In honour of the day

Here Comes The Summer - The Undertones

Panto and post-panto pints put paid to my plan for Solstice at Stonehenge, but here are some pics from previous years

A group of people are gathered around the silhouetted stone structures of Stonehenge at sunset.People gather at an ancient stone structure to watch the sunrise.A large stone stands in the foreground against a frosty landscape at sunrise.A wooden signpost stands in a grassy, dimly lit area at night near a bright streetlight.

Possibly the best thing I’ve seen in a theatre since The Clash at the Lyceum

Sleeping Beauty at Salisbury Playhouse

A woman in pajamas, wearing a sleep mask and crown, is surrounded by roses and the text "Sleeping Beauty: A Pantomime Adventure."

Things that annoy me #1035

When you need a password and MFA to see some IT documentation.

Especially when it doesn’t work in my default browser

I enjoyed That Christmas last night. It’s a sweet film. It said in the credits that it was based on three different stories, which does make sense, in that the film has a lot going on. Good fun, in any case

Gratuitous seaside postcard

A cartoon depicts a bread delivery person joking with a woman at her door, with a humorous exchange - 'will you be round tomorrow'....'no, I'll be the same shape'

​Powershell to get a list of micro.blog posts

Set your headers:

$headers = @{
  "Authorization" = "Bearer $Token"
  "Content-Type" = "application/json"
}

…where $Token is retrieved from micro.blog

Then:

$Uri = https://micro.blog/micropub?q=source`&mp-destination=https%3a%2f%2fmattypenny-tweets.micro.blog%2f 
$i = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $Uri-Method Get -Headers $headers

….replacing mattypenny-tweets.micro.blog with the name of your blog

Then:

$i | select -expand items | select -expand properties | select post-status,published ,content

…which gives the below.

I think you can put start and end dates on the query….I’ll add that in later

Screenshot of tweets of Christmas past displayed in powershell

Want to read: Season of the Witch: The Book of Goth by Cathi Unsworth 📚

Season of the Witch book cover, featuring Siouxsie Sioux with a slightly jumbled up face

I listened to this podcast in which the author spoke to Mark Ellen and David Hepworth, and the book sounds interesting

The book combines a history of goth with personal memoir, and stuff about the 1980s generally. Unsworth says there was a good queen, Siouxsie Sioux, and a bad queen, Margaret Thatcher

I never saw Goth as being that political tbh, but I’ll be interested to read about it in more detail

Also, Unsworth nominates the Sisters of Mercy single with Alice on one side, and Floorshow on the other as being the Greatest Ever Goth Record….which is, as far as I am concerned, the correct answer 😃

The two best songs which start with the same two words, imho

Goin' back - Dusty Springfield

Going back to my roots - Odyssey

I know next to nothing about Mongolia, so this was interesting

My young friend Tom’s podcast about Khorloogiin Choibalsan - the Stalin of the Steppes

The Hated and the Dead - Khorloogiin Choibalsan

​Khorloogiin Choibalsan

I’m mucking about with the idea of doing some #sketchnote pages on Powershell basics

#Powershell

Notes on Powershell functions...if I ever finish the pages I'm intending I'll type it all out too, but not yet

I read in this month’s Record Collector magazine that:

[David Essex’s] performance of Che Guevara in Evita led to a personal invitation from Fidel Castro to meet in Cuba.

It seems odd that Fidel would want to meet someone mainly because they’d played the part of his comrade on stage

David Essex LP cover

These numbers are quite something ⚽

Brentford have the unusual distinction of being the Premier League’s best side at home (22 points from 24) and its worst on the road (one point from 21).

Premier League: 10 things to look out for this weekend

For some reason, I was thinking this morning about books named after song titles, or lyrics, and whether they’ve ever been of interest to copyright lawyers….then I was in ‘Spoons this morning and saw this beer.

Bit early to try it, sadly

Beer pump sign (I don't know what those things are called tbh) for a beer called Comfortably Numb

Like weekends, December is too short

Back in the olden days, when Twitter was still a nice place to be, there was a hashtag called #PostASongLyricYouLove

“And I can play hide and seek with my fears And live my days instead of counting my years”

Goin' Back - Dusty Springfield

I’m not a fan of the works of either Freddie Mercury, or Kenny Everett and Cleo Rocos, but I’m sure they’d have been great fun on a night out….and this is a sweet story

“In 1988, Princess Diana, disguised as a man, along with broadcaster Kenny Everett and singer Freddie Mercury had a drink in London’s Royal Vauxhall Tavern, a gay club in London.”

A right royal night out - Witness History

A man and a woman with colorful attire are laughing together at a lively event, as featured on the BBC Witness History webpage.

I’m thinking about writing and running a Powershell script to upload my twitter archive to micro.blog

I want to confirm whether or not to upload each tweet

But, according to an AI thing:

It would take approximately 259.17 hours to read 31,100 tweets.

The Hogwarts Express came through Salisbury station just now

A steam train is passing through a dimly lit train station at night.

The German rendering of Ben Lyttleton’s Twelve Yards reads like it’s about monitoring elves

I’d read that book too

Cover of book about soccer penalties rendered in German as Elf Meter