Summer holidays! Sun! So naturally the entire house comes down with THE PLAGUE. Sigh. Fortunately, at least, not that plague. Anyway…

Published stuff

My Stuff column this week is The Apple Watch X I want is one that’ll stop me doing stupid things, partly written in a haze. In what’s undoubtedly a journalist prize-winning first, the opening line is “CRANK CRANK KA-CHUNKK FRRRRRRRRPPP!” That’s a good thing, right?

Over at TapSmart, I explored study aids for iPhone and inducted 1Blocker into my classic apps series.

And for this very blog, I… posted something that wasn’t a weeknote. I know. I’m as surprised as you are. Threads and Mastodon are not doomed. What is: an expectation they can replace Twitter is quite self-explanatory, I think.

I get the feeling lots of people are looking for that single social network solution where they chat with friends, laugh at jokes, follow breaking news, get customer support from brands, have exchanges with celebs, and so on. Those days are gone, atomised in a whiff of Musk.

Upcoming stuff

For once, I don’t have an office full of hardware that’s not mine (hurrah!), but I do have a new Apple TV I’ll be putting through its paces for a proper explainer. I’m sure there are many others in the wild, but I’m writing one, so there.

It would be hilarious to suggest I’ll release a new album soon, but I did at least make some progress this week on a few tracks. I now try to avoid looking at the ‘date created’ stamp on all of them, mind. I suspect by the time I’m done, streaming will be too, and we’ll be having music injected directly into our brains. On the plus side, music is my happy place. So I should do more of it, regardless of whether it goes anywhere .

Other stuff

Last Sunday, on the way home from having sat in a field for four hours with some friends, I started to feel… not good. I then spent roughly the next ten hours making sure I was within running (and, later, desperate zombie-like staggering) distance from the bathroom. The dreaded noro had got me.

Still, it made me appreciate anew is the basics in life. That first moment of not being in crushing discomfort. Being able to tolerate the slightest sip of cold water. (The best thing I’d ever tasted, I thought, at that moment.) The flat lemonade I found I could carefully drink the following day. Half a banana: the meal of kings.

I’m still recovering now, and slowly returning to normal. But I am looking around and wondering a little more what normal should be. Not that I’d wish noro on anyone to end up in a similar space.