Music
Books
Say Nothing – Patrick Radden Keefe
Entangled Life – Merlin Sheldrake
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The Modern Disease
Narcissus bows, his lonely stare
Captivated by the glare
And though his brothers are all there
He knoweth not the others' care
His head so heavy with his crown
His loving gaze is only down
Beguiled by his own fair frown
And drawing closer starts to drown
Above the pool he's on his knees
His own beauty is all he sees
Fixated he begins to freeze
This is the modern disease
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January 2024
Music
Books
Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back) – Jeff Tweedy
The Anomaly – Hervé le Tellier
Screen
Detectorists (Again)
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A new day, a new song
About 9 years ago I started writing a haiku every day. I’m now up to 3257 haiku. I have recently started another project where I write a new song every day. I would like to get to 1005 songs. I’ve done 26 so far. You can follow along on https://1005songs.wordpress.com/.
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Scam me a song
A few weeks ago someone on Instagram asked me to write a song for their 10 year old son’s birthday. The brief was simple:
His name is paul and his turning 11.
oscarhuffman_
His birthday is on the 15th of January,
he is like merman,
Unicorns and color blue. Also, his favorite show is the pj masks but he’s in love with spider-man lol.
he love to eat cake a lot.
You’ll probably wanna mention is puppy Chloe too. They’re best friends. Thanks.
His nickname is muffin,
Brief description about him: would be he’s well articulated, a positive thinker, vibrant and he speak Spanish so well.
Core fan of zayn malik – and his all time favorite is ( Let me )
I would love those things about him mentioned in the song
Upbeat and time frame should be 1:30 secsI thought this sounded like a fun project so I said I was happy to help out. I agreed to it without asking for payment – writing songs is fun and I wanted Paul to have a nice birthday. As it turned out I was offered $200 for my trouble, but this wasn’t my motivation and I was sceptical that the money would ever arrive.
I sent a quick demo at first to see if my idea was on the right lines:
He seemed pleased with this attempt:
Awwnn – Ben this is awesome I love it. When do I get the mp3 format
oscarhuffman_So I decided to do a better recording and really make it into a nice song for Paul’s birthday. This is the finished result:
However once I sent this it soon became clear that this was not a genunie request but an attempt to steal money from me (I won’t go into the details).
Nevertheless I found it hard to believe that someone say things like this if they didn’t mean it:
I appreciate your talent
oscarhuffman_
I’m a big supporter of talent – I don’t joke with music and writers cause it takes major time and creativity to come up with somethingOn 15th January (Paul’s alleged birthday) I sent him best wished and asked the user to send me a video of him listening to the song so I could see his reaction. I haven’t heard back…
So instead I’m sharing the song here in case there are any boys called Paul who have a birthday soon! Happy Birthday Paul!
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December 2023
Music
Books
Good Omens – Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchet
The Diary Of A Young Girl – Anne Frank (Again!)
Screen
Blogs
I’m not going to list everything I read in December, this is just an excuse to link to Matt’s blog so I get a pingback! Happy Birthday!
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Global Styles: Add color and typography presets
Last week Rich Tabor and I spent the week thinking about how to improve color and typography variation in Gutenberg. The result was this pull request.
I made a demo video to explain our intentions and how it works, but unfortunately the video was too big for GitHub, so I’m adding it here, and I’ll just link to this post.
This was a really fun little project, I hope we can find a way to land it!
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October 2023
I had an idea that it might be interesting to share what media I have been consuming each month. October was a lot more about creating than consuming, but I still found time for some music and books.
Music
Books
The Last Devil To Die – Richard Osman
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin
TV
Finished the last series of Ghosts.
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Three Thousand Haiku
Today I wrote my 3000th haiku. (I also did posts for 2000 and 1000). This means I have been doing this daily haiku thing for getting on for 10 years.
Sometimes I wonder if I should stop posting haiku. Why follow such a strict form? Why not focus on something more long form? Should I place more emphasis on quality rather than forcing something every day?
One of the lessons I have learnt by writing a haiku every day is that, even if it seems incredibly difficult to say anything, there are always words if you let them come. The important thing is to keep on creating, regardless of how you’re feeling and whether you even like the things you make. The act of creation is it’s own reward.
The discipline to post something every day has given me the confidence to keep creating even when it seems hard to go on. This has lead me recently to start posting a song I am practicing every day.
I think I’ll keep going with the haiku for now, while I still can.
scruffian 