A couple of days ago, I darned a much-loved cardigan. I didn’t make the cardigan, but I wear it a lot and it is a merino/cashmere mix that is soft and warm. It developed a large-ish hole in the back which I have been meaning to fix for ages.

I’m not good enough at darning (nor did I have quite the right matching thread) to do invisible mending, but I also didn’t have the courage or flair to try a visible mend. So the darn is a kind of fence-sitting half-way house between the two which probably says a lot about my general approach to life.

Anyway, I enjoyed the process of darning, and making something whole and usable again.

This could be seen as a pretty standard period romance (love across the divide!), but it is elevated somewhat by an interesting exploration about how people manage relationships after a war. How should the ‘victors’ treat the ‘vanquished’?

I have to admit that I have never heard of Rudy Ray Moore, but I thought this was really fun. It is a very affectionate tribute to the man, and treats him with appropriate respect, rather than making fun of him.

This morning I saw an incredible sky. I was driving so couldn’t photograph it, but it was the most amazing pale salmon with golden lemon tones. There was a heavy mist lying on the fields and wrapping the trees like a comfort blanket. The rising sun lit up the drops of dew on the grass like fairy lights. Everything was distilled but diffuse and shining. I wanted to keep it safe.

Sweet and funny story of two smart and ambitious girls who suddenly realise they need to live a little before they graduate from high school. The bond between Molly and Amy is so touching and believable, and I loved their adorable dorkiness and strong feminist principles, set against the seemingly air-headed hedonism of the rest of the class. I’m going to have to watch it again to pick up on all the references, home-made posters and so on.

After years of using a Magic Trackpad, I got a Logitech MX Ergo trackball. It has taken a little getting used to, but I like it. I can put it between the halves of my keyboard which is better ergonomically, and switch it between connecting to my iMac and MacBook Air with one button. Thus really helps when I am working from home on my laptop. The angle feels very natural once you are used to it.

My husband often buys me books he thinks I will like. He’s really good at picking them, but as a result I end up with quite a stack of books and it takes me a while to get around to reading them. I therefore picked up this book without remembering quite what grabbed me about it when I received it. As soon as I started reading it, I couldn’t believe that I had let it languish for so long on the ‘to read’ pile.

The story is set in the near-ish future when Biology departments in Universities and subsequently commercial companies are able to project the consciousness of young human ‘phenomenauts’ into the 3D-printed organic bodies of animals. The phenomenauts are able to feel what it is like to be a dolphin or a spider or fox (to the extent that this is possible while still remaining human), experience their senses and move around in a real environment in the company of real animals. If anything could hit all my wish fulfilment buttons at once, it is this idea.

Initially, the phenomenauts’ job is to study and monitor animals, but the companies are starting to develop the experience for tourism. Ever since I was a child, I have been fascinated by animals, and wanted to be able to occasionally take off my humanity like a coat and experience life as an animal. I do a much more hands-off and objective version of this professionally, and every colleague I’ve told about this book (and believe me, I haven’t been able to shut up about it) has said that it would be amazing to be able to do that. So you see where I am coming from.

The story follows the Katherine North of the title (or Kit, as she prefers to be known) who - at the age of 19 - is a veteran among phenomenauts at ShenCorp. They employ young children because their brains are plastic enough to cope with the body shock of projecting in to radically different bodies and sensory systems. Emma Geen describes beautifully what that experience might be like, and does an excellent job with the biological detail while leaving enough room for speculation and some gorgeously poetic moments. She also shows how spending so much time in other ways of being changes the phenomenauts. The altered perspective changes their own ways of being as humans. For example, Kit spends quite a bit of time as a fox, and as a human finds herself more aware of dominance behaviours, territoriality and so on among other humans. It also makes her acutely aware of the realms of information (like smell or ultraviolet-sensitive vision) that are a closed book to humans.

The book weaves an exciting thriller in among Kit’s phenomenaut experiences, but I won’t provide any spoilers about that. It is a gripping book and one that I have often found myself thinking about since I finished it. Emma Geen apparently read Psychology and Philosophy at University, and that shows itself in the many fascinating ideas she presents the reader with. I will certainly be reading it again.

View all my reviews

By all rights, this ought to be awful: an adaptation of the Cyrano de Bergerac story set in a boys’ public school, where the two male leads fall for the daughter of the new French master. However, I have to say that I loved it.

Alex Lawther (in the Cyrano role) does a great job as an awkward geek (as he always does), but there is so much surreal quirkiness in the peculiarities of the school (particularly the ‘Streamers’ water-based rugby game) that I found it offset any tendency the film might have to become boring and over-familiar. Great fun.

This was a beautifully shot film, with good and subtle performances by all the cast, and I found it engaging enough at the time. However, it hasn’t really stuck in my mind the way some films do. Even though it is only a few weeks since I saw it, I struggle to remember much about it.

Quirky doesn’t quite cover it, but this is a terrific film. Wonderful performances by all three leading women, but the chemistry between Olivia Coleman and Rachel Weisz was outstanding. I’m certainly going to to watch it again.

I'm of a similar age to many of these women, so I could relate strongly. Great, knock-about comedy from a very talented bunch of actors. It wasn't laugh out loud funny the whole way through, but there were some great moments.

I’ve just updated my Ergodox EZ with a new configuration. I’ve moved the Command, Option, Control and Shift to the home row on each half (as suggested by Xavier Noria), so that you type a normal letter if you tap the key, but holding the key down gives you a modifier. The organisation of the keys is mirrored on each half so that you can hold the modifiers on whichever half makes sense. For example, if I want to type Cmd-S I hold the ‘j’ key with my right hand (for Command), and ’s’ with the left. For Cmd-N I would hold the ‘f’ key with my left (again, for Command), and hit the ‘n’ key with my right. Ergonomically, it’s brilliant, as I already have my hands on the home row.

This has freed up the small keys at the top of each of the thumb clusters, so I have configured these to output Opt+Shift-left arrow (innermost key) and Opt-left arrow (outermost key) on the left hand half. On the right hand half, the configuration is mirrored, but uses the right arrow. This is fantastic in standard macOS apps, as it lets me move forward and backward by word when editing (Opt-arrow) or select the previous or next word (Opt+Shift-arrow). In Emacs, it also lets me promote or demote headings or subtrees in Org mode.

I still have to get fully used to this new layout, but I’m loving it.

I caught a bit of a conversation on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour the other day, which amazed me. Humans produce unusually sugary breast milk compared to other mammals, but many of the sugars in it cannot be digested by babies. Instead, these sugars are thought to feed the gut microbiome.

That’s pretty mind-blowing: evolution has tuned the composition of breast milk so that mothers feed not only their baby but the community of bacteria within him or her.

So much of the trouble that humans create between each other stems from making tiny distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’. And yet we are incredibly similar to other apes, other primates and even other mammals. And each of us has at least as many bacterial cells within us as we have human cells (not to mention the viruses, fungi and so on). There are layers and layers of communities, and we should worry much less about which of those communities is ‘us’.

Beautiful and heartbreaking. I loved ‘The Secret of Kells’ and ‘Song of the Sea’. This film is every bit as beautifully animated as either of those, but tells a much darker story. Parvana and her family are struggling to survive in Afghanistan under the tyrannical rule of the Taliban. When Parvana’s father is arrested by the Taliban and thrown in jail, Parvana is forced to dress as a boy to try to make money and buy food for her mother, older sister and infant brother.

It doesn’t shrink away from the violence and harshness of the regime, but it also beautifully portrays the tenderness between members of the family. I have seen criticisms of the ‘story within a story’ which Parvana tells her siblings, but I think it is a key part of the way that the characters can approach and deal with emotionally difficult things.

All of the Cartoon Saloon films have a moment that comes out of nowhere and grabs you right by the feels. This one is no exception, and it was heart-rending and stunningly beautiful at the same time. The film even managed to make me (eventually) pity the over-zealous young Taliban follower who harasses Parvana and her family. There’s a very subtle moment when you see that he is just a young lad who can’t even grow a proper moustache yet, and he’s scared when the reality of the situation dawns on him.

This is an amazing piece of work.

I’m a huge fan of C.J. Sansom’s ‘Shardlake’ books, and have read all the previous books in the series. His writing seems to get better with each book, and the Tudor world in which you are immersed gets richer. His characters have deepened and matured too. I’m glad Jack Barak is back, as I love his tough chippiness. It’s such a good foil for Shardlake’s quiet seriousness.

This book is set in 1549 and tells the story of the peasants’ rebellion in Norwich, lead by Robert Kett. My knowledge of history is not great, admittedly, but I had never heard of this rebellion before. The detail was fascinating, and the way that the plot strands of the crime that Shardlake has to solve weaves in with the historical events is superb. As ever, the plots are gripping, even over such a long book. It is also very moving in places, because we get so fond of many of the characters. I had a particular fascination with this book, because part of it is set in Wymondham and Hethersett, where I spent quite a bit of time as a child, visiting friends and relatives.

By the way, don’t skip the Historical Note at the end. It is fascinating to see how much of the action (and some of the characters) was based on historical facts. It is an incredible piece of work.

View all my reviews

Growing up in Suffolk, Nathaniel Mann, heard stories passed down by his grandma about a tradition of the village Rough Band, made up of pots and pans, iron and metal implements, including meat cleavers - delivering a sort of sonic warning to anyone stepping out of line, committing adultery or behaving in way considered unacceptable.

As part of the Avant-Folk trio ‘Dead Rat Orchestra’, Mann, a singer and composer, has long been playing music with strange percussive instruments. Coming across an old meat cleaver in his dad’s garage he was inspired to make a set of cleavers to play music on - so turned to a bronze bladesmith to help turn meat cleavers into musical gold.

I listened to this yesterday and found it fascinating. The sound that comes out of the bronze cleaver when struck is eerie and beautiful, and I love the poetic terms used in smithing like ‘The Cry of the Tin’. There are so many interesting layers here, including the social standing of blacksmiths (respected, but feared and mistrusted), the soundscape of traditional crafts, old traditions of social justice through ‘Rough Music’, and work songs from around the world. If you can access BBC radio, I definitely recommend giving this a listen.

BBC Radio 4: Dead Rats and Meat Cleavers →

Mr. Bsag is a printmaker, and often submits his work to open exhibitions. The requirements for this process are many and varied, but these days the initial round of selection usually involves submitting a digital image of your work. He now has a copy stand, and so he takes a photo of his prints. This is a tricky process in itself, because his engravings are often small in size, so difficult to capture in a photograph at an appropriate level of detail.

But then the fun starts. Every submission seems to require a different combination of DPI, maximum or minimum image dimensions, maximum file size and so on. Over the years we’ve tried a range of image editing applications to process the images for submission. It seems as if it would be an easy task, but (for example) the ones that allow you to set a specific DPI don’t give you a live estimate of file size, so you have to use trial and error to optimise the pixel dimensions and quality while remaining within the file size limits.

What I really want is an editor that would allow me to enter filter-like constraints (less than 3 MB, longest edge more than 1920 px, 96 DPI) and it would then pick the combination of variables that maximised image size and quality while satisfying all the other constraints. If anyone knows of anything like that, do let me know!

I enjoyed this as much as the first. This section of the Marvel Universe has been a playful, creative, action-filled joy, and this second instalment was no exception. The rapid changes in scale at unexpected moments really tickle me, as did the drum-kit playing giant ant.

International Trade Secretary, 2017: replicating the 40 free trade deals that the UK currently benefits from via the EU before Brexit? Should be simple to just roll them over.

Me (knowing nothing about International Trade deals, free or not): 🤔 Really? Because it seems as if it might be kind of complicated.

ITS, 2 months from Brexit date: So far we’ve completed 0/40 deals, but we’re really hopeful that it will all work out!

Me: YOU ASTONISH ME.

Over on the main blog, I wrote about my TWSBI Go fountain pen a few months ago. I had almost emptied its fairly substantial ink reserve, so yesterday I cleaned and refilled it. It was as easy as I had hoped.

Squish out the remaining ink by depressing the spring, dunk the nib in some clean water and squish, squish, squish a few times, and — hey presto! — you have one clean pen. Dunk the nib in the ink bottle and squish again (a bit more slowly this time), and you have a full pen.

I love my Lamy 2000 to bits, but my heart sinks every time I’m faced with laboriously turning the piston knob about 3 million times when I need to clean the pen. The Go is stupidly easy to clean and ridiculously fun.