not sell out.

When I started writing on this blog, a recurring theme I considered was a constant information overdose. This extends to the impenetrable thickets that is the content of streaming platforms, who carry more than anyone can watch. Hence review aggregation tools like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic can be helpful in avoiding Razzies.

Today, the sheet of the day in my Art of Vinyl Covers calendar showed the cover of Forever Young by German synth-pop band Alphaville.

Outside of reggae circles, Max Romeo is probably best known for his raunchy hit Wet Dream, an early reggae piece from 1968¹ that reached number 10 in the UK singles chart in August 1969 despite limited airplay². The backing band on this and other tunes was the Hippy Boys, in which the Barret brothers Aston ‘Family Man’ on bass and Carlton on drums formed the rhythm section. Of course, Aston and Carlton Barret would later come to fame when joining Bob Marley and providing their strong rhythm backbone to the Wailers.³

For several reasons^{1 2}, I was looking into a new hosting solution for this personal blog. I looked into some options but there were not many providers which offered

With iOS 17.2., Apple released its own version of a journaling app. After the app was announced, a few voices raised concerns that this would be another instance of so-called sherlocking, meaning Apple develops onboard features or own apps that cannibalize on tried and tested third-party apps.

Ich bin kein großer Podcast-Hörer. Einigen weithin empfohlenen (gehypeden) Podcasts bin ich kürzlich wieder entfolgt, ich habe nicht die Zeit¹ um - ansonsten von mir durchaus geschätzten - Unterhaltungskünstlern beim belanglosen Labern zuzuhören, oder dabei, wie sie sich mit ihrem Gegenüber über ihre eigenen Witze amüsieren. Meist fehlen mir Inhalte, sei es eine neue Sichtweise auf ein Thema, etwas Wissenswertes oder neu zu Entdeckendes oder schlicht gute Unterhaltung, stattdessen plätschert der Talk nur so dahin.

My family gifted me the X-Wing Fighter LEGO set from the MICROFIGHTERS series. It is one of the early sets in this series, dating from 2014, and they bought it used.

A common complaint with Mastodon or the Fediverse in general is that the registration for new users is too complicated because they have to choose a server aka an instance. A common dismissal of this complaint is that most of us have at some point in time successfully chosen an email, cloud storage, or other provider, so we are expected to be able to do so as well for Mastodon.

Music makes people happier, and it doesn’t harm them. Most things that make you feel better are harmful.
— Fran Lebowitz¹