Weeknotes 309

Monday, Wednesday, Friday at the gym. Isn’t it amazing what humans can achieve when we put our minds to it.

I finished Piranesi. It’s basically perfect. I found the prose so captivating that I didn’t really mind what happened, but the story’s great too. I’m sad it’s over and I’ll definitely want to read it again.

I enjoyed it so much that I looked into buying the audiobook of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Turns out it’s narrated by Neil Gaiman so that’s not going to happen. Apparently there exists an older edition with a much better narrator but it’s not available on Audible? Sigh.

I started Revelation Space (thanks Paul). I’m an hour in and it’s 22 hours long, so I may be some time. I like it so far and it hasn’t infodumped more than I can handle.

I didn’t do anything this week except work and worry about work. Oh, I did pop to the Christmas Japanese market in Dalston yesterday and combined it with lunch & coffee with Marina. The non-edible highlight was this guy going Christmas ham on the shamisen.

Pluribus has gone downhill again. So boring with so much filler. (The persistent repetition of the interminable voicemail greeting really feels like they’re twisting the knife.) Only three episodes left to do something interesting!

I was happy to see that the excellent Ghost of Yōtei deservedly won Console Game of the Year at the Golden Joystick awards. I must admit I’m curious about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 but I don’t know whether I can bring myself to play a turn-based (no) RPG (no) regardless of how great the story & performances are. Probably not…? My loss.

I’ve been working my way through the Waitrose bran sticks. They’re no more expensive than the M&S flavour (£4/kg) cos they’re “Essential Waitrose”, although they come in a 750g box so it feels like you’re saving money by buying in bulk.

They’re pretty good but both the texture and flavour is a bit worse than M&S. A decent but slightly disappointing second best.

In July I started posting weeknotes to Bluesky but nobody’s seeing them there as far as I can tell. Oh well. It’s barely any extra work so I’ll keep playing the long game for now.

My YouTube 2025 Recap says I’m in the top 0.4% of Cracking The Cryptic viewers and I’ve watched 567 of their videos this year. There’s still most of a month left so I reckon I can get to 600 if I put the effort in.