Week 5: Free music I never asked for
I’ve had a quiet week. I explored some of the streets in the area that I’d never visited before. Most of them turned out to be rather dull cul-de-sacs full of identical little 90s houses that nonetheless all cost way more than I’ll ever be able to afford. I didn’t find anything interesting, really. I ended up in one council estate that’s almost completely fenced off from the surrounding streets: every time you think you can see a way out, it’s barricaded off. I don’t really understand why that’s the case. Maybe it’s a relic of a bygone fad in town planning.
I’ve been practising the theremin and I’m making progress. I can play separate notes now, by using the left hand to adjust the amplitude while moving the right hand.
Google emailed me to tell me that they’re closing down Google Music (the inevitable fate of most Google products) and that I could download the tracks I’d uploaded. Strange, I thought: I don’t recall ever using Google Music. Out of curiosity, I went through the download process and received a zip file containing five MP3 tracks and five corresponding CSV files, which turned out to be metadata for the music.
I didn’t recognise any of the tracks, and the metadata shows that I’ve never played any of them! They were all published in 2012, so maybe they were added to my account as part of a promotion. I bought a Nexus 7 tablet around that time, I think.
I finished watching Raised by Wolves. The last episode teased a whole load of interesting things about the planet for the next season, but I feel a bit cheated by having watched a whole season without actually getting to them.
If you’ve watched Vikings, you’ll recognise Travis Fimmel’s character in Raised by Wolves. This time, he’s Ragnarr Loðbrók in space.
We made it to the end of Dark. I really enjoyed the first couple of seasons, when there was only time travel to think about. The third season adds parallel universes to the time travel, and I spent much of it not really knowing who was who or what was going on. It was all tied up in the last episode, but it was a bit of a slog to get there towards the end. I’m relieved it’s over.
Dark also gave me some good German practice. The dialogue is fairly simple and predictable, to the extent that I’d keep annoying L— by anticipating what they were going to say, word-for-word, a couple of seconds before.
I really need to tidy up my office space before I’m discovered dead under a pile of patch cables and resistors. Maybe I’ll get around to it this week.