My formerly-footballing friend Fred Fieber has done the illustrations for CAMRA’s new leaflet of Salisbury pubs

Fred’s website is Fred Fieber - Pub drawings

The bit of CAMRA’s website relating to Salisbury is Pubs and Clubs around Salisbury

A pamphlet features a list of pubs with names, addresses, phone numbers, and illustrations of each establishment.

Ian Dunt on why Traitors Australia, Season Two, is the Best Political TV Show of 2024

All of the key political themes are in the Traitors: conformity, group-think, individuality, reason, superstition, unforeseen consequences, binary opposition, loyalty, betrayal, and the bitter murderous gap between tactics and strategy. It’s all here, in this reality TV show. I’ve never seen anything like it. I might never see anything like it again.

The Complete Dunt Awards 2024

traitors logo

It was tidy

#GavinAndStacey

God bless us, every one!

My favourite folkie Christmas songs.

open.spotify.com/playlist/…

I’m not capable of great emotional complexity, but I do come near to it when a player I like, but who plays for Arsenal, goes and gets himself injured

Bukayo Saka out for ‘many weeks’, Arteta reveals, in Arsenal injury blow

My favourite reggae Christmas tunes

open.spotify.com/playlist/…

The middle classes can be quite confrontational, because they don’t associate confrontation with violence

Kevin Bridges Kevin Bridges - The Overdue Catch-Up via @bbciplayer

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

<img src=“https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/139254/2024/square-version-sb-artworkdone.png" width=“600” height=“600” alt=“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