GreyShuck

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago
  • In meetings at work, for my actions or actions that I need to follow up on etc. If I am prepared, I will add them to an existing document that we are working from in the meeting or will create a specific actions email as we go. If I am not prepared, it will be notes jotted in a physical notebook. In either case, I will then copy any actions for me to MS TO Do - which is one of the very few relevant apps that we have available on both the locked down phones and laptops. Just occasionally, it is more appropriate to make notes directly in the TO Do app.

  • Generally for non-work stuff, I will use Google tasks - since it available on all platforms and integrates with the calendar etc. I would love to find a good alternative to google and have tried a few over the years, but have never found anything that I can get to at work and on all platforms at home and will integrate with a calendar that is also available on all platforms - including those that my SO uses - as well as this.

The majority of notes that I make these days are either things that I have to do or are updates on the status of particular projects or systems though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago
  • Historical Fiction: I, Claudius from 1976. It stands up staggeringly well.
  • Fantasy: Extraordinary (2023), Neverwhere (1996 - Gaiman's first TV series)
  • Crime: The Night Manager (2016), Slow Horses (2022), Mare of Easttown (2021)

Also Beforeigners (2019, Norway), which kinda qualifies for all of these categories.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Bbc Radio 4 have any number of dramas in their back catalogue. One that I particularly enjoyed is Alan Plater's Only a Matter of Time - available on the Internet archive, I find.

Then Orson Welles original War of the Worlds by the Mercury Theatre on the Air in 1938 is well worth a listen. That is available in several places around the Web.

Then, of course, there is Big Finish, who started off doing Doctor Who audios and have produced hundreds over the years - far more hours than there are of T V Doctor Who, classic and new - but they also produce a lot of other dramas, based on other properties and some completely original.

Overall their earlier ones are where the standout tales are, but they are fairly reliably entertaining throughout.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Last was in May this year and the next - probably just camping - will be in September.

I am very fortunate in having a friend with a holiday chalet. A group of us go down to open in up and stay for a week or two most years. The only cost is the fuel to get there.

My SO and I usually aim to get another week away - maybe camping, maybe a holiday cottage - later in the year too.

We are in the UK and always go to other location in the UK for holidays. Neither of us have flown since the '90s and have no intention of doing so again.

 

UK ministers have scrapped plans to use Whitby near Liverpool as a testing ground for hydrogen in domestic heating following objections from residents, in a sign of the difficulties involved in decarbonising homes.

Its suitability is fiercely contested, however, with critics saying that hydrogen is an expensive distraction whose use should be limited to industrial applications.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I've got the same one here as on reddit, and on tildes as it happens. It is a variant on a local mythic being in my part of the world.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Archive.is link..

Personally, I always used to carry a paperback with me and would read in the odd moments that this writer seems to recall as being so dull and soul destroying. I still do carry e-books on my phone of course and use them in exactly the same way - but also with the option of doomscrolling, of course.

As for TV, I was never one for TV - or radio - as background noise. With fiends, I had a bit of reputation of going round and turning such things off when I entered the room, so that we could talk without distraction. I would ask them first, of course.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

The Shannara series by Terry Brooks has a reputation as being an homage to LotR, and they are quite enjoyable.

Waaay back, this was what I turned to after reading LotR. He had only published the first then and it was what made me understand the difference between good writing and bad. It gave me nothing else other than that lesson and certainly didn't scratch the itch that I had for something like LotR. In fact nothing did and I found it best to look for something completely different that was good in it's own right rather than poor imitations.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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.

 

In case you have not encountered this resource before:

Juno Covella was written By Lawrence Durdin-Robertson in honor of the Goddesses of all nationalities and traditions.

Today, for example: The Matralia. (Seyffert, Dict.) "Matuta (usually Mater Matuta). An old Italian goddess of dawn and of birth, also goddess of harbours and of the sea, and hence identified with the Greek Leucothea. In her temple at Rome in the Forum Boarium, on the 11th of June, the Matralia, or festival of mothers, was celebrated in her honour by the women of Rome. . a matron who had not been married before was allowed to place a wreath on the statue of the goddess. The women first prayed for the well-being of their nephews and nieces, and then for that of their own children.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not quite there yet where I am, but I am certainly hoping to a bit later this summer from time to time. I have hopes of WFH (...From Hammock) at some stage, now that I have garden that is suitable.

 

I'm enjoying this AMC show so far - and would say it is the best SF airing currently - that I am aware of.

I have not read the books but my SO has read the first of them and is also enjoying it. She can't recall a great many details from the book though - her memory doesn't work that way.

One tiny point that I am curious about - a detail that my SO doesn't remember - is whether the characters who have seen the Pez dispenser actually recognise duck as a duck? Do they know what ducks - or birds in general - are?

From episode 1, IIRC, it seems to be suggested that they did not understand what the things flying in the sky in the outside world were.

Anyway - what are your thoughts on Silo?

 

With the aim of stimulating discussion if there is anyone here...

With the solstice approaching, does anyone have any plans to celebrate?

I have very recently moved and although we now have a sizable garden surrounded by woodland and eminently suited to outdoor celebrations etc, anything that we are going to do this time will be pretty low-key - since we are still unpacking and generally recovering. We will have a fire of some kind - either outdoors or in the hearth that we now have indoors - I'm going to watch the sunrise and maybe we will plant the first thing in our garden: there is a pot of meadowsweet waiting.

 

Recently, I had The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher (the adult fiction pen-name of Ursula Vernon) recommended to me. It is inspired by, and is a approximate sequel to, Algernon Blackwood's The Willows.

The Willows - as with several other Blackwood tales - is clearly playing around with the original concept of 'panic' - the oppressive terror that you can experience in truly wild places, which was, according to the ancient Greeks, inspired by Pan. As such these tales are only a step or so distant from Lovecraft's cosmic horror - which embody the utter indifference of the universe.

Kingfisher's tales (I am now half-way through my second: The Twisted Ones) feature very engaging, very human protagonists and typically intersperse the horrific with cosy, mundane interludes and so have a very different tone to Blackwood (or Lovecraft), but do make for easy and enjoyable reading: still with some memorable imagery and concepts, but never really soul-raking stuff.

Has anyone else read any of her works? What do you think of them?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

My 'big read' this year is Finnegans Wake - which I am (or have been) reading week by week along with the TrueLit sub on reddit. It would be a profoundly different experience to read it without the analysis and discussion going on there, so that is something...

Otherwise, I am reading The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher, which is engaging and entertaining, as was her The Hollow Places which I read immediately before. I am also dipping into a collection of the Para Handy tales by Neil Munro, which are a cosy - if stereotypical and patronising - glimpse into another time and pace of life.

I have just returned from a couple of weeks away during which I finished an anthology of Clarke Ashton Smith short fantasy tales (all about the atmosphere: story and worldbuilding are very much secondary and character scarcely features); Haldor Laxness's The Atom Station (a sparse look at the clash of modern - written in 1948 - and traditional Icelandic values); and Blackwood's The Willows (an extrapolation of the original idea of "panic" - as several of this other tales are).