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I’m not sure if there’s a simple explanation but this year’s influenza virus has been playing havoc with Emma and John’s school. John was home from Tuesday to Thursday because his class was closed as a result of too many kids being out. I attended the annual concert on Saturday and half of Year 6 was absent for the same reason.
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The Apple world was rocked by the news that Alan Dye had resigned from the company (John Gruber had the definitive take at Daring Fireball). Dye had been Apple’s Vice President of Human Interface Design and has been a controversial figure for years. Many, including me, blame him for the slow deterioration in Apple’s UI design, especially on the Mac. It’s got so bad that macOS 26 is the first time since I got a Mac where I haven’t upgraded to the latest version of the operating system and indeed have no plans to do so. I don’t know if things will improve by next October but I have a little more hope than I did a couple of weeks ago.
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I was saddened to discover a few weeks ago that a Cantonese restaurant near work had closed down. That had been where I’d gone when I wanted some char kway teow (Wikipedia), a rice noodle dish that’s easy to get in Sydney but difficult to find in Japan. Technically, I don’t think what they served was char kway teow but it was close enough. Alas, with that avenue closed off, I hunted around and found a restaurant over in Jinbōchō (Google Maps) that, again, served a decent approximation. It was ¥1400 which feels like highway robbery for char kway teow but is probably around what you’d pay in Sydney, too.
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Quote Investigator has an interesting post about the proverb that there are three sides to every story: yours, theirs and the truth.
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I was explaining to sogaiu that I’m bizarrely picky, boring and mortified at being rude. His response was that I had basically described a Japanese person. Maybe I’m in the correct country after all.
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I saw a video on Youtube talking about this year being the 30th anniversary of GoldenEye and had two immediate thoughts. First (as you would expect), oh my God—how has it been 30 years? To put that into starker relife, Dr No came out in 1962 and so GoldenEye’s release is now almost halfway between then and now. This is objectively terrible. Second, I should watch GoldenEye again. Because it has been 30 years and I’m now middle-aged, it took me two sittings to make it through but I made it and am pleased to report that it still holds up well. I remember being very upset that John Gruber and Dan Benjamin gave it such short shrift when they were discussing the Bond films on The Talk Show podcast. With more distance, I can see why it wouldn’t hold the place in their memory that it does in mine. It was the first Bond film I saw in a cinema and I remember being riveted for the entire spectacle.
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Apple Music told me that Alice Sara Ott’s John Field: Complete Noctures was their most-stream classical album of 2025 (Apple Music). I wish I had something more eloquent to say than ‘I liked it’.
