Now

What’s going on, Internet? This was meant to be the April wrap-up. It’s now the middle of July, so let’s call it the autumn-into-winter wrap-up and pretend that was the plan all along, lol.

Autumn kicked off with Easter down in Martinborough and a batch of hot cross buns. I managed to get to three gigs in three months: MGK at Spark Arena, Split Enz at Spark Arena, and a solo night out for Home Brew performing Last Week at the Auckland Town Hall. I’m so happy I got to see Home Brew perform live, finally after all these years. Auckland has been really good for me being able to get out to gigs more frequently.

More recently, this month we escaped a rainy afternoon at Kelly Tarlton’s. The following weekend we headed south to Butterfly Creek and spent the afternoon there. My first time visiting and really enjoyed it. It’s part butterfly sanctuary, part farm, part zoo, part adventure playground, and part dinosaur kingdom, lol. There’s a lot going on. We spent around 30 minutes in the butterfly house while my son stood super still in an attempt to have a butterfly land on him. So cute, but didn’t work out for him this time.

Then finally the weekend just been we spent a long weekend on Waiheke for Matariki. We spent Friday on the beach, hot chocolate and fluffies at the beach cafe, late lunch at The HEKE, and a bus trip to Oneroa for ice cream. Saturday we spent the morning at the Ostend Markets, back to the beach, then back to the beach cafe for an early dinner and to watch the All Blacks Italy game.

When I last wrote about books, it was all about reading eBooks again. Since then I’ve got through nine books, with only A Darkness Returns being an eBook. Highlights of these books were The New Girl and Leave Before You Go by Emily Perkins, Platform Decay by Martha Wells and the return to James S. A. Corey’s new universe The Faith of Beasts.

I also read The Lean Startup, Blood Ties, Famesick, Don’t Burn Anyone at the Stake Today but mostly didn’t finish these.

The record shelf did some damage this quarter, 20 new arrivals. June was basically an Olivia Rodrigo situation, and each gig sent me home with its record: MGK’s Lost Americana, True Colours after Split Enz, and Last Week on pink vinyl after the Home Brew show.

I guess the other thing with three months to cover is that I got through a lot of media. Highlights being Outer Banks. I wrote up seasons one and two and have since torn through season three and halfway through season four as I write this. Such a fun show. I realised as I started season three that this reminds me of the recent Tomb Raider games or the older Uncharted games which I loved playing.

The other big binge was Hacks, all five seasons, 47 episodes. I had an absolute blast with this show. It was sitting there waiting to be watched for literal years and I finally sat down and blasted through it.

Another standout was Tulsa King, got through the last two seasons quickly. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this show so much!

The Boys wrapped up with season five. I think I was satisfied with how it ended? Yeah, I think so. I also got through Fallout season two quickly, can’t wait for the next. And also wrapping up was Euphoria which messily wrapped up with season three. This season was kinda bat shit, not sure whether I enjoyed it or not, but happy I don’t have to think about it any more.

Keeping up with the weeklies and new seasons: House of the Dragon season three, X-Men '97 season two, and Power Book III: Raising Kanan season five. This season we’re really seeing Kanan turning into how we saw him in Ghost.

I’m also slowly working through Only Murders in the Building season five with my wife and in-laws when we are able to sit down together and watch an episode.

Eighteen movies since March. The highlights though. I caught Project Hail Mary at the theatre with my brother-in-law before it stopped showing. Finally caught up with The Fantastic 4: First Steps to make sure I’m up to speed with the road to Avengers: Doomsday. I was excited to see The Devil Wears Prada 2 as the first always had a special nostalgic place in my heart.

Anniversary was an unexpected sleeper, I was not expecting what this movie ended up being after watching the trailer.

Don’t Ever Stop, a fantastic documentary on Tony De Vit. This was especially good as a hardhouse fan and hearing legends of the scene talk about their interactions with Tony and memories of the origins of what became the hardhouse scene in the UK.

The Drama was an interesting one, and to be honest I thought the other woman’s secret she shared was way worse than Zendaya’s. Locking a kid in a fridge in the forest and not telling anyone is wild. Get out of here.

And the rest… Office Romance, Mile End Kicks, A Real Pain, Eenie Meanie, Carolina Caroline, Stone Cold Fox. I don’t think I watched any I didn’t like.

The bookmarks kept flowing while the blog was quiet. The best of them are already rounded up in the May and June link dumps, so I won’t repeat them here. Check out the bookmarks page for even more.

Around the web? I can’t remember if I shared this already, but I participated with issue 24 of the Ctrl-ZINE. Go give that a read! I also finally sat down with Manu to answer his People And Blogs questions. Manu has also hung up his hat since founding and running the series for the last few years and Zachary Kai has picked up the reins. You can find the archive here.

James has recently started a new podcast, Wonders of Web Weaving which is 9 episodes deep as of writing. Catch up on all of them if you haven’t already, and if you keep listening you might hear yours truely in a week or two 😉

Website wise, there’s plenty going on under the hood while I prepare for the 2027 redesign. Really looking forward to sharing this with you all soon. There’ve been a few improvements around the site, but you’ll see most of the changes when I roll out the new design.

I did sit down and refresh my 11ty and Neocities guide. I’m really pleased with all the great feedback I’ve received from this one, especially with all the people who have successfully managed to build a website using 11ty with it.

Sweeet, laters 🤙