I’m have a pretty keen interest in tech but I am worried I am getting old because I don’t even know what Rust is and can’t, honestly, really be bothered to find out…

Watched Saving Private Ryan (1998) by an author from letterboxd.com
As U.S. troops storm the beaches of Normandy, three brothers lie dead on the battlefield, with a fourth trapped behind enemy lines. Ranger captain John Miller and seven men are tasked with penetrating German-held territory and bringing the boy home.

After seeing this, Teddy Duchamp’s fiercely proud claim that his father stormed the beach at Normandy lands very differently.

And, despite your average American displaying almost religious zeal for them, and annual public displays of “remembrance” here in the UK, I still don’t think we respect our veterans enough.

★★★★

My review

Posted on
by

My son is 13 and, like me, he has . One of the ways this manifests is extreme reluctance to engage with “new” things outside his current hyper focus. Fortunately, my brother is exactly the same, so I have some experience of working around it (though for decades we didn’t understand what we were working around). However, it can still be really hard when I want either of them to try something I know they’ll love. I have to time the recommendation perfectly, or perform some sort of inception, otherwise they bounce off the idea like a fly hitting a window.

Mostly this has been around playing video games. Despite the Venn diagram of our three VG interests almost being a circle, the chances of us aligning to enjoy a game together (for more than a single session) are virtually zero.

Recently, though, my struggle with my son has been with movies. For example, with Rob’s death, I desperately want to recommend he watch Stand By Me. It’s the perfect coming-of-age story for boys coming-of-age. I don’t even want to watch it with him. I just want him to see it and feel it in his own way and time. But I’ll have to leave him to find his own way to it, which, I think, is as it should be.

Rest in peace, Rob Reiner, and thank you.

According to my , I’m a “Butterfly”, I “frequently replied to other people’s posts, pollinating Mastodon with new discussions”. Well, if that’s the case, I hope I did more good than harm.

A yellow version of the Mastodon mascot, with purple butterfly wings.
I do not strongly identify with this image

I’ve been watching Pluribus on Apple TV, which I’ve enjoyed, but the problem is the main character is called Carol and now I have a dreadful Neil Sedaka earworm

Watched Scrooged (1988) by an author from letterboxd.com
Frank Cross is a wildly successful television executive whose cold ambition and curmudgeonly nature has driven away the love of his life. But after firing a staff member on Christmas Eve, Frank is visited by a series of ghosts who give him a chance to re-evaluate his actions and right the wrongs of his past.

The final monologue DOES go on a bit too long but it also bought a little tear to my eye. Further positives: the Ghost of Christmas Present just seems to get funnier the old I get.

★★★★

My review

I’ve worked professionally with data for 20 years. Today I am working with literally the worst data set I have ever come across. It’s published every week by CQC. There are formatting errors or typos in either the filename or the headers every other week. Sometimes the order of the headers or the headers that are included change. It is virtually impossible to automate. For example: https://www.diffchecker.com/3Lhlr6SF/