David Bowie is no longer with us.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield posted a fitting tweet, and here's his quote from the BBC's reaction page:

"I was so sad to wake up this morning to the news … The whole span of my adult life I've been listening to David Bowie so it is an irretrievable loss. It saddens me. I'm just delighted I got to play a little part in everything he's done."

I felt the same way, though it's easy to say it now. I will admit to owning only a small part of his catalogue, and playing even that infrequently; but…

Thanks for the music, the memories.

Here's Chris's Space Oddity video, and David's.

Here’s a screenshot of a mind map of my current blog posting workflow:

It’s in need of a little automation and, to that end, I’m investigating what I can do on my Android phone.

Oh how I miss iOS’s Editorial and Launch Center Pro and URL schemes and…

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Post inspired by @manton’s App.net posting.

I'm simply not going to list the deaths of well-known individuals during 2015/early 2016. Each has a place in my past, however small that place is. I have no doubt that all have enriched my life by some variable, though small, amount…

I led a happy childhood; not the rose-tinted view of a time ripe to be torn asunder upon discovering a dark secret much later in life, but a genuinely carefree time.

Allowed to play out; free rein to go as far as my and my childhood friends' imaginations would allow us, we had it all. My parents, both working class (not that it matters), made sure I always had enough to occupy me and that I was safe…

There's no doubt it was a different age.

The television then wasn't by any means new, but I remember our black-and-white set and the occasional moiré pattern leading me to think colour was, impossible as it sounds, just about to break through!

It never did.

The number of TV channels wouldn't have retained a modern consumer's attention for more than a few minutes. Throughout the entirety of my childhood we had three (3) channels to choose from! My parents picked our programming wisely, using the Radio Times & radio guide extensively.

There are too many things to list, but a brief conversation earlier reminded me of the magic of 1970s TV. Of particular significance, though I wouldn't expect many to understand why-for-me the unmasking of professional wrestler 'Kendo Nagasaki'; an amazing bit of television unlikely to be repeated today.

To fill the entertainment void between TV programmes and living our lives we listened to the radio; music, lots of it, and BBC Radio 4 for talk, news and of course drama.

We had a record player with a storage capacity of, er… ok, capable of playing 78s, 45s and 33-1/3 vinyl records. Amazing sounds from a black plastic disc, and especially the rich, unsurpassable bass and frequency range when played on my Auntie & Uncle's 'Radiogram'; from-memory almost identical to the one at the top of this 'Radiogram Days' page.

Incidentally, rather than me telling you what my parents and I listened to, just take a look at that page. It sums up the era perfectly.

Ok, to give you a clue, my parents had me later in life than the average. I listened to a vast range of music, first theirs and gradually as my tastes developed…

A range spanning my Dad's jazz to songs from the shows, rock & roll, classical to avant-garde, through the big band sounds to American easy-listening to…

Ok, given a huge range of influences I chose as my first single…

Elvis Presley's 'Suspicion' – I suspect because, faced by the unaccustomed freedom and the choice in the shop, I simply couldn't decide.

But then my teenage years arrived and with them the train-wreck of inevitability. Of course I stepped away from the earlier path set up by my mum and dad. Had to; to establish my sense of 'self', or something.

Music became an important part of my life. Unfortunately the path I chose through its many genres, styles, influences, wasn't the same as my mates, colleagues, family. No matter, it helped my sense of identity grow.

Yes, I was a bargain hunter, regularly rummaging in Woolworths' wire baskets to find the stuff no-one else wanted.

Earlier this evening, a little while before my Bluetooth headphones' charge finally ran out, I was at a loose end and searching for something 'different' to listen to.

Looking through the albums I'd queued up on Amazon Prime Music, Isao Tomita's Snowflakes Are Dancing stood out as something I'd grabbed to stream eventually, but at the right time. It's an album of Claude Debussy's music, Tomita's being a 1974 electronic variant – and one I remember listening to as a child, bought by my uncle when still brand-new.

It's one that captivates me still.

So why now?

As I mentioned earlier, it's the right season to reminisce; and though year-ends usually bring out the strongest emotions, this music has opened up a good-few links back to my dim-and-distant past.

Its all good; it made me who, and what, I am.

To everyone who contributed to the making of this blog post: thanks!

I have a new redirect from my vanity domain. The general structure, as of today, is:

• (www.)bt3.com – a Mediawiki site, 'self-hosted' on a server provided by @rabryst (App.net.) Currently stagnant, I'm unable to take it down without a tortuous examination of the action's impact on the rest of the Web,*
• blog.bt3.com – a subdomain redirecting to bazbt3.re-app.net, my blog hosted at 10centuries.com by @matigo (App.net),
• ego.bt3.com – the new subdomain redirecting to bazbt3.github.io, my test blog hosted by Github.com.

Why 'ego'?

My first choice, 'id', would have misrepresented the blog a little; there's nothing visceral allowed to intrude, though my aim is to introduce its reader to the writer.

I'd toyed with the idea of something 'clever' but difficult to verbally pass on, for example 'httpcolonslashdot', 'http', or simply 'dot'; but the likelihood that my site will be disseminated by literal word-of-mouth is remote indeed.

So, because I have one, 'ego' it is.

Don't bookmark it.

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*There's not much of value to anyone, not really.

Twitter seems likely to announce an increase in its post character count, upwards from 140, sometime in the next few months. For many it'll be a welcome move, especially given that 140 characters is artificially restrictive – a holdover from the time Twitter ran on the back of SMS messaging.

140's all very well, encourages people to be concise, and gives just enough space for a status update or headline and link; but the fact that alternative services exist to increase the character count (after a quick redirect outside Twitter) means the time has come to grow the posts.

10,000 characters is of course a rumour, based on the same limit already existing within direct messages (I've not tried it.) Whilst it seems to me to be ridiculously excessive (I struggle to fill a 2048-character App.net personal message) is seems (Internet speculation) that only the first 140 characters of a Tweet will be shown in the standard timeline…

Phew, I'm glad they seem to be thinking of retaining the same level of scrolling I'd need to reach the top!

So, post length and the timeline out of the way, what's next to like?

Editing!*

Dropping an edit button into the laps of the majority of users is playing with fire. Most will admit the ability to edit a post must be included for 10k posts. I'm inclined to agree, but only because I can trust myself not to change the context of my posts after a 'negative' reply or one from a user I simply don't like.

An edit, by the way, is not the same as a delete and retweet; an edit preserves the flow of a conversation, a delete leaves a telltale gap.

Most users are content to post, to chat, to look at kitten pics. Most simply won't spot, nor care about, the 'Edited' indicator. Outrage is bound to follow.

My summary of a 10k limit: meh.

What I'd like to see is a Facebook Groups-like feature. No, not lists with every tweet public, but a community builder. Reduce the character count to a reasonable 4096 (a more sociable level) drop a shed load of metadata in each post, make me happy. Heck, I'd pay to remove the ads and user tracking across the rest of the web, but I can't see Twitter or especially Facebook relinquishing their monetisers.

Can you?

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*I reserve the right to edit this post.

In a new departure, I'm experimenting with a blog post to call ADN to choose our #ThemeMonday theme for January 2016.

For more information, see the ThemeMonday page.

So here we go, please think what you'd like to see this month and tell us all. Seasonal themes, silly , sexy or serious themes; it's your ADN to shape as you will. Make the most of this opportunity!

Please reply to ADN post thread when you see it.

Thanks!

Yesterday I posted this on App.net:

“Copyright of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf expires.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35209185

Here’s a quote from the article:

“…annotated version, with thousands of academic notes, will aim… to show that Mein Kampf is incoherent and badly written, rather than powerful or seductive.”

I laughed out loud.

App.net’s (ADN’s) @blumenkraft, being German and with that country’s unique perspective, opined “it’s a peace of crap! i love they did the afford to set it into a historical context.”

To which I replied “My wife read it a few years ago, during a philosophy phase. At the time she told me pretty much what you and the article say. #NotOnMyBucketListForAReason”

ADN’s @jeremycherfas also responded: “The Economist’s article was a very good one.” So I did a quick search and came up with:

What the Führer means for Germans today: Seventy years after Adolf Hitler’s death, how Germans see him is changing. – a very interesting read.

Within that article, a reference to a novel:

“The latest bestseller is “Look Who’s Back” by Timur Vermes, translated into English this year. Hitler wakes up in today’s Berlin near his old bunker. Disoriented at first, he so amuses everybody he meets, including his Turkish dry-cleaner, that he is launched on a meteoric career as a comedian. His hip colleagues are convinced that he is a consummate “messed ekta” (Berlinish-English for method actor) offering a subtle critique of modern media culture.”

Me to Jeremy: “Thanks. On the strength of it I just grabbed a trial of ‘Look Who’s Back’ from the Kindle store.” I also added a screenshot of its cover.

I read the introduction, laughed out loud again, read chapter 1 and settled nicely into chapter 2, at which point the preview ended. So I bought it.

Jeremy had asked me to report back what I made of the trial, and upon my few disorganised words said “Good recommendation. I might even add it to my own list. In fact, I will. I take it you’ve read Robert Harris’ Fatherland?”

At this point I shall step out of conversation mode and into…

Ah, no, I hadn’t read it, but I give thanks for his recommendation, but with reservations…

My focus for the last 30-something years had been predominantly sci-fi/satire/humour. ‘History’ tends to be restricted to the facts; I’m really not a fan of historical dramatisations (TV/film, whatever, Blackadder excepted.)

Prior to puberty I’d read children’s books, then gravitated through some of the English Classics, especially the more accessible Dickens, that sort of thing; and all the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. All of ’em. I was then a voracious reader (as is my oldest daughter today.)

And then I read my first Isaac Asimov; The Early Asimov – a boxed 3-volume set, acquired second-hand from a stall on Rochdale Market. The best bit of their transactions, aside from saving money over new; a return-for-half-purchase-price when buying more. Awesome! But financial transactions aren’t as important as the power of the written word when welded to a willing mind. Mine.

That led me to a long exploration of sci-fi. Bear, E.E. (Doc) Smith, Niven/Pournelle/Barnes, more Asimov, Brin, L.Ron Hubbard (his Battlefield Earth is a great book) and, well, suffice it to say it’s a big list. All gone now apart from a selection of Niven et al, and of course my Asimovs.

I read other genres, e.g. Tolkien, e.g. shed-loads of nonfiction, but nothing compared to the impact sci-fi had on me over time – for allowing me to escape.

It takes me three passes to fully explore a novel: a first quick skim, a later slower read, and months later a final deep exploration pf what subtleties remain. No, I utterly failed to on the one book: The Lord of the Rings. I’ve ‘only’ read it twice, though I attempted a third. (I’m no Christopher Lee!)

And then, when I least expected it, my wife-to-be arrived; with cats, responsibilities, children, and a consequent loss of free time and focus.

Back to the Hitler related novel; “Quite a departure for me, this…” I said to Jeremy, “…but this is still well within my comfort zone. Just opened my wife’s copy of Mein Kampf, compared it with my Churchill’s The Second World War. Actually there’s no comparison, but I might just flick through the former after the novel.”

Honesty time: I really didn’t get far into Churchill’s tome. But I’ve dipped in on the odd occasion as documentaries have appeared on the telly. Incidentally, when I can get a visually un-truncated version of The World at War, I probably will.

2016 sounds like it’ll be the year I make the time to read my queue. No more excuses.

2015 was a year with a lot of downs, and I'll be glad to see its end. Really. There were of course positives, but overall zero sense of balance.

2014 was equally odd in that regard; my wife nearly died in the July and, restricting myself to social networking, I'd:

• Messed about with Linux doing some, what I'd call, rudimentary shell script coding based on top of Ayadn – a command line client for the App.net social network,
• Inexplicably tailed off from my initial enthusiasm with the App.net Wiki, and have struggled to retain that,
• Told everyone I wasn't going to be using Facebook again,
• Or Twitter.

2015, a year in review:

This year I continued my idiosyncratic approach:

• Increasing my use of footnotes* in social media posts,
• Adopting the Oxford Comma more widely, occasionally even abbreviating the following "and" to "&"! And, even though I know it's not its only use case, preceding only "and" gives me room to grow,
• Starting to use the Semicolon more frequently.

This last one puzzles me. Until late this year I'd almost never used it, succumbing as I did to peer pressure during my final couple of years at school by intentionally not caring about 'English' lessons. So why now?

A desire for self-improvement perhaps?

2015 also brought:

• A late-year increase in the frequency of my blog posts, partially in response to installing the Journey (daily) journal app on my Android phone,
• My slow-but-sure takeover of the #ThemeMonday hashtag on App.net (page needs updating.) I make the call to choose a shortlist of themes, collate, remind, and then post a poll to get votes to pick each. It's not hard work, not really.

So, this blog post ends as the year ends, on a low note:

2015 does not get Baz's Seal of Approval; really, it's had very, very few highlights.

The only standout was a weekend trip to London with my family, my first. (Family and trip to England's capital.)

[Edit:] Ruby puppy arrived in April. Now that changes my perspective a tiny bit towards favouring 'balance.'

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*I can't honestly recall when I started using footnotes, it could have been 2014.

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I reserve the right to edit this post as events unfold on this, the last day of the year. Naturally I reserve the right to edit all the posts but rarely do, aside from typos.