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New trailer on YouTube for the film "Ebenezer".#

As ”A Christmas Carol" lover, this is actually looks okay (this could be the first non-terrible film Johnny Depp’s been in for a decade – he’s been on an awful run). And it has that Victorian vibe I like, whilst also feeling a bit different and fun. And I like Depp’s mannerisms.#

I also think "Ebenezer" is a decent title. It’s been used before. But it beats yet another "A Christmas Carol" which will only make finding the version you want even more confusing.#

AI has implemented footnotes for me, apparently. So I'd like to try them out. Let's give it a go...#

This should have a footnote.11 This is the first footnote#

This is the second footnote.22 Another footnote. Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since 1966, when designers at Letraset and James Mosley, the librarian at St Bride Printing Library in London, took a 1914 Cicero translation and scrambled it to make dummy text for Letraset's Body Type sheets. It has survived not only many decades, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised thanks to these sheets and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker and Microsoft Word including versions of Lorem Ipsum. With some text after it!#

Let’s see if I can add a footnote on mobile.33 This should work!#

Another?44 One final, baby footnote#

Added keyboard shortcuts to Walden.blog. This is a post to test if hitting CMD + Enter will publish it.#

I hate reading the Introduction chapter of a book, and will often skip them. They’re usually dull.#

So I love it when a book simply doesn’t use the word “introduction” in its introduction. It tricks me, quite happily, into actually reading it.#

The book I’ve just started has done it – "The Pen: A Human History" by Simon Garfield.#

And you know what? I enjoyed the intro chapter.#

I've written before on one of my old blogs about tagging and the importance of not keeping it too organised. I had a habit of not wanting to create a new tag uness I was certain I'd use it again for other things.#

I also had a bit of a habit of of nesting them, creating monstrosities like travel:england:resource:walking.#

I'm now more relax. I have 2,871 tags for my 21,229 bookmarks on Pinboard.#

Because they're created by my brain, I often suprise myself when I see a tag has already been created for something I'm bookmarking.#

Today I was bookmarking a page about a graphic for a blueprint of Sherlock Holmes' flat. The website was old looking – lots of plain HTML. So I tagged it old.web. And to my suprise, I'd already used that tag for a page about Charles Darwin and a Usenet archive.#

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I often reference the book I'm reading in posts. It's good to have a central place to see all my posts about a book, so I was adding a unique ID. For example, B204. An ID is a lot shorter than having to write out the book title and author. However, it also doesn't tell the user anything about the book, and my tags list was getting clogged up by these IDs.#

So, I got Claude Fable 5.1 to build a separate metadata system for books! They're like tags, but just separated out for books. And it means I can show the title, author, year published, and also cover art!#

It needs a bit of tweaking, but it will do for now.#

Note: please ignore the books attached to this post. I'm just testing out the ability to hopefully add multiple books to a post.#

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Now that I’m on the BulletJournal train (adapted slightly by me) I thought I’d give the Leuchtturm1917 x BulletJournal x Dreggriffel pen (that’s a lot of collabs) a go.#

Don’t know why I did. I’ve already found the perfect pen: uni-ball Jetstream 101. And this one cost £29! (the uni-ball costs £6 for 3!)#

It’s a pleasant enough looking pen, with decent weight. But doesn’t write as well as the uni-ball – and isn’t as comfortable.#

Oh well. Maybe I’ll keep it at my desk and use it when I plan my day.#

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You often see products with something like 20% EXTRA FREE on it. I always presumed it was a fairly new thing.#

But I'm watching an episode of Only Fools & Horses from 1989 and I noticed Del-Boy is drinking a can of Heineken that has it on it. So apparently it's a nearly 40 year old gimmick.#

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I like using a Mac because it's largely beautiful (less so these days, I admit).#

But I have to use Windows for work. And my goodness every day I am shocked by its ugliness.#

Even with the rise of everything being browser based (thus things look largely the same on Mac and Windows) it's still an issue.#

Windows is a bit like religion – I don't understand how people can choose it.#

AI is in its Uber era. The leaked finances of Anthropic and OpenAI show both spending more than they earn, with venture capital covering the gap. You get a great deal today. The playbook is is the same as companies like Uber: lose money until rivals fold and you can't work without the service, then raise prices.#

On a Claude Pro or Max plan, Anthropic probably spends £4–5 on compute for every £1 you pay.#

All these years after its invention I still find FM radio remarkable.#

You’re telling me this a tiny, thin cable hanging out the back of my alarm clock can pick up music/speech from an antenna goodness knows how far away‽#

Sure, the quality isn’t the best. But it’s still miraculous.#

AI slop had made it to magazine covers.#

I saw this Sherlock Holmes magazine in WHSmiths at Victoria Station.#

I’m sure it saved them £200-500 in paying a designer and the moneyfolk rubbed their hands together with glee.#

But I didn’t buy it because of its awful AI cover (I love Sherlock Holmes and would enjoy this magazine, I’m sure. And the contents looked decent enough). How many others have skipped it because of the AI art? You wonder if that money they saved was cancelled out by lost sales.#

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Talking of Sherlock Holmes, Bookish is a very underrated TV show with Holmes vibes. In fact, it’s written by Mark Gatiss who wrote the Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock show.#

It’s a cosy detective show set in London after World War Two.#

There’s murder sometimes, but it’s gentlee.#

It’s a great show to fall asleep to (on rewatch – don’t miss any of it on first watch).#

The tie is dead, long live the tie.#

It's gone the way of the hat.#

Now-a-days even bankers aren't wearing them. A tie is associated with insurance salesfolk, and people in recruitment and sales.#

Log – 09:26: The cycle into work was especially bracing today — mainly due to wind I think. Glad I brought my Barbour waterproof. I used a feature of it for the first time: where the collar pops up and wraps/tightens around your neck. I felt a bit like Ryan Gosling in "Blade Runner 2049" in it.#

I'm suitably feeling rough this morning after not getting much sleep last night and also eating sugar — I really need to stop that.#

And talking of things I need to stop, I need to stop having double caffeine during the day (he says, with a bottle of cherry Coke Zero to his right). It's for sure the reason why I've struggled to sleep these past few days. I just can't resist. When I'm tired, and my Ritalin isn't kicking in, it's tough to resist. But I must.#

In fact I think I should start gradually lowering my caffeine in general. Just to see if it makes a difference. Maybe I won't get an afternoon energy crash and maybe I'll sleep better. I don't have anxiety, but once in a blue moon I'll have a little panic attack or feel the start of one. In fact, maybe I'm more anxious than I think. I do after feel like I might have a heart attack. I chalk it up to my hypochondria, but maybe it is anxiety. Either way, it's a worthwhile experiment cutting out caffeine.#

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@ns123abc on Xwitter:#

The [Anthropic] prospectus warns that nearly 25% of revenue came from just TWO customers, and that many top enterprise clients aren't locked into long-term contracts and could cut spending or walk away anytime.#

How are two companies contributing 25% of their revenue. That’s insane.#

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The blog is actually looking decent in night mode on mobile.#

Awoke with quite a bit of muscle pain this morning after all that carpet lifting yesterday. Mainly in by lower back and legs. It’s to be expected.#

Me and Abigail are due to watch LOTR today potentially. I’m currently waiting for a haircut in the barbers and on the drive here it started to look a bit autumnal – leaves falling in roaring orange.#

Log – 12:56: Just back from the Turkish barber after my haircut. Well, I say cut, it's more of a shave — I haven't had scissors near my head for many a year.#

It was done by a kid of no more than fourteen. Because of his youth I got to bump the queue as the guy in front didn't want his hair cut by the young man. But he did an okay job. He required quite a bit of reassuring and me confirming that I was liking his work, but that's fine. He was a very affable kid and cracked a few jokes. It felt almost charitable letting him do my hair (and beard, I must add). It was good seeing a kid working, oddly, I think because you see it so rarely these days. It's largely a good thing as it means they're in school or playing and doing hobbies. But this fella obviously wanted to make a few quid on the weekend. I gave him a six pound tip, handing over forty quid for the cut, which is a crazy amount of money. Makes me glad to be bald as I can usually shave my own head at home.#

Now I'm going to have some alone time and read in bed.#

Tonight we're due to watch the first Lord of the Rings film, which means it's going to be a good day.#

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Log — 13.17: I got a lovely little twenty twenty-seven weekly planner from Hatchards the booksellers the other [day]. A delicate, vintage looking thing, it has gilded edges, rip-away corners, and plenty of different sections. Made of vegan leather, it's a delightful little thing. Aside from one issue: the "dates of note" are all US dates of note! Hatchards is an English institution and its stores and brand reek of Englishness. So for its branded planner to have US dates of note is an outrage. Offer it as an option, sure, but to make it the default is tantamount to treason. Boo!#

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Log – 17:58: Had my fairly common weekend naps. And I continue to be worried by it. As if it's indicative of a more serious underlying health problem.#

I've only lived in this house for a year, so maybe this happens every year, but Canadian geese fly overhead most evenings as the sun starts to set. It's a pleasant addition to the day. They wail a little loudly, but they fly low and it's a somewhat magical sight. They remind me of that film "Fly Away Home" each time I see them. Hopefully I get to see them every start of autumn.#

I don't know why, but I just had a sudden jolt of excitement about the work week starting and taking Ritalin again. I haven't taken it many days this week. Firstly because I never take it on the weekends. And secondly because I skipped it on the day I saw Van Morrison and then didn't take it on the day after due to being fairly hungover.#

I've been fretting about how I'm going to include this notebook (an A5 Bullet Journal one) into my "productivity system," worried it might replace my beloved Field Notes. As BuJo is largely for getting tasks done I of course tried to use this notebook for my to-do's, whilst demoting the Field Notes to my log entries. But it was tough to do. An important part of any to-do system is easy capturing into the "inbox." That's tough with a notebook this big and thick. So I've suddenly realised that despite the grid system and handy stickers that this notebook provides I don't have to use it for to-do's at all. At the end of the day it's just a notebook. And it makes sense to use this for just my logs — with its high quality paper and comfortable writing space and hard back — and the Field Notes more for to-dos — with its carryability, general smallness, and ability to bend. I mean hell, I could probably cut down a lot of the BuJo stickers to fit inside it (BuJo also offers its own "pocket" version I could look into). So who knows, maybe I'll try it. The big issue I have with logs + to-dos combined is as someone with ADHD I need my to-do's not only visible, but front and centre — that list needs to almost be sacred. So when I intermix it between my long log entries the to-do's get lost, and forgotten.#

I would love to not have to deal with two notebooks and have just the one. But if I want to go the paper route (and not just use the all digital Todoist) then I think two makes the most sense.#

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In bed, reading.#

Started a new book: "Everyday Life in Medieval London - From the Anglo-Saxons to the Tudors" by Toni Mount.#