Developing in the Microsoft ecosystem after years with Go, I can't believe how much time is wasted on random things unrelated to what you're currently doing breaking because some magic black box intended to hide a detail from you has broken in magic, black box ways with the detail as to why hidden.

For various reasons I have mostly listening to music streamed to Bluetooth speakers over the past couple of weeks. It's nice to be back to the good shit.

Nature is healing.

Doctor The Who, in which a 1960s rock band stumble around time slightly wasted, getting embroiled in various science fiction mysteries when all they want to do is play a gig and smash up their instruments.

I have been meaning to type "I had a great time at Retrofest 2026" into this thought dissemination box since at least Monday so let the record show that it was, indeed, a fantastic weekend.

"Working from home with limited human contact or use of language is fine, I get up in the morning, head downstairs, turn on the... (stares for a while at kettle, brow furrowing)... boilyboi, make a cup of tea..."

Fired up my old Windows 10 laptop to be greeted by an Out Of Box Experience, two separate popups about the same thing with only a "Remind Me Later" and then a background WIndows process immediately taking 100% of the CPU so anyway one small bit of poking Secure Boot later I have a Linux laptop now.

In a just world ISO 3000 would be the standard for things that are ice cold.

Brain: "what's the word for an unskippable cutscene that comes on a VHS tape or DVD?"

Realising with despair that I can recall the members of 1471 more readily than any genuine pop group of the era.

Just seen a horrible collision of 2020s documentation culture with post-2025 hiring culture: "in order to submit your job application, please join our Discord"

I've reached the point in the pop history where I have to write about the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and if this was a thing anybody cared about (which they don't) and I had not already been cancelled for my opinions on The Doors (which I haven't) I would sure be in trouble when that gets published.

Putting forward the view that the collapse in Western society is down to us having gone too long without a good solid reggae summer.

Unexpected bad consequence of being part of some sort of retro scene: people mentioning the age of something that was made in 1982.

Published 1990-1991 into the pop history page and had a realisation: if the next section is 1992-1993 that will be the last one covering a point I was not "present" for as an active consumer of music purchasing my own records.

2017: "I will listen to the entire history of the UK charts and write about it, allowing me to put forward a more Britpop, rock and indie-centric viewpoint than the typical more EDM-focused retrospectives." ... 2026: "YOU ALL OWE RHYTHM KING THE BIGGEST DEBT AND YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW IT"

Microslop have introduced yet another one of those bizarre features I can't imagine anyone ever having asked for, in that if you leave a large Excel spreadsheet open long enough it navigates itself to a completely different part of the spreadsheet while proclaiming, "pick up where you left off!"

Entering that era of the charts which can be loosely described as, "Andrew Lloyd Webber and the KLF have a shitposting competition".

When you get to Friday and it's like, "fuck it, I could really greeble a cube right now".

Looking at Bluesky like, "OK guys, what did you vibe code?"

Ah yes, the man who can be in the middle of a busy pub conversation and pause to go, "oh, the version with the 'heavenly wine and roses' bridge".

I need a proper failure of a video, a good old-fashioned "fewer viewers are choosing to watch this" situation, because otherwise I'm getting dangerously close to believing I might be in some way qualified to give advice on building a very small YouTube channel.

The whole thing's a scam. We've never saved any daylight at all. Every year it's the same thing, you get round to winter and find we've almost completely run out again.

How is your day and does it involve trying to get CD-ROM and UK keyboard layout support working in DOS on a 1990s laptop?

That problem where your off-clock retro programming interferes with your on-clock actual day job and you're sitting there looking at some flags thinking, "yeah, so I can pack those into a single char and mask out the bits I need and..." No Matt! This is not how it works any more!

If the limit of your allyship is your trans friends asking, "please don't watch that, it directly funds legal action to erase people from me from society" then you ought to be wondering if that concept means any more to you than just another profile badge.

Opened YouTube Studio and this is new (to me, at least). You can now restrict who can comment, including optionally how long they have to be subscribed (1 hour/1 day/1 week). Not sure I'd want to enable it but YouTube are definitely playing with the comment settings of late.

Look, I have a corner of a Discord! Other, better retro software videosmiths have their own corners of said Discord which do not have channels called things like "#aaaaaaaaa" and "#triangular-objects". I suggest joining so you can chat to them instead. discord.com/invite/5GcKU...

I thought I'd clear the air after a couple of tycoon game videos that were too successful for me by covering retro programming again, because that should be niche right, and TASK FAILED.

I miss the UK having adverts for basic concepts, like "go to work on an egg" or "milk: continues to exist".