I spend the last three days reading a book on the history of Japanese pop culture and all of a sudden I've bought myself cans of Asahi. Disgustingly impressionable

Buy BLADESONG! Now in Early Access, it's an insanely detailed blacksmithing RPG featuring a grim, immersive story campaign written by yours truly!

Luna refused to make eye contact with me when I was about to leave for London earlier this morning 😅

Sleepy dog

The vocal harmonies in Nowhere Man - and only the vocal harmonies - are currently living rent free in my head

Pick up the nearest book. Turn to page 42, and post the second sentence. “Tactical design patterns support low-level design decisions; the intent of these decisions is to design and implement a solution that fits the problem domain as closely as possible”

I peeked at my therapist’s notes and this was the only thing written down

Browsing the Lexus website and stumbled upon their "Lexus AI Concierge" which includes example prompts such as, "Help me choose a grade" or "Summarise the [specific Lexus model you're looking at]". A wholly unnecessary (and slow) tool. Just have a better structured and content-designed website!

jesus nailed on to score with a cross like that

It's been a while since I last looked at external SSDs, but I'm pretty sure a 1TB one didn't set you back £110 (I regret not buying one earlier)

Ramsgate harbour looking decent

Because I’m sad and need some form of organisation, I’ve written up a spreadsheet of all the London museums that were recommended to me by online peoples. They all look great, but I’m definitely most interested in visiting The Wallace Collection, Garden Museum, and the Museum of Brands

Had a tennis lesson today where the sole focus was on the backhand. No idea how many I hit in total, but it must’ve been in the 100s. Starting to get better direction and a lot more energy through the shot; the rally ball cross-court is landing deep pretty consistently now

“You can check out any time but you can never leave” living rent free in my head

I’ve been given so many recommendations for niche, special interest, lesser known museums and galleries in central London in the last day. I have my work cut out trying to visit all of them this year

Fur cut and a new bandana

Today's newsletter: some thoughts on the government's latest U-Turn, both from a policy perspective (this specific U-Turn is good) and a political and organisational one (they really should stop making predictable mistakes):

Hotel California's lyrics are astonishingly evocative. A real song of innocence and experience

Healthy eating out the window today as I've acquired multiple bags of Cadburys Mini Snowballs for 50p each in the reduced section at Tesco

Nearly 50 grand for a Golf GTI, 50 year anniversary edition or not, is obscene

1. Bloodborne 2. Deus Ex 3. FF7 4. Dark Souls 5. Stardew Valley 6. HL2 7. Papers, Please 8. Dishonored 9. FF8 10. Kotor

Luna really doesn’t want me to read my book and is demanding I give her strokes and fuss (I must oblige)

Had a good time revisiting William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience yesterday. I think it's about time I got around to exploring his epic poetry/prophetic books, now. I dabbled a little bit with them when I wrote my dissertation back in uni, but a proper read wouldn't go amiss

Welbeck has a knack for scoring against Man Utd, doesn't he?

Thought it best to break up all the philosophy books I’ve been reading recently with a bit of Blake

Clair Obscur, no doubt

A glass of Prosecco is a suitable substitute for cooking support when there’s no wine in the house, right

Morrissey here doing a “just sold a China dog for a £7 profit on bargain hunt” pose

Ten years ago I was travelling to work on the train, funnily enough listening to Station to Station, when I read the news that David Bowie had passed away. Today, I'll be listening to his back catalogue and taking a moment to reflect on what an extraordinary career he had

FF7 Rebirth then, Metaphor now

Started using Threads a bit more mainly cos the football/sports scene is generally livelier than here, and it is one facet of the Old Ways that I’d like to recapture on socials

Today I will finally get around to filling out the (surprisingly) long form to volunteer at my local library and archives

Too young to have memories of playing anything. The only game I recall at that age was Duke Nukem 3D cos I remember seeing my (much older) cousins loading up MS-DOS and playing it. It made no sense to me (almost certainly for the best) Now: probably one of Pokemon or Mario RPG

Grok is awful; it's the very worst example of what running AI without any guardrails and concern for harm looks like. But let's not forget that it's people - and let's be clear here, those people are men - who are telling Grok to make those images.

Nearly stacked it three times on the ice but at least I got a photo of the sun rising

At the time, Croc. My aunt bought it for me for 20 quid from Woolworths. I was obsessed with the lil Gobbos Now, it’s FF7. But also an honourable mention to Grandia; a wonderful RPG

It’s so cold today I saw the postie wearing leggings with their shorts

This is a deeply depressing read by Rachel Hewitt and one that will feel frustratingly familiar to anyone trying to get a book published right now!! Also when she lists the big non fiction sellers - phew. open.substack.com/pub/rachelhe...

Back then I basically played nothing but Tekken 3, either on the PS1 or local arcades Now, it’s Half-Life

Emery would be a disaster at United for the same reason he was a disaster at crisis era Arsenal and did not do that well at PSG: Emery (I don't mean this as a criticism) is not a manager for a dysfunctional club.

Then: FF8 Now: System Shock 2

I’ve spent so long driving a budget city car that my heuristic for judging if a car is premium or not is whether it has an armrest

Deus Ex then and now

Back to work tomorrow. I am not prepared

Exactly what I want to see in a VW interior. Simple, elegant, functional. The sooner we leave behind every ancillary control being capactive touch buttons / on a touchscreen, the better www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_9C...

Trying to grok a chapter on philosophical logic having played a couple hours of tennis and still feeling slightly hungover from last night may not have been the wisest use of time this afternoon

Start the year as you mean to go on

Merry new year time for bed

It’s a magical world, Hobbes ol’ buddy. Let’s go exploring!