Darren

Do you win or lose if you get to eat the biscuit, or is it just a matter of perspective?

Of course!

Here’s last week’s.

I was studying for a radio production degree exactly at the point where radio station budgets were rapidly shrinking, while podcasting was growing. But obviously the degree course didn’t really have any podcasting in the syllabus because it was relatively new. Home streaming wasn’t really a thing at that point either, so we go no tuition on how to set up our own output.

Radio is massively different now than it was then. So yeah, I hear ya.

Radio production.

Got a degree, moved to London, applied for loads of jobs, and… nothing.

Trouble is, I needed to be paid, and at the entry level it’s all unpaid internships and volunteering at community stations. Unless you know someone who can get you through the door, of course.

Stuck with making a podcast in my spare time for a few years, but ultimately lost the spark.

These days I work in health and safety management and stream a radio show every Monday night that about 15 people tune into live, and 30-odd people listen to on Mixcloud. It makes me no money, but I enjoy it.

I learned recently that yt-dlp works with the iPlayer, though it’s capped at 720p for some reason. However, get_iplayer can download 1080p as long as you add --tv-quality=fhd to the command.

I assure you we’re open.

The Hobbit is one well crafted movie. Two if you want to hang out the story a little.

The Hobbit is not three fucking movies.

JD walks down the corridor to Peter Gabriel singing The Book of Love while I’m weeping like a baby.

And that’s that. There was no more Scrubs.

As a kid I guess I did, because I was borderline libertarian and something of a prick. But these days I’m older and a little more aware of people who aren’t me, so these days I don’t think about it at all.

I would prefer if rich people paid more, but that has no real bearing on how much I pay.

My wife occasionally sends me TikTok videos she finds interesting. I don’t have the app installed because I can’t be trusted to not end up scrolling for hours, and TikTok’s website is pure dog shit. Because they want you using the app.

Anyway, turns out yt-dlp works perfectly with TikTok 👍🏽

A nice beef gravy. Delicious.

Same goes for sexual abusers too.

Doesn’t matter how good that first Lostprophets album is, I just can’t listen to it knowing what Watkins got up to, so I’ll listen to music by people who didn’t fuck a literal baby.

I periodically delete my Metallica collection so I can re-download it for no other reason than fuck Lars.

Over on Twitter I was keen to chat to people with large follower bases in order to perhaps hook in to some of that. On Mastodon I generally have no idea how many followers people have because it really isn’t important to me any more.

If someone is interesting, and their engagement good, then I’m happy to be a follower.

I’ve found almost the exact opposite.

Engagement on Lemmy is mostly fine, but I chat with people all the time on Mastodon

I think the key is to meet people on their level, to find people who share your interests and sensibilities. Follow plenty of folks and chat to them and before long you’ll have a grand little community.

I always undo my laces before taking off my trainers.

No matter how tired I am, I always take a few seconds to untie my laces, because if I don’t I’ll wear through the heels and then I’ll need new trainers.

Which one? Either would lead to remarkably different evenings.

They haven’t yet responded, so I can only assume that they died of how much they hate you. Sorry.

Drugs Are Really Excellent?

Detectorists is a masterpiece. Everything about that show is warm-hearted. Not even Lance and Andy’s rivalry with Simon and Garfunkel ever turns truly nasty.