Mark Carroll's Journal

A few of the songs seemed better when I heard them again in the final. Some of that was that the actual performances were improved over the semi-finals but I suspect that most of it was that I simply liked them more on a second hearing. Unfortunately, while some were agreeable enough, there weren't any songs that I feel a strong need to hear ever again.

After the song contest, it seems that I always comment on the difference between the jury vote and the popular vote. Each year brings interesting discrepancies between the two. I wonder if the UK's song selection process should, at least in part, return to including some kind of popular vote element. The current internal selection approach has proved poor at finding songs that win popular approval.

In experimenting with generative AI, I find Mistral quite nicely conversational, hence in part my recently writing here about the advent of AI companions. In chatting with it about books, it wondered if I'd read Iain M. Banks' Consider Phlebas and, by coincidence, I happen to have that very book out from the library.

My borrowing the novel at all is another coincidence: I had checked the library's online catalogue and found no available copies. Then, I happened to see it on the shelves of a local branch. Curiosity piqued, I returned to the web interface and discovered awful UX flow: you find the book, click "Book" format, see an entry about the book, click to check branch availability, and see it's not available. You have to notice the "other formats" section, click around in that, and it finds other editions, some of which are available. I've passed the issue on to the library who can do no more than pass it up to their software provider.

In rereading the novel, I find myself at an unusual boundary point. Usually, I retain a fairly good memory of a typical novel for a few years. Once I've waited for long enough, I've mostly forgotten it and can reread it reasonably anew. My memory of Consider Phlebas feels betwixt the two: as I read each scene, I have a fair idea where it'll go but I don't know what the coming scenes hold.

Thanksgiving was nice, R. kindly indulges me with her cooking. For dessert, the pecan pie seemed more popular than the pumpkin. On Friday, we finished up the savoury leftovers. We'll probably do something similar but smaller around Christmas when it is just me and R., other family being away in America and Asia then.

For watching the parade from here without paying, there is typically the option of various free streams (some clearly near each other) from random parts of the parade. I like to see the performances too so this year I took the option of simply finding some free not-NYC feeds that were well-positioned for their parade, e.g., I think we settled on Philly's in the end from some local station there.

I can't help but notice television streaming services raising their prices again. Most of them don't carry enough that I want to be worth the price they ask. I used to cover for this by subscribing to the couple that do while using DVD-by-post rental for late catchup on the one or two shows that I may want from each of the others. Though, Disney seemed to be tending not to release their shows also on DVD, and the by-mail services have also been growing more expensive, or ending altogether.

I wonder where this is going and how people respond. Fortunately, I don't have much time for engaging dramas at the moment anyway, and what's available for free here largely covers me. Still, I suspect that VPN services are doing well these days.

I had mentioned starting another Finnish library book, this was Antti Tuomainen's The Man Who Died, for what it's worth that was quite good too, I got a couple of laughs out of the grim premise. It is unusual to have consecutive successes for random borrowings, certainly encouraging. Now I'm back onto a rather less Finnish Ann Leckie novel, another that looks lengthy from the outside but turns out to be printed with not many words per page.

I had previously mentioned our city library system's openly shelved books being but the tip of the iceberg compared with the stacks, the science fiction sections being small indeed when judged against some branches from other Scottish library systems.

I had a further surprise in visiting our modern art gallery. Not only is there a decent library branch in its basement but many of the books borne by its small science fiction section are the same as in some other branches, including my nearest. This isn't a surprise for classics, like The Forever War, but was more of a surprise for, frankly, books that have rather less reason to be commonly shelved. For instance, the system lists a whole eighteen copies of Humans, Bow Down, which isn't exactly the kind of book to leave one thinking about it for months afterward.

To put those eighteen copies into perspective, consider examples of books that I would expect large library systems to carry. Fairly randomly: for Stephen King's The Stand we seem to have no borrowable copies at all, and for Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose there is but one (currently on loan).

Initially, I had wondered if they have a broad selection and just choose oddly and uniformly what to shelve but, the more I probe, the more it seems that what they choose to buy and hold is not in the proportions that I might have guessed.

I had an odd evening recently in which I watched episodes of Picard (2020) and Twelve Monkeys (2015) and noticed both Terry Matalas writing and Todd Stashwick acting in each. Todd's appeared in plenty of things I've seen and is always welcome, like when I discovered that Michael McKean's in The Diplomat (2023), he gets around too, though Rufus Sewell (whom I've liked since Dark City (1998)) and Keri Russell are already enough of a draw there.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned how this year's Eurovision Song Contest followed the usual pattern of my concurring with the public televote rather than the verdict of the panels of industry professionals. Yesterday I reflected on how last year's contest was an exception to the pattern.

The United Kingdom's song scored unusually well last year yet I thought it one of our more mediocre entries. France's and Germany's scored the worst, yet I thought both to be quite decent songs. Perhaps neither song was positively a gem but nor did they seem superlatively bad^* against the other finalists.

^*superlatively bad tempts me to imagine words like sublative

We have now moved in to our converted flat in the heart of Glasgow, we stop back in Aberdeen this coming Sunday to finish cleaning the rented flat there. A few appliances, etc., seem to need repair or replacement so we are working through those, unfortunately the market is buoyant enough that there isn't adequate opportunity to inspect fully in advance, but that's all quite manageable.

More awkwardly, our normal walking around on our mostly laminated floors apparently seems a terrible imposition on the neighbour below. I'm switching to very soft-soled slippers and we're putting some thick rugs down but ultimately we don't have the money to re-floor the whole place and don't yet have the skills to levitate like the Strangers in Dark City (1998). Ultimately, it's not we who decided to move to a converted flat below another, they're not known to be the quietest, and the ceilings are high enough that they could put in a suspended one if they needed to.

The move went well, especially given that everything fit into the van, and the van fit into the car park below, and it was great to get to drive manual transmission again. The weather largely smiled on us when convenient, at least sufficiently. The window ahead of my desk here features a major intersection so I sometimes get to hear the sirens of emergency vehicles or the complaints of drivers annoyed with each other. Still, it's nice having the motorway so close at hand, we can easily visit IKEA and suchlike for furnishing our flat. There is also plenty within an easy walk, including a nearby Asian supermarket.

There is much on our to-do list, ranging from address changes to furniture assembly. However, I very much look forward to some quieter evenings and weekends in the longer term. We have had the viewings, the purchase, the move, now the setup, and I am ready for something of a break.

It occurred to me that mentioning some of the more favored books that I own might be a useful way for me to share about myself and, best of all, inspire recommendations of ones I'd like.

I'll skip some categories for various reasons, including that they may not serve such purposes well, or there were too many CueCat^*-resistant exceptions. Those exceptions include, ( some reference books and other staples. )

( I own books about computer music, etc., )

( about how to approach life, )

( about Christianity, )

( history, )

( food, )

( the paranormal, UFOs, etc., )

( various fiction. )

It's worth noting that many of these are older books that have survived multiple culls, in some cases been replaced. This makes me suspect that I missed out on some worthwhile books in more recent years.

^*A barcode scanner, perfect for ISBNs. The business model may have been justly derided but the device itself is an ongoing boon.