Notes from the Engine Room XVI
Meta Letta
I never considered these newsletters arduous to read, and have often been told they’re a good length. If I don’t include too many links (or you don’t follow them) and if you consider the playlist an added extra, it’s 2-5 minutes to read about a thousand words. But I have had some feedback that, after a long day, a wall of text can feel like a daunting mountain to climb.
When the first lockdown kicked off in March 2020, I despaired at what I expected to be an avalanche of new podcasts: Bored people, sitting in their rooms, creating tedious shows called the likes of Lockdown Lowdown or Quarantine Kaffeeklatsch. Thankfully this didn’t happen, or if it did it didn’t hit my radar. But it turns out that all it really took for me to create one… was being asked.
And so, to accompany Notes from the Engine Room and Sounds from the Engine Room, as an experiment I’m going to test out Voice from the Engine Room.
I’ve never created a podcast before. I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’ve not given myself enough time to do everything properly. It’s going to be rough at first. I don’t know if there will ever be more than one. But why not give it a go?
There will likely be some small differences: corrections in my garbled grammar, links obviously won’t work, etc. But I’ll do my best. And worst case scenario? You can skip it entirely. There will be no refunds.
In My Ears
I spent a lot of time researching podcast hosts. I could host myself, which would be easy, but I wanted a free host that would handle a lot of the submission process for me. At least until I figure out what I’m doing, if I continue with it. I was going to use Podbean, which seemed to have a good balance of features in its free package. But then I discovered Anchor; being owned by Spotify means I can include songs, something you can’t do with other hosts for fear of running into IP theft issues. It does sadly mean that the podcast will only be available through Spotify, but it means I can put this week’s playlist at the end of the spoken word part.
And for everyone else, Sounds From The Engine Room XII is available as always.
This last week there have been new releases by The Go! Team and We Are Scientists, and they can be found on the playlist. I think I preferred The Go! Team’s last album though, this one seems a bit soft; to the extent that I had to check my system to make sure I hadn’t accidentally turned down the bass.
Rest assured, there is no inclusion of Atomic Kitten‘s Southgate You’re The One. I’m not even going to link to it. You don’t deserve that.
On My Screen
It remains impossible to discuss Loki without spoilers, and even discussing the meta-narrative would give everything away. There’s only one episode left though, and I’m curious to see where they’ll take it. Next week you might want to skip reading this entire section if you’re not up-to-date, as I doubt I’ll be able to keep my thoughts to myself.
(Saying that, I’m might just do it as a blogpost, which would solve that problem.)
Instead I’ll talk a little about Lovecraft Country, which was my favourite TV show of last year and one I can’t wait to re-watch. (That might be my little bit of self-indulgence for my time off next week)
The show was critically acclaimed and very well-reviewed, despite a couple of small slumps. But I was surprised to find that a lot of viewers couldn’t really get on with it. I’ve seen it described as a “narrative mess” or “all over the place” or that the characters were “hard to like”. I personally don’t agree with any of that, but I will say it was not a show that lent itself to passive viewing, and it wasn’t without its strangeness.
Lovecraft Country was based on the novel by Matt Ruff and some of the cast didn’t make it, so I wasn’t really super hopeful for a second season; but that didn’t mean I didn’t have hope nonetheless. There were storylines still left open, and it was clear that show runner Misha Green had more stories to tell. Had she continued with it, it would have been called Lovecraft Country: Supremacy, and been set in a very different America, as evidenced by the map she released. The ‘Whitelands’ across the centre of the map is “completely overrun by zombies — most of them the slower variety, but with pockets of fast-moving zombies, too”.
I shall mourn the show I shall never get to see. I had plenty of thoughts of my own as to how it could have continued, and I would have loved to work on the project. But maybe it can become a little spec script one day.
In My Face
Last weekend I was finally able to take advantage of my Christmas present from 2019: A sourdough bread baking course at the Bread Ahead Baking School in Borough Market. Even the compressed half day course was amazing; the teacher Manuel was incredibly knowledgeable, and I came away with numerous loaves of bread, and the basis of my new sourdough starter: Steve. Steve is currently happily growing, literally perched on a pedestal. May he feed me and my family for many years to come.
Manuel gave us a nifty little proportional universal recipe for sourdough bread, based around the amount of flour you want to use:
- 100% Flour
- 60%-70% Water
- 20%-35% Starter
- 1.8%-2% Salt
The specific amounts would then be determined by experience as they can be influenced by room temperature, water temperature, how active the starter is etc.
On My Mind
I’ve obviously been thinking a lot about the imminent removal of all social distancing and mask ordinances in England, and I’ve been somehow surprised that people have either forgotten (or don’t care) that masks mostly protect the people around us, not the wearer.
Be that as it may, the changes to the rules won’t really affect me much. I’ll sadly in future lose out on table service at a lot of hospitality venues, and there’s a risk of having to sit next to someone in the cinema. But aside from that, I’ll likely continue to wear my mask on trains and enclosed spaces, and I’ll still be working from home most of the time.
Denouement
So there we go, we’re all done for this week! If you’ve been reading this, I hope it was some measure of entertaining and/or interesting. And if you’ve been listening to me speak, I’m sorry, here’s some music to listen to.
Be careful out there!