Well doing this last month was a nice way to look back at the month, so here is my May 2025 recap.
It’s been a weird month. As I mentioned in the last post we moved to be closer to my partner’s parents. Turns out that we were just in time. She’s spent a lot of the month in and out of hospitals with her dad. I’ve been running errands, cooking, and trying to be helpful. But also by myself a whole lot.
Photography
I mentioned last month I’ve been taking more photos. This place is an absolute gem for sunset photos. I have some amazing sunsets a mere 10 minutes walk from my house, but we’ve also had some damp and misty mornings that have made for good subjects too.
Watching
Obviously I watched all of Andor, followed by Rogue One. I don’t think I can say much about Andor that’s not been said. It was one of the best written, cast, and acted pieces of television I’ve seen in a long time. The storytelling was fantastic, and sadly all so relevant. Also lovely was watching snippets of cast interviews on Instagram. It was a real ensemble piece and everybody involved seems to have come away from it changed by it.
We’re also watching Succession, very slowly. It’s a fantastic show, very dark, very funny, super well written. But the characters are so awful I can only deal with an episode at a time. Great storyteling about truly hateable people!
I also watched the BlackBerry movie. I put it on thinking that it would be awful and it would just be some background noise. But actually, a really good film. I am not sure how close to the truth it is, but a lot of it seemed pretty plausable.
Listening
Music-wise May was a treat. We got to see Snarky Puppy play a show in Brisbane. I’m a huge fan of their music, but was a little unsure about how much I’d enjoy the show. Turns out, they’re incredible. They played a whole lot of songs from We Like It Here as part of a 10 year anniversary. Listening to the whole crowd sing along to the end of Shofukan was damn near a religous experience. 10/10. Would do again.
On a sadder note, I was very sad to read about Jill Sobule’s death. I was a big fan of her early albums and listened to her a lot in the early 2000s.
My latest musical obsession though is Hermanos Gutièrrez, two Ecuadorian-Swiss brothers who both play guitar. Think South American instrumental cowboy surf guitar. I’ve been listening to them a whole lot.
YouTubin
I’ve been watching an awful lot of YouTube this month.
It started off with “guitar youtube” losing their minds about Instagram Guitar Influencer Giacomo Turra being exposed for stealing arrangements from other guitarists, not crediting them, and rising to fame by faking his ability to play them using a whole lot of recording tricks.
Interestingly it came in the same week as the revelations about celebrity cookie baker Brooke Bellamy stealing recipes from other chefs and publishing them in her book.
There’s something in there about online celebrity and the shortcuts people will take. I’m sure somebody has written about it deeply.
Speaking of celebrity chefs, Doobydobap is one of my favourites on YouTube. Her Costco meal prep video has a hack in there that has been game changing for me this month. Buying bulk lots of peeled garlic (which I have done at my local markets) and bulk ginger, chopping it in a food processor, and freezing it in breakable sections. I’ve been doing a lot of stir frys and between this and Recipe Tin’s “Charllie” sauce it’s made cooking so much faster.
I also went on a deep deep dive into buying old Jeeps and the many problems you’re likely to find. I’ve got a bug to do some camping trips and doing it offroad in a 20 year old, stripped down Jeep seems like lots of fun. There’s so many good, well made, travel films of people doing just that sort of thing.
I’ve also been watching a lot of photography videos (usually with road trips attached to them).
And of course, like every other car enthusiast I’ve glued to every episode of the Mighty Car Mods GTR. IYKYK.
On the car topic, this video about an efficient two stroke rotary engine is super interesting, and a great visualisation of how most engines work. Worth a watch!
Work
I mentioned I’ve been head down into a new project in Vue 3. It’s trucking along. Not without it’s challenges.
I also had another project go live without a major incident. A .NET implementation of a SCIM API for a client. That was a learning experience. And a great reminder than until you’re in production, you really don’t know what you’re up against. No plan survives first contact with users!
I’ve been playing with some new tools too. I realise I’m probably too late, but I’ve been using Arc Browser for a few weeks. I like it actually. It’s a nice way to manage multiple profiles as well. I don’t know if it has a lot of future though, they seem to be pivoting away from it already.
I’m also using Raycast again. I used it for a little while early on, but it didn’t stick. I’m trying again. It actually replaces a few other tools I have and makes it easy to create a text based interface to a lot of functionality.
Oh speaking of work, I may have an interesting and rather large announcement here soon. Stay tuned.
