James Alvarez's stream

December 22, '24 - 10:19 AM

7407879123 — Sun, 22 Dec 2024 10:19:18 +0000

Lily today: come on papa, join our chaos

November 16, '24 - 11:49 AM

7407879123 — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 11:49:00 +0000

I take Lily here every now and then, and she's twice met and 'played chess' with another toddler!

November 16, '24 - 11:47 AM

7407879123 — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 11:47:53 +0000

In a coffee shop (no13 on London rd), having banger after banger 90s shoegaze, we've had ride, mbv, cocteau twins and pumpkins. This coffee shop also does incredible batch brew.

September 15, '24 - 7:10 PM

7407879123 — Sun, 15 Sep 2024 19:10:02 +0000

Made me chuckle...

September 15, '24 - 6:35 PM

7407879123 — Sun, 15 Sep 2024 18:35:26 +0000

My daughters favourite story for the past two weeks has been about Bop and Biff two boxers who train for a fight, knock eachother out and then become friends and have a big feast, no idea why this resonates so much with her 😂

September 10, '24 - 7:59 AM

7407879123 — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 07:59:40 +0000

There are only five emoticon reactions in Outlook and none of them are suitable for the most common thing which is to say a quick thank you. A thumbs up feels very informal! And I can’t really think of when I would use a heart in a work situation and not actually also send an email.

September 9, '24 - 8:58 AM

7407879123 — Mon, 09 Sep 2024 08:58:56 +0000

Ended up in Starbucks this morning why is my Americano so bubbly 😂

September 4, '24 - 2:27 PM

7407879123 — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 14:27:04 +0000

No responses from my Banjo app testers yet. No response is not good I think 😂

August 30, '24 - 4:20 PM

7407879123 — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 16:20:59 +0000

Banjo app is ready for testing, icon finally designed - now to see if people like it 😱

August 28, '24 - 8:04 AM

7407879123 — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 08:04:29 +0000

There is basically no other use case than humour!

August 28, '24 - 8:03 AM

7407879123 — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 08:03:28 +0000

Been disturbed by Google Reimagine today. Imagine the UX meeting about users... Our users are people who want to um lie and mislead others, more easily?

August 25, '24 - 7:58 PM

7407879123 — Sun, 25 Aug 2024 19:58:48 +0000

Watched God on Trial 2008

August 23, '24 - 9:48 AM

7407879123 — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 09:48:11 +0000

I also learnt the useful concept of schismogenesis, which is kind of like the anthropological equivalent of counterwill. Many cultures seemed to be predicated on something like pathological demand avoidance, consciously against restrictions to freedom or intergroup violence.

August 23, '24 - 9:36 AM

7407879123 — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 09:36:47 +0000

Interesting point at the end about how chiefs rose to power potentially via charity. By caring for the captured and lost, who grow into a force.

August 23, '24 - 9:35 AM

7407879123 — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 09:35:20 +0000

I basically feel unqualified to have an opinion, it was very dense on facts about different civilizations in a way that I found difficult to assimilate, and not coming to it with a deep knowledge of anthropology or archaeology, the revolutionariness of the ideas was over my head. Basic takehomes where a) the hobbes/rousseau conceptions of pre-agricultural humans are myths, and that humans held a variety of social structures, which implies creativity and freedom. b) our modern unequal and heirarchical society is not an inevitability from agriculture/technology/ scale.

August 23, '24 - 9:28 AM

7407879123 — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 09:28:29 +0000

Finished The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow

August 23, '24 - 7:10 AM

7407879123 — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 07:10:30 +0000

Week of staycation begins tomorrow. Planning visiting friends, playing music, reading. Need more music in my life! I'm being tempted by the idea of busking to see what its like, and also setting myself up as a music teacher for banjo/mandolin.

August 22, '24 - 7:51 AM

7407879123 — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 07:51:40 +0000

Treated myself to the Kenyan Peaberry from Pact as a staycation present and it's 😋, exactly the flavour profile I love. Ordered myself some distilled water to try and make my self the ultimate V60.

August 21, '24 - 9:09 AM

7407879123 — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 09:09:29 +0000

Learnt a new tune: https://thesession.org/tunes/825

August 14, '24 - 8:22 AM

7407879123 — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 08:22:39 +0000

One of the reasons I don’t trust behavioral psychology is the fact that I burnt my toungue multiple times a week for years on coffee and tea until I actually thought about it and decided to try not to do that.

August 14, '24 - 7:18 AM

7407879123 — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 07:18:35 +0000

I liked how the psychiatrist Stutz expanded the idea of the inevitability of suffering into three categories: pain, uncertainty, and work. It would seem that work would be one of the easiest to accept , but it took me ages.😅

August 14, '24 - 6:20 AM

7407879123 — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 06:20:34 +0000

We’ve been trying to find a slug which has been living in our kitchen. Last week we found it hiding and I took it outside and threw it over a fence. This morning it appears to have come back? There’s no food for it inside unless it’s eating cat food?

August 14, '24 - 6:19 AM

7407879123 — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 06:19:02 +0000

Watched the film Stutz

August 9, '24 - 7:35 PM

7407879123 — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 19:35:20 +0000

Finished reading The Screwtape Letters by C.S Lewis

August 8, '24 - 8:27 PM

7407879123 — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 20:27:01 +0000

It's unique and artistic but I just found some of the premise vulgar, and somewhat shocking in a way I possibly wouldn't have cared about years ago, but I think this stopped me from loving it. A lot of art/media in the 90s was about this rebellious, pushing boundaries, edginess which seemed on one hand to be about this freedom to be real about the dark side of humanity but often in a way where you are kind of manipulated somehow into joining in as a watcher of the film - which seems out definitely out of fashion now, for good reason? I think Bukowski was like one of the godfathers of this. I'm a bit too squeamish these days...

August 8, '24 - 7:21 AM

7407879123 — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 07:21:04 +0000

Finished Breaking the Waves 1996:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_the_Waves

It was engrossing, and technically great but personally it felt distastefully sadistic at times, perhaps a product of it's time.

August 7, '24 - 3:39 PM

7407879123 — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 15:39:44 +0000

On annual leave until September 🥳 apart from 2 days. Outlook app uninstalled from phone.

August 7, '24 - 2:40 PM

7407879123 — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 14:40:21 +0000

Lily picked me a new book from the library - One flew over the cuckoo's next - what a choice!

August 6, '24 - 7:22 PM

7407879123 — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 19:22:19 +0000

Finished Code Red by Chris Ryan. Not the typical book I read, my daughter (3) picked it out at the library for me. It was actually enjoyable to read something less weighty than what I normally pick!

August 4, '24 - 6:45 PM

7407879123 — Sun, 04 Aug 2024 18:45:32 +0000

R.Crumb only listened to old music: "When I listen to old music, it's one of the few times.when I actually have a kind of a love for humanity. You hear the best part of the soul of the common people, you know. It's their way of expressing their connection to eternity or whatever you want to call it. Modern music doesn't have that. It's a calamitous loss that people can't express themselves that way anymore."

August 3, '24 - 7:34 AM

7407879123 — Sat, 03 Aug 2024 07:34:34 +0000

Summer in England is apparently like this 50% of the time now

August 2, '24 - 8:10 PM

7407879123 — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 20:10:18 +0000

Just watched Crumb (1994):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crumb_(film)

August 1, '24 - 5:41 PM

7407879123 — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 17:41:19 +0000

Now syndicating my stream to Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@jamesalvarez

July 31, '24 - 5:45 PM

7407879123 — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 17:45:40 +0000

Henry in the longish grass

July 31, '24 - 7:10 AM

7407879123 — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 07:10:15 +0000

Honestly I’ve often wondered why butterflies are so unwieldy! Turns out it’s maybe for generating static electricity:

https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2024/july/butterflies-static-electricity.html

July 30, '24 - 10:01 AM

7407879123 — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 10:01:53 +0000

The worst thing about the office is not being able to take my shoes and socks off when it’s this hot 🥵

July 29, '24 - 7:53 PM

7407879123 — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 19:53:33 +0000

Nearly got this cross posting to twitter…

July 29, '24 - 9:30 AM

7407879123 — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 09:30:26 +0000

Currently questioning my choice of framework for an up and coming archival project in Digital Humanities in light of reading: This Page is Designed to Last.

Software sustainability is such a big issue in University settings as money comes in grants, subsequently runs out, and leaves ancient legacy software headaches.

I could totally build this up coming app to render static HTML, thus rendering it solid for years to come, but it currently I could see it adding a lot of friction to updating the site for non technical users.

July 29, '24 - 8:59 AM

7407879123 — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 08:59:12 +0000

Whenever I see private API keys in a private git repo, I tell them of a time when someone forked the repo to work on it but made the fork public and got our email account locked down. And I will also now send them this:

https://trufflesecurity.com/blog/anyone-can-access-deleted-and-private-repo-data-github

More generally: Never use private forks.

July 29, '24 - 8:16 AM

7407879123 — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 08:16:21 +0000

Got my new stream rendering on my PHP site 😍 - British dates and times of course. Design needs some tweaking but I need to get on with my work now...

July 29, '24 - 8:07 AM

7407879123 — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 08:07:59 +0000

Testing a picture… This is my most recent setup for egg fried rice.

July 29, '24 - 7:49 AM

7407879123 — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 07:49:28 +0000

Sometimes you come across someone's website which is just a goldmine of good stuff, curated lists, links, writing and gorgeous to look at - I feel like I could easily spend hours on Joodaloop

July 29, '24 - 7:47 AM

7407879123 — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 07:47:02 +0000

I created this stream today - I have been wanting to add microblogging to my site, and serendipitously came across https://streams.place/ which does everything I want, looks beautiful and works by sending messages to Telegram!