I’m absolutely going to feel that tomorrow. Spent an hour after work shovelling part of that alleyway with a few of the neighbours trying to get it ready to accept cars coming in and out. Hard work out but also a good community activity. If I had a beer fridge I would have definitely shared while we shovelled some snow. Maybe next time.

Something tells me I’m not getting the car out of the driveway. Oh, Canada.

⚽️ Twelve bloody minutes for Spurs to score. So annoying.

⚽️ Strangely I’m kinda excited to see the kids feature in this game. Except Lindeloff, they’re all PL debutants :).

Taking the kids to the YMCA in a new area has also meant that I get to discover different neighbourhoods and different stores. The Black Canary espresso bar and my new favourite used bookstore The Great Escape Book Store.

❄️ First major snow shovelling. Backbreaking work for a city slicker like myself. 20cm of snow easily around us.

Cobra Kai final episodes are finally out. Fantastic way to get through this snow period.

Kids first snow day ever. It’s February. Two more weeks to the end of Winter and move into Unlocking.

The 🍊 is showing what a real asshole he is eh? If you shake his hand, check for the number of fingers left…

Somehow I had completely missed the existence of Berger Books, the real successor to Vertigo Comics, easily one of the most diversely awesome imprint in comics history.

The Growler – Ontario’s craft beer guide stopped publication last year. Clearly not enough interest in the publication, which I find strange. It’s a well put together guide, with a very dense layout capturing an enormous amount of information. Still I have an issue and it will likely be enough for a few years at least. Would love it if they released the maps so that they can be updated by others.

I’ve currently been binge watching Yellowstone. Great show so far even though nothing could be farther away from my life as the mountains of Montana and all the horses.

Always a treat to get new Steven Wilson work. Wish I’d known about December Skies during December because that would have been the perfect track for that month.

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
— Warren Buffet by way of Benjamin Graham

Seth’s take on the Canadian reaction to Trump’s embarrassing (and complete lack of understanding of how the world fucking works) is why I’m happy to be in Canada - even in the face of economic warfare from an absolute melon, erm sorry 🍊, they have class, something the 🍊lacks in every aspect.

The Twelve Snake is a limited edition from Christopher Ward, that celebrates the year of the snake in the geekiest way possible, and I’m all for it. Definitely pricey and it I had $1000 to burn I’d be there, but I don’t and so won’t, but love to see this sort of thing executed well.

Listening to the Canadian reaction to the 🍊’s stupid tariffs. I’ve always cheered for the underdog (it’s more fun that way) and make no mistake, Canada is definitely the underdog here. This reminds me a little of that idiot Liz Truss, totally inept and unqualified for the position she found herself in. The 🍊 showing his ineptitude.

ktool (love the name btw) sends newsletters and articles to your Kindle. I like the idea, but I’ve tried this sort of thing in the past (and for free?) and it never stuck.

I have been using an Analogue like system for the last month and I absolutely love it. However Arun’s take of making the cards even smaller is super intriguing and something I might try my hand at myself.

After 626 episodes the Core Intuition podcast is done. Love the commitment and longevity and a reminder that most things have a beginning and an end. Thank you gents, it was fun.

That was a first. Driving in a blizzard. Not fun at all. Had to be done to get some final things out of the other house, only three days left.

One week in the new house and damn if I’m not tired of playing house. Turns out the windows in the new place are terrible and leaky as all fuck. So had to add some film across them and getting some weather sealing tape around the frames. This is Canada, how can your windows be so shit. It’s -20°C outside those windows. Once we get a working washing machine and the shower stops whistling at us when we use it maybe things can settle down a little.

⚽️ This game is so stodgy. Slow. Laboured. Not fun to watch.

🍺 Roman Candle. Great regular IPA to have. Flavour is subtle and has a good buzz after it.

The slow hard journey to getting settled in continues. It’s funny but while the Americas is meant to be the ‘New World’, it really isn’t. The future looks old.

🥶 Polar vortex. -20°C outside and the wind is howling. 3 days in the house with the kids. Definitely not worth going outside for any reason.

🇸🇪 IKEA has always been a mega stressful endeavour. Add a family to it all and honestly I shake my head wondering why I bothered. The only big news for me was a product got ‘upgraded’ from a hard plastic (which I dislike) to a soft plastic (which I love). We settled on a bunch of things that make like more functional but with the kids in tow…just a nightmare. Zane had multiple episodes inside. Ryan had a mega meltdown outside.

⚽️ Literally no consistency in this MU team. A great performance is then followed by an absolute stinker. Always at home. Garbage.

⚽️ These Brighton players are just annoying.

⚽️ This blonde twat has been shit housing the entire game. Get him off already.

⚽️ Why is Brighton the bogeyman of United? I mean honestly. Also brave from Mazraoui.

⚽️ Not sure why we are not harrying Brighton when they have the ball, but we are moving in slow motion.

News of the ceasefire is sweet relief. Biden jacking off a wanted war criminal makes him no better. Netanyahu is human scum. He doesn’t know any better. Awful example of a human being. I had thought better of Biden. Now complete with a legacy that has so far killing 45,000 Palestinians.

So. Tired. Today is the first time I have actually felt my age. There were three young lads moving the house for us. Each no older than 21.

🚚 Moving day tomorrow. It’s so surreal for me at the moment. Unlike most of the houses I have lived in, this one has some serious connections with people in the neighbourhood. I would have hoped to have stayed another 2 years in this house. Alas it was not meant to be.

When we have the ball, it’s a game and when we don’t, it’s a fight.
— Manuel Ugarte

Love this quote and why this player is quickly becoming a cult hero.

⚽ Oh my word. Arsenal getting pushed out at home. Amazing from the boys, 10 against 12. That referee was rubbish (and I don’t normally blame the ref for very much, they are also allowed to have an off day I suppose).

⚽️ C’mon Tamworth?!! Is that even how that is spelt? Love the FA cup because of all this weirdness.

Reading The Message by Ta-Nehesi Coates is a really difficult read. Not for how it’s written but the parallels it draws between black America and what is happening in Palestine at the hands by the Israelis. If a nation has done these things to people in its own borders, why are we surprised that it would support the same actions somewhere else.

Fuck Twitter. I noticed that Micro.blog allows you to cross post to Twitter, so I wanted to try it and see the flow. Somehow, in the brief seconds I was on there I found myself watching some Joe Rogan garbage with Mel Gibson talking about blue dyes curing cancer and just rattling off pharmaceutical names like they were characters in a show. What the fuck is happening on that piece of shit of a platform? Die platform. Die you abomination.

Always a good time when you discover a nice little coffee place within a decent setting.

As I look at these five men, I wonder if the world was favoured with better humans, what they could have done to change the world for the better. They are all complicit in a wide range of evil. For me however the ongoing racist and imperialist action against the Palestinian and Lebanese people, in the name of Israeli brutality and inhumanity, makes anything good they might have achieved practically irrelevant.

🥶❄️ It has been absolutely freezing in Toronto this last week. The coldest since we arrived here 2½ years ago.

Honestly America, you guys bringing the deranged 🍊 back into my newsfeed is just a dick move. Now whenever this old idiot has a brain fart and says stupid shit like he’s taking over Canada, Panama Canal and Greenland, it’s everywhere.

⚽️ I predict a proper drumming. 4-0 to Liverpool. But the boys have started with a little bit of desire at the moment. See how long that lasts.

After a decade of playing around with pizza making, I think I’ve finally dialed it in to my ideal combination. 250g dough and grate the cheese on top (sprinkles more evenly that way).

The BYD Seal. It was only a matter of time before the Chinese car industry started to produce something that ticks a lot of boxes. It might not have a future in North America or Europe (because of tariffs) but in other parts of the world?

Finished reading: Scalped Deluxe Edition Book Two by Jason Aaron 📚 . Tearing through these at the moment. If you like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The Wire, Narcos or anything similar, this is for you.

Finished reading: Scalped Book One by Jason Aaron 📚. Easily one of the best comic book series ever made. Crime noir at its very best, with incredible art. I started reading this when it was being published monthly, really looking forward to finishing this story.

Here are my stats for 2024. Mega year for publishing on my site. No idea what happened in March but clearly I went turbo.

Reading Again

By my own standards I read a lot of books in 2024. Easily my biggest standout year since University I would argue. It was an incredible journey and one I can’t wait to better in 2025 (all this is thanks to the Toronto Public Library system which is magnificent).

Micro.blog played a very helpful role in cataloguing this transition as well. The bookshelf feature while not necessarily a core feature is one that I love to use and engage with.

Personal Finance

The Simple Path to Wealth was easily the most important book I read in 2024. It went straight to the top of my financial books that if you’ve not read you should absolutely do. It was an eye opener and something that I wish I had read 25 years ago. Having said that, some of the necessary financial plumbing to achieve some of the advice in the book wasn’t always easily accessible to those outside North America. Regardless, there is a way now and you should totally make the painful steps to get your finances in order. It took me over 5 months of wrangling and I am still working through a few things, but it is super important that you do this and this book is the easiest way to get you there.

Graphic Novels

Shubeik Lubeik was easily one of my favourite comics this year. It had some stiff competition, as I caught up with Saga which is immense and one of BKV’s best work (which is saying a lot as the man does not write anything that isn’t an 8/10). A Distant Neighbourhood was easily one of the best manga’s I have ever read. For someone like me in my 40s it totally hit the right notes, even though it was set in Japan.

Personal Growth and Hobbies

The Art and Business of Online Writing was incredibly instrumental in how I am looking to continue with my more considered writing on the web. I still believe in what I am doing at Stet, but clearly I am not using the various online platforms to the fullest extent. I read Slow Productivity by Cal Newport. There were some good concepts in there. Seasonality of work and getting a matinee in the work month being two important ideas I will hopefully look to implement. Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman was the book I think I needed the most. 2024 was not a year of major production and creativity. Work played a major role in destroying my mental health for a while, the wars in Gaza and Lebanon destroyed my drive because these side hobbies felt frivolous. This book framed things in a way to help me get over all of that. I did a ton of reading instead. I let ideas percolate in my head. It reminded me that it’s ok to have a seemingly less productive ‘season’ if that season was 8 months or more.

Cookbooks

One of the things that I didn’t catalogue are the plethora of cook books I checked out. Ottolenghi’s books Simple and Plenty More were great, Falastin being my favourite. I also bought Chef Jack’s Dig In and looking forward to trying a bunch of recipes in there. I also thought Joshua Weismann’s An Unapologetic Cookbook was excellent (his second book was less important to me).

⚽️ This Newcastle team is so well drilled on their press. Team can’t really do very much at all. So predictable.

⚽️ That’s more like it Rasmus. Finally doing something. Anything.

⚽️ They are being totally schooled. Everyone is having a shocking time of it.

⚽️ Oh my word. Dogshit. This team is dogshit.

Reading in 2024

9th of April was when it all happened. I walked into the public library to get a sheet of paper printed and left with a library card and 5 books under my arm. This then opened the door wide for me to borrow and read 39 books this year.

I remember a few years ago seeing some others online ‘claiming’ that they had read 40 books or more in a year and I honestly didn’t believe it was possible.

This year I found out how. When the price entry to a good book is free, then it can become a source of incredible joy (and knowledge) and 40 books is really not that large of a mountain to climb.

The beauty of course is that I am not limited to one way of ‘reading’. This year was the first time that I enjoyed a few audiobooks as well. As long as I am in North America, I have access to whatever I want (not always at exactly the time I want, but that’s ok).

Just rewatched Dune. Complete masterpiece. The sound. The costumes. The visual effects. All wrapped in excellent performances and a tight script. Escapism at its finest.

🏈 Watching my very first NFL game. I don’t know the rules or what is going on. Why are some of the players wearing fanny packs? Who are the coaches speaking to through their microphones? Why do the Steelers have one of the worst bland corporate looking logo I have ever seen? What is with the little towels the players have on their side?

🎄 Oh the lies we tell our kids for the sake of preserving the myth behind a man in a red suit. Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas Message from Irish President Michael D. Higgins. I remember years ago listening to Higgins address the world during covid and being super impressed with his thoughtfulness, warmth and poignancy. This message is no less powerful but for very different reasons. The Irish have endured and come out on top. Here’s to the Palestinians and Lebanese achieving even a fraction of this type of success in the future.

Year of Kindness

2024 was a lot of things to me and most people I imagine. One thing I believe is that 2024 was not kind. The genocide in Palestine at the hands of the racist imperialist Israeli ethnostate (enabled and supported in full by the morally bankrupt Western governments) remains a particularly harrowing episode in our collective history as humans. These demons in Israel have lost their humanity. Human beings are not meant to do these atrocities to other humans, and certainly not celebrate it while doing it. If you’re an Israeli, or an Israeli-sympathiser that condones the slaughter of babies, children, women and men then you have also lost your humanity and I hope that your way of thinking is something that can be eradicated in the near future. You are the worst of what humanity had to offer in 2024, or even in the last 50 years - and you had a lot of competition. I wish you nothing but misery in all aspects of your life.

American politics continues to fall further down the toilet. Stupidity and social engineering at a mass scale has finally yielded the results that its creators intended. Total unaccountability and chaos to do what is right. People who barely have a grasp of the issues are being given weapons they don’t know what to do with.

Lebanon’s regular 20 year pummelling continues without missing a beat. Every fucking 20 years. I can’t recall a more unfortunate series of events, spanning decades, happening to a tiny collection of dirt. There will always be resistance to evil. The Israelis (and their sympathisers) seem to have forgotten this very simple fact.

All these events have played their toll on me. I am less able to function apart from work. My enthusiasm for my projects feel completely and utterly meaningless in the wake of some serious shit that is happening around the world, to people I care about. This has happened to me before. Part of me is broken, but I want to do something about it.

For 2025, my theme is kindness. Kindness to myself. Kindness to those around me. Kindness to those further away. We could all do with a little bit more kindness.

Design Complete

It took a minute - well actually it took around 7 years - but I finally got the site where I want it across text, photos and my bookshelf. The last two pages have been annoying me for years but it was fine until this morning when it was bloody not fine anymore. I also tweaked the colours a little so that they are both neutral both in normal and dark modes.

Over the last 20 years of playing around with websites I have wondered to myself why I bother spending time tweaking and fixing and sweating the pixel details. I’m not alone in this space as clearly many, many others have the same tinkering itch. It’s an itch that you can’t help but scratching away at. Leave it alone and it will be fine. Not that I spent ages over the last 7 years playing with the design (I would tweak once or twice a year), but my feeling now is that unless there is a major shift in what I do with my site, the design will remain consistent and the same for many, many years to come.

Finished reading: Just Enough Design by Taku Satoh 📚. I don’t tend to read a lot of books about design. This one hit all the right notes. The concepts being Japanese design by way of hodo-hodo. Tiny little book with short essays that showcased the designers thoughts. Loved it because it celebrated some of the best of what I feel is Japanese culture.

⚽️ Watching MU is seriously bad for my mental health. Highs are high. Lows are underground.

⚽️ What is going on with MU? I mean total capitulation to this Bournemouth team…at home.

The Cure has a new album and it’s amazing. 2024 has been a great year for my kind of music.

🎄Finally work is over for at least the coming week. Have a couple of emails to close out a couple of minor things, but then just total disconnect. It has been an incredibly challenging year but needless to say, a lot of life has happened in 2024. Looking forward to chilling with the kids and doing things that make me happy.

⚽️ What a shame man. 13 min is all he had in the tank for this game.

⚽️ Mason Mount is clearly a broken player. Made of fucking wheatabix.

⚽️ Pretty cagey game so far. Nothing serious been created. Just a lot of ball passing at the moment with plenty of errors from both sides.

Monument Valley is easily my favourite iOS game series (so much so I have a print above my desk). The third instalment of the series continues the fine tradition by adding a new way of moving around. The colours, design and music remain on point. If I had a ‘complaint’ it would be that there isn’t any merch I can get easily.

Tomorrow is Monument Valley III day. Something like 11 years after the first one was released.

I’m still not up to speed with what has happened in Syria. It feels like a civil war that started some 12 years ago. The rebels lost a few years ago, only they didn’t, rather they came back and managed to take over in a matter of a week? What the hell is going on here? Why now? Not that I feel anything but contempt for Bashar, but the whole thing has unfolded or unravelled during very curious timing…

⚽️ So many bodies in the middle of the park. Forest parking the bus here.

⚽️ I’m about to throw something at the TV.

⚽️ This team sucks so hard. Just shit.