Weeknotes #293

I start off this weeknote on a sombre note. It looks like my beloved meat pies are no longer being stocked by the local grocery. I was buying so many of these that I fear this doesn’t reflect a considered choice by the grocery’s ordering manager but instead means that the products themselves are no longer available (or at least no longer available from the same supplier). I suppose I had a good five-month or so run.

On Saturday, Eri took Emma and John to a nearby planetarium to see a documentary there. (Loyal readers might recall that I did this last year.) While they were off doing that, I took Rowan to the Lego Discovery Centre over in Odaiba. The Discovery Centre isn’t the greatest attraction in Tokyo but I’d rate it above last weekend’s Sanrio Puroland. I was also really impressed by the monorail that we caught from Odaibakaihinkōen to Shimbashi. It was a handful of stops but gives passengers a pretty spectacular view of Tokyo Bay and the Rainbow Bridge.

I kept working on Predoc, notably taking on the kind of bonkers challenge of converting the epic mdoc(7) manpage to Predoc. (mdoc is the modern language for writing manpages.) In theory, this weeknote is being published on Monday or Tuesday (it’s backdated to Tuesday) but in the ‘future’ where I am actually writing it, I can tell you that I succeeded. I think this initial implementation is close to ‘done’ and it’ll be time to announce it more broadly and see if the Internet at large cares at all about it.

Perhaps as a result of spending more time working from home, my weight is almost back up to 70kg.

John Gruber noted the death of movie poster designer, Joe Caroff, with a link to this post from Posteritati and what an incredible collection of posters to have produced. Caroff was responsible for designing the iconic 007 logo but he also produced some of the most famous movie posters of the 20th Century. Worth a scroll for anyone who loves advertising and graphic design.

Speaking of James Bond, when I linked to Patrick Willems’ video essay on Daniel Craig’s Bond films, I neglected to mention my favourite part of the video. Willems references a crazy movie theory from the James Bonding podcast that posits that the Daniel Craig films are not a ‘reboot’ of continuity but in fact ‘wrap around’ the previous series of films. That is, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace are Bond’s first two adventures. Then comes Dr No, From Russia with Love etc. Skyfall then comes after all of this. Obviously this isn’t true but I love a good crazy movie theory and it’s always bugged me how sharply Craig’s Bond jump from the neophyte secret agent in the first two films to the grizzled veteran in the third.

I don’t think I’d previously come across Sigala’s ‘Give Me Your Love’ from 2016 (Apple Music). British singer John Newman is the vocalist and it’s reminiscent of other hits Newman has from this period like ‘Love Me Again’ and ‘Blame’. If, like me, you like those tracks but were unaware of this one, give it a spin.