Some of Yes's early seventies stuff, including Astral Traveller, [No Experience Needed, No Opportunity Necessary], Siberian Khatru and Roundabout (hell, several tracks from Fragile) rock so damn hard.

I used a butterfly keyboard MacBook for the first time yesterday (I tried out a 2017 MacBook Pro at a Cash Converters), and I can see why Apple returned to the normal scissor key mechanism. The butterfly keyboard feels bad to type on — the keys are too shallow and offer too little tactile feedback.

With Godzilla walking past the Statue of Liberty in the trailer, I’m pretty sure Godzilla Minus Zero will be the second Japanese Godzilla movie to show Godzilla in America, with the first being Destroy All Monsters in 1968, which has Godzilla attack New York.

Good luck to John Ternus as Apple's new CEO in September. Tim Cook, as a supply and logistics guy, did a great job overall, but it will be good to finally have an engineer run Apple.

The frequent speculation on Trump’s death or mental decline is a kind of… catastrophist hopecore? (Am I using “hopecore” right?)

I enjoy vacuuming. It’s not my favourite household task – that would be hanging out laundry – but it gives you some exercise and you get a nice clean floor as a result.

I just reinstalled my 3.46 GHz hexacore CPU in my 2010 5,1 Mac Pro (which is super-easy, as the Mac Pro's CPU and RAM are on a convenient slot-in daughterboard).

When you read text with a given person's voice in your head (for example, when I read George W. Bush's tribute for Ronald Reagan after the latter's death in 2004, I read the tribute with Bush's voice in my head), does your inner voice slow or speed up according to the person's way of talking?

I just got my second (to my knowledge) Bluesky block. :( My first was from someone who was really rude and belittling when I expressed my belief that sentient AI is possible. This new block was from someone who responded really spitefully to my post about Eddie Redmayne.

What happened to Eddie Redmayne? He won an Oscar for The Danish Girl, starred in the uneven and cancelled Fantastic Beasts Harry Potter spin-off series, embarrassed himself in Jupiter Ascending, and now you hardly ever see or hear of him anymore.

I just discovered an amazing animated filmmaker on YouTube named Avocado Animations. Avocado's work often feels like a more mature Meat Canyon, and his shorts are really well-directed works of confronting pitch-black satire.

While it would be nice if the lower-end iPads had faster USB-C ports, or if the MacBook Neo had two USB 3-speed ports instead of one USB 3 and one USB 2-speed port, USB-2 is fine. It's still fast enough for most light-to-medium tasks, and it's way faster than USB-1 in my vintage Macs.

I just completed Superliminal, a game I'd dabbled in before, and really liked it. Superliminal is a surreal puzzle game with challenging reality-bending mechanics. The game has a fun Portal-like sense of dry humour, but also some creepy moments as the inescapable dream sequence deepens.

The base M1 chip was included in a wide range of devices, from iMacs to iPads, and the M1 Max was included in the MacBook Pro and Mac Studio, but the M1 Pro was only ever included in the MacBook Pro. If it weren't for the global chip shortage, we probably would have gotten an M1 Pro Mac Mini.

@icklenellierose.bsky.social Do you think you'll play Idols Of Ash? It's a great indie game, but the giant centipede that pursues you through the cavern could be a problem. Is a centipede different enough that it won't trigger your fear of spiders, or is it like a MULTIPLIED spider (and so, worse)?

I still wonder: Ultraman, the Superman clone in James Gunn’s Superman film, is brutish, destructive, simple-minded and clad in black, so do you think his design alludes to the popular perception of Zack Snyder’s Superman as shallow, grim, violent and unheroic?

Idols Of Ash now has a Mac version! Thank you, @leafygames.bsky.social!

I recall some Whovians asserting that the next Doctor after Ncuti Gatwa must be a woman, as the BBC cannot let the first full-time female Doctor look like a failed experiment. But then Gatwa regenerated into Billie Piper and they were like ‘Not like that!’

I didn't like Maestro either, but you don't need to make a big butthurt thing about it. Also, the Ninth Doctor kissed a man (Captain Jack Harkness) all the way back in 2005. Del Arroz's complaint about the Fifteenth Doctor kissing Rogue is not only homophobic, but DATED homophobia.

With Apple having discontinued the Mac Pro, I wonder if they'll hold a "funeral" for it at WWDC, like they did for Mac OS 9 at WWDC 2002.

I have a proposition: a remake of Ingmar Bergman's Persona, starring Jessica Chastain as Elisabet Vogler and Jodie Whittaker as Nurse Alma, and directed by Joachim Trier. How about it?

Eclipse, Delta Goodrem's song for this year's Eurovision Song Contest, is nice enough but very generic. Plenty of good Eurovision pop ballads sound just like this. 🤷‍♀️ Some think Eclipse is a shoe-in to win, but I don't think it will stand out enough.

I haven't seen much online about Lee Cronin's The Mummy, which is a shame, as it's REALLY GOOD. The Mummy has great cinematography, makeup and music, engaging characters, some fun dark humour and a compelling plot that paces its gut-wrenching scares with rising dread and intriguing lore. 4.5/5

I'm seeing Lee Cronin's The Mummy today, and noticed that the film stars Laia Costa. Her name sounded familiar, so I looked her up, and Costa starred in the remarkable 2015 German thriller Victoria, which was shot in one single 138 minute take.

I was about to ask what the hell happened to that Mac port of Cronos: The New Dawn we were promised ages ago, but then I found the release date trailer from last week, and it’s coming out on April 28! :D

Me, listening to I Want You (She's So Heavy) by The Beatles for the first time:

@leafygames.bsky.social I think bioluminescence should be the default for Idols Of Ash's centipede. The illumination doesn't diminish the centipede's scariness, and since green symbolises the player character's memories, the green of the monster could symbolise the character's urge to push on.

I just watched a fan film called Logan: The Wolf, and it’s so freaking cool: a grisly, really well-choreographed brawl, followed by an intriguing tease of the broader X-Men universe. (Warning: the gory violence is VERY graphic.) youtu.be/xM5pep-vwo0?...

@leafygames.bsky.social I just finished Idols Of Ash, and I really liked it: it’s deeply atmospheric, the climbing and grappling mechanics are a steep learning curve (pun intended) and the giant centipede is horrifying. Would you consider making a Mac version? 🙏

I walked 20,581 steps today, equating to 19.09 km. :)

I wondered if we might see a bout of terminal lucidity from Trump — he suddenly repeals and apologises for his harmful policies and toxic behaviour, comes clean about Epstein and resigns, then dies shortly after — but then remembered that there was never a good man in him with wits to regain.

2026 has an abundance of video game movies — Iron Lung, Return To Silent Hill, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Mortal Kombat 2, new Street Fighter and Resident Evil movies, and a third Angry Birds film — but I just learned of another video game movie coming out in late April: Exit 8. :D

I realised the other day that while I miss my father (who died in September 2024) and will never stop missing him, I don't miss my grandparents.

I just learned about the upcoming horror movie Pinocchio: Unstrung. In the Twisted Childhood Universe franchise, Bambi: The Reckoning wasn't very good and Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood And Honey was awful, but Blood-And-Honey 2 and Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare were pretty good, so I'm mildly optimistic.

The Life Of Chuck is a really charming, poignant character study, the second-act dance sequence is electric and the surreal first act is very intriguing, but the excessive, obtrusive narration really dragged it down for me.

Late in Dishonored 2, you use a timepiece to shift between the present and past in the manor of a mad aristocrat, and it’s so freaking cool how if you incapacitate said aristocrat, he can’t attend the summoning ritual that made him insane, thereby changing the future/present for the better.

Lasers were a huge scientific breakthrough and now we use them to play with cats. Computers were also a huge scientific breakthrough and now we use them to look at pictures of cats. In other words, science was made for cats.

It’s so strange that while Biden is about four years older than Trump, Trump took the record for the oldest US President at age 70, then Biden took the record (at 78 years and 61 days), then Trump took it back again (at 78 years, 220 days).

It’s disconcerting how so many people don’t realise that Ireland isn’t part of the United Kingdom.

I don't watch iJustine's videos very often, but I like how bright and enthusiastic she is. It's a shame that she seems pretty pro-AI, and her Instagram post celebrating 50 years of Apple is almost certainly AI-generated, given its waffling, impersonal feel and many clunky phrases.

I hope that Mac port of Sniper Elite 5 comes out soon. 🤞

Australia has several cryptids, including the mythical yowie and bunyip, giant eels and various wild cats, but it’s rather fascinating that the thylacine, with frequent but unsubstantiated sightings, is a rare case of an animal that once undeniably existed but later became a cryptid.

Today marks twelve years as the film critic for the Star Mail newspaper chain. :D I'm still deeply grateful that the Mail took me on in 2014, and forever thrilled to have such a widespread (~100k weekly circulation across six newspapers) and appreciative audience for my weekly film reviews. ❤️

They Will Kill You is supernatural Blaxploitation The Raid with a drop of Snowpiercer, and it’s awesome.

When I’m having a brisk walk and my heart and lungs are pumping, I’m breathing deep and steady, I’m sweating but not profusely and my leg muscles don’t feel cramped, exactly, but more like gently pinched, I know I’m getting a good workout. :)

@thespoonyone.bsky.social You mentioned a while back that you needed incredibly small screwdrivers to work on your laptop. Well, I also needed really small screwdrivers to work on my M2 Pro MacBook Pro the other day, including one I’d never even heard of: PL1.

I like the Nuka World add-on for Fallout 4 more than @bigbeak.bsky.social, as the theme park setting is vibrant and fun to explore and the side-quests with Oswald, Cito and Sierra Petrovita are engaging and amusing, but I agree that the main Raider quest-line is terribly underbaked.

I come from a timeline where everything is the same except that Tank in The Matrix is played by John Leguizamo instead of Marcus Chong, and Tank survives into the sequels with the narrative role Link has in our timeline. Also, the Merovingian is named Hades.

Does a Sports Emmy for Outstanding Music Direction, won for the 59th Super Bowl Pre-Game Show, count toward the EGOT? If so, Lady Gaga is only a Tony (theatre award) away from the EGOT. :)

I tried replacing my M2 Pro MacBook Pro's top-case, which includes the keyboard and battery, and it was quite the ordeal. I followed a guide and started very organised, but when reseating the motherboard, I lost track of screws and cables so often that I felt like I was losing my mind.