Fascinated by Manuel Moreale's take on blog comments.

I'm not a fan of comments in general and I think commenting on something should be done in one of two ways:

Privately via email or via direct messaging

Publicly by posting a reply on your own website

This is interesting as it has literally worked; look at me posting my reply here.

The beauty of independent publishing means there are no rules other than your own. There are any number of reasons not to allow comments. Maybe your blog is just your way of shouting one way into the void. Maybe your software of choice doesn't support comments. Maybe it's spam, trolls, monsters. It could turn a fun thing into a chore. And who wants that?

I allow and encourage comments, always have. Back in the day before the socials became a thing, commenting was a way to foster a little community of like minded individuals. Those halcyon days of Dave2's posts that could garner 30+ comments. It was a fun way to discover other blogs. You interact with them, they interact with you, you find an audience.

But here in 2024, with trackbacks and pingbacks still being a thing, I'd say Manuel has a good point. Maybe replying on your own site is also a decent way to engage with other kindred spirits. I'm going to give it a try.

In January I wrote how I'm fully vested in the streaming lifestyle. While my focus in that post was Spotify and music, it also applies to movies too. I think the last Blu-Ray purchased was The Grand Budapest Hotel or something? We don't even own a Blu-Ray player nowadays.

I'm making a tradeoff here for convenience vs availability.

Chad Comello has a piece about why he's still flying the physical media flag. And he makes that very point about availability. What do you do if the rug is pulled out from under you? Streaming services could wither on the vine. Studios and record companies could change their licensing deals. Movies and albums can just disappear.

I already run into this from time to time with Spotify. If a band has had a lengthy career they're likely to have been on a few different record labels. Not all labels have licensed their work to streaming services. That gap in a body of work is a legit problem. I'm looking at you Killing Joke.

But the convenience of having almost everything at my fingertips keeps that lure of streaming services alive. At least for now.

I commented on Chad's piece about the other elephant in the room.

Reintroducing physical media would mean a complete rethink of our lifestyle. We downsized, and because we were over a decade into the digital lifestyle all those old CDs and DVDs were donated. There would need to be a rethink of where this new media would live. And the non-trivial outlay of acquiring all the equipment to play said media again.

Dear reader, before you keel over horrified, I do still have my vinyl in storage. I'm not some animal.

Also the irony of me saying all of the above when I've just started buying physical books again is not lost on me. What can I tell you, It's complicated.

Got to thinking about Tesla's announcement of their 10% reduction in workforce. For years they gained a foothold because they were early to market and their cars just had something about them. They were cool, the company was cool, Elon was cool (I know, I know, stay with me) . I've admired the Model S and Model X from afar for years.

In 2024 all major car manufacturers make electric vehicles. The competition well and truly caught up. Now if you want a fancy lad electric vehicle you have other options. Those made by Volvo, Audi, Jaguar, BMW, and Mercedes are compelling. Tesla no longer the only game in luxury EV town.

But there's also a pretty big elephant in the room.

When it comes to me even thinking about a Tesla, that particular ship couldn't have sailed further if I'd pushed it out of the docks myself. Musk's toxic behavior has ensured I will never give a cent to anything he's involved in. I'm sure I'm not alone.

On the one hand I thought it was great Blur were headlining Coachella. But on the other hand, it's a bit of an odd choice. Blur were never that big here in the US to begin with. A lot of Americans my age would know Song 2, but 1997 was a long time ago.

And lo, the crowd wasn't very receptive. Perhaps Blur's management should have known this festival in 2024 really wouldn't have their target audience 🤷🏻‍♂️

last.fm are raising the price of their pro accounts. Which to be fair, has them join the club of lots of other services I pay for. There was much lamenting in r/lastfm on Reddit. And I get it, people will complain, as is their right.

I don't mind paying for services I get a lot of value out of. And last.fm is certainly one of those. I mean, I'm 18 years into it at this point, it's not like I'm suddenly going to have a change of heart. It's a coffee a month for something I enjoy. So yeah I'll continue paying to keep the lights on.

WordPress still has some odd little quirks for a mature product. For example, they still have their own code inside /wp-includes/theme-compat/comments.php to alter the look and feel of your comment section.

It can be edited of course, in fact they have a comment inside that code encouraging you to do just that <!-- You can start editing here. -->. But upon each WP update, that file is clobbered with the default and all your changes are gone. So that's fun.

I don't want to have to remember to copy my version back so I just have a cronjob check if the file has changed and it all gets fixed up 🤷🏻‍♂️

A few things that found their way in front of my eyeballs of late.

• Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters. Apple TV+. I'm as surprised as you are that this was actually rather good as Godzilla things go. Kurt Russell was great in it, Wyatt Russell was also great doing a pretty good impression of his Dad.

• Gravity. Yeah, the George Clooney Sandra Bullock movie. First re-watch since I saw it at the movie theater when it first came out. Made all the more entertaining because of a group of young kids shouting profanity down the front (I remember my first beer as well) who got kicked out to rapturous applause. Anyway, yeah this holds up extremely well. Fantastic movie. Perhaps the most George Clooney that ever George Clooney'd? That would probably be Oceans 13 mind.

• Life. Because why watch one sci-fi thing, when you could watch two? Hiroyuki Sanada is great, Rebecca Ferguson is great. Ryan Reynolds and Jake Whatshisface were also present. But this movie dear reader, while not getting great reviews, is excellent. I would watch it again right now.

• Constellation. Apple TV+. Because why watch two sci-fi things, when… well, you get the idea. Apple TV+, while not having the catalogue of Netflix, has had some fantastic tv shows of late. This one is no exception. An accident on the ISS forces (some/all) of the astronauts to return to Earth. Sort of. Great cinematography, this show looks like a million dollars. I'd love to live in their house in Hamburg. Noomi Rapace is great in this. And grumpy Jonathan Banks is grumpy. "Mamma"…"Alice" when you get to that episode you'll know what I'm talking about. Would like to see a second season.

• Stephen King – Billy Summers. This book was a delight. An assassin out for one last job. A coming of age story. And two novels in one cleverly handled. I've been a fan of King's since I was a teenager and always forget what a great story teller he can be.

• 3 Body Problem. Netflix. What happened was, I'd learned people who read the books weren't impressed by the TV adaptation? And yet the premise sounded great, and the trailer sucked me in. So I went in cold. And it was glorious. To the point where I've now bought the first book in the trilogy and I'm a quarter through it. Fantastic story.

• This Is Us. Netflix. My wife and I started watching this on live terrestrial TV when it first came out and kinda forgot about it somewhere around season two ish. So we watched it from the beginning to the end. It gets a lot of flack for being trauma porn & needing to teach a life lesson every episode. But I dunno, as guilty pleasures go, this was pretty good.

• Röyksopp – Profound Mysteries III. I've become somewhat obsessed with this album and have played it to death this week. It's playing right now in fact. Give it a listen if you haven't already.

Previously.

It rained almost all day yesterday, dark and overcast with the temps barely getting above needing-a-jacket level. More rain overnight with a thunderstorm that woke me from a bizarre dream about toothbrushes. The dark clouds have rolled in again. Dark enough that we need the lights on in the house at lunchtime.

Previously I'd worry about the rain. We bought an old house a few years ago and had some bad luck with water damage after a particularly bad monsoon season. Now we have a new roof, new upstairs balcony, fancy patio door. Rain all you want Phoenix, now I couldn't care less.

Desert dwellers love days like these, for we know what's coming soon enough. This time Thursday it will be 20 degrees warmer. And the inevitable test of whether we can make it through April without having the air conditioning on in the house.

Spent a bit of time hacking on lastweekly today to rip out Twitter integration. It's been busted since Elon broke the API last year; that and I'm not really that interested in Twitter these days. Slowly replacing all that with WordPress integration so the weekly cron job will now post last.fm stats here automagically instead.

It's that time of the year where we get our Olive trees sprayed to prevent the fruit from growing. Dear reader, why would anyone ever do that? The trees look pretty, but the actual olives themselves are a bit of a pain in the ass. They fall on the driveway and if you step on them they stain the concrete and then you walk that lovely olive splatter into the house. Plus they're a Pigeon magnet and no one wants to host a Pigeon party.

Because there are more TV shows to watch than hours left in my life, I decided to add yet one more watching project to the list. As you do. Last night was the start of the big X-Files re-watch extravaganza. All 11 seasons of it. One episode down, 217 left to go!

Well, doing my part to choose the candidate who will run against the deranged orange fella in November.