Elsewhere

My 11 year old daughter just recommended I switch to Opera.

Hey USA, _you_ are actually the bad guys.

"It’s worth saying it out loud as an affirmation: making things is not about the destination, but about the journey. The journey is what you put into creation: the thought, the mistakes, the sweat, the time, the lived experiences, the refinement in technique. What you get back is knowledge. The output is an artifact of that knowledge. When you get that artifact without the journey, you make nothing, you learn nothing."

Can I get a "Hells Yeah"!

JSM articulates his thoughts on AI...

"As someone who has spent their entire career and most of their life participating and creating online, this sucks. It feels like someone just harvested lumber from a forest I helped grow, and now wants to sell me the furniture they made with it."

https://jasonsantamaria.com/blog/large-language-muddle

It saddens me when a web publication doesn't have an RSS feed. It's not hard. You just lazy.

After a couple of months poking at code and relearning things I hadn’t touched in years, I’ve just relaunched https://dontcom.com.

It’s now running on 11ty (which is a heckin’ great static site generator). There’s still a bunch left to do, but it’s live—go check it out and let me know what you think!

No promises on how often I’ll post, but I’ll do my best.

For the past 10 years I've been curating a covers playlist over on Spotify. I hecking love a good cover! https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7kkrdeuFrJaeVcgC4AVIIM?si=bf19cec117d641ce

This particular cover has been doing the rounds on video sharing platforms: Erin Morton from CCM Musical Theatre performs an absolute banger cover of Radiohead's Creep.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROJZntCBZCc

I, for one, have not been waiting _at all_ for this to happen.

https://forward.com/culture/music/716509/bob-dylan-streisand-duet-album-the-secret-of-life/

After 7 solid days of importing I've finally moved all my photos from Google Photos to a self hosted Immich instance (running on a just-capable Synology NAS).

I love Immich so much. It's always a delight to discover such excellent free, open source software. If you haven't used it then I can't recommend it enough. If you're going to migrate from Google Photos then I recommend the immich-go command line tool to for the job.

https://immich.app/
https://github.com/simulot/immich-go

Nope. The DJ followed it up with a banging Baby Shark remix 😭

Yeah Yeah Yeahs — 'Maps' at the primary school disco... Am I getting old, or are kids cooler these days?

Bob Dylan said it best:
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good?
Will it buy you forgiveness?
Do you think that it could?
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul
And I hope that you die
And your death will come soon
I'll follow your casket
On a pale afternoon
I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand over your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead

This is incredible! Excited to hear more as the dig progresses. https://www.teaonews.co.nz/2025/03/03/ocean-waka-most-important-discovery-in-new-zealand-archaeology/

Over the weekend I watched a little documentary about Zambia's 70s Psych-rock scene (https://youtu.be/czrPRJehmdA) and discovered a few interesting bands: WITCH and Amanaz (to name just two). If you're looking for something a little different to rock out to you should give it a crack.

#music #africa #rocknroll #psychadelia

Way back, a friend showed me this music video for Chelsea Jade's 'Life of the Party' (https://youtu.be/ySxyBXCi2ww) — which immediately captivated me. And just this morning I got an email that she'll be playing in Auckland in March.

One guess who's going!

Pretty pleased that I've now moved all my IG posts over onto Pixelfed. Was a fun trip down memory lane viewing my archive https://pixelfed.nz/darren

I'm keen to know what y'all are doing to help your general wellbeing...

Some things I'm doing to help my ongoing mental-malaise:
- Daily journal/notes (thanks to Obsidian and this https://dannb.org/blog/2022/obsidian-daily-note-template/)
- Reading more fiction. I used to listen to audio books, but I'm now enjoying the actual act of using my eyes and mind to read for myself
- Exercise (this is an ongoing struggle, but getting there)
- No more oligarch-owned social media (hey, check out my pixelfed https://pixelfed.nz/darren)
- Getting out of the house more in the week with the entire family

IKR!?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/16/i-knew-one-day-id-have-to-watch-powerful-men-burn-the-world-down-i-just-didnt-expect-them-to-be-such-losers

my mental health

I don't usually complain online. But, fuck, each new year is worse than the one before. Not even music brings me joy.