It’s wild how it’s been 3 years since the last Sabaton album. Pandemic adjusted it’s ~1 year I guess. In between we’ve had a few singles in which have been somewhere between Fine and This Has Aged Poorly.
On first listen I wasn’t impressed so I’ve given it a lot more time before committing opinions to the blog, listening to it a lot.
First I’ll break down what I think of each track, then the album as a whole, and finally something about what I want from Sabaton these days.
[Read More]Last year I wrote about useful stuff to buy/use. This will cover some useful stuff I found this year.
Order your coffee beans from a good roaster. Previously I’ve either had a Pact subscription or picked up random bags from cafes I’ve visited. Obviously with the Pando that’s been hard. I’ve taken to alternately ordering from Quarter Horse or Square Mile. I’ve been getting the filter roasts generally, always in bean form.
[Read More]About 4 years ago I bemoanedthe heating in our house. It turns out that providing you’re willing to connect things to the internet it’s super easy. It was probably possible the time I wrote the post if you’re okay with the internet[0].
Simply use Tado°! Replace your thermostat with theirs, connect the internet bridge to your network and you’ve a minimal setup. At this point through the app you can define arbitrarily complicated heating schedules, have it adapt to the weather, detect open windows by drops in temperature, reduce the heating if you leave the house.
[Read More]I managed to source an Xbox Series X late last year. I’ve been playing a lot of Assassins Creed since then.
There was a sale and picked up Odyssey for really cheap and proceeded to put 70+ hours into it. It’s brilliant. After not playing an AC game since 3 it was great to see the series improved the formula quite a bit. Combat felt better than I remember. The story was fun and Kassandra was incredibly likeable. Getting the “Good” ending is worth it I feel. The segments set in the future are always jarring but the payoff is very cool.
[Read More]I think it’s fair to say that my interest in Warhammer 40k 8th edition peaked early and dropped off a cliff after playing a few games. I don’t think I really gave it a fair whack, something I think I’ve at least started to do better with with 9th edition (and Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game).
I have played exactly one game of 9th (and MESBG) this year and both were brilliant. As is my want I’ve spent more time analysing why I think that than actually playing the games.
[Read More]Some of the albums I have enjoyed in 2021. In no order and not all from 2021.
My GOTY has such a ripping soundtrack. Barry knocks it out of the park.
Wow. Just wow. I found these guys via Sayem’s excellent metal playlist. The sound of drinking a pint of warm bitter and shooting a longbow.
Hotel Chocolat make this device called a Velvetiser. It’s some where between a kettle and a blender. You put some milk and chocolate in and it heats up the milk while mixing it quickly to make it frothy (Velvetised). It makes one cup, in a short amount of time, very quietly, and is easy to clean. What’s more is that it’s really well designed and pleasant to use.
The mixing paddle attaches via a magnet and magically is spun through that coupling. This makes attaching & detaching the paddle really easy. It also leaves the bottom of the mixing compartment smooth and therefore easy to clean.
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I bought a 64GB 4K Apple TV recently and it’s magic.
It replaces a combination of Fire and NowTV sticks. Both of which are old and were cheap at the time. Their UIs are slow, remotes feels cheap, and clutter up the place.
My immediate reaction is that tvOS is buttery smooth. Zero complaints. Moving between apps (and having it remember positions) is perfect. Starting streams is super fast, especially NowTV!
[Read More]I’m tinkering around with Clojure at the moment and have found the tooling to be quite nice.
My setup is:
I recently dropped my Pixel 3a perfectly flat on the bathroom floor and utterly shattered the screen. This broke the OLED too. I tried to repair but it failed[0]. I took this opportunity to shake up my tech stack and buy an iPhone.
Here are my observations so far:
[0] I replaced the screen but it wouldn’t lie flat no matter how much I cleaned the glue or wiggled things. I also managed to ruin the speaker grille removing the old screen. Once I booted it up I noticed that the touch response was all kinds of messed up. At this point I’d spent as much as the phone was worth so I gave up.
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