My Reading List for the Summer Holidays
The other day I finished Jeffrey Konvitz’s “The Guardian” and now I have the feeling that I have read enough 70’s horror, if at least for a while. Since summer vacation is only a few measly days away, I thought it’d be a good idea to plan my reading for the next two months. Browsing through the Storytel catalogue I decided on the following, albeit not necessarily in that order
New Pen
Actually it is the first fountain pen I got myself since, I guess, 4th grade or such. I didn’t know how much fun it is to use a fountain pen. I doubt I have spent much time thinking, or enjoying that when I was in school, but now things are a lot different. And not only my age of course. I’m making also some progress on the “improving my handwriting” issue.
About my next Read and an Interview
After finishing the Themis Files series the other I was looking for the next thing and when Tim Ferriss’ interview with Neil Gaiman was mentioned in my feed, I took it as a sign and started “The Graveyard Book”. Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite authors, yet I haven’t read much of his work during the last year (only Neverwhere and Good Omens, both I loved) and “The Graveyard Book” was still on my reading-list.
Trying to find Balance with Music, Podcasts and Audiobooks
Podcasts, for many years had been a steady companion in my daily life, so much so, that I listen to way more podcasts, than for example music. At one point during the last year though, I started to become interested into Audiobooks, and quickly got hooked. It didn’t took long before my Audiobook habit more or less replaced my Podcast habit. During my extensive Audiobook phase, I only caught up with a few select podcasts and marked most of them either as read or completely unsubscribed.
The Book-Log
Earlier this month I published my reading list from 2018, and in the process realized that putting it together took a felt eternity. Some books were in my Kindle, some in Audible and some in Storytel. It was a bit of a hassle to look them all up and a rather time consuming endeavour. Sure, I could have relied on Goodreads, but, as far as I know, it integrates only with the Kindle, and audiobooks would have to be added manually.
My “The Books I Read List for 2018”
I started out rather strong and finished a couple of books right in the beginning of the year, and then I explored Audiobooks, which was the moment, when thing got, not necessarily out of hand, but surely a bit wild. Once I started to read audiobooks two things happened almost immediately: The time I spent reading an actual book declined almost immediately (this has also to do with the fact that I prefer focussing on one book at the time)The time spent listening to podcasts declining equally dramatically.
The Thing with “The View From The Cheap Seats”
I discovered Neil Gaiman’s writing a few years ago and since then I consider myself a huge fan of his work. I have read so far only a small fraction of this work and even though I usually read his books in one go, “The View From The Cheap Seats” is one that is yet unfinished. I’m coming back to it from to time though and tend to read it only in small-ish chunks, like chapter or one at a time.
The thing I forgot to write about yesterday
As far as I know it was more or less sold out and we played well and our soloist(s) for this gig, were finnish drum legend Teppo Mäkynen and Jukka Eskola on trumpet and flugelhorn. The band was very well conducted by Ville Vannenmaa. Some words about the concert. Teppo is surely a drummer in his own right, and easily plays the most beautiful style I have heard so far.
On the Micro-Monday Podcast
I had the pleasure to be invited for a chat with @macgenie for the Micro-Monday podcast. The episode is now live, and if you want to hear me stumble through my own answers you should have a look at here. Thanks again to @macgenie.
Visiting the Moomin Snowcastle
Over the weekend we had some fun with a spontaneous visit to the Moomin Snowcastle at the Santa Village in Rovaniemi. The snowcastle is rather large, yet not so much a “castle”, but more of an exhibition of snow-carvings, which in my opinion is much better and more entertaining. It was the first really cold day of this winter and my phone made sure to remind me that it doesn’t agree much with the minus twenty-something degrees outside.
Merry Christmas
I could not think of a better image to wish you a Merry Christmas with than one straight from Santa Village. It’s the real one (trust me) and the image is a bit blurry, but you try to hold the phone still long enough at minus twenty-whatever degrees. Related: earlier that day we ran into the real Santa taking off from work. I’m not sure though why he took the elevator.
The one with the "Murderbot" and other Novellas
I posted a short micro-blog the other day, when I started with the Murderbot Diaries, and in the meanwhile I of course finished the whole series. Suffice to say, that I liked it a lot. Great story, great writing and the character of the Murderbot is just the best. At the moment there are four books in this series (a fifth one is said to be published in 2020 and a prequel on Wired) and it was one of the few books (or series in this case) where the thought: “Hey let’s listen to this again” crossed my mind.
Seven years and 70 socks
For our seven-year wedding anniversary my wife surprised me fittingly with seventy pairs of socks. Which is brilliant and the best gift ever! I don’t know about your sock drawer, so they are still in a box and it looks something like this: The fun of this gift aside, I realized how much time these sock might save me a lot of time during the year. A highly unscientific guess of mine is, that I on average spent about 3 min a day looking for socks, or worse a sock.
Gingerbread Castle
My wife has finished this year’s gingerbread house, or castle in fact. My idea of simply wrapping the dough about, say a ready-built Lego house and bake that in the oven, was rejected (my wife naturally much wiser than I am) but it may have inspired curved templates. Now we just have to wait a while before we can eat it.
5.0 and waiting for Twenty Nineteen
Now that WordPress 5.0 has landed I’m eagerly awaiting for the new default theme Twenty Nineteen to arrive on Worpdress.com as well. I learned earlier that there are some issues at the moment, but I hope that they are going to be resolved soon. For the time being I have switched back to Independent Publisher 2, since it is already Gutenberg-ready, or at least more so than my previously, rather extensively tweaked theme.
It’s still a work in progress…
My wife started to built this year’s gingerbread house. It’s still under construction but it is going to be nice again
Stuff I watched during the last few weeks
The other week a nasty virus took me down and I had been on sick-leave for a couple of days. Since the kids were in kindergarten I had not much to do during the day, so I did the inevitable and checked out some movies and series on Netflix, something that I usually don’t have time to. First off I started watching the third season of Daredevil. I watched the first two seasons quite a while ago, and it took a while before I started to remember what happened just previously.
The Audiobooks and one other thing that I listened during the last weeks
Since finishing the The Complete Sherlock Holmes I have read a few more books, but, aside the Herbie Hancock autobiography didn’t came around to quickly post a note to the blog. This is unacceptable of course. Anyway, here is now the list, because you need to know: John Scalzi: RedshirtsHerbie Hancock: PossibilitiesJohn Scalzi: The Android’s DreamThe X-Files: Cold Cases (technically this is not really a book, it’s an audio-drama in fact, and features both David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson and it is a hell of a fun and I will definitely get the follow-up as well) Currently I’m listening (I still can call it reading):
Finally new glasses
After sitting on and breaking my previous glasses, and sticking with crap glasses from the supermarket for a while, I finally got new ones. Nice to see again sharply. Related: when I got my first, and previous glasses, I still was on ADN and posted it there. Seems ages ago. Also related: the piano looks scratched quite badly.
The finished Lego BB-8
The other day I got the Lego BB-8 as a birthday gift and we had a blast putting it together. Some parts, especially the inner ones controlling the moving bits, were surprisingly tricky to put together. In short a nice challenge. The model is just lovely, I especially enjoy the wobbling head part: Also the stand adds for a really nice presentation and the droid just looks nice on the nightstand.
8 Years on Wordpress.com
The other day I got the notification that I joined WordPress.com 8 years ago. Cool! As great as this sounds, it is only correct for this instance of the blog. I started more or less seriously focusing on blogging about a year earlier with my now long defunct photoblog From 10 to 300mm. Earlier this year I started to dig out some of those entries via Wayback Machine and the earliest post that I could recover dates back to 17th of August 2008.
The One With All The Hama Beads
I think my wife has started this Hama-Beads-craze around here by un-digging the Hama-Beads which lay dormant for years on shelf in the kids room. In the beginning it were only a few random patterns and by now the situation got slightly out of hand. In the meanwhile I bought a couple of bags of new colours and some small cases to store them in (of course) and searched online for some nice patterns (of which there are surprisingly many).
Ninja-Go Lego Dragon
Spend a good time of the morning yesterday building this with our son. This turned out very nicely.
Hauska Vappu!
Update: Next time I put on glasses when uploading an image, so to pick a sharp one. Image replaced.