2021-12-10: Newsletter test You can happily ignore this, it’s just a test post to see how the newsletter email looks. The next …
2021-12-09: I’ve upgraded to a premium subscription on Micro.blog and, all going well, I’m going to move Talk …
2021-12-09: The latest issue of my Talk about books newsletter is about Andrew Marvell’s poem, “A Dialogue …
2021-12-09: The previous post was kind of a test. I wanted to see what would happen if I used <cite> tags …
2021-12-09: Last week I began to reread Milton’s God. I haven’t made quick progress: Empson’s argument is dense …
2021-12-08: This is what I was eating yesterday evening as the storm raged outside: canard à l’orage
2021-12-08: I’m listening to Esbjörn Svensson Trio Live in Hamburg (2007) for the first time in at least a …
2021-12-08: I’m supposed to be writing my newsletter today, so I’ve tinkered with the Hugo theme of my …
2021-12-08: John Naughton, who owns a Tesla, characterizes Elon Musk as “three-parts genius and one part …
2021-12-08: To prove I can be ruthless, these are the only editions of Marvell’s poetry that I’m keeping. To be …
2021-12-07: The overflow carpark is seriously overflowing this morning.
2021-12-07: I’m not watching You Don’t Know Me on BBC1. The library has the ebook but it’s not available till …
2021-12-07: Ted Gioia writes that, when Czesław Miłosz wasn’t allowed back into the US, his wife Janka Miłosz … …
2021-12-06: Chris Noth on The Good Wife’s Peter Florrick: “I don’t feel any connection to [it]. It’s odd, …
2021-12-06: The inclusion of Danielle McLaughlin’s novel, The Art of Falling, in John Self’s pick of the year’s …
2021-12-03: It wasn’t until I’d read more than half of the series that I began to see the pattern: he gradually …
2021-12-01: I found the pdf copy of my 2016 piece in Essays in Criticism, “Andrew Marvell’s Gender”. I still had …
2021-12-01: One reason I hate streaming and music download services is that the metadata is rarely clean. Seems …
2021-11-30: I’ve had another go at customizing a Hugo theme but, as before, I’m finding that I can do most of …
2021-11-30: That’s the 3rd day in a row I’ve had to reboot the MacBook Air to force it to sync with iCloud — and …
2021-11-30: A tweet with 1000 likes and 17 angry vicious replies will still look like a dumpster fire, even …
2021-11-29: So, here is the explanation I promised as to why Literal.club is not for me. I don’t need an …
2021-11-29: The upshot is I’ve no longer had it with Apple and I’m no longer (particularly) glad that I resisted …
2021-11-29: Rebooting cleared the logjam, I’m pleased to say. But that’s the second time I’ve rebooted in 24 …
2021-11-29: Well, I got my missing iCloud folders back but the Mac has again stopped syncing with iCloud. It …
2021-11-28: I finished reading Andrew Taylor, The King’s Evil, the third in a series set in Restoration London …
2021-11-28: OK, this worked: I unchecked iCloud Drive in Finder preferences, rebooted the MacBook Air, and then …
2021-11-28: Help! Last week, my MacBook Air wouldn’t sync with iCloud, so I signed out of iCloud and then back …
2021-11-27: I had my booster yesterday followed by a restless night but I think that had as much to do with the …
2021-11-26: I was racking my brains trying to remember Bruno Bettelheim’s name this morning and it just wouldn’t …
2021-11-26: A tweet from Adam Roberts yesterday, comparing the volumes of two collections of Basil Bunting’s …
2021-11-24: In the latest issue of Talk about books, I attempt to deal with an entire series of detective novels …
2021-11-24: After my previous post, I tried logging the Mac out of iCloud and logging back in again. Fingers …
2021-11-24: Since I upgrated to Monterey, my Mac won’t sync with iCloud, and it’s extremely frustrating. I also …
2021-11-23: Three book reviews that I originally posted on Literal.club. (Charles Cumming, Box 88; Louise …
2021-11-23: I get really annoyed when I Google the distance from one place to another and I’m told it’s “a …
2021-11-23: The Wheel of Time is the latest fantasy to plunder Irish culture. Are we okay with that? I don’t see …
2021-11-21: I’m likely to add two paid subscription levels to Talk about books newsletter: PDF and print …
2021-11-21: I think I’m going to delete my Literal.club account. I’ve no desire to track my reading, or to rate …
2021-11-20: … a political writer convinced that political dogma (of any sort) is inimical to writing itself … …
2021-11-19: I’m reading the 4th in a row of 5 of Michael Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen novels 📖 that I’m going to write …
2021-11-18: And, speaking about toggles in iOS/iPadOS, I’d love a quick (instant!) way to switch smart quotes on …
2021-11-18: I wish iOS and iPadOS had a way to toggle “select mode” on and off. I’m fed up trying to position …
2021-11-18: I haven’t read all of this WSJ piece because paywall but the accessible part suggests wired …
2021-11-18: the press release/back cover copy genre does what I spent decades telling undergraduates not to do: …
2021-11-17: I just opened the Maps app for the first time since I upgraded to macOS Monterey about three weeks …
2021-11-17: I just renewed my .ie domain name for a fourth year, so I guess I must be serious about it. I …
2021-11-13: I just posted A year of “Talk about books” (already). Seriously, a year? The rate at which time is …
2021-11-12: I’ve been noticing recently that some pages on my site (hosted on GitHub Pages) don’t fully load, or …
2021-11-12: The book Antifragile is pretty bad. Like most popular management books, it’s a single useful …
2021-11-12: I’m pleasantly surprised that, among the books I chose last year to rescue from a French attic, are …
2021-11-11: I intend to reread 5 novels in Michael Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen series over the next 13 days, to write …
2021-11-10: The 26th fortnightly issue of Talk about books, which has just gone out, is about Lucy Caldwell’s …
2021-11-09: I thought I’d missed the opportunity to see Enrico Pieranunzi (with Jasper Somsen and Jorge Rossy) …
2021-11-06: I did worse than I expected on this Kristen/Kirsten/Kristin/Kyrsten quiz, with a score of 5 out of …
2021-11-06: I never really understood Wordsworth’s “emotion recollected in tranquility”. I now know that’s …
2021-11-04: “To mitigate the issue with Snipping Tool, use the Print Screen key on your keyboard and paste the …
2021-11-04: I took a photo on my phone, and uploaded it to iCloud, intending to edit it on the Mac. 25 minutes …
2021-11-04: Among the very limited selection of books that I had sent back from France were two different …
2021-11-02: I’ve finally recovered those books that had spent the last 10 years in my sister’s attic in the …
2021-10-31: I was taught art by Patrick McGoohan’s sister at a secondary modern school in Hounslow. I’ve taken a …
2021-10-30: I’ve been reading and writing about Andrew Marvell on and off over the past 25 years and I think the …
2021-10-29: Well, I got Windows 11 installed and I find that the taskbar is fixed at the bottom of the screen, …
2021-10-29: I’m downloading Windows 11. It took just over 2 hours to get to 99% (with the speed fluctuating …
2021-10-29: Lucy Caldwell’s “All the people were mean and bad” won the BBC National Short Story Award. A woman …
2021-10-29: Dropbox has gradually grown in unpopularity on the Mac it demands all sorts of access (effectively, …
2021-10-28: I just got from the library You Love Me, Caroline Kepnes’s 3rd book featuring repeat murderer Joe …
2021-10-27: Substack has been adding new “tools for writers”. What interests me most is the one for embedding …
2021-10-27: This issue of Talk about books newsletter is out and it’s about Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s …
2021-10-26: Well, I zapped my Medium account: it’s gone for good. I hadn’t been able to set up redirects for my …
2021-10-26: For me, the hard choice in question 2 here is clearly between options 2 and 3. I’ve finally come …
2021-10-25: Every now and then, I get the notion that I ought to read something else by Arthur Phillips (having …
2021-10-24: Terence Eden has a post on his blog today about problems with footnotes on WordPress. That prompts …
2021-10-24: I have this 5-year-old Bluetooth Boombar, that I’ve generally used with an iPod Touch, but now the …
2021-10-24: I found out yesterday that the Brad Mehldau Trio is playing the National Concert Hall on 3 Nov — and …
2021-10-24: Here’s Mike Collins’s review of the new Marcin Wasilewski Trio album, En attendant. I was afraid at …
2021-10-24: An album by Enrico Pieranunzi, Thomas Fonnesbaek and Ulysses Owens Jr includes a version of a very …
2021-10-23: I’ve been neglecting my Short stories on the web page, I’m sorry to say. I just updated it for the …
2021-10-23: I keep a page that lists the 19 or so posts about aphantasia and SDAM that I’ve written since April …
2021-10-23: The Common Reader’s Henry Oliver is Not quite against alcohol, and neither am I. I’ve become a …
2021-10-23: … a detestable man of extraordinary contradictions … someone who even Steve Bannon pronounces too …
2021-10-23: I was chatting on Teams yesterday to someone at work who mentioned the need to “eliminate …
2021-10-23: It was this that lost it for the Sun. Enjoyable piece of flash fiction from Adam Roberts (whose …
2021-10-23: People often complain that Medium hijacks text selection for highlighting, quote-tweeting, …
2021-10-22: This arrived in the post yesterday: the first book by Nobel winner Abdulrazak Gurnah that I’ve …
2021-10-22: I suppose the inescapable implication of Douglas Adams’s well known riff on technology is that we …
2021-10-22: It’s such a tedious cliché when someone is described as “socially liberal but economically …
2021-10-22: Since I said that I’m not going to be posting on Medium any more, I continue to get new followers …
2021-10-21: Getting around to my “afternoon coffee” (a term of Art) at last. (It’s 21:50 here). Actually …
2021-10-21: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has died. I’d barely heard of him and haven’t read anything he wrote but I …
2021-10-21: I deleted my Facebook and Amazon accounts; I still use Google for search but zapped my Google …
2021-10-21: I’ve been thinking again about RSS and find that I’m even more convinced than I was when I wrote …
2021-10-20: I’m not sure about Metaverse, but I’m definitely Facebook-averse.
2021-10-20: Salman Rushdie has posted a new short story on Substack. Whimsical, perhaps would-be Borgesian and …
2021-10-19: I got an email from Tesco Mobile (my former phone service provider), saying they owed me a small …
2021-10-18: This is my final post on Medium, unless I change my mind again. I’ve enjoyed writing there but I’m …
2021-10-17: Yesterday, I was complaining that I couldn’t set up iCloud email wiith a custom domain address …
2021-10-17: I’ve moved all the Medium posts that I wanted to keep to my static site and I don’t intend to post …
2021-10-16: I’m trying to set up iCloud mail with a custom domain, but I keep being told to check my SPF record. …
2021-10-16: As a teenager many decades ago, I meant to read Under the Volcano but somehow never got around to …
2021-10-15: Wednesday’s issue of Talk about books (about Kazuo Ishiguro’s short stories in Nocturnes) contained …
2021-10-14: I think it’s time Talk about books revisited Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad. I had separate posts …
2021-10-14: I often complain about the slapdash metadata associated with music streaming and downloads. I just …
2021-10-14: The last time I bought an album by Terje Gewelt was over 10 years ago. It was Oslo (2009), with E …
2021-10-14: The top ten publications on Substack collectively make more than $20 million a year in subscription …
2021-10-13: The latest issue of Talk about books newsletter has just gone out. It’s mainly about Kazuo …
2021-10-11: There were several things I was unhappy with on Google+, including the way it handled links and the …
2021-10-11: Wednesday’s issue of Talk about books is going to be (primarily) about Kazuo Ishiguro’s short …
2021-10-11: Substack discovery: literature Substack’s “Discover” page can be reached in one of two ways: either straight from the home page or …
2021-10-10: No, it’s Andrew Hill. Cedar Walton 🎹 🎶
2021-10-10: I’m enjoying the Marcin Wasilewski trio’s performance of “Riders on the Storm” so much that I’ll …
2021-10-10: Brexit Destroyed Labour Party, Not Corbyn, it says here. Actually, I’m pretty sure that Brexit at …
2021-10-09: I wish Esbjörn Svensson Trio had made a live album of the music from Seven Days of Falling. Live in …
2021-10-09: Usually, for a book this good, this well written, this artful, I would extol it and exhort you, I …
2021-10-09: Spying as a summer job, between A-Levels and university: Charles Cumming’s Box 88 📚
2021-10-07: So, I just ordered the Cambridge Companion to Salman Rushdie (paperback), edited by Abdulrazak …
2021-10-07: I’m so glad I cancelled my subscription to the NYT last year, because now I can’t give in to the …
2021-10-07: It’s 30 years this month since I gave up legal practice. Last night I dreamt that a batch of …
2021-10-06: Kennys’ Bookshop has a new search facility and it’s a lot faster (and, on first impression, more …
2021-10-06: Lennie Briscoe was one of my favourite characters on Law & Order. I didn’t know that Jerry …
2021-10-04: I was sure I’d never previously read Brian Moore’s Catholics, about which I posted yesterday. But …
2021-10-04: The current issue of my newsletter (Talk about books) is about women on the run in novels by Lisa …
2021-10-04: I just learned by browsing Substack that Freddie deBoer thinks The Matrix (1999) is rubbish, while …
2021-10-03: I just posted something about Brian Moore’s 1972 novella, Catholics. Now, back to Ishiguro’s …
2021-10-02: One thing I prefer on the Mac to the iPad: I can leave “smart quotes” on as default, and get …
2021-09-30: I’ve never used Keynote and very rarely use Numbers but I’ve just gone and downloaded updates to …
2021-09-30: The newsletter (Talk about books) is due out every other Wednesday, but I held it till this morning …
2021-09-29: I hadn’t had a keyboard with a numeric keypad for a long time until I got a Windows desktop late …
2021-09-28: As I was reordering my book review posts, I was reminded of this from 6 years ago, about Andrew …
2021-09-28: I reordered the book reviews (none recent) on my reviews page into alphabetical order by author …
2021-09-28: Don’t say you weren’t given fair warning. This is from John Naughton, quoting The Guardian.
2021-09-26: I’m trying out the Safari Technology Preview, as John Gruber recommends before installing Safari 15. …
2021-09-26: I haven’t got a fixed internet connection here so I connect through my phone. Before I had an …
2021-09-26: I was just trying to write a short note about Brian Moore’s 1972 novella, 📖Catholics📚 when it struck …
2021-09-26: JSTOR is so frustrating! It won’t let Keychain suggest a strong password, or automatically store a …
2021-09-25: This is what I have to say about Philip Kerr’s early novel, A Philosophical Investigation. It’s …
2021-09-24: Spotify and music streaming generally want to keep a fraudulent payment system in place because they …
2021-09-23: Felicia C Sullivan writes about her bridge book, the novel Follow Me into the Dark, which I …
2021-09-21: “Musk thinks Peter [Thiel] is a sociopath, and Peter thinks Musk is a fraud and a braggart.” …
2021-09-21: “You can now embed NFTs in your Substack posts …” Finally! Exactly the feature I’ve been waiting for …
2021-09-20: According to my ebook app (BorrowBox) I’m now on page 141 of 140 🤷♂️
2021-09-20: Pianist Emil Viklicky remembers bassist George Mraz who died last week. As I’ve said before, …
2021-09-20: The Irish Times books quiz is unusually easy today. I still got one wrong, though.
2021-09-19: I just read a longish Substack post in NetNewsWire, wanted to ”like” it, so I opened the web page …
2021-09-19: Dave Gelly reviews with enthusiasm Chick Corea’s Akoustic Band Live. I have 2 previous albums by …
2021-09-19: I love Tot but I’m finding its erratic behaviour frustrating. I accidentally deleted a note on my …
2021-09-18: I’ve had more feedback on my Frankenstein post than on any previous issue of the newsletter and all …
2021-09-18: Somebody just commented on an old post of mine about motivation, productivity and aphantasia, …
2021-09-18: I just went to turn off autocorrect on my iPad, only to find out that I already did that months ago. …
2021-09-18: Help! The version of Carla Bley’s “Vashkar” on the new Marcin Wasilewski album is ruining those on …
2021-09-17: Recent mentions of Herbie Hancock on Twitter have sent me back to the album 🎶Herbie Hancock Trio …
2021-09-16: First impressions of Marcin Wasilewski Trio’s En attendant: at 43 mins, it seems insubstantial; and …
2021-09-15: The next issue of the newsletter, in 2 weeks’ time, is likely to be about “fugitive women” and to …
2021-09-15: I just got an email from the company I buy my coffee from, saying that Lavazza are putting their …
2021-09-15: The latest issue of Talk about books (newsletter on Substack) has just gone out. It’s Creature and …
2021-09-14: “I’ll put it on my reading list.” Might do better actually to read it. Alan Jacobs — @ayjay — …
2021-09-13: Microsoft has been messing about with Windows Paint again. When are they going to learn? I had to …
2021-09-12: Yesterday, I posted something on my static site that, at any time over the previous 4 months, I’d …
2021-09-11: This is the first thing I’ve posted on my own site since May. I had been posting to Medium (using a …
2021-09-11: The more I look at the draft I have on the Mac, the more I see that it’s a very early draft, missing …
2021-09-11: Not only did I lose the last paragraph, but edits that I’d made to earlier paragraphs also didn’t …
2021-09-11: I really need to be careful when switching between the iPad and the Mac. I just lost the last …
2021-09-10: I’m not consistent in choosing filenames (slugs) for posts on my website. Sometimes I’ll use an …
2021-09-10: I just found out that there’s a new Marcin Wasilewski Trio album out today, 🎹En Attendant🎶. I’ve …
2021-09-08: Sean O’Neill argues that the significance of Sally Rooney’s Irishness hasn’t been given the …
2021-09-08: The phrase “vanilla JavaScript” has lost none of its power to irritate the hell out of me. Why are …
2021-09-08: Problematically, Substack does not identify which authors are part of the Substack Pro programme. …
2021-09-07: Before I deleted my Google account, I had been artkavanagh@gmail.com for 15 years. I regularly got …
2021-09-06: That’s twice in one day I’ve come across (unrelated) references to Howard Carter and Tutankhamun’s …
2021-09-06: I’m back doing my own coffee-grinding for the foreseeable. I cycled to Castlebar Aldi on Friday to …
2021-09-06: When I was writing last week’s issue of the newsletter (about the Jackson Brodie series) I forgot to …
2021-09-05: I write most things that are intended for my own site in nonstandard but valid Markdown, i.e. mainly …
2021-09-05: Innocence, ignorance or complicity (Kazuo Ishiguro) 📚 Ishiguro’s new novel provides the opportunity to take a second look at Kathy from Never Let Me Go I …
2021-09-04: The latest issue of my Substack newsletter is about Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series of novels. …
2021-09-04: Four months ago, I resumed paying the Medium membership fee to get a custom domain name and hoping …
2021-09-04: One thing (of very many) that annoys me about Google is that, if I click a search result and then …
2021-09-04: I detest websites that make the fan start up on my (Intel) MacBook Air. LinkedIn is one of them if I …
2021-09-04: This WSJ story is the first of the many pieces I’ve read on the Supreme Court’s order on the Texas …
2021-09-03: I just joined literal.club where my username is @artkavanagh (as it is almost everywhere except …
2021-09-03: … perhaps there are no new forms – of writing, of personal connection, of belief in something that …
2021-09-02: The most recent issue of my newsletter, Talk about books, is about Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie …
2021-08-31: I just deactivated my Reddit account. I never really felt I belonged there. Interestingly, a …
2021-08-31: I’ve used autocomplete in preference to bookmarks in my browser since autocomplete started. I visit …
2021-08-29: I don’t usually like “very short stories” or flash fiction because, too often, there just isn’t room …
2021-08-28: TIL that Rupert Holmes, who wrote the novel on which Atom Egoyan’s Where the Truth Lies🎬 is based, …
2021-08-28: Richard Williams, reviewing Marc Johnson’s solo bass album, Overpass, points out that Charlie Haden, …
2021-08-27: I just wasted a chunk of the afternoon trying to persuade a mod on r/books that I ought to be able …
2021-08-27: Here’s an interesting view on Sally Rooney’s novels as a “shameless reassertion of white …
2021-08-26: Rock musicians aspire to have jazz credibility – even Ginger Baker called himself a jazz drummer, …
2021-08-25: This is my favourite Charlie Watts story 🎶🎹
2021-08-24: Twitter … satisfies our yearning for an aphorism of banality … an aphorism that closes down rather …
2021-08-23: I often use Dir$() in VBA in my day job, to batch process folders of Word documents. But it doesn’t …
2021-08-22: My newsletter, Talk about books, has now reached its 20th fortnightly issue, which means it’s been …
2021-08-22: In the current issue of my newsletter, I make the case that ambivalence about justice is more or …
2021-08-19: I hadn’t seen any of The Good Fight📺 since season 2, but I just caught an episode from season 5 and …
2021-08-18: The new issue of Talk about books, my newsletter, is titled Your favourite author’s ambivalence …
2021-08-18: Alan Jacobs (@ayjay) about rationalists: they’re about “overcoming bias,” about eliminating …
2021-08-18: Couldn’t keep my eyes open at 7.30pm yesterday, so I lay down for a late siesta and woke up after …
2021-08-18: Facebook (and in some aspects of their business, Google and Amazon) are the robber barons of the …
2021-08-17: Is Dark Spectre (1996) a riposte to Red Dragon (1981)? Thomas Harris’s Francis Dolarhyde kills …
2021-08-15: Parts of the internet — Medium, GitHub, om.co, the Irish Times — seem to be out today, or at best …
2021-08-15: I just posted this on Medium Reverse chronological order? Trying to stop some posts from going out …
2021-08-12: Medium has broken the Back button. It happens when you’re on somebody’s profile page, click on the …
2021-08-09: I’m reading Kate Atkinson’s 📖Big Sky (2019) at last and thoroughly enjoying it. The next-but-one …
2021-08-09: How on earth did they manage to design the USB-A connection so that you always try it the wrong way …
2021-08-09: Charles Arthur (the Overspill) says “we are starting to think that reviews really aren’t a good …
2021-08-07: But, while he himself would never have taken the extreme measure of slaughtering his loved ones to …
2021-08-07: I’ve reordered the book discussion section of my home page to list the posts in alphabetical order …
2021-08-07: Late autumn has come early this year. I seem to have completely missed early autumn, which is …
2021-08-06: Alexandro Chen, “Hired to do nothing”, a short story told from the point of view of a man who, on a …
2021-08-06: How did we build a machine that rewards people for being the dumbest, snarkiest, most kneejerk …
2021-08-06: It seems that the third book in Dervla McTiernan’s Cormac Reilly series, The Good Turn📚, will …
2021-08-05: Glad they’ve got this (almost) sorted out. UK musicians to be able to tour visa-free in 19 EU …
2021-08-04: Sophie Hannah tries to explain why so many readers/critics etc think that Agatha Christie wasn’t a …
2021-08-04: I was in the supermarket, and Dido’s “Here with Me” was playing and I realized for the first time …
2021-08-04: There’s another issue of my newsletter, Talk about books, just out. It’s about Felicia C Sullivan’s …
2021-08-04: John made me outline my self-image. In brief: my best efforts always fail and I must punish myself …
2021-08-04: It’s usually said that the users are the product, but they aren’t even that: they’re the conduit for …
2021-08-03: Future Tense editor Torie Bosch set out to praise Microsoft Word, but ended up excoriating Google …
2021-08-03: Martin Hiesboeck is frustrated at the way Taiwan is seen from Europe and believes there’s a lot that …
2021-08-02: This bookshop in Louisburgh, County Mayo, opened 5 years ago and I’ve been meaning to visit ever …
2021-08-01: This morning I read for the first time a post from Jan 2020 by Ryan Langdon about his shock on …
2021-07-31: Economics Substacker Noah Smith is very good on the topic of Twitter. I think I previously posted a …
2021-07-31: It’s more than 30 years since I read The Handmaid’s Tale. I think it’s well past time that I reread …
2021-07-28: Here’s Dea Poirier on Crime Reads about writing fiction without the ability to visualize. I don’t …
2021-07-27: I hadn’t seen this before, and stumbled on it while looking for something else: Eileen Battersby’s …
2021-07-26: The internet is flowing like sludge. I wonder if there can be some kind of sporting event taking …
2021-07-26: Since I started to use Medium with my own domain, I find that I’m very happy with it as a place to …
2021-07-26: It’s occurred to me that maybe I should sell my iPad Air 3 and my iPhone 12 Mini and replace them …
2021-07-26: I’m finding that I tend to skip over tweets (and Micro.blog posts) that have multiple emojis, much …
2021-07-26: I hope I’m not being unfair to Alexis Nowicki when I say that I don’t believe that Kristen Roupenian …
2021-07-26: What iOS and iPad need, IMO, is an easy, unambiguous way to collapse a selection. I’m fed up tapping …
2021-07-25: Here’s a highly informative post by Richard Williams about Mose Allison, about whom I knew less than …
2021-07-25: My posts on Medium have been getting much less external (i.e. mainly Google) traffic recently. Maybe …
2021-07-25: There’s lots to think about in this post from Noah Smith: Why is China smashing its tech industry?
2021-07-24: I noticed recently that when I reposted old posts/articles on Medium, it put them at the top of the …
2021-07-23: I bought a CD player a few months ago after years without one, and I’ve been using it mainly to play …
2021-07-23: I’m fully exempt from having to watch Shyamalan’s Old, because I’ve read the spoilers. Quite …
2021-07-23: Though I went to school in Sligo and was born and brought up in the county, I’ve been to the Sligo …
2021-07-23: The new lists feature in Medium has something useful that I hadn’t noticed till now: a “Recently …
2021-07-21: Here’s the post explaining what Medium lists are about and how to make them. It’s all very …
2021-07-21: The past two weeks haven’t gone particularly slowly, yet it seems like ages since I’ve sent out an …
2021-07-21: This came in the post today. I think I’ll enjoy reading it.
2021-07-20: The next wave of Facebook Bulletin writers in case you’re interested/curious. There’s nothing here …
2021-07-20: My second attempt at a Medium list naturally had to be about aphantasia and SDAM (severely deficient …
2021-07-20: Medium has a new feature: user-generated lists. This is my first attempt — Literary discussion and …
2021-07-19: I love Law & Order. Particularly seasons 5 through 17, when Jack McCoy was EADA. The first 4 …
2021-07-19: I was taken aback by the tone of comments on this post about Angular. Not just disagreement but …
2021-07-19: Alan Jacobs (@ayjay) was not happy with the ReMarkable (because of low contrast) or the Kobo Elipsa …
2021-07-18: I hadn’t thought about BookFunnel for years till, a few days ago, I followed a link that led to a BF …
2021-07-18: If you use an email address based on your own domain, don’t ever let that domain registration expire …
2021-07-18: I woke up in the night, thought I had something in my eye and tried to pull on my eyelash to …
2021-07-18: Ought-to-correct is such a bloody menace. Why do I ever have it turned on?
2021-07-18: All of my devices (Mac, iPad, iPhone) are plugged in, charging. None of them is near where I want to …
2021-07-17: I plugged my iPod Touch into the Mac to replace 2 albums that had managed to delete themselves from …
2021-07-17: A few days ago I posted a rather gloomy piece about the crisis in the arts. To balance that out a …
2021-07-15: Note to self: next time I order from coffeeclick.ie I’m to get the Lavazza Gran Espresso rather than …
2021-07-14: I just posted this on Medium (aka my blog): “Don’t blame the pandemic: the arts were already in …
2021-07-13: I love this dismissal by @baldur of Kevin Kelly’s “1,000 true fans” notion. I wonder if there’s any …
2021-07-10: I just posted this on Medium: Habits and habitation.
2021-07-10: My Twitter timeline is almost all in black & white this morning. What’s up?
2021-07-09: If you enjoy the Bluestocking, … do howl into the Twitter void about it. I live only in the golden …
2021-07-08: I got a flat tyre 🚲 5 Km from home, on my way back from shopping in Westport. Normally, I’d have a …
2021-07-06: Keychain refuses either to save my password for JSTOR or to suggest a new strong password when I …
2021-07-06: Having tried this approach for several days now, I confirm that leaving the coffee in the Aeropress …
2021-07-06: Is it possible to crosspost to Twitter using the feed for a particular MB category (e.g. “tweet”)? …
2021-07-06: I’m seeing a lot of mildly annoying posts from a particular writer on Medium, so I decide to …
2021-07-06: Medium has always tended to behave differently in Safari for iPad than it does in macOS Safari. I …
2021-07-05: I just got a text from officialdom asking if I was still living at the same address as when I came …
2021-07-05: I’m encouraged to find that Andy Matuschak takes the same view as I do on the relative merits of PDF …
2021-07-04: Oddly enough, I wasn’t conscious of this when I was setting up the talkaboutbooks.net domain for my …
2021-07-04: I’ve been trying the Logitech K380 Bluetooth keyboard (that I usually use with the iPad) with the …
2021-07-04: Scott Flanigan picks 10 tracks by Brad Mehldau I can’t do without. I’d have made some different …
2021-07-03: Steven Soderbergh has made another heist movie, his sixth after Out of Sight (1998), the Oceans …
2021-07-03: I may not have lost my taste for coffee after all. I’d taken too seriously a YouTube video that …
2021-07-03: Like Vincent van Gogh and Marvell’s “Little T C”, Roddy Doyle was given the same first name as an …
2021-07-03: I just posted “A custom domain for my Substack newsletter”. It’s on Medium but not paywalled.
2021-07-02: I’ve been meaning to read Felicia C Sullivan’s novel, Follow Me into the Dark📖, since I found some …
2021-07-02: Jonathan Carroll is one of the most reliably good writers on Medium. Here’s a snippet from him that …
2021-07-02: I’ve been having a bit of discussion about RSS with MarkStarlin over on Medium about RSS feeds …
2021-07-02: I just deleted two short posts referring to this piece on the Catholic nuptials of Boris Johnson. …
2021-07-01: I decided to go ahead and use a custom domain with my Substack newsletter. Still not sure it’s worth …
2021-06-30: Dustin Grinnell, How to write with aphantasia on Aphantasia Network. Good a reason as any to reup my …
2021-06-30: I’m awfully tempted to register a domain name to use with my Substack newsletter. Substack charges …
2021-06-29: I just Googled “lost my taste for coffee” and got 14,500 hits. So, I guess it’s a thing. This is …
2021-06-29: I was hunting through the iTunes Music folder (in the file system), to add back music that had once …
2021-06-29: Why Amazon’s recommendation system is a disaster. Amazon’s reviews are rubbish. From the Department …
2021-06-29: I’ve noticed that my lack of a visual self-image is a recurring theme in my writing about …
2021-06-29: Either the bezels on my iPad Air 3 are too narrow or my thumbs are too big ☹️
2021-06-28: I’ve been trying to log in to NY Review of Books to read one article for free, but it tells me that …
2021-06-27: I’ve just been listening to Florian Ross Trio’s album Blinds and Shades for the first time in a …
2021-06-27: I sat down this morning to write a blog post about “Tech’s unfulfilled promises” over the past four …
2021-06-26: I took a trip on a train, And I thought about … doing this more often.
2021-06-25: Here’s a mini-review by Ted Gioia of Bill Evans’s On a Friday Evening, a little known, previously …
2021-06-25: I’m Back on Twitter: maybe for good this time.
2021-06-23: The latest issue of my newsletter is Judicial misconduct: Scott Turow’s judges, prosecutors and …
2021-06-21: I just learned that Craig Venter has aphantasia. Other interesting people who have/had it include …
2021-06-21: The most exciting musical performance I ever attended was by the Brad Mehldau Trio in Sète, July …
2021-06-20: I just got a renewal receipt from Zoho Mail, so I guess that means it’s already a year since I …
2021-06-19: … in the likely event of McDonald becoming taoiseach? Likely event? More and more, I’m asking …
2021-06-19: This happens every other weekend and I’m getting really fed up with it. The Cancel button is greyed …
2021-06-18: Yesterday, I tweeted a link to an NYT article, “The boys in their summer dresses”. Coincidentally, 3 …
2021-06-17: It turns out that Medium were indeed clearing out bots and spam accounts: Keeping Medium authentic.
2021-06-17: Not that it makes a lot of practical difference, but I seem to have lost 150 followers on Medium all …
2021-06-17: I’m really enjoying Noah Smith’s Substack newsletter, Noahpinion, at least for now. I’ll get fed up …
2021-06-17: NYT: The boys in their summer dresses. I’m afraid I’d look like ram dressed as lamb. Why didn’t this …
2021-06-17: In July 2019 I posted a short piece on Medium, What Colm Tóibín said about genre fiction. Then, a …
2021-06-17: I hate “recommendations”. I had hoped mine would improve after I resumed my Medium subscription, as …
2021-06-16: A little over 3 years ago, I learned that most people can form mental images and that those of us …
2021-06-16: As it’s Bloomsday (the anniversary of the day on which James Joyce’s great novel is set, 16 June …
2021-06-15: Edward Snowden has started a Substack newsletter
2021-06-15: ”Heroes don’t do that.” So glad I’ve never aspired to be a hero (super or otherwise) if that’s true …
2021-06-15: Sometimes the saying that “Twitter isn’t real life” is true! But sometimes Twitter actually is real …
2021-06-15: I’m listening at the moment to “Bud Powell” (song) by Chick Corea (pianist) … or have I got that the …
2021-06-15: Ireland’s data watchdog loses sole oversight of Facebook in Europe Though the ECJ judgment is being …
2021-06-15: It’s counterproductive to call for Justice Breyer to step down before the midterm elections. For him …
2021-06-14: The Guardian: Rightwing firm posed as leftist group on Facebook to divide Democrats. Now there’s a …
2021-06-13: Here’s a 2,000 word piece about aphantasia in the NYT by Carl Zimmer (who alerted Adam Zeman to the …
2021-06-13: I’ve just been followed on Medium by Smokestack Lightnin’. Oh, sorry, no. It’s Substack Writing. …
2021-06-13: He changed the lives of many, myself included, with his disdain for hierarchy, humour and generosity …
2021-06-13: I should probably make it clear that I didn’t mean “What a clown!” in a good way 😉
2021-06-13: I missed this at the time but it has resurfaced in the context of President Biden’s quotation from …
2021-06-12: I stayed with Ryan Holiday’s Conspiracy📚 to the end, in case there were any surprises. Not sure it …
2021-06-11: I was chatting with my sister two weeks ago about Donen’s Charade🍿 and mentioned that I’ve always …
2021-06-11: Here’s a nice coincidence. It seems that President Biden quoted Yeats’s “Easter 1916” during his UK …
2021-06-11: Found it (in another room I can’t remember going into, obviously).
2021-06-11: I had the handle of the coffee grinder in my hand a few minutes ago. I put it down while I was …
2021-06-10: Really, most science fiction is about economics says Noah Smith, in Science fiction novels for …
2021-06-09: The new issue of my newsletter (Talk about books) is Globalization noir: Alan Glynn’s Winterland, …
2021-06-09: Is it just me or is the internet excruciatingly sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooow today? I suspect …
2021-06-08: having published as only his second book the most important English-language novel of the second …
2021-06-05: I know what they mean when they say it’s unfair to demonise the whole of the clergy for just a few …
2021-06-05: Nothing playful or strange or the ahead of time stuff that’s in there. Jeanette Winterson burns her …
2021-06-04: Well, I held off for almost 6 years but I’ve finally turned off slide over and split view on the …
2021-06-04: I’ve avoided Medium’s RSS feeds in the past because they included comments/responses as well as …
2021-06-03: I noticed that some albums I’d bought as iTunes downloads had gone from my Apple Music library, so I …
2021-06-03: So, I plugged the iPod Touch into the MacBook Air to copy some music across and it prompted me to …
2021-06-03: Never mind pilates, yoga and whatnot, we should be able to go to falling-over sessions during which …
2021-06-02: I suppose what I mean is, on the one hand, since the HTML specification makes it clear that italics …
2021-06-02: I stopped italicizing book and journal titles in posts on Medium and Substack because both of those …
2021-06-01: I borrowed Ryan Holiday’s Conspiracy📚 from the library on impulse just because the ebook was …
2021-05-31: I didn’t enjoy Liz Nugent’s Our Little Cruelties📖 as much as her earlier books. She alternates the …
2021-05-31: Terence Eden asks What are unusual characters?
2021-05-31: Who knew? “Pro” at the end of a name can sometimes mean “Programmer’s”: as in “Polish Pro” keyboard …
2021-05-30: I’m about halfway through Liz Nugent’s Our Little Cruelties (ebook borrowed from the library). It’s …
2021-05-30: My first substantial post since I went back to using Medium as my blog. A kind of addendum to last …
2021-05-30: Not that I’d trust Boris Johnson’s judgment or advice on anything, but maybe it’s time to repeal …
2021-05-29: Now that I’m using Medium as my blog, I thought of importing some blog-style posts from my static …
2021-05-29: I looked out the window at 5.30 this morning and saw that the sky was a vivid red. It looked …
2021-05-28: Matt Yglesias says that Twitter may be creating “bubbles of fake consensus” across various fields of …
2021-05-27: For weeks (months?) now, whenever I follow a link to a New York Times story it tells me I’ve reached …
2021-05-27: The fact that this is called The Beast Must Die and features a “Detective Strangeways” suggests to …
2021-05-27: I’ve never read anything by Patrick O’Brian, (though I heard a bit of one of his novels being read …
2021-05-27: Here is the latest issue of my newsletter, Talk about books. The title is “To overreach the devil”: …
2021-05-27: I sought a theme and … think I’ve found one. It’s big and unruly and hard to wrestle with, though.
2021-05-27: The most recent issue of Ted Gioia’s newsletter, How I became the honest broker, covers a lot of …
2021-05-26: So Amazon has bought MGM. (Hat tip @dave 😀.) I’ve got a copy of 12 Angry Men on DVD that I probably …
2021-05-26: I’ll probably continue to wear a mask in public when I’m fully vaccinated. Two reasons: I broke one …
2021-05-26: I remember someone complaining about the way iPad and iOS handle text selection now. This person …
2021-05-26: there is limited awareness of the culture war debate more generally in the UK – despite a huge surge …
2021-05-24: I think the local shop gets McNamee’s wheaten bread in on a Sunday. Yesterday, they had just one …
2021-05-24: I was reminded of this post, The upside of SDAM, yesterday, when I found the abandoned draft of an …
2021-05-24: Benedict Evans, quoted by Charles Arthur, on the subject of Apple’s ad strategy.
2021-05-24: He was homeless, so would sleep on people’s floors, devouring their books. Judy Collins, in My …
2021-05-22: Enticing review by Sebastian Scotney of Moravian Romance, a duo album from Miroslav Vitous and Emil …
2021-05-21: Here is a short (6 item) list of Substack newsletters that I like and read. I tried it out as a …
2021-05-21: Speaking about Paul Graham, I keep forgetting to visit his site, though I mean to. The RSS feed from …
2021-05-21: John Naughton linked to a 2009 essay by Paul Graham which is a revelation to me. Since learning …
2021-05-20: I’ve noticed a lot of Substack users asking how to find new writers or newsletters on the platform. …
2021-05-20: After trying it for a few days, I’ve removed the “blogroll” (officially called “Homepage links”) …
2021-05-20: I’ve been driving myself crazy trying to figure out why I can’t get some music to sync from Apple …
2021-05-19: I’m rereading (after a very long gap) William Empson’s 📖 Faustus and the Censor (1987) for the next …
2021-05-19: Vous n’encaissez pas la vérité! But can you handle the deepfake? via Charles Arthur, The Overspill …
2021-05-18: Microsoft Teams for personal use is now available on the web/desktop as well as on iOS and Android, …
2021-05-17: “There are many ways in which the thing I am trying in vain to say may be tried in vain to be said” …
2021-05-17: Legislation will be introduced, the Queen said last week, to “restore the balance of power between …
2021-05-16: Whoever designed the sardine tin, with its thin, springy metal top that practically guarantees …
2021-05-16: I’ve been trying out the new “blogroll” feature on Substack. I think it makes the page look too …
2021-05-16: It seems that I only ever mention Lawrence Lessig when I write “I don’t usually agree with Lessig, …
2021-05-16: Well, I read An Anonymous Girl to the end. It got better in the second half and the plot was quite …
2021-05-16: What’s this about Martial Solal hanging up his piano stool? I went to a trio concert of his in …
2021-05-16: I wish I could get the MacBook Air and iPad to connect to the iPhone’s personal hotspot …
2021-05-15: I’m a third of the way through An Anonymous Girl📚 by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen and I’m …
2021-05-14: I swear, if Twitter keeps nagging me to turn on notifications I will delete my account again 😡
2021-05-14: Here’s more about Substack’s acquisition of People & Company, from one of the latter’s founders.
2021-05-13: Substack announces that it has acquired People & Company, an organization specializing in …
2021-05-12: I’ve just sent out the latest (by my count the 13th) issue of my Talk about books newsletter. The …
2021-05-12: Tried again. Something is downloading this time: 5.69GB of software. Fingers crossed.
2021-05-11: So, I plugged the iPhone into my MacBook Air and followed the steps to Restore. It says it’s …
2021-05-11: Whenever you change the passcode on your iPhone, or set one up for the first time, the phone should …
2021-05-11: I haven’t read anything by Christopher Priest except The Prestige📚, — my review — and I read that …
2021-05-10: I tweaked the font colour on what I’ve now started to call “my static site” slightly. I know that …
2021-05-10: I posted yesterday about using my Medium profile with my own domain. I’m not sure, but at first …
2021-05-09: I had been slowly moving my old posts from Medium to artkavanagh.ie. But Medium has changed in the …
2021-05-07: Listening for (maybe) the first time since the first decade of this millennium to 🎹 Bill Evans’s …
2021-05-07: Enrico Pieranunzi has made so many great albums that I sometimes go for months without listening to …
2021-05-07: One of the reasons I got a Nokia flip phone rather than a smartphone last year was that I had been …
2021-05-06: After 2 days with my first ever iPhone, I think it’s helping me to appreciate the iPad better: I’d …
2021-05-06: I think Substack is down.
2021-05-06: Why is it bad that investment companies are buying whole estates? Rents in and around Dublin are …
2021-05-04: I’ve owned a succession of iPads and iPod Touches but never, till today, an iPhone (it’s a 12 Mini). …
2021-05-04: I followed Terence Eden’s advice to hide Trending topics on Twitter. I chose Finnish because not …
2021-05-03: I just accidentally deleted Kottke.org from NetNewsWire (moving my finger without noticing that it …
2021-05-02: Writing about Midnight’s Children for my newsletter emphasized something that should have been …
2021-05-02: Adam Roberts on Twitter
2021-05-02: I’ve just finished reading Emma Healey’s Whistle in the Dark. Not at all what the reviews led me to …
2021-05-02: In case you were wondering, a reminder as to why I no longer italicize book and journal titles in my …
2021-04-30: Several days late, the newest issue of my newsletter, Talk about books, is finally out. The title is …
2021-04-30: the salvation of humanity coming in the form of a cybernetically enhanced dolphin … Why Johnny …
2021-04-30: This weekend the Bray jazz festival would normally take place. I miss it, and wonder who would have …
2021-04-29: One year and 9 days after the last time, I just knocked over a full Aeropress ☕️. I’ll have to …
2021-04-29: the collapse of Foster’s leadership … relates to her failing to vote against a ban on gay conversion …
2021-04-28: How come Daniel Ek is a billionaire? Spotify really oughtn’t to be making anybody rich.
2021-04-27: I didn’t know Tadd Dameron’s “Hot House” till I recently bought the Corea album Further …
2021-04-27: It appears that Will Oremus has accepted Medium’s severance money and left OneZero, though not (so …
2021-04-24: I’m writing about Midnight’s Children for the next issue of my newslettern and found this excellent …
2021-04-22: Terence Eden has an ingenious way to “hide” Trending topics on Twitter. But I think we need to get …
2021-04-22: Before StackOverflow existed, I used to Google how to do something and the top hit would be a forum …
2021-04-22: I need to read 300 pages today if I’m going to finish rereading Midnight’s Children in time to write …
2021-04-22: It finally struck me that the line from a song, “We got stars direct in our face” is really meant to …
2021-04-20: I really hate liveblogs. Surely there’s a better way to cover events and announcements.
2021-04-17: A woman would have told her where to stick him. But Jones had no female friends. Review of John …
2021-04-16: I started to read Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown (2005) last night, and immediately realized …
2021-04-16: Ha! I got 8 out of 10 in this Game of Thrones quiz and I never read any of the books or saw a single …
2021-04-13: I just came across this 4-year-old post on Scott Turow’s previous novel, Testimony. (Reading current …
2021-04-12: I finally got around to ordering this, two years after publication. The price put me off for a …
2021-04-12: While I was writing yesterday’s issue of the newsletter, about Ian McEwan’s Saturday, it was brought …
2021-04-12: Apparently, the Charlie Jazz festival at Vitrolles is expected to go ahead this year. I saw the Brad …
2021-04-11: Here’s Richard Williams’s favourable review of the new trio album from Vijay Iyer, Linda May Han Oh …
2021-04-11: The latest issue of my Substack newsletter, Talk about books, has just gone out. It’s titled On …
2021-04-10: Instead of reacting to the disaster of the 2008 property crash by resetting national policy to make …
2021-04-09: Whatever happened to “don’t break the Back button?” I’ve noticed several times on The Irish Times …
2021-04-08: I missed the fact that Tavernier died a few weeks ago. Here’s a superb reminder of what a great film …
2021-04-08: A few weeks ago, I bought a CD player, the first I’ve owned for about 12 years. And yesterday I …
2021-04-07: Medium gives you no control over what appears in your blogroll, but setting it up is as easy as …
2021-04-05: Hemingway feels increasingly irrelevant today, his influence diminished to a vanishing point, his …
2021-04-05: I’ve just moved a dozen or so miscellaneous blog-type posts from Medium to artkavanagh.ie. I’d …
2021-04-04: Last night I finished watching the 2018 tv adaptation of Le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl, one ep …
2021-04-03: I don’t write this in defence of the manifest and ugly inequalities in my country today. But I’m not …
2021-04-02: I’ve moved some more posts from Medium to artkavanagh.ie, so that I can eventually delete my Medium …
2021-04-02: I will say to this day, the way I made it is an interesting movie that I like. It is not Tom Wolfe’s …
2021-04-01: I have to admit that I usually don’t make it all the way through Matt Stoller’s antimonopoly …
2021-04-01: That last post was partly an experiment in posting straight HTML to Micro.blog — HTML is valid …
2021-04-01: PDF is still preferable to ePub But maybe the optimal page size is larger than I thought This piece was originally posted on Medium …
2021-04-01: It’s 40 years since The Long Good Friday came out. It towers over most of the London gangster films …
2021-03-31: As it’s the 400th anniversary of Andrew Marvell’s birth, here are links to some things I’ve written …
2021-03-29: I’m ripping a DVD for the first time in ages, which means that I’m hearing the fan in my MacBook Air …
2021-03-28: I’ve sent out the 10th issue of my newsletter, Talk about books. This one’s called Sarah Waters’s …
2021-03-28: I’ve been on a bit of a “Round Midnight” binge this morning, listening to versions by Jürgen …
2021-03-28: the voice of leftish Ulster Protestantism, inclined towards trade unionism, the Workers’ Party, and …
2021-03-27: The winds of March that make my heart a dancer These Foolish Things
2021-03-27: I usually hate nostalgia about literary Dublin; or indeed any aspect of Dublin — it brings to mind a …
2021-03-27: I just Googled the difference between “jointure” and “portion” and got many hits relating to SQL …
2021-03-27: Microsoft Exchange/Outlook has just nagged me three times to enter my work email password and 2fa …
2021-03-26: Substack has added/improved some features, including links on the home page, which can be used to …
2021-03-26: I wish Alboran Trio were still making albums. I’m now listening to this one🎶 🎹
2021-03-26: Casey Newton reports on The mess at Medium. Though I’ve moved almost all my fiction to …
2021-03-25: Yesterday, I was trying in vain to remember Tim Harford’s surname so that I could search for a …
2021-03-24: On Memex 1.1 yesterday, John Naughton mentioned Tim Hwang’s Subprime Attention Crisis, which was new …
2021-03-24: More changes at Medium. What I think this means is that Medium is going to focus less on its …
2021-03-23: Having published her first novel when she was 61, Penelope Fitzgerald … spent the last twenty five …
2021-03-22: I’ve never ground coffee till now: I drink it too quickly for it to go stale. But I can’t get the …
2021-03-21: Maybe when you buy a book of short stories, you have to expect that there will be one or two …
2021-03-21: Oh, Chatterbox Guy is going so fast that he’s going back in time! I get it I don’t think …
2021-03-21: Adam Roberts didn’t enjoy the Snyder cut but at least he got to let off steam writing about it 🍿
2021-03-19: I was very disappointed when I saw Cutter’s Way (1981)🍿. Eventually, I realized that the fault must …
2021-03-19: There will be no war, but in the struggle for peace not a stone will be left standing. Good …
2021-03-18: When you visit a site from that site’s RSS feed, it really ought to know better than to nag you to …
2021-03-16: Christopher Nolan’s Memento🍿 is 20 years old. I still think it’s great, which is more than I can say …
2021-03-14: I’ve sent out the latest issue of Talk about books (newsletter). The title is An epical forged …
2021-03-14: Legendary guitarist and songwriter Richard Thompson has written a memoir, Beeswing: Fairport, …
2021-03-11: According to Twitter the hashtag “NoTallMen” is trending in Ireland. Wonder what that’s about 🤷
2021-03-11: I just cancelled my digital subscription to the NYT. It’s a surprisingly protracted process. …
2021-03-11: Steve Goble says It’s time to appreciate Wilkie Collins’s lesser known classics. I couldn’t agree …
2021-03-11: But they hate us so much that they don’t care what they’re losing … Great piece by Naoise Dolan …
2021-03-10: I just deliberately chose to buy an album on CD rather than from iTunes, even though it cost about …
2021-03-10: Piers Morgan is “off to spend more time with my opinions”. I almost feel sorry for him when he puts …
2021-03-09: I hadn’t known that Anne Sacoolas does not deny causing Harry Dunn’s death. Her lawyer says US won’t …
2021-03-08: Deathbed regrets: I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time trying to figure out what my purpose in life …
2021-03-07: I haven’t yet read Ishiguro’s novel Klara and the Sun📖, but I did find in Constance Grady’s Vox …
2021-03-07: Sorry about this but I’m reposting a link that I already posted here yesterday: Paul Graham and the …
2021-03-07: A very rare piano solo album by Tommy Flanagan, In his own sweet time. Recorded 1994; he died in …
2021-03-06: “Once Brad Mehldau went off into one of his twelve-minute rhapsodies, and right there, about nine …
2021-03-06: I just posted Paul Graham and the online essay. The cofounder of Y Combinator sees his main activity …
2021-03-05: It’s Bandcamp Friday (the day on which Bandcamp waives its fees, so more money goes to the …
2021-03-04: I know I’m going to order an M1 MacBook Air sooner or later, so why wait? OTOH, I’m still happy with …
2021-03-04: It seems that blockchain is the future of digital rights management. Bet you didn’t see that coming …
2021-03-03: Pianist Dan Tepfer, Eric Harland (drums) and Jorge Roeder (bass) play a jazz trio performance 130 …
2021-03-02: I’m glad I didn’t read this Irish Times piece by Roisín O’Donnell before I wrote about her short …
2021-02-28: I never read much serious science fiction. I’ve just now understood why: throughout my 20s and into …
2021-02-28: One reason I thought about switching my newsletter to Buttondown is that it’s just about the only …
2021-02-28: I’ve just sent out the most recent issue of my Talk about books newsletter. This issue is titled …
2021-02-27: I just spent a few hours fiddling about with CSS/design on Buttondown, trying to get my newsletter …
2021-02-26: I’ve just exported the first three months’ worth of data from Substack (because I’m probably going …
2021-02-24: And then I went back to iTunes and found the album immediately, searching for “Corea Clarke White”, …
2021-02-24: I just bought something on eBay for the first time in … I don’t know, I’d say about 14 years. I …
2021-02-20: Last summer, I wrote a post in which I claimed that PDF is a preferable publishing format to ePub. I …
2021-02-19: I’m waiting and hoping for some major musical artist to say, “Screw this. I’m taking my music off …
2021-02-18: Substack is offering “Better analytics for your subscribers”. I’m not sure I need this but I’m …
2021-02-18: Medium is now allowing custom domain names again. I’m thinking about making my Medium profile a …
2021-02-17: I’m not watching the tv adaptation of Behind Her Eyes, though I’m sure I’d do so if I had a tv. My …
2021-02-17: Anyone who refers to film, music, or writing as “content” is simply not a trustworthy custodian of …
2021-02-16: Every web server can – and should – gzip files on transmission. Manually zipping a single file on …
2021-02-15: A day late but worth waiting for: the latest issue of my newsletter, Talk about books, discusses the …
2021-02-15: I liked Jonathan Carroll’s The Chocolate Conductor, kind of a character study but (unless the …
2021-02-15: Veteran jazz critic John Fordham lists Chick Corea’s 10 greatest recordings. I’ve been meaning for …
2021-02-13: And there are very few opportunities in life to have it both ways; semicolons are the rare instance …
2021-02-11: I’m remembering Chick Corea by listening to his recording of Bud Powell’s “Tempus Fugit”, with …
2021-02-11: Chick Corea is reported to have died at the age of 79. This has come as a big shock to me 🎹 🎶
2021-02-08: It was the era of supergroups but I’m doubtful if this one would have worked. I might be quite wrong …
2021-02-08: Ted Gioia on Twitter: When you finally manage to pay the rent with your streaming royalties 🍿
2021-02-07: Andrew Marvell died from an overdose of an opium-based malaria treatment, Stewart Mottram has found. …
2021-02-07: Is Brian Moore reemerging from obscurity? This is the second newspaper article I’ve read about him …
2021-02-06: No GAA (Gaelic games) fixtures while the pandemic restrictions remain in force. Not much sport to be …
2021-02-06: Felicia C Sullivan is going to post much less on Medium — sorry, paywall — and concentrate instead …
2021-02-06: It seems that Amazon is opening a fulfilment centre in Ireland because of Brexit. Otherwise there’d …
2021-02-05: My three favourite Christopher Plummer films: The Silent Partner (dir. Daryl Duke, 1978) Ararat …
2021-02-05: This is Elmo, my sister’s dog. I was staying with my sister when the original pandemic restrictions …
2021-02-05: She lost in 1979 to … [Tory] Tony Marlow, a man who who opposed equal pay on the grounds that it …
2021-02-04: It’s not obvious from the photo, I’m afraid, but there were layers of cloud over the “mountains” …
2021-02-03: Though I haven’t yet worn the shoes that one of my sisters gave me for Christmas, because the …
2021-02-02: By me: Citing book and journal titles when posting on Medium and Substack. These platforms treat all …
2021-02-02: I don’t drink coffee first thing in the morning: I prefer water then. I aim to have my first cup …
2021-02-02: I want the Dunning-Kruger effect to be real … says Jonathan Jarry, before concluding that it …
2021-02-02: Randell Roberts, LA Times: Cicely Tyson and Miles Davis
2021-02-01: Here’s a close up of some of the books I discussed in the first six issues of my newsletter 📷
2021-02-01: Complaints about the number of books in circulation started as soon as printing was invented. …
2021-02-01: “You can’t really be in a beautiful secluded part of the English countryside without thinking, ‘Oh …
2021-01-31: I’ve just sent out the 6th issue of my newsletter, Talk about books. This one is about Tana French’s …
2021-01-31: While I like Coppola’s The Conversation, I’ve slways felt that it was overpraised. This article does …
2021-01-30: Replacing Calvinism with communism: Simon Kuper, whose biography of George Blake is just about to …
2021-01-30: Ah, I see what it does now. It’s the shortcut for toggling the code font on and off. I didn’t notice …
2021-01-30: I just noticed that, when I’m in the Substack editor, ⌘-` doesn’t have the expected effect …
2021-01-29: Well, carrying the bike up and down the stairs turns out to be no big deal. Carrying the shopping up …
2021-01-29: Gina Gershon’s motorbiking, Die Hard-loving detective was secretly the criminal mastermind behind …
2021-01-29: I opened up a Robinhood account very early on, but for me, the mobile-only functionality was a …
2021-01-28: The ideal Law & Order: Criminal Intent detective pairing would have been Jeff Goldblum (Zach …
2021-01-28: Here’s M G Siegler on Twitter’s acquisition of Revue, and what that means for Substack. Having read …
2021-01-28: The management company of the building in which I rent an apartment say they’ve disabled the lift …
2021-01-28: If I had a suspicious mind, I’d wonder if some person or group had cleverly gone around various …
2021-01-27: I had been dragging my heels a bit about updating to iPadOS 14.4 until I read about the security …
2021-01-27: If the company publishes op-eds from the usual suspects in tech about how revolutionary their …
2021-01-27: I just saw the title of a post on Medium by Seth Godin: “Passion is a choice”. I didn’t read the …
2021-01-27: Remember that scene from the Sopranos, where Tony’s wife calls to buy 5000 shares of Webonics, after …
2021-01-26: I just searched for a book on Kennys.ie bookshop site and got no hits, so I searched on …
2021-01-24: I’ve never had a problem with TextEdit before, or not that I’ve noticed, but it’s suddenly deleting …
2021-01-24: A cold, bright day. So far, at least. I shouldn’t be surprised if it gets darker later.
2021-01-24: Sir Edward Carson, who prosecuted in Oscar Wilde’s trial for gross indecency, brought to his …
2021-01-23: Go home? I am home. Why would you think I was anywhere else?
2021-01-23: I had noticed that Lawrence Lessig has been posting behind the Medium paywall. Here’s his rationale. …
2021-01-23: I’m reading Ian McEwan’s The Children Act again and, so far, enjoying it more than I did on first …
2021-01-23: McConnell, focussed on Republican judicial appointments, “made a Faustian deal for all those …
2021-01-23: I bet Netflix will change the ending of Behind Her Eyes. I can’t see how they would make the book’s …
2021-01-23: Small mountains, biggish sky.
2021-01-22: Via Charles Arthur’s Overspill blog, I see that computer makers are finally moving away from the …
2021-01-22: After an absence of two years, I went back to Twitter at the end of November, starting from scratch …
2021-01-21: The frequently visited list in Safari on my iPad is mainly made up of sites that I almost never …
2021-01-20: It’s 25 years since Our Friends in the North first appeared on our television screens. It was great, …
2021-01-19: Tech offers me phones-that-are-really-cameras, tablets, smart watches, ereaders, home speakers, …
2021-01-19: Those close to him say that Mitch McConnell has his eye on his legacy, now more than ever. That’s …
2021-01-19: The overflow carpark is overflowing again.
2021-01-18: I see rumours that Apple will be bringing back MagSafe charging for its new MacBook Pro. While I was …
2021-01-18: Of course, these figures are averaged out and based on a basket of goods etc. A lot depends on what …
2021-01-18: Ireland is the 13th most expensive country in the world to live, according price comparison website …
2021-01-18: If you were wondering what to make of Glose (whose acquisition by Medium was recently announced), …
2021-01-17: I’ve sent out the fifth issue of my newsletter, “Talk about books”. The title is William Empson and …
2021-01-16: We want to rethink the book-reading experience, and we’re hiring. Ev Williams is not being at all …
2021-01-16: The main problem is that it has increased the attack surface against me. There’s yet another …
2021-01-16: If you’re a fan of the vinyl revival then don’t buy this album. Well do, just not on vinyl. With its …
2021-01-15: And speaking about ebooks, Medium has just acquired Glose, a French-based ebook “platform” (I’m not …
2021-01-15: The law firm that led a class action against Apple and big five publishers almost a decade ago over …
2021-01-15: the gap in stability and user experience has narrowed as Windows has improved and Mac OS has become …
2021-01-14: It’s hard to pick a side in the Trump-Giuliani falling-out. On the one hand, Trump has made a habit …
2021-01-14: I just noticed that the computer I bought back in November is offering me “3 months FREE of Amazon …
2021-01-12: Funny to think about Brian Moore as a “neglected” author. In the late 70s and early 80s, I read …
2021-01-11: Simon & Schuster will not, after all, be publishing Josh Hawley’s book, The Tyranny of Big Tech. …
2021-01-10: Katherine Whitehorn has died, aged 92. Her column was always one of the first things I’d read in The …
2021-01-10: I posted The upside of SDAM earlier. Severely deficient autobiographical memory brings advantages as …
2021-01-09: … his patient became obsessed with committing “creative suicide”, as the ultimate act in his …
2021-01-09: The Guardian has a newly discovered short story by Patricia Highsmith, “The world’s champion …
2021-01-08: … the trials of making a documentary about improvisational jazz with Keith Jarrett. He cannot …
2021-01-08: I’m pleased to say that Substack is now allowing customized themes. My first attempt uses the sans …
2021-01-08: Ted Gioia, Why music ownership matters 🎶 What happens when the mega-corporations who run the …
2021-01-07: I’ve just been reading Stuart Neville’s short story “Echo”, in the anthology Being Various, ed. Lucy …
2021-01-07: I was afraid I was going to wake up to the news that Trump had imposed martial law. When I read …
2021-01-06: It looks as if I’m back at work: I had to boot up the Windows pc for the first time in over 2 weeks. …
2021-01-05: I hope steps are being taken to prosecute Trump before an international tribunal when he leaves …
2021-01-04: When I deleted my Google/Gmail account two weeks ago this video also disappeared from YouTube. So, …
2021-01-04: It would be oppressive to extradite Julian Assange to the US on espionage charges because of suicide …
2021-01-04: Snow and cloud on the Nephin “mountains” (hills, really): the view from my balcony this frosty …
2021-01-03: I’ve just sent out the 4th issue of my Substack newsletter, Talk about books. This issue is titled …
2021-01-02: I’m looking at the contents list of Being Various (ed. Lucy Caldwell), trying to remember which …
2021-01-02: For years now, I’ve been seeing knowledgeable people put Keith Jarrett’s Facing You high up on their …
2021-01-02: I’m seeing a lot of commentary about The Great Gatsby and other works published in 1925 coming out …
2021-01-02: I seem to have completely lost interest in tech. I’m regretting the time I’ve spent over the years …
2021-01-02: Here’s another great tweet-length very short story by Hannah Whiteoak. I wish I knew how she …
2021-01-01: I hope the UK will do well outside the EU — but not so well that it encourages other member states …
2021-01-01: I’ve been choosing to write long posts on my 2019 MacBook Air’s butterfly keyboard instead of on the …
2021-01-01: 2020 has just ended in this time zone. Every good wish for 2021 to you all.
2020-12-31: I’ve seen some commenaries online on HBO Max’s The Flight Attendant. Since we don’t get HBO Max …
2020-12-31: Medium seems to have changed the way it tells you about new followers: it notifies you that you have …
2020-12-31: I’m not usually a fan of extremely short (in this case, tweet-length) fiction, but Hannah Whiteoak …
2020-12-31: Jazz pianist Frank Kimbrough has died. To be honest, not one of my favourites, but still great, and …
2020-12-30: I just read two short stories in a row by Kevin Barry, one in Electric Literature and the other in …
2020-12-30: TikTok is being sued for the misuse of private informationn about a 12-year-old girl from London. A …
2020-12-30: It must be chilly today. My espresso-sized cup of coffee was cold by the time I finished it! ☕️
2020-12-29: Latest addition to my short stories page: Danielle McLaughlin, “Snow Globe”: An artist under …
2020-12-28: Here’s Ted Gioia’s list of the best online essays he read in 2020. I think I’ll be revisiting this …
2020-12-28: As a reader of blogs, I dislike WordPress. I particularly can’t stand the way the Follow button …
2020-12-28: Anna Wiener in The New Yorker asks Is Substack the media future we want? I suppose that depends on …
2020-12-27: I finished reading Lisa Lutz’s The Swallows yesterday. A very disturbing subject — the sexual …
2020-12-24: I finally deleted my main Google account — the one I’ve been using as my primary email (Gmail) …
2020-12-23: Three Days of the Condor is at least as much a Christmas movie as Die Hard is. So there! 🍿
2020-12-22: From Ted Gioia on Twitter: The best decisions I’ve made ran counter to short-term incentives — …
2020-12-21: I’ve just sent out the third issue of my newsletter, Talk about books. This issue is titled Reading …
2020-12-18: I read Ulysses three times between 1993 and 1996. It’s time for a fourth reading if I can find my …
2020-12-15: The library can (in fact it frequently does) deliver satisfaction, but it is an autumnal …
2020-12-14: If you report it to customer services – you’ll likely be ignored. It makes me wish that there were …
2020-12-14: I said in previous post that I’d read nothing of le Carré’s since Smiley’s People. Thinking back, I …
2020-12-14: John le Carré has died, aged 89. I loved some of his books, thought others were close to …
2020-12-13: Somebody who can recognizably be described as a “rat-faced little prick” really has no business …
2020-12-13: I loved Prince’s music, and he came up to me at the Grammys and said, “You really should write some …
2020-12-12: Emily Olcott remembers the Jazz Standard, yet another venue closed permanently. A 9-minute read but …
2020-12-12: I found out what was wrong with my Twitter summary cards, which weren’t displaying an image. I had …
2020-12-11: I had read enough books to pick up on the fact that Genius is a personality-laundering scheme … Two …
2020-12-10: I just broke my favourite espresso cup (so favourite that it’s the only one I took with me when I …
2020-12-10: On Crime Reads, Nick Kolakowski is describing Neil Jordan’s The Good Thief as “The best heist movie …
2020-12-10: I hope the Bad Sex award stays cancelled permanently. I’ve been saying for years that the Literary …
2020-12-08: I’m listening to Robert Glasper’s performance of Radiohead’s “Reckoner” (from his album Covered) for …
2020-12-08: I’m a bit sad to see the end of the Ikea catalogue, though it’s over a decade since I bought …
2020-12-07: “The United States government, from the nineteen-thirties on, became a big insurance company, and it …
2020-12-06: I’ve just sent out the second issue of my Substack newsletter, Talk about books. This issue’s called …
2020-12-02: Novelist Alan Glynn on the appeal of doppelgängers in fiction and films.
2020-12-01: Choose something you’re interested in and scroll to see more like it … Swipe to the left to …
2020-12-01: I just posted on my own site The judgment of critics. For most of my life I’ve believed that the …
2020-12-01: I think I’ll have my bike back this afternoon. Tomorrow at the latest. And it’s bright and dry …
2020-11-30: Blogger Roland Denzel thinks that authors should stop writing about writing. I don’t recommend the …
2020-11-29: Now that I’m back on Twitter, I’ve been experimenting with adding “Twitter cards” to some of my …
2020-11-29: The pandemic restrictions are being relaxed from Tuesday in Ireland. First thing I’m going to do is …
2020-11-29: I just posted something on Medium introducing my email newsletter. I know it’s been a few weeks …
2020-11-28: I like wearing a mask and interacting (at a safe distance) with other mask wearers. It seems I’m …
2020-11-27: I don’t think I’ve been faced with a genuine dilemma for a long time, if ever. But I often find …
2020-11-27: How academia resembles a drug gang (or why recently minted PhDs still live with their moms). Via …
2020-11-26: We finally found those tapes from Ronnie’s. Where Bill Evans had a residency in 1968 with Eddie …
2020-11-26: Yesterday I said that, if the prompts lent themselves to it, I’d explain what I mean when I say I’ve …
2020-11-25: Substack “Writers’ library” just emailed out a writing prompt: What does “home” mean to you? This …
2020-11-25: I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I’d never heard of Clare Sheridan, sculptor, “middling novelist” …
2020-11-25: It would never be accurate to call me a cockeyed optimist. I’ve sometimes described myself as “a …
2020-11-24: So, the same weekend that I renew my .ie domain name for a third year, I start a newsletter, rejoin …
2020-11-24: I studied law in Ireland in the 1970s and practised as a solicitor for about 6 years in the 80s. As …
2020-11-23: During the 2 years I was off Twitter, I posted various bits of writing that I would certainly have …
2020-11-23: Yesterday, I sent out the first email from my new newsletter. Now all I need to do is capture some …
2020-11-22: I’ve posted the first issue of my Substack newsletter Talk about books. I’m planning to send it out …
2020-11-22: Well, I did it, I signed up for Twitter again. Already, I can feel my anxiety rising, and I found …
2020-11-22: I’m thinking about going back to Twitter after a gap of 2 years, mainly to try to drum up …
2020-11-22: With the Brexit transition period coming to an end, and agreement apparently still eluding the …
2020-11-21: Sorry if I posted my microblogvember post for today twice. I was convinced I remembered posting it …
2020-11-21: I’m a little bit apprehensive about facing into winter here on the exposed, wind-and-rainswept west …
2020-11-21: I’ve been hesitant about starting a newsletter. When I was setting up my previous effort, …
2020-11-20: My Microblogvember post yesterday didn’t say quite what I wanted. I hope my enthusiasm isn’t …
2020-11-19: It’s generally been a principle of mine that one should be careful not to waste effort by attempting …
2020-11-18: Throughout my 20s and into my 30s, I believed that society is founded on our mutual dependence and …
2020-11-17: I found just four emails in my Spam folder. None of them was spam and one was about a delivery that …
2020-11-17: Once the level 5 restrictions have been lifted, I’m going to get the train to Dublin and bring my …
2020-11-16: Until my late 50s, I completely misunderstood the idea of memory. I didn’t realize that episodic …
2020-11-15: Excellent “Quote of the day” on John Naughton’s Memex 1.1 blog yesterday. It’s from Robert Musil and …
2020-11-15: Since updating to Big Sur yesterday, I’ve been aware of an urge to change my MacBook Air’s screen …
2020-11-15: I’ll be ending 2020 (and spending much of 2021) far from where I expected to be. But that will be …
2020-11-14: Reading this BBC history of the ballpoint pen persuaded me that I should finally give up trying to …
2020-11-14: I decided not to be patient. I knew it was the right choice as soon as I heard the chime. The chime …
2020-11-14: The progress bar on my Big Sur installation has been stalled just 3mm from the end for 45 minutes. …
2020-11-14: I’m not normally a fan of Dusty Springfield — for example I hate how she sings the great …
2020-11-14: I’ve written ✏️ another poem. I make no more claims for it than I did for the previous two. In fact, …
2020-11-13: I’m quite pleased with myself: I just moved my bare foot in the nick of time out of the path of a …
2020-11-13: But it’s not how it seems, I will figure it out. I guess now’s the right time. How will I ever know? …
2020-11-12: Lots to think about (and maybe react against) in this New Yorker piece by Hannah Arendt on W H …
2020-11-12: It seems I’ll have to start ordering coffee online to get the espresso roast I like. I’ve never …
2020-11-12: In my previous post, I used the word “paths”, partly to stay within the character count, but also to …
2020-11-12: I was trying to travel light in France with just one pair of shoes, to which the rough paths did as …
2020-11-12: Two to three years ago, Dan Belmont was one of the undsputed stars of short fiction on Medium. Then …
2020-11-12: Brexit will make it a nightmare for British musicians to perform in the EU, partly because …
2020-11-11: I’ve finally moved the entire 74,000 words of A Falling Body from Medium to www.artkavanagh.ie which …
2020-11-11: Since my work Windows notebook won’t boot up any more, I got a new Lenovo desktop. It’s nice having …
2020-11-11: Reports of the death of Sean Connery reminded me of the existence of the “unofficial” Bond film, …
2020-11-10: I find that, without a conscious decision, I’ve given up crossdressing. My soon-to-be elderly legs …
2020-11-10: Yet another reason to like Kamala Harris, from London Jazz News 🎶
2020-11-09: The battery in my MacBook Air is at 5%. It’s threatening to go to sleep unless I plug it in, but …
2020-11-09: On Friday I was advising a writer on Medium who was worked up because he hadn’t been writing …
2020-11-08: Medium’s recent change of style and approach has made it more likely that I’ll post there (though I …
2020-11-08: I often joke that I’m a software, not a hardware, guy: able to make something ephemeral from bits …
2020-11-08: Advice: don’t read A Clockwork Orange — it’s a foul farrago Of made-up words that bite and bash and …
2020-11-07: I bet Trump pardons himself and some members of his immediate family. Who else, I wonder?
2020-11-07: Because of rain and wind, as well as catching up on work, I haven’t been out much to expore the …
2020-11-06: Twitter says that when Trump leaves office he’ll lose protection as a “newsworthy individual”. This …
2020-11-06: I replaced my defunct Windows notebook with a desktop (really deskside). It’s been 14 years since I …
2020-11-06: I’ve been editing HTML files with TextEdit and puzzling over how to do some things that work …
2020-11-05: But all things are composed here Like Nature, orderly and near: In which we the dimensions find Of …
2020-11-04: I love stills from stage plays. If the play is one I haven’t seen (as all of these are) I can’t help …
2020-11-04: I just reread my long short story from early 2018, “Purpose of Amendment”. I can see there’s …
2020-11-03: Sorry to hear that John Sessions has died. I liked him as an actor (particularly) and comedian, even …
2020-11-03: What a disappointment! I got an email from Caffè Nero, apparently offering me the chance to buy …
2020-11-03: I managed to astonish myself on Friday: I found a document in my suitcase showing that my after-tax …
2020-11-02: Stevens are 2 percent more likely to vote Trump, while Stephens are 14 percent more likely to vote …
2020-11-02: Was it just yesterday I was thinking about leaving A Falling Body on Medium? I’m afraid it won’t …
2020-11-02: Blasted Windows: telling me I have “no internet” and that “the DNS server can’t be found” when the …
2020-11-02: I haven’t read any of the Jack Reacher books. I recently tried an Eddie Flynn (by Steve Cavanagh), …
2020-11-02: This is hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time. Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson (Thin Lizzy …
2020-11-02: 25 Feel-Good Films You’ll Want to Watch Again—and Again. theatlantic.com via @dave David Sims writes …
2020-11-02: When, as a kid, I’d lose or forget something, an adult would urge me to concentrate, try to …
2020-11-01: Now that Medium allows use of a sans font and personalized theme, I might just leave A Falling Body …
2020-11-01: It’s the beginning of the month, so I have three new free reads on Medium. I’d been saving some …
2020-11-01: I bought Brad Mehldau’s last two trio albums Blues and Ballads (2016) and Seymour Reads the …
2020-11-01: I just posted Who needs independent booksellers? It’s a question my answers to which haven’t been …
2020-11-01: We’ve been getting a lot of rain. The carpark opposite my new apartment was flooded Thursday, dried …
2020-10-30: Ursula Le Guin introduces herself I predate the invention of women by decades. Well, if you insist …
2020-10-30: Sharing the internet with America is like sharing your living room with a rhinoceros. It’s huge, …
2020-10-29: Is this a coincidence or does it just seem like one? I listened to the Labèque sisters’ album Love …
2020-10-28: I just posted “Lining figures” in Microsoft Word: You learn something new every now and then on …
2020-10-28: … when my last book came out someone wrote an article naming me as ‘a forgotten writer’… I suppose I …
2020-10-28: Please enter your telephone number as a continuous string without spaces or dashes. Why, do you not …
2020-10-26: In fact I feel more like a drummer … I try to make the piano sing, although it’s really a percussion …
2020-10-26: The plural use of “advancements” seems quite new. I’ve been seeing it a lot where I’d once have …
2020-10-26: Lithium-ion batteries are believed to have been responsible for at least 250 fires at recycling and …
2020-10-25: I just posted Writers on writing. A list of pieces/posts etc. available to read on the web in which …
2020-10-24: I’ve been wanting to order some books (from, for example, Kennys.ie) for several months now but I …
2020-10-23: Having stayed in cheapish hotels for the past 13 weeks (mostly in France) I’ve finally found …
2020-10-23: The Sunna Gunnlaugs trio was supposed to be playing live in Poland today (I think it’s today) but is …
2020-10-22: My favourite coffee in France was Lavazza’s Il Perfetto Espresso, but I found some very acceptable …
2020-10-21: Richard Williams on The news from Keith Jarrett 🎶 🎹
2020-10-21: Keith Jarrett is unlikely to perform again, after two strokes in 2018 left him unable to use his …
2020-10-21: From Melville House Press’s Moby blog: Booksta-what? I can’t see the appeal myself. I’m obviously …
2020-10-20: Jonathan Carroll, Moving day in your head: what it’s like to start writing a new book.
2020-10-20: ”fast, strong, cheap and impossible to use” That (according to the New Yorker) is graphene, no. 6 …
2020-10-19: I’ve just posted “Short stories on the web”, a list of short stories (not by me!) that I recommend …
2020-10-15: I must say I like the new customizable profiles on Medium and the redesign generally, particularly …
2020-10-15: Emily Hughes, A definitive ranking of Tana French novels, on Electric Literature
2020-10-15: I just tripped over the USB-C cable that is charging my MacBook Air … and I’m delighted to discover …
2020-10-14: It’s time we treat Facebook for what it is: A media company, subject to the norms, responsibilities, …
2020-10-13: Something weird is happening with Google I start to type a search term, Google does its autocomplete thing and (as usual) suggests a phrase …
2020-10-13: Till I watched Stana Katic (“Castle”) apparently speaking precise, formal French aimed primarily at …
2020-10-13: The reference to keg beer as “weasel piss” was one of the things that jogged my memory about …
2020-10-13: I turned over to BBC4 last night and caught the last 10 minutes of a play that I recognized as …
2020-10-11: My wife and I both had coronavirus and we were lucky to get it early. I have asthma and so I was …
2020-10-10: A new post by me: Anxiety after all. I think I may be experiencing a generalized (I call it …
2020-10-09: Because I studied and briefly taught poetry in a university, I habitually think of poetry as …
2020-10-07: I just revived (briefly) my Mix account, which I’d deactivated in Dec 2019. Not only have I retained …
2020-10-07: Do you think that Google deliberately steers traffic away from Garrett Camp’s Mix.com? I had assumed …
2020-10-06: I just started to download Catalina 10.15.7 update. Initially, it was reporting “about 13 hours …
2020-10-05: … people with SDAM tend to do particularly well in jobs that require abstract thinking … “We think …
2020-10-05: A new short story by me, “A slip of the masc”. A gender-nonconforming man attends the cremation of …
2020-10-03: Speaking about women jazz pianists (and Poland, where Sunna Gunnlaugs will be touring in a few …
2020-10-03: Icelandic jazz pianist Sunna Gunnlaugs emailed her list telling us that on the first Friday of each …
2020-10-02: While editing my earlier post about France, memory and live jazz, it struck me how very peculiar it …
2020-10-02: I just posted “France, memory and live jazz: Once, in real time, without a rehearsal”. It’s partly a …
2020-10-02: Jimmy Stewart rates me … Vertigo! A much better than usual 7 out of 10 in today’s Irish Times Movie …
2020-10-02: It seems that Medium has gone back to indicating — with a little star after “x min read” — which …
2020-10-02: Adrian Chiles of The Guardian on being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. I read stories like this …
2020-10-01: I thought for a moment I’d lost my iPod Touch. I bought it earlier this year, before the …
2020-10-01: That entire £1.67 billion arts package is being used to mothball some of the larger enterprises but …
2020-09-29: Learning to love (or at least use) Apple’s unlamented butterfly keyboard Shortly after Apple announced the 2020 MacBook Air, I bought a refurbished 2019 model, so I could …
2020-09-29: What is the purpose of literary criticism? Rumaan Alam interviews Charles Finch on Slate. …
2020-09-28: There’s a superb version of Paul McCartney’s “Great Day” on the Brad Mehldau Trio album Seymour …
2020-09-28: I’m usually good at cancelling trial subscriptions that I don’t want to renew but I’ve just taken …
2020-09-28: For the past 9 years, most of the books I had acquired up to then were inaccessible, languishing at …
2020-09-28: Mike Collins (jazzyblogman) has posted a roundup of recent reviews he’s written for London Jazz …
2020-09-28: I’m downloading my Gmail archive from Google, in preparation for deleting my account. The total size …
2020-09-27: Somebody goes to the trouble of splitting a post/essay/article into 280-character chunks so as to …
2020-09-26: While waiting to recover some print books, I finished Karin Alvtegen’s Betrayal in Apple Books. I …
2020-09-26: Following a visit to my sister’s attic on Thursday, I now have some print books to read again: Ian …
2020-09-25: Alan Ralph has written a detailed and perceptive reply to my post from Wednesday about where RSS is …
2020-09-23: A new post by me: Where to now for RSS? I may well be suggesting something that’s been considered …
2020-09-23: Here’s @ayjay on the way “gaslighting” is currently being used. I’ve been suspicious of this usage …
2020-09-21: I love the fact that you can set up Safari to use Reader View automatically with particular sites. I …
2020-09-20: The Irish Times’s insistence on serving up a mobile site to Safari 14 on a MacBook Air is making me …
2020-09-20: I hate maps embedded on web pages. They’re often too small to be useful, and if you use a trackpad, …
2020-09-18: Now I’m getting the desktop version of The Irish Times on iPad and the mobile version on MacBook Air …
2020-09-17: Since I installed Safari 14, The Irish Times is showing me what looks like a mobile version of their …
2020-09-17: With 1.4GB of the 5.27GB downloaded so far, the speed has dropped to 233KB per second and the …
2020-09-17: I’m trying to download a Windows recovery ISO image (5.27GB) over a hotel wifi connection at about …
2020-09-17: Oh, so that’s where the expression “be kind, rewind” comes from. I’m old enough to have had a …
2020-09-17: I’ve just posted “I think I’m finally over France: I may have been trying to relive my experiences …
2020-09-16: I know I’ve said this before but I really don’t get the impetus towards ever thinner bezels. I’ve …
2020-09-16: iPadOS 14: I’m seeing “Update requested” and “Estimating time remaining” for 20 minutes now. Maybe …
2020-09-16: I finished reading Doug Johnstone’s Hit & Run last night, as iPad battery reached 2%. Fairly …
2020-09-14: I’ve started to read Doug Johnstone’s Hit & Run, which I found in Apple Books library. I must …
2020-09-13: It’s no defence (or mitigation) to say that breach of treaty obligations will be “specific and …
2020-09-13: Roger Stone … has said Trump should seize total power and jail prominent figures including Bill and …
2020-09-12: I just tried to read a story on LitHub and got this monstrosity. Neither of the apparent “buttons” — …
2020-09-11: Rooting about on an external hard disk that I hadn’t paid much attention to recently, I find that …
2020-09-11: I’ve just posted Even plainer text. A suggestion for writing a basically structured document in …
2020-09-11: Someone who doesn’t need to tell you how clever they are while doing something clever is a political …
2020-09-11: I’m having to skip my coffee this morning so I’m not in the best of moods. I’ll make up for it in …
2020-09-11: Social media itself is not the existential threat. Rather, it’s the way that social media surfaces …
2020-09-10: Pianist Marc Copland writes about the significance and genius of Gary Peacock whom he knew since …
2020-09-09: Martyn Turner cartoon in The Irish Times
2020-09-08: I got an email from a mailing list to my old address saying at the bottom “If you’ve changed your …
2020-09-07: I’m excited at the prospect of an album by pianist Dominik Wania but I sort of wish it wasn’t a solo …
2020-09-07: Of the dozen or so pieces I’ve posted about aphantasia and related topics, the two most important in …
2020-09-06: Another book that had been sitting in my Apple Books library and I finally got around to reading is …
2020-09-05: The great bassist Gary Peacock has died. I’m just going to listen to some of his duets with Marc …
2020-09-03: I posted something this morning, saying that I’d seen The Matrix only once, hadn’t liked it and …
2020-09-02: I bought a cheap (not Apple) USB-C adapter to read my old USB drive on the MacBook Air. I couldn’t …
2020-08-30: I just posted WhatsApp? Nothing much. Today is the day when I finally delete my WhatsApp account. …
2020-08-29: The girl is instantly plunged into Vittoria’s maelstrom, a swirl of tragic backstories, reckless …
2020-08-29: I’ve reluctantly removed Tot from the menu bar on the Mac and added it to the Dock instead. When …
2020-08-29: I’m bemused at how much Google’s Material Design has been lauded and imitated. Personally, I find it …
2020-08-28: If Hugh O’Flaherty could be forced to resign from the Supreme Court 21 years ago, just for asking …
2020-08-27: In August 1970 Miles was moving from a freer version of the complex music his quintet played in the …
2020-08-26: Trying to type in the dark on a keyboard without a backlight, I realize that my touch-typing is not …
2020-08-26: Adam Roberts did not find it straightforward to format an ebook and send it into the world You know …
2020-08-25: I haven’t any printed books to read for now so I’ve been excavating my Apple Books library. I just …
2020-08-25: The Irish Times has a go at ranking Christopher Nolan’s films. I used to try to persuade myself that …
2020-08-23: I’m watching Destroyer, directed by Karyn Kusama and starring Nicole Kidman (also Tatiana Maslany, …
2020-08-23: Hey, Google, it looks like it hasn’t occurred to you that the fact that there aren’t any hits for my …
2020-08-23: I Googled find free articles Medium and I got lots of hits telling me how to circumvent the paywall …
2020-08-22: A new post by me Reading poetry in scholarly editions ✏️
2020-08-20: Malcolm Gladwell has a theory of mystery/thriller/detective fiction. Where I think it falls down is …
2020-08-20: Here’s a short story by Dearbhaile Houston, who is working on a collection of short stories. The …
2020-08-19: The public middle school in Menlo Park, where Schaake now resides, has students who are homeless, …
2020-08-16: I don’t own any Sonny Clark albums (and I’m pleasantly surprised to learn that he recorded a …
2020-08-15: The New Yorker has a new story by Haruki Murakami. And this: “You Are My Dear Friend”, by Madhuri …
2020-08-15: Better to wallow in self-pity over nothing than to have actually screwed up your life. Ted Chiang, …
2020-08-14: The view from my hotel room in Pau, Pyrénées Atlantiques.
2020-08-13: I’ve just posted the third and final part of A good masculinity is hard to find. The third part is …
2020-08-11: I’m planning to delete my Google account in October, having used Gmail as my email provider for 15 …
2020-08-09: I quite often find myself wondering why I’m still following John Naughton. Then he links to …
2020-08-09: I wish iPadOS had the option to type curly single quotes by default but straight double ones. The …
2020-08-08: I’ve seen a wild boar fairly close, when it crossed a remote country road in front of me. I don’t …
2020-08-08: Mark Dawson just revealed a corrupt system, writes Annika Karody on the Melville House blog. Dawson …
2020-08-07: Excel doesn’t offer the option to turn off this auto-formatting, and the only way to avoid it is to …
2020-08-07: I assumed from the moment that I first heard about wireless charging that it must be wasteful and …
2020-08-07: Jason Kottke has a chili recipe “concocted through practice and improvisation” by one of the most …
2020-08-06: Here’s a new short story by Naoise Dolan, Family News told from the point of view of an effectively …
2020-08-06: The Guardian has great pictures from the Isle of Wight festival, 1970, including a pensive Jimi …
2020-08-02: I mentioned yesterday that I hand-edit the JSON feed from my personal site. I noticed this morning …
2020-08-02: Another off-cut from my thesis: “Prelate of the grove”: A note on ambition and preferment in …
2020-08-01: Panic over. I Googled the MacBook Air keyboard problem and it turns out all I needed to do was hold …
2020-08-01: I edit the JSON feed from my personal site by hand. Realizing that I can’t use the MacBook Air, and …
2020-08-01: By me: Writing “plain” text. These days, I at least start off most of my writing as unformatted …
2020-08-01: The keyboard on my 2 month old refurbished 2019 MacBook Air, seems to have stopped working. The …
2020-07-31: I’ve just finished reading Kate Atkinson’s Transcription. The end is very satisfying: at once …
2020-07-30: Here’s a very new short story by Niamh Campbell, whose “Love Many” won this year’s Sunday Times …
2020-07-30: I’m halfway through Kate Atkinson’s Transcription and enjoying it. With another writer, I’d worry …
2020-07-30: After 15 years on Gmail, I’ve switched to Zoho mail (with my own domain name on top). Just now, I …
2020-07-29: A new post by me: Tech’s unfulfilled promises. Tech held out the promise of helping to free humanity …
2020-07-28: Somewhat ironically, I wrote the previous micropost in a coffee shop because I don’t have a home …
2020-07-28: Emily Temple asks Is this the end of writing in cafés? I like the idea of writing in cafés, but in …
2020-07-26: I spent the years between 1988 and 2011 outside Ireland, apart from the occasional visit, but until …
2020-07-26: Two months ago, following the release of the 2020 MacBook Air with magic keyboard, I got a refurb …
2020-07-26: I’ve been trying to attract some friends and family members away from WhatsApp, so I can avoid …
2020-07-26: I haven’t posted anything for nearly a week. I had been planning to move from Ireland to France back …
2020-07-20: The Register reports that “no logging” VPN providers have been storing plain text logs (including …
2020-07-19: Ha! As soon as I posted this, I went back to Tot on the Mac and, sure enough, it’s now showing …
2020-07-19: I had been hoping that using Tot on both iPad and MacBook Air would solve the problems I’ve been …
2020-07-18: Here’s a marvellous piece in The Guardian Saturday Review by Chris Power, author of the collection …
2020-07-17: Suppose the Twitter Bitcoin scam was a kind of decoy to make the world think that the scammers were …
2020-07-16: Max Schrems wins another round against Facebook, the European Commission and the Irish Data …
2020-07-16: If anything, our results show that Branwell is the least likely member of the Brontë family to have …
2020-07-16: Unlike Nazism, Marxism wants of course to save victims, but it thinks that the process that makes …
2020-07-15: The zig and zag of rupture and reconciliation makes Normal People mostly a picaresque and …
2020-07-14: Google Translate pops up a warning about “Upcoming changes to history”. I think they might be on to …
2020-07-14: It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of these. Nice to know that some sites are still taking their …
2020-07-14: a truth universally unacknowledged … another of the unknown knowns Fintan O’Toole on what Ireland …
2020-07-14: Tim Andersen, PhD, I do not believe in the multiverse, the case for realism. Yeah, what he said.
2020-07-12: Trump reportedly suggested selling Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria, according to his acting …
2020-07-12: I’m glad that Micro.blog allows me to fix mistakes in posts. I’ve always understood in theory why …
2020-07-12: Last week I posted part 1 of “A good masculinity is hard to find”. Here’s Part 2 — gender as …
2020-07-10: As I’ve said several times, here and elsewhere, I’m not a fan of ebooks. Here’s the contrary view, …
2020-07-10: In our restaurant that has two stars. In our restaurant that is now a hostile environment of …
2020-07-08: Why is it so hard to change your email address on a subscription? I want to stop using Gmail …
2020-07-07: Stephanie Soileau, Last One Out Shut Off the Lights. A short story from her new collection 📖
2020-07-06: So, Morricone is dead. I’m not on a music subscription service, and unfortunately can’t share a …
2020-07-05: A new post by me: “A good masculinity is hard to find: Part 1 – episodes from the early life of an …
2020-07-04: OK, the fix for that Tot bug is straightforward, if counterintuitive. I set up a text replacement, …
2020-07-04: I think I’ve just found a bug-disguised-as-a-feature in Tot for the Mac. I’ve been happily using Tot …
2020-07-04: Niamh Campbell’s Love Many, to which I have already linked, is a deserving winner of the Sunday …
2020-07-01: Here’s a short story by Felicia C Sullivan, “Even the Toaster Couldn’t Be Trusted: A short story …
2020-06-30: Richard Williams has been listening to Lucio Battisti. By chance, I first heard of Battisti only …
2020-06-30: Probably I’m missing something but I can’t help feeling that Modern Monetary Theory is just a catchy …
2020-06-30: Magpie sheltering from the rain.
2020-06-29: I am advised to “shield”, keep my head in my shell, isolate with some minimal bubble socialising. …
2020-06-28: It makes a change to read a review of an album that I already have, Brad Mehldau’s Suite: April …
2020-06-28: After a gap of about 2 months, Marks & Spencer have got their ground espresso ☕️ back in stock, …
2020-06-28: The sheer number of markets Google dominates — mobile operating systems, general search, online …
2020-06-27: By me: PDF is preferable to ePub, even on small screens. Long form texts, including fiction, may …
2020-06-26: It’s just struck me that the app/feature I’d most like to see in iPadOS is the MacOS Preview. …
2020-06-26: This is probably an accurate reading of the situation, if a bit cynical. Richard Murphy on Starmer’s …
2020-06-25: Most of the books recommended by Stephen M Tomic (see previous post) are Kindle only. Here’s one …
2020-06-25: A few years ago, when I was sending out my weekly newsletter, “Recommended short fiction on Medium”, …
2020-06-25: A fleeting chance to share an intimate gig with Fred Hersch on piano and Esperanza Spalding, here on …
2020-06-25: So, Bookshop.org will be coming to the UK. (I’m not in the UK, of course, but I buy some books …
2020-06-25: While I’m on the subject of Keen: I think that the pundits who are comparing it to Pinterest are …
2020-06-25: I’m conflicted about Google’s experimental Keen: I’d love to ignore it, although I’ve speculated …
2020-06-24: I don’t usually like audiobooks — without something to keep my eyes occupied, my attention tends to …
2020-06-24: I’m sorry to see the end of the Segway though as a cyclist I’m predisposed to think that any trip …
2020-06-22: television productions of Shakespeare diverted people from the text and delivered them into the …
2020-06-22: I was culling feeds in NetNewsWire yesterday, mainly expunging those whose content is largely …
2020-06-22: Forgotten plays: No 4 – Howard Brenton’s Bloody Poetry (1984). I saw a revival of this play in the …
2020-06-21: I’ve noticed that when I post fiction in multiple parts, the first part gets page views but these …
2020-06-20: I’ve been using Gmail as my main email provider since 2005. I never bothered to move because Google …
2020-06-20: Today’s Diverted Traffic from the London Review of Books is William Empson’s Fairy Flight in A …
2020-06-19: Democrats live in permanent fear of losing and trust the powers that be to pick someone whom they …
2020-06-19: Venez nombreux et masqués faire la fête du jazz … The Sunside is probably my favourite jazz club …
2020-06-19: Enrico Terrinoni, the Italian translator of Joyce’s works, writes about Joyce’s affinity with …
2020-06-18: Just as my 3-month Deezer free trial subscription ends, here comes Spotify offering me 3 months for …
2020-06-17: Apple removed subpixel antialiasing from macOS in 2018, the same month it retired its last …
2020-06-17: The card I use to pay my phone provider expired 2 months ago. I paid last month’s bill as a one-off …
2020-06-14: I’ve updated the list of aphantasia posts on my personal site to add this morning’s I forgot the …
2020-06-14: Hiding from history: Conservative party deletes archive of speeches from internet. Originally posted …
2020-06-14: I’ve just posted I forgot the future: SDAM, aphantasia and a purpose in life. Before I knew I had …
2020-06-14: Living with his family under restricted movement in the Netherlands during the pandemic, Brad …
2020-06-14: As an island on the periphery of Europe, we should have expected a lower fatality rate than …
2020-06-13: It was okay to publish the now-discredited Steele dossier, because Trump is scum. So says Matt …
2020-06-10: What [governments] actually promise is to accept the money that only they can create to settle the …
2020-06-09: While I was without a Mac, I installed the Linux subsystem for Windows, primarily so that I could …
2020-06-09: A short story by Niamh Campbell, “Love Many”, shortlisted for The Sunday Times Audible short story …
2020-06-08: “The Lost Generation, a short story by Rosemary Jenkinson about a school reunion after 25 years, …
2020-06-08: I got 17/30 or 57% in the font game. I’m annoyed that I got Myriad wrong, as I previously used it a …
2020-06-07: Emily Temple’s (first) novel, The Lightness is out. I’ll probably wait for the mass-market paperback …
2020-06-07: It’s hard to judge whether one’s monthly subscriptions are good value. I don’t pay anything to The …
2020-06-07: Buying the wrong things, part 2. I don’t own a coffee grinder (because I get through it so quickly …
2020-06-07: Ah, now I see. It’s still possible to use Option as a compose key; but to get a circumflex you use …
2020-06-07: I seem to have developed a talent for buying the wrong things. I meant to buy two novellas from …
2020-06-07: One thing I’ve noticed about my recently purchased 2019 MacBook Air is that it no longer seems to be …
2020-06-07: Week 12 (already?!) of Melville House Press’s ebook sale features “a fantastic selection of novellas …
2020-06-06: Paolo Amoroso, a former Micro.blogger, recommends a new blog directory. It’s called FindYour.blog.
2020-06-06: I’m going to take out a trial, digital-only sub to The New Yorker, largely so I can read short …
2020-06-04: I’m still watching Stumptown for now, though it’s not getting any better. In last night’s episode a …
2020-06-02: I’ve been trying to avoid using the word “lockdown” because I don’t believe it’s accurate. I’ve been …
2020-06-02: I haven’t read any of Alice Munro’s short stories. I caught Almodovar’s film Julieta on tv at the …
2020-06-02: Hey, I got 7 out of 10 in this Irish Times quiz about Normal People. I watched only the first …
2020-06-01: Erica Sadun enthuses about the MacOS Preview app, and offers a workshop on its little-known …
2020-06-01: London Jazz News will not be posting tomorrow 🎶
2020-06-01: Total Recall at 30: a thrilling reminder of Paul Verhoeven at his best. My favourite Verhoeven …
2020-05-31: My final example of book cover art (🎨 day 7) is another Italian book that I knew nothing about until …
2020-05-31: What avail him now his awards and prizes, The praise expended upon his meticulous technique, His …
2020-05-30: The luminous background colour, the stylized figure, the spare font: this cover is so eyecatching …
2020-05-29: I saw this cover and immediately thought “That’s a book I’m going to read”. I’m not sure exactly why …
2020-05-28: I don’t know what edition of Wuthering Heights this is, but I love the cover (as well as the book). …
2020-05-28: OK, so now it’s a breach of the rules on impartiality to say that somebody “broke the rules” when he …
2020-05-27: I forgot to add the cover image for Seven Types of Ambiguity when I posted my entry for day 3 of the …
2020-05-27: I love the old Pelican paperback covers, and William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity is …
2020-05-26: Day 2 of the final week of the May MB challenge (art 🎨). I’m posting examples of book cover art that …
2020-05-25: I’m sorry to say that I’ve never been in the least competent in the visual arts. So, for the final …
2020-05-24: My final (day 7) book recommendation is Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White. It was almost a toss-up …
2020-05-24: A list of some of my posts on Medium that I think are worth keeping and don’t fall into the broader …
2020-05-23: My first thought was to dispose of the body. Then I’d tell the authorities that Frank left me for …
2020-05-23: I said I’ve been adding description tags to some old posts, both on artkavanagh.ie and on Medium. …
2020-05-23: Louise Doughty on the moment when “a slowly swirling mass of ideas”, accumulated search and …
2020-05-22: Why are liberals more afraid of the coronavirus than conservatives?, asks Vox’s Ezra Klein. I’m not …
2020-05-22: My recommendation for day 5 of the book challenge is The Burden of Proof, the second of Scott …
2020-05-22: “The Great Elmore Leonard Renaissance of the Late 90s” by Zach Vasquez on Crime Reads. I love Get …
2020-05-21: I watched the 4th episode of Stumptown last night. After a promising pilot, this series has been …
2020-05-21: Social distancing in Ridley Road market is one thing I never expected to see. I can remember times …
2020-05-21: Now that I’ve got a Mac again, I’m not likely to be doing much browsing on Windows, so I’m switching …
2020-05-21: Book recommendation day 4: Peter Abrahams, Nerve Damage: a dying sculptor gets a sneak peek at his …
2020-05-21: Serendipitously, Catherine Ryan Howard’s Distress Signals, which I recommended on Monday, seems to …
2020-05-20: Books day 3: Unravelling Oliver was Liz Nugent’s first crime novel and it’s the best (and shortest) …
2020-05-19: It’s so nice to have a Mac again. Looking at the file modification dates on iCloud, I see that it’s …
2020-05-19: My 2nd book recommendation is Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. I’ve read it several times but …
2020-05-19: I just got a 2019 MacBook Air with 🦋 keyboard. At @Munish’s suggestion, I tried the Apple site for a …
2020-05-18: My first book recommendation in the May challenge is Catherine Ryan Howard’s Distress Signals. A …
2020-05-18: The [Office of Public Works] is prioritising those who merely drive through the park over those who …
2020-05-17: I just noticed that I’ve been writing less than usual since February, when I got my iPad Air, and …
2020-05-17: Melville House Press’s ebook sale has some interesting titles this week. I tend to resist buying …
2020-05-16: The code is too complicated, the design is too simple. You will not be able to learn anything from …
2020-05-16: No one wants to operate in a place that people are just passing through; everyone wants to settle …
2020-05-15: I’ve just gone back and added “Description” meta tags to some of the posts on my site. It doesn’t …
2020-05-15: Spending nearly three months raising a baby she has given birth to, but who[m] she is not …
2020-05-15: dedicated readers have started buying direct from our websites and those of bookstores that have …
2020-05-15: If you’re reading a Medium story in a “desktop” browser and you select some text, you can highlight …
2020-05-14: I don’t think I’m going to be using the new iA Writer feature, welcome though it is. It opens the …
2020-05-14: There’s been a lot about iA Writer on MB in the last day or so for obvious reasons. Coincidentally, …
2020-05-13: Here’s At the Clinic, a short story by Sally Rooney, featuring the main characters from Normal …
2020-05-13: I should have realized that my book 📚 reviews on Amazon would survive the deletion of my account. …
2020-05-13: Scott Turow’s favourite among his own characters is Alejandro “Sandy” Stern. I particularly like a …
2020-05-11: It’s time to move my crime novel, A Falling Body, from Medium to artkavanagh.ie. For posting on …
2020-05-08: Although the piano-bass duo is easily my favourite musical lineup, I had ignored the 2012 album, …
2020-05-08: The man who operated the wind machine, an old aeroplane propeller, was decapitated by it one morning …
2020-05-08: The CD I ordered on 22 March finally arrived yesterday (I’d chosen the slowest USPS option, which …
2020-05-07: Just had the notion that I’d like to buy a 2018 or 2019 MacBook Air (i.e before the Magic Keyboard …
2020-05-06: Strange there’s so little information online about Intromotion, the 1997 album by Esbjörn Svensson …
2020-05-06: I’m fed up with iCloud Drive overwriting something I’ve just written on Windows with an earlier …
2020-05-06: I’ve felt since season 2 that The Good Fight is heading towards a scenario in which Diane votes for …
2020-05-06: We need to figure out a less optimized version of working from home … says M G Siegler (sorry, …
2020-05-05: I’m no fan of Elon Musk’s but I can’t help bristling at the suggestion that input forms and database …
2020-05-04: People with aphantasia are more likely to work in a STEM field according to a study led by Adam …
2020-05-04: I just discovered (on Deezer) an Esbjörn Svensson Trio album that I’d never heard of before. It’s …
2020-05-04: A few weeks ago I bought Textastic for iPad, thinking I needed a full-featured text editor. I’ve …
2020-05-03: I used the phrase “immersed in doings” in an attempt at a poem. I couldn’t remember where I had …
2020-05-03: Nothing new here, just a reminder; but if you’re in the mood for reading some general/crime (mostly …
2020-05-03: Pick TV’s rerun of Elementary has now reached the end of season 6. I’ll probably hang on for season …
2020-05-03: According to John Naughton in The Observer, the GDPR is a powerful but essentially unenforced …
2020-05-01: I’ve been cycling as an adult for 37 years. Today I finally discovered how to remove the pump …
2020-04-28: But what is only now coming into focus is the impact that Trump’s unprecedented number of judicial …
2020-04-27: The Wonder Spot, Melissa Bank’s 2005 follow-up to her big hit, is the book that Hadley Freeman …
2020-04-26: Michael Tamblyn, Kobo CEO, says the publisher is … rejecting over 50% of the ebooks submitted …
2020-04-26: I caught most of Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys on tv last night. It’s weird to think that it’s 25 years …
2020-04-25: A short story by Anna Breslin, The Other Michael Jones. Emma has barely had time to begin to adjust …
2020-04-25: I just Googled how to stop animated gifs from playing automatically in Firefox, and followed the …
2020-04-25: I just heard yesterday that Deirdre Bair, biographer of Beckett and de Beauvoir, has died. I’ve …
2020-04-25: Laughter in Dark Times: Some funny (in both senses) book recommendations by Geoff Dyer, including …
2020-04-22: When I’m listening to music, I don’t usually play two albums in a row by the same artist. But, since …
2020-04-22: The euro seems to have fallen below the dollar in value, at least for small amounts, like the …
2020-04-22: I just renewed my subscription to Medium (probably only for a month or two) after letting it lapse …
2020-04-21: Bookmarking this to watch Shakespeare’s Globe performances of The Two Noble Kinsmen and The Winter’s …
2020-04-21: I was debating on WhatsApp as to how to refer to our current circumstances. “Lockdown” isn’t right …
2020-04-21: I’ve never owned an iPhone, though I’ve had a succession of iPads and iPod Touches. The new SE …
2020-04-21: Procrastination is the brain’s way of getting essential things done (such as house-cleaning) by …
2020-04-20: Given that I have an invisible disability and that people tend to assume I’m straight by looking at …
2020-04-20: I just knocked over the Aeropress, which contained just enough water and ground coffee to make the …
2020-04-20: Pianist George Colligan has a new trio album, Live in Arklow just out. Unless he’s played in Arklow …
2020-04-20: I just posted this on LinkedIn: From tech to text: What comes after Word and VBA?. Two weeks ago, I …
2020-04-20: Several emergency planners and scientists said that the plans to protect the UK in a pandemic had …
2020-04-20: We Live in the Blue Ruin, a short story by Felicia C Sullivan that I enthused about in my (now …
2020-04-19: I’m not sure what happened. I must have inadvertantly made the gesture that means “select the entire …
2020-04-19: Actually, “disaster” is an exaggeration. But it’s a very annoying setback.
2020-04-19: I decided that Pretext wasn’t going to cut it, so I bought Textastic from the App Store, and somehow …
2020-04-19: Instead of editing the file on the iCloud drive in Windows, I should copy/move it onto my C: drive, …
2020-04-19: I use iCloud to swap text docs between Windows and iPad. I keep forgetting to close the file in …
2020-04-19: And if the arks turn out to be real, don’t get on the one that’s leaving first. Frank McNally in …
2020-04-18: I’ve been ruminating again as to why people sometimes call basic, nonframework JavaScript “vanilla”; …
2020-04-18: Piano Sketches is an album of six solo piano tracks performed by six Polish pianists, with a jazz …
2020-04-16: The Irish Times has reprinted from the Dublin Review of Books a long essay by Maureen O’Connor in …
2020-04-16: In my earlier post, since corrected, I wrongly described Mary-Kay Wilmers as “founding editor” or …
2020-04-16: The Guardian has ranked all of Stephen Frears’ films. (Coincidentally, he’s the ex-husband of …
2020-04-16: Many of Ireland’s bookshops are back online, according to this Irish Times book club email. And I …
2020-04-16: Because the trackpad on my Windows notebook is so awful, I’ve developed the habit of hitting PgDn …
2020-04-16: There are three Belgian writers whose names are known outside Belgium. None of them wrote about …
2020-04-16: It was good to see Bernie Sanders endorse Joe Biden’s candidacy on Monday. That shows the Democrats …
2020-04-16: Lee Konitz, one of the greats, has died at the age of 92 🎶
2020-04-15: Paolo @amoroso on the unavoidablity of WhatsApp and the unbeatable quality of its network effect. …
2020-04-15: Speaking of Electric Literature, that’s another site I’m thinking about removing from my feed …
2020-04-15: Here’s an English translation of a short story, The Island at Noon, by Julio Cortázar (who also …
2020-04-15: I’m fed up of headlines and stories saying that the economy/life/society isn’t going to return to …
2020-04-14: … the force of the take-off made him “float” off his seat, causing him to stand up and involuntarily …
2020-04-14: Speaking of Tyler Cowen, I just found this Slate piece from 2006, in which he declines to lament the …
2020-04-14: I’m probably about to remove Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution from my feed reader, perhaps …
2020-04-14: I was one of those people who held out the hope that the iPad would be something wholly different …
2020-04-12: I’m feeling a bit proud of myself. I wrote a 350-word response — the first draft was longer — to …
2020-04-12: New post from me: Heather Sellers: Learning the lessons of face-blindness and place-blindness. A …
2020-04-11: After all, people still hesitate to insert cell phones into their fiction—in large part, I’ve always …
2020-04-11: Of the several recent Enrico Pieranunzi albums I mentioned a few days ago, the trio album with …
2020-04-11: As I’ve already repeated ad nauseam, I much prefer printed books to ebooks. I haven’t been buying …
2020-04-11: Standing in the slow-moving queue outside the supermarket, I couldn’t help getting anxious that most …
2020-04-11: If you enjoy piano-bass-drums trios, Serbian ensemble Majamisty TriO have made Organic, their new …
2020-04-11: Week 4 of Melville House Press’s ebook sale sees a new batch of books reduced to $1.99 for the next …
2020-04-10: For years, on a succession of Macs, I kept my iTunes library on an external hard disk. Now, I no …
2020-04-10: And, speaking of Thomas Fonnesbaek, I also learned that he made a trio recording, Groovements, with …
2020-04-10: Enrico Pieranunzi is nothing if not prolific. Yesterday, I learned of a slew of recent albums I …
2020-04-09: LitHub’s Emily Temple has a list of the best 50 contemporary (with us, that is) long novels. I’m …
2020-04-09: On Electric Literature, Jess Zimmerman asks Why is everyone suddenly obsessed with sourdough?
2020-04-07: It really does remind me of a dysfunctional family with a psychotic, alcoholic dad, where where …
2020-04-06: The ruthless economic underpinnings of the internet serve to punish the giver and destroy the …
2020-04-06: I’m wondering if I’m going to abandon Trigonometry with just 3 of its 8 episodes left to air. …
2020-04-06: From The Guardian: Steven Appleby, Why I felt liberated when I started dressing as a woman.
2020-04-06: A short story, Sana and her portrait by Nardine. I haven’t been posting “Short fiction on Medium” …
2020-04-05: I’ve just watched a video from Hampstead Theatre of their 2016 production of Wild by Mike Bartlett, …
2020-04-05: Here’s an encouraging post from Alex Tabarrok, who points out that the aim of “lockdown” isn’t …
2020-04-05: Putin’s Troll Machine is churning out endless fake news about the dangers of 5G in English, while …
2020-04-05: Here’s a brief clip (YouTube) in which Alan Kendle interviews Adam Zeman about dreaming and …
2020-04-04: “We hit 3M hard today” tweeted Trump, as if 3M were a foreign terrorist camp. I remember (as if it …
2020-04-04: In the war between dog-walkers and cyclists, I’m generally on the side of the latter — I am one, …
2020-04-04: McConnell has been privately asking Republican-appointed judges to retire soon so Trump can appoint …
2020-04-04: Brett Nordquist has been making coffee at home a lot more, and describes his method, involving a …
2020-04-04: Appearing to be somewhat emotional in Buswells Hotel, he talked about being humbled by the evident …
2020-04-03: Prolific, versatile novelist Toby Litt, who teaches creative writing at Birkbeck College, University …
2020-04-03: I was wondering why Pinterest keeps recommending my own pins to me. It looks as if it might be …
2020-04-03: The Bimhuis, a favourite European jazz club in Amsterdam, has been offering audio from gigs for …
2020-04-03: Ellis Marsalis has died, sadly 🎶 🎹
2020-04-03: From Superhighway 98, How Google Ruined the Internet. Not the whole story, but an essential part of …
2020-04-03: New Orleans, with Hurricane Katrina, and Port-au-Prince, with the 2010 earthquake; both events only …
2020-04-03: A picture of somewhere I’ve been.
2020-04-02: I’m Ian Duncan from Community (which I’ve never seen), it says here 📺
2020-04-02: I know of people for whom the lockdown’s big epiphany has been how much their lives were already …
2020-04-02: Medium isn’t down after all. It must have been just a momentary glitch. Sorry.
2020-04-02: The Guardian has a piece by fantasy novelist Mark Lawrence about being an author with aphantasia. …
2020-04-02: Medium seems to be down.
2020-04-02: Today I learned that the play Everybody Comes to Rick’s was originally set in Vienna, not …
2020-04-02: we have to agree with the Authors Guild that “using a global crisis to advance a copyright ideology …
2020-04-01: I’ve been watching reruns of Elementary on Pick 📺, but they’re skipping episodes. They skipped the …
2020-04-01: Till I read this piece in Slate, I’d never heard of That Girl, which ran from 1966 to 1971, though I …
2020-04-01: I got an iPad Air two months ago, having previously had a regular iPad. The Air has a 10.5” …
2020-03-31: Here’s the first full trailer for the tv adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People. I’m not sure …
2020-03-31: From Six Colors by way of Daring Fireball, a useful tip on how to bring up the emoji keyboard when …
2020-03-31: Fred Kaplan argues that, now that Orbán has been given power to rule by decree indefinitely, Hungary …
2020-03-31: I try to follow a link from Outlook and get an alert that my organization’s policies don’t allow …
2020-03-30: Another reason why I think that when we eventually emerge from this crisis it will be into a …
2020-03-30: Good ideas in a crisis are good ideas outside of crisis, and bad ideas reveal themselves … This, …
2020-03-30: 25 of The Guardian’s favourite long reads. And there I was, just saying that I dislike …
2020-03-30: The magazine was notorious for publishing “second-tier fiction by first-rate writers.” If John …
2020-03-29: I’ve been seeing many book recommendations this last 2 weeks, and it’s made me realize that not only …
2020-03-28: A week ago, I said that I was not posting, but writing. Now, here are 1,200 words about nothing of …
2020-03-28: I greatly enjoyed this LitHub piece by Suzanne Rivecca about her reluctance to accept a …
2020-03-28: Liz Nugent is one of the most original crime novelists to have emerged in Ireland in recent years. …
2020-03-28: Last night, the Irish government announced new restrictions on movement and activities. Here’s a …
2020-03-28: ICYMI, the Warren for President Tech Team has open-sourced some of the tools they developed for the …
2020-03-27: Following my free trial of Apple Music, I bought a couple of albums but to spread my wishlist …
2020-03-27: Contrary to his own expectations, Sameer Vasta is finding it hard to write. I’d like to tell him …
2020-03-27: They don’t know what they don’t know. Yup, it’s those pesky unknown unknowns again, coming back to …
2020-03-27: Art Pepper, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and all that junk All of that junk and all of that jazz …
2020-03-27: I expect that the global economy we’ll find ourselves in after the present crisis will be in some …
2020-03-26: I went food shopping this morning. Traffic was sparse so it made sense to cross the road in one of …
2020-03-25: this is how an artist should live — oblivious to the possibility of their own importance; ever …
2020-03-24: William Davies thinks that the 2008 crash did not result in a fundamental shift in capitalism. I …
2020-03-24: Diverted Traffic is a new LRB newsletter, featuring a different piece from the archive each day – …
2020-03-24: Tim Allhoff’s 2014 trio album, There Will Be Light, concludes with a version of Hollow Talk, the …
2020-03-24: It seems that M G Siegler, whose posts on Medium have hitherto been freely accessible, may have …
2020-03-23: Though I started to work from home in 2005, I’ve only just come to realize (reading what others have …
2020-03-22: As an aphantasic, I’m bad at planning, prioritizing etc. In previous crises, from 1974 to 2008, I’d …
2020-03-22: My month’s free trial of Apple Music is coming to an end and the list of albums I’ll likely buy …
2020-03-22: Matt Stoller warns that huge corporations (like Boeing) may be about to exploit this crisis to …
2020-03-22: For the next week our top ten bestselling fiction ebooks are just $1.99. (Ebooks only, folks.) From …
2020-03-21: Not posting, but writing I haven’t been posting much recently but I have been writing. I recently wrote 4,000 words on the …
2020-03-21: Of my Medium posts about aphantasia, “Aphantasia can look a bit like ADHD” has the second-highest …
2020-03-21: I couldn’t resist making one of those 4-square grids out of this quotation from Gianrico …
2020-03-20: In the late 00s, I got interested in a number of German jazz pianists, several of whom had been …
2020-03-20: An exasperated Public Health Service put out a news release recommending that older people with …
2020-03-19: I’m not sure whether this is a tautology or the next step in my education: I was under the …
2020-03-19: I’ve managed to go all this time without reading any fiction by Anne Enright. Pale Hands I Loved, …
2020-03-19: This excerpt from Nicholas Delbanco’s book Why Writing Matters about the problem with plagiarism …
2020-03-19: one of the joys of an excellent cup of coffee is to savor the taste as it cools … the upshot being …
2020-03-18: One of the bars was the original bar from the old 108 pub in Rathgar. Complete with working taps, …
2020-03-18: Just as well I bought an iPad Air six weeks ago. It makes it easier to resist the temptation to get …
2020-03-18: John Banville, when asked to contribute to a collection of 6-word stories, wrote, “Should have lived …
2020-03-17: Somehow I failed to notice that Ethan Iverson had left The Bad Plus over two years ago and been …
2020-03-17: Another Apple Music discovery: a solo piano performance of Chico Buarque’s O Que Sera by Tim …
2020-03-17: A beginner’s guide to The Ezra Klein Show. The cofounder of Vox introduces the most compelling …
2020-03-16: Some of the albums I’ll consider buying when my free Apple Music trial ends next week 🎶 🎹: Angelo …
2020-03-16: Cet arrêt brutal pourrait engendrer à terme la fin notre activité ! Nous ne bénéficions …
2020-03-14: I am really fed up of apps (particularly common on iOS) that automatically linkify URLs, so that …
2020-03-14: Good to see an economist finally recognize that the inflation rate isn’t uniform across the whole …
2020-03-14: Around 2004, I lived in a house with original Steven Appleby art on the walls. I met him once and …
2020-03-14: “Installments” with two “l”s looks wrong to me but when I write it with just one “l” I get a …
2020-03-14: The only constitutional freedoms ultimately recognized may soon be limited to those useful to …
2020-03-14: “Stay indoors unless you have to leave the house out of necessity, i.e. to shop for food, for health …
2020-03-12: I’ve never read Donna Tartt’s The Secret History in spite of friends’ recommendations but Emily …
2020-03-12: Another discovery thanks to my Apple Music trial sub, Front Room Songs. I know Florian Ross’s trio …
2020-03-12: So, Trump has at last done something to counteract the climate crisis, by banning travel — largely …
2020-03-12: I’m removing Charles Arthur’s The Overspill from my feed reader. I generally don’t follow/subscribe …
2020-03-11: Paul Krugman reviews Piketty’s Capital and Ideology. I haven’t read any Piketty, but I see his …
2020-03-10: I’m using my month’s free trial of Apple Music to listen to (inter alia) Angelo Comisso’s 2010 …
2020-03-10: At 62, Amanda Redman is now “the right age” to play Cleopatra, who was 38 at the time of the events …
2020-03-09: I just exported all my feeds from Reeder 4 and imported them into NetNewsWire for iPad! Thanks, …
2020-03-09: I’m linking to Tyler Cowen’s excerpt from the NYT interview with Anne Enright rather than to the …
2020-03-07: Paolo @amoroso, formerly of this parish, on why he prefers a chromebook to an Ubuntu box
2020-03-03: I wish I was in Paris tomorrow or Thursday. I’ve seen Pieranunzi in the Sunside twice before and no …
2020-03-03: I’ve been given another month’s free trial of Apple Music. (I don’t normally use a music …
2020-03-03: I love this headline: JavaScript Best Practices — Things to Avoid. I haven’t read the piece (because …
2020-03-03: I can’t quite believe that my Medium post about tropes and subgenres in the first three Cormoran …
2020-03-03: From 2016, a reminder from playwright David Hare of Georges Simenon’s significance. Hare had adapted …
2020-03-02: The Insomnia app didn’t delete my points after all. It logged me out unexpectedly and without …
2020-03-02: The Insomnia (Irish coffee shop chain) app seems to have punished me for refusing to share my …
2020-03-01: Everything good in the world is kindness. Jan Morris is 93 now and has published what may be her …
2020-02-29: I really like the iPadOS app Pretext, in which I’ve been doing nearly all of my writing recently. …
2020-02-28: There are tons and tons and tons of things that are effectively “hidden” on any OS. Charles Arthur …
2020-02-27: The last time I needed to convert a colour PDF page to greyscale, I simply used Preview on the Mac. …
2020-02-25: Easons has bought Dubray Books. I first misread the headline as Easons acquired by Dubray and my …
2020-02-25: I don’t know what The Temple House Vanishing is about. But on the strength of Rachel Donohue’s …
2020-02-22: When a short story writer goes long: Brandon Taylor: reluctant novelist 📚
2020-02-22: One particularly annoying thing about iPadOS system ads: they interfere with the use of Cmd-Tab to …
2020-02-21: My dozen or so posts on Medium about aphantasia tend to get more views than my other posts on that …
2020-02-20: Just go into a good art museum, and look at what they are stocking in their bookstore. Tyler Cowen …
2020-02-19: The Dublin Inquirer intends to spin off its cycle collision tracker as a citizen-run project, and …
2020-02-18: The boom is back for some people. It always was. Dispatches from an extra on Normal People 📺
2020-02-18: I’ve been reading Lucy Caldwell’s Being Various, an anthology of new Irish short stories by authors …
2020-02-16: Craig Fehrman, How Obama’s Reading Shaped His Writing. A nice book excerpt on LitHub about the …
2020-02-16: Until yesterday, I was unaware that Harold Wilson had sued the members of the The Move for libel in …
2020-02-16: I’ve just posted In defence of flow. It was prompted by Barbara Gail Montero’s essay Against Flow, …
2020-02-15: “[The burglars] got distracted by the booze and were here when the police arrived … It puts me in …
2020-02-13: Lyle Mays has died 🎶 🎹
2020-02-11: The most recently modified file in the Documents folder on my Windows notebook is named Working Copy …
2020-02-11: I complained that Sinn Féin rather than the left had gained from the collapse of Irish “civil war …
2020-02-11: “I’m not going to argue for the wider distribution of Nazi material, but I still don’t trust Amazon …
2020-02-10: I just discovered that Slide Over and Split View work in portrait mode. Is this new (maybe in …
2020-02-10: Oh, it looks as if the Oscars were on. Between the Irish general election, storm Ciara, the …
2020-02-09: I’m continuing to move my fiction from Medium to artkavanagh.ie and my six-part novella, Dear Old …
2020-02-09: A subscriber-only piece in The Irish Times suggests that Irish “civil war politics” may finally be …
2020-02-08: In iOS 12 (on iPad), I used to use Federico @viticci’s Rename files shortcut to change the filename …
2020-02-07: I just signed up for the year’s free trial of Apple tv+. I’m kind of surprised that I’m eligible for …
2020-02-07: I haven’t been able to find a print copy of Lisa Lutz‘s The Swallows yet so I downloaded the sample …
2020-02-06: Facing a structurally similar situation in 1998 and 1999, Clinton secured not only acquittal but a …
2020-02-05: I keep forgetting about RTE’s Brainstorm site because it doesn’t have an RSS feed that I can …
2020-02-05: The caucus disaster was caused by our abandonment of expertise. … says Mike Elgan, plausibly enough
2020-02-05: I‘m uing an iPad again after 5 months. I got a 10.5” iPad Air, which seems to have about the …
2020-02-05: I lived in Hackney (Clapton) from 1988 to 1995, then in nearby South Tottenham till 2003 and back to …
2020-02-04: People occasionally come up to me and say: “You’re the reason I became a lawyer.” I have to say: “Oh …
2020-02-03: Though I watched the first season of Ashes to Ashes, I’d never seen Life on Mars, till I caught an …
2020-02-02: Marco Rubio puts his statement on Trump’s impeachment trial behind Medium’s paywall, presumably to …
2020-02-02: Most (perhaps all) of my formerly favourite coffee shops have thrown out their panino toaster grills …
2020-02-02: John McPhee’s “Old Man Project” At 88, he acknowledged that plans for books he had carried around in his head for decades might not …
2020-01-31: Timothy Garton Ash says that former remainers like himself must now work for Brexit to succeed, but …
2020-01-31: Each week, Medium emails me view/read figures for my 2 or 3 best performing stories, but I could …
2020-01-31: I love this review by Laura Miller of Megan Angelo’s Followers. It doesn’t particularly make me want …
2020-01-30: An expanded tenth anniversary edition of Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows will be published in a couple …
2020-01-27: Philip Pullman is one of those angered by the omission of an Oxford comma on the Brexit …
2020-01-27: I just read a whole novella by Cory Doctorow on Ars Technica. Unauthorized Bread is a very effective …
2020-01-25: I’ve moved two more short stories from Medium to my own site: The Asymmetry of Desire and Voluntary …
2020-01-25: It’s just occurred to me that my two earlier posts of today are probably in breach of Irish law, so …
2020-01-23: I’m about a quarter of the way through Louise Doughty’s Apple Tree Yard. I’m still not sure whether …
2020-01-23: I complained last week that the mail app on my Windows Phone was no longer working. Yesterday my …
2020-01-22: John Oliver puts his foot down on pointless push notifications, it says here. Surely “pointless push …
2020-01-22: I just added up the word counts of all my posts on the topic of aphantasia and got a total of …
2020-01-19: I’ve moved two more of my short stories from Medium to artkavanagh.ie — The Bourne Indeterminacy and …
2020-01-18: It looks as if Audible may have caved over audiobook “Captions”. I certainly hope so. The Audible …
2020-01-18: Bird is the Worm recommends a video of Mats Eilertsen playing “Tundra” from his album Reveries and …
2020-01-17: Just saw a headline on The Verge, Twitter hashtags aren’t as useful as they used to be, and wondered …
2020-01-16: I stopped using Edge because, if I suddenly changed scrolling direction, it would jump a few pages …
2020-01-15: Microsoft has just released the new, Chromium-based version of its Edge browser, so I’m trying it …
2020-01-14: Really the only misgiving I had about deleting my Amazon account was the fear that I might not be …
2020-01-14: I just noticed that the Mail app on my Windows phone (a Lumia 535) hasn’t updated for 10 days. This …
2020-01-13: I’d read that the philosopher Derek Parfit had been aphantasic (as I am) but I didn’t know the …
2020-01-12: Two weeks ago, I finished reading Tana French’s In the Woods for the third time, and I’ve now …
2020-01-11: Matt Stoller’s What Is the Point of Economics? looks interesting but I was repeatedly distracted by …
2020-01-10: John Siracusa’s Front and Center app is interesting but has no appeal for me: I use Command-backtick …
2020-01-10: Richard Williams looks back on 50 years of Manfred Eicher’s record label, ECM. Williams’s choices …
2020-01-08: Elizabeth Wurtzel has died. I am flabbergasted to read that it’s 25 years since Prozac Nation came …
2020-01-06: Alternatively, I could enable the Windows Linux subsystem, install a distro from the Windows Store …
2020-01-06: When Phil Chevron died in 2013, I tweeted that I’d listened to Let’s Talk about the Weather several …
2020-01-06: Who are the strangers deep inside, Haunting undaunted, their presence denied? The Radiators’ …
2020-01-05: For the past few months, I’ve been writing on a Windows notebook, using EditPad Lite (and Consolas, …
2020-01-05: I watched Atomic Blonde on Channel 4 last night. Mostly stylish (Berlin!) tedium interspersed with …
2020-01-04: Pinterest continues to amuse and frustrate me. I had “pinned” Anil Dash’s post, ‘Link in bio’ is a …
2020-01-03: Who said it: Dominic Cummings or Nathan Barley? I got 2 wrong (nos. 3 and 11). In my defence, it has …
2020-01-02: 50 years ago, on 2 January 1970, my father died. It was just two days after my mother’s 36th …
2020-01-01: Another list of short stories, this time from Future Tense. While I like Future Tense’s nonfiction, …
2020-01-01: Here is Electric Lit’s list of Recommended Reading’s four most read short stories from each of the …
2019-12-31: Booker T (of the MGs and “Green Onions”) has written an autobiography “without the aid of a ghost …
2019-12-31: This Irish Times story claims that an Irish architect “helped France rediscover” Charlotte Perriand …
2019-12-30: There is massive distrust of the wealthy in this book, and virtually no distrust of concentrated …
2019-12-29: I thought my iTunes library (on an external disk for years) had spontaneously disappeared, but it …
2019-12-29: I’ve hesitated to move my fiction from Medium to my own site. While fiction tends not to do well on …
2019-12-29: Ah, I think I understand now. Put a comma between “independent YouTube channels” and “with a slant …
2019-12-29: the algorithm is shown to favor mainstream media and cable news content over independent YouTube …
2019-12-28: You know what the secret of prediction is? Timing. 6/ China implodes, the world wobbles. Ah, well, …
2019-12-27: Nick Drake’s “Day Is Done” played over the closing scene of Coronation Street this evening. I don’t …
2019-12-26: I’m undecided between marginal notes and <details> tags for references. Marginal notes are …
2019-12-26: Ken Harris, the narrator of Carson McCullers’s short story, “Who Has Seen the Wind?” is …
2019-12-26: I clumsily smashed a couple of wine glasses while reaching for the Aeropress plunger, so left my …
2019-12-25: Is my memory playing tricks on me or does the ending of Three Days of the Condor take place at …
2019-12-25: I’m a bit surprised to find Laura Miller describing the audiobook of Kate Atkinson’s Big Sky (which …
2019-12-24: Vox’s Constance Grady recaps the 2010s in book publishing and offers an explanation as to why the …
2019-12-24: A baker’s dozen of suggestions from Tyler Cowen as to what you can do to “stay weird”. No.10 is …
2019-12-23: The good old days of the web may be just around the corner. In part a follow-up to my LinkedIn …
2019-12-23: I missed the final episode of His Dark Materials on BBC last night. (And, because I’m in Ireland, I …
2019-12-22: I’m working on turning my long PhD thesis into a much shorter “monograph” on the theme of justice in …
2019-12-21: Zach Vasquez thinks that The Silent Partner would make a better Christmas movie than Die Hard. I’ve …
2019-12-21: The hills have eyebrows. (Pic from Getty Images via Buzzfeed 😉)
2019-12-20: After fruitlessly Googling how to hard reset a Walkman A865, I tried Bing and found instructions, …
2019-12-20: Like @numericcitizen, I came to the end of an experiment this week. In my case, the experiment was …
2019-12-20: I deleted my Facebook account (then only 18 months old) in mid2017, and I only ever dipped a …
2019-12-18: I asked a friend for his opinion on my Sally Rooney post and he said he finds the fonts and colours …
2019-12-17: Before posting an article on LinkedIn 2 days ago, I wanted to read some other examples. LinkedIn …
2019-12-17: Slate’s Laura Miller on what happened in YA fiction during the 2010s. The genre entered the decade …
2019-12-16: The London Review of Books has relaunched its website and everything — current issue, archive etc — …
2019-12-15: Will Self never wanted to write a memoir … one that leaves him, Montaigne-like, immured in the …
2019-12-15: This is a bit of an experiment and possibly one I won’t be repeating very often, but I’ve just …
2019-12-14: It looks as if Mix.com is no longer allowing comments on mixed/shared links. I don’t know if this is …
2019-12-14: Where possible, I like to link to an image on, say, a publisher’s site rather than upload an extra …
2019-12-12: I liked the Dexter books a lot. (I enjoyed a lot of the tv series too, but I thought those …
2019-12-12: Has anybody got any idea why some Medium URLs end in a question mark (if it is indeed a question …
2019-12-12: One thing I like about Medium is that I’ve tended to draft posts in a text editor without …
2019-12-12: Gladwell discusses le Carré’s The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, the 1963 novel in which Smiley …
2019-12-11: Here’s a sobering post from @JoshNicholas about what happens when the inflexibility of code meets …
2019-12-10: Not relevant to my previous micropost, but the mention of Ewan Morrison reminded me of this Medium …
2019-12-10: I couldn’t support the choice because it was a woman written by a man, when there were three women …
2019-12-08: I’ve been going through old Medium posts, looking for ones to delete because no longer relevant. …
2019-12-08: When quoting seventeenth-century prose containing lots of italics, I’m often undecided whether to …
2019-12-07: The Corbyn Effect is that bad opinion polls for his party are good news because people are more …
2019-12-07: I’m working on a longer project at the moment, so there’s nothing new to post. Instead, here’s a …
2019-12-05: Fred Kaplan’s Best Jazz of 2019, including a newly released 1999 live recording from Paul Bley, Gary …
2019-12-03: Robert Reich brands Moscow Mitch “the worst Senate Majority Leader in history”. Hard to argue with …
2019-12-02: Ahistorical Survey, a poem I wrote these two short verse paragraphs at the beginning of August. It felt as if they were waiting …
2019-12-01: By me: I was not born to follow. Why I don’t think the “following” model is satisfactory, either for …
2019-11-30: I listen to a lot of piano-bass-drum trios (because there are a lot to listen to), but I really love …
2019-11-30: I make no great claims for my posts about aphantasia. They’re no more than the uninformed …
2019-11-29: David Berman thinks that the apparently irresolvable debate between monists (Hume) and dualists …
2019-11-27: Everyone seems to assume vast quantities of courage in other people that they cannot seem to find in …
2019-11-27: Vox’s Constance Grady explains how Tana French solved the problem of writing a series of detective …
2019-11-27: I hate the way Word automatically hyperlinkifies web and email addresses. When people edit them …
2019-11-26: It’s four months since I deleted my Amazon account. Getting by without ordering from the online …
2019-11-26: John Naughton, Oxford, like the past, is another country. The UK turns itself into a “hostile …
2019-11-25: This is strange. I seem to gone overnight from 3,800 followers on Mix to just 18, though when I …
2019-11-23: Now that I’ve posted the piece on Sally Rooney’s short stories it’s time to get on with my …
2019-11-22: Your brain doesn’t contain memories, it is memories, it says here. As somebody with severely …
2019-11-22: I was complaining recently about the difficulty of finding good quality writing on the web using …
2019-11-21: Alex Tabarrok (Marginal Revolution) on why it’s inefficient, expensive and wasteful to require …
2019-11-21: Unfortunately, my hand-rolled JSON feed didn’t work. While validator.jsonfeed.org said it looks …
2019-11-21: After months of procrastination, I’ve finally added a JSON feed to my personal site. I created it …
2019-11-18: I haven’t been posting much on Medium recently. Here’s Andrew Marvell (1621–1678), poet: Three …
2019-11-17: I’ve been meaning to write this for some time. Here it is at last: “Oh my god, shut up”: Sally …
2019-11-17: I still use Google search, though privacy and surveillance are important to me. That’s because Gmail …
2019-11-17: It’s now a year since I registered the domain artkavanagh.ie and I’ve just renewed it for another …
2019-11-16: I think I’ll be paying a visit to Brother Hubbard of Capel Street soon. Supreme Court judge’s “very …
2019-11-14: I replaced the CSS stylesheet for my three Andrew Marvell essays (the most recent of which is …
2019-11-14: Adrian Chiles doesn’t like the app that’s replacing Caffè Nero’s loyalty card. I’ve gone off Caffè …
2019-11-13: By me: Why Google might just conceivably be the future of search. We need something better than the …
2019-11-12: Hardly a straightforward test of a hypothesis, this was more a chronicle of how to repeatedly …
2019-11-11: Deirdre Bair on her first meeting with Samuel Beckett. I found her biography useful, though John …
2019-11-10: I seriously, if briefly and reluctantly, considered giving up coffee to keep my anxiety in check, …
2019-11-10: Originally posted by me on Google+ 18 months ago, now rescued and revised: How and where to read …
2019-11-09: Unlike Scandinavian crime fiction, French’s has a lyrical heart, even if that heart has been broken. …
2019-11-09: Katie Yee on LitHub: Here’s why you should preorder all your books from independent bookstores. …
2019-11-08: Now that I’m eschewing ebooks in favour of the printed kind, I wonder if I should also revert to …
2019-11-07: God, I love spoilers. Now I know for sure that I don’t need or want to see the film Last Christmas. …
2019-11-07: Just finished reading Unravelling Oliver, Liz Nugent’s first novel. It’s melodramatic (everybody’s …
2019-11-05: David Heinemeier Hansson balances the MacBook’s flaky keyboard against Windows’s ugly font rendering …
2019-11-05: Liz Nugent, Unravelling Oliver 📚 I’ve just started to read Liz Nugent’s first novel (having already loved her second and found her …
2019-11-02: I’m about two-thirds of the way through the first draft of a discussion of three short stories by …
2019-11-01: And yet, Pinterest does guess what they’re going to like based on their demography, at least in …
2019-10-31: Dahlia Lithwick, Why I Haven’t Gone Back to SCOTUS Since Kavanaugh: Some things are worth not …
2019-10-30: Winter in Venice is the only original studio album by Esbjörn Svensson Trio that I don’t have, and …
2019-10-29: I’ve just finished reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel from 2000, When We Were Orphans. It has a narrator …
2019-10-28: It’s a year since I (re)posted Sophie Hannah plans her novels before she starts to write: The …
2019-10-27: Today’s stylus equipped and mouse-capable iPad shows great promise. But it doesn’t (yet) make it …
2019-10-27: I’m rereading a short story on The New Yorker site. Annoyingly, the PgUp and PgDn keys move slightly …
2019-10-26: Most of my Micro.blog posts are tweet-like utterances of no more than 280 characters, but now and …
2019-10-25: This is what I’ve been trying to do my whole life, is to write the “everything book”. Salman …
2019-10-24: I’ve been working on this for some time: Religion and divine justice in the work of Andrew Marvell. …
2019-10-24: I’ve updated the book reviews page on my site, so that it now includes just about all the Goodreads …
2019-10-23: Medium is tweaking the way its Partner Program allocates money from members’ subscriptions to …
2019-10-23: My follow-up post to LaTeX as a writing tool compares LaTeX and Microsoft Word — and similar word …
2019-10-06: EP Thompson talked about history rescuing the past from the “enormous condescension of posterity”. …
2019-10-06: The book I wish I’d written I won’t say that I wish I’d written Larkin’s poems because I remain …
2019-10-06: Most of what gets described as magic realism isn’t realism at all — and therefore it isn’t magic …
2019-10-06: Then came Oscar, the time of the guns, And there was no land for a man, no land for a country, …
2019-10-05: Having argued last week that the book review is slowly dying and that this is not a regrettable …
2019-10-03: Me: The book review is slowly dying and we don’t need to mourn it
2019-09-22: So, I just did a search for “Chick Corea Vigilette” on NPR.org and I got hits for “Chuck Berry”, …
2019-09-22: I aimed to dream up a nonsensical political project as self-harmingly loony as Brexit. I’m not sure …
2019-09-22: I was prompted to write this by @Ciaran’s posts on a writing system for lawyers: LaTeX as a writing …
2019-09-19: Mike Elgan has some good reasons Why we shouldn’t let AI write for us. Of course, translation is a …
2019-09-19: I finally got around to reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005), the first of his books I’ve …
2019-09-19: In horror movies as in life, you’re supposed to direct your attention toward survival. Sex is a …
2019-09-18: Instead of clicking the button to accept all cookies, I accepted only the “necessary” ones. As I …
2019-09-18: The city as an entity really doesn’t want anything to do with writers anymore—we’ve been priced out, …
2019-09-10: That’s the second time in two days I’ve steadied this lightweight notebook while plugging in a USB …
2019-09-08: Survivorship bias in writing and publishing. We all want to avoid irrational thought patterns but it …
2019-09-06: I was sorting through some books, deciding which I want to keep and which I’m taking to the charity …
2019-09-02: Fraud accounts for much less than 1% of actual value transfers in real world payment systems. Actual …
2019-09-01: I watched the last three episodes of season 1 of Westworld last night and then slept badly, with …
2019-08-31: Nearly 18 months ago I wrote about the first three Cormoran Strike novels. Now, at long last, I’ve …
2019-08-29: Babies develop werewolf syndrome after medical mix-up in Spain. At least they know the hair-loss …
2019-08-29: Unfortunately the cheetahs are going extinct faster than the ultra-rich, but that could change very …
2019-08-28: Microsoft has removed epub support from Edge apparently. I wonder if this is related to the move to …
2019-08-28: I watched the first episode of season 1 of Westworld a few weeks ago. I’ve made several attempts to …
2019-08-26: I’ve started to read Christine Mangan’s Tangerine. Here’s a review I hadn’t read before buying it, …
2019-08-26: I suppose I didn’t really expect to get an answer to this question but it may just be because I …
2019-08-25: Here’s a multipurpose, universal rating scheme I devised a few years ago. I believe it should be …
2019-08-25: This award-winning bookshop is in a town about 10 Km from where I’ve been living for the past 3 …
2019-08-25: My own site isn’t organized as a blog and doesn’t have an RSS/Atom/JSON feed. I’ve considered …
2019-08-25: It turns out that I was able to change my username on WordPress.com (but I decided to change the …
2019-08-25: Tara Sparling, 10 Bloody Brilliant Reasons To Marie Kondo Your Bookshelves. I wanted to comment on …
2019-08-25: “I have started a new book and have doubts about whether it is really a good idea. I try to remind …
2019-08-24: I had two rather gnomic microposts yesterday on the subject of Pinterest and grid layout. Here’s the …
2019-08-23: Here’s a thought-provoking post from creative writing teacher (and practitioner) Toby Litt on …
2019-08-23: Obviously, I’m not saying that Pinterest looks anything like one of David Carson’s designs but it …
2019-08-23: I didn’t read Anti-Grid Design Icon David Carson Says Computers Make You Lazy … because paywall but …
2019-08-22: Brad Mehldau has recorded two superb versions of the Beatles’ “And I Love Her”: the solo performance …
2019-08-22: MixKit offers “a curated gallery of beautiful art and illustration”, free to use. It’s not clear …
2019-08-20: this may all be a kind of correlate to income inequality and massive returns for founders… Tyler …
2019-08-20: Though now rightly celebrated in Ireland, for many decades it was in America, among Jewish-American …
2019-08-19: while “prizes are a wonderful way to showcase a group of authors … the act of picking a winner is …
2019-08-19: Because of my inability to visualize, I’ve always had problems with motivation, planning and focus. …
2019-08-19: contrary to what many people think urbanization increases forestation as does increased agricultural …
2019-08-19: Fans of romances and thrillers … tend to race through books quickly … A duo writing under the pen …
2019-08-19: The more we regulate language, the more we communicate a social consensus that it has great power. …
2019-08-18: I’ve got mixed feelings about this. I’ve had precisely 0% success persuading friends and family to …
2019-08-18: Having recently finished rereading Lethal White, I’ve finally started to write an update to my post …
2019-08-18: I slept much better last night than I had been sleeping recently. I spent the last few hours before …
2019-08-18: when you’re reading on paper and you’re reading on screen, you’re seeing completely different …
2019-08-17: I just started to read Sally Rooney’s Normal People this evening and I’m about a quarter of the way …
2019-08-17: I’ve been dismissive of ebooks in recent posts. That doesn’t mean that I always prefer to read from …
2019-08-17: I just finished reading Cristina Alger, The Banker’s Wife, about an enormous Panama-Papers-style …
2019-08-16: Donald Trump and R Kelly considered uninsurable by “disgrace insurance” company
2019-08-16: I am Brimstone and Treacle, it says here. I’ve been called worse, and 5/10 is better than …
2019-08-16: Hijackers routinely attempt to sign in to sites across the web with every credential exposed by a …
2019-08-14: It’ll be a lot more than that by the time he’s finished, with any luck QT @dave Trump says …
2019-08-13: It‘s being reported that JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank were advised by their compliance departments to …
2019-08-13: But it seemed clear Epstein had embellished his role in the Tesla situation to enhance his own …
2019-08-13: I’m slightly surprised to find that I clearly prefer Enrico Pieranunzi/Mads Vinding’s performance of …
2019-08-13: I almost always use the self-service checkouts to avoid slow queues at the human-operated ones. A …
2019-08-12: Richard Williams writes about a new short story by Haruki Murakami, “Charlie Parker Plays Bossa …
2019-08-12: I honestly don’t know why Fracture isn’t better known than it seems to be 🍿🎥 You belong in the DA’s …
2019-08-12: LitHub’s Emily Temple has a list of overlooked or forgotten first novels by authors acclaimed for …
2019-08-11: I’ve just finished reading Caroline Kepnes, You: Now a Major Netflix Series. (It’s nice that …
2019-08-10: How and where to read and publish short stories This is a revised and truncated version of a Google+ post of mine from May 2018. Now that Google+ is …
2019-08-08: I’ve just finished reading Lisa Lutz’s The Passenger and was bowled over by it. It slows down a lot …
2019-08-08: I detest the word “societal”. I’ve commented before that if Karl Marx were being translated into …
2019-08-08: I read the sample chapters on Apple Books of two books by Cristina Alger, The Banker’s Wife and …
2019-08-06: I wish apps like Apple Books kept my search history as well as my purchase history. I read part of …
2019-08-06: I just switched my Micro.blog theme from Kiko to Arabica, having seen how nice the latter looks on …
2019-08-06: I love these covers, but I’m really fed up hearing “we all judge books by their covers”. We don’t …
2019-08-06: Sinn Féin once again demonstrate the gaping abyss between what they want (a no-deal Brexit, which …
2019-08-06: the Constitution prevents the government from outlawing the possession of a handgun in the home. …
2019-08-06: If insulin intended for dogs can be produced for $25 a bottle, why must insulin intended for humans …
2019-08-06: That’s The Guardian for you: great for journalism, for web stuff not so great.
2019-08-05: This is so sad. Kathryn Holmquist, whose journalism I used to read avidly, has been found dead on …
2019-08-05: I was whining about having to toggle smart punctuation in iOS, for straight quotes in HTML. But I …
2019-08-05: Somewhat belatedly coming to the realization that several of the people I used to follow on Google+ …
2019-08-04: There are lots of words that are typed with the left hand only (on a QWERTY keyboard): afterwards, …
2019-08-04: How Tyler Cowen chooses what fiction to read. What, no Amazon recommendations?
2019-08-03: Very rapid historical shifts in norms do in fact bring various forms of reaction and sometimes …
2019-08-03: Listening to Doctor 3’s live double-CD album, Winter Tales for the first time in a while. I always …
2019-08-03: Kristen Roupenian on Mary Gaitskill, whose Bad Behavior has been republished 30 years on. There’s …
2019-08-03: Here’s a follow-up to something I posted at the beginning of June, Why ebooks aren’t real books. The …
2019-08-03: His son, Gino, blamed the satnav. Hadn’t Rimonti always driven to Italy by his own devices, reading …
2019-08-01: The Guardian’s John Fordham ranks the 20 best Miles Davis albums in order 🎶
2019-08-01: The Marcin Wasilewski Trio is so good at cover versions: “Hyperballad”, “Diamonds and Pearls”, …
2019-08-01: This is sad: Marcel Berlins, legal columnist/journalist and crime fiction reviewer, has died. I’ve …
2019-08-01: I’ve put my most recent post about aphantasia, Does someone with aphantasia dream in colour? on my …
2019-08-01: I’ve been using the Micro.blog iOS app on iPad ever since I’ve been here but I think I might switch …
2019-08-01: 10 years ago, I had an Archos AV500 on which I could record films and tv off the satellite in …
2019-07-31: Is it normal for foreign allies to edit drafts of presidential speeches? According to Rep. Elijah …
2019-07-31: This is my first attempt at a poem in more than 45 years. This is my first attempt at a poem in more than 45 years. I’m not making any claims for it except to …
2019-07-31: Reblogged: @dave “We Can’t Impeach One of the Most Unpopular and Corrupt Presidents Ever and Risk …
2019-07-30: Since I first saw them live in 2006, I’d been saying that the Marcin Wasilewski Trio should release …
2019-07-30: Slate’s Laura Miller is one of my favourite critics. I don’t think I’ve seen a hatchet job from her …
2019-07-30: Rereading Cal Newport’s New Yorker indie web essay, I was reminded he’d said some Mastodon instances …
2019-07-30: We’re starting with an email newsletter featuring a new approach to video journalism covering …
2019-07-28: This was when there was plenty of rehearsal and studio space cheaply available in Temple Bar, before …
2019-07-28: I’d love a quick way to toggle “Smart punctuation” (just in so far as it affects double quotes) in …
2019-07-28: Does someone with aphantasia dream in colour? As an nonvisualizer, I thought I knew the answer to …
2019-07-27: Browne spends 230 pages labouring through the endlessly repetitive disintegration of all that bright …
2019-07-27: When the biggest mistake of your career becomes part of the plot of a film 16 years later.
2019-07-27: I bookmark sites so rarely (tending to rely on autocomplete and the browser history) that I’ve just …
2019-07-27: The heavily redacted document, based on a two-year investigation, found no evidence that the hackers …
2019-07-27: Double space after fullstops The full horror of Brexit starts to become apparent in Jacob …
2019-07-26: I’ve already deleted my Pinterest account twice. I think I can refrain from deleting it a third time …
2019-07-25: Actually, Robert Mueller Was Awesome, says Renato Mariotti in Politico Magazine. Mueller got to say …
2019-07-25: Following Mueller’s testimony, Democrats say there’s still insufficient evidence for impeachment. …
2019-07-25: What Colm Tóibín said about genre fiction: And why are so many Irish crime writers angry about it? …
2019-07-25: Liked 😎👍: @Dave Richard Neal Slow-Walked Getting Trump’s Taxes—Now He’s Getting Primaried. …
2019-07-24: My post from Jan 2018, Publishing long form fiction on Medium, still gets regular hits. I can’t say …
2019-07-24: a serious book that finds a big, sprawling story in what seems like a small, narrow life. Laura …
2019-07-23: This is really quite bizarre. Seven crime writers, some of them very acute readers, pile on to …
2019-07-23: Since reading this at The Nib, originally shared by @Dave yesterday, I’ve again gone looking for the …
2019-07-17: Stevens claimed that he never drifted anywhere; he held that the court had moved inexorably to his …
2019-07-17: I’ve just finished reading Karin Slaughter’s The Good Daughter, and found it reminiscent of Gillian …
2019-07-17: “… I told him the plot of my first novel … My father goes: ‘Why don’t you write it?’” Camilleri …
2019-07-16: Following my post at the weekend on finding things to read on Medium without subscribing, I was …
2019-07-16: I finished reading Alan Glynn’s Graveland last night. It shares a problem with the last book in at …
2019-07-15: Yesterday and Saturday, I plugged in my more-than-10-year-old Walkman NWZ-S639F but it woudn’t …
2019-07-14: You wait decades for one history of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, then two come along at once. …
2019-07-14: Something good has come out of the Trump administration, an exec order on kidneys. But More than 80 …
2019-07-14: Find stories to read on Medium without subscribing On Monday it will be 5 weeks since I ended my Medium subscription. I have been tempted to resume it. …
2019-07-14: Possessing oodles of data is only an unalloyed good if you can protect it from thieves, hackers and …
2019-07-13: Having read Alan Glynn’s Winterland and Bloodland a few weeks ago, I’ve just started the final book …
2019-07-13: I’ve finished My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing. It’s about a (married) couple of serial killers …
2019-07-12: Google’s … Area 120, is working on a new social networking app called Shoelace … You use it by …
2019-07-12: I’m now reading Samantha Downing’s My Lovely Wife which was €0.99 on Apple Books. It’s pitched as …
2019-07-11: You know you don’t own your e-books … right? | The Chicago Tribune I thought that looked moderately …
2019-07-10: Just over a week ago, I got fed up of Microsoft Edge’s erratic behaviour and installed Firefox. …
2019-07-09: “This Is Pleasure”, a novella by Mary Galtskill in The New Yorker. Quin, a senior editor in a …
2019-07-07: Spent 90 mins ripping 3 tv episodes from DVD to Windows notebook SSD, added them to iTunes (whose …
2019-07-07: Tara Sparling methodically summarizes the lessons to be learnt from Giles Coren’s documentary on the …
2019-07-07: Inspired by @kulturnation, I’m finally Preparing to close my Amazon account. Thanks, Michael.
2019-07-06: Returning to the question what to post where, I think my current approach is that anything …
2019-07-05: Cork Jazz Festival (like most jazz festivals) is again programming rock and R&B acts to bring in …
2019-07-04: This approach threatens to cement Dublin’s growing and unwanted reputation as one of Europe’s most …
2019-07-03: My recent posts on Medium have performed poorly. The one originally subtitled Plotting in Gillian …
2019-07-03: Robert Reich on one or two things the Democrats might be getting wrong.
2019-07-02: I keep forgetting to visit RTÉ Brainstorm: a home for new ideas and insights because they don’t seem …
2019-07-02: NBC News: New study shows Russian propaganda may really have helped Trump. Must be from the …
2019-07-02: Reposting from @Dave — Stop driving in bike lanes ny.curbed.com This applies in Dublin too — and …
2019-07-02: I finally got fed up of Microsoft Edge jumping randomly about in the browser history while I was …
2019-07-02: Robert Reich explains how to accumulate a billion dollars. There are basically only four ways to do …
2019-07-01: Here’s a new story by Roisin O’Donnell, How to Build a Space Rocket. I enthused about her collection …
2019-06-30: … the entire federal judiciary costs about $7 billion, not even enough to … fund federal health-care …
2019-06-30: Matthew Dessem, Dems, Please Don’t Drive Me Away on Slate.
2019-06-30: I found myself, almost without intending to, writing about Liz Nugent’s third novel, Skin Deep. …
2019-06-29: Thanks to iOS Shortcuts, I think I’m back to using Apple Notes as my writing tool of choice. I’ve …
2019-06-29: Jhumpa Lahiri’s short stories 📚 Domenico Starnone reintroduces Jhumpa Lahiri’s stories in Interpreter of Maladies, on Literary Hub. …
2019-06-28: I’ve finally managed to write my first Shortcut. The idea is to make it easier to write HTML quickly …
2019-06-28: From Electric Literature, a publication that seems to be going from strength to strength since it …
2019-06-27: Last year, I wrote about How I came to love the author-date method of citation after years of …
2019-06-26: I haven’t read any of Neal Stephenson’s fiction, which is perhaps a bit surprising considering the …
2019-06-26: Felicia C. Sullivan, my favourite writer of short fiction on Medium, has gathered links to most of …
2019-06-25: Knowing that he did little research, never bothered to check his facts and relied on his literary …
2019-06-24: The cofounder, publisher and managing editor of a local Dublin newspaper that didn’t exist 5 years …
2019-06-24: Speaking of Sally Rooney (as I was yesterday), I saw her second novel, Normal People in Lidl for …
2019-06-23: Sally Rooney is getting a lot of deserved attention as a novelist, but it was her short story, “Mr …
2019-06-22: I just finished reading Alan Glynn’s Bloodland, the second in his loosely connected trilogy about …
2019-06-20: I found the episodes of Law & Order, seasons 12 and 13, that I bought from iTunes and that I …
2019-06-19: … a bit like blaming Karl Marx when your Rolex stops working. A luxury, Marriott-owned, 5-star …
2019-06-18: Today I went to Raven Books in Blackrock to look for a copy of Alan Glynn’s Bloodland. I found that, …
2019-06-17: According to LitHub, Everyone on Book Twitter is recommending their favorite short story …
2019-06-16: … the funeral bubble, when it’s kind of all right because everyone’s in it together and swapping …
2019-06-16: When I posted Why ebooks are not real books a week ago, I was halfway through the Apple Books …
2019-06-16: Here’s a review in the Guardian of Elif Shafak’s 10 Minutes 38 Seconds. I’m looking forward to …
2019-06-15: He is a firm believer in making things up as opposed to too much research. “Does it matter a jot if …
2019-06-15: “So it goes” is not a way of accepting life but, rather, of facing death. It occurs in the text …
2019-06-15: Medium’s paywall Recently Medium has been more insistent in encouraging people who write on the platform to post …
2019-06-15: The existence of Sweny’s Pharmacy, which sat at the corner of Lincoln Place long before it was …
2019-06-15: Tyler Cowen on Marginal Revolution, quoting Arthur C Clarke: Laying of cable for the transatlantic …
2019-06-14: My Pinterest following has grown an extraordinary 150% in just one week: I had two followers, now I …
2019-06-14: I used to think Trump could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and the Republicans would let him get away …
2019-06-12: That’s the second time today that the only way I could end a WhatsApp voice call was by taking the …
2019-06-12: I started to read Alan Glynn’s Winterland last night. It seems to be more a conventional …
2019-06-12: Years ago, when I was living in London, my then flatmate asked me what was the Latin name for …
2019-06-11: From Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader.
2019-06-10: Reading Uber’s Path of Destruction, I’m wondering how much, if any, of this critique applies …
2019-06-10: I’ve just finished reading Dervla McTiernan’s The Ruin. A bit too much of a procedural for my taste …
2019-06-09: By me: Why ebooks aren’t real books 📖
2019-06-09: An article in Nature about research into predicting future historical significance. I’ve just read …
2019-06-08: Oh, look! An interview with Matt Bomer that doesn’t even mention White Collar 📺 🍿
2019-06-08: Here’s something for all you notebook enthusiasts.
2019-06-08: Undecided between buying the ebook version of Dervla McTiernan’s The Ruin from Apple Books or Kobo. …
2019-06-08: Oh, so Michael Wolff was implying in his previous book that Trump and Nikki Haley were having an …
2019-06-08: I finished Skin Deep by Liz Nugent last night. I’ve got very mixed feelings about it but mostly …
2019-06-08: Surprising figures on trauma injury to cyclists in Ireland: hospitals treated 410 cases of major …
2019-06-08: There’s a tradition of nostalgic English nature writing with few European equivalents … I have …
2019-06-07: I’m right in the middle of Liz Nugent’s Skin Deep at the moment. I have to say I’m not enjoying it …
2019-06-05: Mike Elgan found a purple moka maker in his rental appartment in Sicily, which he describes as a “My …
2019-06-05: And while I’m on the subject of Medium, once iPadOS 13 is released, I’ll be ditching the Medium app …
2019-06-05: I’ve just cancelled my Medium subscription after 18 months, in which time I’ve paid $90, which …
2019-06-04: I just noticed somewhat belatedly that about 30 episodes of Law & Order (all of season 13 and …
2019-06-04: So, @Dave linked to a post by Brett Nordquist about shorter blog posts, which led me to take a look …
2019-06-03: Rumours of Avon’s death are not even slightly exaggerated, I’m sorry to say 📺
2019-06-02: Dave Gelly reviews Alan Broadbent Trio, New York Notes in the Observer. I haven’t heard Broadbent; I …
2019-06-01: My parents grew up in rural Tipperary, without electricity. Now, they casually FaceTime me in …
2019-06-01: The Irish Director of Public Prosecutions was criticised for refusal to charge Ian Bailey, convicted …
2019-05-31: In May 2018, the Irish High Court referred 11 questions for determination by the Court of Justice of …
2019-05-30: I felt like I’d been in some ways telling the same story over and over. In my eighth book, Tunnel …
2019-05-30: When I read that there’s going to be a television adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People my …
2019-05-30: Peter Flom, LaTeX for people who think they don’t need it, with a comment from me.
2019-05-29: Total exoneration my ass
2019-05-28: 👍 Laundry literary programs 😎
2019-05-27: Hayley Atwell writes in The Guardian about playing Rebecca West in Rosmersholm
2019-05-26: Matt Yglesias on Vox: Daenerys was right: King’s Landing had to burn. According to him, Daenerys …
2019-05-25: A “senior White House official” tells Acosta: “The president’s insane.” He needed to be told? From …
2019-05-25: Gosh, did Deadwood really end as long ago as 2006? There’s no doubt in my mind: the rate of …
2019-05-25: A few months ago, I dug a 10-year-old Sony Walkman NWZ-S639F out of a box of old stuff. To my …
2019-05-24: Kara Swisher interviews Ev Williams about — among other things — Medium. I read the transcript …
2019-05-24: I’ve started to reread Caroline Kepnes’s Hidden Bodies, 3 years after first reading, so I’d …
2019-05-22: You win or you die? In life there is no such thing as sex-and-violence; they are different … As a conscious choice, Game …
2019-05-22: I’m surprised to discover that, while I obviously want Republicans to lose both the presidency and …
2019-05-21: Mike Elgan thinks the new Google Glass looks awesome. Judge for yourself.😎
2019-05-21: The magazine Vanity Fair now has a digital archive of everything they published from the time they …
2019-05-20: Much of [Bruce Chatwin’s] work was a byproduct of trying to write this essay—the entirety of The …
2019-05-19: I published “Andrew Marvell’s Gender” in the journal Essays in Criticism three years ago. I’ve just …
2019-05-19: Machine learning is much better at doing certain things than people, just as a dog is much better at …
2019-05-17: Just having a look at some recent book cover designs on The Casual Optimist’s blog: it seems …
2019-05-17: A new journal, Series of Unsurprising Results in Economics (SURE) is attempting to counteract …
2019-05-16: Here’s an extraordinary story from last December’s New Yorker that I didn’t see until now, …
2019-05-16: … a ghastly creep called Hans-Peter Schneider – European born, medically trained and in every regard …
2019-05-15: This Medium post by Dervla McTiernan prompted me to download the sample chapter of her first novel, …
2019-05-15: Murray Waas reports that Jeff Sessions told DoJ officials to lie about his firing of Andy McCabe in …
2019-05-15: Melville House Press isn’t happy that Normal People, not Becoming, is Book of the Year. Michelle …
2019-05-14: Well, this wasn’t exactly intuitive. The Export OPML command is hidden off the bottom of a screen …
2019-05-14: I’ve been using Reeder 3 on iPad for a few months. I didn’t sync the app with an online account, …
2019-05-13: I’m fed up with web pages where the text jumps around while I’m trying to read it, as ads load, …
2019-05-13: I haven’t watched any of Game of Thrones or read any of the books but at times I’ve been kind of …
2019-05-12: Recently I’ve been less inclined to write book reviews (aimed at people who are deciding whether to …
2019-05-12: This is the most exciting thing I’ve read for some time. Andy Matuschak, “Why books don’t work”. …
2019-05-12: By me on Medium: Eluding the algorithm: Web discovery in the aftermath of social media. This is the …
2019-05-12: Steve Newman recalls Meeting Paul Robeson at Leamington Spa railway station in the spring of 1959.
2019-05-11: Critics respond to (slightly exaggerated) rumours of the death of the book review BookMarks has responses from several critics to the Harper’s essay by Christian Lorentzen on the …
2019-05-11: Medium has changed the way it operates its paywall, leading me to think again about my approach to …
2019-05-11: Last week, I posted a very short list of blogs and personal websites that I recommend. I had …
2019-05-11: After paying a lot for very small homes, Londoners have no higher incomes than the UK average. Most …
2019-05-09: The Oxford Handbook of Andrew Marvell is a big (800+ pages), comprehensive book about the subject of …
2019-05-09: I need a replacement steel mesh filter for my Aeropress. In the past, I’ve always bought them …
2019-05-08: Crime novelist Laura Lippman writes in praise of being an “old mother”: a 60-year-old woman with a …
2019-05-08: Trump would … buy stock in a company, publicize that he was considering buying the company to pump …
2019-05-08: Having finished Emma Healey’s Elizabeth Is Missing (a worn and battered copy that I found in a …
2019-05-08: My two most recent posts on Medium were tagged “Literary Criticism” and drew a disappointingly low …
2019-05-07: Hey, it turns out that I’m a snowflake and I’ve only just realized the fact. It seems so obvious …
2019-05-07: Kevin Smith cast himself as Silent Bob because he couldn’t memorize dialogue: How we made Clerks 🍿🎞🎬
2019-05-06: I’ve seen Medium users complain that they often don’t see posts from people they’re following on …
2019-05-06: As for Boris Yeltsin, who became the first president of a post-Soviet Russia, [Gorbachev] says, “I …
2019-05-06: Trump complains that two years of his presidency were “stollen”. Good to see him becoming diet …
2019-05-06: Novelist Ben Dolnick explains why you should read books in long stretches rather than “in five- or …
2019-05-06: The umbrella concept of the Indigo store is something like “all of the items in here could be seen …
2019-05-05: Making Robert Mueller come out: Dahlia Lithwick sees the special counsel as Boo Radley
2019-05-05: I’ve posted a very short list of blogs and personal websites that I like. I hope to add to it …
2019-05-04: I love this quote from Elif Batuman’s The Idiot, which has just shot up my list as a result. I’ve …
2019-05-04: The novel as puzzle: Susie Lopez spent four years reading Finnegans Wake and annotating her reading …
2019-05-03: In UK local government elections, the Liberal Democrats — who support remaining in the EU — have …
2019-05-03: Here’s a lovely story — hat tip The Overspill — about how a group of YouTube web developers brought …
2019-05-02: Cormac Larkin interviews Fred Hersch in The Irish Times in advance of Hersch’s solo piano …
2019-05-02: I’ve just muted the New York Times on Mix. I’m not a subscriber to the NYT, and I’d been using up my …
2019-05-01: Mix has updated its iPad app, so that it’s no longer, as I complained the other day, allowing cookie …
2019-05-01: Assange gets just two weeks less than the maximum sentence (1 year) for jumping bail.
2019-04-27: I’ve been saying for months that I must read Lethal White and update my post about the Cormoran …
2019-04-27: I started Emma Healey’s Elizabeth Is Missing yesterday. I’ve had her second novel, Whistle in the …
2019-04-27: Is Garrett Camp’s Mix growing to resemble its parent? StumbleUpon, out of which Mix grew, used to give a misleadingly inflated figure for page views …
2019-04-27: Here’s my review of Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal, Stealing Fire 📚
2019-04-26: I’ve just finished reading Sophie Hannah’s A Game for All the Family. Much more ludic and darkly …
2019-04-24: ”We have been, I have been the most transparent president and administration in the history of our …
2019-04-24: Writing every day I’ve generally been inclined to scoff at the seemingly ubiquitous advice that a writer should write …
2019-04-24: … it takes a true savant of exquisitely attuned grievance collection to read an individual reference …
2019-04-22: I’ve been poking though some of my old posts on Medium to see if I should delete any of them. This …
2019-04-21: David Siegel’s “In Reality: A new worldview just for you” A long, link-filled, occasionally provocative essay by David Siegel on the application of the …
2019-04-21: Radio critic tries to slap down Paddy Cosgrave while conceding he’s right about tax: he needs to be …
2019-04-20: Nathan Ward writes on CrimeReads about Kenneth Fearing’s The Big Clock. I bought and read a copy …
2019-04-20: It looks as if Piqd has run out of money. I hadn’t even noticed that they’d pivoted to podcasts. …
2019-04-20: Overkill’s deceptive attraction: Plotting in Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places. A “spoiler”-rich …
2019-04-16: ”I’ve been called vulgar names, mocked for my appearance, my looks, my weight, my sexuality, and …
2019-04-16: Although Om Malik is happy to continue to pay for Amazon Prime, he’s been ordering less stuff from …
2019-04-16: Now that I’m no longer trying to write analytically (or maybe I should say academically) about …
2019-04-15: He loves Sally Rooney’s Normal People, he tells me, admiring especially what he calls the “clever …
2019-04-14: Having spent years studying English literature but never feeling comfortable talking about the …
2019-04-13: How did Meet Joe Black make $143 million? Well, my flatmate at the time went to see it in the …
2019-04-13: This is happening more and more on Mix: a cookie consent form or data privacy notice blocks the …
2019-04-13: By me on Medium: Rereading Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum 📚
2019-04-12: Anticapitalist writer umair haque has an interesting (if longwinded) perspective on the failure …
2019-04-12: Tess Wheeler had 105 IRL connections on LinkedIn; she took part in a challenge and, 7 weeks later, …
2019-04-12: Rebecca Renner writes about the CIA’s role in the publication of Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago — and …
2019-04-12: You can’t use aphantasia as an excuse, says former Pixel president Ed [Catmull, former Pixar president] argues aphantasia is not a barrier to success. He told the BBC: …
2019-04-08: Benedict Evans draws comparisons between Microsoft’s security problems in the 90s and Facebook’s …
2019-04-04: it’s refreshing to see a novelist so earnestly uncertain about the value of her task—and a complex …
2019-04-03: He has to keep three balls in the air at once: the biographical story, an interpretation of the …
2019-04-03: ”What we have to do is Congress has to meet quickly and make a deal. I could do it in 45 minutes … …
2019-04-01: In Amanda Craig’s short story, “The Ghost Writer”, a “literary” novelist, whose latest book has been …
2019-04-01: “If all of the people who hate Ishtar had seen it,” May remarked to her one-time comedy partner Mike …
2019-03-31: An excellent discussion by Rob Doyle of Mark Fisher’s k-punk. I must admit I started to read the …
2019-03-31: A significant, influential and brilliantly made film that had a deep influence on me has just turned …
2019-03-30: To lose one court case may be regarded as a misfortune. Formidable Austrialian literary agent Selwa …
2019-03-28: I need to submit something in print, so I’ve been writing and editing in IA Writer, exporting as …
2019-03-28: Is Joni Mitchell’s Blue (1971) the perfect album? John Corbett thinks so. Read an extract from his …
2019-03-28: I wonder if Apple will finally, finally, finally listen to this. When you get stories like this in …
2019-03-27: I read Stealing Fire on Scribd back in January but I wanted to get my own copy so, since I’m …
2019-03-27: this is what growing up is all about: finding ways to identify yourself, using the only thing you …
2019-03-26: I’m a sucker for courtroom dramas. I still haven’t found a copy of Anatomy of a Murder but I was …
2019-03-26: Remember SmartTags in Word? Neither did I. Microsoft deprecated them in 2010 (about 7 years after …
2019-03-26: Spoke too soon Now I’m having my second coffee of the “morning”.
2019-03-26: Finally getting to have my second coffee of the morning. (It’s 4.37 pm here.) then I’ll move on to …
2019-03-25: Hey, Instagram “influencer”! There’s a robot coming for your job …
2019-03-24: There was Russian interference in the 2016 election but no evidence that anyone connected to the …
2019-03-24: The Rubble Club: In Dublin, architects are outliving the buildings they designed. I’m not sorry to …
2019-03-23: Actually, contrary to what I said in my last post, it seems that Electric Literature may have moved …
2019-03-23: “Liking Books Is Not a Personality”, says Hannah McGregor on Electric Literature. That’s …
2019-03-22: Why feedback is never worthwhile you probably don’t know how a failing employee (or infuriating husband, or whatever) could most …
2019-03-21: Disney now controls approximately 75% of the film industry, meaning that a lot more crappy books …
2019-03-20: I mentioned a while ago that I’d drifted into a semi-intentional boycott of Amazon, in that I …
2019-03-19: A few days ago, I incorrectly said that I hadn’t read any of Harlan Coben’s books. I’ve just been …
2019-03-18: The final version of my thesis was in Nisus Writer Pro. I imported the RTF into Pages and I’ve been …
2019-03-18: Not for the first time, life imitates Law & Order
2019-03-18: I’m going to get a new iPad Air. I don’t know when, but I’m definitely going to get a new iPad Air 😊
2019-03-17: Steve Newman on Medium tells the story of Willie The Lion Smith 🎹 🎶
2019-03-17: I’ve started to move my book 📖 reviews from Google+. The first five (originally posted 2017–18) are …
2019-03-17: Don’t let undeserving people be the instruments with which you hurt yourself. Also, read more short …
2019-03-17: The data I downloaded from Google+ has filenames that all start with the date of posting, which …
2019-03-17: An unwillingly abandoned town in the mountains, a lawyer turned bestselling crime writer, a New York …
2019-03-17: So why do I do [social media]? Heck, if I was a good businessman, I may not be writer. I do it …
2019-03-16: Vulture profiles John Lanchester whose fifth novel tackles climate change and intergenerational …
2019-03-16: The poverty of writers (in general and with a small number of notable exceptions) is getting more …
2019-03-15: I’ve updated my “Short Fiction on Medium — recommendations” page to add links to some recently …
2019-03-15: Ellen Ullman is still close to the machine 📚 Pretty graphical interfaces are commonly called “user friendly.” But they are not really your …
2019-03-15: I’d heard of Uber Eats, of course, but I have to say that Uber Treats sound much more tempting.
2019-03-15: The Girl in the Mirror. A short story by Jennifer Schmidt about beauty, disguise, selfhood and …
2019-03-15: Simply removing likes would be bad. But even just hiding both likes and RTs could be apocalyptic. …
2019-03-14: They probably thought of themselves as law-abiding Americans, with exceptions so minor as to be …
2019-03-13: I’ve just resurrected a 23-year-old essay, Finite though unbounded: the abolition of infinity in the …
2019-03-13: “Every leaf and every grass blade on earth makes more and more sugars as CO2 levels keep rising … We …
2019-03-13: After doing the job for a while, I wasn’t liberal anymore. I certainly wasn’t conservative. I just …
2019-03-13: A short story by Sally Rooney in the New Yorker, “Color and Light”. A hotel worker in a seaside town …
2019-03-13: A few days ago, I was wondering on Micro.blog whether I should get an aluminium Lamy fountain pen or …
2019-03-13: The rest of the Internet was a sideshow. It’s just easier if everything is on one platform, I was …
2019-03-13: The people who were leaving negative reviews [of Captain Marvel] were “review bombing,” a tactic …
2019-03-12: Corey Robin argues that in order finally to escape from neoliberalism, we need to “uninstall” …
2019-03-12: I’m very pleased with yesterday’s haul from the charity shop. I’ve read Midnight’s Children at least …
2019-03-11: This new study suggests that ADHD may be especially beneficial when the goal is to create or invent …
2019-03-11: M G Siegler has been thinking about (and perhaps overthinking) The Blogging Mindset Basically, I …
2019-03-11: In the worst moments of my life, there is always a joke to be made, and that’s a deep comfort to me. …
2019-03-10: Venture capitalists have subsidized the creation of platforms for low-paying work that deliver …
2019-03-10: There’s two types of people: There are “organizers” and “searchers.” Organizing seems like too much …
2019-03-09: About 15 years ago, I had an alumin[i]um Lamy fountain pen, but left it behind after a lecture. I’m …
2019-03-09: A new border would have to be manned by customs officials, but these would not go there unless they …
2019-03-07: In The phone’s not smart so you might have to be I’m fussing about whether I should keep my newish …
2019-03-06: Fierce op-ed by Dahlia Lithwick in Slate: The Cowardice of the Cover-Your-Ass Memo. John Kelly and …
2019-03-06: I persisted nearly to the end of this story about John Adams possibly referring in letters to Thomas …
2019-03-06: This is the first personal productivity hack I’ve read in ages that sounds as if it might actually …
2019-03-06: The US Senate has confirmed a nominee to the federal bench who has just 9 years’ experience of …
2019-03-06: Ditch Mitch
2019-03-05: Mix.com, Garrett Camp’s “curated discovery” site (and the successor to StumbleUpon) still feels …
2019-03-04: It’s unfathomable that, 18 years after the launch of the iPod, our clothes still have buttons and …
2019-03-03: Nicole Dieker, who successfully self-published 2 volumes of literary fiction, has some considered …
2019-03-03: Patience is a virtue I don’t have, unfortunately by me on Medium. For now — and this could change …
2019-03-03: I’m about to start moving my more significant book reviews (i.e. the ones I want to keep) from …
2019-03-02: The day job is starting to interfere with my writing time, I’m afraid. I was so exhausted after …
2019-03-02: Does anyone know if there’s a way to prevent Simplenote from linkifying a URL when you paste it into …
2019-02-28: you only officially have to worry about things that are a. Likely and b. Preventable, which seems …
2019-02-28: I got 18/22 — and I haven’t even seen Goodfellas
2019-02-28: It’s pretty clear that Michael Cohen is not the brightest person ever to graduate law school. I …
2019-02-26: It’s very simple stuff with no literary ambition that I can see I’m inclined to suspect that Will …
2019-02-25: The British Library says it will have to end access to Spare Rib digital archive in the case of a …
2019-02-25: Jean-Louis Gassée reaches the end of the BeOS story in his “50 Years in Tech”.
2019-02-24: An open letter from the New York State budget director on the lessons to be learned from the Amazon …
2019-02-24: I’ve been trying to rework my doctoral thesis, “Andrew Marvell’s ambivalence about justice”. A …
2019-02-23: The special counsel has filed an 800-page sentencing memo in Manafort’s case. Maybe this is the …
2019-02-23: Since Accelerando (Vijay Iyer’s second trio album with Stephan Crump and Marcus Gilmore) was …
2019-02-23: I just switched the default browser on my Windows 10 (work) notebook from Edge to Chrome, hoping …
2019-02-21: Hi, @tibz. This always makes me laugh. (Not a direct reply to your restaurant post, as I wanted to …
2019-02-21: Sounds Like Titanic When you play the violin you are able, for a moment, to leave the female body in which you are …
2019-02-20: President Donald Trump is assembling a sprawling, corporate-style reelection campaign … a top-down …
2019-02-20: A few weeks ago, when I needed a new Bluetooth keyboard for the iPad, I considered a Keytron but it …
2019-02-20: When I watched Unbreakable back in the primeval 00s, it never occurred to me that it was a superhero …
2019-02-19: “At times like these, Corbyn is his own worst enemy”, says John Crace in the Guardian. And, when you …
2019-02-19: I don’t know that salvation can be found in labor, a notion that combines the most alienating …
2019-02-17: I’ve been across the Border six times today already, and that’s a normal Saturday — going to the …
2019-02-17: Author Rob Doyle revisits Arthur Koestler’s first novel, an exploration of the failure of a …
2019-02-16: She is, she thinks, “the only person who went into writing because it was a more stable career than …
2019-02-16: I was on the Simon & Schuster website and they enticed me to sign up to their email list with …
2019-02-15: Steve Newman’s review of the Branagh-directed, Elton-scripted film, All Is True 🎬 🍿
2019-02-15: There is no good time to admit you’ve been deceiving people, but later is worse. Leo Benedictus in …
2019-02-15: Andrea Levy, author of Small Island and several other novels, is dead (of cancer) at the age of 62 📚
2019-02-14: I calculated that as a rule of thumb, and on average, about half of our life’s total medical costs …
2019-02-13: My congratulations to the genius who hit on the abbreviation “GDPR”. You can type 3 of the 4 letters …
2019-02-11: First dates can be unbearably stressful. Luckily for Heather (or is it Anna?), she has a coping …
2019-02-10: I remember once having a problem in my personal life and trying to determine from War and Peace what …
2019-02-10: Crime writers I admire defend Dan Mallory: ”He didn’t tell me anything that wasn’t true,” Liz …
2019-02-09: Oops, I didn’t mean to leave @grayareas out of this reply, sorry.
2019-02-07: I decided several months ago that I’m going to favour printed books over ebooks. So, should I pay …
2019-02-07: Craig Taborn will be playing solo in Dublin next week 🎶 🎹
2019-02-07: I was embarrassed about how ashamed I felt of this year’s rejections, having so publicly endorsed …
2019-02-06: Instead of thinking about line editing as a forgotten art, one callously consumed by the book …
2019-02-06: I thought about buying a cheap Chromebook (a second-hand HP) but decided against it. Now that they …
2019-02-06: I just added a public domain picture to “The Paradoxical Ambition of Andrew Marvell’s Third Advice …
2019-02-05: Karen Thompson Walker has a new book coming out: The Dreamers, her follow-up to The Age of Miracles. …
2019-02-05: The dispiriting tale of forgotten filmmaker Lorenza Mazzetti, who had “undesirable alien” stamped on …
2019-02-05: For years I’ve believed that I have vivid dreams but remember only fleeting fragments. Because …
2019-02-05: Another fairly close reading of a well regarded, literary short story by Emily Temple on LitHub. …
2019-02-05: Constance Grady’s take on the New Yorker/Ian Parker assassination of the literary reputation of A J …
2019-02-04: Irish police ask cyclists to take down videos of infringing cars “as you are identifying a …
2019-02-04: according to many people who know him, [Dan] Mallory has a history of imposture, and of duping …
2019-02-04: Cavanagh hadn’t set foot in New York by the time he’d written the first three Eddie Flynn novels. …
2019-02-03: These shots remind me of the expression (attributed to Lord Hoffmann, I think): “He took to …
2019-02-03: I wanted to set up an autoreply on one of my email accounts, to say that I’m trying to move away …
2019-02-03: KonMari is great, it’s just been misdirected at things instead of acts. Rather than scrutinize your …
2019-02-02: During the same period in which socially accepted sadism diminished, economic inequality and …
2019-02-02: the urban cinemas, such as The Cabra Grand (now a bingo hall) built by Samuel Lyons in 1946, with …
2019-02-01: Prolific book blogger and Goodreads reviewer, Larry H, assesses Kristen Roupenian’s story …
2019-02-01: Lisa Allardice interviews both the author (Bart van Es) and the subject (Lien de Jong) of the …
2019-02-01: We’re always being told that the passive voice is to be avoided if at all possible. So why, in that …
2019-01-31: I haven’t been writing or posting fiction recently: I’m trying to concentrate instead on finally …
2019-01-31: we found that taking the perspective of someone who endorses a counterattitudinal view lowers …
2019-01-28: More about the role of “comps” in publishing, this time from Melville House Press 📚
2019-01-27: Bifurcation is not for everyone. But it might be the right option for most writers. Thomas Maloney …
2019-01-27: Broadly speaking, the American tracks are either well known already (John Coltrane, Horace Silver …
2019-01-27: Eye-opening piece by Laura B. McGrath in the L.A. Review of Books about “comps” in publishing and …
2019-01-26: Here’s a New Yorker profile of Roger Stone by Jeffrey Toobin from 2008. Trump was very …
2019-01-26: _The New Yorker_’s Katy Waldman has read both of MacKenzie Bezos’s novels and finds it impossible to …
2019-01-26: I’ve been thinking for some time that those people who assume that the Republican nominee in …
2019-01-26: LitHub has an excerpt from Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style …
2019-01-26: I had, of course, seen some headlines about Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg and a dead goat but I’d …
2019-01-25: Nate Hoffelder complains that Wattpad told everybody except him that it was getting into book …
2019-01-24: Designing for the web ought to mean making HTML and CSS says David Heinemeier Hansson on Signal v. …
2019-01-23: I’ve been trying to mix this short story, Mia Gallagher’s “All Bones”, to my …
2019-01-22: It’s two years since my very first post on Medium, The Language of Ireland. I was reminded of it …
2019-01-21: While I’m on the subject of fonts, the latest instalment of Jean-Louis Gassée’s “50 Years in …
2019-01-21: I’ve been trying out Simplenote as a writing app on iOS. It’s very nearly perfect except for one …
2019-01-20: Nicholas Carr’s LARB review of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism Surveillance capitalism’s …
2019-01-20: I’ve posted The five stages of coming to terms with aphantasia on Medium. It includes a brief …
2019-01-18: Amazon has said that “almost 40” self-published authors have sold more than a million e-books in the …
2019-01-18: “Let’s face it,” [Marie Kondo] writes in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and puts the next …
2019-01-17: Gideon Rosenblatt has a good analysis of what went wrong with Google+ and why its failure to be …
2019-01-15: Nicholas Carr has reviewed “Shoshana Zuboff’s epic critique of Silicon Valley, _The Age of …
2019-01-15: With my old Windows notebook, I’d be scrolling down a page, with two fingers on the trackpad …
2019-01-15: How Chris Power solved a problem with “the most autobiographical story” in his collection Mothers, …
2019-01-13: He hugged like a natural non-toucher who had taken professional instruction in how to overcome his …
2019-01-13: I’ve updated Medium’s iPad app is making me want to tear my hair out. The problem seems to be …
2019-01-13: I often enjoy Larry H.’s reviews, which he posts on Goodreads and on his blog, “It’s Either Sadness …
2019-01-12: “Own that content!” Me, on Medium, revisiting the question when to post there and when …
2019-01-12: Everything old is new again, from RSS to regular expressions. Quite right, too.
2019-01-11: its status as fiction had largely got lost. In a way, I still feel that this is something to be …
2019-01-10: Already today I’ve read several general statements—e.g. Americans love cars or Americans’ collective …
2019-01-10: KonMari passed right over my head until it involved books. While I agree that you shouldn’t throw …
2019-01-10: Speaking (as I was) of Patricia Highsmith’s The Cry of the Owl, the plot struck me as …
2019-01-10: I’ve never read Highsmith’s The Cry of the Owl (one of the recommendations on this list …
2019-01-10: AeroPress Movie is a documentary revealing the story of AeroPress … Sounds like my cup of … um, you …
2019-01-10: a man showed his barber a paused video clip of the haircut he wanted, and the barber obliged, …
2019-01-09: Laura Miller reviews Kristen Roupenian’s breathlessly awaited collection _You Know You Want This_📚. …
2019-01-09: Just been trying to “Like” a Goodreads review, having forgotten that I’d disabled Javascript last …
2019-01-08: Democrats want equal airtime to rebut Trump’s immigration speech. Why would they need equal airtime …
2019-01-08: New safe straight lines are finite though unbounded. Old epicycles numberless in vain. Then deeper …
2019-01-07: Sally Rooney’s Normal People has won the Costa Novel Award, which means it’s in …
2019-01-07: Publishing today is in a state of crisis. There is a smaller, not a greater market for serious work …
2019-01-06: Just about to start reading Stealing Fire by Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal, on this recommendation …
2019-01-06: The closest thing we will ever have an opportunity to do to have the longest impact on the country …
2019-01-06: I suppose it’s to be expected at new year, but I was struck to read two pieces yesterday by women I …
2019-01-06: Two more book reviews I’ve just posted on Goodreads: Joakim Zander’s The Swimmer and Jonathan Holt’s …
2019-01-05: Here’s my Goodreads review of Catherine Ryan Howard’s The Liar’s Girl which I read in a single …
2019-01-05: By me on Medium: Medium’s iPad app is making me want to tear my hair out. Trying to open a link to a …
2019-01-04: Medium seems to have changed the font it uses for titles. The new one looks good but it’s not a sans …
2019-01-03: Kristen Roupenian’s “Cat Person”, may have been mistaken by some New Yorker …
2019-01-03: I’ve just created a new collection on Mix, titled Political Economy and moved 8 links/stories there …
2019-01-03: China’s economy began to slow in the second half of 2018. The government-reported GDP growth during …
2019-01-02: There’s a detailed, informative profile of and interview with Sally Rooney in The New Yorker. …
2019-01-02: A legislative proposal to require motorists to allow a distance of at least 1 metre when overtaking …
2019-01-01: Humourist Mark Starlin posts a monthly list of his favourite reads on Medium. Here’s his …
2019-01-01: I don’t really mind having to enter my email every time I log in to Irish Rail’s onboard wifi, but …
2019-01-01: Since I discovered the San Francisco font in Apple’s Books app, I’ve maybe, kinda started to get a …
2018-12-31: Somehow I doubt that Amazon foresaw that it would have to set up its own private legal system to …
2018-12-31: I just posted a list of all my own fiction which is now available on Medium. There are several short …
2018-12-31: I could have sworn I’d just posted a request for info on how to force sync iCloud Drive on Windows …
2018-12-30: Yesterday, James Finn in a post on Medium argued that, but for its religious guise, the Catholic …
2018-12-30: Not just one post on my site yesterday but two: Could subscription reading put paid to the ebook? …
2018-12-29: When our current national nightmare is over, if it ever is, everyone — from doctors and lawyers to …
2018-12-29: Could subscription reading put paid to the ebook? Writers who want to make money should look to …
2018-12-29: Standing-only escalators? Why not keep the present rules on downward and short upward escalators, …
2018-12-27: I hadn’t known that Caroline Kepnes’s You has been adapted for Netflix. I still haven’t read the …
2018-12-26: Now that I’ve finally registered my own domain name, I still want to post some things on …
2018-12-25: Just spent ten minutes trying to figure out how to add a caption to an image in the Medium iOS app. …
2018-12-25: When I posted this I hadn’t heard that Eileen Battersby (long serving literary correspondent with …
2018-12-24: I missed this when it was first pubished. Eileen Battersby remembers Anthony Cronin who died two …
2018-12-23: For some reason, nobody has ever done a randomized controlled trial of parachutes. Until now. The …
2018-12-22: The San Francisco font option in Apple Books I rarely stick with the publisher’s “original” font in Apple Books, because that usually means …
2018-12-22: I’ve just posted “HTML and Markdown”. Though I think Markdown is (from a writer’s point of view) …
2018-12-22: I got just 35/75 in the _Guardian_’s Literary Quiz of the Year, which it says is “not bad”. It would …
2018-12-19: ”Am I to believe that the hoards of male Tory MPs — some the most obnoxious people I’ve ever come …
2018-12-17: I think I’ve had it with Reddit. Not because of the misogynist culture — the only subreddit I’m …
2018-12-16: Jean-Louis Gassée’s reminiscences of 50 years in tech have reached his 1990 firing by Apple.
2018-12-14: I might prefer that [most readers] don’t finish my book, because who can live up to the imagination …
2018-12-10: Because of a security flaw, the Google+ shutdown is brought forward by four months according to the …
2018-12-10: I’m not generally a fan of year-end “best” lists but Slate has a spot-on books list from Laura …
2018-12-10: 25 years later, I see the words “the blockchain is the new Internet” scrolling down Twitter … …
2018-12-10: I couldn’t wait to find out how Highsmith would punish her protagonists—or allow them to punish …
2018-12-10: Tyler Cowen has been listening again to Tom Lehrer. It’s been a while (like maybe 30 years) since …
2018-12-09: End direct provision in Ireland. It’s brutal and inhumane. People (including families) are living in …
2018-12-09: So, I read a story in the Medium app, then try to open it in Safari (so I can bookmark the …
2018-12-08: This is me on Medium, wondering if there’s an app which will generate a to-do list sorted for 3 …
2018-12-08: A few weeks ago, I was defending Medium. Since I’ve been using iPad primarily, I’ve …
2018-12-08: Trying again, this time as new post, not reply. Markdown allows for the use of html tags and …
2018-12-06: But even for those writers who aren’t gazillionaires, a room of one’s own shouldn’t be an object of …
2018-12-05: I’m trying to regularize the format of a Word document while Track Changes is turned on. Ugh. …
2018-12-05: a prominent criminal barrister agreed to become a registered police informant in exchange for a …
2018-12-05: Jack Monroe on the importance (and sometimes unaffordability) of tin openers
2018-12-04: Just updated my Medium post from 8 months ago, “Why I’m no longer a self-published …
2018-12-04: Jeremy Harding on the London Review of Books blog gives a cool, perceptive account of what’s …
2018-12-04: Reposted with Medium url fixed. Another post from me on Medium on the subject of aphantasia. This …
2018-12-03: My Goodreads review of Aphantasia by Alan Kendle. TL;DR If you have the condition or an interest in …
2018-12-03: If I try to access docs.google.com on the iPad, Google flat-out refuses and insists I use the Google …
2018-12-02: I’ve just moved The paradoxical ambition of Andrew Marvell’s Third Advice to a Painter …
2018-12-02: “… my experience with the competitive side of [debating] is that it’s actually like a game. I was …
2018-12-01: I read last week that Google search doesn’t use personalization much any more, partly because it …
2018-12-01: My Goodreads review of Philip Kerr’s Research which I mentioned here last week. As I said then, it’s …
2018-12-01: It recently struck me that I seem to have drifted into a semi-intentional, initially unplanned …
2018-12-01: I can’t bring myself to congratulate Julian Gough on being nominated for the Bad Sex Award, a prize …
2018-12-01: In this extract from his new book, Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain, Fintan O’Toole …
2018-11-29: I don’t know if it’s available at an equivalent price everywhere, but I just got Naomi Alderman’s …
2018-11-28: Another post from me on Medium on the subject of aphantasia. This time it’s “Aphantasia, …
2018-11-27: I’ve now got 3 piano-bass duo albums featuring Charlie Haden: Nightfall with John Taylor, Last Dance …
2018-11-27: Every time I visit Reddit in Safari for iOS, it nags me to open it in the app. I’m undecided …
2018-11-26: Having started Philip Kerr’s Research late on Saturday, I spent more time than I could spare racing …
2018-11-26: This made me laugh. I’ve managed at most 4 or 5 pages of Norwegian Wood and I sometimes have the …
2018-11-26: Well, I tried I out Ulysses and Drafts 5 on the iPad, and even bought the iOS version of iA Writer …
2018-11-25: Just started to read Research and I’m enjoying it. It will be only the third book by the late Philip …
2018-11-25: Some 11 years after Michael Dibdin’s death and the publication of his final Aurelio Zen novel, I at …
2018-11-25: This is exciting! Not just two new Chick Corea albums, but two trio albums to boot. Marcus Gilmore …
2018-11-24: For years, on and off, I’ve been toying with the idea of registering an .ie (Irish) domain …
2018-11-23: It says here that Sarah St. Vincent’s Ways to Hide in Winter is on sale for $1.99 “wherever ebooks …
2018-11-20: One reason I’ve tended until recently to buy CDs and rip them myself is that the online stores …
2018-11-20: if anything is connected to the headphone jack, the OS shuts off the built-in speaker completely. …
2018-11-20: Gosh, Charlie Haden really was fond of “My Old Flame”, wasn’t he? Great though Lee …
2018-11-19: Well that wasn’t intentional but it might be for the best. I’ve just lost access to my …
2018-11-19: Ulysses can’t get started, it seems. So perhaps I’ll be going with iA Writer after all.
2018-11-19: Decision time: I want to buy a writing app to use on iOS (iPad) and I’m vacillating between iA …
2018-11-19: Late Henry James is difficult in a wholly different way than Finnegans Wake is difficult … says Sam …
2018-11-19: We can’t be comfortable with anything we’re constantly justifying. We’re saying it’s just as good as …
2018-11-18: Jobs’ dismissal was a stroke of luck of historic proportions, for Apple and its shareholders, for …
2018-11-18: I’ve just sent out the final issue of my Short Fiction on Medium email newsletter which had …
2018-11-17: I’d forgotten how much I like Arild Andersen’s live album The Rose Window till I started …
2018-11-17: “Have a swell eternity”, William Goldman
2018-11-17: I looked at the falling weekly traffic reports, and counted the ever-declining number of comments, …
2018-11-16: Conan Doyle based Professor Moriarty on George Boole, true or false?
2018-11-15: … no one can now conclude that progressives fell flat while the rest of their party was busy …
2018-11-15: How I came to love the author-date method of citation I originally posted this note on Google+ in March 2018. As Google+ is going to be closing to …
2018-11-15: Facebook increasingly turned to Definers Public Affairs, a Washington DC based political consultancy …
2018-11-15: Why I don’t (entirely) agree with Nikitonsky about Medium Yesterday @adders linked to a post (on Medium) in which Nikitonsky blasts the idea that Medium is a …
2018-11-14: If you read French and like short stories, Flora Cistoldi has some good ones on Medium. The most …
2018-11-14: You know [an edit button] will be [abused]: trolls will change tweets to alter their meaning, not …
2018-11-13: When I removed myself from Twitter a couple of months ago, I bookmarked Seth Abramson’s feed and I …
2018-11-13: Illuminating interview with Tana French by Lily Meyer about French’s new novel The Witch Elm. …
2018-11-13: Democrats’ 2018 performance would superficially look more impressive if they somehow managed to go …
2018-11-13: Boss Fight Books were told by their printer that Grabbing Pussy and Super Mario Bros. 3 were the …
2018-11-11: I’m trying out a new tagline for my novella, Dear Old Stockholm: Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy …
2018-11-10: I just posted what will be my last piece of fiction for several months on Medium: a short story …
2018-11-10: Roger Ebert: Wikipedia editor, from Guernica Magazine
2018-11-08: Here’s a book that’s in stock at Amazon and had a very effective launch campaign … just not at the …
2018-11-08: Leucocyte, issued shortly after Esbjörn Svensson’s sudden and early death in 2008, is still not my …
2018-11-08: Trump believes he can get away with flagrant obstruction of justice because the Republicans in the …
2018-11-08: cyclists have repeatedly proven to be faster through cities than any other form of transport says …
2018-11-07: The Republicans holding the Senate, while expected, is disappointing because Trump can expect to …
2018-11-06: I’m shocked to hear that Roy Hargrove is dead at 49 🎶
2018-11-06: I wouldn’t say that “romantic suspense novels” are usually my kind of thing but this author, Selena …
2018-11-06: It was completely obvious … what [the backstop agreement] meant: in order to avoid both a hard …
2018-11-03: I’ve now posted the sixth and final part of Dear Old Stockholm. When Lucie finishes her …
2018-11-01: I didn’t know that “Hermione 2020” is a thing. But I understand why it infuriates Kaitlyn Tiffany. I …
2018-11-01: Barely two months ago, I had no idea who Peter Casey was; now he’s dominating the Irish Times …
2018-10-31: I’m looking at pictures of the new iPad Pro with its shrunken bezels and asking myself what on …
2018-10-31: A prosecutor (probably special counsel Robert Mueller) has subpoenaed somebody (“no ordinary …
2018-10-30: I’m the kind of person whose thoughts come in words, not in images. I often say I don’t have much in …
2018-10-30: Actually, I may be wrong about the MacBook Air having a 2732 × 1536 resolution. That’s what Slate is …
2018-10-30: I’m disappointed that, at a resolution of 2732 × 1536, the new MacBook Air has a screen ratio of …
2018-10-28: Some apparent disagreement about the title of John Boyne’s forthcoming book. Writing.ie calls it My …
2018-10-28: The supposed plotter-pantser distinction is a false dichotomy, I argue in a piece I’ve just reposted …
2018-10-27: I’ve posted the penultimate (fifth) part of my crime fiction novella, Dear Old Stockholm, on Medium. …
2018-10-26: Classical music isn’t dying, but our ways of experiencing it are becoming ossified. So true 🎶 🎹
2018-10-26: I was trying to explain aphantasia to a friend. When I said “most people are able to form mental …
2018-10-23: If we need to fight the scourge of fake news, we need systems of record — Google, Facebook, and …
2018-10-23: As I’ve said many times since the backstop was agreed, not the customs union but a customs union …
2018-10-22: When has Sonny Rollins ever not been at the height of his powers?
2018-10-22: I’m having a great Monday morning, so far. A bios update seems to have made it impossible for …
2018-10-21: I’m now using NetNewsWire on Mac and Reeder 3 on iPad. They don’t sync, of course, but I’ve long …
2018-10-21: By me on Medium: “What’s happened to my “Short Fiction on Medium newsletter?”. TL;DR I’m switching …
2018-10-20: It looks as if the 1970s are shortly due to return. And oddly I’ve kind of missed them. They feel …
2018-10-19: Aaron Parks has just released new album Little Big, by a quartet with Greg Tuohey on guitar. Just …
2018-10-19: Fallon & Byrne seem to be determined to force me to view their site in landscape orientation. …
2018-10-19: Slate recently stopped producing original videos This is news, buried in parentheses in a story …
2018-10-18: If you’ve set your preferences in Apple Books (or its predecessor iBooks) to display ragged right …
2018-10-16: Charles Arthur on Morgan Knutson on Google+ his experience in small non-profits where he was the …
2018-10-15: Excellent interview with Ronan Guilfoyle by Cormac Larkin in the Irish Times 🎶 the audience will …
2018-10-14: I’ve just posted the fourth part of my six-part novella, Dear Old Stockholm, on Medium. The narrator …
2018-10-14: Twitter claims that t.co, its URL-shortening system, doesn’t retain any user data. Excellent news if …
2018-10-14: More about aphantasia and ADHD: “Aphantasia’s Effect on Executive Function” by me on Medium.
2018-10-11: I don’t really appreciate they way, when you’re accessing a computer remotely, …
2018-10-10: My most-read posts on Medium seem to get most of their views via Google and relatively few from …
2018-10-10: Why isn’t autocorrect smart enough to know when I don’t want a letter i on its own to be …
2018-10-10: It’s heartbreaking when young children are dependent on a parent who can’t stand them. …
2018-10-10: Graham Norton: “oddly, in a world that seems to be going to hell in a handcart, Ireland is …
2018-10-10: I bought a new iPad (non pro) on Saturday for €459 and was quite pleased with that. But restoring it …
2018-10-09: The shutting down of Google+ for consumers fills me with … um, relief. I no longer need to think …
2018-10-08: Julie Parsons’s Irish Times column, “In Praise of Older Books” looks again at A S Byatt’s 1990 …
2018-10-08: Donald Clarke in The Irish Times: “As we speak, some drunk undergraduate is boring some poor, poor …
2018-10-07: That’s weird. I’ve just been using an Apple wireless keyboard to type into Notes on the iPad (9.7 …
2018-10-06: I like most things about Safari; it’s certainly my favourite browser. But I hate when it …
2018-10-05: Just unchecked “Show recent items in the Dock” in System Preferences. That’s more …
2018-10-05: Just unchecked “Show recent items in the Dock” in System Preferences. That’s more …
2018-10-04: Piano solo by Jean @Kapsa 🎹 🎶 👍
2018-10-03: Michael Avenatti has protected his tweets, it seems. This doesn’t look good.
2018-10-03: More from me about how aphantasia can seem to mimic ADHD; this time as a comment on a Medium story, …
2018-10-02: Comparing my ancient (in computer years) MacBook Air with the HP Envy x360 that I use for work, …
2018-09-30: From Alphasmart Neo to Freewrite Traveler via the Palm Foleo Nate Hoffelder sees the forthcoming Freewrite Traveler as the spiritual successor to the Alphasmart …
2018-09-30: A perjurer for the Supreme Court The legacy status does not necessarily mean that Kavanaugh would …
2018-09-30: It seems that Jay Rayner, best known as a food critic, also plays jazz piano (in this instance with …
2018-09-30: If Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed, it will at least be entertaining. I look forward to all the motions …
2018-09-29: I don’t give a fuck about the law. I want my fucking money. (Donald Trump) Chris Christie must have …
2018-09-29: I’ve just posted the third part (of six) of my crime fiction novella Dear Old Stockholm on Medium. …
2018-09-29: Actually, maybe it’s not that Melville House resists being mixed. I seem to have trouble …
2018-09-29: Here are some sensible thoughts from an editor (Michael Barron) on second-person narrative in …
2018-09-28: “Lindsey Graham to Democrats: ‘You’d better watch out for your nominees’”. Just imagine, if …
2018-09-26: Fintan O”Toole in the Irish Times about Ian Buruma’s sacking as editor of the New York Review …
2018-09-24: I’ve installed Mojave. There wasn’t enough free space left on the 128GB SSD (5-year-old MacBook Air) …
2018-09-23: Thanks to @jemostrom’s micropost about the Michael Lewis audiobook, I’ve signed up for …
2018-09-23: MS Outlook makes me so bloody angry. At least it actually starts up on my new computer (unlike on …
2018-09-22: I keep getting taken by surprise when I copy a link from a web page and paste it into Apple Notes. …
2018-09-22: I’ve only ever posted 2 videos on YouTube. This is by far the more popular: Martial Solal (piano) …
2018-09-22: Brad Mehldau has recorded several different performances of Nick Drake’s “River …
2018-09-22: An uncharacteristically perceptive piece by Diarmaid Ferriter about the changes to the Irish …
2018-09-21: I’ve been trying to create a new password for an Irish government website. It keeps telling me …
2018-09-21: Nikita Prokopov is disenchanted with software bloat. AMP is >a technology solution to a problem …
2018-09-20: I’ve just posted the second part of my six-part novella Dear Old Stockholm on Medium. Third …
2018-09-20: Anna Burns’s Milkman and Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room are, for my money, the two most …
2018-09-19: Ian Buruma no longer edits or works for the New York Review of Books, following his publication of …
2018-09-18: This is weird. 3 of the candidates to become President of Ireland were panellists on Dragon’s Den, a …
2018-09-18: Times Newer Roman will only work for assignments you have to submit by hand or in a PDF. If you’re …
2018-09-18: Twitter is now letting users have a straightbackward reverse chronological timeline, with no ICYMI …
2018-09-18: I couldn’t work out why the micro SD card in my phone (a no-longer-supported Microsoft Lumia 535) …
2018-09-18: Poor John Dowd had a nightmare client. He seems to have approached him as he would a senior, …
2018-09-18: Effective (and probably actionable) advice here about how to use the lessons of the Paul Feig film A …
2018-09-18: On the other hand, I definitely prefer the studio version of Wasilewski’s own “Three …
2018-09-17: I just bought the new Marcin Wasilewski Trio Live album off iTunes. I have to say I’m enjoying the …
2018-09-17: It’s just hit me that I have nothing to upgrade to iOS 12. I sold my iPad Air 2 and 5th gen iPod …
2018-09-17: Waterstones buys Foyles. I remember that utterly daft Foyles double-queuing payment system. I didn’t …
2018-09-16: I haven’t got a subscription to Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer or similar, so I can’t share playlists. …
2018-09-16: What’s up with Apple’s iBooks store? A few days ago, it wouldn’t load at all. Now the first page …
2018-09-15: I just posted the first part of my novella, Dear Old Stockholm on Medium. I’ll be posting the …
2018-09-15: Aphantasia and ADHD (inattentive subtype) I just posted the following to /r/ADHD, then I thought it might also be a suitable candidate for my …
2018-09-15: The Guardian has an excerpt from Robert Galbraith’s new Cormoran Strike novel, Lethal White. I’ve …
2018-09-15: “Yes, blogs are dead in 2018 … the activity formerly known as blogging is now carried out on social …
2018-09-14: There’s a lot I hate about social media but few things more than its hijacking of the word “social”, …
2018-09-14: God, I hate Windows! I can’t find any way to dismiss this popup ad, which is not merely …
2018-09-13: I’m just writing up a report using a template that tries to force me to think systematically, …
2018-09-13: Rachid Taha has died, sadly. He was 59. 🎶
2018-09-12: Can’t wait to hear this, though I’d have loved it to include some earlier material, such …
2018-09-11: It seems that people are still determined to force close apps on their iPhones despite the phasing …
2018-09-10: Actually, now I think about it, it was 2006 when I first heard Wasilewski trio live, at the Pizza …
2018-09-10: Seems there’s finally going to be a live album from the Marcin Wasilewski Trio, something I’ve been …
2018-09-10: Having used the HP Envy x360 for a few more days, I have to say I still love the MacBook Air, …
2018-09-09: My various Medium posts on the subject of aphantasia have developed into an accidental series. …
2018-09-08: … and still my heart has wings …
2018-09-08: Julie Parsons’s weekly series in The Irish Times, “In praise of older books”, continues with the …
2018-09-07: Waterstones is buying Foyles, according to Nate Hoffelder in The Digital Reader. Having been a …
2018-09-07: I love my nearly-5-years-old MacBook Air, but in the last few days I’ve been using a HP Envy …
2018-09-07: This is my farewell to Twitter
2018-09-06: The first short story I wrote, “Inheritance”, which I first posted on a WordPress blog (now defunct) …
2018-09-06: Caoilinn Hughes, whose first novel, Orchid & the Wasp has been causing a stir, won first and …
2018-09-05: I haven’t actually read this yet, so this is not a recommendation, but David Meyer has made the PDF …
2018-09-05: Ah, I see. I Googled “discretionary comma” and it isn’t what I thought, based on the context in …
2018-09-05: Just followed a link in a micropost by @vasta to “the discretionary comma” (I think it means using …
2018-09-05: I’ve just started to reread Tana French’s first novel, In the Woods, so as to write about it and her …
2018-09-05: Google wants to kill the uniform resource locator, according to Wired. The headline’s misleading, …
2018-09-04: Jacqueline Pearce, who played Servalan in Blakes 7 among many other roles (including a memorable …
2018-09-03: M G Siegler on Tony Gilroy’s first and best film as director, Michael Clayton.
2018-09-02: Looks like I spoke too soon. The Followers and Followeds were reinstated, it just took a bit longer …
2018-09-02: My latest post about aphantasia on Medium: “Aphantasia can look a bit like ADHD”
2018-09-02: I just reactivated my Twitter briefly to look for a link I’d tweeted and then lost. While my tweets, …
2018-09-01: I just submitted a new short story, “Voluntary assumption of risk” for the Benedict Kiely Short …
2018-09-01: I’ve just posted the final part (Appendix 3) of my novel-length fiction, A Falling Body. The story …
2018-08-31: I’ve been reading Seth Abramson’s tweets (and threads, what threads!) for well over a year, and even …
2018-08-31: Constance Grady thinks that the Cormoran Strike books are like Harry Potter for grown-ups. I never …
2018-08-31: Mentioned before that screen on my Windows notebook doesn’t work, so I’ve been operating it remotely …
2018-08-31: Now that I’ve deactivated my Twitter account, I’ve bookmarked Seth Abramson. Otherwise most of what …
2018-08-30: Though, now that I think about it, @sharding, the problems have all been with html email. I …
2018-08-30: Mike Elgan notes that @Leo has deactivated Twitter—and ditched Tumblr at the same time—and asks if …
2018-08-30: Me on Medium: “the main reason to read a book is to find out whether it’s worth rereading”. 📚
2018-08-29: I’m controlling Windows notebook from MacBook Air (because the former no longer has a working …
2018-08-29: Hey, I just discovered something about Micro.blog. My previous micropost ran over 280 chars because …
2018-08-29: This is why I don’t trust Google to find the best search results and why, when I had a Facebook …
2018-08-29: I’ve deactivated my Twitter account, initially for about 14 days to see how I get on without it.
2018-08-29: Here’s my comment on a Medium post by Natalie Slivinski which was my first clue that aphantasia …
2018-08-28: I couldn’t work out why Pinterest was recommending “Dacia logan” to me, till it …
2018-08-28: “No-deal Brexit ‘wouldn’t be the end of the world’, says Theresa May”. No, just the end of the UK.
2018-08-28: It’s dawned on me that some of the difficulties I’ve ascribed to aphantasia (planning, goals. focus …
2018-08-24: The stories I recommend in this week’s Short fiction on Medium newsletter are by Edward …
2018-08-20: Glad to see that Mix.com at last has an app for iPad — just a few weeks after I got rid of my iPad. …
2018-08-19: “What is evolution but a process by which glitches in genetic code come to be revealed as prized …
2018-08-18: “Putting your groan up foot where your chyld foot run”. The older book praised by Julie Parsons this …
2018-08-18: “To start with the obvious, not everybody who fantasizes about killing another road user would …
2018-08-17: +1 @davextreme People who put “Now a major motion picture!” stickers on book jackets go to The Bad …
2018-08-14: I’ve been asking how people without aphantasia experience body image & gender identity, and …
2018-08-13: My most-read post on Medium, “Who Really Killed The General’s Daughter?” has applause from only 3 …
2018-08-13: “First, I should probably point out I have a Chrome extension that changes ‘adults under 40’ to …
2018-08-13: Erin Bartnett on Electric Lit ridicules the notion of a shortcut to reading. “You only have 40 …
2018-08-13: For thriller author Simon Lelic, “the writing is the planning.” This is important and often …
2018-08-13: As usual, I’ve updated the alphabetical list, Recommended short fiction on Medium—3, to include this …
2018-08-12: This week’s recommendations in my Short fiction on Medium newsletter are of stories by Georgia …
2018-08-12: Odd that so few ex-staffers from the Trump WH have written gossipy books. Admittedly in some cases …
2018-08-12: New from me on Medium, “Gender identity—and aphantasia?” the latest in what’s becoming a series of …
2018-08-11: The second part of Chapter 8 (the final chapter) of A Falling Body is up on Medium. Just 2 more …
2018-08-09: Neil Jordan’s trending on Twitter but I’ve seen no mention of The Good Thief (2002) with …
2018-08-08: I don’t have goals, aims, plans, a strategy or “focus”. It strikes me that it would be very easy to …
2018-08-06: I’ve also updated the alphabetical list on Medium to include this week’s recommended stories.
2018-08-06: In this week’s short fiction on Medium newsletter, I recommend stories by Gosia Rokicka, Raleigh …
2018-08-06: I finished Conversations with Friends last night and already I miss the characters—very unusual for …
2018-08-05: “I felt like Stalin, planning murder all day and watching Swan Lake in the evening.” Luke Jennings, …
2018-08-04: How, at 17–18, Ottessa Moshfegh got an eminent and revered (and much older) writer to teach her some …
2018-08-04: I’ve just posted the first part of Chapter 8 (final chapter) of my “novel-length fiction”, A Falling …
2018-08-03: Thanks for the welcome, @cheri, @jrladd and @bradbarrish. I’m very glad to be here.
2018-08-03: Reading Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends at the moment. It’s pretty compelling, …
2018-08-03: I’ve just signed up for Micro.blog, aiming to transition gradually and gently from Twitter. …